Can We Trust the Bible?

Gary Jarvis

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Theme: We Can Trust that the Bible is God's Word. Purpose: To Be Confident in the Reliability of Scripture. Gospel: Scripture is the Full Gospel. Mission: Grow in our Confidence of the foundation of our Faith.

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Introduction: Can We Trust the Bible? - For most here and tuning in every week there is a general assumption, that “Yes” we can trust the Bible, because when I preach, I preach from the Bible what it says, and you all don’t question that. We don’t often examine why we can Trust the Bible. - Some may be tuning in and are not so sure that we can, so this message is directly for you the minority who are not so sure, but then for the majority, my goal is to equip you if an when you have conversations with people for whom the Authority of Scripture/Trustworthiness of Scripture is not a forgone conclusion.

There are a couple of Hang-ups people have in Trusting the Bible.

Can we be confident that we have what the original authors wrote? The argument is that since the Bible was hand copied early in history there are errors upon errors, and we can’t really know what it originally said. - My experience is this question is a top reason people lose their faith in Seminary.

Can we be confident that our English Bibles are translated in a way that it conveys what the authors wrote in the original languages?

Is the Bible Historically Accurate?

Were the Authors writing what actually happened or Myth?

Do We have the Right books in the Bible? I am having increasing number of conversations with people that suggest there were other books that should be included that the Church arrogantly censored.

I give credit to Greg Gilbert who wrote the book, “Why Trust the Bible?” I recommend it, it is a simple read, gets at the issues clearly compellingly and for the everyday reader - I was able to finish the book in one day.

5-The Bible Is Historically Reliable.

Issue 1: We don’t have the original. - True we don’t.

What do we have - The N.T. alone - 5,400 dinstinct pieces of ancient manuscript. The copies of the copies. - the earliest going back to AD 125, 150, 200 and then later.

People kept there books for longer in ancient times - took better care of them because you can’t just print another - av. 100-150 years - Think about it, we still have manuscripts that are 1,800 - 1,900 years old that we can compare to. - So age here is not really a problem, and there is no other book that has as many manuscripts to compare like the Bible. - Greg Gilbert

No one questions if we have the original wording and historicity of the History of the Peloponnesian War - 8 manuscripts the oldest being 1,300 years from the original or Julius Caesar’s Galic Wars - 10 manuscripts - 900 years later.

In fact no other book from Ancient History has more manuscripts to compare and earlier manuscripts to compare in order to determine the original words.

Issue 2: There have been scribal errors, up to 400,000 when you compare these many manuscripts - Well as you can imagine humans make mistakes and they can when they are copying a document by hand.

Consider This:

Why Trust the Bible? Four Hundred Thousand Differences?

The manuscripts are not in fact riddled with variants, and that four hundred thousand number is not nearly as scary as it seems at first, if it’s even accurate. That’s because the scholar who used that number looked not just at the five thousand extant original-Greek manuscripts that predate the printing press but also at ten thousand other manuscripts in other languages, and then on top of that, at another ten thousand or so instances where people quoted the New Testament during the first six hundred years of church history! Put all that together, and you’re really talking about four hundred thousand variants (perhaps, or maybe it’s three hundred thousand or two hundred thousand …) spread out over some twenty-five thousand manuscripts and quotations covering six hundred years, which at the far upper end comes out to only about sixteen variants per manuscript. To put it nicely, that’s really not very many.

2. Keep in mind that “four hundred thousand variants” here doesn’t mean four hundred thousand unique readings. What it means is that if one manuscript says, “I am innocent of this man’s blood” and ten others say, “I am innocent of this righteous blood,” then you get to count all eleven as “variants.” Factor that in, and that scary four hundred thousand number becomes near meaningless.

3. Finally, it’s not as if the variants in all those twenty-five thousand manuscripts just show up randomly everywhere; rather, they tend to cluster around the same few places in the text over and over again, which means that the number of actual places in the New Testament text that are really at issue is surprisingly small.

Scholars with all of this data - They are able to with a high level of confidence compare all of the manuscripts - Like a family tree to come to a very high confidence of what the original text said in its original language.

Bart D. Ehrman as quoted by Dan Wallace in 'Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament' on pg. 24... "In spite of these remarkable differences, scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable (although probably not 100 percent) accuracy." In an article by Dan Wallace, he wrote... 'Though textual criticism cannot yet produce certainty about the exact wording of the original, this uncertainty affects only about two percent of the text. And in that two percent support always exists for what the original said--never is one left with mere conjecture. In other words it is not that only 90 percent of the original text exists in the extant Greek manuscripts--rather, 110 percent exists. Textual criticism is not involved in reinventing the original; it is involved in discarding the spurious, in burning the dross to get to the gold.' [The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical? Study By: Daniel B. Wallace The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical?

Also, none of this changes any of the major teachings of scripture - all the variants we have are of in consequential matter, but even there we have great confidence in what those inconsequential differences are resolved.

Question ?: I can’t read Greek or Hebrew, can I trust that the English Translations convey what the original says? Or is there something lost in translation?

Greg Gilbert’s illustration of kid speaking to his Grandpa (Baby Boom Generation): “Yo, it’s chill, bro.”

Why Trust the Bible? Is Translation Even Possible?

“What he means, Dad, is that everything is okay. He’s happy.” But if I wanted to be really careful about it, I would need to explain each word in turn, like this:

• Yo is a customary but informal greeting in Kidspeak. Its Boomerspeak equivalent would be something like hi or hey.

• Chill in Kidspeak does not mean “cold.” It communicates that a situation or a person is copacetic, happy, okay. It’s actually a modern derivative of the common Boomerspeak word cool, as in “It’s cool; I’m cool; everything is cool.”

• Bro is a term of friendship and endearment, a shortened form of the word brother. But that doesn’t mean a person has to be a blood relative to be your bro. It might best be translated into Boomerspeak as friend, or more colloquially, man.

So, putting it all together, we can translate the Kidspeak sentence “Yo, it’s chill, bro” into Boomerspeak as “Hey, it’s all okay, man.” And hearing that, my dad’s eyes light up with understanding, he gives my son a smile and a thumbs-up, and they share a moment of genuine and accurate—though translated—communication. “That’s gnarly!” my dad says. And then we’re off to the translation races again!

Why Trust the Bible? Why so Many Bible Versions?

Scholars significantly disagree about how to translate only an exceedingly small percentage of words or phrases in the Bible. These cases also represent an exceedingly small portion of any given book (or even any chapter) in the Bible.

2. When there is such disagreement or uncertainty, the best translations of the Bible will acknowledge that in a footnote, making the reader aware of other possible translations or even noting (as the ESV puts it) that “the meaning of the Hebrew [or Greek] is uncertain.”2 The point is, no one is trying to “slip anything through” without telling us, nor—at this point in the history of English translations—would they be able to do so even if they wanted to.

3. The sheer number of scholarly translations actually helps us identify—and avoid!—deliberately misleading translations. For example, when the New World Translation (NWT) of the Jehovah’s Witnesses translates John 1:1 as “and the Word was a god,” it helps to be aware that every other major translation renders that verse “and the Word was God.” Clearly, the NWT has done something here that the other translations reject, and if you studied Greek long enough to understand its use of articles (a, an, and the), you would come to the same conclusion the other translators obviously did—that the NWT has tailored its “translation” of that verse to protect a particular, idiosyncratic theological doctrine.

4. Once we identify and reject deliberate mistranslations like that, we can confidently say that not one major doctrine of orthodox Christianity rests on a disputed or uncertain translation of the Bible’s original languages. We know what the Bible says, and we know what it means.

Question? Do we have the right books? - Ever since Dan Brown’s book the Davinci Code “A Work of Fiction Mind you,” Came out, more and more people are wondering, Why these books, why not the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, the Shepherd of Hermes, The Apocalypse of Peter etc, The Didache, etc… - Then the argument goes, see the “Orthodox Christians” just wanted to surpress other versions of christianity, there were multiple expressions, and they did that by censoring the other books. Emperor Constantine brought together the Bishops of the Church to choose which books were in the Canon in order to exert his control over the church. Well that last part is not true - The Council of Nicea did not work on which books to use.

O.T. - Simple - The O.T. books we have now was the Jewish Canon at the time of Jesus and was the Bible Jesus used.

N.T. - The Books were not chosen they were received, and way before the Council of Nicea. - And the early church had for criteria for recognizing whether a book should be in the N.T.

Apostolicity - They had to have been written by one of the Apostles or a close companion to an Apostle who is reliably relaying that Apostle’s Testimony. Examples of books by Apostle’s - Matthew, John, the Letters of Paul 1-3 John, 1-2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation. Of Close companions - Mark writing Peter’s account, Luke a close companion of Paul. - The point here is it had to based on eye witness testimony. - Well what about books like the Gospel of Peter/Thomas, etc. - Those books were written too late to have been written by Peter and Thomas - In fact they were written in those names because the author knew this critera.

Antiquity - They had to have been written early at a time when eye witnesses were still living to be able to authorize its truthfulness. -

Culture speaks out of two sides - On one hand they say the books of the O.T. written 20 - 60 years after the events “too long”, but then want to include books in the 2nd century - 3rd Century. - No the early Christians only received books in the 1st century because they were earliest. - BTW 20 - 60 years is extremely early when it comes to histories of antiquity - Hypocricy.

All the other books people are looking at are all late - They have all been written after 100 ad - They are not early enough for the early church and for us to trust that they could be vetted by eye witnesses.

3. The Rule of Faith - They had to be in agreement with what Jesus taught and his story of his birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending the Spirit.

The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations[132]of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father “to gather all things in one,”[133] and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, “every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess”[134] to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send “spiritual wickednesses,”[135] and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning [of their Christian course], and others from [the date of] their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory. - Ireneaus

4. Universality - They had to be used by the early church widely across the known world.

So, to conclude on this question - do we have the right books, Yes, these are the only ones written by eye witnesses or close companions, at a time that other eye witnesses can judge their truthfulness so closest to the events of Jesus story, that are consistent with the eye witness accounts passed down by the disciples, and were universally accepted by the Church. - That is a pretty high bar. exactly because the early church wanted the Truth - Historical Truth at that. - The Shepherd of Hermes many have said is a beautiful and a fine theological book, but it was written by a man named hermes not close to an eye-witness and later around 140-155 AD - No matter its beauty is not included, although good devotional material like Pilgrim’s progress is not to be thought of as scripture.

We can be Confident then that we have the right books in the Bible. And they are the right books from a Historians point of view if you want to get the most reliable history of who Jesus is.

- We can be confident that we have the most trustworthy books in the Bible.

But the question is the Bible’s message some work of fiction, myth, or are the authors trying present eye-witness accounts of historical events?

When we look at any piece of literature it is actually usually quite easy to pick up on queues as to the genre of the literature. It is not hard for us to imagine that the Odyssey is not historical, but mythical based on clues in the text. That Greek Mythology is exactly that Mythology. The same can be said with the Bible and what we find is the claim of the Bible itself and the clues show us that the Authors are writing Eye-Witness Tesimony or history.

slides 6-11

2 Peter 1:16–21 NIV

For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain. We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Luke 1:1–4 NIV

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

John 21:24 NIV

This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.

1 John 1:1 LEB

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and our hands have touched, concerning the word of life—

12 - The Embarrasing components of the Disciples - Myth they would be shown as heroes - That they did not believe Jesus was raised at first, example.

Using Women as witnesses unless they are just reporting what happened.

So the writings both claim they are writing down eye-witness testimony, and the clues in the text show this indeed is what they are doing.

But the miracles seem like mythology. - Well let’s look at the biggy - The Resurrection

13 - Jesus’ Resurrection Confirms His Authority.

The half-dozen facts we usually use are these: 1) that Jesus died by crucifixion; 2) that very soon afterwards, his followers had real experiences that they thought were actual appearances of the risen Jesus; 3) that their lives were transformed as a result, even to the point of being willing to die specifically for their faith in the resurrection message; 4) that these things were taught very early, soon after the crucifixion; 5) that James, Jesus’ unbelieving brother, became a Christian due to his own experience that he thought was the resurrected Christ; and 6) that the Christian persecutor Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus) also became a believer after a similar experience.

This is what Historical Scholars agree on whether they are Christian Scholars or non-Christian Scholars or Sceptics.

How are these facts explained?

Theories that hold no water to any scholars today, but have been proposed.

Disciple’s stole the Body - Does not explain their willingness to die, Does not explain the conversion of James and Paul

Swoon Theory - Jesus was only mostly dead, not fully dead - No way Jesus could survive.

Religious leaders moved the body out of fear of disciple’s claim - Well they could have debunked that by producing the evidence, and they did not.

Mass hallucinations/spiritual resurrection/remembrance in grief. - Mass suggestion has happened in religion, but this requires a closed system where everyone is together - Hale Bob cult, Branch Davidian Cult, Mass suicide cults, But this does not explain multiple, separate hallucinations at separate times, and among skeptics like Thomas, James, and Paul, and the willingness to die for a lie at different times, places, individually. Someone would have to have caved.

Today these facts are so overwhelming that the only response for the skeptic is “Well, I just don’t believe in Miralces.” So who is going on blind faith now?

The simplist and most reasonable explanation of these facts is Jesus did indeed rise from the dead. Nothing else can explain these fact but this.

Why Trust the Bible? (Implications of a Resurrected Jesus)

It is worthy of note that, despite the somewhat desperate attempts of many scholars over the last two hundred years (not to mention critics since at least Celsus), no such explanation has been found. The early Christians did not invent the empty tomb and the “meetings” or “sightings” of the risen Jesus in order to explain a faith they already had. They developed that faith because of the occurrence, and convergence, of these two phenomena. Nobody was expecting this kind of thing; no kind of conversion-experience would have generated such ideas; nobody would have invented it, no matter how guilty (or how forgiven) they felt, no matter how many hours they pored over the scriptures. To suggest otherwise is to stop doing history and to enter into a fantasy world of our own, a new cognitive dissonance in which the relentless modernist, desperately worried that the post-Enlightenment worldview seems in imminent danger of collapse, devises strategies for shoring it up nevertheless. In terms of the kind of proof which historians normally accept, the case we have presented, that the tomb-plus-appearances combination is what generated early Christian belief, is as watertight as one is likely to find. - N.T. Wright

If He did, which is what he claimed he would be able to do, then it is not a stretch to believe he healed the sick, cast out demons, walked on water, etc. That he was who he said he was. The resurrection then validates the eye witness testimony of the Bible, and it is true that All authority in Heaven and Earth was given to Him.

If Jesus’ resurrection confirms His authority than what does Jesus say about the Bible.

14 - Jesus Endorsed the O.T. and Authorized the N.T.

slides 15-17

Hebrews 1:1–3 NIV

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

18 - Jesus then is the final and ultimate authority on What God has to say, and the fact that God exists.

He used the O.T. to show that he was going to fulfill it’s message its story...

Luke 24:44 LEB

And he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything that is written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.”

- This is the entire O.T. - Jesus’ resurrection put its stamp of endorsement and ratification on the authority of the O.T.

Matthew 19:5–6 NIV

and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Why Trust the Bible? What Does the Resurrection Mean for the Old Testament?

The interesting thing, though, is that if you take a look back at Genesis, you’ll notice that this sentence is not attributed to God at all. Rather, it’s a commentary on the situation by the human author of Genesis. But therein lies the point: Jesus understood even the parts of the Old Testament where God wasn’t actually speaking as the words of God.

Why Trust the Bible? What Does the Resurrection Mean for the Old Testament?

You can see the same thing in Mark 12:36 where Jesus quotes a psalm written by David, but introduces it by saying, “David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared …” You see? From start to finish, Jesus the Messiah endorsed and confirmed that every word of the Old Testament was the Word of God and therefore true from start to finish.

- It is Jesus who taught the N.T. writers that Scripture is God-breathed. Humans yes wrote the words in their language, in their style, with their personality, but it is God-Breathed, Spirit empowered, the humans were carried along by the Spirit of God.

Matthew 5:17–18 NIV

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Going back to our discussion - The original is all there, it has been preserved.

So, Jesus Clearly Endorsed the O.T. as God’s infallable Word.

But He also Authorized

John 16:12–13 NIV

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

2 Peter 3:15–16 NIV

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

- The Disciples knew the were writing scripture as they wrote it. They were fulfiling what Jesus said would happen that the Holy Spirit would guide them in their testimony, and Peter basically says this is what is going on in Paul’s letters. Peter endorses Paul’s letters as scripture on par with the O.T.

So it is really the Risen Jesus who Endorses and Authorizes both the O.T. and the N.T. as the Inspired Word of God, and so...

19 - We Can Trust that the Bible is God’s Word.

slides 20-23

2 Timothy 3:14–17 LEB

But you continue in the things which you have learned and are convinced of, because you know from whom you learned them, and that from childhood you have known the holy writings that are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, in order that the person of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

24 - vs. 14 - The Rule of Faith - Timothy received the eye-witness testimony of Jesus from the Apostle’s at a time near when the events happened.

vs. 15 - These things were the fulfillment of the O.T. Scriptures that Jesus endorsed as the Word of God by His Resurrection.

Vs. 16 Timothy can Trust that the Bible is God’s inspired word of God.

Conclusion: Greg Gilbert

Why Trust the Bible? What Does the Resurrection Mean for the New Testament?

In the end, therefore, the answer a Christian will give to the question, “Why do you trust the Bible?” is, “Because King Jesus the Resurrected endorsed the Old Testament and authorized the New.” That’s not a presupposition. It’s not an unthinking, close-your-eyes-and-jump leap of faith. It’s a considered conclusion built from a careful argument that

1. the Bible is historically reliable;

2. Jesus was resurrected from the dead; and

3. the whole of the Bible therefore rests on Jesus’s authority.

That’s why we believe it.

That’s why we trust it.

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