Told in Stone is a channel on YouTube dedicated to learning more about ancient history. In a recent video that is gathering a lot of attention, Garret Ryan states that “99% of ancient literature has been lost.”
That’s a staggering claim! I have no doubt it is true. As Ryan says, “Ancient Greece and Rome had plenty of literature, but practically none of it survives today.”
Historians often point to the fire that destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria. Ryan says that it could have contained “between 532,800 and 700,000 volumes in scroll form”. Who knows how many great works were lost in that fire. Books of philosophy, poetry, science, mathematics, plays, stories, historical records. It is said that the destruction of the library at Alexandria set civilization back by centuries.
While the loss of the library in Alexandria was a great loss, the loss of one library could not have been responsible for the loss of most of the literature of the ancient world. The real cause is something much simpler: the fragility of the paper it was written on.
Ancient scrolls were often written on papyrus. Papyrus scrolls were fragile and subject to decay. Parchment would later replace papyrus and was a better, more durable material. Many of the Dead Sea scrolls were written on parchment.
Still, neither were as durable a material as paper, which wasn’t invented until the 2nd century AD in China and wouldn’t make it to Europe for another eight centuries. With the invention of paper, sheets could be bound together to form books. Once the printing press was invented in 1496 in Germany, books could then be printed faster and more cheaply. This contributed to the spread of knowledge as well as its preservation.
When I heard Ryan say “99% of all ancient literature has been lost,” it occurred to me that, while this may be true, there is one volume that has stood the test of time: the Bible.
When you hold a Bible in your hands, you hold a book that is actually a collection of sixty-six books. Some of which are very old! The Book of Genesis is thought to have been written between 1440 to 1400 BC. Some believe the Book of Job is even older, having been written between 1900 and 1700 BC.
If 99% of all ancient literature was lost, how is it that a book written in three different languages by forty different authors on three continents has survived for so long?
The answer: God. He promised us that His Word would always remain.
The Psalmist proclaimed: “Your word, O LORD, is everlasting; it is firmly fixed in the heavens” (Psalm 119:89).
Quoting the prophet Isaiah, Peter told those in his day:
“For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. {24} For, ‘All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, {25} but the word of the Lord endures forever’ ” (1 Peter 1:23-25).
Throughout history there have been many who have tried to destroy God’s Word.
In A.D. 64 Christianity was declared illegal by Rome. Shortly thereafter a great persecution of Christians began. For centuries Roman emperors persecuted Christians — Nero, Vespasian, Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Maximus, Decius, Valerian, and Diocletian. They burned down churches. Copies of Scripture were burned. Christians themselves were put to the sword. Or worse. It wasn’t until the Edict of Milan in 313 that Constantine the Great put an end to the bloodshed.
It is said that by A.D. 325 some 2 million Christians had been martyred for the faith.
Their churches were burned. Copies of Scripture were burned. And Christians themselves were put to death.
But God’s Word did not die!
What the Roman emperors couldn’t accomplish through brutality godless philosophers have sought to do through different means.
And failed. Time and again.
Allen Webster has written:
“Voltaire was a notorious French infidel. In 1778, he boasted that within one hundred years the Bible would be no more. Later, the very press that printed the blasphemous prediction was used to print Bibles, and the house in which he lived was used by the Geneva Bible Society to store Bibles and as a distribution center.” (Heart to Heart)
Wendell Winkler noted:
“Bob Ingersoll, an American agnostic, once held a Bible up and boasted. ‘In fifteen years I will have this book in the morgue.’ Within fifteen years, Ingersoll was in the morgue; however, the word of God lives on.”
Someone has said: “His words have passed into laws, they have passed into doctrines, they have passed into proverbs, they have passed into consolations, but they have never passed away.”
Let’s make sure our life is guided by the enduring Word of God. It is a book that has literally stood the test of time. And, as the Psalmist declared, it is “a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path” (Psalm 119:105).