![]() ![]() Over 700 years later, Ezra the scribe returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity and it is thought performed the demanding task of collecting, sorting and editing the extant biblical books and records into one collection. Moses, the ancient lawgiver and deliverer of Israel, is credited with authorship of the Pentateuch, but he undoubtedly took existing records collated, edited and abridged them and wove them together in a narrative. Stories began to be set down in writing and were combined with laws, prophecies and poetry in order to describe God’s involvement in human history. Each successive writer-editor added to previous records. These early portions of Genesis provide us with a pattern for how the rest of the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament was formed. ![]() The earliest sections of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, were composed of genealogical or family history records. ![]() ![]() According to one authority, the Bible “has had a greater influence on the world for good than any other book ever published.” Many individuals through the ages gave everything they had - health, wealth, reputation and even their very lives - for the single-minded purpose of making God’s word available to all who could read or be read to. The history of the Christian Bible (Old and New Testaments) is a remarkable story filled with high drama, inspiration, intrigue, intellectual brilliance and self-sacrifice. Skinner- Executive Director of the Neal A Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship. ![]()
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