This page is about the first time God told someone to keep a record things that were happening (the first real bible), how the Hebrew bible was relayed-orally through the generations, 25 facts about the Dead Sea Scrolls, how the King James Version came about and more.
The first Biblical instructions from the Lord to keep an account of His commandments appears in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 17, after His Holy people were led out of Egypt and the Ten Commandments were created. Many people do not realize that the Lord had a lot more than Ten Commandments for His people and that the Lord ordered a book to be created listing the laws He created for His chosen people. This first record was not called a Bible but it is the first time the Lord ordered the people to keep records and He told them why they should write and read this book. The Lord tells the king to write a book to copy His laws And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites.: Deut. 17:18 The Lord says the book should be read everyday because we will learn to fear the Lord and keep His laws and statutes. And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: Deut. 17:19 His laws and statutes will keep us from acting like we are better than others and will help us to keep His commandments. He also tells us that if we do keep his laws and statutes we will live longer and so will our children. That his heart be not lifted up above his bretheren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel. Deut. 17:20
"In the modern era, we take for granted that the Hebrew Bible is a text—written words, displayed in chapters and verse. Yet biblical scholar William Schniedewind, the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies at UCLA, has a different view. In How the Bible Became a Book (Cambridge University Press, 2004), he explores when and why the ancient Israelite accounts—once conveyed only orally—came to be written down and attain the status of Scripture. Here, Schniedewind offers an overview of his findings".... Read More about the Origins of the Bible... By William M. Schniedewind Posted 11.18.08. NOVA https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/origins-written-bible/ About The Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls are fragments of ancient manuscripts discovered in 11 caves between 1947 and 1956 in the Dead Sea region of what is now Israel. Some of these fragments are from the books of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. Others are sectarian scrolls—giving us insight into daily life in that area more than 2,000 years ago. Read More... About the King James Version written by Dr. Lawrence M. Vance As the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) was coming to a close, we find a draft for an act of Parliament for a new version of the Bible: "An act for the reducing of diversities of bibles now extant in the English tongue to one settled vulgar translated from the original." The Bishop's Bible of 1568, although it may have eclipsed the Great Bible, was still rivaled by the Geneva Bible. Nothing ever became of this draft during the reign of Elizabeth, who died in 1603, and was succeeded by James 1, as the throne passed from the Tudors to the Stuarts. James was at that time James VI of Scotland, and had been for thirty-seven years. He was born during the period between the Geneva and the Bishop's Bible. One of the first things done by the new king was the calling of the Hampton Court Conference in January of 1604 "for the hearing, and for the determining, things pretended to be amiss in the church." Here were assembled bishops, clergymen, and professors, along with four Puritan divines, to consider the complaints of the Puritans. Although Bible revision was not on the agenda, the Puritan president of Corpus Christi College, John Reynolds, "moved his Majesty, that there might be a new translation of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the reigns of Henry the eighth, and Edward the sixth, were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the Original." Read More here http://www.av1611.org/kjv/kjvhist.html
Memory Verse And it shMall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites.: Deut. 17:18