Slide 1

We want to know: Do we have a reliable copy of the Bible? This question has to do with correct translations and with accurate copies. Does the Bible agree with verifiable facts from other sources of knowledge, both historical and scientific?

Slide 2

How do we know that we have accurate copies of the original text? First, we have an unbroken chain of versions of the Bible going back from our day to the time in which the original scriptures were written.

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We have more modern translations such as the New King James Version, the New International Version, the English Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, and the American Standard Version itself.

Slide 4

We have copies of the King James Version reaching back to 1611. It is interesting to see that there is very little difference in the Old Testament even between such translations as the American Standard Version and the King James Version.

Slide 5

We have copies of translations such as John Wycliffes appearing around 1382. Our translations keep going back to the time of Jerome who translated the Latin Vulgate 390-404 A.D. Jerome used a version that scholars call the Old Latin Version that is dated around A. D. 150 - Kenyon, p. 26).

Slide 6

By comparison of these translations, it is obvious that differences between them are superficial. There are different languages. There are different stages of the same language. There is variation in spelling of some words. There is some variation in which passages are included in given versions, but we know about all those passages.

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Second, we have a wealth of manuscripts, hand-copied facsimiles of the originals. By comparing these manuscripts, some of which, in the New Testament, date back within a few decades of the death of John the apostle, we can arrive at a consistent text.

Slide 8

The Old Testament. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew with a few chapters in Daniel (2:4-7:28), a few chapters in Ezra (4:8-6:18; 7:12-26) and a few random verses elsewhere (Jer. 10:11, e.g.) written in Aramaic.

Slide 9

One of the peculiarities about the Hebrew Old Testament is that until 1947 and the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament, except for isolated fragments, were from the ninth century A.D. Kenyon says, All the extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament contain substantially a Massoretic text (p. 42).

Slide 10

The copy of the Hebrew Old Testament that I use is based squarely upon a huge handwritten manuscript called the Leningrad Codex (a book with leaves instead of a scroll), dated around 1008 A.D. So we can see the accuracy of this copy which takes us back 1000 years ago, and until 1947 that was about as good as we had.

Slide 11

In 1947 Bedouins discovered caves west of the Dead Sea. In these caves, men found a wealth of manuscripts. William F. Albright says, At Qumran alone we have remains of nearly every Old Testament book, going back a thousand years, on the average, before the previously known Hebrew manuscripts (Appendix to Youngs Analytical Concordance, p. 49).

Slide 12

He goes on to say, The first surprise that confronted scholars was the extraordinary closeness of most of the Biblical scrolls to the Massoretic text.... The first Isaiah scroll seldom departs in essentials from the printed Hebrew Bible, though there are innumerable variations from the latter in spelling. The evidence therefore suggests that we have an accurate copy of the Old Testament scriptures.

Slide 13

The New Testament. The New Testament was written in Greek. There are nearly 4,500 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament (Ira Price, Ancestry of the English Bible, p. 161). More recent estimates are 5,000 (The King James Version Debate, by D. A. Carson, pp. 17-18).

Slide 14

Kenyon says, No fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading.... It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain. Especially is this the case with the New Testament.

Slide 15

The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, or early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.

Slide 16

Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text of the principal Greek and Roman writers whose works have come down to us, of Sophocles, of Thycydides, of Cicero, of Virgil; yet our knowledge of their writings depends on a mere handful of manuscripts, whereas the manuscripts of the New Testament are counted by hundreds and even thousands.

Slide 17

In the case of the Old Testament we are not quite in such a good position.... In some passages it sees certain that the true reading has not been preserved by any ancient authority, and we are driven to conjecture in order to supply it. But such passages are an infinitesimal portion of the whole and may be disregarded.

Slide 18

The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries (Kenyon, p. 23).

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Criticism of the Bible. Those of us who believe the Bible to be the word of god must be informed about some of these matters. We must know, for example, that the results of the critics work is determined to some extent by the attitude he has about God.

Slide 20

Criticism is divided into lower criticism, which concerns the form or text itself, and higher criticism which concerns questions concerning the origin of the book. Higher critics have approached the study of the Bible with several presumptions that have proven to be disastrous to true Bible scholarship.

Slide 21

First, they have flatly rejected all supernaturalism, any miracles, and the verbal inspiration of the scriptures. Second, they are determined to place their trust in their own reasoning and their own speculations rather than upon the Bible as the word of God.

Slide 22

Third, they have been influenced by gross errors in determining their theories; then, when the theories are shown to have been completely false, they hold to the theories anyway. For example, eminent scholars in the last quarter of the nineteenth century held that the Pentateuch could not have been written by Moses because writing was not known in Palestine before the time of the kings (Kenyon, p. 4). It is now known that writing is much more ancient than the time of Moses. The main reason for scholars rejection of Mosaic authorship is their disbelief in God.

Slide 23

The various destructive critical theories of the scholars reminds us of the scholar who maintained to another scholar that he could prove that the Pentateuch was written by Middleton and not Moses. When challenged, he replied, Well, if you drop the Oses from Moses and put Iddleton instead, then it will be perfectly clear.

Slide 24

The Bible is the principle witness that Jesus was ever on earth. Recognizing this fact, infidels have attacked the credibility of the Bible and especially the gospel accounts.

Slide 25

They try to argue that the gospels were written in the second century, thus giving time for myths to grow up about the life of Christ. Unavoidably though, scholars are having to come back to an earlier and earlier date for the writing of these accounts. How strong and how unusual is the situation with regard to the testimony about Jesus life?

Slide 26

Jesus and Alexander the Great. In assessing the strength of the testimony regarding the life of Jesus, His crucifixion, and resurrection, it will be helpful to compare Christ to another historical figure: Alexander the Great.

Slide 27

Alexander was born in 353 B.C. and died about 320 B.C. In the bibliography of Alexander the Great found in the Encyclopedia Britannica we find this statement: The original sources for Alexander are lost, and the problem is to recover them from the secondary authorities.

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In other words, there are no records left by any of the first- hand witnesses of Alexanders deeds. Of the secondary sources, there are five:

Slide 29

Diodorus Siculus from the first century B.C. Quintus Curtius Rufus from the first century A.D. Plutarch from 46-120 A.D. Arrian from 100-170 A.D. Justinus of the third or fourth century A.D.

Slide 30

Of these the writer who lived nearest to the time of Alexander lived two centuries after he died. The difficulty of coming up with a credible life of Alexander the Great can be illustrated by supposing that in the year 3984 A.D. the world has none of the letters, journals, or books written by or about George Washington in his lifetime. All that is possessed is an account written by a man who lived in 1984, two hundred years after George Washington.

Slide 31

With regard to Jesus, we have, not only the four accounts of the gospel, all written in the first century by men who either knew Jesus personally (Matthew, Mark, and John) or who had plentiful access to people who did (Luke). We also have the thousands of manuscripts of these accounts assuring us that we have an accurate copy of the writings of the New Testament.

Slide 32

Reasons for rejecting the Bible have nothing to do with the evidence. The fundamental reason why men reject the Bible is its claim of supernatural origin and its record of miracles. However, it is poor logic that rejects miracles because there is no God, and rejects God because there are no miracles.

Slide 33

Objectivity requires that in a study of the Bible we be open to the possibility that there is a God and that miracles have been done. In the Bible miracles fit into an overall purpose; they are not random.

Slide 34

In other words, for God to show that He is God, He has periodically demonstrated His power with miracles. For Jesus to demonstrate that He is the Son of God, He had to be able to do things impossible for normal men to do.

Slide 35

In the Bible miracles were done to prove: That the Lord is God. That the prophets and apostles were inspired by Him. That Jesus was His Son.

Slide 36

One thing that the Bible most definitely does not do is to portray miracles as some ignorant explanation of natural occurrences. We will devote the remainder of our study to several things in the Bible that clearly indicate that it is a book of God, the revelation of His will.