The first step to making the Bible seems obvious: God's word was preserved in writing. However, there's much more to this first step than you might think. In the ancient world writing was an expensive, laborious process. Books had to be written and copied by hand (the first printed book was completed until around AD 1455). The postal systems of the Roman Empire generally were restricted to government use, so the biblical authors had to find special travelers or messengers to carry their writings. Everything about ancient books was different from today, from their languages to the ways they were produced.

What materials were used by the first biblical authors? Paul gives us a clue. The apostle was locked away in a cold, damp Roman prison. When he wrote to Timothy, his young apprentice, he could have asked for anything. Better food, more companions, lawyers to plead his case, the church to rally to his defense. Instead, here is his personal appeal: "When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments" (2 Timothy 4:13). What were his "scrolls" and "parchments"? Why did they matter so much to history's greatest apostle?

Scrolls were made of papyrus, the most prevalent "paper" in the ancient world. As we noted in the introduction, the papyrus reed grew along the Nile River in Egypt and in other marshy places. It was cut, unrolled, and left to dry in the sun. Strips were laid horizontally, then others overlaid vertically. They were woven and glued together, constituting the most common and inexpensive writing material of the day. These sheets were then sewn or glued together into scrolls.

A more expensive and durable writing material was parchment, named for the region of Pergamum in Asia Minor (modern-day western Turkey) where it was developed. This was manufactured from animal skins, usually sheep or goats (vellum). Parchment was perfected around 200 B.C., but was too heavy and expensive for common use. Like papyrus, it was often rolled into scrolls.

Reeds were used as brushes, with a kind of carbon-liquid glue as ink. Such pen and ink was employed with papyrus and parchment.

The original books of the Bible were apparently all written on papyrus. Since this first "paper" decayed quickly, none of these original writings exist today. The same is true for the writings of Plato, Aristotle, or Julius Caesar. We simply don't have the originals of ancient books, but must rely on copies made through the centuries.

Around A.D. 100, people began cutting scrolls into sheets and stitching them together. The result was the "codex," the ancestor to our "book." Codexes using parchment are the earliest copies of the complete New Testament which we have today.

The scrolls and parchments Paul requested were his Bible and his books. They were the earliest form of the Scriptures we cherish and study today. If you were locked away on death row, would they be your first request?

God's word has come to us in three original languages. Hebrew is the oldest of the three, the language used for most of the Old Testament. It is written from right to left, with no upper or lower cases or vowels. Centuries later, scribes added the vowels (called "points") we have in the Hebrew Bible today.

Aramaic was a descendent of Hebrew. It was the common spoken language of the Jews toward the end of the Old Testament era, and was the typical language of Jesus' culture. It is found in the Old Testament in Ezra 4:8-6:18, where the author draws on documents exchanged by the Persian king and his subjects; 7:12-26, recording a letter from the Persian king to Ezra; and Daniel 2:4--7:28, where the narrative deals with subjects important to Gentiles and was thus written in their language.

Jesus and his disciples could read Hebrew. For instance, Jesus read from the Isaiah scroll, written in Hebrew, before preaching at Nazareth (Luke 4:17-19). However, they typically spoke in Aramaic. We still find Aramaic words in the Gospels--"Abba" for Father (Mark 14:36), and "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani!" ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!", Mk. 15:34), for instance.

Greek was the universal written language of the Roman Empire, and thus the language in which the entire New Testament was written. There were two kinds of Greek in the first century--the classical language employed by the cultured, and the "koine" ("common") Greek used by the masses.

A century ago, scholars were confused by the contrast between the Greek of the New Testament and that found in the classical writers. German theologian Richard Rothe went so far as to call New Testament Greek a "language of the Holy Ghost." But then archaeologists began discovering scraps of papyrus and pieces of pottery from the first century, written in the more common language of the people. Shopping lists, personal letters, wills and documents came to light. And their language was strikingly similar to that of the New Testament.

Today scholars rank the New Testament documents on a spectrum relative to "koine" and classical Greek literature. The Gospels are the most "common" in nature, containing so much of Jesus' discourse with the masses and intended for the widest distribution. 1 Peter (recorded by Silvanus from dictation by Peter) and Hebrews are the most classical works in the New Testament. Luke and Acts are somewhere in the middle, employing excellent literary style but recording events using the speech with which they occurred.

William Barclay concludes, "It is worthwhile remembering that the New Testament is written in colloquial Greek; it is written in the kind of Greek a man in the street wrote and spoke in the first century…Anything that makes the New Testament sound other than contemporary mistranslates it."

It is a miracle that God could take on human flesh, that the Creator would enter his Creation. It is no less a miracle that he would give us his revelation in our language. That the Lord of the universe would write a book we could read. But this is precisely what he has done. The wisdom of the ages has been transmitted on papyrus and parchment, in human languages through human instruments. We could not climb up to God, so he climbed down to us.