Since the Christian’s faith is built upon the teaching of the Bible, this is an important question. The Bible claims for itself to be the word of God – every word being ‘God breathed’. The Book has some 40 human authors, but Christian’s believe that it also has one divine Author – God himself, who inspired each of the human authors. But is this true? Can we trust the Bible?
Britain’s most famous preacher, Charles Spurgeon, used to liken the Bible to a lion. He said that just as there is no need to defend a lion, there is no need to defend the Bible –simply let it out the cage and it will defend itself! There is a lot of truth in this. At the end of the day, arguments about the Bible’s authority and historicity will not defend the Bible; God himself will vindicate his word as you open it and read it for yourself. “Faith comes through hearing the word of God” is the Bibles own advice.
Some of the arguments on this topic run as follows.
- There is a remarkable unity in the Bible which suggests that it has one divine Author. The Bible consists of 66 books written by 40 human authors over a period of some 1500 years. There never was any conference, yet while each book reflects the writing style of its human author there is a consistency and unity in the Bible’s teaching which suggests one divine Author over all.
To those who claim there are inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible my first response is to say that in studying the Bible for over 30 years I am not aware of these inconsistencies. My second response is to ask which inconsistencies the person has in mind. Usually, they cannot cite any – because they have not actually read the Bible for themselves! If the reader has a genuine question about a particular apparent contradiction then perhaps carm.org/bible-difficulties will help.
- A second argument for the Bible’s trustworthiness are the findings of archaeology. Dr WF Albright (not himself a Christian believer) says, “There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of the Old Testament tradition”. Again, Jewish archaeologist Nelson Glueck said, “No archaeological discovery has ever disproved a biblical reference”.
- A third argument for the Bible’s trustworthiness is manuscript evidence. This is worth knowing if your concern is that, like a game of Chinese Whispers, the message of the Bible has been substantially changed as it has been copied down the ages. Ancient documents were copied out by hand on papyrus, parchment or vellum. As these wore out quickly, teams of scribes would make new copies and throw out the old ones. It is therefore usual in ancient literature for a gap of at least a thousand years to exist between the time of the original writing and the earliest copy that has survived. So no-one doubts the essential accuracy of such documents as: Caesar’s Gallic Wars – there are 9-10 good copies with a gap of 900 years between the original and the oldest copy. Catullus (a Roman poet) – there are 3 good copies with a gap of 1600 years between the original and the oldest copy.
In the case of the Old Testament the gap was around 1300 years, which is quite normal. However, in 1947 a shepherd boy threw a stone into a cave at Qumran near the Dead Sea and broke a jar. Inside the cave he found a number of jars with very ancient documents inside known today as the Dead Sea Scrolls. These include references to many verses in the Old Testament, and also the entire script of Isaiah, dated only 300 years after the time of writing. The important point is that the wording on these scrolls is almost identical to the oldest texts prior to the discovery.
As for the New Testament, it is simply the best attested ancient document in the world. There are about 5,000 Greek manuscripts of all, or part, of the New Testament, dating from 260 years after the original was written. But again, the differences between these copies is very minimal. The respected scholar F.J.A. Hart said that “apart from insignificant variations of grammar or spelling not more than 1/1000 part of the whole New Testament is affected by differences of reading”.
This does not prove that what the Bible says about God is true but it proves that what we have today is the same as the original documents.
- A fourth argument for the trustworthiness of the Bible is Jesus’ attitude to the Old Testament. Jesus believed in and referred to the Old Testament as the word of God. He believed it was the revelation of God given under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He accepted Old Testament history as true. He accepted Old Testament ethics. He accepted the miracles recorded in the Old Testament and the ethical teaching. He stated that Old Testament Scriptures were there to reveal him and denounced those who did not believe them.
Is the Bible trustworthy? Having given these arguments, the best way to find out is to read the text yourself. Two days before writing this I spoke to a mother of two children. When she went off to university her parents urged her to read the four Gospels. (They were Christians but she was not). She could not sleep one night because of noisy neighbours. She remembered her parents’ plea, turned to the Gospels and started to read them – thinking they would send her off to sleep! But God spoke to her as she read her Bible and she became a Christian that evening.