The Bible a Cultural Artifact

Cultural artifacts are found all around the world. Where a person lives can determine which cultural artifacts affect them in the most significant way. The cultural artifact chosen for discussion in this paper is the Bible. The bible is an important asset to a religious person. The Bible is not only studied by Christians, it is also considered as a significant and fascinating object separate from its importance as Scripture: it is deemed a cultural artifact in the history and growth of Western culture (Crook, 2012). Comprehension of the Bible gives Christian’s a foundation on which to base their faith. The Bible is many things to many people; to Christian’s it is a supplier of motivation and inspiration and a manual of how to live their lives, to some the Bible is a historical manuscript and a basis of debate, and to others it is a mixture of unfathomable rules and prohibitions that were pertinent to dead cultures of long ago.

No matter who you are or what you believe chances are that you know what the Bible is if you are in America. America was founded on Christian values therefore the Bible is considered by many as a very significant part of American culture. The Bible is a very important cultural artifact for this author because everything that this believes in and live for is based on God’s word which is found in the Bible. The Bible has influenced this author’s family from generation to generation for great number of years throughout history.

The Bible is a compilation of sixty-six books written by approximately forty writers. The first scripts of the Bible were composed by the author's own hand or by a scribe under the author’s individual guidance (Ringer, 2007). The Bible is broken into two resources that Christians draw their beliefs and faith on, the Old Testament and New Testament. Until 1496 when Gutenberg printed the first Latin Bible, all Bibles were duplicated by hand onto parchment, papyrus, and