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Bible History History of the Bible: How The Bible Came To Us: This is a good link to read with a cup of coffee and about a half an hour of your time. Below is a more recent synopsis of the Bible (The last 600 to 800 years or so). The Bible has, of course, always been the center of Christianity from the beginning; but as a book it was always in parts : to be read at certain times. The priests and monks studied the Psalms, or the Gospels, or the Minor Prophets, for instance. In Paris the birth of the Bible as one book took place, around 1200. There the Bible was put in a single volume; the order and names of the biblical books were standardized, and the text was checked for accuracy. For the first time the text was divided up into numbered chapters. The name that is attached to this is Stephen Langton, he of the Magna Carta! More important for us : the physical appearance of the book changed! The pages became very small; the scribes employed headings at the top of the page and used blue and red initials to mark the beginning of each chapter. ( There was not yet a division into verses; this happened in the 16th century.) It is thought that the Franciscan and Dominican friars, when they travelled preaching through Europe, spread the use of the Bible in one volume; and the Bibles were produced in such quantities that two centuries later they were still in use. ( For more on this subject see : A history of illuminated manuscripts, by Christopher De Hamel, whose work was used for this information.) From the website English Bible History: "In the 1550's, the Church at Geneva, Switzerland, was very sympathetic to the reformer refugees from England and was one of only a few safe havens for a desperate people. Many of them met in Geneva, led by Myles Coverdale and John Foxe as well as Thomas Sampson and William Whittingham. There, with the protection of the great theologian John Calvin and John Knox, the great Reformer of the Scottish Church, the Church of Geneva determined to produce a Bible that would educate their families while they continued in exile."  "The New Testament was completed in 1557, and the complete Bible was first published in 1560. It became known as the Geneva Bible. Due to a passage in Genesis describing the clothing that God fashioned for Adam and Eve upon expulsion from the Garden of Eden as "Breeches" (an antiquated form of "Britches"), some refer to the Geneva Bible as the Breeches Bible." "The Geneva Bible was the first Bible to add numbered verses to the chapters, so that referencing specific passages would be easier. Every chapter was also accompanied by extensive marginal notes and references so thorough and complete that the Geneva Bible is also considered the first English "Study Bible". William Shakespeare quotes hundreds of times in his plays from the Geneva translation of the Bible. The Geneva Bible became the Bible of choice for over 100 years of English speaking Christians. "Published between 1560 and 1644. Examination of the 1611 King James Bible shows clearly that its translators were influenced much more by the Geneva Bible, than by any other source. The Geneva Bible itself retains over 90% of William Tyndale's original English translation. The Geneva Bible remained more popular than the King James Version until decades after its original release in 1611! "The Geneva holds the honor of being the first Bible taken to America, and the Bible of the Puritans and Pilgrims. It is truly the "Bible of the Protestant Reformation." Strangely, the famous Geneva Bible has been out-of-print since 1644, so the only way to obtain one is to either purchase an original printing of the Geneva Bible, or a less costly facsimile reproduction of the Original Geneva Bible." The original 1611 King James Version contained the Deuterocanonical books. Just as The so called "Apocrypha" Books were to be found in the Early Protestant English Translations of the Bible which predate the KJV.  Contrary to common belief the Deuterocanonical books were NEVER really removed. Throughout the following centuries we find that in the KJV the Deuterocanonical books have appeared and disappeared in a apparent whirlwind of apparent confession, all depending on the whims of the individual printers. In 1880 the The American Bible Society voted to remove the books they called "Apocrypha" from there Bibles. The "Apocrypha" was officially removed from the English printings of the KJV by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1885 leaving only 66 books. How can I reconcile my belief in the inerrancy of Scripture with comments in Bible translations that state that a particular verse is not “in better manuscripts”? Carol Stanley, Manchester, New Hampshire By J.I. Packer, for the study, “The Undiminished Accuracy of Scripture.” The answer to this question parallels that of Charles Spurgeon who, when asked to reconcile human freedom with divine predestination, said, “I never reconcile friends.” He maintained that the two realities fit together. So here. Manuscripts first. The New Testament books first circulated in hand-copied form, and hand-copying by monks went on till Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century. Anyone who has copied by hand knows how easily letters, words, and even whole lines get dropped out or repeated. The New Testament manuscript tradition was not exempt from this. Also, it is clear that some copyists facing what they thought were miscopyings made what they thought were corrections. Some of these copyists added in the margin, amplifying words and sentences that the next copyist put into the text itself, thinking that was where they belonged. Because the copying was done reverently and with professional care, manuscripts vary little overall, except for the occasional slippages of this kind. Manuscript comparison reveals many passages that clearly need correcting at this level of detail. The King James Version New Testament was translated from the “received text”—the dominant manuscript tradition at the time—and published in 1516. New manuscript discoveries have led to minor adjustments to that text, and where uncertainty remains about exact wording or authenticity, the margins of honest modern versions will tell us so. The New King James, for instance, while still following the received text, notes these things conscientiously as it goes along. Other things being equal, manuscripts are “better” when they are nearer to the original—that is, earlier in date. In the New Testament only one word per 1,000 is in any way doubtful, and no point of doctrine is lost when verses not “in better manuscripts” are omitted. (As examples, see Matt. 6:13b, 17:21, 18:11; Mark 9:44, 46, 49, 16:9–20; Luke 23:17; John 5:4; and Acts 8:37.) Such has been God’s “singular care and providence” in preserving his written Word for us (Westminster Confession I.viii). So how does all this bear on the Christian’s very proper faith in biblical inerrancy—that is, the total truth and trustworthiness of the true text and all it teaches? Holy Scripture is, according to the view of Jesus and his apostles, God preaching, instructing, showing, and telling us things, and testifying to himself through the human witness of prophets, poets, theological narrators of history, and philosophical observers of life. The Bible’s inerrancy is not the inerrancy of any one published text or version, nor of anyone’s interpretation, nor of any scribal slips or pious inauthentic additions acquired during transmission. Rather, scriptural inerrancy relates to the human writer’s expressed meaning in each book, and to the Bible’s whole body of revealed truth and wisdom. Belief in inerrancy involves an advance commitment to receive as from God all that the Bible, interpreting itself to us through the Holy Spirit in a natural and coherent way, teaches. Thus it shapes our understanding of biblical authority. So inerrantists should welcome the work of textual scholars, who are forever trying to eliminate the inauthentic and give us exactly what the biblical writers wrote, neither more nor less. The way into God’s mind is through his penmen’s minds, precisely as expressed, under his guidance, in their own words as they wrote them. Text criticism serves inerrancy; they are friends. Inerrancy treasures the meaning of each writer’s words, while text criticism checks that we have each writer’s words pure and intact. Both these wisdoms are needed if we are to benefit fully from the written Word of God. — J.I. Packer is an executive editor of CT and a professor of theology at Regent College in Vancouver. “Text Criticism and Inerrancy.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY 
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