Ep. 209 - The History of the Bible: How We Got the Scriptures We Have Today

The Deconstructionists

John Williamson

Religion, Religion & Spirituality

4.4 • 823 Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode Summary

The Bible is often treated as if it arrived perfectly bound, leather-covered, and gold-edged, straight from heaven. But the reality is far more complex—and far more interesting.

In this episode, we dig into the real history of how the Bible was formed—from its earliest writings to the process of canonization, from the Apocrypha to translation controversies, and why no one alive today has ever held an original manuscript.

We’ll talk about:

• When the books were likely written

• Who scholars think wrote them

• Why certain books were included or excluded

• The political and theological forces that shaped the canon

• How translation is never neutral

• Why inerrancy is a recent idea in Christian history

By the end, you’ll see the Bible not as a static, untouchable artifact, but as a living record shaped by people, history, culture, and language.

Key Topics Covered

• The Bible as a library, not a single book

• Timeline of Old and New Testament composition

• The development of the Jewish Scriptures and Christian canon

• The role of councils and church politics in determining canon

• The Apocrypha—what it is and why it’s in some Bibles but not others

• How the Dead Sea Scrolls changed what we know about biblical history

• Why we don’t have original manuscripts, and how scholars reconstruct the text

• Major translation milestones—from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate to the King James Version to modern editions

• How the concept of biblical inerrancy only took root in the late 19th–early 20th centuries

Primary Sources & Scholarship

The research for this episode draws from respected biblical scholars, historians, and textual critics, including:

Canon Formation & Authorship

• Bart D. Ehrman – Jesus, Interrupted; Misquoting Jesus; Lost Scriptures

• John Barton – A History of the Bible: The Story of the World’s Most Influential Book

• Bruce M. Metzger – The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance

• Lee Martin McDonald – The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority

Dating & Historical Context

• Paul’s letters: c. 50–60 CE

• Gospel of Mark: c. 65–70 CE

• Matthew & Luke: c. 80–90 CE

• John: c. 90–100 CE

• Revelation: c. 95 CE

• John J. Collins – Introduction to the Hebrew Bible

Dead Sea Scrolls

• Lawrence H. Schiffman – Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls

• James VanderKam – The Dead Sea Scrolls Today

Excluded & Apocryphal Texts

• Marvin Meyer – The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus

• Karen L. King – The Gospel of Mary of Magdala

• Timothy Michael Law – When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible

Textual Criticism & Manuscripts

• Daniel B. Wallace – works on New Testament textual variants and manuscript dating

• Eldon Jay Epp – Perspectives on New Testament Textual Criticism

Translation History & Inerrancy

• Peter Enns – The Bible Tells Me So

• Kenton L. Sparks – God’s Word in Human Words

• Mark Noll – The Civil War as a Theological Crisis

Special music by Forrest Clay from the Recover EP. Find it anywhere you find your music!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Deconstructionist podcast.
0:03.0	I'm your host John Williamson, and we're back with a new episode.
0:06.2	And this is another one in the series I mentioned some weeks back about topics that people have submitted over the years that I just now finally had time to sit down and actually do properly.
0:22.7	And so there's a number of topics.
0:25.4	This is one obviously on the Bible, including some on original sin, the idea or the concept
0:33.1	of original sin.
0:34.5	We'll do one on mythology.
0:36.4	We'll do one on at. We'll do one on
0:37.6	atonement theories. And so there's a whole bunch of them that we have planned
0:42.6	that I'm very, very excited to release, where we really do a deep dive in a way that
0:47.9	we've not really done before. And so we'll mix those in with the regular
0:52.5	interviews that you guys are used to. Hopefully you guys like these and hopefully they're educational.
0:57.0	The plan is to also provide in the show notes all of the different resources that were used for research.
1:04.0	So if you want to dig deeper, you can certainly do so.
1:08.0	And so this one today is on the Bible. And we semi-regularly have done
1:13.7	the Bible over the years because obviously it's very important to understand scripture and the
1:20.5	Bible and the history behind it and what went into it and how it came to be. And so obviously, you know, a lot of folks who listened to the podcast came out of sort of restrictive, oftentimes like sort of for lack of better wording, evangelical or like maybe fundamentalist conservative backgrounds.
1:42.9	And so, yeah, I think it's important to take a look at some of these topics and really
1:48.9	dig in deep.
1:50.0	And so, so let's hit on the Bible today.
1:52.4	So let's kick it off.
1:54.6	What if I told you that the Bible didn't fall from the sky, fully assembled, leatherbound,
	...

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