The Bible

What it is and why we should trust it

We have to have a standing point. We have to have a standard or measuring stick by which we can establish the truth or falsehood of ideas we encounter. As the revealed word of God, the Bible is that standard. If any human places himself as judge over the Bible, deciding what belongs in it and what doesn’t, he can throw out any part of it he doesn’t like. You have to accept it as a whole. You can then evaluate any church or belief system in terms of how closely it agrees with the Bible.

The Bible is not a single work. It is a collection of books covering 4,000 years of history. It was written by 40+ people over about 1,600 years. The authors came from a variety of pasts, from all parts of society. Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, although parts were in Aramaic and parts in Greek. The New Testament was written entirely in Greek.

Even taking all this into account, while there may be many implications to a text and how it is written, the author is rarely trying to make more than one point to his audience. One of the most important things to do when looking at a Biblical text is figure out the speaker, the audience, the intended message and the context.

Be careful when you do all this, though, because the Bible is not just a piece of literature, to be analyzed like any other piece of literature. It is also sacred literature. Something is sacred when it is set apart for God and only used for pure purposes. We also say that the Bible is inspired. Inspired means that it is filled with the Spirit (literally in-Spirited). The Bible calls Scripture God-breathed, by which the author tells us that God Himself breathed the Scripture into the authors, who provided it for the world. He controlled the content and the means of expression. It says exactly what He wants it to say, exactly how He wants it said.

2 Timothy 3:16

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instructing, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness

The Apostle Peter agreed.

2 Peter 1:20-21

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

In this context, Peter is using the word ‘prophecy’ more broadly. He means ‘communicating revealed truth’, rather than ‘prediction of future events’. He is talking about Scripture as a whole and how we got it.

Jesus, in rebuking the Pharisees, referred to the Scripture as unbreakable, which means that it is permanent truth.

John 10:35b

Scripture cannot be broken

Throughout the Bible, it is written that, “The word of the LORD came to…” or “The Spirit of the LORD came on…” Scripture clearly understands itself to be holy text, inspired by God. Jesus affirmed this.

In part, following Jesus means changing from a secular to a holy mindset. If Jesus said it, it must be true. This is the basis of our faith. If the Bible, that Jesus stated is God’s word, says it, it must be true.

People have been trying for over 2,000 years to prove the Bible untrustworthy and untrue. They have failed. It is safe to ignore those who claim otherwise, because their claim is based on desire rather than fact.

Is the Bible text we have a reliable copy of God’s intended text?

Every copy of any part of the Bible produced before the 1400s was written by hand. We all know that it is quite possible to make perfectly accurate copies of a text by hand, but it is also possible to make mistakes.

If all copies of the text of the New Testament were made by hand for over 1,300 years, how do we know they are accurate?

There are generally three types of variations in Biblical texts: Spelling variation, word order change and copyist error.

Spelling variations are relatively easy to detect and figure out what the correct letter must be. But part of the challenge with spelling variation is that language changes with time and distance. Look at the differences between the way British English and American English spell words.

“The car was blue in color” and “The car is blue in colour” would be considered a variant text, even though the meaning didn’t change. In any case, most languages in history did not have established dictionaries or fixed spelling. Both versions are different, but both are correct.

Word order changes are more of a problem for people speaking English than most other languages.

“The boy handed the girl the dog” and “The boy handed the dog the girl” mean totally different things in English. Most other languages, however, identify the parts of speech with specific prefixes or suffixes to tell the reader which part is which. In the original sentence, the subject (the boy), the direct object (the girl) and the indirect object (the dog) would each be specifically identified. Word order wouldn’t matter. “The dog the girl the boy threw” might take a moment for the reader to understand, but the meaning would be perfectly clear. This actually allows for better communication, because the author can use the word order to emphasize the point they are trying to make without in any way changing the meaning of the sentence.

Other wording changes can occur as well. Sometimes a copyist will use a synonym or try to make a verse from one book match the obvious quotation from another, as when Jesus quotes Psalm 82 in John 10:34. New Testament authors were sometimes a little careless about exact wording when quoting the Old Testament, focusing on the meaning of the text, rather than the precise words used. God took this into account when He created, trained, chose and guided those authors.

There is a field of study called textual criticism that examines these issues and works to determine the reliability and likely content of the original text from these many clues.

Of course, the original manuscripts are long gone. Even the best-preserved manuscripts wear out with time, and we can expect that the originals were read, studied, copied, passed around from person to person. We do, however, have a LOT of fragments and a LOT of quotations or references to the text.

The Old Testament

The text of the Old Testament was complete by the 400s BC. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest copies we had dated back to the 800s AD. There were several reasons for this.

First, the materials they had available wore out with time. When they wore out beyond a certain point, the Hebrews would respectfully bury them rather than store them in a library. This usually finished the destruction of the text.

Second, the region was politically very unstable. Jerusalem was conquered 47 times in its history. In those days, invading armies frequently destroyed much of the city. They tended to be especially thorough in destroying temples of gods other than their own and all of the contents.

Third, the Israelites were forcibly deported once in the 580s BC by the Babylonians and again in the mid-100s AD by the Romans.

Despite all of these challenges, we have around 735 manuscripts, each covering part of the entire body of text. There is very little variation between them.

When the manuscript was finished, it was checked. The character spacing had to be perfect. The scroll had to be the correct length. The center of the scroll had to line up on the correct letter. After they checked these things, they proofread the text itself. If they found any single error, they destroyed the entire scroll and started over.

This resulted in astonishingly little variation in the text.

In 1948, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. They include copies of the Old Testament text that date to between the 100s BC and the 100s AD. They overwhelmingly confirm that there was little to no textual drift in 900 years of copying by hand. None of the drift changes the meaning of any of the text.

The New Testament

We have a lot more New Testament manuscripts and they are generally older. The early church didn’t bury their old manuscripts – they just shelved them away.

There are, however, more variants. There are several reasons for this.

For the first three centuries, the church was an illegal body. Copies of their writings were destroyed by the Romans.

Copyists functioned differently. They were not respected specialists, but were likely to be whoever in the community happened to be able to read and write, to whatever level of skill. They worked faster and tended to be less concerned about small mistakes like spelling variation or word order that didn’t significantly impact the meaning of the text. Sometimes they checked and corrected the texts, sometimes not. Sometimes a text with an error might be taken home for personal use. This text might be later copied and passed around.

There are 40,000 words in the New Testament. For 39,600, there is no variation of word use, word order or spelling. None of the remaining 400 words significantly impacts the text. They are ALL minor variations.

None of this is hidden. Nearly all Bibles footnote the variations in the text.

In short, we can confidently state that:

-The text of the New Testament is 99% pure and accurate to the original manuscripts.

-None of the variation significantly impacts the meaning of the text.

-The text of the Old Testament has less variation and is even more reliable than that of the New Testament.

No other document in history is as well-preserved and authenticated. We can trust the Bible.

The Actual Text

The Bible is broken in two parts – the Old Testament and the New Testament.

A testament is an official document stating a person’s thoughts and desires. We tend to associate a testament with a person’s death because of the way it has been used. It can express opinion or direct action, as with the disposition of a person’s belongings after they die. A testament remains in effect until revoked by the author.

The Old Testament contains God’s thoughts and desires for humanity as well as expressing His future intent. In it, He stated:

• That He loves us
• That He created us, and for a purpose
• The way He wants us to live, both in relation to Him and in relation to each other
• That we have sinned against Him
• How we can redeem ourselves from His wrath (animal sacrifice)
• That He was going to send a savior who would provide a more permanent redemption

All these things are expressed in God’s first testament to humanity.

The second testament, known as the New Testament, refined His first testament. There is no disagreement between the content or intent of the Old Testament and the New Testament. The New Testament completes the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, God stated:

• That He loves us
• That He created us, and for a purpose
• The way He wants us to live, both in relation to Him and in relation to each other
• That we have sinned against Him
• That we can’t really redeem ourselves from His wrath; animal sacrifice was a temporary measure
• That Jesus was the savior that He sent to provide a more permanent redemption
• That Jesus is a Person of God Himself, because that is the only way that we could be redeemed
• That anyone who accepts Jesus and His offer of salvation will be saved and dwell with God in eternity
• That anyone who rejects His offer of salvation will be separated from Him forever
• That the world is going to end, but that we shouldn’t worry about it because He is in charge

Why do we treat it as one book?

How can it even make sense that such a collection of writings even hangs together, let alone be reliable to the point where people quote it word-for-word?

Why should I believe it?

There are answers to these questions, as well as many others.

The Bible was written in two major phases. The first section (slightly more than half) was written before the 3rd century B.C. by the Jews. This is, in fact, the Hebrew scripture. It was written over time and assembled into a single collection. When a group of works are collected into a single authorized collection, it is called a canon. A book is considered canonical if it is in the collection and non-canonical if it is not. This Jewish scriptural canon had been solidified by Jewish religious authority several hundred years prior to Jesus’ birth. The second half of the Bible is a collection of writings by Jesus’ followers who were alive during the events surrounding His life, death, resurrection and return to heaven. This collection of writings was solidified into a canon before the year 400.

They also include additions to other various books, such as Psalms, Esther and Daniel. The books of the deuterocanon were written in what the many call the inter-Testamental period, around the 3rd – 1st centuries BC, and were later edited out of the Protestant canons. They contain some views on the afterlife which seem to depart from the rest of Scripture. This is important because several doctrines, including those of purgatory and the angels derive from these books. Whether you accept these books as Scripture will have a direct impact on how you view the rest of Christianity. The reason the Protestant denominations removed them from the Bible is as follows:

As we are looking at the Bible today, we need to evaluate which text constitutes the revealed word of God. If the competent scholar who was establishing an official translation of the Bible from the original texts determined at the time that some parts didn’t belong, we would be wise to give his opinion considerable weight rather than second-guess his work 1,600 years later. We need to look at the content – several parts of the apocryphal books conflict with the rest of Scripture, particularly where heaven and the angels are concerned. Remember that God doesn’t contradict Himself.

Old Testament

There are 39 books in the Old Testament. There are 17 books of narrative, 5 books that look at life from an everyday perspective and 17 books of prophecy. These are the books that Jesus would have used and referred to as “the Law and the Prophets.” He considered them to be God’s word. These are the books quoted in the New Testament. The version quoted most often in the New Testament is LXX.

The first five books are sometimes known as the Pentateuch. They include Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. They are sometimes referred to as the books of the Law. In broad terms, they cover:

• The beginning of the world
• The beginning of sin
• The beginning of God’s work to contain and fix the problem of sin
• The beginning of Israel
• The beginning of Israel’s walk with God

The book of Joshua talks about how Canaan was conquered by God’s help, and how the people got into trouble when they tried to conquer it without God’s help. At the end of Joshua, we have begun to get the sense that Israel follows God – sometimes – but they also tend to ignore Him when it suits them, in favor of doing their own thing. Then God allows them to get into trouble to force them to return to Him.

This is further emphasized in the book of Judges.

Judges (The word better translates to ‘chieftains’) In the book of judges we read that Israel continues to not follow God faithfully – they worshipped other gods and disobeyed His commandments. So God let them be attacked by foreign powers. Once the people remembered that they needed to be faithful to God, and worship Him only, God sent the Judges – warrior chieftains who rallied the people to God, and drove out the invaders. As long as the people had a good, godly judge and leader– they remained faithful to God. But when the judge died, the people went back to worshipping false gods, and became even more twisted than before.

By the end of Judges, it became clear that God’s people need godly leadership.

This is the point that comes to a head at the start of first Samuel. The people themselves didn’t fully understand the problem; they thought just having a king, and a consistent kingship as their form of government would make them a strong nation, like all the other nations out there. They did not ask for a godly king. They simply asked for a human king. What follows, through first and second Samuel, first and second Kings, and Chronicles, is a rather sad series of stories – three kings rule over the nation of Israel, only one of whom, David, is really godly – and he only somewhat. By the end of the reign of Solomon, David’s son, he had re-introduced idolatry to the areas surrounding Jerusalem and the nation divided into two halves. For the next two centuries, the northern half had twenty kings– all of them ungodly, and the southern half had nineteen kings, only eight of whom were godly. The best of the kings still died; their sons seldom carried on their godly perspective. The northern half was eventually destroyed by Assyria; the southern half was nearly destroyed – they were conquered and forcibly deported for seventy years.

At this point in the Old Testament, we come upon the five books that are known as wisdom literature –they are actually books that deal with everyday faith.

The book of Job deals with the problem of pain – what happens when bad things happen to good, godly people.

The book of Psalms is the old Hebrew worship book – these are poems and songs that were set to music, and they describe what life is like – in good times and bad – as God’s people.

The book of Proverbs provides Godly rules for living in the form of short, wise sayings. If the Hebrew people had fortune cookies, these would be in them.

The book of Ecclesiastes takes a good look at life, and asks – what is the point of it all, anyway?

And the Song of Songs takes a look at human love as something that is good, and, in the right context, can be a delightful gift from God.

The next books are the major and minor prophets. The major prophets include: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel and Daniel. These cover a span of about 600 years. They include messages from God to His people about how they should live, warnings about how they should NOT live and some prophetic predictions about the near and very far future.

New Testament

Soon after Jesus’ resurrection and return to heaven, His followers began writing letters to each other. In particular, the Apostles began writing to the various churches that started, reminding the churches of the things they had originally been told and addressing problems that began appearing. The one that wrote most of the letters was Paul. These letters are often known as the Epistles. Epistle is a fancy word for a letter.

The Epistles tell in great detail about God and how He wants us to live. They tell us the meaning of Jesus’ sacrifice and how we should apply the example He gave us in our daily lives. They were generally written to individual churches that had specific problems, so each is focused differently.

A lot of people started writing to each other about Jesus, particularly in the second century, and they wrote some pretty wild things. The early church in the 2nd century gradually weeded out the various alleged gospels and epistles that could not be traced directly to one of the apostles and fixed the New Testament canon at 27 books.

The first four books of the New Testament are known as the Gospel, or good news. They were written after the Epistles to give people a better sense of who Jesus was and what He said.

All of the books of the New Testament were written in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses to the events they describe. If they had been inaccurate, they would have been quickly corrected by people who were there at the time. We can be assured that, like any other eyewitness account, they are as accurate as honest witnesses can make them. This is important, because we have to assume that people writing eyewitness accounts are being honest. This is a fundamental principle of law as well as evaluating historical documents of any kind. The writer is assumed to be honest until proven otherwise.

How we should read the Bible

There are several methods of translation that are used. All have positive sides and drawbacks.

Literal translation is word for word translation from one language to another. This can be difficult, and meaning tends to be lost as common phrases and idiomatic expressions do not often translate well. You dig? Some literal translations include: King James, Young’s Literal Translation, New King James, New American Standard.

Dynamic translation means translating thought for thought. This can capture the meanings of different expressions, but nuances or fine distinctions can be lost, such as the difference between killing and murder. Some dynamic translations include: New International Version, New Living Translation, Today’s English Version, Good News Bible, New English Bible.

A paraphrase is an attempt to present an original thought in a way that is understandable. It is similar to thought for thought translation but with less concern for accuracy. It also is much more subjective. The paraphraser has greater room to put their ‘spin’ on things, interpreting them in the way they think that they should be rather than trying to hold to the author’s original intent. Some paraphrase Bibles include: The Living Bible, JB Phillips’ New Testament, The Amplified Bible, The Message.

Translators aren’t evil or intentionally misleading – they are trying to make the Word of God accessible to a specific target audience. The translation you use should be based on what you are trying to accomplish.