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An Outstanding Book and a SurvivorAwake!—2011 | December
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An Outstanding Book and a Survivor
“No book has excited so much opposition . . . , but it has survived every attack which power, talent, and eloquence have ever made on it.”
WHY should the Bible be worthy of your attention? For one thing, it claims to contain God’s message to humanity. (2 Timothy 3:16) If that claim is true, then you would surely be missing out by not reading it.
Another reason for paying attention to the Bible is that it is one of the oldest books in existence and is by far the most widely translated and distributed. It is the best-selling book of all time and continues to top the best-seller list every year.
The claims, age, and circulation of the Bible are even more impressive in the light of the numerous attempts that have been made throughout history to suppress it. “No book has excited so much opposition as this; but it has survived every attack which power, talent, and eloquence have ever made on it,” stated the 19th-century theologian Albert Barnes.
The same writer noted that people naturally take an interest in anything that has withstood repeated onslaughts. “But no army ever survived so many battles as the Bible,” continued Barnes, “no ancient bulwark has endured so many sieges, and stood so firm amid the thunders of war and the ravages of time; and no rock has been swept by so many currents, and has still stood unmoved.”
Many ancient writings have been lost, destroyed, or just forgotten, but despite vicious attacks, the Bible has always survived. Some people have fought, at the risk of their life, to make it available to the masses. On the other hand, some have snatched it from the hands of yearning readers and have publicly burned Bibles and their owners.
Why has this book been so loved and so hated? What battles has it survived? Who tried to destroy it? More important, why has it survived? And why is its message important to you? The following pages will address these questions.
[Chart/Pictures on pages 2, 3]
(For fully formatted text, see publication)
TIME LINE OF BIBLE PUBLISHING
1513 B.C.E.–c. 98 C.E. Bible is penned in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek
100 Becomes more portable in codex form
405 Translated into Latin by Jerome
1380 Translated from Latin into English by Wycliffe
1455 Gutenberg produces the first printed Bible
1525 Translated into English by Tyndale
1938 Printed in over 1,000 languages
2011 Available in over 2,500 languages
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The Bible AttackedAwake!—2011 | December
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An Unpopular Message Attacked
The prophet Jeremiah was directed by God to write in a scroll a message condemning the sinful inhabitants of ancient Judah and warning them that their capital city, Jerusalem, would be destroyed unless they changed their ways. Jeremiah’s secretary, Baruch, read the message aloud, in public in Jerusalem’s temple. He read it a second time in the hearing of Judah’s princes, who took the scroll to King Jehoiakim. As the king listened to God’s words, he did not like what he heard. So he cut the scroll into pieces and burned it.—Jeremiah 36:1-23.
Then God ordered Jeremiah: “Take again for yourself a roll, another one, and write on it all the first words that proved to be on the first roll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah burned up.” (Jeremiah 36:28) Some 17 years later, exactly as God’s word through Jeremiah had foretold, Jerusalem was destroyed, many of its rulers were slain, and its inhabitants were taken into exile in Babylon. The message that scroll conveyed—and a record of the circumstances surrounding the attack made upon it—have survived until our day in the Bible book of Jeremiah.
Bible Burnings Continue
Jehoiakim was not the only person in pre-Christian times who attempted to burn God’s Word. Following the breakup of the Greek Empire, Israel came under the influence of the Seleucid dynasty. The Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes, who ruled from 175 to 164 B.C.E., wanted to unite his empire in Greek, or Hellenistic, culture. To that end, he attempted to force Greek ways, customs, and religion on the Jews.
About 168 B.C.E., Antiochus plundered Jehovah’s temple in Jerusalem. Atop the altar, he built another in honor of the Greek god Zeus. Antiochus also prohibited the observance of the Sabbath and commanded the Jews to leave their sons uncircumcised. The penalty for noncompliance was death.
An element of that religious purge was Antiochus’ attempt to eliminate all scrolls of the Law. Although Antiochus pursued his campaign throughout Israel, he failed to destroy all copies of the Hebrew Scriptures. Some carefully-concealed scrolls may well have escaped the flames inside Israel, and copies of the Holy Scriptures were known to have been preserved by colonies of Jews living elsewhere.
Diocletian’s Edict
Another prominent ruler who tried to destroy the Scriptures was the Roman Emperor Diocletian. In 303 C.E., Diocletian promulgated a series of increasingly harsh edicts against Christians. This resulted in what some historians have termed “The Great Persecution.” His first edict ordered the burning of copies of the Scriptures and the demolition of Christian meeting places. Harry Y. Gamble, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, wrote: “Diocletian took it for granted that every Christian community, wherever it might be, had a collection of books and knew that those books were essential to its viability.” Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, Palestine, who lived during that period, reported: “We saw with our very eyes the houses of prayer cast down to their foundations from top to bottom, and the inspired and sacred Scriptures committed to the flames in the midst of the market-places.”
Three months after Diocletian’s edict, the mayor of the North African city of Cirta, which is now known as Constantine, is said to have ordered the Christians to hand over all their “writings of the law” and “copies of scripture.” Accounts of the same period tell of Christians who preferred to be tortured and killed rather than to hand over copies of the Bible to be destroyed.
The Intent of the Attacks
The shared intent of Jehoiakim, Antiochus, and Diocletian was to wipe out—yes, to obliterate—God’s Word. Yet the Bible survived all attempts to destroy it.
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