Our God is a speaking God (Heb. 1:1-2). He has given us a great treasure—His speaking, recorded in physical form as the Holy Bible. Through His speaking, God has manifested Himself to humanity. Such a manifestation of Himself is the revelation of the very being and purpose of God. What God spoke, man recorded, thus preserving God's speaking for all men. The transmission of the Holy Bible is the process by which man obtained, preserved, and passed on God's speaking through time.

From God

To further understand the transmission of the Bible, we need to examine the Bible's source and essence and the means by which God conveyed His speaking to us. Second Timothy 3:16a tells us that "all Scripture is God-breathed." That the Bible is the very breath of God proves that the source of the Bible is none other than God Himself. Not only is the source of the Bible God, but the very essence, the constituent, of the Word is also God as the Spirit. In John 6:63 Jesus said, "The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." God is Spirit, hence the Word is the embodiment of God as the Spirit; when you touch the Word, you touch God as the Spirit. God's breathing was also the means by which He conveyed His word to man (2 Tim. 3:16). As a book, the Bible stands alone; its source, essence, and how it was conveyed to man set it apart from all works that draw their source from human authors.

To Man

While the Bible is God's own speaking, God used man to record what He spoke to them. Second Peter 1:21 declares that "men spoke from God while being borne by the Holy Spirit." Although it was men who physically recorded the words contained in the Bible, man's will, desire, and wish, with his thought and exposition, were not the source from which God's speaking arose.¹ The source of the Bible is God, by whose Holy Spirit men were borne to speak out God's will, desire, and wish.² Therefore, while the source of the Bible is God, man was the means by which God recorded and preserved His word. Man is also the intended recipient of God's Word.

The Languages of the Bible

Because God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4), the Bible was written in languages understood and spoken by people. The Bible is one book. However, because the tumultuous history of the Jews, the people to whom God entrusted the recording of the Bible, it was written in three languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Hebrew was the original language of God's chosen people, Israel. God arranged that the first Hebrew, Abraham, would leave Babylon, give up the Babylonian language, and acquire a new language, the language of Canaan, which eventually developed into Hebrew. The Old Testament's first recipients were Abraham's descendents, the Israelites, who spoke Hebrew. While parts of the Old Testament were being written, Israel was in captivity in the lands of Aramaic speaking people; thus, a few portions in the Old Testament are recorded in Aramaic. These portions are related or are directly addressed to the captors of the Jews.³

During the Roman Empire, when the New Testament was written, the Jews spoke Aramaic among themselves.⁴ While there are a few Aramaic words recorded in the New Testament, it was in Greek—rich, concise, and expressive—that the majority of the New Testament was originally recorded. Greek was not only the best language for recording and conveying the richness of the Bible from a linguistic point of view but also the lingua franca (universal language) of the Roman Empire, which at that time encompassed most of the known world. Because the New Testament was recorded in Greek, the revelation contained in the Scriptures was widely spread throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. The Bible's being recorded and preserved in human languages shows that what God conveyed in the Bible was meant for man to understand and enjoy.

Media

Unlike today, during the time the Bible was written, writing materials were costly and not easily obtainable. Generally speaking, the most durable, cost-efficient, and accessible materials were chosen to record and reproduce the text of the Bible. In the ancient world the media that met these requirements progressed from stone to clay tablets, papyrus, leather, parchment, and eventually paper.

If the Bible had not been recorded upon suitable media that could be preserved and disseminated with relative ease, the revelation of the person and purpose of God would have been available and beneficial only to the people and time during which it was recorded. However, because God desires that man have access to His Word, the Bible was recorded on the most suitable and durable materials available. Today, the revelation contained in the Bible is readily accessible to man.

Canonization

Man's recognition that what was written down and recorded by God-inspired men was in fact God's own speaking is called canonization. The word canon has two basic meanings in relation to the Scripture: (1) the list of books accepted as being the Holy Scripture, and (2) a rule or standard. The Bible is the rule or standard against which all Christian beliefs and practices are measured.⁵

It is important to understand that regardless of whether or not man recognizes the divine speaking as the speaking of God, it is still the Word of God. It neither requires nor benefits from man's acknowledgement of it. Historically, however, from man's standpoint, the last part of the Bible's transmission was its recognition by men as the Word of God. The Bible's canonization over time attests to its authenticity as God's Word. One author describes the process of canonization by saying:

There is no need to declare a tree by its name. It only needs to grow up gradually, to bloom, and to bear fruit; spontaneously men will recognize what kind of tree it is. In the same way, whether or not the books of the Bible were from God is best answered by the test of time. The values and authority of the books spontaneously manifest themselves.⁶

The Translators' Sacrifice

It is no small matter that today we can read the Bible in a language we understand. Although the Word of God had been completely transmitted and recorded for hundreds of years, at times, almost no one could read it. According to 1 Timothy 2:4, God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth." However, for all men to receive salvation and come to the full knowledge of the truth man had to be able to apprehend the salvation that is offered to him and understand the truth God desires him to come to the full knowledge of. All men speak many different languages. Therefore, in order to reach all men, it was necessary for the Bible to be translated into languages accessible to every man. The work of providing all men with a translation of the Holy Word is the goal of translation.

The work of translating the Bible into languages that all men could understand was not an endeavor without opposition and sacrifice. As men began to translate the Bible into vernacular (common) languages, such as German, French, and English, fierce resistance arose from the Roman Catholic Church. Because much of what the Church taught and practiced was not mentioned or even forbidden in the Bible, giving the common people access to the pure Word of God would have meant a sure end to the system of the clergy with all of the benefits to those who were in its ranks. Working directly with secular (non-religious) sovereigns and nations, the Catholic church systematically slaughtered thousands of believers who disagreed with its doctrines and practices. Instead of taking man's speaking, these believers endeavored to either translate or read the Word of God in languages they could understand. To translate the Bible into the vernacular languages of the day was to risk one's life. Nevertheless, adversity and opposition could not deter those who sought to make God's word available to all. Testifying of the resolve that he and his fellow reformers shared, Martin Luther wrote, "The body they may kill; God's truth abideth still..."⁷ It was words like these, and the words of the Book these men so diligently translated, that would sustain them in their work in their most trying and even final hours. Today, as the benefactors of their labor and sacrifice, we do well to treasure, read, and assimilate the product of all their work.

Literacy

Because faithful men labored and risked their lives, the truth of the Bible was made available to all men. However, the common man needed to have the ability to read. Furthermore, in order to spread vernacular translations of the Bible, there was a need for a technology that could produce millions of copies of the Bible. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, these needs were met.

Prior to the fourteenth century, literacy was rare and often limited to the clergy. But the new culture of the Italian Renaissance at that time promoted literacy as a social endeavor rather than a skill limited to the clergy. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the clergy's monopoly on literacy was being decisively overthrown. The ability to read and write was highly esteemed and regarded with immense importance. Reading became a matter of personal enrichment. As a result, the demand for books soared. One scholar noted that "the rise in literacy created a virtually insatiable appetite for reading material," yet the supply of books lagged far behind.⁸

The Mass Publication Revolution

Before the invention of the printing press, book production was labor intensive, costly, and highly inefficient. Trained scribes painstakingly copied text and illustrations by hand. Because of the rise in literacy and the correspondingly high demand for books, entreprenuers began to search for a way to improve the inefficient process of book making and to reduce the cost. Five men would join in the frantic race to find a way to mass produce books, but it was Johannes Gutenberg who was the first to break through with a new technology, movable metal type. Having completed his colossal invention, the first modern printing press, he proceeded to print a book—The Book. In 1456, Guttenburg produced the first printed Bible.⁹

It is impossible to quantify the effect the printing press has had upon humanity. One historian relates, "Now copies of books could be reproduced more rapidly, more cheaply, and with a higher degree of accuracy than had ever been possible previously."¹⁰ Of particular importance is the profound effect that printing had on the journey of the Bible. Without the printing press the translated Bible would not have been as widely available to all men. Gutenberg's invention paved the way for the work of those who translated the Bible into vernacular languages to flourish.

William Tyndale, to whom we owe the first printed English Bible,¹¹ was greatly used by the Lord to make His pure word accessible and understandable to ordinary men. For many centuries, governments and religion severely limited the layperson's access to the Bible by confining translations to languages requiring scholarly study. Yet Tyndale was driven by the belief that "the root cause of much confusion in people's minds [in Biblical matters] was ignorance of the Scripture. If this ignorance could be corrected, the eyes of all would be opened and the truth made clearly known."¹² Armed with such a conviction, he devoted his life to properly translating and widely distributing the Bible in the language of the common man. Despite the repeated confiscation and destruction of his work and constant threat to his life, he remained faithful to his service in the face of immense opposition, even until his death as a martyr.

An inspired and prolific translator, William Tyndale faithfully rendered the original Greek text into the first complete printed New Testament in English, the 1526 Worms New Testament, of which two copies still exist.¹³ He was the first to translate anything from Hebrew, a language virtually unknown in England at the time, into English when he published the Pentateuch in 1530.¹⁴ Ironically, though Tyndale spent much of his life working amid relentless persecution from the King of England, the highly regarded King James Bible, published only eighty years after his version was printed, borrowed from his work almost word for word.¹⁵

William Tyndale's effect on the English language is immeasurable, even to the extent that some claim, "Without Tyndale, no Shakespeare."¹⁶ Tyndale's masterful work demonstrates his greatly admired talent in balancing accuracy and clarity, the latter affording him great variety of expression. His unique ability as a translator came from his technical skills of fluent and accurate Greek, Hebrew, Latin, German, and four other languages, and from his complete understanding of the complex art of rhetoric.¹⁷ His unadorned poetic style in structuring the English translation can be seen in many widely recognized phrases, such as: "let there be light" (Gen. 1:3), "my brother's keeper" (Gen. 4:9), "the salt of the earth" (Matt. 5:13), "give us this day our daily bread" (Matt. 6:11 King James Version), "for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found" (Luke 15:32 King James Version), and "the powers that be" (Rom. 13:1 King James Version).

Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire, England circa 1494 (the exact date of his birth is not known) into a prosperous, well-connected family. He studied at the University of Oxford, obtaining his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1512 and his Masters in 1515, which permitted him for the first time to read theology. He was appalled that this official study did not include studying the Scripture.¹⁸ He later attended Cambridge University, where he may have gained his competency in Greek. For a short period he was a tutor to a Gloucestershire family, where at the dinner table he would engage local church officials in lively discourse over what were often conflicting views of Biblical truths. He was even summoned before the diocese on a charge of heresy, which was dropped. John Fox, in his Book of Martyrs, describes one debate during which Tyndale announced to a clergyman that he meant to translate the Bible into English so that even a farmer could know more of the Scriptures than the clergyman himself.¹⁹

Since Tyndale could not carry out his desire to translate the Word in England without episcopal license, he went to London where he unsuccessfully appealed to the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, to support his work. Since it was difficult, if not impossible, to independently translate the Bible in England, as King Henry VIII was a Catholic "Defender of the Faith," he sailed for contintental Europe and began translating the New Testament into English in early 1524. By August 1525, the work was practically complete and prepared for printing in Cologne, Germany. The local government, alerted to the progress, forbade the printing, causing Tyndale to gather his work before it was seized and flee up the Rhine to Worms. The first complete printed New Testament in English appeared in February 1526, and copies began to reach England one month later.²⁰

For the first time, the whole New Testament, faithfully translated from the Greek (rather than from the erroneous Catholic Latin version), could be read by anyone. This alarmed the English authorities, and Bishop Tunstall himself sent out a prohibition of the book, labeling it a "pestiferous and most pernicious poison."²¹ He began gathering all the copies he could find for public burnings and buying large quantities of the books in Europe before they reached England. Tyndale used much of the money he received from these bulk orders to then revise and print updated versions. Though the Church authorities tried to prevent the spread of Tyndale's Testaments, they did not succeed. There is evidence that in many parts of England, groups of people met to read and hear the Word.²²

William Tyndale spent the next few years working freely in Antwerp, but in the spring of 1535 a young Englishman befriended him and then treacherously betrayed him for money. Tyndale was kidnapped and imprisoned in the fortress of Vilvorde, just north of Brussels. He was tried for heresy before seventeen commissioners and chose to defend himself, not by legal manuvering but from the Scriptures. He wrote his defense in a book entitled Sola fides justificat apud Deum, "faith alone justifies before God."²³ Eventually he was condemned to death, and after sixteen months in prison, was "brought forth to the place of execution...tied to the stake, strangled by the hangman, and afterwards consumed with fire, at the town of Vilvorde, 1536; crying at the stake with a fervent zeal, and a loud voice, 'Lord, open the king of England's eyes!'"²⁴

Surely Tyndale would have rejoiced to know that his prayer was heard: within months of his martyrdom, a complete English Bible, two-thirds of it his work, and licensed by King Henry VIII himself, was circulating in Britain.²⁵

Bible transmission transferred God's breath from its intangible reality into written text readable and knowable by man. Translation involved the entire process of translating the written manuscripts from their ancient tongues into the modern languages we now speak. The capstone of the entire process of receiving and unlocking the Bible, however, is the extracting of the intended meaning from the contents. It is not sufficient that the Bible is translated into our language; for us to comprehend the text, we need adequate interpretation so that we understand what we are reading.

The Lord's word is food to us (Matt. 4:4), yet for it to nourish us we need the Word to be opened to us, bringing us into proper understanding. Therefore, the Psalmist delighted not only in the Lord's word (119:16), but also in the "opening of [the] word," which "gives light, / Imparting understanding to the simple" (v.130). Proper spiritual interpretation opens the Word so that we can perceive its proper meaning.

The science of interpretation, known as hermeneutics, has historically involved precise attention to the grammar and logic, as well as psychological and historical contexts of the Bible. The objective of hermeneutics is to develop an interpretational key, a governing principle which stands apart from individual passages, to present the central message of the Bible. Interpreting the Bible guided by a hermeneutic key is necessary, particularly in rendering challenging passages, in resolving apparent discrepancies, and in assembling the central message of the Bible developed through various passages. Throughout history interpreters of the Bible have developed different hermeneutic keys, touching on various aspects of God's interactions with and activities related to man. The highest and best hermeneutic should ultimately reveal not only what God does but who God is according to His intrinsic being. The master key to unlocking the full meaning in the Bible is the central line of God's economy, which reflects the intrinsic being of the Triune God: God is Triune to dispense Himself into our being as our life, life supply, and everything to produce and constitute us as His corporate expression.

A Key to Understanding: Tools of Interpretation

A major deficiency of written text is its inability to fully convey the tone or sense of dialogue as clearly as an animate speaker could. For this reason, even in the Old Testament when the Scriptures were read aloud, the reading was accompanied by "interpreting and giving the sense" so that the people "understood the reading" (Neh. 8:8). Translation by itself is in one sense a very elementary form of interpretation, but is as if we were left with a transcript of a discussion without a clear sense of the speaker's tone, inflection, pacing, volume, even gestures and movements. Such paraverbal and nonverbal elements of speech are regarded by communications studies to account for a staggering ninety percent of what is understood and perceived.²⁶ From this we can begin to understand the necessity not only for an accurate translation but for an accompanying interpretation to fully communicate the sense of a passage.

The hermeneutic study of Scripture is not a casual process of interpretation but the establishment of a solid and "complex set of rules for finding and expressing the true sense of the inspired writers."²⁷ While formalizing and standardizing a basis for interpretation cannot eliminate discrepancies among different interpretations, it can expose a host of illogical, irrelevant, or otherwise improper interpretations. An external framework for evaluating passages in a work as complex and rich as the Bible, which contain the writings of over forty authors in an array of literary genres, draws out a central line in the Scriptures as a context for assembling the intended meaning of the Word.

The object of hermeneutics is to capture the sincere and full sense of each passage of the Bible. Indices examined for hermeneutic study are (1) the language of the text—presupposing a knowledge of the original languages of the sacred texts and examining their grammar and logic, (2) the context of the text—the relation of a particular passage to its surrounding verses and the overall context of its book, (3) the psychology of the writer and the historical context, and (4) the items of truth discussed by the particular passage, e.g. justification, sanctification, salvation, etc., according to their full definition and development through Scripture. Therefore, the tools aiding hermeneutical study include word studies, lexicons, and commentaries.

Then, based on these textual elements, hermeneutics will tend to expound a passage along particular lines of meaning: (1) literal, (2) moral, (3) allegorical, or (4) anagogical (prophetic). Another prevailing hermeneutic principle is parallelism, i.e., interpreting the Scriptures by means of the Scriptures based on the belief of the unity of Scripture. All of these principles suggest that there is a view that underlies the text of the Scriptures, stands apart from individual passages, and unifies the message of the Bible. The body of these principles applied to one's reading of the Word supply the hermeneutic key by which you interpret and understand the Bible.

Historical Progression of Interpretation

Through two thousand years of church history we can see a spectrum of interpretations that guided the understanding and teaching of prominent Bible teachers. There are several interpretational keys which have greatly advanced our understanding of the Scriptures:

• Law & Gospel: Martin Luther, long heralded as the "father of the Reformation," applied the distinction between the law and the gospel as the governing principle in his understanding and teaching of the entire Bible. In fact, Luther summarized the entire Old Testament as being the law, representing God's demands upon man and exposing his inability to fulfill these demands, and the New Testament as the gospel, being a book full of the glad tidings of God's promises through Christ, particularly to justify man by faith. Luther clearly stated that "[t]here is no book in the Bible in which both are not found. God has always placed side by side both law and promise."²⁸ Luther encouraged others to read the Bible based on this principle: "Therefore, hold to this distinction, and no matter what books you have before you, be they of the Old or of the New Testament, read them with a discrimination [of law and gospel]"²⁹
• Covenants: Reformed theology, grounded in the teachings of John Calvin, interprets the Bible based on two covenants—the so-called covenant of works and the covenant of grace, which advocates an extreme view of predestination. While there are passages which seem to support Calvin's covenant theology, this particular interpretation needs proper balancing and the understanding of the richness of the divine truth.
• Sanctification: John Wesley's interpretation of the Bible introduced the teaching of the eradication of sin through instantaneous and gradual sanctification. Thus, man is both justified by faith and also sanctified by faith.
• Dispensations: John Nelson Darby, a leader of the Plymouth Brethren, greatly advanced the understanding of dispensations whereby God deals with man in different ways in different ages according to His purpose in that particular age. The Brethren understood the "cutting straight of the word" (2 Tim. 2:15) to be the dividing of the Bible into its various dispensations of innocence, conscience, human government, promise, law, grace, and kingdom.

All these interpretational keys have Scriptural basis, and for the most part, have advanced our understanding of the Bible. The simultaneous existence of multiple valid interpretational guides—not to mention many conflicting ones as well—suggests that an interpretation's basis in Scripture and its logical soundness are not sufficient in rendering a fully satisfactory hermeneutic key. An interpretation of Scripture, while generally applied to the entire text, may be 100 percent correct, but its scope may only pertain to 10 percent of the revelation in the Bible. Therefore, the progression of interpretation leads us to search for an ultimate interpretational key to the Scripture that not only does not invalidate other sound interpretational keys but also is entirely supported by the text of the Scripture and encompasses the Bible's full revelation.

Other interpretations of the Bible may account for God as the Righteous Judge, as the Creator, or as our Heavenly Father. But no previous interpretational key offers an explanation to God's being Triune.³⁰ Why is He specifically the Father, Son, and Spirit? The economy of God explains this and is therefore the master key to understanding the central revelation of the Bible: God's dispensing Himself—with the Father as the source, in the Son as the course, and as the Spirit as the flow—into man for His corporate expression for eternity.