Why Trust the Bible? Don't believe everything you read. Everybody
knows that. So why trust the Bible? What can be known about its
historical reliability? Doing History Even more than other
religions, Christianity presents itself as history. At its heart,
Christianity claims that something extraordinary happened in the
course of time--something concrete, real, and historical. In the
Bible, the New Testament declares that a man named Jesus was born
to a virgin, claimed to be God, did miracles like walking on water
and raising people from the dead, was crucified on a Roman cross,
then rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to reign as King
of the universe. Can we conclude confidently these things are true
without simply presupposing the Bible is "the Word of God"? One way
to find out is to approach the New Testament as a collection of
historical documents that speak for themselves. But are these
documents truly reliable, historically speaking? Answering that
involves a series of questions. Are Our Bible Translations
Accurate? Although translation from ancient languages is neither
easy nor simple, scholars have been working at it for centuries. It
really is possible for genuine, accurate, correct communication to
occur through translation. In the New Testament, there is only a
small percentage of content that has proven difficult in
translation. The best Bible translations acknowledge these places
with a footnote. Moreover, we can confidently say that not one
major doctrine of orthodox Christianity rests on any disputed or
uncertain passage. We know what the Bible says and what it means.
Were the Original Sources Accurately Copied? As with other ancient
books, the physical pieces of "paper" on which the original authors
first wrote the New Testament have been lost to history. But we
have thousands of other ancient writings (on papyrus, vellum, and
parchment) with original-language text copied from each book of the
Bible--about 5,400 distinct pieces when it comes to the New
Testament, many going back to the first three centuries. They allow
us to reconstruct with a huge degree of confidence what the
originals said. (By comparison, for Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars we
have at most ten readable copies, the earliest of which dates nine
hundred years after Caesar's time.) By comparing ancient copies of
New Testament content with each other, we find a remarkably stable
history of copy-making. For a few passages there's genuine doubt
about the original text, as reflected by a relatively large number
of variations. The vast majority of these variations are minor, not
affecting how we ultimately understand the Bible's meaning. Were
These Originals Truly the Best Sources? But were these the right
documents to be looking at in the first place? Were other "Gospels"
out there telling a different but equally reliable story about
Jesus? Actually, the only Christian books dated confidently to the
first century are the very ones that finally made up the New
Testament--most of them already recognized by Christians as
authoritative by first century's end. Not until about a hundred
years later did books start showing up that departed significantly
from New Testament teaching. Meanwhile, Christians had good,
plausible, historically meaningful reasons for explaining why the
books in our New Testament should be there while others shouldn't.
The earlier documents were recognized as reliable witnesses to
Jesus's life and teachings. Were the Original Authors Trustworthy?
In their narratives, New Testament authors included verifiable
details of real, historical facts. Close scrutiny makes clear that
these authors weren't writing fiction, or perpetrating some hoax,
or under any delusion. They obviously believed that what they wrote
really happened. Nor were their writings hopelessly confused,
contradictory, or filled with errors. Especially in modern
centuries, the Bible has been subjected to scorching and detailed
assault by skeptics, but every single alleged contradiction,
inconsistency, and error has been met with plausible resolutions
after patient study. Were the Original Authors Mistaken? So the
Bible is a reliable historical record of what these authors believe
happened. But did those things really happen? After all, the Bible
is filled with miracle stories that invite our natural skepticism.
These miracles appear essential to the Bible's message, and their
eyewitness accounts come across as far more plausible than miracles
found in ancient myths and legends. It's here that one miracle in
particular leaps out: the resurrection of Jesus. If biblical
writers were genuinely mistaken about that, it's unlikely they were
right about much else. If Jesus is still dead, he's assuredly not
the "Christ" the Bible speaks of. Here again, careful historical
analysis reveals that what happened at Jesus's tomb couldn't have
been his "near death," nor some hoax or deception or mass
hallucination involving his followers. Their confident insistence
that they found his tomb empty and saw the risen Jesus-- a belief
embraced even at cost of their lives--is explained by only one
possibility: Jesus was bodily, historically resurrected from the
dead. Reason to Believe Because of that resurrection, Christians
believe what Jesus said. And since Jesus himself endorsed the
entire Old Testament and authorized the entire New Testament,
Christians believe these writings are reliable and true. To
Christians, Jesus's resurrection means that anyone united to him by
faith will be resurrected just as he was. They believe God fully
accepted the sacrifice for sins Jesus offered on the cross as the
more-than-sufficient payment for our moral debt. They believe Jesus
now lives to guide his people on earth. The Next Question In the
end, deciding whether the Bible is reliable is just a means toward
a more important question: Is Jesus reliable? If you're not a
Christian, let this discussion challenge you to consider: Who
exactly is Jesus? Perhaps that question is best answered in
something the apostle John said about his New Testament writings:
"These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in
his name" (John 20:31).
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