Reliability of the Bible
– Jaison Sam
How can a book written thousands of years be relied even today? How can I believe what is written in it is real? For centuries people have questioned the trustworthiness of the Bible. No other books in the world would be so strongly scrutinized and criticized as the Bible. Many have thought Bible to be textually corrupt, scientifically implausible and historically questionable. This article is a sincere investigation through these questionable realities to see how reliable the Bible is!
What does Reliable mean?
The term reliable means capable of being relied on or dependable. So, it is the quality of being dependable and truthful.
The Text of the Bible.
One’s belief on the reliability of the Bible depends highly on his/her understanding of the text of the Bible. If the text of the Bible is not trustworthy, Bible is not trustworthy. This issue is the most common concern people have raised, its about the question of actuality of words recorded. To answer the most important question of Bible’s reliability, it is better to begin with what the Bible claims to be. The Bible claims to have its origin from God. The word “inspired” refers to God breathing out- in other words the words recorded in the Scripture is from God (2 Tim. 3:16,17). Again, the recording of the words was not directly by God but by human agents. Through revelation God communicated his messages and humans recorded it with the help of Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). Keeping this together, one can understand that the Bible is recorded with the help of Holy Spirit and is the recording of the very things God communicated. If God is true, as Bible claims, then logic requires, the recording of the Bible must also be truthful.
If the Bible is recorded without error (the Autographs) the next important question that becomes reasonable is how reliable are the copies. To answer it is necessary to begin with the reliability of the Old Testament. Christ accepted the Old Testament as reliable quoting from almost all of it. He agreed with the three-fold division of the Old Testament (Luke. 24:44). Jesus also had taken the Scroll of Isaiah and read it as being the very Word of God and applied it to him as fulfilment of what was recorded (Luke 4:16,17). It is striking that the Scroll He used needn’t be the autographs but were copy (Taking the possibility of wear and tear). The strongest evidence for the reliability of the OT text is the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in 1947. It is also noteworthy that the Scribes who copied and preserved the text were careful and meticulous. As Paul D Wegner states in his book The Journey from Texts to Translations that ‘there were numerical systems developed to ensure accuracy. Had they found any mismatch they even destroyed and started over again.’
Now concerning the New Testament, the number of manuscripts and the families of manuscripts available is greater in comparison to any of the secular texts. There are more than 5300 separate Greek manuscripts represented by fragments, uncials (capital letters) and minuscules (small letters). The Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus are notable among them. Dr. Daniel Wallace, notable Greek Scholar notes that though it is possible to find indivual variations, most of the differences are completely inconsequential- spelling errors, inverted phrases and the like. D A Carson another Greek Scholar opiniates that “The purity of text is of such a substantial nature that nothing we believe to be true, and nothing we are commanded to do, is in any way jeopardized by the variants.
Having laid a clear foundation on the authenticity of the text it is necessary to now move towards scientific, archaeological and historical evidences to add to our reasons.
The Archaeological Evidence
It is important to know that Archaeology does not prove the Bible but it is good enough to add clarity to our understanding of the Bible as James Hoffmeier in the preface of his book The Archaeology of the Bible comments.
Critics once claimed that Assyrian king Sargon was not a historical figure as mentioned in Isaiah 20:1. It was assumed that Bible was mistaken in the identity of the king. But this thinking was taken away soon when Paul Emil Botta uncovered the great city of Khorsabad and Sargon is now one of the best-known Assyrian kings of the ancient world.
Another claim was concerning the identity of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah recorded in Genesis 19, 20. They claimed that such cities were never in existence. But one of the important twenty first century findings is the discovery of the location of Sodom, Gomorrah and other ‘Cities of the Plain’ at the northern end of the Dead Sea. The excavation in this site is carried out by Dr. Steven Collins, who is the Director of the Tall El-Hamman Excavation Project.
The critics contended that there are no evidences for written language during the time of Moses, so it is not possible that Moses wrote the Law. The Black Diorite Stele which contains the detailed laws of Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian ruler, was discovered. It was written between 1792-1750 B.C., 300 years before the time of Moses. He lived in the same region that Moses lived. The Ebla Tablets were found in 1970 in northern Syria and are dated about 1,000 years before Moses. These evidences support the use of written language at and before the time of Moses.
Another argument that were brought to favour the unreliability of the Bible is the impossibility for the walls of Jericho to have fallen the way it is reported in the Bible and during the timeframe of the Biblical account. The Walls of Jericho have now been excavated where Joshua and the Israelites began the conquest of the Promised Land and the evidence shows an outward fall or collapse of the walls with dating to the time of Joshua. This supports the Biblical account of what happened in Joshua Chapter 6.
Historical Evidences: –
Primeval History:
The greatest argument that the critics has brought was the dissimilarities of the flood narratives seen in Genesis 6-9 with the other flood narratives. But the fact there are other flood accounts and there are similarities of the flood during Noah’s times in other cultural stories indirectly supports the reliability of the OT. The two sets of eight or ten representative generations living before and after the Flood are found common in ancient Sumerian and Babylonian literature. This demonstrates that the OT fits the literary forms and practices of the era it documents. Methuselah who lived for 969 years is found commonality with an ancient Sumerian document, which records that king (En)-me-bara-gisi reigned for 900 years. King (En)-me- bara-gisi was not fictional. He is a historical person because archaeologists have discovered inscriptions bearing his name.
Patriarchal History:
Abraham is the beginning of the patriarchal era (2000-1600 B.C). There are many historical records from this point on in history. The patriarchs raised and grazed sheep and cattle, ranging from Ur (modern Iraq) down to Egypt. Data from Ur during this era record large flocks of sheep, which fits with OT descriptions. Records from Mari mention Haran, where Abraham once lived. From the time of Abraham down to Jacob, Canaan was a land of independent “city-states” like Shechem, Jerusalem, and Gerar.
Historical Israel:
After the period of the judges, Saul, David, and Solomon ruled Israel. “The House of David” is named on an Aramean stele from Dan, and likewise on the stele of Mesha king of Moab. The design of Solomon’s temple reflected trends that were present in neighbouring Syria. The Dead Sea Scrolls (150 BC- AD 70) provide good evidence of a carefully transmitted text tradition through almost a thousand years down to the Masoretic scribes.
Scientific Evidences:
Over the centuries the accuracy of the Bible in relation to the Scientific discovery has been severely criticised. It is noteworthy to understand Science as growing in its understanding and is not fully believable. This is because humans are fallible and they would not be 100% accurate in their observations and interpretation of the facts.
But the Bible’s claims have never been destroyed yet. Here are few claims of the Bible which could never be changed.
Bible expressly claimed a beginning for the universe. Philosophers and scientists rejected that claim for over two thousand years, but now astronomers believe the universe had a beginning using a theory called big-bang. It is just a theory which is not established well even today. Yet, they have changed their position of thinking.
All humans are of “one blood”, descended from one man and one woman (Acts 17:26; 1 Corinthians 15:45; Genesis 3:20). Biologists argued that different races descended from lower animals, but today genetics has verified that there is only one human race.
God created animals “after their kind.” Biologists argued that animals evolved from other animals, but today biology confirms that creatures reproduce within their own kind.
Concluding Thoughts:
The evidences for the reliability of the Bible is indeed overwhelming but here we could only take a short journey. Anyone who is willing to apply logic would agree that there is definitely a greater amount of reliability for the Bible when compared to rest of the “so called” ancient documents.
This is because Bible is indeed what it claims to be,
“The very Word of God”. The Word, which is settled in heaven.
Psalm 119:89
Jaison Sam
Lecturer on Theology at Reheboth Theological Institute, Kerala