The World's Greatest Book
It is the best seller of all time, of all books anywhere. It is referred to as "the Book of books."
It has been translated into more languages than any book in the world-as of the year 2002, at least parts of it into over 2,300 languages! It is even believed to be the first book ever translated, from Hebrew to Greek.
We call the book, simply, the Bible. The word Bible means "books." Actually, the Bible is a collection of books-66 of them, written by some 40 authors.
Every valid belief must have a factual basis. There are millions of opinions on almost any subject, but they are only uninformed and meaningless unless they are rooted in fact. The Bible is the root source of the faith of the plurality of the world's population. This raises a major question . . .
"Is the Bible trustworthy?" This may be "the world's greatest question." Is it a factual revelation of the Creator of the universe, or just a collection of human opinions and myths?
Are there objective reasons why millions of people, including many thousands of scholars, believe in the Bible's reliability, or is it just a matter of blind faith? You need to know. The entire validity of Judaism, which is based on the Old Testament, and Christianity, which is based on both the Old and New Testaments, rests upon the answer.
If it is not trustworthy, it is the greatest hoax ever fostered upon the human race, and deserves our total scorn. If it is trustworthy, it demands our utmost attention and respect. Only one attitude is incomprehensible-indifference, to strangely ignore the possibility that the Bible may contain the exclusive answers to this life and the next, as it claims.
Interestingly, most people, even the indifferent, have an opinion on the subject, although it is often based on emotion or hearsay. But surprisingly few have systematically examined the evidence, or even read it.
I once asked myself this question, and then spent the next 25 years discovering the answer. I'll tell my conclusion, then in just one minute I will summarize the extensive research generally agreed upon by thousands of scholars.
Is the Bible trustworthy? You will find out.
The Bible is Unique
Scholars who have studied the sacred writings of the various religions report that the Bible is unique and distinctive for many reasons. Here are a few:
· It was written over a period of about 1,600 years, or about 40 generations.
· It was written in different places on three different continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe.
· It was written in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
· Its 40 authors were from different walks of life, including kings, fishermen, scholars, statesmen, and peasants.
· It includes hundreds of subjects.
Yet with the above incredible diversity, it has an amazing unity. This continuity and consistency (along with other characteristics and content as described below) make the Bible logically beyond human ability to accomplish. The presence and influence of an external Guiding Hand are necessary.
Another unique and undoubtedly miraculous feature is the Bible's survivability. It has withstood attacks not given to any other book, attacks from despots, doubters, and skeptics throughout the ages and around the world.
Despots hate the freedom it gives to the human spirit and the worship it reserves for God instead of the state or its leader. From the days of the Roman emperors to present-day fascists and communists, the Bible has been outlawed and attempts have been made to stamp it out. Over 200 years ago, Voltaire predicted the Bible's soon demise. Ironically, after his death the Geneva Bible Society used Voltaire's printing press to publish more Bibles!
"God is not mocked,"1 the Bible says.
Doubters are often motivated by the Bible's moral imperatives.
One popular modern-day intellectual admitted the Bible's truth but then
said he was forced to reject it because to accept it would condemn his
"lifestyle." Human pride causes much opposition.
The idea is abhorrent to many that their moral condition would cause the
need for mercy from the Supreme Being, a need of every human, according
to the Bible. They see their outwardly ethical behavior as qualifying
them for favor from Almighty God, in a sense making them His moral equal,
or Him their debtor.
Intellectual pride is a factor and has become institutionalized, permeating many universities, including seminaries. Peer pressure forces almost blind adherence to the flimsy hypotheses of "higher criticism" to try to prove the Bible writers as either ignorant or liars. Upon receiving solid evidence that a popular such theory was in error, one professor agreed but shockingly said he had "been teaching it too long to change"!
In spite of these unparalleled attacks to destroy it, the Bible has survived as the most authentic and accurate ancient document in existence, based on both age and number of original manuscripts available. Homer's Iliad ranks closest to the New Testament in number of manuscripts available, 643, with the earliest copy written about 500 years after the original. There are only about 10 good manuscripts of Caesar's Gallic Wars available and the earliest was written over 900 years after the original. By contrast, there are over 5,000 complete or partial Greek manuscripts of the New Testament available (plus over 10,000 Latin Vulgate and over 9,000 other versions), with the earliest written only 25 years after the original!
Shakespeare's 37 plays are only about 200 years old but there are said to be about 100 significant textual variants that are a subject of scholarly dispute. By contrast, the New Testament is about 1,900 years old and it is estimated that there are only 20 or less such passages. Do we ever hear doubt of the reliability of Shakespeare's work?
If the same tests were applied to all available ancient literature, the Bible would clearly be hailed as by far the most reliable. Or else all other ancient literature, including the classics, would have to be rejected as unreliable.
The Bible Claims Itself to be Divinely Inspired
A major and unique aspect of the Bible is its own consistent claim to be divinely inspired. The Bible claims itself to be "the Word of God." But more than claiming divine inspiration, in the Bible God even speaks in the first person! Expressions such as "And God said..." followed by a quote appear about 3,800 times in the Old Testament alone.
These claims and characteristics are in a book which espouses truth, morality, and all that is good. It is illogical that it would be a hoax, and a conspiracy is impossible because of the vast differences in time and place of the writers and events. Also, of the large number of people involved, someone would have surely "squealed," a victim of the good conscience he preached. But beyond logic, there are other objective reasons that argue for the divine inspiration of the Bible.
Prophecy Confirms the Bible's Truth
Prophecy, or the prediction of future events, gives the Bible an internal authenticity. This is one of the great marvels of the Bible, one that distinguishes it from all other writings. Prophets spoke under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit about future events, especially concerning Israel, the nations, the Messiah, and the church. The events have occurred without fail as they were predicted.
Unlike modern-day psychics whose track record on predictions is, at best, usually no more than chance would provide, the ancient Hebrew prophets could not make a mistake. They were 100 percent accurate, the only such group in the history of the world. This confirms the divine origin of their information. Through them, God revealed His plans, and they wrote it as they were inspired.
For example, about six hundred years before Christ, the prophet Ezekiel predicted details about the destruction of the city of Tyre.2 Its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar came just a few years later. History has shown the prophecy's amazing details to have happened: Tyre became a "bare rock" where fishermen spread their nets, and the city was never rebuilt. There were many other prophecies and fulfillments concerning various locations and people, such as Sidon, Samaria, Edom, and Nineveh. Many prophecies foretold the historical plight of the Hebrew people, their first dispersion in 586 B.C. and return under Ezra, and their later dispersion and worldwide persecution foretold by Christ that occurred in A.D. 70. It was also foretold that they would someday return to their land from all over the earth. Seeing this, the prophet Isaiah had written:
Who has heard such a thing? ...Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be brought forth in one moment?3
Almost 2,000 years after the Jewish dispersion, the United Nations, in an unprecedented action, mandated the reestablishment of the nation of Israel. Born "in one day," May 14, 1948, modern Israel is seen as prophetic fulfillment by many scholars.
Probably the most profound and intriguing prophecies concern the Messiah, which will be discussed in the next chapter.
Archaeology Confirms the Bible's Truth
The relatively new science of archaeology is confirming the utmost accuracy of the Scriptures as previously unknown records and artifacts are uncovered.
For centuries, some people doubted certain details of the Bible, such as the existence of certain ancient peoples and places that seemed in conflict with available knowledge. But by faith alone, the devoted would always cling to the Bible's truth because it was "inspired." Now, just in our generation, doubts have been put aside one-by-one by researchers combing and digging over ancient sites.
For example, the Old Testament refers to a city that was built from solid rock. Skeptics would scoff about the reality of this unknown city, but Petra has been discovered and is now a major tourist stop in Jordan.
In the New Testament, in Acts 13:7 Luke speaks of a "proconsul" who was the governor of Cyprus. For years many scholars thought that Luke had made a mistake in terminology because the Roman government was thought to have used the title "propraetor" instead. Recently, however, archaeology has determined that Rome did, in fact, use the title as mentioned by Luke. The scoffing critics were found to be in error as they have time after time.
Dr. W. A. Criswell points out that about 200 years ago a group of French scholars listed 82 alleged "errors" in the Bible that would eventually destroy Christianity. Since then, however, archaeology and the increased understanding of the ancient languages and cultural contexts have resolved each item.4
Christ Himself Confirms the Bible's Truth
The testimony of Jesus Christ Himself confirms the Bible. Even His detractors exalt His saintliness and wisdom, incapable of deception and misrepresentation. Christ believed and taught the infallibility and reliability of the Scriptures, even rebuking those who did not believe! He repeatedly said such things as: "It is written... . Search the Scriptures... . Have you read?.... Scripture cannot be broken."
He spoke confidently and unashamedly of Old Testament events and people, such as Noah and the ark, Jonah and the whale, Abraham, and Moses. He also said that the story of His own life and purpose were prophetically and symbolically woven through all these actual events hundreds of years before.
Jesus did not teach that just the principles or basic message of the Scriptures were inspired, or even just the words. He spoke of the accuracy of even the "jot" and "tittle," the smallest characters of the Hebrew alphabet.
And it wasn't just in His human life that Jesus believed and taught the infallibility of the Scriptures. He did so even after the resurrection when He rebuked the disciples as "slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!"5 (Not some, but all!)
Of course, in Jesus' day there was no New Testament. There was only what we call the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible. But Jesus knew the New Testament was forthcoming, and He placed His stamp of authority on it by anticipation when He told His disciples:
"But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you."6
Mathematical Proof of the Bible's Truth?
Possible mathematical proof of divine inspiration is one of the most intriguing subjects. The field needs much more research and previous research needs recognition. However, beginning at least as early as the 1,800's and through today, mathematically-gifted people have made exhaustive studies in the original Hebrew and Greek languages of the Bible manuscripts. These researchers claim that results prove that the writings had to come from an infinite and omniscient Mind.
One person who studied this phenomenon was a Russian immigrant and Harvard graduate, Dr. Ivan Panin, who spent 50 years and accumulated 43,000 pages of notes on the subject before he died in 1942.7
A more recently published work on the subject is Theomatics, by Jerry Lucas and Del Washburn.8
In both Hebrew and Greek, numbers are not separate characters but are represented by letters of the alphabet. For example, in Greek "alpha" is both the first letter of the alphabet and also the number one. Panin and others have taken the original manuscripts and have assigned the appropriate numerical value to each letter. Then they looked for numerical patterns. The results they report are mind-boggling-patterns of numbers that could not have been done by humans. Plus, probability theory analysis shows such an elaborate accident as totally impossible. For example, in just the first verse of the Bible, Panin found 30 different patterns of the number seven. In English, this verse has ten words, but in the original Hebrew it has only seven. The seven words have exactly 28 (4 X 7) letters. The nouns in the sentence give a combined 777 (111 X 7). The two objects of the verb both have seven letters, and so on. The chance of 30 combinations of seven in a seven word sentence happening accidentally is described as 1 in 33,000,000,000,000!
Lucas, a Phi Beta Kappa, and Washburn report similar and numerous examples in the Greek New Testament manuscripts, and their book includes a 79-page chapter on just their statistical and probability methodology to satisfy sincere and serious doubters. They state unequivocally that their study "scientifically proves that God wrote the Bible."
Such patterns as discovered by Panin, Lucas, and Washburn are said to appear throughout both the Old and New Testaments and reportedly have not been found in any other writing anywhere.
In a startling announcement carried by the Associated Press, researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology have discovered a similar, but different, phenomenon. Using computer analysis of the first five books of the Bible, or Jewish Torah, they have discovered odd patterns of hidden words with coded intervals. For example, in the Book of Genesis, the Hebrew word "Torah" is found repeated by letters at 50-character intervals and "Elohim" (God) at 26-character intervals. The word "holocaust" is reportedly found at 50-character intervals in Deuteronomy, a book that predicts great future trouble for the Israelite people (chapters 28-31). It would have been impossible for a mortal to have done this, and statistically such an accident would have been impossible, the researchers say. "We need a non-rational explanation. And ours is that (it) was written by God through the hand of Moses," says computer expert, Menachem Wiener, of the Institute.9
In all of this, it appears that the omniscient Creator left a most unusual and persuasive signature on His Word. It makes the apostle Paul's statement even more graphic and awesome:
All Scripture is God-breathed... 10
Is the Bible trustworthy? We have not even mentioned the reality of its truths that have been experienced by millions of people over the centuries. But the collective evidence that we have included overwhelmingly supports the fact that the Bible is God's unique and, as it claims, exclusive message to the human race. We must not ignore it.11
Understanding the Bible
The Bible is a collection of history, biography, poetry, prophecy, and spiritual and practical principles. But there are many things in it that are difficult to understand. Perhaps that is because the Bible is revelation from the infinite Mind. It is the Word of the living God. Also, the Bible reveals that God desires "seekers." And when we read it, we are plumbing the depths of the infinite. We should not despair if we do not understand everything. No one does.
The Bible has been described as a deep mine of treasures, continually inviting the seeker to another chamber after he has spent time in the first. In writing to his son in A.D. 412, St. Augustine said:
Such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else from early boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and talents greater than I have, I would still daily be making progress in discovering their treasures.
Here are some principles that will help you to understand the deeper messages of the Bible.
1. Approach it prayerfully, and know that only God can unlock its mysteries for you.
2. Avoid interpreting passages out of context.
3. Compare difficult passages with passages that are clear and look for consistent truths or themes.
4. Consider the historical context.
5. Use a good modern translation, and a lexicon or commentary to clarify unfamiliar words and concepts.
Words of Life
In the Bible you will find words of the Spirit, for your spirit.12 You will find who you are, where you came from, and where you are going. No other book or source anywhere in the world has that information.
You will find yourself and the meaning of life.
You will also discover "the world's greatest Person," whom we describe in the next chapter.
Good reading!
One Minute Summary
The World's Greatest Book
The Bible is the most unusual book ever written and the best seller of all time. An array of incontrovertible facts gives overwhelming evidence of the Bible's divine origin and complete trustworthiness: (1) by virtue of the number of copies or parts of ancient manuscripts extant, their closeness in years to the original, and the agreement of scholars on their accuracy, the Bible is by far the most reliable of all ancient works, much more so than the next most reliable, Homer's Iliad; (2) it was written over a period of about 1,600 years, on three continents, in three languages, and by some 40 authors ranging from peasants to kings. In spite of that, it has an amazing consistency and continuity, making an external Guiding Hand an obvious necessity; (3) the Bible uniquely claims itself to be divine, and in its pages God speaks even in the first person; (4) prophecy and later exact fulfillment give the Bible an internal authenticity; (5) the modern science of archaeology has consistently confirmed the Bible's most minute details, silencing previous critics and scoffers; (6) Jesus Christ Himself believed and taught the Bible's complete accuracy, both before and after His resurrection, even to the "jot" and "tittle," the smallest components of the Hebrew alphabet; (7) while less conclusive without further research, modern computer and mathematical analysis has revealed evidence of previously hidden word and number patterns that could not have been placed by mortals or occurred by chance-apparently a divine signature of the Creator to further authenticate His work and to demonstrate His power.
In conclusion, all objective evidence supports the statement of the apostle Paul who said, "All Scripture is God-breathed."