005 Can the Bible be Trusted?

Ellen Meyer
May 4
14 min read

Image: A visualisatin of the Bible's Cross References by Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild.

If you are listening to this podcast, you may be someone who wants to explore existential matters of faith and life as a non – Christian, or you are a believer who is curious and hoping to learn and grow in faith. So, since I refer to the Bible a great deal, I think it is only fair for me to explain to you why I believe that this book, the Bible, can be trusted. You may be wondering how can such an ancient relic be relevant today – or even whether it has been corrupted? So I hope to explain to you why I believe the Bible can be trusted and to give you some ideas for further research.

I received my first bible at the age of 6, but read out of it only selectively, often revisiting stories and scriptures that I liked and that encouraged me. My sporadic reading continued until I was in late twenties, only turning to the Bible, when I was in trouble or needing direction. Finally, I did make a commitment to follow Jesus, though I would have called myself a Christian before. I was definitely a hypocrite as I did not really know the Bible and I was not even faithful to follow what I did know. Though I had doubts and questions, every time I turned to the Bible, the words I read seemed to nourish my soul and often gave me direction for my life. So, I was always drawn back to this mysterious book, I can even say that I that I loved it.

As a passionate Christian, I often shared my faith and even though people did not always agree, they usually disagreed, it was usually respectful. But that all changed when we moved to Switzerland. I shared the story of Jesus to a group of people, in Geneva, where we lived and what I encountered took me completely by surprise. Some saw it as a book containing spiritual inspiration, many did not know what to think of it, but shockingly, some people made some serious accusations against it. And do you know what? Because I had such a special relationship with this book and always felt that God communicated with me through the Bible that I trusted the Bible, BUT I could not defend it or explain why I believe it is reliable.

This is what started my quest to find out “Can this Book be trusted?” and honestly, I had no idea what I would find out. In this podcast I would like to share with you a brief summary of some of my important discoveries and since this is such a vast topic, I will include some links of where you can find more information for your own research.

Did you know that the Bible is a compilation of 66 books, divided into two main parts: the Old and the New Testament. It was written between 2 and 3000 ^[1]years ago, by about 40 different authors who we believe to have been divinely inspired by God.

Although the bible informs our Christian worldview, and provides a moral standard for life, the purpose of the Bible is actually relational: to reconciliate us to the Father, God through the Saviour. I am not sure who originally said this, but someone wrote that “the Bible is the only book you read with the author always present”, referring to the presence of the Holy Spirit who reveals the treasures in the Bible to the reader. It leads believers into an intimate relationship with God, while reading us, transforming us, empowering us, when we read those life-giving words. This implies that it is not really up to us to interpret the words according to our opinion, but to ask God what He was saying through a particular text to us His children. Now, I can spend hours telling you stories of how God has spoken to me and other believers through the Word. But the point of this message is to not share personal testimony, but to show you evidence outside of the Bible itself.

Three of the most common arguments that I hear against the Bible is this:

1. The text of the Bible has been corrupted through time. In other words, we don’t have the original text.

2. Or the bible had human authors and can therefore not be trusted.

3. And the most common one is that Bible is full of contradictions.

Now, if you make such a claim, you must be able to back it up with reliable evidence. And honestly, I have never found anyone who has given me compelling evidence.

As with any other historical document or writing that make certain claims, I would invite you to examine it critically. Sadly, we are in a world where social media and even the general media propagates information to further personal and political agendas. Even in scholarly research and clinical studies, untrue results have been exposed. So, we should not just trust everything we hear, even if it is said by an authority figure. Investigate and evaluate, but when doing so, three things are important to keep in mind.

1. Be a seeker of truth, wherever that may lead. Judge the text innocent until proven guilty. Acknowledge your own biases and then be objective as you investigate. Acknowledge that often our prejudice is based on partial information and maybe even an emotional opinion.

2. The Text should be free from certain contradiction, if to be trusted.

Note what I am saying, it must be certain that it is a contradiction. We must understand, the purpose of the writing, the full context and be sure that we are not drawing conclusions about seeming contradictions which could be reconciled, explained or for which we simply do not have sufficient information because of the time gap. “Beyond reasonable doubt” is a good way to think about it.

3. The use of primary sources. How far removed is the author to the events chronologically and geographically? The bigger the gap, the more opportunity for error.

There are 3 tests to determine the reliability of an ANY ancient document. To be fair, the Bible would have to adhere to the same tests of reliability as other ancient documents that we rely on to understand events of the past. And there are 3 main tests^[2] to establish accuracy:

1. The Bibliographical test

2. The External Evidence test

3. The Internal Evidence test

I have taken this information from the research of several people, mostly the apologist Josh McDowell who has done extensive research on the topic.

1. Firstly, “The Bibliographical Test

We do NOT have original copies of the Bible. But did you know that we do not have the original written documents from ANY ancient historical works. We ask two main questions when testing for the reliability of a copy:

- How many manuscript copies of that document exist?

- What is the time- interval between the original writing and the earliest existing copy?

Clearly the more copies exist and the closer they are in time to the original, the more comparisons between the copies can rule out errors in copies and instil confidence for its accuracy and reliability.

Though I would encourage you to do your own research about other religious documents and manuscripts, I will give you an example of the evidence for some ancient documents.

- The most impressive is Homer's “Iliad,” with more than 1,900 manuscripts. It is removed from the supposed "original events" of the Trojan War by approximately 400 to 500 years.^[3] So scolars are confident that they could compile the original document from the fragments, but the contents is not considered reliable historically.

- However, “The History of the Peloponnesian War” by Thucydides was written 2400 years ago and considered and I quote “a mine of military, moral, political, and philosophical wisdom”, not to mention a reliable account of an historical event. Thucydides lived approximately 460 – 400 BC and we have numerous papyrus fragments from the early Christian era and 8 manuscripts from 900 AD.

- For the “Histories of Herodotus” forty-nine papyrus fragments and a few “parchment manuscripts” from the first century AD is available.

- Then there are historical documents such as the “The Annals of Tacitus” which survived in fragments, written by Tacitius a reliable historian. Of the 18 books, only book 1 – 6 and 11- 16^[4] have been preserved in manuscripts, kept in Italy. Some books are completely missing.

Yet, even with so few copies, scholars consider these copies faithful and reliable. But friends, for the Old Testament there are thousands of ancient Hebrew manuscripts and fragments.

- The oldest complete Hebrew manuscript is the Leningrad Codex, dating to A.D. 1008 (using the Masoretic text).

- Around 1890, a discovery, the Cairo Geniza (holding place), produced approximately 10 000 biblical fragments.

- Then at Qumran between 1947 – 1956, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls contained 200 manuscripts, with parts of every Old Testament book (excluding Esther and Nehemiah), dated from the 3^rd century B.C. to a 100 century A.D.

Now there is a bigger time interval between the original documents and the copies due to lack of durability of the papyrus, the weather conditions and the intentional attempts to destroy the Hebrew Bible (like for example the temple destructions). However, faithful copies of the original documents were continually replicated by scribes, highly trained in their craft. The training and diligence of the scribes was impressive and they were truly meticulous. And when we compare these copies – it becomes very clear we can recreate accurate copies of the original and Old Teatment, has not been corrupted or changed.

The number of copies of fragments and manuscripts of the New Testament is even more astounding.

· Of the Greek Manuscripts, we have about 5,800 (handwritten copies in the original language). We have the Codex Sinaiticus (4th-century manuscript ), Codex Vaticanus which contain the near complete bible.

· We have approximately 10,000 Latin and 9,300 in languages such as Coptic and Syriac.

· There are thousands more copies and papyri fragments, some of which date back to the 2nd century.

I am tempted to nerd out and mention all my findings here, but I am not sure if everyone is as excited as I am by this.

This beats any other ancient text by far!

Textual critics and scholars have determined that there is only 1 % of Biblical text, which is in question, and those are noted in the footnotes of your bible for transparency. Furhtermore, none of these question essential doctrine. This means that 99% of the original text is accurately constructed. You cannot deny that this is pretty impressive!

Let’s now examine the External Evidence test. Is there evidence outside of the actual manuscript which can corroborate its veracity. For example, are there other literature that refer to it or quote from it. Is there archaeological proof for its existence?

Entire books have been written on the evidence found for the truth in the Bible. Though we do not know everything, new discoveries continue to confirm what is written. I will note some references for further reading on the blog post but I will give some examples.

1. The Old Testament refers to a King called Nebuchadnezzar and a place called Babylon. For years, critics have claimed that this was fictional and it did not exist, but then between 1899 and 1917, excavations revealed evidence for its existence, including inscriptions which Nebuchadnezzar had made. The site is located in Iraq.

2. The tower of Babel which you can read about in the Bible. The story recounts of a group of people, who had only one language, constructed a tower to reach the heavens. Because God knew that they were uniting against Him, He scattered the people and confused their language. This story was claimed to be a myth.

However, ancient Sumerian literature, refers to a time when there was only one language. Archaeology has also uncovered evidence of a great ziggurat tower that existed.^[5] Clay tablets tell the story that the construction of the tower offended the gods who destroyed the tower and scattered the men and I quote “making their speech strange”. This is evidence outside of the bible.

3. Then is also geological evidence for the destruction of the evil Sodom and Gomorrah which we read about in Genesis 14. (Read more on page 160 – 161)

4. And this is one of my favourites. Critical scholars were sceptical about the story of Balaam and his donkey which we read about in Numbers 22:22. Then in 1967, archaeologists found plaster with an Aramaic inscription: “Warnings from the book of Balaam, the son of Beor. He was a seer of the gods.”. Interestingly, the building dates back only to the 8^th century BC, but the condition of the plaster and the ink – indicates a time corresponding to the Biblical Balaam.

The external evidence for the New Testament is overwhelming. Thousands of citations and references have been found by authors and church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Iraneous, Origen and more (pg. 168) Even more impressive are references to places, people and events recorded in the New Testament by non-Christian writers, such as Tacitus, a well-known historian in the Roman world, Josephus, a Pharisee and Pliny the Younger who described early Christian practices (pg. 171).

This and much more confirmation exist for events, people and places in the New Testament, reinforcing the external evidence for its veracity.

Thirdly, the Internal Evidence test.

This answers to questions relating to consistency of the contents and reliability of the authors. Is it filled with contradictions, or have the authors fabricated information to support their own view?

The writers of scripture, both in the Old and the New Testaments, wrote as someone closely connected to the source, as participants or eyewitnesses. That means it was recorded in their lifetime, which leaves no room for legend or myth.

Passages are often taken out of context and then criticized. Often in the Gospels, the accounts vary as different people tell their side of the story. Yet, this actually attests to the fact that everyone observed the events from another perspective and did not try to meet and fabricate an exact same story. None of the apparent contradictions are unexplainable. They only reveal different perspectives. When there were scribal errors in numbers or spelling or confusion with names (sometimes the same person was called by different names) it is noted in the footnotes. The same goes for when different manuscripts exclude or include certain texts – nothing is hidden. And the extraordinary thing is that all the text in question does not affect Christian doctrine at all.

I will briefly address the question which I also referred to in the course “Love Revolution, Session 1”: Who decided which books go into the Bible? Why were so many books left out?

The Original Hebrew Bible

There could be a perception that some council or church decided one day which books go into the Bible and which don’t. This is not the case. The books in the Old Testament were in used by the Jewish community for centuries. The Hebrew scriptures were divided into the three main sections, together known as the Tanakh, considered sacred and authoritative^[6] by the community.

1. The Law (Torah).

2. The prophets Nevi’im).

3. The writings. (Ketuvim).

They are even referred to by Jesus, for example, when He said that He came to fulfil the “Law and the prophets” (Matthew 5:17, 22:40). In fact, there are many references of the Old Testament in the New Testament, because this was still their sacred writings, this was their bible. The story of the New Testament was still unfolding.

For the New Testament, the criteria for inclusion in the canon (or testament) was as follows:

1) was the book written close enough to the events to avoid the possibility of legend or myth? (ancient)

2) was the book written by an apostle or someone closely connected to an apostle (apostolic), in other words a person chosen by Jesus?

3) was this a book that the early Christian community read and used and accepted as authoritative?

The Apocrypha

At this point, I need to mention the fact that certain branches of churches, like the Catholic or Orthodox Coptic churches include a group of additional books called the “Apocrypha^[7]” or deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament and one or two others in the New Testament.

Some or all of these books were included in some of the ancient manuscripts (4th century like, Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus). Now, the protestant bible does not include these books, and this is why. Firstly, the Old Testament Apocrypha was not included in the original Hebrew “Tanakh”, our Old Testament, which was the sacred writings of the Jews, that which Jesus and His apostles used. Secondly, within these texts, there are serious contradictions in facts and doctrine that does not align with the books considered canonical and inspired. Additionally, though some of these books were used by earlier Christian communities for teaching, they were definitely not accepted unanimously as a part of the inspired writings, but as additions to it.

A last note on the New Testament. Jesus was set up by His own people and was crucified. His followers’ lives were in danger. For many years, they were violently persecuted, yet they grew rapidly all over the world. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose, by telling the truth. Yet they stuck to their story, because of their conviction that Jesus lived, died, was resurrected and is the son of God and Saviour to the world. For them to proclaim this message, meant that they were risking their own life and that of their family. Something worthy of reflection.

The human authorship of the Bible

Before concluding, I would like to briefly look at the human authorship of the Bible. The big question of why God created humans and even more perplexingly have chosen to collaborate with us for His purposes is beyond me. Regardless, it is exactly what He has done. God has always chosen, collaborated and partnered with those who accepted Him relationally. In the case of the bible, He called each one of the imperfect authors of the books of the Bible and He did something great with their lives. Moses, the murderer, David the shepherd boy, Matthew the tax collector, Paul or Saul, the destroyer of Christians. The authors were imperfect people, used for His perfect purposes. The fact that they were so flawed and then used by God, is a testimony of His love and grace towards humanity and it should give each one of us hope. They received divine inspiration to bring people of all ages, the one and only salvation story and revealed to us what our mission should be when Jesus goes back to heaven. Jesus now continues to communicate with us through the Bible and the Holy Spirit – His presence here on earth. But there will never be another Bible. Though small details may have been lost in translation and other things may be mysterious – there is no doubt that we can know God enough (though never fully) to trust Him and have a close relationship with Him and know His plans for us. There is no other book like it.

Conclusion

When we put the bible through the Bibliographical, External Evidence and the Internal Evidence test, the Bible far exceeds any other historical documents and proves to be reliable. Additionally, the application of textual criticism^[8], further clarifies establishes what the authors of the Bible wrote orginally. Furthermore, the fact that the copies were made, not just by random people, but by scribes whose vocation it was to duplicate the text as close as possible to the original gives us further assurance. We acknowledge that in some copies there are variations such as additions and omissions of text, misspellings and different accounts – the scribes were human after all, not photocopiers! Yet for this reason, copies are compared, ancient copies are preferred and the text investigated with such great care that errors are identified. What is even more amazing is to think that there have been numerous attempts to destroy the Bible^[9]. Yet is has survived. With regards to truth of the content of the New Testament, including the evidence for the historicity for the person of Jesus, the evidence is abundant. I am therefore entirely convinced that it has not been corrupted and is in fact reliable.

Considering all this evidence, I believe question should not be “Can the Bible be trusted, but rather “Would you believe it ?”

Epilogue:

I have rewritten this podcast several times. Each time, I think of something that is significant to know about the Bible. Yet even if I wrote a thousand messages, I don't think I could ever do justice to the wonder of this book. There is one thing that I forgot to add: Cross-references!

The Bible was written on three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, in three different languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek over 1500 to 1600 years. Yet it presents a cohesive narrative connected by over 60,000 cross-references throughout the Bible. It is through the cross-references that we can trace prophecies that have been fulfilled and trace the thread of the salvation story from the Book of Genesis to Revelation. Humanly impossible to orchestrate. But this really is the last thing that I will leave you with to contemplate today.

Until next time friends.

Image Credit:

"A visualization of the Bible’s 63,779 cross-references, by Chris Harrison"

https://markmeynell.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/a-stunning-visualization-of-the-bibles-63779-cross-references/

Further Resources and References:

Books:

God Breathed by Josh McDowell

I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman L. Geisler, Frank Turek

Searching for the Original Bible by Randall Price

Websites:

https://bibleproject.com/videos/old-testament-tanak/

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-apocrypha/