Bible Quick Notes
“The Bible”
An Easy Practical Guide to Biblical Doctrine
The Bible
Not Just Another Book
Part of every Protestant church’s statement of faith says, “We believe the Bible is inspired by God.”
This comes from what the Apostle Paul said in his second letter to Timothy.
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
God inspired the Bible, both Old and New Testament, and it is without error in its original manuscript. It is the infallible rule of Christian faith and practice. It is incapable of being wrong or being mistaken.
The Bible equips everyone with everything they need to live an effective life. It is transformational, and it is transformative. It is God’s answers and directions for life in a hostile world filled with sin.
The reason is that the Bible is God’s Word. The Lord Himself breathed it into existence. Therefore, it isn’t just another religious book. It is practical, beneficial, and relevant; teaching what is true and reproving what isn’t, along with correcting and instructing us on how to get and stay right with God.
The writer of Hebrews provides an analogy revealing just how useful and powerful God’s word is in keeping us on the straight and narrow path leading to eternal life.
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
God’s word is living and powerful. Like a scalpel in the hands of a surgeon, it cuts through the philosophies and thoughts of man that are filled with contradictions and lies. It gets to the heart and the spirit of God’s thoughts, will, and ways.
The Bible pierces our hearts and touches our souls to change the direction and course of our lives.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a renowned Baptist preacher and author in the 1800s, said, “I would recommend you either believe God up to the hilt, or else not to believe at all. Believe this book of God, every letter of it, or else reject it. There is no logical standing place between the two. Be satisfied with nothing less than a faith that swims in the deeps of divine revelation; a faith that paddles about the edge of the water is poor faith at best. It is little better than a dry-land faith and is not good for much.”[1]
Since the Bible is God’s word to humanity, it is far better to invest a couple of dollars in purchasing one now, rather than spend thousands of dollars in psychiatrist fees later on.
The Bible also isn’t just another religious book like the Koran is to Islam, or the Bhagavad-Gita is to Hindus. Nor is it like the Book of Mormon, or the individual writings of Sun Myung Moon (Moonies), Joseph Rutherford or Charles Taze Russell (Jehovah Witnesses), Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), or L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology).
Nor is the Bible just a great work of literature like Homer’s Odyssey, or Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, as many people like to believe.
The Bible is none of those, nor can we think of it as an old book that is unrelated to our lives in this age of science and technology.
Instead, the Bible is God’s word for our lives, and without it, our lives would be without meaning and purpose, especially seeing how it is God’s roadmap to salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ.
The Psalmist proclaimed, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105)
What makes the Bible different, and how can we trust it for our lives?
There is both external and internal evidence to show the Bible is indeed God’s word and not from man’s imagination. It is a reliable guide to live our lives by.
The Bible Is Unique
The Bible is one of a kind, and its uniqueness is in its reliability as it addresses hundreds of controversial subjects, even the hot topics of our day like marriage, homosexuality, greed, ecology, and labor relations, to name a few.
Yet, even though it speaks to matters of our day, it took over 1,500 years to write, beginning with Moses. The Bible contains 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament, in three different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek), and by a wide diversity of writers including kings and shepherds, soldiers and politicians, fishermen, priests, prophets, an IRS agent, and a physician.
These authors wrote the Bible on three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe) and in places like deserts, dungeons, prisons, palaces, in various cities, and on a remote island.
It also includes a variety of literary styles including historical, legal, wisdom, poetry, parables, proverbs, allegorical, prophetical, and apocalyptic. Plus, they wrote it in times of joy and despair.
What makes the Bible unique from all other writings and books? All these topics remain in complete harmony throughout its pages, even though there are all these different authors writing in various locations and locals. Why is the Bible so unique, and why is it important? Because the Bible is God’s unfolding story of His salvation and redemption of humanity. It speaks of humanity’s lost condition, being depraved, and then it reveals God’s plan to save humanity through Jesus’s substitutionary sacrifice so that whoever believes in Him will experience salvation (John 3:16).
Beginning in Genesis, there is paradise lost, but at the end, in the book of Revelation, we regain paradise.
No other book contains such harmony of thought or purpose.
It is also unique because it is translated into over 2,000 languages, which represents over one-third of the world’s languages or over 90 percent of the world’s population.
No other book even comes close to those figures.
No other book is translated, retranslated, and paraphrased more than the Bible, while remaining over 95 percent true to the oldest manuscripts available. The reason the Bible had to be copied so often is because of the perishable materials used, and yet it has never diminished in style or correctness.
Jewish scribes took great care in copying each manuscript of the Bible. They kept a table on every letter, syllable, word, and paragraph for each book, and for each section of the manuscript.
People throughout the ages have tried to ban it, burn it, vilify it, and even outlaw it, saying that it would never last, yet it is still the best-selling book of all time. And while people continue to scrutinize the Bible, trying to find some fault within it, the Bible has stood the test of time. It is an anvil that has worn out critics’ hammers.
Jesus said it best.
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.” (Mark 13:31)
Prophecy Proves the Bible’s Accuracy
One evening, a Jewish man came into the church and started a conversation. He didn’t believe the Bible was God’s word. Instead, he believed men wrote it, and it has changed over the years.
After sharing about the Bible’s uniqueness, I realized I had to show him beyond any doubt the Bible was indeed God’s word, and so I took him to fulfilled prophecy.
If man wrote the Bible, there would be no way that it could predict what would happen hundreds, if not thousands, of years later. These are not vague word pictures, but literal fulfillments.
Fulfilled prophecy reveals the Bible is God’s word.
After our conversation, the man promised he would find his Bible and look up the prophecies concerning the coming Messiah I gave him.
It’s important to understand biblical prophecy about historical events, to present-day events, has been fulfilled as outlined in the Bible.
Take, for instance, the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
These are just a few of the prophecies Jesus fulfilled.
In his book, “Science Speaks,” Peter Stoner looked at the mathematical probability of one person fulfilling eight specific prophecies concerning the coming the Messiah. These prophecies were the Messiah’s birth in Bethlehem, preceded by a messenger; entered Jerusalem on a donkey, betrayed by a friend, sold for 30 pieces of silver along with it being thrown down in God’s house and used as a “Potter’s Field,” silent before accusers, having hands and feet pierced, and crucified with thieves.
Stoner gave the mathematical probability of one man fulfilling these eight prophecies at 1 in 10 to the 17th power.
To illustrate this number, Stoner likened it to silver dollars two feet deep throughout the state of Texas, with one of them marked. The probability of one person fulfilling these eight prophecies was the same as a blindfolded man finding that one silver dollar on the first try.[2]
But Jesus didn’t fulfill just eight. He fulfilled over 60 prophecies, and there were over 300 prophecies fulfilled at the time of Jesus and the first church.
Prophecy, therefore, is a reliable measure of the Bible’s accuracy. And since only God could know these events in advance, this makes the Bible divinely inspired.
Manuscript Reliability
We say the Bible is without error in its original manuscript. This is saying the writers got it right on the first take. It didn’t need nor did it receive editing of any kind.
But many find this hard to believe because we don’t possess the original manuscript to compare to our recent translations. Rather, we have copies of copies.
The reason the Bible had to be copied so often is because the material used was perishable, which mandated new material to be used.
But are the copies we use in our current translations reliable?
The Old Testament
The Old Testament scholars transmitted God’s word with the utmost care. Old Testament scholars kept tables on every letter, syllable, word, and paragraph for each book and for each section of the manuscript. And they destroyed any copy that wasn’t exact.
They also appointed certain men to monitor these writings and transcribe them. Beginning with the Scribes, there was a secession of scholars tasked with the manuscript’s preservation.
Between 300 to 200 B.C., Jewish scholars wrote the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. Seventy-two Hebrew scholars went to Alexandria, Egypt, to translate the Hebrew text for inclusion into its library.
They placed each scholar in separate rooms and told to translate the Hebrew Torah into Greek. Each translated according to protocol, and each copy was identical.
The last set of scholars taking over this task were the Masoretes. They continued this practice from around the fifth century A.D. through the ninth century A.D. The Masoretic text of 980 A.D. is the oldest complete copy we have of the Old Testament.
So how reliable is this text copied from its predecessors 1500 years earlier?
Although we only have around 730 complete copies of the Old Testament from this time period, along with various individual manuscripts, their accuracy has been with little controversy.
Take the Isaiah manuscript found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. They dated this manuscript around 125 B.C. Over one thousand years separated it from the earliest text written by the Masoretes, but the two texts are over 95 percent identical. The remaining five percent difference is from the fifty-third chapter, where they changed the word “light” along with ten spelling variations and four punctuation marks. But these changes never affected the passages’ meaning, and the Septuagint written less than a 100 years before the Dead Sea Scrolls, supports it.
The New Testament
Today, we have about 25,000 copies of the New Testament written in various languages, including Latin, Greek, and Ethiopian. No other historical document or book even comes close to this number. Homer’s Iliad has just 643 copies written in the Greek language, and they are only 75 percent similar in wording and construction.
But that’s not the case with the New Testament.
Biblical scholars have concluded that, from the sheer volume of manuscripts available, it is possible to reconstruct the New Testament with complete accuracy. Further, seeing the small window of time that existed from the original to the earliest copies found, somewhere around 200 years, major errors didn’t have time to creep in, and with the amount of manuscripts being written in the various languages, this would prohibit any changes from occurring.
Through a thorough examination, comparing all available manuscripts, they can reconstruct the New Testament with a 99 percent accuracy rate. This means the New Testament we read today is from a text that is over 99 percent pure or accurate.
The early church fathers quoted the New Testament manuscripts so often that we can reconstruct about the entire New Testament from their writings.
And while some variations exist, they have concluded that no fundamental doctrine upon which the Christian faith depends or rests upon any of these variations or disputed texts.
Apparent Contradictions
Whenever discrepancies occur, the benefit of the doubt must rest with the document and not those who doubt its authenticity or cite apparent contradictions after the fact, and in our case, thousands of years later.
Christian apologist, author, and speaker, John Montgomery, said, “One must listen to the claims of the document under analysis, and not assume fraud or error unless the author disqualified himself by contradictions or known factual inaccuracies.”[3]
More is required than an appearance of error or contradiction. Unsolved problems are not necessarily errors. By utilizing all available data and thorough research, resolution has come to many of these objections. Do we understand the passage within its context correctly? Do we possess all available knowledge and data concerning the matter? Can we shed further light on the topic from research in areas like literature and archaeology?
The Bible itself also bolsters and supports its trustworthiness. The biblical text deals with most problems and discrepancies, which is to be expected, seeing that the Bible asserts it is God’s word.
Principles of Interpretation
Most allegations of error or contradictions stem from a failure to recognize the basic principles of interpretation.
Just because the Bible doesn’t explain something doesn’t mean it’s unexplainable. Other source material, including historical documents, archaeological finds, and linguistic differences, answers many of these difficulties and problems.
A fallible interpreter of the Bible doesn’t mean the biblical revelation is fallible. Human beings make mistakes, that’s why pencils have erasers and computers have “delete” keys. Just because humans make mistakes, however, doesn’t mean God makes mistakes.
“God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good.” (Numbers 23:19)
We should never take a biblical passage or quote out of the context of the passage itself. Someone said, “A text taken out of context is a pretext.” You can prove anything from the Bible when someone takes biblical passages out of their context.
We also should never build a doctrine on an obscure passage. Some people baptize for the dead using 1 Corinthians 15:29, stating, “What will they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? Why then are they baptized for the dead?”
While the meaning isn’t clear, they wrote it in negation form, which means the practice was wrong.
New Testament citations of the Old Testament don’t have to be exact to the Hebrew text because some authors were quoting from the Septuagint or the Aramaic.
Something else to consider is that just because the Bible records wrong actions by God’s people doesn’t mean that God approves of these actions. The Bible records human mistakes and behaviors, even from those whom it venerates.
Differences in interpretations also exist based on the literary style the author is using. If they are writing in allegorical language, the interpreter shouldn’t try to fit it into the historical or legal genre.
Archaeological Evidence
Archaeology can never prove the Bible is God’s inspired word, but it can reveal the events listed are historically accurate.
Nelson Glueck, former president of the Jewish Theological Seminary at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, in his investigation of archaeology and the Bible said that he never found one artifact of antiquity that contradicted God’s word.[4]
There is overwhelming archeological support for the historical accuracy of both the Old and New Testaments. Archeology has proven not only the Bible’s historical accuracy but also gives the most accurate historical accounting even over other historical accounts written not only by current historians, but those living during the time.
It is said that every time an archaeologist shovel comes up, another critic of the Bible and a biblical discrepancy goes down.
With all the archaeological digs under way or those that have already occurred, if the Bible was mistaken, then one would think that by now something would have been dug up or found that would corroborate these accusations. But to date there has been nothing, only more evidence proving the accuracy of the biblical accounts.
The Canon of Scripture
The word “canon” comes from the Greek word meaning “rule” or “measuring stick.” When it applies to the Bible, it means those books that the church has accepted as being accurate as well as true. These comprise those books listed in the Protestant Bible comprising 39 books of the Old Testament, and 27 books of the New Testament. The church has accepted these as divine revelation.
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in 367 A.D. affirmed these Old and New Testament books as the canon of Scripture, but it wasn’t until the end of the century that the third Council of Carthage, in 397 A.D., affirmed them.
The Old Testament had already been in use, and while there were other books written prior to Jesus Christ, they never made it into the Holy text. These were the Pseudepigrapha and are a part of the Apocrypha writings included in both the Septuagint and Roman Catholic Bible.
New Testament inclusions to the canon went through a series of tests. These tests help put a stop to many of the writings that were around during this time. One example would be “The Gospel of Judas.” Historically, the document dates around the time of Christ, but that doesn’t make it divinely inspired. The early church fathers dismissed it as fictional and written by someone they could not identify.
Just because someone writes something and publishes it, doesn’t make it true. If we won’t automatically accept something written on the Internet, then why don’t we apply the same standard to ancient writings?
To become canonized, a prophet of God had to write it, and whose time sensitive prophecies came true. If the prophecies were false, the writings were rejected.
Further, it had to be authentic by telling the truth and not contradicting the evidence or what God has revealed through the other books already authenticated. The Bible clarifies God cannot contradict Himself (2 Corinthians 1:17-18), nor does He lie (Numbers 23:19), or utter what is false (Hebrews 6:18). The historic church’s philosophy was, “When in doubt, toss it out.”
Finally, it had to be accepted by God’s people. Peter accepted Paul’s writings as Scripture (2 Peter 3:15-16). The early church fathers also quote these passages.
The Apocrypha
These are books not found in either the Jewish or Protestant Bible, but they included them in the Septuagint and Roman Catholic Bible. They are religious writings of uncertain origin and thus rejected.
The word “apocrypha” means “hidden things,” but they are not the lost books of the Bible. The New Testament does not directly quote anything from these Apocrypha books. Some say that Jude quotes from the Apocrypha book, “The Assumption of Moses.” And while this has some merit, what is interesting is that we can no longer find the quote, but it seems to have its foundation in the biblical book of Zechariah.
Old Testament Apocrypha books include I and II Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, The Prayer of Azariah, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, The Prayer of Manasseh, I and II Maccabees.
New Testament Apocrypha books include Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas, epistle to the Corinthians, Second Epistle of Clement, Shepherd of Hermas Didache, Teaching of the Twelve, Apocalypse of Peter, The Acts of Paul and Thecla, Epistle to the Laodiceans, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, the Seven Epistles of Ignatus.
The reason the Canon of Scripture does not include these Apocrypha books is because they have historical and geographical inaccuracies and errors in chronology. They teach doctrines that are false and vary with the Scriptures. Jesus or New Testament writers never quote them. Jewish scholars never recognized the Old Testament Apocrypha as a part of the Holy Scriptures, and the council of Trent never recognized them as divine until the fifteenth century.
Conclusion
From what we have looked at is that the safe thing to say is that the Bible is that the Lord God Himself inspired it, making it the infallible rule of Christian faith and practice.
The Bible contains God’s answers and directions that are practical, beneficial, and relevant for our lives. It teaches us what is true and reproves what isn’t, and instructs us on how to get and stay right with God.
The Bible is God’s word not only to the generations gone by but also to our generation and generations to come. It is God’s roadmap to salvation through the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” (John 5:39)
No other book even comes close, and therefore, there is no other book we need to read and understand more than the Bible.
[1] Charles Spurgeon, “Charles Spurgeon on The Bible,” http://ministry127.com/resources/illustration/charles-spurgeon-on-the-bible
[2] Peter W. Stoner, Science Speaks, Online Edition, (Moody Press Chicago, 2005), chapter 3, “The Christ of Prophecy.”
[3] John Warwick Montgomery. History and Christianity (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1971), p. 29.
[4] Dr. Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert, (New York: Farrar, Strous and Cudahy, 1959), 136.
