Chapter 1 of The Bible in its Making, the most wonderful book in the world. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Bible in its Making, the most wonderful book in the world, by Mildred Duff and Noel Hope. Chapter 1 A Living Book There is only one book that never grows old. For thousands of years men have been writing books. Most books are forgotten soon after they're written. A few of the best and wisest are remembered for a time. But all at last grow old. New discoveries are made. New ideas arise. The old books are out of date. Their usefulness is at an end. Students are the only people who still care to read them. The nations to which the authors of these first books belonged have passed away. The languages in which they were written are dead. That is, they have ceased to be used in daily life in any part of the world. Broken bits and torn fragments of some of the early books may be seen in the glass cases of museums. Learned men pour over the fragments and try to piece them together to find out their meaning once again. But no one else cares much whether they mean anything or not. For the books are dead. They cannot touch the heart of any human being. They have nothing to do with the busy world of living men and women any more. Now our Bible was first written in these ancient languages. Is it therefore to be classed among the dead books of the world? No indeed. The fact alone that the Word of God can be read today in 412 living languages proves clearly that it is no dead book. And when we remember that last year five million new copies of the Bible were sent out into the busy working world for men and women by one society alone, we see how truly alive it must be. Nations may pass, languages die, the whole world may change, yet the Bible will live on. Why is this? Because in the Bible alone, of all the books seen on this earth, there is found a message for every man, woman or child who has ever lived or will live while the world lasts. It is the message of God's salvation through his Son Jesus Christ.  It does not matter who the person is nor where he lives, a living force exists in the Bible that will help every human being who acts upon its words to become one of God's true sons and soldiers. No human wisdom can explain this. The Bible tells us about Christ. Before Christ came, all teaching led up to him. He is the only safe guide for our daily life. Through his death alone we have hope for the future. From the first page to the last, the Bible speaks of Christ. This is the secret of its wondrous power. These are the words which I spake onto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. Luke chapter 24 verse 44. Although we speak of the Bible as one book, because it tells one worldwide story, yet this one book is made up of many books, of a whole library of books in fact. Go into a library, look at the well-stocked shelves. Here is a volume of history, here a book of beautiful poetry, here a life of a great and noble warrior. This book was written only last year, this one appeared many years before you were born. Just so is it with the books of the Bible. For more than a thousand years God was calling the best and wisest men of the Jewish nation to write for his book. Some of the authors were rich and learned, many were humble and poor. Kings wrote for it, a shepherd boy, a captive lad who'd been carried away as a slave into a strange land, a great leader, a humble fruit-gatherer, a hated tax-collector, a tent-maker, many poor fishermen. God found work for them all. There are sixty-six books in the Bible, written by at least forty different authors, books on history, collections of sacred songs, lives of good men and women, stirring appeals to the sinful. God chose the men best fitted to write each part. He called them to his work, he spoke to their hearts, he put his spirit into their minds. In these days those who read God's word often forget what old, old writings the first books in the Bible are and how everything has changed since they were written. Seeing the word so clearly printed on fine white paper, readers do not stop to think that they have come down to us from the days when the greatest nations in the world wrote their best books on lumps of clay or on rough, brittle paper made from brown reeds. So these Bible readers grow impatient and because they cannot understand everything all at once some are even foolish enough to give up reading the Old Testament altogether. But the things that are hard to understand are only hard because we are still so ignorant. Whenever any new discovery about the ancient times has been made it has always shown us how exactly true the Bible is. Some years ago just at the time when the doubts and carpings were at their worst, when those people who did not trust God even declared that many of the cities and kings mentioned in the Old Testament had never existed at all, a wonderful thing happened. God allowed the old cities themselves to be brought to light once more. Deep under the earth they were found with their beautiful palaces, libraries full of books and long picture galleries lined from end to end with stone and marble slabs on which were caught portraits of the very kings whose existence the people were beginning to doubt. This is how it happened. Some people said the Bible does not describe things as they really were. In Old Testament times for instance the nations were very rough and ignorant and as for Moses who is supposed to have written the first books of the Bible it is most doubtful whether he ever learned to read and write at all. But, answered others, Moses was brought up in Egypt and the Egyptians were very learned, the Bible says so. The man who wrote those words in the Bible may have made a mistake. It is true that the ruins of old Egyptian temples and palaces are covered with strange figures and signs, but who can say now whether they mean anything or not? Those who trusted in God's word could not answer these questions, but just at this time God allowed the first great discovery to be made. For the moment had at last come when all thoughtful men and women needed to be able to settle these questions for themselves. In the year 1799 a French officer who was in Egypt with Napoleon's army discovered the Rosetta Stone. You may see this stone in the British Museum. It is a great block of black marble. On the smooth side cut deeply in the stone are a number of lines of ancient writing. Many stones covered with ancient writing had been found before, but this one is different from all the rest. The lines at the top of the stone are in the strange old Egyptian picture writing which learned men have agreed to call hieroglyphic, that is writing in pictures. This was a very special kind of writing in ancient Egypt and generally kept for important occasions. The lines in the middle give the same words, but in the ordinary handwriting used for correspondence in ancient Egypt, and last of all is found a translation of the Egyptian words written in ancient Greek. This old kind of Greek is not spoken in daily life by any people today, but many learned men can read and write it with ease. So that, you see, by the help of the Greek translation the Rosetta Stone became a key for discovering the meaning of both kinds of ancient Egyptian letters. Thus, by the help of the Rosetta Stone, and after years of patient labour, the long dead language could be read once more. Egypt, the land into which Joseph was sold, where the Israelites became a nation, and Moses was born and educated. How great a joy to read the words carved on temple walls or in palace halls, and to find with each word read how exactly the Egypt of ancient days is described in the Bible. The dress the people wore, the food they ate, the way they spoke to their kings, the description of their funerals, the very name of their famous river, and the words they used to describe the plants, insects and cattle of Egypt. All these are found in the Bible, and are proofs of the care with which Moses wrote of the land of his birth. But other nations, besides the Egyptians, are mentioned in the Bible, and about them also grave doubts arose. Almost all the Old Testament prophets cried out against the wickedness of Assyria and Babylon, and foretold the awful punishment which God would bring upon them for their pride and cruelty unless they repented. They did not repent. Destruction came upon them. Their very names were forgotten, and their cities are utterly lost to the world as though they had never existed. Nineveh, Babylon. There were such cities once, perhaps, but as for the kings of whom the Bible speaks, Sinatrarib, who came up against Jerusalem and was driven back through the prayers of God's servants, Isiah and King Hezekiah, two kings, Chapter 18, Verse 19, Nebuchadnezzar, who carried Daniel away into Babylon, Ahasuerus, who reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, Esther. Well, if they ever lived at all, they were certainly not the kind of king spoken of in the Old Testament, but it all happened so long ago that we cannot expect to understand much about it now. So the questioners settled the matter in their own minds, but God had the answer to their questions already for them. He put into the hearts of some brave men the idea of going out to the desolate plains empty and void and waste. Nahum, Chapter 2, Verse 10, the plains that had once been the rich empires of Assyria and Babylon, and there to search patiently for some trace of the splendid cities of old. Very wonderful is the story of how these searchers found them. Nineveh had been lying buried under huge mounds of rubbish for more than two thousand years. Now, just at the time when her testimony was needed, the ruined halls of her majestic palaces were once more brought to the light of day. What had been the names of these grim kings of old whose stern-faced figures were sculpted on the walls? Could any among them be the fierce Assyrian kings mentioned in the Bible? If only the strange, wedge-shaped letters that covered every vacant space on the stone slabs could be read, what a message from the past they would reveal. Once again clever men set to work and persevered until the strange letters were deciphered and the palace walls gave up their secrets. Here was King Sennacherib, here Tiglathpilosa, 2 Kings, Chapter 15, Verse 29. Here Esarhaddon, 2 Kings, Chapter 19, Verse 37. Oh, how wonderful to look at the old-time portraits which had been drawn from the men themselves! Well, although the Egyptians and Assyrians proved to have been great nations in the time of Moses, they had no communication with each other except in wartime. They spoke different languages, wrote in altogether different styles, and had very different ideas about everything. Nations kept to themselves in those days. What the Bible says of their intercourse must be wrong. This is all the clever people were quite sure about, but once again God showed them their mistake. Twenty-five years ago an Egyptian peasant woman was walking among the ruins of an ancient Egyptian city, a city built before the time of Moses. Bright yellow sand had drifted over the broken columns and painted pavements of what had once been the palace of a great king. But the peasant woman did not care for that. Was there anything hidden in the sand that she could sell? This was all her thought. Suddenly her foot struck against something hard in the sand. She looked down. Could it be a stone? No, it was not a stone, but a queer oblong lump or tablet of clay hardened into a brick and covered with strange marks that looked like writing.  She showed the tablet to her friends, and they dug down deep in the sand and found whole sackfuls of baked clay tablets. But when the dealer in curiosities saw the lumps of baked clay, he shook his head and would give very little money for them. After a while some of the bricks were taken to Paris and London. These tablets could not have been found in Egypt, declared the learned professors. They are either imitations or they were found somewhere else. These are clay letters and must have been written in Assyria or Babylon. No Egyptian could have understood a word of them. Yet the tables had been found in Egypt and had been read by the king of Egypt's scribes. For the peasant woman had all unknowingly discovered what remained of the foreign office belonging to the old Egyptian nation, and thus we see that the Egyptians of Moses' time could read and write foreign languages as easily as we can today read and write French or German. End of Chapter 1 The Secret of Its Greatness God always chooses the right kind of people to do His work. Not only so, He always gives to those whom He chooses just the sort of life which would best prepare them for the work He will one day call them to do. That is why God put it into the heart of Pharaoh's daughter to bring up Moses as her own son in the Egyptian palace. The most important part of Moses' training was that his heart should be right with God and therefore he was allowed to remain with his Hebrew parents during his early years. There he learned to love and serve the one true God. Without that knowledge no education can make a man or woman fit to be a blessing to the world. But after this God gave him another training. The man who should be called to write the first words of God's book would need a very special education. Most likely some of the children of Israel could read and write, for we know there were plenty of books and good schools in Moses' time, but they certainly did not make such good scholars as the Egyptians. And the child grew and she, his mother, brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. Exodus 2 verse 10 In those few words the Bible shows us the Egyptian side of Moses' education and a very thorough education it must have been, for the Egyptians were the most highly cultured people in the world in those days and we know that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Acts chapter 7 verse 22 The Egypt of Moses' time was very different from the Egypt of today. Among all the great nations it held the first place. For the people of Egypt were more clever and rich, their gardens more beautiful, their corn fields and orchards more fruitful than those of the dwellers in any other land. Again of all the peoples in the world the Egyptians were looked upon at that time as the most religious. From one end to another the land was full of temples, many of them so huge in size and so magnificent with carvings and paintings that even their poor ruins, the great columns shattered or fallen, the enormous walls tollering and broken, are still the wonder of the world. Every great city had its schools and colleges. Clever men devoted their whole lives to teaching in these colleges and to writing learned books just as they do in the cities of Europe and America today. These men were called scribes that is writers. Moses a boy brought up in the royal palace would have the best and most learned scribes for his teachers. A fragment of an old Egyptian book describing the duties of a lad in the scribe's school has been found. It tells how the school master wakes the boys very early in the morning, quote, the books are already in the hands of thy companions, he cries, put on thy garments, call for thy sandals, close quote. If the lad does not make haste he is severely punished. If he is not attentive in school the master speaks to him very seriously indeed, quote, let thy mouth read the book in thy hand and take advice from those who know more than thou dost, close quote. He has to write many copies and as he gets he learns to compose business letters to his master. Before he is fourteen he is most likely a clerk in the government office and must continue his studies at the same time. The letters and copies of a school boy who lived three thousand years ago have been discovered. How many bad marks did his teacher give him, do you think, when he had to correct the carelessly written capital? So greater respect had the Egyptians for writing that they used to say, quote, the great god Thoth invented letters. No human being could have given anything so wonderful and useful to the world, close quote. Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, drawing, an Egyptian lad was supposed to study all these and as we have seen those lads who were trained for work in the foreign office had to learn other languages as well. They had also to read and write cuneiform, the name given to the strange wedge-shaped letters of Assyria and Babylonium. All the letters from the people of Canaan to the Egyptian king and his foreign office were written in cuneiform. Chinese is supposed to be the most difficult language to learn in our day, but the ancient cuneiform was certainly quite as complicated as Chinese. The cuneiform had no real alphabet, only signs. There were five hundred simple signs and nearly as many compound signs so that the student had to begin with a thousand different signs to memorize. Yes, boys had their troubles even in those days. Now, as Moses grew older and learned more, he must often have felt very thoughtful and sad. So many books, so many ideas, so many stories of cruel gods and evil spirits, where was the truth to be found? No one seemed to remember the one true god, the god of his fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Very likely a Babylonian book written in cuneiform and pretending to describe the creation of the world and the story of the ark and the great flood found its way into Egypt. Many copies of this book existed in Moses's day. Part of a later copy was found a short time ago in the ruins of the library of a great Assyrian king and is now to be seen at the British Museum. A strange book it is. The words were not written, remember, but pricked down on a large flat tablet of clay. If Moses read such a book as this, it must have troubled and puzzled him very much. For it is a heathen book in which the beautifully clear story of the creation of the world is all darkened and spoiled. The Babylonian who wrote the book and the Assyrians who copied it were all descended from Noah and therefore some dim remembrance of God's dealings with the world still lingered in their hearts, but as the time passed they had grown farther from the truth. That is why the oldest copies of these books are always the best. The heathen had not had time to separate themselves so completely from God. Quote, in the old, old days, they said, there were not so many gods as there are now, close quote, and some of the most learned heathen even believed that in the beginning there was but one God. Quote, afterwards many others sprang up, close quote, they declared. Quote, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Close quote, Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. Oh, how far the nations had wondered already from the greatest, deepest truth which the world can know. How sad to think that horrible nightmare stories of evil spirits and cruel gods should have come between men's souls and the loving father and creator of all. Yes, it was time indeed that the first words of the Bible should be written and that a stream of pure truth should begin to flow through the world. But Moses had much to do for God before he could write one word of his part of the Bible. We know how his life of learning and splendor came to a sudden end. He fled from Egypt and became a shepherd in the land of Midian and there in Midian God called him to the great work of leading the children of Israel out of Egypt toward the Promised Land. Terrible troubles had come upon God's people in the land of Goshen for the most selfish and cruel pharaoh who ever reigned over Egypt had determined to treat the people who had come to live in Egypt at the invitation of a former pharaoh. Just as though there were captives taken in battle. Many of the old ruins in Egypt are covered with writings describing his cruelties. He killed all who rebelled against him and condemned whole nations to wear out their lives by working for him in the gold mines or granite quarries or by making endless stories of bricks. He cared for no man's life if only he could be called the richest king in the world. Quote and they built for pharaoh treasure cities Pithom and Ramses. Close quote Exodus chapter 1 verse 11. That is store cities. In Egypt many store cities were needed because corn was more plentiful there than in any other country. Pithom where was Pithom? So people were asking a few years ago and because there was no answer to that question they began to doubt. Had there ever been such a city? But in the year 1884 the earth gave up another of its secrets. The ruins of Pithom were found, buried deep in the dust and the remains of great store houses built of rough bricks mixed with chop straw. Exodus chapter 5. And stamped with the name of the cruel pharaoh Ramses II were laid bare once more.  Quote and the Lord said unto Moses write thou these words. Close quote Exodus chapter 34 verse 27. So it was at last that God called Moses to begin the great work of writing the Bible just as he had called him to lead the people out of Egypt just as by his spirit he calls men and women to do his work today. How did Moses write the first words of the Bible? What kind of letters and what language did he use? These are great questions. We know at least that he could have his choice between two or three different kinds of letters and materials. Perhaps he wrote the first words of the Bible on rolls of papyrus paper with a soft reed pen in the manner of the Egyptian scribes. Hundreds of these rolls have been found in Egypt, poems, histories, novels, hymns to the Egyptian gods, and some of these writings are at least as old as the time of Moses. The Egyptian climate is so fine and dry and the Egyptians store the rolls so carefully in the tombs of their kings that the fragile papyrus, that is reed paper, has not rotted away as would have been the case in any other country. Certainly in after years the Jews used the same shaped books as the Egyptians. Indeed, the Jews's Bible, that is the Old Testament, was still called, quote, a roll of a book, close quote, in the days of Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 36 verse 2 Or perhaps Moses wrote on tablets of clay, like those used by the great empires of Babylon and Assyria, and by the peoples of Canaan. Clay was cheap enough. All one had to do was to mold moist clay into a smooth tablet and then to prick words on it with a metal pin. The prophet Jeremiah mentions this kind of book also, Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 1. Most likely, however, Moses wrote on parchment made from the skins of sheep and goats. The children of Israel kept large flocks and could supply him with as many skins as he wanted, and in what language did he write? Perhaps even the very first words were written in Hebrew. We know that in later times the prophets and historians of the Jews wrote in Hebrew. But we must remember that languages alter as years pass on. The Hebrew of Moses' time could only have been an ancient kind of Hebrew, very different from the Hebrew of today. Does this surprise you? Why, you and I could hardly read one word of the English written in England even a thousand years ago. About the middle of the last century, a German missionary found a large carved stone in that part of Palestine which used to be called Moab. This wonderful stone, which is black and shaped something like a tombstone, is covered with writing. It is called the Moabite stone and was set up by Misha king of Moab, 2 Kings chapter 3 verse 4. The writing on it is neither Egyptian nor cuneiform, but a very ancient kind of Hebrew. Of course, this does not take us back actually to the days of Moses, but still it is so old that Moses may well have used the same kind of writing. We have seen that most nations in those old times had their books and we know that each nation had always one book that had valued more than the rest. This was the book that told the people about their religion and the gods in whom they believed. In most of these books some grains of truth were found.  The heathen nations of Moses' time, therefore, remembered dimly some of God's dealings with the world. They were so blinded by their heathen worship that no atom of fresh light could reach them and little by little they drifted further into the darkness. But though tiny fragments of truth are to be found in their books, not one word is to be traced in any book of the most precious truth of all until God revealed it to his servant, Moses. This makes our Bible so wonderful and different from all other books. It is a revelation, that is, something which comes to us from God and which we could never have known without his help. From first to last the Bible is written to teach us about Christ. Throughout the whole of the Old Testament Christ is referred to as the coming Saviour or Messiah, which you know is the Hebrew word for Christ. Christ is to bruise the serpent's head, Genesis chapter 3 verse 15. In him all the nations of the earth are to be blessed. Genesis chapter 12 verse 18. He is the star that shall come out of Jacob, Numbers chapter 24 verse 17. When the Lamb of the Passover was killed and the people who taught they could only escape from death through the sprinkled blood, this was a type or picture of salvation through the blood of Jesus. When at last the Saviour came, the Jews rejected him and would not accept him as the Messiah. Then he said to them, Had ye believed in Moses, ye would have believed me for he wrote of me. Close quote. John chapter 5 verse 46. End of chapter 2 In section 3 of the Bible and its making the most wonderful book in the world. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Little T. The Bible and its making the most wonderful book in the world by Mildred Duff and Noelle Hope. Chapter 3 Moses and his Writings We now begin to understand a little the very beginning of God's book. Of the times in which he was written, the materials used by its first author, and the different kinds of writing from which he had to choose. But we must go a stepfather. How much did Moses know about the history of his forefathers, Abraham and Jacob, and of all the old nations and kings mentioned in Genesis? Before God called him to the great work of writing his part of the Bible, we believed that he knew a great deal about them all. Most thoughtful young people like to read right through their Bibles. And perhaps you have been perplexed to find that many parts of the Old Testament are both puzzling and dry. Of what use then can these chapters be? You have perhaps asked yourself, is it not all God's book? But you must not let this trouble you. Every passage, every verse has its special place and object. Not a line of God's book could be taken away without serious loss to the whole. What, all those long lists of the queer names of people we never hear of again? Ask someone. Why I dread those chapters. I once had to read Genesis chapter 10 aloud, and I shall never forget it. Those who feel like this will be surprised to know that many of the most learned men of our own days are giving much time and thought to the careful and patient study of this very list of names. And the more carefully they study it, the fuller and wider does the subject become. Babel and Eric and Akkad and Kaunar in the land of Shinar. Genesis chapter 10 verse 10. The ruins of all these great cities and kingdoms have now been found. They were old before Moses was born. Indeed, they were so old that their names were only to be found in ancient books. Even the very language spoken by some of these nations had been forgotten by all. Save the learned scribes of Babylonia and Assyria. And yet we find these names accurately given in Genesis. Had they been missing from its pages, the Bible would give us no true idea of the beginnings of history. Remember this when next year I attempted to feel impatient at the awkward syllables. Again, in Genesis chapter 14, we read the names of the kings who governed nine nations in the time of Abraham. And of how they fought together, four kings with five, verse nine, 300 years before Moses was born. Until very few years ago, the Bible was the only book that told us about these ancient kings and kingdoms. And people said, the man who wrote that chapter did not really know anything. He just collected a pack of old stories that had been repeated over and over again, with so many exaggerations and alterations that at last there was scarcely a word of truth in them. Since this foolish conclusion was arrived at, many new discoveries have been made. The broken fragments of old tablets have been pieced together in red. And the names of all the nine kings brought to light once more, certain it is that Moses, with the help of the writings which we now know must have existed in his time, would have but little difficulty in writing those parts of Genesis, which tells us the history of some of the most ancient nations of the world. But when God gives a man some work to do, he always helps him to do it. For those who really trust him and have patience to work on, the help they need always comes. The difficult path is made smooth. This has been the experience of God's sevenths in all times. Many letters and books belonging to the brain of Amorfield, King of China, Genesis chapter 14, verse one, have lately been found. He was one of the wisest heathen kings who ever lived, and the widings of his times are very interesting because they bring us quite back to the days of Abraham. Amorfield kept written records describing the splendid temples he built and a great embankment which he made to keep the river at Tigris from flooding his people's cornfields. But the wisest thing he did was to correct and widen out a long list of all the laws in the land of Shinar. Thus, he worked in very much the same kind of way for Shinar that our own king, Alfred, did. Thousands of years later, for England, this list of laws were found in 1901. They are engraved on a great rock of black marble and are so numerous that they would fill pages of our Bible. They are wise and just as far as they go. There is a great deal about buying and selling of them and the lawful ways of conducting their business, but they are wholly different from those wonderful commandments which God gave to the children of Israel 300 years later. For China's laws were the heathen laws of a heathen king. In them, there is no word of God, no word even of the heathen gods in which Amorfield believed.  Luke chapter 10 verse 27. In these words, Jesus Christ gives to us the true meaning of the commandments which Moses wrote down in our Bible. Again, until quite lately, many people were certain that there could never have been a king like Melchizedek, the king of Salem, who came and blessed Abraham and of whom we read in Genesis chapter 14 and also in Hebrews chapter 7. But among the letters found in the foreign office of the king of Egypt is one from the king of Salem. Melchizedek but from another king of Salem who describes himself in these words, I was set in my place neither by father nor mother but by the mighty king, meaning by God. We read what is said about Melchizedek in Hebrews chapter 7. These words show us that all the kings of Salem believe that they owed everything to God. This is why Abraham honored Melchizedek so highly. Salem, that is peace, so as we see from these ancient letters, Jerusalem was called the city of peace even in the days of Abraham. All these old records and many more, Moses must surely have seen. The cities of Canaan was full of books as were those of Egypt and Babylonia for the name Kel-Joseph here. Joshua chapter 15 verse 15 means city of books. Thus, as year by year there were clearly the kind of preparation which Moses had for his great work and the sources from which he gathered much of his information. Yet no single word of the Bible is copied from the heathen writings. No, just as a man who decides to give his whole life to God today uses in the Lord's service the knowledge he gained before he was converted. So after God called Moses to his great work and started during his life were dedicated to the service of God and used by his Holy Spirit. We do not know. We are nowhere told when a Moses wrote every word of the books of the law. The Jews believed that every letter every tiniest dot was his it may well have been so as we have seen but again he may very likely have had helpers and editors that is people who arranged and copied his original writings. But the children of Israel always called the first five books of the Bible the Torah that is the law and they looked upon these as their most precious possession something quite above and apart from every other writing Jehovah's direct words and commandments to his people at last the life work of Moses was done and Joshua took his place called by God himself at once in a very different position when Moses brought the children of Israel out of Egypt they were without a Bible but in Joshua's days the light had begun to shine the river of the knowledge of God to flow and God was able therefore to say to his servant Joshua this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth but thou shalt meditate their end day and night in a way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success Joshua chapter 1 verse 8 we are not told who was called by God to write the book of Joshua we think that Joshua wrote at least a part of it himself but we all know that it describes how the Israelites came at last into the promised land and drove out the wicked idol worshipers very deep in the earth there remains many old Kenanite cities have been found in Amorite cities especially interesting we know how the children of Israel dreaded the Amorite cities great and walled up to heaven Deuteronomy chapter 1 verse 28 as the people said yet in spite of their great strength Joshua took them one by one overthrew them and afterwards built the Jewish towns upon their ruins this was the custom of conquerors with all these ancient cities as the excavators find today the ruins of the keys we can see its whole history three distinct cities have been found one below the other deepest down of all full 60 feet underground are the enormous walls of the Amorite city great masses of rough brick forming huge walls at least 28 feet wide no wonder the children of Israel felt doubtful of victory above the Amorite walls are the scattered fragments of the altars the Israelites had no time to build anything better until Canaan was conquered above these again stand the ruined walls of a later Jewish city the keys as it was in the days of Solomon and the Jewish kings a fair city it must have been built of white stone the capitals of some of the columns carved to resemble a ram's horn perhaps to remind the people of the massive strengths of the ancient Amorite city Henry space we might pause over many of the other ancient Canaanite cities but its subject is of absorbing interest but perhaps we may return to it in a later volume Joshua like all God's true servants past and present made full use of the precious book and there was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua read not before all the congregation and the little ones and the strangers Joshua chapter 8 verse 35 before he died he spoke to the people very soulfully about their sins many of them in spite of God's commandments and his flavor and love had begun to serve the false gods of Canaan the people repented at the old leaders earnest words and they cried the Lord our God will we serve and his voice will we obey before Joshua made them promise to be stayed fast and Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God verse 26 from this we see that Joshua wrote a part at least of the book that is called by his name people have often thought it strange that the children of Israel should again and again break God's clear command thou shall have no other gods performing the false gods when the living God had done so much for them it is the old story a man who has once given way to drunkenness is not safe unless he puts strong drink out of his life forever if he even touches it he is liable to fall back again into its power so it was with the children of Israel the worship of false gods the temples were so strange so beautiful the gods themselves so mysterious and it all was so easy so pleasant no stern self denial was needed there was no difficult laws to keep no holiness was asked for drinking, feasting and all kinds of self indulgence were part of the worship of fall and those who serve the goddess of beauty might spend their whole lives in wicked and degrading pleasures the backsliders of Israel found it only too easy to give up the struggle for white and to sink down into the horrible wickedness of the heathen tribes around them many people today are asking how God of love and mercy could bid the Israelites utterly to destroy the cities of Canaan and to kill their inhabitants but the more we discover of these ancient tribes the more hopelessly they pray to find them to have been for centuries God had been waiting in patience the warning he had given to them through shot on strip destruction had been unheeded now at last a cup of their iniquity was full Genesis chapter 15 verse 16 and the Israelites were to be his means of ridding the world of this plague spot and the book of judges we see how each time his people disobeyed his command by letting their merciless neighbors rule over them till they loathed the monarch and turned once more to the living God had Israel absorbed devices of these nations instead of destroying them try to think what the world would have lost the only channel through which God was giving his book to man would have become so choked and polluted with vice that in its turn it also would have become a source of infection and not of health Moses and his widings recording by little T section four of the Bible in its making the most wonderful book in the world this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Jeanne Whitfield the Bible in its making the most wonderful book in the world by Meldred Duff and Noelle Hope the history books thus little by little the book of God grew and the people he had chosen to be its guardians took their place among the nations a small place it was from one point of view a narrow strip of land but unique in its position as one of the highways of the world on which a few tribes were banded together all around great empires watched them with eager eyes the powerful kings of Assyria the learned Greeks and in later times the war like Romans how small and unimportant the Israelites appeared to the world then yet we know that in reality they were greater than any people the world had ever seen God's words have been fulfilled through the children of Israel all the nations of the world are blessed the old empires have crumbled into dust the great conquerors of ancient days are forgotten few people today remember the names of the wise men of Greece and Rome but our lives and thoughts are daily influenced by the thoughts words and deeds of the Jews of old Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, David, Elijah their very names are nearer and dearer to us than those of the heroes of our own land when Queen Victoria was asked the secret of England's greatness she held up a Bible their sacred book was all that the Jews possessed their whole greatness was wrapped up in it as the heathen truly said they were the people of the book and now let us glance as the history books of the Bible the first and second books of Samuel have been put together from several other records most likely Samuel himself did part of the work in Shiloh where he was educated the old documents were kept and Samuel the gifted lad who so early gave his heart to God to write the story of the Lord's chosen people during his own lifetime the Bible mentioned several other histories that were written in these days besides those which we know now the acts of David the king first and last behold they are written in the book of Samuel the seer and in the book of Nathan the prophet and in the book of Gad the seer these last have disappeared first Chronicles chapter 29 verse 29 stores of books were being gathered when for instance Saul was chosen king Samuel wrote in a book and laid it up before the Lord first Samuel chapter 10 verse 25 these books were most likely written on a rough kind of parchment made from the skins of goats sewn together and rolled up into thick rolls the books of Samuel are very precious to us for in them we read nearly all we know of the history of David the shepherd king some of David's own writings are found in these books but for most of them we have to turn to the book of Psalms which was the manual of the temple choir and became the national collection of sacred poems these Psalms were composed by different authors and at different times chiefly for use in the temple but the collection was founded by David and he contributed many of its most beautiful hymns David's boyhood was spent among the ragged hills and valleys of Bethlehem as we read his Psalms we feel that the writer has passed long hours alone with God and the beautiful things which God has made let us watch him for a moment it is evening and the young lad is alone on the hills keeping his father's sheep the sun is sinking in golden light even the sullen surface of the dead sea reflects the glory and the hills of Moeb glow as though on fire God is the creator of all this beauty thinks David yes bright as is that golden sky his glory is above the heavens Psalm 8 verse 1 now the sun is quite gone night's dark curtain draws across the world the rosy glow fades one by one the great white stars shine out and presently the moon rises the young lad raises his face and gazes upward when I consider thy heavens the work of thy fingers the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained Psalm 8 verse 3 he murmurs how great is this mighty God how far beyond all the thoughts and ways of men what is mad for but God loves us even though we are lower than the angels he has crowned us with glory and honor he has given all his beautiful world and all the wonderful things he has made into our hands oh Lord verse 4 our Lord how excellent is thy name in all the earth verse 9 in Psalm 29 David gives a word picture of a thunderstorm he describes the furious blast of the young lad he has watched the black storm clouds gather over the hills and valleys of Bethlehem he had no fear of the tempest God's voice was in the wind God's voice divided the lightning flashes God's voice shook the wilderness yes God would make his people strong even as the storm was strong and when the storm had passed and the sun shone out once more over the quiet hills clearly the words rose in David's mind the Lord will bless his people with peace verse 11 Solomon, David's son was the wisest king of ancient times he wrote many books but only small fragments of them are found in the Bible a few Psalms, Solomon's song and a collection of proverbs for much of Solomon's wisdom was of the earthly sort he stood first among all the learned men of his day which is limited to mere human wisdom grows quickly out of date the cleverest men of today will be thought very ignorant in a few years whereas David's writings live his love for God and his faith in God made him able to write those words of trust and hope and praise which are as sweet and fresh today as when they were written and which go right home to our hearts how many cold hearts have not David's Psalms how many wounded spirits have they not comforted there is not a grief or anxiety in our lives today that could not be met and softened by the words of the Jewish writer of long ago yes the work done for God and inspired by his spirit never grows old and now as we open the books of the kings the great empires of the days of old Egypt Persia seem to start into vivid life once more how strong they were how terrible what defense had the little kingdom of Judah against such overwhelming power such mighty armies such merciless rulers she had the best defense of all God's holy promises chronicled in his book while her people loved and served their God but alas they soon forgot to read and obey his book and neither loved nor served him anymore then came sorrow and trouble exactly as Moses had foretold cities were sacked and many hundreds of people led away into slavery yet until the days of Hezekiah no one tried to understand the reason for all this King Hezekiah understood and trembled God would pardon the nation's sin and when the book of law was lying forgotten in the temple he had it brought out and read before him 2 Chronicles chapter 34 verses 14 through 18 under his direction the Proverbs of Solomon were collected and copied Proverbs chapter 25 verse 1 and the Psalms of David sung in the temple once more the wonderful story of the king of Assyria's campaign against Jerusalem followed shortly after by the defense of the holy city by God himself in answer to Hezekiah's prayer can be read at length in the story of Hezekiah the king although Syna Sherab of Assyria was one of the mightiest rulers the world has ever seen he was utterly discomfited by all the kings and chronicles give us as it were the history of a nation from God's point of view the writer's names are not even known but in these books we are shown clearly that God rules over the nations and is working his purpose out through his chosen instruments year by year it is in vain for a man to strive against God or for a nation to hope for prosperity against the deep truth and perfect order which lie behind a parent confusion in the story of a nation with the history books of the Bible the books of the prophets are closely interwoven throughout kings and chronicles we catch many glimpses of the prophets and their noble efforts to keep alive God's words in the hearts of the people but in the writings of the prophets themselves we may read the actual messages to stir up their hearers in times of national distress or heart backsliding God's indignation against hypocrites and oppressors is declared in words that cannot be passed over but ever as the clouds of trouble gather more thickly over his people is the hope of a coming savior more clearly put before them for a real understanding of the prophets books they carry to know something of the circumstances under which each man lived and wrote Amos and Hosea for instance warned their people of the approach of Sargon of Assyria unless they repented and turned again to the law of the Lord as they did not repent the prophets warnings came true and Sargon invaded and destroyed the kingdom of Israel but Nahum brings comfort as the kings of Assyria shall so disappear that in the years to come the very place where they dwelt shall be forgotten while Judas shall keep the Lord's feast forever Nahum chapter 1 verse 15 the Bible tells of many of God's acts which seem very wonderful to us we call these acts miracles because we cannot explain them nor how they happen now the writings of Isaiah Ezekiel and the rest of the prophets are also miracles for although these men wrote at widely different times and hundreds of years before the birth of Christ yet their books all speak of him the light of God's spirit shown into their hearts so that they foresaw and foretold the coming of the savior king terrible troubles would overwhelm the Jews they'd waste and the inhabitants led away captive God's words were sure he would visit his people at last he would redeem them from their sins the troubles came the prophets eyes streamed with tears and their hearts were torn with grief as they saw their land wasted by the heathen yet they did not despair the dark night of sorrow would wear away at last God's people should be brought back Jerusalem rebuilt her king would come the son of righteousness arrives and his name shall be called wonderful counselor the mighty God the everlasting father the prince of peace Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6 end of section 4 recording by Jeannie Wichfield section 5 of the Bible in its making the most wonderful book in the world this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Jamie Allen the Bible in its making the most wonderful book in the world by Mildred Duff and Noel Hope chapter 5 the scattering of the people at last the full punishment fell upon God's chosen people the words of warning written in the fifth book of Moses had told them plainly that if they turned aside and worshiped the wicked idol gods of Canaan the Lord would take their country from them and drive them out into strange lands yet again and again they had yielded to temptation and now the day of reckoning had come Nebuchadnezzar the great king of Babylon sent his armies into the holy land no nation at this time could resist Nebuchadnezzar even the fierce Assyrians had to bow before him for he was one of the most powerful kings the world had ever seen yet even Nebuchadnezzar was but an instrument in the hands of God as Daniel recognised when he said thou, O king, art a king of kings for the God of heaven has given thee a kingdom power and strength and glory this thought had been Daniel's comfort and stay though he had been carried into the great heathen land far from Jerusalem his beloved and holy city but to those Jews who had no trust in God to uphold them the sorrow was almost greater than they could bear for Nebuchadnezzar broke down the walls of Jerusalem and led many thousands of her people away to be his slaves in Babylon we have taken their treasure of gold and silver we have laid their city walls in ruins their temple is bare and deserted and their gardens of lilies and spices are choked with weeds their fields are unsewn and the best men and women of the land are serving us in Babylon now at last there is an end of this proud Jewish nation for all they most valued is in our hands so said the heathen Babylonians mocking the poor captives how little they dreamt that the Jews most precious possession was with them still more valued than jewels or gold sweeter than milk and honey of their own land was the book of the law the book which told them all they knew of God indeed not until the people were forced to live in a heathen city did they really learn to understand her greater treasure their nation possessed in the written words of God but in Babylon with its huge heathen temples blazing with jewels and gold its scores of cunning idol priests who deceived the people by pretending to tell fortunes and make charms and its countless images here at last God's chosen people began to see the greatness of the gift with which the Lord had blessed them in the words which had now become the first book of our Bible Nebuchadnezzar might break down the wall of their city he could not break down the spiritual wall which God himself had built around his people scattered through many lands forced to serve heathen masters as they were the book of God's law was a living gift which bound the Jewish people together as we have seen the Psalms were written by different writers and one of the latter Psalms the 137th gives us a vivid picture of those sad days by the rivers of Babylon there we sat down yay we wept when we remembered Zion Babylon was famous for its great rivers and these poor captives watched the flowing water with the great windswept bed of reeds and giant rushes we hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof but their Babylonian masters had heard of the sweet Psalms of the Lord's people sing to us they said sing us a merry song sing us one of the songs of Zion sing to those cruel heathen who have wasted our country and carried us away into slavery sing one of the holy songs of Israel the songs which King David wrote that they may laugh and mock at us how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land no they could not sing their hearts were breaking with grief never could they forget the holy city ruined and desolate as it lay Jerusalem was still to them a place most loved in all the world and yet even in far off heathen Babylon the Lord called men to add to his book the Book of Daniel has troubled many people greatly it was not history at all some critics said but a mere collection of myths and legends but year by year as fresh discoveries are made we see ever more clearly that it would have been better to trust the old bible words after all there never was a ruler over Babylon named Belshazzar so these people said a few years ago however Belshazzar's name was found in an old cuneiform tablet Nabanides had been crowned king but he seldom took any part in the affairs of the empire all that he left to his elder son Belshazzar who seems to have acted as the king in his father's stead almost daily further discoveries are being made all proving the accuracy of Daniel's writings what is probably the flaw of the very dining hall in which the handwriting appeared has recently been uncovered Cyrus of whom Ezra speaks in the first chapter of his book was a very different king from Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar loved to pull down and destroy nations but the great wish of Cyrus was to build up and restore the cuneiform writings of the Babylonian and Assyrian kings consist mostly of long lists of nations they led away into slavery and the towns they burnt with fire but the inscriptions made by Cyrus the Persian king had to be taken to their homes all the people I collected and restored their habitations and among these people as the bible tells us were the Jews of Jerusalem many and great were the difficulties before them but led during the reign of our 30s by Ezra and Nehemiah they faced their troubles bravely until at last the wall of Jerusalem was rebuilt and the city restored to something of its old beauty what a time of joy and triumph hardly could the Jews believe that they were in their own dear city once again Psalm 126 describes this wonderful day when the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion we were like them that dream then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing then said they among the heathen the Lord has done great things for them we have sinned against the Lord we have been untrue to our promise but never again will we neglect his book nor forget his law and all the people gathered together as one man and they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which the Lord had commended to Israel a solemn day that was as we read in the book of Nehemiah a day of real returning to the Lord pictured them standing there those men and women and little children of Jerusalem their faces would be worn with toil and hardship on a raised platform of wood stood Ezra in the midst of the book of the law and beside him were the interpreters for the people had been so long in a strange land that scarcely any of them could speak Hebrew that is the old Hebrew language in which King David wrote if the law of God was to be impressed or fresh on the nation's heart that day the scribes and the writers and the teachers must translate it into languages of their heathen conquerors so they read the book of the law of God distinctly and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading of Ezra the Bible has been translated into nearly every known language it is most interesting therefore to read in the Bible itself about what was most likely the very first translation of all and this not a written translation remember now when the people heard the words of God's book they were very sad for now at last they understood how deeply they had sinned against him they had been proud of their Bible and rightly felt it to be a great treasure but now they saw that the words of the language to honour God's book is not enough we must obey it the Jewish people did not again learn to speak the old language of their nation yet all the copies of the book of the law and the books of the prophets the Psalms and those writings which tell of the history of the Lord's people that is the whole of the Old Testament was still written in the ancient tongue so it came to pass that after a while that the Bible could only be read by learned people in which the law of God was given had become a dead language that is a language that had ceased to be used in daily life before the death of Ezra and Nehemiah or else very soon after the scribes of Jerusalem that is the writers and teachers began to devote themselves almost entirely to the studying and copying of the Bible a young lad in those days who became a pupil in the school of the scribes of Jerusalem would have to begin by learning Hebrew writing correctly was almost impossible unless you had heard it read two or three times and knew pretty well what was coming for the ancient Hebrew alphabet consisted entirely of consonants there were actually no vowels the little dots you see in a specimen of Hebrew are called vowel points and are a guide to the sound of the word but in the old old days of which we are speaking these dots had not been invented the reader had nothing but consonants before him suppose we followed this rule in English and you came to the word TP you would be puzzled indeed to know whether tap, tip or top was meant but the Jewish scribes had wonderful memories a teacher would read a long passage from the Psalms to his pupil and very soon the lad would be able to repeat the whole correctly the constant words just refreshing his memory this would not always be as difficult as you might suppose indeed to this day the Hebrew of the sacred books in the Jewish synagogues of vowel points at this time it was that the Jews became really people of the book and that a special society was formed to guard and copy the Bible how wonderfully this work was done never have the words of any other book been so lovingly cared for we have called the Bible the oldest book in the world we have seen that it tells about nations and people who were almost forgotten before the days of Abraham it seems strange therefore that the most ancient copy of the Hebrew and in the possession of the Jews today carries us back only to the time of our Saxon Canes this is because the Jews custom is reverently to destroy every copy of the books of the Old Testament that is of their Bible as soon as it becomes worn with use or blurred with the kisses of its readers this is a living book they say it should look new God's word can never grow old so year by year they make new copies directly the older worn out and this they have done for long ages and so careful have they been in making the copies that although all was written by hand there has practically been no alteration in the words for more than 2,000 years God had indeed well chosen the guardians of his book let us try to picture to ourselves the young scribe of those old old days with his long dark hair and big serious eyes dressed in his white robe he has been very patient and has passed working early and late now at last he is to be allowed to copy one of the sacred books my son the old teacher has said take heed how I do a sty work drop not nor add one letter lest I become as the destruction of the world oh may the Lord keep my attention fixed may he hold my hand that it shake not so with a prayer on his lips the young scribe begins his work and it is through such patient careful work as his that the older part of our Bible has come down to us from the half forgotten ages of the past end of chapter 5 section 6 of the Bible in its making the most wonderful book in the world this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Max Lindberg the Bible in its making the most wonderful book in the world by Mildred Duff and Noel Hope chapter 6 but troubled times came again to Jerusalem the great empires of Babylon and Assyria had passed away forever exactly as the prophets of Israel had foretold but new powers had arisen in the world and the great nations fought together so constantly that all the smaller countries and with them the kingdom of Judah changed hands very often at last Alexander the Great managed to make himself master of all the countries of the then known world Alexander was an even greater conqueror than Nebuchadnezzar had been he did not treat the Jews unkindly he neither interfered with their religion nor took treasure from their temple yet while Alexander did God's people know outward injury his influence and example led them astray for Alexander was a Greek and the Greeks although at this time the cleverest people in the whole world were a heathen nation with many foolish and wicked things Alexander himself offered sacrifice to Venus, Jupiter and Bacchus the pretended God of wine and strong drink and to many other gods of man's invention never again would God's chosen people willingly worship false gods their troubles had cured them once for all of that sin but although they knew the Greek religion to be untrue they were ready to admire the Greeks themselves and to take their opinion about many things who can build like these Greeks they will have said who can carve such beautiful statues or paint such beautiful pictures everyone knows that their poetry is the finest in the world and that their books are the wisest and pleasantest to read and then how well they train their young people the lads of Greece are the strongest wrestlers and the swiftest runners in the world all this was quite true but the Jews forgot that mere cleverness does not make a man or a woman good and that the fear of God is the beginning of all true wisdom many people forget this even today so the Jews began to give their children Greek names and to send them to Greek schools and what was worse they put Greek books into their hands instead of the Bible slowly but surely this unholy leaven entered the people's life and influenced their thoughts but in spite of it all many Jewish men and women remain faithful to God they kept his laws and read in his book daily looking always for the coming Saviour the Messiah who would rule and redeem his people at last the fashion for Greek ideas and ways grew stronger until at last even the high priest himself began to encourage the people to neglect the services and sacrifices of the temple that they might go to the heathen sports and games the Greeks are very fond of foot races and wrestling matches and they held large athletic meetings two or three times a year but no one who believed in God should have gone near those meetings because the Grecian games are always held in honor of some heathen God or Goddess when Alexander died he left his vast empire to be divided among his generals just as Napoleon did centuries later with his conquests the descendants of one of these generals was named Antiochus and he began to rule over Syria which included the country of Judah 170 years before the birth of Christ he was known as Antiochus IV and was a selfish and cruel ruler although indifferent to his own heathen religion he set himself to destroy all other forms of faith I am king all my subjects shall think as I do he said he was told that the Jews believed in only one God but he cried with a scornful laugh yes but I will soon alter that before this there had been trouble between Antiochus and the people of Jerusalem and he thought to himself I must break down their old ideas and force them to disobey the laws of Moses as they call them above all I must utterly destroy their book the book of their law once gone they will be easy enough to manage so he sent one of his generals to Jerusalem and made him take in army of soldiers and speak peaceable words unto them but all this was deceit the orders of Antiochus were obeyed the Jews suspected nothing the soldiers kept quiet until the Sabbath day but while the Jews were at prayer and unable to defend themselves the treacherous Greeks fell suddenly upon the city and smote it very sore and destroyed much people of Israel then these wicked men built a strong castle on the hill of Zion so overlooking the entrance to the temple that no one could come in or go out without the knowledge and consent of the governor of the castle but this was only the beginning of sorrows soon the dreadful orders of the heathen king were cried through the streets of Jerusalem it is the will of Antiochus the king that all the people throughout his whole empire will worship the same gods as himself and shall declare that his religion alone is true death to all those who disobey the Jews looked at one another and uttered dismay for they knew well that Antiochus had power to keep his word no more burnt offerings may be made to the god of the Jews in the temple I forbid the keeping of the Sabbath the Jews law declares the flesh of swine to be unclean I command that on the altar of the Jewish god in his temple at Jerusalem a sow be offered in honor of my god Jupiter the priests themselves shall be forced to eat of it as for the books of their law destroy them utterly let not a word remain in the whole land publish this order against the book and if after my will has been declared any man is found to have a copy in his possession let him be put to death horrible as it seems all these wicked commands were carried out a sow was slaughtered on the altar and an image of Jupiter set up in God's holy temple more cruel than all the book of the law was torn and trodden underfoot throughout Jerusalem and all the cities of Palestine bands of soldiers went everywhere searching for copies of the scriptures torn to fragments burnt with fire often alas drenched with the lifeblood of those who loved them now indeed the books of the bible were in terrible danger for the most powerful king of the fierce heathen world was fighting directly against them oh god the heathen have come into thine inheritance thy holy temple have they defiled they have laid Jerusalem on heaps the blood of thy servants have they shed like water round about Jerusalem and there was none to bury them Psalm 79 so the cry went up from those faithful hearts who still dared to serve the true god the altar, the temple itself was now defiled, made unclean the book of the law had been torn to fragments but his people could still cry to the lord and he heard they did not obey the wicked king and the stories of their courage thrill our hearts as we read them for they show us what those saints of old suffered rather than deny their god they were stoned they were sawn asunder were tempted were slain with the sword they wandered about in sheepskins and goat skins being destitute afflicted, tormented of whom the world was not worthy Hebrews 11 verses 37 and 38 it was of these times especially that the writer of Hebrews was thinking when he penned those words seven young men the sons of one woman were with their mother brought before the king's officer or as some say before the king himself for refusing to break the laws of god they were cruelly beaten but one of them cried what wouldest thou ask of us we are ready to die rather than to transgress the laws of our fathers the torturers thereupon seized the brave fellow and so cruelly tormented him that he died his mother and brothers being forced to look on but though their faces grew pale as death and they quivered with anguish to see their loved ones suffer they gazed steadfastly at each other the Lord looketh upon us the Lord God hath comfort in us they said then the second son was taken and before he died he cried with a loud voice looking at his heathen judge full in the face thou like fury takest us out of this present life but the king of the world shall raise us up who have died for his laws unto life everlasting but when it came to the turn of the youngest son even the heathen judge was anxious to spare him and he promised the lad honor and great riches if he would but turn from his faith but the young youth stepped out before them all his boyish faces brave as a man's and his boyish voice was steady whom wait ye for he asked I will obey the commandments of the law that was given unto our fathers and thou shalt not escape the hands of God we suffer for our sins but our pain is short see I offer up my body and life for the laws of my fathers beseeching God to be merciful to my nation and that thou at last mayest confess that he alone is God and last of all after her sons the mother died as well but the saints of God did not die in vain the victories over pain and death fired the hearts that had grown so cold and awakened the careless into active life those who had forsaken the religion of their fathers returned by hundreds to God confessing their sins and pleading for pardon so the very fierceness of the trial proved a blessing and the days of torture were followed by a revival of faith in God and devotion to his service there was an old priest named Mattathias who with his four sons had never listened to the cunning temptations of the heathen Greeks all his life he had served with his whole heart and had brought up his sons to follow in his steps when Mattathias and his sons heard what was being done at Jerusalem they clothed themselves and sat cloth and wept praying and fasting continually beseeching God to forgive his people and to put away their sins in a little while the king's officers came to the heathen altar at Modan the town where the old priest lived sacrifice to Jupiter our master's God they said sacrifices all Jews shall be forced to do or die but the old man looked the Greeks straight in the face though all the nations in the world obey the king yet will I and my sons walk in the covenant of our fathers God forbid that we should forsake his law as he spoke a backsliding Jew stepped up to the altar to sacrifice the old priest's eyes flashed fire and in an instant he had struck him down and the Greek officer with him quivering with indignation Mattathias then turned to the startle people whosoever loves God let him follow me he turned and fled swiftly through the streets of the city many followed him at once others joined him later in the strong camp he formed in the mountains until at last he was at the head of an army wonderful it is to read how little by little this army of God's people drove the heathen from the cities of Judah how they overturned the heathen altars and cast down the images of the false gods and how at last they came to Jerusalem cleaned the temple and purified the golden altar from the stains of heathen sacrifices then tenderly and reverently they gathered together all that was left of the copies of their scriptures weeping as they saw the poor fragments blackened with fire stained with blood and scrawled all over with the horrible figures of heathen gods as today we read in the clean white pages of our Bible let us remember this scene and of the time when those torn and blood stained fragments were all that remained to the world but thank God when all the pieces had been collected together there was plenty of material from which to make fresh copies and no sooner had peace been restored to the city than the scribe set to work with eager loving care the book had become doubly precious now its written words were indeed sacred for the blood of martyrs had fallen upon them and men and women and little children too had chosen to die by hundreds rather than to deny them End of Chapter 6 Recording by Max Lindberg Section 7 of the Bible and Its Making The Most Wonderful Book in the World This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Wang Anxi The Bible and Its Making The Most Wonderful Book in the World Mildred Duff and Noel Hope Chapter 7 Two Famous Versions of the Scriptures By the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea on the coast of Egypt lies Alexandria a busy and prosperous city of today You remember the great conqueror Alexander and how nation after nation had been forced to submit to him until all the then known world owned him for its emperor He built this city and called it after his own name A hundred years before the days of Antiochus of whom we read in our last chapter A company of Jews were living in Alexandria then a rich and beautiful city with its stately palaces and temples of white marble its beautiful gardens and groves of graceful palm trees After the death of Alexander the Greek kings of Egypt delighted to live in the new city and in the old Greek books we can yet read about the splendid processions and festivals held in its streets year by year At this time Alexandria drew all the merchants of the world to her markets and her harbor was constantly filled with ships laden with silver, amber and copper while caravans were arriving daily bringing jewels and results from China, India and the cities of the Far East The Jews of Alexandria were not treated as foreigners but as good subjects and citizens years passed they grew rich and honored in their beautiful home Their children, however, seldom have ever heard Hebrew spoken for all the Jews of Alexandria for convenience sake, spoke Greek like their neighbors But although these Jews live in a heathen city where they read nothing but Greek books and heard Greek spoken all day long they did not forget their God they longed as earnestly as ever to hear about him So they did, only a few of the other Jews could read Hebrew and their children could not understand one word of the language but the little ones, therefore, grew up in ignorance of the word of God This was impossible Here in the heathen city of Alexandria the scriptures would be the only safeguard of Jewish boys and girls The language of our children is Greek and the Bible must be translated into Greek so that they all can understand it This was the wonderful proof of the Bible's living power The Jews had changed their language and their country Thousands of the cleverest books ever written were within their reach for Alexandria had at this time the largest library in the world yet all this made no difference but without the written word of God they could not exist Some writers say that Ptolemy Philadelphia, the king of Egypt at that time having heard the Jews speak of their book and wishing to have a copy of it to place in his great library sent all the way to Jerusalem for sending learned scribes who should translate the book into Greek Now, however, it is believed that the Jews of Alexandria did the work entirely themselves although their Greek Bible is still called the Septuagint that is, the scriptures of the Seminy in memory of the old tradition Gradually, as the years passed the Greek language spread to other nations until Alaska became, as we have seen the leading language of the world Even today, as you know, this old Greek tongue is taught in many of our schools and colleges and those who can read it tell us that there is no language so beautiful none with words so sweet to the ear nor which such deep thoughts can be expressed Thus we see how God used the learning of the heathen Greeks to make his book known to the world For hundreds of years the Bible had been a book for the people of Israel alone Now, as the time of junior year when the son of God himself should come to the world that the world by him might be saved the scriptures which had since the days of Moses spoken of his coming were sent out to the nations by God himself in order to prepare the way The Jews of old divided all dwellers on the earth into two classes the Jews, that is, themselves the Gentiles, that is, all the other nations But now the wall of separation was to be broken down and the words of the prophet Isaiah were to be fulfilled The Gentiles shall come to thy life Isaiah chapter 9 verse 3 Now that God's holy word had been translated into Greek the one language which every man of those days wished to learn the message could ring through all the Gentile cities A king, a savior, is coming Be ready to meet him So the scriptures went forth north, south, east, and west and we think they reached to that far eastern city in which the three wise men lived through afterwards travel to Bethlehem seeking the Messiah and saying where is he that is the born king of the Jews? Matthew chapter 2 verse 2 The Bible had indeed taken a strongly forward now for long centuries it had been like a tiny stream flowing through a dry land and reaching only a few people Now it had become as a river of truth ever growing deeper and wider guided by God in all its wonderings across the earth The Bible was now no longer locked up in a language which was already half forgotten With this Greek translation its worldwide work had begun But while the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures was becoming an open door in which the people of many lands could draw near to God a second witness to the truth of God's book was hidden away in Samaria For the Samaritans had their own copies of the books of the law and kept them closely shut up among their own people for hundreds of years It is impossible now to give the actual date when the Samaritans began to use a different copy of the scriptures from the Jews The Israelic city of Samaria was captured by Sargon king of Assyria in 732 BC but although he carried away the most important inhabitants captive a great number of the poorer people remained on the land and when Sargon filled the country with new and heathen settlers so many marriages took place between the two races that the children of Israel lost their own name and were known to the Jews of Judah as Samaritans Yet the Samaritans still belonged to the Jews' religion and the separation did not probably become complete until Nehemiah expelled all those Jews from Jerusalem who had married heathen wives Nehemiah Chapter 13 Verses 23-30 Now Josephus the Jewish historian tells us that Emoni's exiles was a man named Manasseh a grandson of the high priest and that indignant at being cast out he fled to Samaria Here he determined to set up a separate worship of Jehovah and having obtained permission from the king of Persia to wreck the temple he built a holy place on Mount Jerusalem which became the center of a new form of religion It is thought that Manasseh had carried away a copy of the books of the law from Jerusalem and by means of certain alterations in the words he made it appear that God had chosen Mount Jerusalem in Samaria for the sight of his house instead of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem Now this time all the Jews still wrote in ancient style on the Moabite stone but not long afterwards they adopted the square letters of Hebrew writing such as are still in use today The Samaritans, however in their hatred of everything Jewish refused to follow their example The Jews had cut them off and they would take nothing from the Jews They were key to the old style of letters They would not allow a single word of the books of the prophets or the Psalms or history books have a place among their sacred writings The Jews accepted these books as inspired and the Samaritans rejected them Thus Jewish pride and Samaritan loneliness raised a terrible barrier between the two nations which grew more hopeless every year Yet these students Samaritan documents falsified as they had been have had a word to do for God's word within comparatively recent times For in their ear 1616 AD just as some people were beginning to attack the Bible and to declare that they could find no evidence that the Old Testament was suddenly startled to hear of a great discovery An ancient copy of the law had been found in Syria Other copies soon afterwards came to light The world had rediscovered the Samaritan Bible A nebulus in Samaria known Old Testament times as Shechem A traveler was allowed to look at the oldest Samaritan copy of the older books of the law Its queer letter signs are traced on parchment rolls which are set to then form from the skins of rams offered in sacrifice They are kept in a silver cylinder covered with crimson satin heavily embroidered with gold But out of this discovery a new difficulty arose Some of the critics decided that this was the original copy written by Moses and therefore more correct than the Jewish scriptures They would have done better to wait and to have trusted the Bible a little more True, the discovery was of great importance for these documents proved beyond all doubt that the book of the law dated back to a time when the ancient form of letters so they bore strong witness to the great age of the first five books of our Bible But learned scholars were soon able to prove that the oldest Samaritan copy was probably not older than the 10th or 11th century of our era and that the form of letters was so ancient merely because the Samaritans refused to imitate the improved Jewish writing 100 years ago, for instance books of long essays were printed in England but the old form of letters was tiresome to read and is now entirely out of date Now the Samaritans had not only refused to accept the new and improved form of letters they had rejected as well all the fresh light and inspiration which God was continually giving to his people through the holy prophets According to the Samaritans Moses was the only true prophet Thus they cut themselves a drip from further light and little by little the nations had dwindled away Yet because so many of the Samaritans in the time of Christ were faithful to the measure of light they had and kept alive in their hearts the hope of a coming Messiah God made for them a wonderful way of escape Every Bible reader knows and loves a beautiful scene by the well of Sakkar in Samaria where the Savior began by asking a woman for water to drink and ended by explaining to her some of the deepest truth of God's kingdom We understand now why the woman was so surprised that a Jew should condescend to speak to her and why the Jews would have no dealings with the Samaritans In the end a great barrier divided her from all ordinary Jewish teachers She had been taught to believe in an altered Bible not merely a different translation remember for the Bible should be the same and airy language but a book of the law in which some of the words had been changed and the original meaning destroyed So the woman said to her Lord our fathers worshipped in this mountain and he say that in Jerusalem is a place where men out to worship verse 20 The Savior had not said so but she felt sure that he as a Jew would certainly contradict the old traditions of his countrymen But the Lord Jesus Christ had come to show the world that it was no longer a question of this mountain or that Such matters had been but a shadow of the good things to come God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth So the Lord Jesus Christ the Messiah for whom both Jews and Samaritans were waiting threw down the barrier of ages and united the two nations in a spiritual worship End of chapter 7 Recording by Wang An Qi Section 8 of the Bible in its making The most wonderful book in the world This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings Visit LibriVox.org Recording by Thovo The Bible in its making The most wonderful book in the world By Mildred Duff and Noel Hope Chapter 8 The Bible in the Days of Jesus Christ Slowly but surely as time went on God was adding to his book until about 400 years before Christ the Old Testament Scriptures in their present shape were completed Many questions have been asked as to how the canon of the Old Testament was formed That is, how and when did the Jews first begin to understand that the books of the Old Testament were inspired by God About the first five books the books of the law there had never been any question that in the very earliest times those books so wonderfully given to the people had been the strength and stay of the children of Israel But many books had been written in the days of the Old Jewish Kings and also after the return of the people from Babylon some of these were very beautiful and helpful How were the sacred Scriptures first divided from the other Jewish writings? No Some had thought that Ezra the scribe with the assistance of a Council of Elders fixed the canon of Hebrew Scripture Others have supposed Nehemiah to have undertaken the work but most likely it was a gradual process directed by God himself who inspired his servants to carry out his will The Christian Bible is composed of two parts the Old and the New Testament but the Jews divided their Scriptures our Old Testament into three parts and they certainly looked upon some books as far more sacred than others The Torah that is the law included as we have seen the first five books of the Bible from the very earliest days the Torah was reverenced as containing the commandments and promises of God The second division consisted of the prophets these being subdivided into the former prophets four volumes Joshua Judges Samuel Kings and the latter prophets three volumes Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and the twelve minor prophets which were included in one book Next in order of sanctity three groups the poetical books of the Psalms Proverbs and Job the rolls or greetings seven volumes Solomon's Song Ruth Lamentations Ecclesiastes Esther Daniel and one volume containing Ezra and Nehemiah indeed not until the Greek translation was made were the books grouped in the order in which we have them now and at the same time their number was increased to 39 by taking the writings of each of the prophets separately and treating Ezra and Nehemiah as different books and now God who has spoken in times past by many different ways and voices spoke at last to the nations by his son by whom also he made the worlds Hebrews chapter 1 verse 2 let us think for a little while of what was being done with the scriptures in the days when the Lord Jesus learned to read their words at his mother's knee words which from first to last told of himself we have seen that no people could possibly honor the actual letters of his scripture more highly than did the Jews the care they took to keep the words exactly as they had been handed down to them was infinite and God who knows all things knew that a time would come when the pure Hebrew words of the Old Bible would be eagerly sought for and treasured by all who truly honor his book therefore although the eyes of the learned Jewish scribes were so blinded that they did not recognize their king and savior when he came yet God blessed all that was true in their work and it is from the Hebrew copies which they made of the books of the Old Testament and not from the Septuagint or Greek translation that the Old Testament of our Bible has come to us today yet sad to say while so careful to preserve the scriptures the scribes and Pharisees forgot its spirit the very purpose for which the Bible had been given them a man might know by memory every letter of the Bible but unless the spirit of God were in his heart helping him to act out in his life the words he repeats with his lips all his knowledge of the Bible would only lie as a dead weight upon his soul the letter killeth second Corinthians chapter 3 verse 6 so wrote the apostle Paul who had as we know been educated by the scribes and Pharisees and when he wrote those words he was recalling his own experience thus as year by year the learned Jews thought more of the letters of their Bible they saw less of its spirit worse still they began to add to the teaching of the books of the law not that they ventured to put other words between those of the Bible or to alter it as the Samaritans had done but they invented long explanations of almost every verse and declared that these explanations must be followed as absolutely as the words of the Bible itself for instance a learned Jewish teacher wrote an explanation about obeying the Levites Deuteronomy chapter 17 verse 11 Moses had said that the people were to do what the Levites told them respecting the law of God neither turning to the right hand nor to the left the Jewish teachers declared what Moses really meant was that if a teacher of the law told you that your left hand was your right you must believe him in this way while professing to explain God's word the scribes and teachers were confusing the simple people who wanted to obey this holy law the saviour saw this and he fearlessly rebuked the teachers of the law grieved beyond words that those to whom God had entrusted his book should make the word of God of none effect through your tradition Mark chapter 7 verse 13 his own way of using the scriptures was very different from his mother he had first learned to repeat texts from the Old Testament and with her he had gone to the synagogue Sabbath by Sabbath to hear the books of the law and the prophets read as he grew older he would have been sent to school to recite the scriptures and long before he began himself to teach the people he had so absorbed the spirit of the Old Testament that his very thoughts seemed to have been given in scripture words perhaps you have wondered why the names of some of the prophets and heroes of the Old Testament are spelt so differently when mentioned in the new Elias instead of Elijah Noi instead of Noah and so on the names of the New Testament quoted from the Greek translation of the Bible instead of from the Hebrew names change a little you know when translated into other languages for instance our name of Mary becomes Marie in French and Maria in Italian and yet it is all the while the same name some people think that this the Septuagint or first Greek translation of the Bible which the savior used many of the quotations which he gave from the Old Testament appear to have been from this translation although some seem taken directly from the Hebrew and others again from an Aramaic version which has disappeared Christ himself no doubt taught the people in the Aramaic tongue which was a mixed language which returned from Babylon Aramaic is called Calde in the Book of Daniel but while our savior constantly quoted from the Old Testament he never used its words without definite purpose the sword of the spirit in his hands was either turned against the evil one or brought directly to bear with overwhelming force on some mistaken teaching which had blinded the people to the true meaning a direct and yet simple way in which he reached the point and once and for all swept away the difficulty amazed and confounded the learned Jews an instance of this is found in his wonderful answer to the Sadducees who disbelieved in the resurrection as touching the resurrection of the dead he said have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God saying and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob Matthew chapter 22 verses 31 and 32 his hearers of course had heard these words quoted from childhood but not till the savior explained their full significance God is not the God of the dead but of the living did they realize that in the first recorded words spoken by God to Moses they approve of the resurrection and of life after death let us take a look at the first time in which Christ publicly read and explained the scriptures it is the Sabbath and the synagogue of Nazareth is full of people serious and attentive for they have met together to hear the word of God now one stands up to read the sacred role is in his hand listen the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind to set at liberty them that are bruised to preach the acceptable year of the Lord he closes the book and sits down from the dim ages of the past those words had been read in the long long ages to come they will yet be read until the world shall cease to exist and time itself be no no more but never before and never again could there be so heart searching or sacred a reading as this when the son of God was read from his father's book in the simple village meeting in Galilee and yet his listeners did not understand the reading even after his explanation of the words they fell upon deaf ears and raised only anger and surprise it was then that the first attempt was made to destroy him verse 29 to his own apostles enlightened as they were the message of the Old Testament was sealed until after the saviour's resurrection when he opened their understanding that they might understand the scriptures Luke chapter 24 verse 45 then only did the wonderful truth dawn upon them that in coming to earth in suffering rising from the dead and ascending to heaven their master had not destroyed the scriptures but had fulfilled them Matthew chapter 5 verse 17 end of chapter 8 recording by Thovo August 22nd 2010