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BackgroundThe Bible is a collection of writings that contains 66 books which are divided into 1189 chapters and 31,173 verses. It was written by about 40 men over a period of approximately 1600 years. There are two major divisions to the Bible: the Old Testament (which deals with the time from the Creation of the world to just before the birth of Christ) and the New Testament (which begins with events leading up to the birth of Christ and continues through the end of the world). The chapter and verse designations were not a part of the original writings. Rather, they were added later to help us identify exactly which words we are referring to. Thus, to say "Romans 3:23" tells us that we are referring to the book of Romans and are talking about the third chapter and the 23rd verse. The Bible states that it is the revealed mind and word of God. II Timothy 3:16-17 states, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." One of the ways inspiration is seen is in the consistency of the message of the Bible even though it was written by 40 men over a 15 to 16 century period of time. What does the Bible Claim for Itself?
The word “revelation” simply means to make known, disclose or divulge something that was not previously known. When referring to the will of God, revelation is God’s way of making known His mind (or will) to man. Over the years, that has happened in different ways as the writer of the Hebrew letter asserts, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets” (Hebrews 1:1). One of the ways that God revealed himself in the past was to speak directly to specific individuals. Examples of this happening would include God speaking directly to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15-17), Noah (Genesis 6:13-21), Abraham (Genesis 17:1-2), Isaac (Genesis 26:1-2), Moses (Exodus 3:1-6) and Gideon (Judges 6:14-18). In Matthew 16:13-19 we are told that God revealed a message to the Peter. The same is true of the Paul in Galatians 1:11-12. At other times God used some rather novel approaches to get his message across. While God spoke to Jacob in a vision (Genesis 28:12-16), He spoke to Balaam through a donkey (Numbers 22:27-28) and used an angel to speak to the Philip the evangelist (Acts 8:26). In some cases, such as Moses (Exodus 24:12), Jeremiah
(Jeremiah 30:2), Habakkuk (Habakkuk 2:2) and the apostle John (Revelation 1:19)
God told individuals to write down what He had said to them and share it with
others so they would know God’s will. 2. The Bible claims that the writers were inspired: When God told men to write His word down, He equipped them through “inspiration.” Inspiration, when used in a Biblical sense, is God’s way of giving a man the ability to write His thoughts accurately, so that others would be able to understand it as well as the writer does. Peter makes the claim, “…knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (II Peter 1:20-21). The Scriptures claim inspiration for themselves. Paul states in II Timothy 3:16-17 that, “All Scripture is breathed out (other translations use words such as “inspired” or “God-breathed”) by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” He further claimed that, “…we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit” (I Corinthians 2:13). Jesus had promised that this would happen in John 14:26 and John 16:13. He stated that five aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit would be that he would: 1.
“Teach you all things”
2.
“Bring to your remembrance
all that I (Christ) have said to
you” 3.
“Guide you into all the
truth” 4.
“Whatever he hears he will
speak” 5.
“Declare to you all the
things that are to come” One of the best ways for us to see revelation and inspiration
in action is to let the apostle Paul illustrate it by saying, “…how the
mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly.
When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of
Christ” (Ephesians 3:3-4). The
image we get from this passage is that the mystery of God was revealed to Paul
by “revelation.” At
this point, Paul understood it. However,
Paul wrote it down so that others could read it and when they did, they could
understand exactly what he understood. This
is “inspiration.” How
wonderful it is to know that when we read the Scriptures we can know the mind of
God just like Paul and the other apostles did! 3.
The Bible claims that it is accurate: Because the Bible is a revelation
(a revealing of God’s mind) and is given to us by inspiration (guiding the
writers as to what they were to say), the Bible claims accuracy for itself.
This can be seen in statements from the apostle Paul such as, “If
anyone thinks he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the
things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord” (I Corinthians
14:37) and “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you
received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the
word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you
believers” (I Thessalonians 2:13). The uncompromising trust in the
accuracy of the scriptures is seen in Jesus’ remark in Mark 12:26-27 where he
places the emphasis on the accuracy of the Scriptures even to the point of the
tense of the verb, and Paul’s argument in Galatians 3:16 which is based upon
the difference in the singular and plural forms of the noun “offspring.”
Jesus, himself, used the verb tense to emphasize a point when in John
8:58 he states, “…before Abraham was, I am.” 4.
The Bible claims that it can be understood and that by understanding it,
we can know the mind of God: Because God has revealed His mind to us and inspired the writers of the Scriptures to write it down for us, it is important that we follow the Scriptures as accurately and completely as possible. Romans 15:4 reminds us, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” I Corinthians 10:11 points out that, “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction.” We have seen that the Scriptures furnish us complete, competent, perfect for every good work (II Timothy 3:16-17). I Corinthians 4:6 states, “…that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written.” Peter reminds us that it is possible to take the Scriptures and twist them to our own destruction, by using them wrongly. He states, “And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (II Peter 3:15-16). We need to accept and follow what the Scriptures tell us. Do we have an Accurate Copy of the Scriptures?
1.
The number of manuscripts of the Bible vs. other books: Conservative estimates as to the
number of available textual documents of the Bible, such as manuscripts and
versions is somewhere near 20,000. The
number of New Testament manuscripts alone is about 5300.
Some of these date from early in the second century. Next to the Bible, Homer’s Iliad
has the most manuscripts available. There
are approximately 650 manuscripts available, most dating from the second and
third centuries A.D., almost 1000 years after the original was written. The History of Thucydides has 8
manuscripts, which are from 1300 years after the original writing. Tacitus wrote his Annals of
Imperial Rome about 116 A.D. It
survives in two manuscripts, one from the ninth century (containing books 1-6)
and other from the eleventh century (containing books 11-16). Josephus, the first century
historian, wrote his work The Jewish War. Today we have nine manuscripts available from the tenth,
eleventh and twelfth centuries. No effort is made to discredit or
question the accuracy of these texts. “By
contrast, our New Testament text rests on manuscripts that are very near to the
date of their original composition. The text of the New Testament, as compared with other ancient
books, holds a unique and enviable rank.”
Neil Lightfoot, How We Got the Bible, Baker Books, third edition,
p.204. 2.
So-called errors: Some have questioned whether or
not we have an accurate knowledge of what the Bible originally said.
They talk about the “200,000 errors” in the scriptures as though the
Bible is full of problems. Let’s take a look at what is true. In the over 5300 manuscripts of
parts of the Bible available, it is true that some 200,000 errors, or what
scholars refer to as “textual variants” exist.
However, when one begins to analyze the data, a whole different picture
of these “errors” comes into focus. Keep
in mind that all of the manuscripts were copied by hand.
Therefore, if a scribe made a spelling error such as misspelling
“Phillippi” for “Philippi” and that was copied 3000 times, you
have 3000 “errors.” The other
common type of “error” found in the manuscripts has to do with word order.
An equivalent example might be the difference in “Get some milk when
you go to the store.” Vs. “When you go to the store, get some milk.”
After these types of “errors” are dealt with, little of the text is
open to question. In their introduction to The
New Testament in the Original Greek, Westcott and Hort state that, “The
amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation…can hardly
form more than a thousandth part of the entire text” (Page 3). In light of the research, it would be considered nearly disingenuous for a scholar to say that the text of the Bible is full of errors or open to serious dispute about its accuracy. Our Attitude Toward the Word of God:
Because God has revealed His mind to us and inspired the writers of the Scriptures to write it down for us, it is important that we follow it completely. Romans 15:4 reminds us, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” I Corinthians 10:11 points out that, “these things happened to them as an example, but they are written down for our instruction.” As we have already seen, the Scriptures furnish us complete, competent, perfect for every good work (II Timothy 3:16-17). We are told in I Corinthians 4:6, “that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written.” Peter reminds us that it is possible to take the Scriptures and twist them to our own destruction, by using them wrongly. He states, “And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (II Peter 3:15-16). We need to accept and follow what the Scriptures tell us.
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