What Does The Bible Say?
Question: Can we know that the Bible is inspired by God?
Answer: Yes. 2 Timothy 3:16.17 says- “all scripture is inspired of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness, so that the man of God can be perfect and thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” Romans 1:16 says- “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation…” In 2 Timothy 2:15Paul writes- “study to show yourself approved of God, a workman that needs not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” In Jude 1:3 we are urged to “contend earnestly for the faith, once and for all delivered to the saints>’ All of these passages teach that we can have confidence in the text of scriptures and can defend them against all who would oppose them or doubt that they are indeed the word of God.
The Bible is an ancient, historical collection of books. The first book was written around 3,400 years ago, and the last book was written around 1,900 years ago. Historians who study ancient texts, such as those written by Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, use specific criteria to determine their reliability. These same criteria can also be (and have been) applied to the Bible. There are three tests that historians commonly use to test the reliability and accuracy of ancient documents: 1. The bibliographical test, 2. The internal evidence tests 3. The external evidence test.
The New Testament was written between A.D. 50 and A.D. 100. So far, the earliest copy of the New Testament found is dated A.D 130. This means that there is less than 100 years between the original manuscript and the first copy that was found! Compare this to Plato, where the period between the original and the first copy was 1,200 years and to Homer (Iliad), where there is a 500-year difference. Historians consider Plato and Homer to have been transmitted accurately. Using the same test, the accuracy of the Bible far exceeds that of these other ancient texts, a fact that historians cannot deny.
Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest copy of the Old Testament was dated around 90 A.D., which means there was a time gap of around 1,300 years between the first book written and the earliest copy discovered. This is similar to Plato, who is considered reliable by an overwhelming majority of historians.
In addition to the length of time between the original text and the earliest copy, Historians relied on how the Old Testament was transmitted to bolster its accuracy. The Old Testament was transcribed by Hebrew scribes who were bound to strict laws on how they transcribed the text, meaning mistakes in transmission were very unlikely. But until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, no one knew exactly how accurate these transcriptions were.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 in a cave in Qumran. The scrolls contained fragments of every book of the Bible, except for Esther, and were dated between 250 B.C. and 50 A.D. The entire book of Isaiah, dated 75 B.C., was part of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery. This discovery closed the gap between the original text of Isaiah and the earliest copy found. In addition, when scholars compared the oldest previous copy of the Book of Isaiah to the Dead Sea Isaiah, they found 95% consistency. Of the 5% variation, most variations involved omitted letters and misspellings. Scholars can confidently assert that the scribal process resulted in a very accurate transmission of the Old Testament.
Another facet of the test involves the number of copies found. The more copies found, the more accurate the text is. Seven copies of Plato and 1,757 of Homer (the Iliad) have been found, whereas over 5,500 copies of the New Testament written in Greek have been found. When you add versions written in other languages to those written in Greek, there are over 24,000 copies of the New Testament. Even more impressive is that after comparing these copies, the New Testament was found to be 99.5% accurate! Historians consider Plato and Homer reliable texts. The bibliographical test shows the Bible to be much more reliable than both Homer and Plato. If Homer and Plato’s authenticity has not been questioned, then why should we question the historical authenticity of the Bible? We will consider in our next column the internal and external tests.
Please address all questions and comments to What does the Bible Say> C/O Maple St. Church of Christ, PO Box 3086, Liberty, TX 77575 and visit our website maplestreetliberty.org