Can we Trust the Bible?

This week starts the mark of a new sermon series at Life Church, and in preparation I wanted to get us thinking about the Bible and can we trust it.

The series of 3 blog posts are in rebuttal to an article written by Timothy Beal; My Take: There’s no such thing as the Bible and never has been.

Can we trust the bible? There are several good questions raised in this article:

1. Which version of the bible is the "correct" one? 
2. What books made it into the cannon and why, and what the heck is a cannon?
3. Can we trust that this bible is the truth? Did someone mess with it?

Here below are the following blog posts:

1. Which version of the bible is the "correct" one?
2. What books made it into the cannon and why, and what the heck is a cannon?
3. Can we trust that this bible is the truth? Did someone mess with it?

Also please be sure to check out our podcasts of the sermons starting May 22nd 2011

 

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Use Your Noggin' Series: The Bible part 3

Can we trust the bible? Is it just a giant game of whisper down the alley?

Historians have a bibliographical test which they can use to test an old document to see how reliable it is. So if a historian is given an old paper on an account of what happened during a certain kings rule he can have a way to judge it's reliability. 


The test can be simplified to this:

1. How many copies (manuscripts) do we have of the original document? How long after the original document was made were the copies made?
2. Are the internal statements in the document true?
3. Are there external documents that corroborate the original document?

Lets jump in with number 1:

The New Testament has about 5,500 Greek full and partial copies of the original books. The Old Testament has about 40,000 fragments and full copies, thanks in part to the 1947 Dead Sea Scrolls discovery. How does this stack up to other works?


J. Casear Galic Wars  
10 copies
Written: 100 - 44 BC
Earliest copy: 900 AD
Time span: 1,000 years

Homer’s The Iliad

600 copies

Written: 900 BC
Earliest copy: 400BC
Time span: 500 years

New Testament 

Over 24,000 copies/fragments

Written: 40-100 AD

Earliest copy: 125 AD
Time span: 25 years

Lets look at number 2:

The mass majority of New Testament writing were circulated very early after Jesus died.

Why does it matter about the time span? This is important because the small the time span the less time there was for falsehood to be added to the story. If falsehood was added to an ancient work and it was copied soon after the original, people who witnessed the events could pick out those lies and discard them. With a time span of 500 years a lot can be changed and know one would ever know.

With the New Testament only about four hundred (less than one page of an English translation) have any significant bearing on the meaning of a passage, and most are footnoted in modern English translations. Overall, 97 to 99 percent of the New Testament can be reconstructed beyond any reasonable doubt, and no Christian doctrine is founded solely or even primarily on textually disputed passages. Mark Driscoll

 To sum it up, the New Testament in unique in that, unlike other older books, when people read the bible back in 125 AD they could go and verify with first hand witnesses that what was written was correct. In other words a person could read how Jesus raised a little girl from the dead, he could then travel to that town and speak with the girl and her parents!

Luke wrote this about his account of Jesus: (Luke 1:1-3)

¹ Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, ² just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. ³ 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 Theophilu.

 Luke wrote his gospel for a rich man who paid him to go an investigate the first hand eye witnesses to Jesus' miracles.

Lets look at number 3:

 Jewish historian Josephus (37 A.D.–100 A.D.) recorded the history of the Jewish people in Palestine from 70 A.D. to 100 A.D. In his work Antiquities, he states:
Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the gentiles. He was the Christ and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. For he appeared alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.

This is one of many acient historians that wrote about matters in sync with the Bible. Archeology also provides some detail into biblical accounts, there are many findings which lead truth to the accounts in the New Testament.

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Use Your Noggin' Series: The Bible part 2

What books made it into the cannon and why, and what the heck is a cannon?

The cannon of scripture is simply a list of books that are authoritative, trust worthy and reliable depiction of who God is. The Bible is made up of 66 smaller books, letters, poems, and lists that created our bible. The process of putting them all together has been one of great debate, however the complete and accepted list of books in the Bible has been set since around 170 A.D.

So the books were selected by a council of religious scholars during that time period and they chose which books they felt met a certain criteria. That criteria could be summed up below:

1) Was the author an apostle or close to one? Was the author reliable and authoritative?
2) Is the book being accepted by many different churches?
3) Did the book contradict other books or other well established teachings of Jesus?

At this point some of you may feel uneasy about the idea of men choosing what books went into the bible. This here is were a large part comes down to faith. If God is sovereign and ruling over the earth, you know He must have hand a huge role influencing what books made it into our modern day bible. Also we must remember that certain books were left out because they were clearly teaching falsehood (the Gospel of Thomas, etc). Ultimately the church did not decide what books to put in - God did. If God inspired these men to write the books of the bible then he also inspired those church leaders to choose the correct books to be put in his Bible.

In regards to the Old Testament and what parts were accepted there is little debate.

When it came to the Old Testament, three important facts were considered: 1) The New Testament quotes from or alludes to every Old Testament book but two. 2) Jesus effectively endorsed the Hebrew canon in Matthew 23:35 when He cited one of the first narratives and one of the last in the Scriptures of His day. 3) The Jews were meticulous in preserving the Old Testament Scriptures, and they had few controversies over what parts belong or do not belong.  source: http://www.gotquestions.org/canon-of-Scripture.html

Further reading:
The Canon of Scripture by F.F. Bruce.

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Use Your Noggin' Series: The Bible part 1

Which version/translation of the bible is the "correct" one? 

Depending on how one distinguishes a different Bible version from a revision of an existing Bible version, there are as many as 50 different English versions of the Bible!

How are there some many translations or versions? The answers comes from how the translator chooses to translate from Greek or Hebrew (the original language of the bible) to English. Any one who has studied Spanish or German in school knows that a sentence in Spanish does not translate word for word very nice into English.

Example in German: 

German: Das Wetter ist häufig in Florida sonnig
German to English (word for word): The weather is frequently in Florida sunny

Of course if you were translating that sentence for a non German speaking friend you would rearrange the words to say "The weather is frequently sunny in Florida." Now that is one way to translate it you, can also translate it to a more modern wording and say "The weather is often sunny in Florida." We also can paraphrase it and say "Florida has amazing weather!"

The same can be said with translating the bible. Translating from Greek or Hebrew to English is very hard, the first man to do it, John Wycliffe, had quite a task before him! The Bible John Wycliffe worked with was one that was already translated into Latin. Today we have direct access though to the original texts (old and new testament) in the original language. These original texts have even been scanned and are now becoming available on the internet.


The best thing to do is to get a few different translations and compare them while reading. Have one for study, and maybe another for light reading. Below is a basic layout of the different types of bibles:

Word for Word Translations: (make a special effort to carefully interpret each word from their original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic into English)

Examples: English Standard Version (ESV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), and the New King James Version (NKJV)/(KJV)

Thought for Thought Translations: (may include words that were not included in the original text in an effort to give the same meaning that the reader of the original language)

Examples: New International Version (NIV), Today's New International Version (TNIV), and New Living Translation (NLT) 

Paraphrase Translations: (pay even less attention to specific word meanings than other translations in an attempt to capture the poetic or narrative essence of a passage)

Examples: The Message (TM), The Living Bible (TLB), and The Amplified Bible (TAB).

Here are some examples from the different bibles:

• Word for Word - (ESV) What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
• Thought for Thought (NLT) What are mortals that you should think of us, mere humans that you should care for us? 
• Paraphrase (TM) What are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? 

Sources:

Pastoral Reflections on Bible Translations (Mark Driscoll 2007)

http://theresurgence.com/files/pdf/mark_driscoll_2007-01-09_pastoral_reflections_on_bible_translations.pdf

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Meet Ray

Meet Ray, see Ray work and see Ray tire.

Ray is a man whom in sense embodies us all. I spoke to Ray one hot summer afternoon while taking a break from our jobs. He was physically exhausted and worn out. Ray, a few years back, was into all kinds of bad things and really got his life turned around. I asked him why he looked so fatigued. A weary look crept over his face, and he exhaled that he was trying to make up for past wrong he had done in his life. His works were literally wearing him down.

I think we all can be like that from time to time, we just want to work really hard so we can be presentable. We also can see those who are presentable and then work hard only to just end up in despair because we can't compete. I asked Ray about his faith and he told me he hopes one day he will be good enough to go to heaven. He hopes that one day he can outweigh the drugs and sin of his past with good deeds and a caring heart.

It made sense to me as a non-Christian, we work and then get paid, so we should work for God's love. Working for God's good favor made sense, I mean after all why would he choose to love us if we didn't help. Ray's forthright honesty an assessment of his situation may not be as clear as ours but we all have a little bit of that mentality with God. Ray failed to see that the only way to please God is with faith (Hebrews 11:6). This is because God is holy and trying to bride him with good works is silly. This is why one author in the bible says "Our good deeds are like filthy rags."

God is holy and just, the only way to satisfy his wrath toward our sin is to place our faith in Jesus. This is because Jesus was a sinless substitute who took our punishment for us. He is our shield and protection from God's wrath against our wrong doing. Jesus asks for faith and nothing else when we come to him.

Check out our sermon series - The DNA  of Life where Jason dives more into this topic of faith

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DNA of Life: Faith