CAN YOU TRUST YOUR BIBLE?
By David Posey
The Bible is the most well-attested ancient book ever written. The manuscript evidence is monumental. There are far more copies of manuscripts of Bible books than any other piece of ancient literature, and the copies are closer in time to the original than any other written document in antiquity.
There are three basic tests of the veracity of a written document: The
Bibliographical Test, the Internal Test and the External Test. We'll examine the evidence for the historical reliability of the Bible in light each of these tests.
THE BIOGRAPHICAL TEST
Since we do not have the original manuscripts (autographs) of the Bible books, we must rely on copies of the originals. The question is how
reliable are these copies? Can we rely on them as accurate reproductions of the original manuscripts? The bibliographical test is concerned with the number of copies of the
original, how they compare with one another and the time span between the original document and the copies. Obviously, a document is considered historically reliable to the degree that there are many copies which are consistent in content from one copy to the next and to the degree of the proximity of the copies to the original document.
Applying this to the Bible, if we can find numerous copies which are
consistent with one another and if some of those copies are very close to the date of the original writings, we have strong evidence of historical integrity. So how does the Bible do? As mentioned above, the Bible is the most well-attested ancient document ever. There is really no comparison at all.
The earliest fragment (p52), a fragment of John 18:31-33 discovered in 1920, dates about AD 120, less than 50 years from the original. There are about 50 other fragments dating within 150-200 years from the time of
original composition. TWO major manuscripts, Codex Vaticanus (AD 325) and Codex Sinaiticus (AD 350) date within 250 years from the time of composition. Compared to other ancient works, this is a very short time span. For example, Caesar's The Gallic Wars dates 1,000 years after it was written and the first complete copy of Homer's Odyssey is 2200 years removed from the time it was originally written. Yet few people question the historical reliability of these documents. F.F. Bruce observed that "if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt."
Oddly enough, this last point is illustrated by the hype surrounding a motion picture. A few years ago, when the new Robin Hood movie was released, there was renewed interest in whether Robin Hood was a real man or just a fictional character. The local news did a story about a
document that was uncovered, supposedly dated at about the time of Robin Hood, 1261 AD, which mentions a "Robin Hood." They wondered if this one copy proved that such a man existed. But this just illustrates how unfair some people are when it comes to judgment about the Bible.
The 27 books of the New Testament alone are attested by nearly 5,000 Greek manuscripts and over 24,000 copies! By comparison, Homer's Iliad is the second best-attested ancient document, with 643 copies. But the closest copy to the original is about 500 years old! But how accurate are the copies of the biblical documents themselves? Are they reliable in the sense of being free from textual corruption? "Only 400 of the 150,000 variants materially affect the sense, and of these perhaps 50 are of real significance. But no essential teaching of the New Testament is greatly affected by them" (Ira M. Price, The
Ancestry of Our English Bible, 1956, p.222, cited by Jenkins, p.83-84). Those 400 variants amount to only one-half of one percent of the New Testament, an amazing figure for an ancient document. By comparison, over five percent of the Illiad is in question. If critics of the Bible are fair, they would not even attempt to discredit the Bible at the bibliographical level.
THE INTERNAL TEST
The second test applied to an ancient document involves looking at the document itself to determine what kinds of claims it makes and whether those claims are true. In other words, what does the Bible say about itself?
The Bible is often referred to as "the Good Book" and is generally considered to be worthy of close reading and application. But is it? If
what it says about itself is not true, can it be useful for any purpose? If the writers of the Bible would lie about the nature of what they've written, how can we believe anything else they say?
The Bible is a unique document consisting of a collection of 66 books,
written by more than forty men over a period of at least 1500 years. Yet, one finds doctrinal unity, moral consistency, one plan of salvation and one world view throughout. Given the diverse time period, authorship and geographical background of the writings, such consistency is truly amazing. But what does the Bible claim for itself? What did the writers believe
they were doing when they wrote? Perhaps the most notable feature of the Bible in this regard is it explicit claim to be God's word. Something like 3500 times in the Old Testament, the writers claim that what they are about to say is what "the Lord says." Were they deluded? Were they lying? Or did they actually receive words from the Lord that they then wrote down? (See I Pet. 1:10-12; II Pet. 1:19-21).
In the New Testament, men like the apostle Paul claimed to have preached "the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27). He told the Thessalonians that they received, not the word of men, but the word of God, when they heard him and the rest of the apostles speak (I Thess. 2:13). Various writers in the Bible claim absolute perfection and authority for the words they write: e.g., "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul..." (Psalm 19:7).
Furthermore, one book recognizes another book as speaking with absolute authority. Daniel, for example, mentions the book of Jeremiah and the
written Law of Moses (Daniel 9:2, 11). Luke, writing in Acts, mentions Isaiah, and says the Holy Spirit spoke through him (Acts 28:25). Peter mentions Paul and implies that his writings are "Scripture" equal to the rest of the Bible (II Peter 3:15). Paul calls the whole Old Testament "Scripture" (II Tim. 3:15) and says all Scripture is inspired by God. Peter refers to the prophets and says they were "moved by the Holy Spirit" (II Peter 1:2Off.). Either these men were deluded, intentionally lying, or they were right.
Jesus also believed that the Bible is God's word to man. For example,
in referring to a difficult and obscure statement in Psalm 82:6, He said, "the Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). That's a powerful statement about how he viewed the authority and infallibility of the Bible. At His temptation, He answered every thrust of Satan with a Bible text. He also said, referring to Psalm 110, that the Spirit spoke through David (see Mt. 22:43). These and many other passages clearly show that Jesus believed that the writings of the Old Testament were God's own words.
The apostles also claimed that the Bible is God's word. Paul, for example, said about the gospel he preached, "For I neither received it
from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12). See also I Cor. 2:10-13 and I Thess. 2:13. The Bible writers believed that they were writing the very words of God.
But what about contradictions? Isn't the Bible full of them? Critics want people to believe this about the Bible. But where is the proof? The law of non-contradiction states that a thing cannot be both "a" and "non-a" at the same time. In other words, it cannot be both light and dark at the same time in the same place. Only when one proves a violation of this principle from the Bible can he prove that there is a contradiction in the Bible. Many of the so-called "contradictions" that have been cited over the years are nothing more than an attempt to question the credibility of the Bible in order to follow some liberal agenda. While there certainly
are difficulties in the Bible, there are no discrepancies for which there is not a plausible explanation. There are a number of good books on the subject and, as archeological and historical discoveries continue, more light is being shed on these issues all the time. It is grossly unfair to ignore the proffered answers.
THE EXTERNAL TEST
The Bible is unmatched in its manuscript evidence and is consistent and unambiguous in its internal claims of reliability and authority. But is there evidence outside the Bible which tends to confirm its historical reliability? There is in fact a significant body of external evidence supporting the Bible's veracity. For example, secular historians such as Josephus (37-100 AD), Tacitus (c. 55-117 AD), Lucian (2nd century), Seutonius (c. 120 AD) and Pliny (c. 112 AD) mention Jesus and the apostles, along with other Bible material. Josephus, for example, often mentions figures familiar to New Testament readers. F.F. Bruce summarizes some of this evidence: "Here in the pages of Josephus, we meet many figures who are well known to us from the New Testament; the colorful family of the Herods; the Roman emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius and procurators of Judea; the high priestly families - Annas, Caiaphas, Ananias and the rest; the Pharisees
and the Sadducees; and so on" (quoted in Geisler, Christian Apologetics, p.323).
Pliny the Younger (c. AD 112), writing to the emperor about his achievements as governor of Bithynia, gave information about how he had killed
multitudes of Christians, 96 men, women and children. He said he attempted to "make them curse Christ, which a genuine Christian cannot be induced to do" (Epistles X.96, cited by Geisler, p.324). In the same letter, he said: "They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day, before it was light, when they sang in alternate verse a hymn to Christ as to a god, and bound themselves to a solemn oath, not to do any
wicked deeds and never to deny a truth when they should be called upon to deliver it up." The citations could be multiplied which demonstrate that the teaching of the Bible was not fiction but was being lived out in the day to day lives of Christians in the first and second centuries.
Also, archeological discoveries overwhelmingly confirm the historicity of the Bible Ferrell Jenkins reports on some of these in his Introduction to Christian Evidences, pp. 58-67. He quotes Jack Lewis (in his Historical Backgrounds of Bible History, p. 177, 1971) who notes: (1) "forty-four Old Testament figures have with reasonable certainty been identified with figures whose names occur in various sorts of ancient records of the Middle East." (2) "Seventeen New Testament figures are known from corns or from other types of inscriptions." (3) "An
additional eleven figures were known to Josephus, to Mishnaic sources or
to classical historians where these writers are not thought to have had New Testament books as one of their sources of information."
Renowned archeologist and paleographer William E Albright made the following observation: "All radical schools in the New Testament criticism which have existed in the past or which exist today are pre-archeological and are, therefore, since they were built in der Luft ("in the air"), quite antiquated today" ("Retrospect and Prospect in New Testament Archeology" in The Teacher's Yoke, ed. E. Jerry Vardeman, p.29).
A person who argues against the historical reliability of the Bible is arguing against good sense. The Roman historian, A. N. Sherwin-White, made the following comment: "For the book of Acts, the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. Any attempt to reject its basic historicity, even in matters of detail, must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted" (Roman Society and Roman Law in the New
Testament, p.189).
The moral of this is clear: be very careful who you listen to when you are considering whether the Bible is reliable or not. It seems that those who have an ax to grind against the Bible are relying (or manipulating?) old, long-overturned data for their arguments. Of course, they would not do that with any other kind of material! In fact, the case for denying the historical reliability of the biblical documents is based upon faith -nothing more, nothing less. If it were not so serious, it would be comical as we observed alleged "scholars" utilizing such puerile means to try to disprove something they cannot afford, professionally, to accept.
Unfortunately, their high-sounding arguments sweep many others away with them. Geisler summarizes the current state of affairs very well when he says, "the integrity of the New Testament writers is established by the character of the witnesses as well as by the quantity and independent nature of their witness. As to the accuracy of their reports there is support in general from the secular history of the first century
and in particular from numerous archeological discoveries supporting specific details of the New Testament account" (p.327).
The great classical scholar Sir Fredric Kenyon observed over fifty years ago: "The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established" (The Bible and Archeology, Harper, 1940, pp.288f.).
If such was the case in 1940, how much more so today! You can rest assured that the Bible you hold is reliable, accurate and true.
Bibliography
Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, Eerdman's 1987. Carl F H. Henry, ed., Revelation and the Bible, Baker, 1958
Ferrell Jenkins, Introduction to Christian Evidences, Guardian of Truth Foundation, 1989 Josh McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Here's Life Publishers, 1979 Josh McDowell & Don Stewart, Answers to Tough Questions, Here's Life Publishers, 1980
F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, Intervarsity Press, 1987. Norman L. Geisler, Christian Apologetics, Baker, 1977.
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