Ken Boa & Rob Bowman
Based on chapter 6 of I’m Glad You Asked, by Ken Boa and Larry Moody, 2d edition, published by Victor Books.
All biblical quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible.
We’re Glad You Asked
Honest questions deserve honest answers.
If you’re considering the truth claims of the Christian faith, you probably have some questions. After all, if Jesus Christ is the Creator and Master of the universe, and if he and he alone can give you an everlasting life of love, joy, and peace, coming to terms with Jesus Christ is the most important matter you will ever face in this life. Any thinking person is going to want to ask some questions about something so important. No one is going to be able to believe in Jesus Christ if they don’t think that these stupendous claims are true.
As you probably already know, the source of information about Jesus Christ on which the Christian faith is based is the Bible. If you’re like most people, you probably have some questions about the reliability and accuracy of the Bible. That’s quite understandable. We don’t expect you to believe everything in the Bible simply on our say-so, or because the church says so. If the Bible really is a revelation from God, there should be good reasons for believing this to be the case, and good answers to any honest and reasonable questions people may ask about it. We’re confident this is the case, and so we’re always glad when people ask such questions.
Obviously, not every question about every detail of the Bible can be answered in a short booklet like this one. Our goal is much more modest. We will offer some brief answers to some of the most common questions people ask about the Bible. These questions are as follows:
1 Has the text of the Bible been accurately preserved?
2 How do we know that the right books are in the Bible?
3 Are the biblical writings intended to be read as history or as myth?
4 Is there any evidence outside the Bible for the events it describes?
5 Hasn’t modern science shown the Bible to be mythological?
6 What evidence is there that the Bible is an inspired revelation from God?
7 Doesn’t the Bible contain contradictions and historical errors?
8 Why are there so many different interpretations of the Bible?
9 Doesn’t the Bible endorse slavery and other practices we now regard as wrong?
10 What if I still have doubts or questions about the Bible
Chances are that if you have questions about the Bible, they are included in these ten questions or in some way relate to one or more of these questions. At the end of the booklet is a list of resources to help you with any additional questions that may remain.
Q. 1 Has the text of the Bible been accurately preserved?
One of the most common questions people ask about the Bible is whether the Bible as we have it now is the same as when it was originally written. As most people know, the 66 books of the Bible were originally written by hand, and they were then copied by hand over and over again, down through the centuries, until the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in the fifteenth century. It is perfectly reasonable to ask whether in this process of copying and re-copying — which is called the transmission of the text — something of the original might have been lost.
On this question, virtually all scholars, whether Christian or not, agree that there is really no problem here at all. Three aspects of the manuscript evidence that is available, considered together, give us complete assurance that the Bible has survived the transmission process whole and intact. These three aspects are the quantity, quality, and age of the manuscripts.
Plenty of manuscript copies have survived.
If we had only a few manuscript copies of the biblical writings, we might wonder if those copies were faithful reproductions of the originals. In fact, the quantity of biblical manuscripts completely eliminates this worry.
In the case of the Old Testament, archeological finds during the past century or so have furnished us with a surprisingly large number of Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament books. Most of these manuscripts are medieval copies produced by the Masoretic Jews, who standardized the Old Testament text by the sixth century A.D. These medieval Hebrew manuscripts include thousands of Old Testament manuscripts discovered in the Cairo Geniza, as well as numerous more manuscripts in other collections. The medieval manuscripts are supplemented by nearly 200 biblical manuscripts among the famed Dead Sea Scrolls (which include almost the entire Old Testament). In addition, witnesses to the text of the Old Testament include the Septuagint (a third century B.C. Greek translation of the Old Testament), the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Targums (ancient paraphrases of the Old Testament), and the Talmud (Jewish teachings and commentaries on the Jewish law, based on the Hebrew Scriptures). Suffice it to say that the manuscript evidence is numerous and varied enough that there is no cause for concern.
The quantity of New Testament manuscripts is unparalleled in ancient literature. There are hundreds of copies of each book of the New Testament in a mass of over 5,000 Greek manuscripts found in museums and libraries worldwide. Additional ancient witnesses to the New Testament text are given by the many translations of the New Testament in Latin and other languages (especially Syriac and Coptic). There are also numerous citations of New Testament passages in the writings of the early church fathers. In short, the text of the New Testament has more manuscript evidence for it than for any other ancient writings.
The quality of the manuscripts is very good.
Because of the great reverence the Jewish scribes held toward the Scriptures, they exercised extreme care in making new copies of the Hebrew Bible. The entire scribal process was specified in meticulous detail to minimize the possibility of even the slightest error. The number of letters, words, and lines were counted, and the middle letters of the Pentateuch and the Old Testament were determined.
As a result of this extreme care, the quality of the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible surpasses all other ancient manuscripts. The 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provided a significant check on this, because these Hebrew scrolls predated the earliest Masoretic Old Testament manuscripts by about a thousand years. In spite of this time span, the number of variant readings between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text is quite small, and most of these are variations in spelling and style.
The quality of the New Testament manuscripts, while not as good as that of the Old, is still very good — considerably better than the manuscript quality of other ancient documents. Because of the large number of New Testament manuscripts, there are many variant readings, but in most cases scholars have no trouble in deciding which of these variants represents the original. Some of the variants are obviously the result of visual errors in copying. For example, copyists sometimes accidentally skipped a line because it started with the same word as the line before or after it. In the imaginary example given below, based on John 1:1-2, it is obvious that manuscript “B” is missing a line, and it is reasonable to attribute the mistake to the fact that the second and third lines both begin with the words “And the Word was.” Other variants are the result of auditory errors when a group of scribes copied manuscripts that were read aloud. For example, in Romans 5:1 some manuscripts say, “let us have peace with God,” while others say, “we have peace with God.” In Greek the difference is between ecomen (“we have”) and ecwmen (“let us have”), both of which sound identical or nearly so (echomen).
Manuscript A
In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God,
And the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
Manuscript B
In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God.
He was in the beginning with God.
It is true that occasionally variants arose from well-meaning scribes who thought they were correcting the text. In these cases usually only a few of the manuscripts contain such “corrections.” In any case, only a small number of the variants affect the sense of the passages, and only a fraction of these have any real consequences. (For example, the variants in Romans 5:1 do not affect the basic meaning of the passage that peace with God is freely available to those who put their trust in Jesus Christ.) Furthermore, no variant readings are significant enough to call into question any of the doctrines of the New Testament.
As has been frequently observed, the New Testament can be regarded as about 99.5 percent pure. The correct readings for the remaining 0.5 percent can often be ascertained with a fair degree of probability by scholars trained in making the kinds of observations discussed above.
The time span between the originals and our earliest copies is unusually short.
Apart from some fragments, the earliest Masoretic manuscripts of the Old Testament date from about the ninth century A.D. However, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls dating from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 68 drastically reduced the time span from the writing of the Old Testament books to our earliest copies of them. Amazingly, the differences between the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Old Testament books and the Masoretic text of the same books are very minor.
The time span between the writing of the original New Testament books and our earliest manuscript copies is exceptional. The manuscripts written on papyrus came from the second and third centuries A.D. The John Rylands Fragment (P52) of the Gospel of John is dated at A.D. 117-138, only a few decades after the Gospel was written. Other recently discovered papyri have even been dated to the first century, although there is some debate about these. The Bodmer Papyri are dated from A.D. 175-225, and the Chester Beatty Papyri date from about A.D. 250. The time span for most of the New Testament is thus less than 200 years (and some books are within 100 years) from the date of authorship to the date of our earliest manuscripts. There is therefore no basis for skepticism about the substantial accuracy of the text of the New Testament as it has come down to us.
To summarize, the Old and New Testaments enjoy far greater manuscript attestation in terms of quantity, quality, and time span than any other ancient documents. No biblical scholar seriously questions the substantial accuracy and integrity of the texts of the Old and New Testament books as they have come down to us.
Q. 2 How do we know the right books are in the Bible?
We have just seen that there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of the text of the books of the Bible. Now we consider a somewhat similar question. Granted that the books that are in the Bible have been accurately transmitted to us, how do we know that those books — and those books alone — belong in the Bible?
The church saw itself as discovering the canon, not determining
The Christian church holds that a fixed number of books have come down to us that belong in the Bible. This fixed collection of books is known as the canon of Scripture. The word canon means a rule or standard, and it came to be used of the collection of books that the church recognized as divinely inspired. Inspiration determines canonicity; that is, a book belongs in the canon if and only if it is inspired. The early church simply recognized these inspired books and rejected from the canon those books which, however edifying and sound, did not bear the marks of inspiration. Thus, the church discovered the canonical books but did not determine them.
The canon of the Bible has two major divisions — the Old Testament and the New Testament. The canonical books of the Old Testament were divided into the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (cf. Luke 24:44), and these had been recognized long before the time of Christ. Some books of the Bible, notably Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon, were questioned for certain reasons by a few rabbis, but most recognized them as Scripture and they remain part of the authoritative canon of Scripture recognized by the Jews.
The New Testament canonical books were progressively circulated and collected, and these 27 books were given official recognition by the councils of Hippo (A.D. 393) and Carthage (A.D. 397). The church used three tests to discover which books belonged in the New Testament canon. First, the book had to be of apostolic origin — written either by an apostle (e.g., John, Paul, Peter) or an associate of an apostle (e.g., Mark was an associate of Peter, and Luke was an associate of Paul). Second, the book had to be of apostolic date — that is, written in the first century. (Books carrying Peter’s name, for example, but known to have been written a century or more after he died, were out!) Third, the book had to contain apostolic doctrine. In the occasional case of an anonymous or disputed book (e.g., Hebrews, 2 Peter), the church pointed to the book’s agreement with the doctrine of the undisputed apostolic books. That the church councils which produced lists of the canonical books were merely acknowledging those books that were evidently apostolic in authority, and not imposing books that happened to agree with their theology, is easy to show. After all, they accepted the Book of Revelation, which most Christians in the fourth century found strange if not bizarre, while they rejected such popular nonapostolic works as the Shepherd of Hermas and 1 Clement.
The dispute between Catholics and Protestants over the Apocrypha does not negate the reliability of the canon.
Admittedly, there is some disagreement among Christians about the exact extent of the Old Testament canon. Roman Catholic versions include seven books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees), along with additions to Esther and Daniel, that are not included in Protestant versions. These books, which Protestants refer to as the Apocrypha, all date two centuries or more after the time of Malachi — when, according to the Talmud, “the Holy Spirit departed from Israel,” that is, inspired prophecy ended.
The origin of the question of the Apocrypha goes back to the fact that it was included in some editions of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced in Alexandria and used by Greek-speaking Jews and Christians in the first few centuries of the church’s history. However, the Apocryphal books were not regarded as canonical by the Jews. Flavius Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, gave a description of the Jewish canon matching precisely that of the Protestant Old Testament, and neither Josephus nor other Jewish writers in the first century (such as the Alexandrian philosopher Philo) ever appealed to the Apocryphal books as Scripture. Unlike the books of the Old Testament, the Apocrypha do not even claim to have the prophetic stamp, and at least one confirms that inspired prophecy did not exist at that time (1 Macc. 9:27).
As for the Christian evaluation of these books, for Protestants it is vital to observe that neither Jesus nor any of the New Testament writers ever appealed to the Apocrypha as Scripture. From Jesus’ references to the Jewish Scriptures (Matt. 5:18; Luke 24:44) it is evident that he accepted the standard Jewish canon without debate. Because of the accessibility and popularity of the Septuagint in the largely Greek-speaking church, some of the Apocryphal books were treated as Scripture by some early Christians. Most of the church fathers who commented on the question rejected the Apocrypha (notably Origen, Athanasius, and Jerome), although the great Augustine did accept the Apocrypha. The question did not come to a head until the sixteenth century at the Council of Trent, convened by the Roman Catholic church to condemn Protestantism (as well as to provide for some needed reforms). In 1546 Trent gave full canonical status to the Apocrypha, which happened to include references to praying for the dead (a Catholic practice criticized by Protestants).
The intramural debate between Catholics and Protestants over the Apocrypha should not discourage us from confidence in the 66 books which all Christians agree belong in the Bible. Other than a couple of minor questions like praying for the dead, the inclusion or exclusion of the Apocrypha does not significantly affect the substance of the Christian faith.
Q. 3 Are the biblical writings intended to be read as history or as myth?
The Bible says that Jesus Christ was not a mere man but was (and is) God in the flesh. It reports that he was conceived and born of a virgin, that he performed such miracles as turning water into wine and casting out demons, and that he rose from the dead. But you may have heard (or even been taught) that the biblical writings are mythology, not history. According to many people today, the biblical authors were not even intending to write historical reports, but were expressing what Jesus meant to them using the mythological categories of their day. Obviously, if this is so, Christians who regard the biblical accounts about Jesus as literal history have seriously misunderstood their own Scriptures.
The question, then, is this: What do the biblical writings themselves purport to be — history, myth, or some combination of the two? We are not presently considering the question of whether the Bible actually succeeds in reporting the historical facts with complete accuracy. That question would be irrelevant if we knew that the biblical authors weren’t even interested in writing history. The issue here is simply whether they intended to be understood as writing history. If they were, then it is invalid to sidestep their historical claims by categorizing their writings as beautiful myth.
They claimed to be writing history.
It turns out that the New Testament writers are quite explicit on this point. Luke, for example, opens his two-part masterpiece (the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles) with a prologue in classical Greek historiographical style, stating that his purpose was to investigate all the facts and report them in order (Luke 1:1-4). He dates the beginning of John the Baptist’s ministry by giving the years of the reigns of several contemporary rulers (3:1-2). Luke’s attention to historical detail (place-names, titles of Jewish and Roman officials, and the like) is evident throughout the Gospel and Acts. And since Matthew and Mark’s Gospels both tell essentially the same story as Luke’s Gospel, it is evident that they are intended to be read as history as well.
John not only insists that he is reporting historical fact, he claims to have been an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. John wrote in his Gospel, “And he who has seen has borne witness, and his witness is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe” (John 19:35, see 21:24). In his first epistle, John wrote, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life . . . what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also” (1 John 1:1, 3).
Peter also insists that the apostolic message was fact, not fable, and cites their eyewitness testimony: “For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16; also see Acts 2:22; 1 Peter 5:1). And Paul warns against turning away from the truth and embracing myths (2 Tim. 4:3-4).
They wrote too close to the events to be writing myth.
That the New Testament accounts about Jesus were intended to be read as history and not myth is confirmed when we consider the time and circumstances in which they were written. The Gospels and epistles were written by such busy missionary preachers and church leaders as John and Paul, who maintained their testimony even through persecution and martyrdom. All of the New Testament books were written between A.D. 45 and 100, according to biblical scholars of both conservative and liberal convictions. Paul’s writings, it is universally agreed, were written in the 50s and early 60s, between 15 and 30 years after Jesus’ death. There simply was not enough time for myths about Jesus to be created and propagated, and the New Testament writers in any case would not have had the time or inclination to produce such myths.
Again, the point here is not that the New Testament writers’ claims to be writing historical fact in and of itself proves that everything they wrote was true. But it is crucial to recognize that they were intending to write history. That being granted, if one is not willing to accept their testimony as at least generally reliable, one must impugn them as either bunglers or liars. Most reasonable people can tell simply from reading the New Testament that neither of those characterizations will fit.
Q. 4 Is there any evidence outside the Bible for the events it describes?
If the accounts of past events found in the biblical writings are history and not myth, one would expect to find some evidence outside the Bible for those events. Of course, not everything in the Bible can be confirmed by extrabiblical sources. One would not expect to find records outside the Bible of, say, Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah (Genesis 24), or Paul’s sermon in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13). But one would expect to be able to confirm in broad strokes the general historicity of the biblical accounts. And indeed this can and has been done.
The Old and New Testaments make abundant references to nations, kings, battles, cities, mountains, rivers, buildings, treaties, customs, economics, politics, dates, and the like. Because the historical narratives of the Bible are so specific, many of these details are open to archeological investigation. While we cannot say that archeology proves the authority of the Bible, it is fair to say that archeological evidence has provided external confirmation of hundreds of biblical statements. Higher criticism in the nineteenth century made many damaging claims that would completely overthrow the integrity of the Bible, but the explosion of archeological knowledge in the twentieth century reversed almost all of these claims. Noted archaeologists such as William F. Albright, Nelson Glueck, and G. Ernest Wright developed a great respect for the historical accuracy of the Scriptures as a result of their work.
Out of the multitude of archeological discoveries related to the Bible, we will mention just a few examples to illustrate the remarkable external substantiation of the biblical accounts.
Archaeology has confirmed much of the Old Testament to be rooted in history.
Excavations at Nuzi (1925-41), Mari (discovered in 1933), and Alalakh (1937-39; 1946-49) provide helpful background information that fits well with the Genesis stories of the patriarchal period. The Nuzi tablets and Mari letters illustrate the patriarchal customs in great detail, and the Ras Shamra tablets discovered in ancient Ugarit in Syria shed much light on Hebrew prose and poetry and Canaanite culture. The Ebla tablets discovered recently in northern Syria also confirm the antiquity and accuracy of the Book of Genesis.
Some scholars once claimed that the Mosaic Law could not have been written by Moses, because writing was largely unknown at that time and because the law code of the Pentateuch was too sophisticated for that period. But the codified Laws of Hammurabi (ca. 1700 B.C.), the Lipit-Ishtar code (ca. 1860 B.C.), the Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1950 B.C.), and the even earlier Ur-Nammu code have refuted these claims.
The biblical description of the Hittite Empire was confirmed when the Hittite capital was discovered in 1906. Examinations of Hittite documents also revealed that the Book of Deuteronomy, a covenant renewal document, actually followed the structure of ancient treaties between kings and their vassals similar to that used by the Hittites and other ancient Near Eastern peoples.
Other excavations have provided information illuminating various aspects of Old Testament Israel’s history as a nation. Excavations at Hazor, Gezer, Megiddo, and Jerusalem, as well as Phoenician inscriptions, illuminate Solomon’s reign. The Moabite Stone yields information about the reign of Omri, the sixth king of Israel. The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III depicts how King Jehu of Israel had to submit to the Assyrian king. The Taylor Prism has an Assyrian text which describes Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem when Hezekiah was king. The Lachish Letters refer to Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Judah and illustrate the life and times of Jeremiah the prophet. Ezra’s description of the liberation of the city of Babylon by the Persian king Cyrus and Cyrus’s decree granting permission for the Jews to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem are authenticated by the discovery of the important Cyrus Cylinder.
The Book of Daniel provides a good example of how archaeology has helped to confirm disputed portions of the Bible. The book claims to have been written by the historical Daniel in the sixth century B.C., and predicts a succession of empires in the Mesopotamian region hundreds of years into the future. Not wanting to admit that Daniel records inspired prophecies of the future, many critics have dated the book in the second century B.C. in order to make it a prophecy after the events. To buttress the claim that the book was written centuries after the historical Daniel would have lived, some scholars questioned the accuracy of Daniel 5 which calls Belshazzar the king of Babylon. Since archeological records say that Nabonidus was king at this time and do not refer to anyone named Belshazzar, some scholars assumed that Daniel was in error. But in 1956, three stelae (inscribed stone slabs) found in Haran cleared up the problem by showing that King Nabonidus had entrusted kingship to his son Belshazzar while he went on a campaign against the invading Persians. Such historical accuracy confirms that the book was written in the sixth century after all.
Archaeology and extrabiblical literature confirm the historical existence of Jesus and the accuracy of the New Testament accounts.
The New Testament has also received abundant support from archeology, and many critical attacks have been reversed. Most of the geographical details associated with the life of Jesus in the Gospels have been substantiated. This includes places such as the Pool of Siloam, the Pool of Bethesda, Jacob’s Well, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum, Chorazin, the residence of Pilate in Jerusalem, and “The Pavement” in John 19:13.
The historical existence of Jesus Christ is well-established by early Roman, Greek, and Jewish sources. The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus made specific references to John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, and James in his Antiquities of the Jews. In this work, Josephus also gives us many background details about the Herods, the Sadducees and Pharisees, the high priests (such as Annas and Caiaphas), and the Roman emperors mentioned in the Gospels and Acts.
We find another early secular reference to Jesus in a letter written a little after A.D. 73 by an imprisoned Syrian named Mara Bar-Serapion. This letter to his son compares the deaths of Socrates, Pythagoras, and Christ. Other first- and second-century writers who mention Christ include the Roman historians Cornelius Tacitus (Annals) and Suetonius (Life of Claudius, Lives of the Caesars), the Roman governor Pliny the Younger (Epistles), and the Greek satirist Lucian (On the Death of Peregrine). Jesus is also mentioned a number of times in the Jewish Talmud. These writings do not discuss the details of Jesus’ life and teachings, nor do they affirm that Jesus actually rose from the dead (anyone affirming that fact would, of course, be writing as a Christian), but they do confirm his existence and the general historical context of Jesus’ life.
In the past critics tried to discredit Luke as an accurate historian, but Luke and Acts have now been substantiated by external evidence. Luke’s frequent references to cities, Roman provinces, and political figures make his writings vulnerable to historical examination. For example, critics scoffed at his reference to Lysanius as the “tetrarch of Abilene” (Luke 3:1). But archaeologists recently found two Greek inscriptions which prove that Lysanius was indeed the tetrarch of Abilene in A.D. 14-29. Luke’s use of titles for public officials (e.g., proconsul, procurator, Asiarch, praetor, politarch) has been challenged in the past, but mounting evidence has vindicated his accuracy.
Q. 5 Hasn’t modern science shown the Bible to be mythological?
So far in this booklet we have seen that the biblical narratives were intended to be read as history rather than myth, and that there is significant evidence from outside the Bible for many of the events it describes. Some people, however, think that the Bible must be relegated to the status of myth for the simple reason that it reflects a pre-scientific view of the world that has been rendered obsolete by modern science. There are two important claims made in this regard. First, it is argued that the miracles of the Bible must be mythological because modern science has shown that such fantastic things do not happen. Second, it is asserted that modern evolutionary science has refuted the supernaturalistic account of the creation of the world and of living things, including the human race. We shall consider each of these criticisms of the Bible in turn.
Miracles are not violations of scientific law but are acts of the God who created the world and designed its natural law.
Many people today think that the miracles of the Bible must be regarded as myth because modern science has shown them to be impossible. But this objection makes sense only if we suppose that people in the ancient world did not know enough about the natural world to understand that the miracles they described could not naturally occur. This supposition, it turns out, has no basis in fact. The ancients knew as well as we do, for example, that women don’t get pregnant by themselves and that dead men don’t spontaneously rise from the dead. They may not have known much of anything about the genetics or chemistry underlying these matters, but they were not ignorant of the natural order of things in their day-to-day life.
The biblical authors do not claim that these events happened spontaneously as merely unusual occurrences of the natural realm. They claim, rather, that these events were produced by the supernatural action of the transcendent God who created the natural realm and gave it the orderly regularity which we call natural law. If God created the universe, he is certainly capable of accomplishing these things in carrying out his redemptive purpose. If God can create a universe out of nothing, and if he created life, he can supernaturally create a new human life inside the womb of a virgin, or restore life to a dead body.
Thus, the real issue is whether the kind of God described in the Bible actually exists. Only if you are already convinced on other grounds that he does not exist would it make sense to conclude that these events could not have occurred and therefore must be mythological. On the other hand, if you believe in a transcendent, personal God who created the world, you should have no trouble believing that he could do these things. If you are still trying to decide whether God exists or not, there is no reason for you to assume that the biblical miracle stories must be myth. In fact, since on other grounds there is good reason to regard the biblical narratives as based on historical fact, you might find these miracles — especially the miracles of Jesus — to offer you some evidence in support of belief in God.
Evolutionary theory, which itself is a matter of scientific debate, has not disproved the biblical account of origins.
The most frequently raised scientific objection to the Bible is that it is contradicted by modern evolutionary theory. The apparent contradiction between the scientific facts and the teachings of the Bible may be addressed from two directions: (1) rethinking our interpretation of the Bible, and (2) rethinking our interpretation of the facts of nature.
First of all, when considering any supposed conflict between science and the Bible, we ought to make sure that we are reading the Bible correctly. We ought to move cautiously before interpreting the Bible to teach a particular theory of the origins and history of the universe or of life on earth that appears to fly in the face of the physical facts. The Bible concentrates more on the who than on the how or when of creation; it attributes the origin of all things to God without describing in detail the processes that he may or may not have used. Even if one understands the six “days” of Genesis 1 to imply that creation took place only a few thousand years ago, this inference is not itself a point of biblical doctrine. (Notice that the Bible never actually refers to an age of the universe or even of the human race.) It is worth noting that scientists who acknowledge the authority of Scripture do not have a uniform view of the age of the earth, and they interpret the fossil evidence and the geological strata in different ways.
A classic example of a “science-Bible” conflict that resulted from misinterpreting the Bible is the debate about whether the earth revolves around the sun. The medieval Catholic church insisted that the Bible taught that the sun and planets revolve around the earth. This idea was actually derived from ancient Greek science, not from the Bible, but this fact was hard for many people to see at the time. This led to the infamous trial of the astronomer Galileo for his “heretical” notion that the sun was at the center and that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun. The Bible, however, cannot be blamed for this blunder. It is true that the church officials who opposed Galileo quoted various verses of the Bible to prove the earth-centered theory, but it is easy enough now to see that this was a mistake.
The verses quoted by Galileo’s critics use what is called phenomenological language — that is, language that describes nature as it appears to the eye, from a human observer’s perspective. For example, the Bible speaks of sunrises and sunsets: “Its rising is from one end of the heavens, and its circuit to the other end of them; and there is nothing hidden from its heat” (Ps. 19:6). But this does not teach that the sun rotates about the earth any more than does today’s scientist when he uses the term “sunrise” and “sunset.” Similarly, the biblical phrase “the four corners of the earth” has been misunderstood to mean that the earth is flat with four literal corners. But Scripture uses this phrase figuratively, referring to all directions (Isa. 11:12; Ezek. 7:2; Rev. 7:1; 20:8).
In some cases, then, scientific discoveries can actually help us to correct our understanding of the Bible. Secondly, though, if the Bible clearly teaches something that is supposedly contradicted by modern science, we should consider the possibility that the data of the physical realm have been misinterpreted. This is quite likely to be the case with respect to the theory of a completely naturalistic origin and evolution of all living things (which is clearly contrary to the biblical world view). Naturalistic evolution stretches beyond the limits of the scientific method, for example, in speculating as to how life might have spontaneously arisen from nonlife. So far none of these speculations has carried the day. But even if scientists could someday come up with an explanation of how it might have happened, this would still be a far cry from proving that it really did happen this way.
Well over a century after Darwin’s Origin of Species, and despite the numerous scientific and technological advances since Darwin, the theory of evolution has yet to win a consensus among scientists or to win over the general public. Very few people doubt that evolution, on some scale, has occurred; but many, many people, including many scientists and other well-educated persons, reject the theory of evolution as a complete explanation of origins.
The point here is that Christians are not acting irrationally when they remain confident in the truth of the Bible in the face of doubts raised by naturalistic evolutionists. There is enough diversity among scientists on these questions, and there are enough reasonable objections to evolutionary theory, that it is quite sensible to withhold acceptance of evolutionism in favor of continued belief in the biblical account of origins.
Q. 6 What evidence is there that the Bible is an inspired revelation from God?
So far we have considered various questions having to do with the fundamental authenticity and historical reliability of the Bible. We have seen that, with respect to those issues, the Bible is what it purports to be — a collection of ancient writings conveying the crucial events and the teachings and values of the people of Israel in the Old Testament and of Jesus and his disciples in the New Testament. We have seen that the biblical writings cannot be fairly characterized as mythological, and that there are good reasons to take its historical accounts seriously.
The Christian view of the Bible, of course, goes further still. Christianity regards the Bible as a collection of uniquely inspired writings conveying authoritative and unerring revelation from God. On what basis do Christians take this view of the Bible? Why not just regard the Bible as a human sourcebook of recollections about the things experienced and believed by God’s people in the ancient world?
The answer to this question is twofold. First, Christians regard the Bible as the word of God and not merely ancient testimonies to the past because the biblical writings themselves, and Jesus Christ in particular, teach that we should regard Scripture in this way. And second, Christians regard the Bible as inspired revelation from God because it contains dramatic proof of inspiration in the form of fulfilled prophecy.
The Bible itself makes the claim to be unerring revelation from God, a claim that must be either accepted or rejected.
Both Jesus and his apostles repeatedly affirmed the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. Referring to “the Law and the Prophets” (Luke 16:16), Jesus made this unqualified statement: “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail” (Luke 16:17). He said that “all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44), and that “the Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35; also see Matt. 4:4; 5:17-18; 15:4). Paul also affirmed that the Scriptures are inspired (literally, “God-breathed”): “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16; also see 1 Cor. 2:13; Gal. 3:16). Peter referred to this divine-human nature of Scripture when he wrote that “no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:21; also see 3:16). These and other statements indicate that the writings which comprise the Bible were viewed by Christians from the start as revelations from God and not the mere opinions of human beings.
The Bible’s repeated claim of verbal inspiration by God does not by itself prove such inspiration any more than similar claims made by the Koran or the Book of Mormon prove the inspiration of those books. But if all other lines of evidence point consistently to the reliability of the Bible, the Bible’s self-testimony of divine inspiration must be taken seriously. These claims to inspiration call for a choice, a verdict on our part. If we conclude that when the Old Testament prophets wrote “Thus saith the Lord,” they were actually giving their own opinion, what we are really concluding is that they were presumptuous if not fraudulent in their claims. Either Paul was called by the risen Christ to be his spokesman and inspired to write on his behalf, or he was not. Either Jesus was the Son of God, in which case his teaching that Scripture is the word of God must be true, or he was not the Son of God, in which case his view of Scripture will be judged false.
The point is that we cannot take the biblical writers seriously without also taking their claim to divine inspiration seriously. Christians, having come to believe the historical testimony of the apostles that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and proved this claim true by rising from the dead, accept the biblical testimony to its own divine inspiration at face value. They do so primarily on the authority of Jesus Christ himself.
Fulfilled prophecy is one of the greatest proofs of the divine inspiration of the Bible.
No other book in the world contains the kind of specific prophecies found all throughout the pages of the Bible. Its prophetic character stands alone in its content, completeness, detail, and accuracy. More than one fourth of the Bible was prophetic at the time of writing. There is no comparison, for example, between the Oracles of Nostradamus and the Old Testament prophecies about Jesus Christ. Other so-called prophecies are so vague and cryptic that they could be “fulfilled” in any number of ways. But the prophecies of the Old Testament are often so graphically detailed and accurate that their fulfillments were obvious — so clear, in fact, that many critics have attempted to assign later dates to some of these prophets (e.g., Isaiah 40-66 and the entire book of Daniel) to make the prophecies come after the events. In other words, these critics began with the assumption that the kind of inspired predictive prophecies which appear in the Old Testament could not happen — which is, in effect, to assume that the God described in the Bible could not exist!
The accumulating evidence is generally in favor of the earlier dates, but even if we grant the later dates, many powerful examples of prediction and fulfillment in Old Testament prophecy remain. The Old Testament prophets gave both short-term and long-term prophecies, so that the historical fulfillment of the short-term predictions would authenticate the validity of the long-term predictions which could not be verified for many years. In some cases the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled only long after the close of the Old Testament period (and, in some cases, the fulfillment is still future). Thus, God designed fulfilled prophecy to be an open demonstration of the divine origin of the Scriptures.
One of the clearest examples of an Old Testament prophecy is Ezekiel’s prediction of the destruction of Tyre (Ezek. 26). Taking the book at face value, this prophecy claims to have been given in the sixth century B.C., but higher critics date it in the fifth century B.C. Even with the later date, we will still see evidence of a successful prediction of future events. According to this prophecy, Nebuchadnezzar would besiege and destroy the city (vv. 7-11), many nations would come against it (v. 3), the ruins would be scraped from the site and thrown into the sea, leaving a bare rock (vv. 4, 12, 19), the site would become a place for fishermen to spread their nets (vv. 5, 14), and the city would never be built again (vv. 13-14).
These specific predictions have been fulfilled in surprising detail. The ancient city of Tyre was a prominent Phoenician seaport that consisted of two parts, one on the mainland at the coast, and the other on an island about a half mile off the coast. Nebuchadnezzar besieged the mainland city for 13 years (586-573 B.C.) and finally destroyed it, but the island city remained intact. This remaining portion continued until Alexander the Great overthrew it in 332 B.C. by building a causeway from the coast to the island. To build this causeway, he literally scraped the ruins and debris from the old mainland site (v. 4) and threw them “into the water” (v. 12). This left the old site “a bare rock” (v. 4). “Many nations” (v. 3) came against the restored island city, including the Seleucids, the Ptolemies, the Romans, the Muslims, and the Crusaders. But the mainland city was never rebuilt (v. 14), and today it remains a bare rock upon which fishermen spread their nets to dry (vv. 5, 14).
Other remarkable examples of the accuracy of Old Testament prophecies include the details about the overthrow of Nineveh (Nahum 1-3), Babylon (Isa. 13-14; Jer. 51), Ammon and Moab (Jer. 48-49; Ezek. 25), Philistia (Jer. 47; Zeph. 2), Edom (Isa. 34; Jer. 49; Ezek. 25; 35), Memphis and Thebes (Ezek. 30), and the desolation and restoration of Palestine (Lev. 26; Ezek. 36).
Jesus’ fulfillment of Old Testament messianic prophecies is especially dramatic proof of biblical inspiration.
Old Testament messianic prophecy provides an even more dramatic proof of the divine inspiration of the Bible, because so much of it is quite specific, and because no one questions that all of the Old Testament was written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus. When these messianic prophecies are combined, the prophetic doorway becomes so narrow that only one person can fit through. Dozens of Old Testament predictions were literally fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ, and these messianic predictions make no sense apart from his life. A messianic impostor might have been able to engineer the fulfillment of a few of these prophecies, but the vast majority would be beyond his reach. Jesus’ sinless character, miraculous ministry, and resurrection could be matched by none other than the Messiah.
Jesus knew the Scriptures thoroughly, and he frequently claimed that the whole Hebrew Bible (“the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms,” Luke 24:44) pointed ahead to him. “And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27; also see Matt. 5:17; 11:10; 21:42; 26:56; Luke 4:20-21; 22:37; John 5:39, 46-47; 15:25). The New Testament writers likewise claim that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament messianic prophecies. “And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ’” (Acts 17:2-3; also see Acts 2:24-36; 3:18; 8:32-35; 10:43; 13:29; 1 Cor. 15:34; Hebrews 1:8-9, 13; 10:5-17; 1 Peter 1:10-12; 2:6-8).
The most explicit and powerful of all messianic prophecies is Isaiah 52:13-53:12, written seven centuries (or, if one prefers the liberal critical dating, five centuries) before the birth of Jesus. This song of the Suffering Servant reveals that the Messiah would suffer sinlessly (53:4-6, 9), silently (53:7), and as a substitute to bear the sins of others (53:5-6, 8, 10-12). Messiah would be subject to “scourging,” “pierced through,” “cut off out of the land of the living,” and placed in the grave of “a rich man in His death.” But after his death he would be “lifted up and greatly exalted” (52:13). This is a clear portrait of the rejection, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. (Jewish scholars since the 12th century have attempted to identify the Servant of this passage with Israel, but the nation is distinguished from the Servant in 53:8, and Israel never suffered sinlessly as this Servant does.)
The following list of Old Testament predictions and New Testament fulfillments regarding the life of Christ demonstrate how thoroughly his coming was foretold:
(l) born of a woman (Gen.3:15; Gal. 4:4)
(2) born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:18-25)
(3) a descendant of Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3; 22:18; Matt. 1:1; Gal. 3:16)
(4) from the tribe of Judah (Gen.49:10; Luke 3:23-33)
(5) of the house of David (2 Sam. 7:12; Jer. 23:5; Matt. 1:1; Luke 1:32)
(6) born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2; Matt. 2:1; Luke 2:47)
(7) his way prepared by a forerunner (Isa. 40:3-5; Mal. 3:1; Matt. 3:13; Luke 3:36)
(8) anointed by the Holy Spirit (Isa. 11:2; Matt. 3:16-17)
(9) preaching ministry (Isa. 61:13; Luke 4:17-21)
(10) speaking in parables (Ps. 78:24; Matt. 13:34-35)
(11) healing ministry (Isa. 35:5-6; Matt. 9:35)
(12) a prophet (Deut. 18:18; John 6:14; Acts 3:20-22)
(13) a priest (Ps. 110:4; Heb. 5:5-6)
(14) time of his appearance and death (Dan. 9:24-27; Luke 19:44)
(15) triumphal entry (Zech.9:9; John 12:12-16)
(16) betrayal price (Zech. 11:12-13; Matt. 26:15; 27:7-10)
(17) abandoned by his disciples (Zech. 13:6-7; Matt. 26:31; Mark 14:50)
(18) silent before his accusers (Isa. 53:7; Matt. 27:12-14)
(19) beaten and spat upon (Isa. 50:6; Matt. 26:67)
(20) mocked (Ps 22:7-8; Luke 23:35)
(21) hands and feet pierced (Ps. 22:16; John 19:16-18)
(22) crucified with transgressors (Isa. 53:12; Mark 15:27-28)
(23) lots cast for his garments (Ps. 22:18; John 19:23-24)
(24) cry from the cross (Ps. 22:1; Matt. 27:46)
(25) no bones broken (Ps. 24:20; John 19:31-36)
(26) pierced in his side (Zech. 12:10; John 19:34, 37)
(27) buried with the rich (Isa. 53:9; Matt. 27:57-60)
(28) resurrection and exaltation (Ps. 16:10; Isa. 52:13; 53:10-12; Acts 2:25-32)
(29) ascension into heaven (Ps. 68:18; Acts 1:9; Eph. 4:8)
(30) seated at the right hand of God (Ps. 110:1, Heb. 1:3)
The biblical claims for its divine inspiration, combined with the forceful evidence of fulfilled messianic and general prophecy, make a strong case for the inspiration of Scripture, especially when these lines of evidence are built upon the case for the historical reliability of the biblical documents developed earlier in this booklet.
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