I am doing intense research on the earliest days of our New Testament. I am hoping to find ways to do a better job of helping my college students that meet at our house see the reliability of Holy Writ.
One of the most fascinating things I have learned is that early believers had a rabid desire to read, and be read to, about Jesus. As Christianity spread across the Roman Empire, Bible books began to be translated almost immediately into languages other than Greek. The craving of the believers from the first was to have copies of the four Gospels. The people wanted to know of Jesus.
The demand for the four Gospels was so great that believers were instrumental in helping develop a new literary form called books. Scrolls could be written on on only one side and were also cumbersome. But books allowed documents to be written on both sides, and made it possible for them to be stacked and then bound together.
The demand for the books of the Bible among believers was so great that they helped shift the whole world from scrolls to books. It's an amazing story. What I liked most about it was the absolute craving early Christ-followers had to be in the Word, and to be near Jesus in their studies. Amen. May we be and do likewise.
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