A. Clay (Jer. 17:13; Ezek. 4:1).

B. Stone (Ex. 24:12; 13:18; 32:15, 16; 34:1, 28; Deut. 5:22; 27:2, 3; Josh. 8:31, 32).

C. Papyrus (made by pressing and gluing two layers of split papyrus reeds together in order to form a sheet) (2 Jn. 12; Rev. 5:1).

D. Vellum (calf skin), parchment (lamb skin), leather (cowhide) (2 Tim. 4:13).

E. Metal (Ex. 28:36; Job 19:24; Mt. 22:19, 20).

A. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, with the following exceptions appearing in Aramaic: Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12-26; Jeremiah 10:11; Daniel 2:4–7:28. Why did God choose Hebrew? In their book A General Introduction to the Bible, authors Geisler and Nix note the following:

"It is a pictorial language, speaking with vivid, bold metaphors which challenge and dramatize the story. The Hebrew language possesses a facility to present ‘pictures’ of the events narrated. ‘The Hebrew thought in pictures, and consequently his nouns are concrete and vivid. There is no such thing as neuter gender; for the Semite everything is alive. Compound words are lacking.…There is no wealth of adjectives.…’ The language shows ‘vast powers of association and, therefore, of imagination.’ Some of this is lost in the English translation, but even so, ‘much of the vivid, concrete, and forthright character of our English Old Testament is really a carrying over into English of something of the genius of the Hebrew tongue.’ As a pictorial language, Hebrew presents a vivid picture of the acts of God among a people who became examples or illustrations for future generations (cf. 1 Cor. 10:11). The Old Testament was intended to be presented graphically in a ‘picture-language.’

Further, Hebrew is a personal language. It addresses itself to the heart and emotions rather than merely to the mind or reason. Sometimes even nations are given personalities (cf. Mal. 1:2, 3). Always the appeal is to the person in the concrete realities of life and not to the abstract or theoretical. Hebrew is a language through which the message is felt rather than thought. As such, the language was highly qualified to convey to the individual believer as well as to the worshiping community the personal relation of the living God in the events of the Jewish nation. It was much more qualified to record the realization of revelation in the life of a nation than to propositionalize that revelation for the propagation among all nations." (pp. 219, 220)

B. The entire New Testament was written in Greek. Again, to quote from Geisler and Nix:

"Greek was an intellectual language. It was more a language of the mind than of the heart, a fact to which the great Greek philosophers gave abundant evidence. Greek was more suited to codifying a communication or reflection on a revelation of God in order to put it into simple communicable form. It was a language that could more easily render the credible into the intelligible than could Hebrew. It was for this reason that New Testament Greek was a most useful medium for expressing the propositional truth of the New Testament, as Hebrew was for expressing the biographical truth of the Old Testament. Since Greek possessed a technical precision not found in Hebrew, the theological truths which were more generally expressed in the Hebrew of the Old Testament were more precisely formulated in the Greek of the New Testament.

Furthermore, Greek was a nearly universal language. The truth of God in the Old Testament, which was initially revealed to one nation (Israel), was appropriately recorded in the language of the nation (Hebrew). But the fuller revelation given by God in the New Testament was not restricted in that way. In the words of Luke’s gospel, the message of Christ was to ‘be preached in his name to all nations’ (Lk. 24:47). The language most appropriate for the propagation of this message was naturally the one that was most widely spoken throughout the world. Such was the common (Koine) Greek, a thoroughly international language of the first century Mediterranean world.

It may be concluded, then, that God chose the very languages to communicate His truth which had, in His providence, been prepared to express most effectively the kind of truth He desired at that particular time, in the unfolding of His overall plan. Hebrew, with its pictorial and personal vividness, expressed well the biographical truth of the Old Testament. Greek, with its intellectual and universal potentialities, served well for the doctrinal and evangelistic demands of the New Testament." (p. 221)

A. Precision—one’s thoughts must be somewhat precise to be written.

B. Propagation—the most accurate way to communicate a message is usually through writing.

C. Preservation—men die, and memories fail, but the written record remains. It may be said that the New Testament especially was written for the following reasons:

A. The order of the books in the Hebrew Old Testament. The thirty-nine books in our English Old Testament appear somewhat differently in a present-day Hebrew Bible. They cover the identical material but number twenty-four and are arranged in a threefold division:

B. The suggested order of the writings. Many believe the book of Job to be the oldest in the Word of God. It may well have been written as early as 2000 b.c. One of the earliest written parts was that section found in Exodus 17. This recording occurred on Israel’s route to Palestine. Joshua had just won a tremendous victory over a fierce desert tribe called the Amalekites. After the battle was over we read:

"And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and release it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven" (Ex. 17:14).

Other early sections of the Word of God would of course include the Law of Moses. (See Deut. 31:24-26.) The following is a mere suggestion of the time of the writing of the Old Testament books:

C. The location of the Old Testament books.

A. A suggested chronological order and possible dating of the New Testament books.

B. The human writers.

A. The tests given to the biblical books. Various books of the Bible, especially those of the New Testament, were submitted to certain rigid tests by the early church. These tests included:

In closing this section it should be stated that it was a combination of these five steps which helped determine whether a book was inspired or not. Canonicity was not determined at all by either the age or the language of a given book. For example, there were many ancient books mentioned in the Old Testament (see Num. 21:14; Josh. 10:3) which were not in the Old Testament canon. Also, some of the apocryphal books (such as Tobit) were written in Hebrew but were not included in the Old Testament, while some books (like portions of Daniel) written in Aramaic were included in the canon.

B. The writings that were unacceptable. After the Old Testament canon was recognized by the Jews as officially closed, and prior to the New Testament period, there arose a body of literature called the Apocrypha. This word literally means "that which is hidden" and consists of fourteen books.

C. Some canonical books were at first doubted but later fully accepted. During the first few years of early church history there were some twelve biblical books which were temporarily objected to for various reasons.

A. The Old Testament. By the year 300 b.c. (at the latest) all Old Testament books had been written, collected, revered, and recognized as official, canonical books. Many believe Ezra the prophet led the first recognition council.

B. The New Testament. During the Third Council of Carthage, held in a.d. 397, the twenty-seven New Testament books were declared to be canonical. However, it absolutely must be understood that the Bible is not an authorized collection of books, but rather a collection of authorized books. In other words, the twenty-seven New Testament books were not inspired because the Carthage Council proclaimed them to be, but rather the Council proclaimed them to be such because they were already inspired.