The British library is a pathway for  valuable resource of Bible history. Its vast collection provides a balanced approach in seeking for the  truth about the custodial history of the Bible by the church and the genuineness of scriptural messages and teachings in its doctrine. The concept of a custodian in the Biblical context, is to align the sacredness of the scriptures with a respectful appeal of preserving and interpreting it and then convey the message and teach the oracles of God. The custodianship is linked to a trail of discoveries of the codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, the codex Vaticanus etc, all which contributed to the development of the Bible.

The Bible has a historical custodial mystery, since God entrusted the Jews with the responsibility of safeguarding, and revealing divine truths, they failed to do with the word what they should have because of pride. Ever since then, the custody of the bible has become a human dilemma.

The language and diverse genres of the Bible created a complexity of understanding, which resulted to its quest for a translation into Latin for interpretation and accessibility to the wider Christian community. The Vulgate which is a Latin translation of the Bible from Aramaic. Greek and Hebrew became the authoritative and accurate Bible of the Roman catholic church. The vulgate’s custodial problems became a reality when the protestants reformers claimed that the Roman catholic church had corrupted the scriptures, hence restricting its access. Limiting access to God’s word created power imbalance between the clergy and the ordinary people, because the clergy had significant control over religious knowledge and practices.

Undoubtedly, the Catholic church preserved the ancient traditions and historical significance of the bible, but failed to preserve doctrinal purity. The protestant church on the other hand succeeded in being the custodians of the Bible by preserving, teaching and spreading the scriptural message by translating it into vernacular languages, encouraged Biblical literacy by emphasizing personal Bible reading. The protestant reformation enabled accessibility of the Bible which the printing press used effectively to mass produce it and shift the Bible from being clerical text to a household book. However, this led to theological fragmentation which was caused by each denominations interpretation of the Bible hence doctrinal disputes due to lack of doctrinal consistency which the Roman catholic had centrally maintained.

Looking into Brennan Breed’s ” Nomadic” theory of the Bible, it clearly illustrates and highlights the journey of a living word in text influencing and being influenced by various communities and interpretations. Though Brenan’s theory may seem to question the Holiness of the Bible, because of his view on its fluidity and adaptability he challenges us to understand how the Bible is Holy and how its meaning works. Conclusively, the Bible has no custodial jurisdiction and God’s intention is for his word to be written in our hearts.