Notable Students of the Bible

Some Notable Students of the Bible

Through the centuries many children of God have spent time on the Word of God. Some of the best brains of these two thousand years have been engaged in God’s Word. Indeed, God has chosen first rank minds from this world for His Word. This is part of the heritage of the Church.

First, let us mention the lower critics, those who scrutinize the letter of the Bible. People such as Tregelles, Dean Alford, Wordsworth and Westcott are giants among thousands of such critics. Why was such a task necessary? Because there was no printing press when the Bible was first written, and it was a forbidden book too. If anyone was found with a Bible, he could be thrown to the wild beasts. In order to read the Bible, he had to copy it himself. He could only copy a little at a time and he had to copy in a great hurry lest he be found by the police. Under such circumstances, error in copying was inevitable. Even with today’s typesetting, mistakes are unavoidable; how much more was the possibility of making mistakes when every word had to be copied by hand? It would be extremely easy to miss a stroke or add a dot. People in the first century copied in a hurry, and people in the later centuries copied from hand to hand. Today we have a great number of hand-copied manuscripts with some variations in letters.

Hence, God has raised up many who specialize in criticizing the letters of the Bible. They gather many manuscripts and compare them word by word, stroke by stroke. It is a time consuming job, for every letter in the Old and New Testaments has to be verified. Some experts have traveled to several countries, visiting many museums for the sake of verifying just one letter. Their devotion ought to move us to tears. They are the great scholars of Hebrew and Greek. They spend all their life on such research. How we thank God for raising them up for this difficult task.

Then we have the translators of the Bible. Many people all over the world have spent a great deal of time in carefully translating the Bible. For example, J. N. Darby was used of God to translate the Bible into French, German and English. The popular edition of the Chinese Bible is the combined work of a number of scholars. Sometimes as much as eleven hours were spent on one verse.

Next there are those who write Bible dictionaries. God has raised up many in different countries to study words, animals, plants, beasts and cattle. They have given us Bible dictionaries which greatly help us in understanding. Otherwise how could we know what cedar and hyssop are? Everything in the Bible has been studied, even the difference between a body coat and a cloak. Among the writers of Bible dictionaries are Philip Schaff and William Smith. Schaff’s dictionary, written a century ago, is considered one of the best.

Next comes the compilers of concordances. Since the Bible is such a large book, it is not easy for us to find a particular verse: hence the need of a concordance. As a matter of fact, the Bible is the only book that has a concordance. The first concordance ever compiled was Cruden’s. Cruden spent many years in compiling his concordance. While undertaking this tremendous task for such a long time, his mind became deranged and the work had to be stopped. However, he resumed the compiling after his recovery six years later. He literally gave his life for the compilation. It is now simple and easy for us to find a principal word in the Bible, but many were the hours spent gathering all the verses in the Bible where that particular word occurs. It required almost a superhuman memory and a prodigious painstaking effort to arrange all the principal words in order. After Cruden, there came Strong’s, Young’s, and Wiggram’s concordances, but all of them are based on Cruden’s work. Each concordance has its own specialty and all four are quite reliable.

Following the above compilers are those who do research on Biblical chronology. They scrupulously try to compute the years from the creation of man to Christ. Among these are Archbishop Ussher and Philip Mauro. The wonder of the Bible is that there are scriptural verses which connect without any interruption from the creation of the world to the time of Christ. God has preserved this chronology by giving us a verse here and a verse there. At times it seems as if some verses are missing, yet by diligent searching we can always find the missing links. The years from the creation of Adam to the birth of Christ are like a chain without a break.

Next are the people who study the numerical structure of the Bible. Of these, there are two different schools: one is represented by F. W. Grant, and the other by the Jewish scholars called Massorites. Thirty years ago, a Russian by the name of Ivan Panin also did computation on numerical structure.

It is marvelous to know that each number in Scripture has its particular structure. For example, consider the number twelve: we have twelve tribes, twelve apostles, twelve foundations, twelve months, and twelve fruits. God uses the number twelve with consistency. He intends to manifest His work in that number. Grant in his Numerical Bible has opened this up to God’s children.

Another school has tried to add up the alphabet of the scriptural words. We know neither Hebrew nor Greek has numerical numbers such as the Arabic 1, 2, 3 and 4. They use their alphabets to represent numbers. Each Hebrew or Greek letter has a numerical value. Ivan Panin, the famous mathematician during the Czarist regime, and his students have added up the letters of all the Bible.

Another school has counted the alphabet in the Old Testament according to paragraphs and verses. This was to help copyists of later generations from making mistakes. For instance, suppose there are 504 letters in a certain paragraph. If the paragraph comes out with 505 letters, it means the copyist has written one word too many. The five books of Moses are made up of 187 chapters, 5845 verses, 63,467 words, and over 300,000 letters. I am not trying to say that such computation has any special value; I simply wish to show young believers how people have spent their time on the Bible.

There is a fourth school represented by Howard Osgood, a most learned person. He spent lots of time studying the Scripture and counted all the Bible words. For example: the total number of words used in the Old Testament is 6417 of which 1798 words are used only once, 728 words are used twice, 448 words are used three times, and 3443 words are used more than three times. In the New Testament, the total number of words used are 4867, of which 1654 words are used once, 654 words twice, 383 words three times, 2176 words used more than three times. The grand total of the words used in the Old and the New Testaments amounts to 11,284 words. That is to say, the Bible in its original language was formed by using these 11,284 words.

Lastly, there are some people who specialize in studying terminologies or emphases in the Bible. For example: Newberry specialized in studying terminologies, Rotherham in studying emphases. We know that in the original Greek every sentence in the Bible has its emphasis. The emphasis in Matthew 5: "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time . . . but I say unto you," is on the word "I"; that in Matthew 6: "They have received their reward . . . and Thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee," is on "they have" and "Thy Father shall." Rotherham spent his whole life in finding these emphases.