Is the Bible just like all other books, in that it was
written by man and subject to man’s error, available today the same as the
original work? Or has it been corrupted, amended or mistranslated over time?
Part I
The
purpose of this essay is to briefly but as thoroughly as possible, explore the
evidence of canonicity and divine inspiration of the Holy Bible. It would stand
to reason that the Bible, like most ancient religious texts, is the product of
many hands and “versions” that are inevitably influenced by the bias of the
author and events of the era. Many
scholars agree that the Bible was written in similar fashion. The Old Testament was passed on orally and
eventually written down in various interpretations of the oral tradition with
added current or relatively current events.
The multitude of texts and oral histories were finally compiled into a
seemingly cohesive document, sometime in a period known in Jewish/biblical
history as the Babylonian Exile. The New Testament is often thought to have
been written many years after the events they claim witness to. The New Testament is largely attributed to
the Apostle Paul, who never actually knew Jesus. The earliest known “Bible” was written by the heretic Marcion around 140 A.D. The earliest copy of the Bible we know today
was the Vulgate, which wasn't written until the late 4th century.
Is it
any wonder then that Christians meet with such criticism in academia? Yet the historicity and canonicity of the
Bible continues to be debated. Modern
scholars face opposition from religiously motivated authors such as Lee Strobel,
Josh McDowell, and Simcha Jacobovici whom staunchly challenge the academic
establishment. According to many apologists,
the Bible is the inspired word of God and thus above reproach. To question its canonicity is to question the
validity of the religion itself. If the
Bible is not the word of God, then there may as well be no God. In the face of scientific discovery, The Church, as it were, has split into two
camps: The Fundamentalist camp, which
holds to traditional Church doctrine and the Modernist Camp, which believes
that there is no need of competing Doctrines; that of science and that of “the inspired”. The Modernist believes that science and
reason are all that are needed and should not be enemies of religion. They feel the Church and all faiths for that
matter, should receive wise teachings without seeking to prove the improbable
or believe the impossible.
I will
begin with an excerpt from one of my favorite church Fathers, I apologize for the
length but I feel it is important for the discussion. Though I’m writing on this topic because it
is considered to be a modern, and
common debate; as Solomon said: “There is
nothing new under the sun”.
Objection 2: Further, knowledge can be concerned only with being, for nothing can be known, save what is true; and all that is, is true. But everything that is, is treated of in science---even God Himself; so that there is a part of philosophy called theology, or the divine science, as Aristotle has proved (Metaph. vi). Therefore, besides science, there is no need of any further knowledge.
On the contrary, It is written (2 Tim. 3:16): "All Scripture, inspired of God is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice." Now Scripture, inspired of God, is no part of science, which has been built up by human reason. Therefore it is useful that besides science, there should be other knowledge, i.e. inspired of God.
I answer that, It was necessary for man's salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides science built up by human reason. Firstly, indeed, because man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason: "The eye hath not seen, O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee" (Is. 66:4). But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas man's whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation. It was therefore necessary that besides science built up by reason, there should be a sacred science learned through revelation.
Reply to Objection 1: Although those things which are beyond man's knowledge may not be sought for by man through his reason, nevertheless, once they are revealed by God, they must be accepted by faith. Hence the sacred text continues, "For many things are shown to thee above the understanding of man" (Ecclus. 3:25). And in this, the sacred science consists.
Reply to Objection 2: Sciences are differentiated according to the various means through which knowledge is obtained. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself. Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy. - Summa Theologia by St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274 A.D.)
So, the
highlights from what St. Thomas Aquinas said above, (Like a speech from Al
Gore, material from the Middle Ages tends to cause many people’s eyes to glaze
over): Other than the fact that Christopher Columbus did NOT discover that the
earth was round, (or anything else for that matter) science and God are related
but in different realms. For instance,
the book of Exodus (Inspired by God) describes several plagues that fell upon
Egypt in rapid succession. In 1986 those
same plagues fell upon a village, also in Africa. Science can now explain all of the plagues
recorded in the Book of Exodus, so through different means, man and God reveal
fantastic events.
Science can reveal
things as God does; in fact all of the fathers of science believed that God had
called them to reveal his creation to glorify his name. Aquinas also points out that science should
not be used to explain everything.
Evidence may be plentiful yet not concise or repeatable. History, as you and I have been taught,
changes as new evidence is discovered.
History and science have been
falsified, manipulated, and confounded consistently since its inception. History in particular is based on pieces of
evidence that are collected from multiple sources, then compiled, thoroughly evaluated
and discussed before being considered historic “fact.” Historians make a
living debating history, they are able to do so because much of our history was
pieced together from multiple sources and many of those sources were not
firsthand accounts. Often the closest we get to firsthand accounts come from
copies of copies of copies. Occasionally
biographies are used as a primary source and offer invaluable insight. Biographies are indeed great, but unless they
can be compared/contrasted with a contemporary’s biography, or other firsthand evidence the story is
one-sided at best and a “Fish story” at worst.
Ramses was probably the reason for the saying “History is written by the
victor”. He systematically destroyed any
evidence he could find of his predecessors and put his name and face in their
stories and on their monuments. Much of
what we “know” about Ancient Egyptian
history comes from the records left by the Pharaohs.
 |
| Ramses, Egyptian fishing tournament championship |
Part II
I answer that:
According to the rubric used by modern historians. the Bible we commonly use today (The King James Version) does
contains the original Gospel. The sources and the accuracy among many other
factors that I will delve into shortly, present an argument for canonical
validity that could stand to any reasonable challenge. Furthermore, I believe that there is even an
argument to be made for Divine inspiration of the Holy Bible.
The
theory stated in part one, of the compilation of the Old Testament, is known as
the Documentary hypothesis. The key word
there is hypothesis, there is no
evidence that what Christians call: “The Old Testament”, was compiled in
Babylon as the theory suggests. The
argument they present is based on seeming contradictions or inconsistencies in
the text, such as the second creation story in Genesis and the two names used
for God: Elohim and Yahweh.
The theory was largely based on the fact that there was no evidence
the ancient Israelites were an organized, let alone literate people until well
after the alleged authorship took place.
This all changed however, with the dawn of the 21st century. Multiple discoveries have been made by
archaeologists that validate the Biblical narrative; the inscriptions of events
along with ancient scroll fragments which have been found, confirm the accuracy
of Old/New Testament translations. Even
events, like the Davidic Kingdom were thought to have never happened but new
evidence seems to say otherwise. (As this is a blog meant to encourage study,
aaand the thought of combing through my disorganized notes for formal citation
makes me want to shoot myself, I’ll provide a keyword list at the conclusion of
this article for those that wish to do further research/check my sources)
There
is truth in the claim that oral history was an important part of ancient Israel
(that tradition continues today) but the fact that is often left out is oral
tradition was a vital part of nearly all known ancient civilizations. There was no Netflix back then, if you wanted
entertainment in Ancient Greece for instance, you would go to the assembly and
listen to an epic tale like, the Iliad (The earliest known copy of which was made
500 years after the first is thought to have been written). At the assembly if the player got the story
wrong, the audience would correct him.
History and the religious stories of the day were all passed down orally
and with careful accuracy.
One of my favorite examples of oral
history are the Viking Sagas. Other than
a few Runes, there is no written Viking history. Viking mythology was compiled from oral traditions
and their sagas/histories likewise were passed down from father to son. Archeology has unearthed evidence and
documents that reference the people and events described in the oral traditions
such as: the legendary exploits of Leaf Erikson, Ragnar and Rollo; all are no now
considered to be historically factual.
Oral history continues to be used today, The History Channel itself is a
fine example of Oral History.
When I was working on my Religious
Studies Minor at the University of Houston, I took a class called Intro to Judaism. I thought: “Easy! I know the Bible so, I know Judaism.” Sure I knew there had been a
few changes, here and there, some Rabbi invented the Bagel, and they traded
their striped robes and sheep in for tiny hats and jewelry… Well, turns out, there’s a bit more to it. Just so we focus on the discussion at hand,
I’ll explain the role of the Scribe.
Each Torah is hand written on the skin of a pure animal. Each letter and space between them is
counted. The name Scribe in Hebrew means
“counter”, in order to become a scribe you must first memorize the Torah in its
entirety. If a space or a single letter
is discovered to be incorrect, the Torah is invalidated and must be taken back
to the scribe. The accuracy of this
method was proven when the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered. The Dead Sea scrolls matched our modern
copies.
What about the New Testament?
How can we believe that some ignorant monk in a Dark Age monastery
copied the Bible by candlelight, let alone translated it accurately?
This question is one that I hear
often from historians with PhD attached to their name. It is actually an easy question to answer: That’s
not how it happened! There is ample physical evidence to back that
statement up.
Jesus’ disciples, apostles and followers were from all walks of
life. That trend was true then just as
it is now. Christianity spread in a time
and place when many of the people were literate and educated. Sermons were passed on orally but they were
also documented. The Apostles recognized
early on that the Message of Christ was the most important thing in/to the
world. They also knew that Jesus was not
the first “Messiah” and surely would not be the last. The Bible itself addresses such apostasy and
false witness as a problem. Therefore
the early church fathers began to compile the true Gospel and share it with the
church immediately.
Where is the evidence?
The first complete Bible that we
have evidence of as mentioned in Part I, is from Marcion. Marcion took the existing Bible, removed the items that he didn't like and kept what he did for his
followers. (Like Thomas Jefferson, with
his Deist Bible, he first needed a Bible, in order to alter one) The hard
evidence for an ancient Bible that was complete with a list of the books
matching our contemporary Bibles (Including apocryphal texts) is the Muratorian
Fragment (A.D. 170), which lists the New
Testament books that we know today. We
also have letters and other writings that contain quotes of the early church
fathers that match the scriptures we have today. Previously the only evidence of the 1st
Century Gospels we had was St. John’s
Fragment (aka P52) which was unearthed in the 1930’s and is on display at
Ryland’s Library.
The following is an excerpt taken
from an old article from Duke University’s Special Collections Library:
Even
within the period that runs from c. A.D. 100-300 it is possible for
paleographers to be more specific on the relative date of the papyrus
manuscripts of the New Testament. For about sixty years now a tiny papyrus
fragment of the Gospel of John has been the oldest "manuscript" of
the New Testament. This manuscript (P52) has generally been dated to ca. A.D.
125. This fact alone proved that the original Gospel of John was written
earlier, viz. in the first century A.D., as had always been upheld by
conservative scholars.
We
now have early and very early evidence for the text of the New Testament. A
classified list of the most important manuscripts will make this clear. Numbers
preceded by a P refer to papyri, the letters refer to parchment manuscripts.
ca. A.D. 200 250 300 350 450
Matthew P45 B Sin.
Mark P45 B Sin. A
Luke P4,P45,P75 B Sin. A
John P66 P45,P75 B Sin. A
Acts P45 B Sin. A
Romans-Hebrews P46 B Sin. A
James-Jude P72,B Sin. A
Apocalypse P47 Sin. A
As you can see, from the fourth century
onwards the material base for establishing the text of the Greek New Testament
is very good indeed. The manuscripts Sin. (Sinaiticus), A (Alexandrinus) and B
(Vaticanus) are almost complete parchment manuscripts. With the help of the
earlier papyrus manuscripts we have been able to establish that the text of
these three great manuscripts is to a large extent reliable. The papyrus
manuscript P75 was the latest to be published, but it showed a virtually
identical text to manuscript B. This settled the vexed question whether we have
in the parchment manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries a safe guide to
the original text of the New Testament. We have.
More discoveries are being made as
Biblical Archeology progresses. Another
discovery was made in 2012 of a first century copy of the Gospel of Mark, each
discovery affirms the accuracy of the Gospel’s transmission through the ages.
What about translation?
The method for translating the New
Testament varies greatly from that of the Old Testament. The argument for the Lone Monk
Translation comes from the legendary St. Jerome. When he wasn’t pulling thorns out from lions’
paws, he was sitting alone in a cave in Bethlehem, writing the Vulgate. St. Jerome was an amazing man and from what
I’ve read, he sounds like the kind of guy I would want to hang out with. He was a scholar and arguably the most
learned man in church history, that being said, he knew that singlehandedly
compiling scripture and translating ancient text could not render an accurate
document in any reasonable amount of time.
The Reformation
The first printed Bibles of course
were products of the reformation: The
Gutenberg Bible, the Tyndale/ Wycliffe Bible, the Geneva Bible etc. Minor changes were made such as; Peter being called to lead the church, was changed to Peter being called to lead the congregation. Many argue that this was a slight to
Catholic authority. The Catholic Church responded to such challenges to their
authority by what seemed to the Protestants as flaunting their own corruption,
they canonized the Apocrypha. Though,
Tyndale lived to challenge the authority and corruption of the Catholic Church,
his translation was closer to the Greek than the Catholic translation. (The original texts use the word
assembly) In the defense of the Catholic
Apocrypha, if you recall the list in the Muratorian Fragment, those texts were
recognized as being latter documents but still important and acceptable to
teach from, alongside the older scriptures and remained separate from the Old
and New Testament, thus their authenticity will not be addressed. They are not heretical documents, as
perceived by the protestant church.
King James
King
James was a Scott, and thus a catholic.
England at the time was on the verge of civil war. The Protestants and the Catholics were
dissatisfied with the crown’s attempt to create a Church compromise that would
satisfy the Catholics’ desire for church hierarchy and tradition and the Bible
focused protestant movement. King James
commissioned an official Bible to be translated from the oldest texts available
by a team of scholars as diverse as the Disciples and Apostles themselves. The ecclesiastical scholars were from both
rich and poor families. They were
Catholics and Protestants, Saints and sinners, (one scholar had even served on
a pirate ship that raided Spanish ships and colonies in the Caribbean). These 50+ men were divided into teams; each
given a section of scripture to translate and upon completion passed the
translation onto the next team until every document was reviewed by multiple
experts. The creation of the King James
Bible rivals modern day quality control measures, which were not adopted by
secular science until well into the 20th century.
Well known Historical sources:
Aside
from matching text, text fragments and inscriptions, there are contemporary
letters that quote early scripture and events that are said to have happened
during the time of Christ. Jewish
historian, Josephus is the leading secular source to the events of Christ and
the early church. Church history is a
literary history. There are countless
documents that prove the historicity, canonicity etc. to be more reliable than
any accepted ancient historical source.
All of the historical evidence below is debatable but the evidence for
the authenticity of the Bible when compared to sources, oft quoted but seldom
questioned, stands head and shoulders above the rest:
|
AUTHOR
|
WHEN WRITTEN
|
EARLIEST COPY
|
TIME SPAN
|
# OF COPIES
|
|
CAESAR
|
100-44 B.C.
|
A.D. 900
|
1000 YRS
|
10
|
|
HERODOTUS
|
480-425 B.C.
|
A.D. 900
|
1300 YRS
|
8
|
|
THUCYDIDES
|
460-400 B.C.
|
A.D. 900
|
1300 YRS
|
8
|
|
PLINY THE YOUNGER
|
A.D. 61-113
|
A.D. 850
|
750 YRS
|
7
|
|
THE NEW TESTAMENT
|
A.D. 40-100
|
A.D. 125
|
25 YRS
|
24,000+
|
Inspired or not?
Divine
Inspiration is one of those divine sciences that cannot be repeated in a
laboratory and thus my argument is purely circumstantial. No other text in the history of mankind has
ever met with such animosity as the Holy Bible.
Kings, Caliphs, Sultans, Dictators, and etc. Have all sought to destroy and or alter the
Word of God. It began with the very
first followers of Christ and continues today, yet it has remained the most
powerful, influential and widely read book in the world. No other book has remained in continuous
print for so long. No other ancient
document has the amount of credibility of authenticity as the Holy Bible. I’ll conclude with a quote, “Fictio Cedit Veritati”. (Fiction yields
to the truth)
key word source list
|
JMcDowell
|
Dr.Pellegrino
|
Stele of Mycenae
|
Sir Frederic Kenyon
|
Ludovico Antonio Muratori
|
Old Testament(J,D,E,P)
|
Tyndale
|
Council of Carthage
|
|
Jacobovicci
|
El Arish inscription
|
Dr.Garfinkel
|
O’Callaghan
|
Hans Lietzmann
|
Marcion
|
Wycliffe
|
Ignatius
|
|
Strobel
|
Ron Wyatt
|
Qumran
|
Daniel Wallace
|
Kliene & Bonn
|
John Layfield
|
Summa Theologia
|
Polycarp
|
|
W.C. Placher
|
Lake Nios
|
Codex senaticus/vaticanis
|
Muratorian Canon
|
Siani inscription
|
Alister McGrath
|
Robert Beckfort
|
Josephus
|
[Also,
I have a basic understanding of the Ancient Greek language & have seen the
original scriptures in person.]
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