For millennia, Christians around the world have embraced the Bible to be the inspired, authoritative

word of God, given to his people for their salvation and spiritual nourishment. But where do we get

this book that we hold in our hands? What do we know about the original manuscripts? How was the text

passed along from generation to generation,

and who even decided which books should be in the Bible?

In our interview today, I'm talking with two Bible scholars who have spent years thinking, writing,

and presenting on these important issues. John Mead and Peter Gurrey served together as professors

at Phoenix Seminary, where they both also work as co-directors of the Text and Canon Institute.

They're also the co-authors of Scribes and Scripture, the amazing story of how we got the Bible from Crossway.

Let's get started.

Well, John and Peter, thank you so much for joining me on the Crossplay podcast today.

Thanks for having us, Matt.

It's great to be here.

So today we're going to talk a little bit about the Bible, how we got it, what those original documents were like and what we understand about them, how we decided or how we came to understand what documents should be

in the Bible. But before we get into some of that, I want to go all the way back to the very

beginning. I wonder if you guys could speak a little bit about the original manuscripts of the Bible,

the actual original documents that were created by the biblical writers themselves.

Maybe we start with the Old Testament.

What do we know about those original manuscripts?

Yeah, that's a great question, Matt.

So the original manuscripts for what we Christians call the Old Testament, what Jews would

call the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible, we're talking about manuscripts written in Hebrew and some in

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