Reliability of the Bible

Feb 12

Show Transcript

Intro: Good afternoon and welcome to the Sunday School Podcast with Sean Parker. Today we are going to be discussing the reliability of the Bible. What’s the history behind it, and can we trust that we have the complete version today?

So without further adou, let’s get into it.

(Transition)

Let’s start today with what the Bible actually says about itself.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

1 Corinthians 2:12-13

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.”

2 Peter 1:20

“knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

The Scripture is fully inspired by God. As long as we have the right scriptures, we can trust that they are God’s word.

So, what qualifies a writing as scripture? What makes it authentic and God breathed.

There are several questions that scholars ask to decide on a scriptures authority.

First, does the scripture have prophetic or apostolic authorship? Or was it written by an apostle or a prophet? These people would have been given divine authority to write the holy scripture. The apostles weren’t just limited to the 12 initially chosen by Jesus.

In Galatians 1:19 we see that Jesus’ brother James was considered an apostle.

“But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.”

There are a few books, such as Luke, Mark, and Acts, that don’t have apostolic authorship, but they were written under an apostle's guidance. For instance, Luke was the traveling companion of Paul.

In correlation with the requirement for Apostolic authorship, the books had to also be written during that era. All of the accepted New Testament writings were completed in the first century AD.

Having been completed during the time of the Apostles, they would have been present to guide the compiling of the texts.

The next thing to look at would be the circulation of the texts. Were the early churches copying and recopying the texts.

Was there immediate and universal acceptance by the early churches? Today’s New Testament was almost entirely unquestioned by the early church.

The books also couldn’t contradict each other.

Many of the writings could be authenticated based on external historical factors. The writings of Paul, for instance, had very distinct theological and stylistic traits that pointed to his authorship.

Religious leaders have spent centuries studying and meditating on the appropriate compilation of the Bible.

Jewish leaders reject the New Testament, but the New Testament was actually foretold in Jeremiah 31:31-34

““Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.””

New Testament books also refer to each other. 2 Peter 3:16 refers to Paul’s letters.

“as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.”

Old Testament writings seem to be more easily confirmed. The Old Testament of the Christian Bible is the same as the Hebrew or Jewish Bible. The way the books are divided varies, but they are exactly the same scriptures. These teachings would have been passed down amongst the Jewish people for millennia.

However, some people like to point to ancient stories that predate the Bible. There was a Mesopotamian tablet found that predated Genesis by about 300 years. This tablet refers to the “Epic of Gilgamesh”. This story is an account of a worldwide flood. Utnapishtim builds a great boat to keep living beings alive during the flood.

Atheists pounce on this story to say that the Bible is just copying an old myth. However, this is completely illogical. Wouldn’t it make sense that if a major worldwide event occurred, there would be multiple accounts of it? In fact, there are nearly 200 accounts of a worldwide flood. To my mind, this confirms that it really happened.

The Old Testament scriptures meet many of the requirements of the New Testament for authenticity, but we can mostly rely on the traditions of Judaism to confirm them.

The Old Testament has been widely accepted in its current form, but in 1947 a discovery was made that provided a primary source for confirming the Old Testament.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the Caves of Quran, near the Dead Sea. These manuscripts dated from about 250 B.C. To A.D. 135 and contained almost the entire Old Testament.

The closer you get to original texts when reviewing Historical documents, the stronger the case for their authenticity. Or the stronger the case that they match the original text.

The New Testament also has texts close to the originals. When it comes to copies of the original New Testament manuscripts, we suffer from an embarrassment of riches.

The New Testament was copied between 20,000 and 25,000 times into various languages. By comparison, the average ancient Greek or Latin writings have about 20 copies.

Having that many copies though has generated a lot of errors in the manuscripts. This could be concerning for most Christians to hear, however when we review the errors, you can see that they aren’t very significant.

These errors are known as textual variants. These can be broken into 4 categories.

The first and most common group are spelling and nonsensical errors. Mistakes that can be attributed to carelessness or fatigue of the scribe copying the text.

The second largest group of textual variants includes minor changes, such as using synonyms. These changes don’t affect the translations.

The third-largest category involves meaningful changes that are not viable. Viability refers to the plausibility that either text could be the original. For example, a medieval manuscript uses the term “the gospel of Christ” instead of the “gospel of God” used by most other texts. The fact that this copy comes so much later than the others, the viability of this being the original wording doesn’t seem viable.

The smallest category by far involves changes that are both meaningful and viable. These involve less than 1% of the textual variants. For example, in Romans 5:1 some manuscripts say “we have peace”, while others say “let us have peace”.

Paul is either stating a fact about a believer’s status with God, or Christians should enjoy the Peace that God gives them. Either option is sound theologically, and has no contradiction to other scriptures.

Ultimately, where we see any particular passage that cannot be affirmed, we don’t really have to worry. There isn’t a single essential truth or doctrine that changes based on any of these variants. We can truly know that the word of God is complete and perfect.

Thank-you for joining me today. I hope this has been informational, and helpful in knowing you can trust God’s word. If you liked what you heard, please be sure to subscribe to the Sunday School podcast.