How long did it take to write the Bible?

Here are sixty-six books, the work of forty to fifty writers, and their composition taking a period of about 1600 years, written on the continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and in courts, deserts, and dungeons; and under circumstances of gladness, sorrow, poverty, pain, and pressure.

When we reflect that the writers of the books of the Bible were about thirty in number, and that their writings ranged from about 1950 B.C., or over 3400 years ago, to about 90 A.D., or about 1850 years ago, we must conclude that the book could not have a definite plan, as it undoubtedly does, without ONE Master Mind behind it.

There is neither book nor monument you can point to within several centuries of the time when Moses wrote the first part of the Bible. Then, after twenty-five years, Joshua, the second inspired writer, wrote the book that carries his name. Then comes another interval, long and sorrowful, of more than 300 years, covering the times of the Judges... Another interval of 300 years, and we hear the grand and glowing strains of Isaiah... A long and dreary blank of 460 years, unwritten in the pages of God's most holy Word — apart from a few prophetic passages — brings us to a few years at most after the death of Jesus.

Think of the human authors of this book, beginning with Moses over 1500 years before Christ, down to the latest of the apostles, John himself, at the close of the first century. Think, through all this long period of time, of the unity of thought and purpose in spite of the variety of authors... Ezekiel was a priest, serving among the holy things of God. Amos has a different character, a gatherer of sycamore fruit, a man with no education at all. Then you have the Psalms of David, the king on the throne... Then in the New Testament you have men who were unlearned and untrained, fishermen taken from their daily work, from the tax collector's table or the fisherman's net, and entrusted with the pen that was to give the thoughts of God.

God was giving His various words piecemeal, "here a little, and there a little." Such was the character of His ways with Israel. They could not — man could not — hear more until redemption was accomplished, after the Son of God Himself had come and His glory was fully revealed.

A growing revelation... has plainly been God's way of working with men from the beginning. He had to teach us both what we are and what He is and does in view of what we are... But the proof of what man is, on which the rest waited, required a long record, slowly accumulating. As Israel had their forty years in the wilderness, so the world had its forty centuries before, "when we were still weak," and at the "right time" that had come at last, "Christ died for the ungodly."

If a friend handed us a heavy volume made up of sixty-six books, written by between thirty and forty people, at different times, spread over fifteen hundred years, and said, "In spite of all their differences there is a remarkable unity throughout," would we not be astonished? In fact there is no other book like the Bible in this respect; nor could there be, unless everything it contained had been written under the guidance of One mind, and its messages throughout given by the One Spirit.

To Paul it was given to complete the word of God by the revelation of the mystery, the last great line of truth revealed in the Word. And to John's prophetic ministry in the Revelation nothing was to be added... We look, then, for no more. Claimed additions to revealed truth are not the fruit of the Holy Spirit's teaching now.