Can We Trust the Bible?

Introduction

We begin today a series of lessons on topics dealing with fundamental aspects of faith and practice. This series will not be exhaustive in scope or content. Our intention is to give some evidence for truths that every Christian should hold to. Our desire is to be a biblical congregation who follows the Bible and who stands with conviction and faith upon its principles. We are interested in knowing God’s will and aligning ourselves with Him. We are not interested in aligning ourselves with a tradition or history for its own sake. Over the next several months we are going to take different topics and try to rediscover what the Bible has to say about those topics.

Today we will begin with a topic that isn’t necessarily found in the Bible but a topic which certainly has to do with the Bible. We want to look at the history of the Bible and ask some difficult questions. How did we get our Bible; how do we know that we can trust what we have in our hands; how can we know for sure that what we call our Bible is really the word of God? These questions need to be answered. As we study you will be encouraged in your faith. {Prayer}

Transmission of the Old Testament Text

Much of what I will say today comes from a book by Rubel Shelly entitled “Prepare to Answer: A Defense of the Christian Faith.” The ideas are found in a variety of books but his arrangement of those ideas and facts is very easy to follow and so I have borrowed freely from him.

Whenever we begin talking about the Bible there is one assumption that we make—God is and has been involved in the preservation of his word. This is a statement of faith about God and his desire to communicate with his creation. The oldest sections of the Bible are 3500 years old. The more recent sections are about 1900 years old. Though written on perishable surfaces and having to be copied by hand for hundreds and thousands of years before the invention of the printing press, the Bible has survived against staggering odds. For example, the Roman emperor Diocletian issued an edict in 303 A.D. requiring the burning of all the sacred writings of the Christians. And yet the Bible remained intact. But sceptics abound. There are many who say that the Bible is no longer reliable. With all the copying and all the attempts to destroy it, we really can’t know what we have is really God’s word. Let’s see.

Let’s look at the Old Testament first. From our reading we know that Moses and Joshua recorded events and the words of God. They were not the only ones. The point I want to make from our reading is that the words which Moses gave to Joshua and which Joshua added to were preserved for generations to come. The original autographs no longer exist. From 300 B.C. to 500 A.D. the duty of preserving and transmitting the Hebrew Bible fell to the ancient scribes. These men took extreme care to preserve the text in as pure a form as possible including the counting of the words and letters in each book. They counted to the middle word and middle letter of each book, calculated how many times a letter was used in each book, and compiled other statistics that reduced the possibility of copying errors creeping into their scrolls. As you can see, the transmission of the text was not just a job it was a sacred trust.

Around 500 A.D. the work of the scribes ended and a new group called the Massoretes became the custodians of the text. They believed that every letter was sacred and thus took equally great pains to copy the text as it had been given to them. Our Old Testament is based upon what is called the Massoretic Text. Our Old Testament is translated from texts which the Massoretes have left us some as old as 1100 years old. But the question still comes, is the Massoretic Text accurate? A startling discovery in 1947 began to shed light on this Old Testament text. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the Massoretic Text has been confirmed. The Dead Sea Scrolls are documents which survived from a Jewish religious sect which had established a community around 150 B.C. and the community ceased to exist around 70 A.D. When the Romans came to destroy Jerusalem, this community took their precious writings and buried them in caves around the Dead Sea. Almost 1900 years later they were discovered and as examination and reading has continued these Dead Sea Scrolls have verified the accuracy of the Massoretic text. While there are some differences, the vast majority of differences center on variations in spelling such as “honor” and “honour” and obvious slips of the pen. We can know that our Old Testament is reliable.

Transmission of the New Testament Text

Like the Old Testament, there are no original autographs available of the New Testament. But there are over 5000 Greek manuscripts which contain part or all of the New Testament. Our oldest texts are papyrus. We do not have a complete New Testament on papyrus but we do have large sections of the NT on papyrus. These date from the early second century. The oldest complete manuscript of the NT dates from the around 300 to 450 A.D. The most recent manuscripts date from the 9th to 15th centuries.

In addition to these Greek manuscripts there are a number of early translations of Greek manuscripts into other languages. These translations were for the purpose of mission work and were made early on in the history of the text. There are Syriac, Coptic (or Egyptian) and Latin versions of the NT which all have early dates.

There are also references to the NT in extra-biblical sources. Writings of men from the end of the 1st century through the 2nd century quote various texts of the NT. In fact, they quote so much of the NT that some believe it is possible to recover almost the entire NT from these extra-biblical sources. So how did the Bible come to be as we now have it?

When Moses finished his writings, there was no need for anyone to pronounce them accepted as scripture. As the undisputed leader of Israel, the materials he wrote were considered inspired. The same with Joshua and in time as more and more authors wrote these were added to the sacred writings. By the time of Jesus, he is speaking of the Scriptures in passages like Matt. 22:29; John 10:35; 19:36; Acts 18:24; Romans 1:2; 2 Peter 1:20. Jesus spoke of the three divisions of the OT in Luke 24:44 when he says words about him were “written in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.” While the OT was compiled and accepted over a long period of time, the NT was written within a 50 year time frame and what was accepted underwent great scrutiny in a short period of time.

A number of second century authors began to suggest what was accepted as Scripture by Christians. By 397 A.D. there is an explicit statement that 27 writings comprise the NT. This decree by the Council of Carthage was widely accepted as authoritative. What we need to notice is that the council’s decree did not decide what belonged in the NT but endorsed what had already developed as a consensus among the believers.

Application

There are two points that I want to make from this lesson on how we got our Bible. To say that what we call our Bible is some conspiracy of man to deceive the world does not understand the respect given to God’s word throughout the centuries nor does it understand that God has guided this process from its inception. Our God wanted to communicate with us, so he had men to write down his thoughts and words. And with the desire to communicate God has intervened throughout the centuries to insure that what we have is accurate and valid as people try to understand God and his will.

Second, in addition to the working of God to bring the Bible to us, God’s people throughout the centuries have regarded these words with great respect and awe. It wasn’t just enough to copy the words, they understood that these were God’s words and great care was taken to be accurate. And it is that same respect and awe that allows us to come to the Bible in reverence and hear and read the words not as just words but as God’s word. Hear God’s word from Hebrews 1:1-4. The words about Jesus demonstrate to us the intent and love of God. God so wants to be in relationship with you. More than just words, these words are designed to bring us closer to the one who has done all to bring you into his family. Will you accept him and his words? Invitation.

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