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How The Bible Was Written

They didn’t have laptops, grammar, and spellcheck, 2000 years ago

James Jordan
Spiritual pursuits
2 min readJan 14, 2025

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It is easy to forget how labor-intensive writing was 2000 years ago. I can write 1,000 words, edit those words, and publish them here in less than an hour. It would take a couple of days to do that with a pencil and paper. It would take even longer if I was writing on a scroll with a quill.

When the Bible was written, they wrote by hand on a scroll. It was no easy task. They had some sort of inkwell they dipped a quill into, and wrote on papyrus, a substance made from plants. Later on, animal skins were used.

The writings were done on scrolls that were rolled up. Imagine, having to unroll your scroll a few feet to remember what you wrote yesterday, or to make sure you were not saying something different than what you said earlier.

If they wanted to make sure what an “Old Testament” passage said, they had to get a scroll and unroll several feet to find what they were looking for. Since books were written by hand individually, they were ridiculously expensive. No one owned a book. You would have to go somewhere like a library to even get access to a scroll. In those days there were no chapters or verse numbers, making looking for something time-consuming and difficult.

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Spiritual pursuits
Spiritual pursuits

Published in Spiritual pursuits

Spiritual pursuits is a publication dedicated to positive spiritual pursuits, learning to go deeper in this world.

James Jordan
James Jordan

Written by James Jordan

Teller of tales, many of which are actually true. Award-winning journalist, and the William Allen White Award for reporting.

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