Can We Trust the Bible?

We've spent the past several weeks examining the evidence for the existence of God. As we've seen, there is an overflow of evidence in support of the theistic God. That is, a God similar to the one described in the Bible. So far, based on our evidence, we can essentially dismiss any worldview that is not theistic. That's a huge step in the right direction because that narrows down our search for truth to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. These three are all theistic religions. In order to know which, if any, of these are true we need more information. Now we'll turn our attention to the Bible. In order to prove the trustworthiness, or historicity, of the Bible, we really only have to look at the New Testament (NT). The NT says Jesus is God, and Jesus called the Old Testament the Word of God. So if the NT is shown to be reliable, then it’s true that Jesus is God, and whatever Jesus, who is God, says can be known to be the truth.

We need to ask two key questions in our examination of this book. The first question is, do we have an accurate copy of what was originally written? There are several factors we look at to answer this question. First, we look at manuscript evidence. We don’t have the original writings of the Bible, so we have to look at the manuscript copies (handwritten copies) that exist. There are nearly 6,000 original language manuscripts (including whole books, partial books, and fragments) of the NT. That may not sound like much, book second place is Homer’s Illiad with over 600 copies, and it drops off dramatically after that. Throw in other language translations and some other manuscripts that are a few centuries younger, and there are over 24,000 NT manuscripts. Also, the time span between our earliest existing manuscript and the original writing of the NT is as little as around fifty years. Compare that to around a 500 year gap for the Illiad. Even if all these manuscripts were destroyed, we'd have all but 11 verses of the NT quoted in the writings of the early church fathers. We can be confident that our NT today is around 99% textually pure. The remaining uncertainty does not affect a single essential doctrine, and variations are simply spelling changes and other minor differences.

The second question to ask is, do we have an accurate copy of the truth or a lie? The NT was written by eyewitnesses, or those who interviewed eyewitnesses, who wrote within the lifetimes of those who could debunk what they were writing were it not true. The authors also included embarrassing details about themselves and hard teachings of Jesus. Remember that most of the disciples gave their lives for proclaiming this new religion called Christianity. Who would willingly and knowingly die for a lie that they themselves invented, if it were in fact a lie? Archeological discoveries and sources outside the NT also verify it as a reliable history book. No undisputed archeological finding has ever shown the NT to be wrong.

Yet, in the midst of all this historical detail, we find numerous miracles mentioned. Since we know now that God exists, then we can be sure that miracles are possible. And since we know that God is unlimited love, we can be sure that He would want to communicate to us. The historically reliable NT says Jesus claimed to be God, and that He proved to be God through many miracles, namely the resurrection. Therefore, we can be confident that what Jesus says is true, since God cannot lie, and Jesus said He desires a relationship with you and me. That means that Judaism must be false, as it is currently taught (since Christianity if fulfilled Judaism), and that Islam must be false as well. Truly Jesus is THE way, THE truth, and THE life.

For His glory,
Adam Tucker