We now move from the background against which the ancestors of the Israelites are set and take an overall look at the writings in which we have the record of Israel's history and faith.

We have seen that modem archaeology has cast new light on the background against which the Bible record is set, and we now turn to another development in Biblical study. In the past hundred years a great deal of thorough study of the texts of the writings which make up the Bible has been undertaken by scholars. The kind of questions which such scholars ask when studying the text of a Biblical book are these:

What is the original language ? Does the book appear to be the work of one author or several? Does the oldest manuscript available to us, in the original language, differ in its content from what we have in our Bibles? Are there variations in the contents, or the arrangement of the contents, in the oldest existing manuscripts and versions of the book? Do translations of the original language keep as closely as possible to the ideas of the original?

Trying to provide answers to questions like these requires a very sound knowledge of the languages in which the books of the Bible were originally written, Hebrew and Greek. Scholars of the text of the Bible need to be familiar with the oldest existing manuscripts and the early translations that were made of them; for example, a textual scholar would need to be familiar with Latin if he was to assess how accurately the original Hebrew and Greek texts were translated into Latin by the great scholar Jerome. Translation from one language to another is never easy and can be very difficult if the original ideas are to be presented accurately.

Some Christians will be rather disturbed at the idea of the books of the Bible being 'taken to pieces' in this way by scholars. It may seem lacking in sufficient respect for the Bible. If two scholars are not in agreement over some point, how do we know which one is likely to be right? But if we believe that the truth of God speaks to us today through the writings of the Bible, we shall not be disturbed by the findings of the scholars but rather encouraged that their work can give us much deeper understanding. God's truth cannot be destroyed by man's examination of it. It is also important to avoid having an attitude to the Bible which thinks of it as a 'magical' book which should not be discussed but only accepted without question.

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