The Reliability of the Bible
FACT OR FICTION
Is There Evidence to Support the Reliability of the Bible and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ?
Sean Arviso
THE RELIABILITY OF THE BIBLE
“Is the Bible really reliable? Is it like any other religious text, or is it superior? Is what we have now what they wrote then?” These are questions you may have asked or heard. How can we answer these using objective reality and reason? This chapter will answer those questions in a concise manner, while providing resources for you to go deeper in your understanding of this topic.
“To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.” (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion)
This statement is reiterated in various forms by a large number of people. I would like to examine the evidence and argue against Dawkins’ claim by saying that the Bible is reliable and authentic. By no means is this exhaustive; however, I would like you, the reader, to consider the validity of the Bible while comparing the same standards of credibility against other belief systems. We will consider the following: 1) The Bible’s authentication by its author; 2) the Bible’s composition; 3) the accuracy of its transmission; 4) the number of biblical manuscripts; 5) the Bible’s unending appeal; and 6) the messianic prophecies fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
To preface the defense of my argument, I would like to share a conversation I had during my time in Israel. As I was working at Christ’s Church (the oldest Protestant church in the Middle East), I met a man named Dr. Shimon Gibson. I didn’t know it at first, but he is the leading archaeologist in Israel, with particular expertise on the first century A.D. As we worked together in post-archeological work documenting artifacts from Mt. Zion excavated in the 1960s and 1970s, he shared with me that whenever an archaeologist in the Middle East wants to find something, they turn to the Bible first, because it has proven itself to be the most reliable and accurate document in the world. This is a very bold claim, which we will examine in what follows for your consideration and, potentially, further discussion.
The Bible being authenticated by its author is a form of internal evidence. According to Adherents.com, there are over 4,200 religions in the world today, and only a handful of them, if that, are authenticated by their author, or the deity behind the text. The most prominent of them would be Islam. Not only does Jesus, whom the Bible claims is God in the flesh (John 1:1, 14; Colossians 2:9) affirm the Old Testament (Matthew 5:17 – 18; 19:7 – 8; 23:1 – 2), but the New Testament reaffirms the Old Testament (2 Timothy 3:16). In addition to these passages, we see phrases such as “the Lord commanded” or “the Lord spoke” used over 2,000 times throughout all 66 books of the Bible, overwhelmingly more than any other religious text (Pilgrim Reader).
Let’s move on to the composition of the Bible. The Old Testament was written in Ancient Hebrew, with the exception of chapters 2–7 of Daniel, which were written in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Ancient Greek. The Bible has 66 books (39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament), written over approximately 1,500 years by more than 40 authors from various backgrounds and levels of education. Throughout all of these writings, there is one central figure, which is Jesus Christ. One of an abundant number of examples of this central figure concerns a person called Melchizedek. This person is first introduced in Genesis 14:18–20 (written by Moses between 1446–1406 B.C.) roughly around 2,000 B.C., when he converses with Abraham and he presents himself as king of Salem and priest of the Most High God. He comes with bread and wine, which we connect with communion, a rite to be done in remembrance of the body of Jesus, broken for us, and His blood, shed for us. After that moment, we see nothing of him for 1,000 years until the time of King David. He writes in Psalm 110:4, “…You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” We wonder who this strange figure is for another 1,000 years until the first century A.D., in the Letter to the Hebrews. The name Melchizedek is mentioned nine times throughout the letter and is completely explained in the person of Jesus Christ. Melchizedek, though a real person in history, was a shadow, one of many in the Old Testament that God used to reveal the substance, which is Jesus. This is a fascinating connection among many that needs much more explanation to fully appreciate, or at least appreciate more. But again, this is for your consideration.
Regarding the accuracy of transmission, we will first examine the reliability of the Old Testament. The reliability and consistency of the Old Testament was solidified in 1947, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves of Qumran in Israel. Unearthed was every single Old Testament writing, except for Esther. The scrolls have been dated back from at least 150 B.C. (History.com)—arguably even 300 B.C. (Missler)—through 70 A.D. (History.com). The 230 manuscripts and thousands of fragments discovered have proven to be consistent with the Old Testaments in our Bibles today. Regarding the New Testament, Norman Geisler and William Nix, leading Bible scholars, are quoted as saying, “The New Testament, then, has not only survived in more manuscripts than any other book in antiquity, but it has survived in a purer form than any other great book—a form that is 99.5% pure” (Strobel). This claim we will examine in our next topic.
When addressing the issue of the number of New Testament manuscripts compared with other ancient writings, Dr. Bruce Metzger has said, “The quantity of New Testament material is almost embarrassing in comparison with other works of antiquity… Next to the New Testament, the greatest amount of manuscript testimony is of Homer’s Iliad, which was the bible of the ancient Greeks. There are fewer than 650 Greek manuscripts of it today. Some are quite fragmentary. They come down to us from the second and third century A.D. and following. When you consider that Homer composed his epic about 800 B.C., you can see there is a very lengthy gap” (Strobel). The table provided will better illustrate the New Testament compared with other ancient writings in regard to date written, earliest copy, time span, and quantity of manuscripts (Heckler).
AUTHOR
DATE WRITTEN
EARLIEST COPY
TIME SPAN
NO. OF COPIES
Caesar
100–44 B.C.
900 A.D.
1,000 yrs.
10
Plato
427–347 B.C.
900 A.D.
1,200 yrs.
7
Tacitus
100 A.D.
1100 A.D.
1,000 yrs.
20
Pliny the Younger
61–113 A.D.
850 A.D.
750 yrs.
7
Thucydides
460–400 B.C.
900 A.D.
1,300 yrs.
8
Suetonius
75–160 A.D.
950 A.D.
800 yrs.
8
Herodotus
480–425 B.C.
900 A.D.
1,300 yrs.
8
Sophocles
496–406 B.C.
1000 A.D.
1,400 yrs.
193
Lucretius
55 B.C.
?
1100 yrs.
2
Catullus
54 B.C.
1550 A.D.
1,600 yrs.
3
Euripides
480–406 B.C.
1100 A.D.
1,500 yrs.
9
Demosthenes
383–322 B.C.
1100 A.D.
1,300 yrs.
200
Aristotle
384–322 B.C.
1100 A.D.
1,400 yrs.
49
Aristophanes
450–385 B.C.
900 A.D.
1,200 yrs.
10
Flavius Josephus
80 A.D.
1000 A.D.
900 yrs.
9
Livy
59 B.C.–17 A.D.
?
?
20
Homer
800 B.C.
200 A.D.
1,000 yrs.
643
New Testament
40–100 A.D.
125 A.D.
25 yrs.
Over 24,000
Let’s now discuss the Bible’s unending appeal as evidence for it being both divinely inspired and divinely preserved through the ages. In the late third century A.D., under the Roman emperor Diocletian, Bibles and churches were burned to the ground (Willis). In the 16th century, under the Roman Catholic Church, thousands of Bibles were burned (Jackson). In the 20th century, Nazis Germany destroyed synagogues and Hebrew bibles (that is, the Old Testament), and tried to snuff the Jewish people out of existence. These are just a few of the many attempts to destroy the Bible. The Bible has been the most attacked piece of literature, by far, in the history of mankind; yet, it remains the world’s bestselling book and is cherished all over the world. A side note while we’re on this topic: a man named Voltaire in the 1800s, famous for his wit and persecution of Christianity, attempted to wipe out the Bible and Christianity altogether. However, 50 years after his death, his own house in Geneva, Switzerland was used for a time to print the Geneva Bible (Pilgrim Reader, pg. 8–9). You can say God has a sense of humor.
Finally, and this is the most important point of all, there is prophecy regarding the coming Messiah or Savior. Prophecy is God’s signature in the Bible to set it apart from other texts from the hands of men. For the sake of brevity, I will merely offer the following textual references as proof, which you must read for yourself. The Messiah:
(1) is born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2, fulfilled in Matthew 2:1–6 and Luke 2:4);
(2) is called Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14, fulfilled in Matthew 1:21, 23);
(3) is born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14, fulfilled in Matthew 1:22, 23);
(4) is a Son to be given, with the government on His shoulders (Isaiah 9:6, fulfilled in John 3:16, Matthew 28:18, and 1 Corinthians 15:24, 25);
(5) flees into Egypt (Hosea 11:1, fulfilled in Matthew 2:15);
(6) is One who will make ready the way of the LORD (Isaiah 40:3–5. fulfilled in Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4–5; John 1:23);
(7) makes a triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Daniel 9 and Zechariah 9:9, fulfilled in Luke 19:28-38);
(8) has lots cast for His garments (Psalm 22:18, fulfilled in Mark 15:24);
(9) has His Body pierced (Zechariah 12:10, fulfilled in John 19:34, 37 and Matthew 27:31);
(10) will be cursed on a tree (Deuteronomy 21:23, fulfilled in Galatians 3:13);
(11) will have no bones broken (Psalm 34:20, fulfilled in John 19:36); and
(12) will through His sacrifice save us (Isaiah 53:5, fulfilled in 1 Peter 2:21–25).
According to Dr. Chuck Missler, a highly decorated engineer, business man, and Bible scholar, “These are only 12 of the 300 prophecies detailed in the Old Testament of the coming Messiah and King of Israel. The odds of one person meeting all 12 of these requirements are one in 10 to the 128th probability. To put this in perspective, the likelihood of any one man meeting these requirements would be equivalent to picking one specifically marked silver dollar out of a total number of silver dollars over two feet (just under one meter) deep covering an area the size of the state of Texas. Jesus Christ fulfills all of these in addition to the other 300 prophecies. So it is very clear that only Jesus Christ has or could ever fulfill the requirements of the Messiah” (Missler).
Given what I just presented, I would venture to say that the Bible is not a “chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other,” as Dawkins proposed. Rather, God has set the Bible apart from all other literature, and its sole purpose is this: that you would know that God loves you and has demonstrated that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, one day you may have true and eternal life in Him.
Works Cited
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. 2006. Print.
Holy Bible. Print.
“Adherents.com.” World Religions Religion Statistics Geography Church Statistics. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.
The Bible Is God’s Word, Pilgrim Reader, pg. 4. Print.
“6 Things You May Not Know About the Dead Sea Scrolls.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, 7 May 2013. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.
Missler, Chuck. How We Got Our Bible. Koinonia House, 2000. 11. Print.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998. 60–70. Print.
Heckler, Robert. “Chapter 2: The Reliability of the Bible.” Making Straight the Paths. 58. Print.
Willis, Cecil. “The Indestructibility of the Bible.” The Indestructibility of the Bible. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.
Jackson, Wayne. “The Holy Scriptures—Indestructible.” Christian Courier. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.
Confino, Alon. “Why the Nazis Burned the Hebrew Bible – Commentary Magazine.” Commentary Magazine. 1 June 2014. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.
Missler, Chuck. “Footprints of the Messiah.” 1994. Audiotape.
