Hand-in-Hand Ministries of Connecticut
The Original Bible (continued)
New Testament
NT - written in Greek over a period of about 50 years
- Koine Greek - the common language of every day usage by common people, including Peter.
- Classic Greek - the pure language of the Golden Age of Greece (450 BC) spoken by educated people, including Luke, who wrote The Gospel According to Luke and The Acts of the Apostles.
- The fish is a symbol of early Christianity. The word "ICTHUS" in Greek, meaning "fish," represents Jesus.
No original manuscripts remain.
<By original manuscript, we mean the original hand-written document of each book of the Bible. In the Old Testament, these would have been in the forms of scrolls that were rolled up when not in use. The binding together of individual pages in the form that we now call a codex generally started with the New Testament. Whether scroll or codex, every record we have is a copy of a copy, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. The determination of what was written and when it was written involves complex detective work and much speculation. There is considerable disagreement on biblical dates and one sometimes suspects that data is selected to support a thesis, rather than being allowed to point a direction.