P9 - Why the Bible is the only Trustworthy and Inerrant Word of God - reasons to trust it

2 Timothy 3:15-16 "and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness."

Introduction:
As we continue on in this series "Why the Bible", we noted yesterday where this particular blogger comes from when it comes to teaching, preaching or writing about the Bible. In unfolding the doctrines of revelation and inspiration in that post, the stage was set for what we will be looking at today, namely reasons to trust the Bible as being the only trustworthy word of God. Today's post will consider three reasons why we can trust the Bible as the only trustworthy Word of God. Notice first of all that the Bible was/is....

1. Perfectly written (inerrant). 2 Timothy 3:15. 
When Paul wrote to Timothy regarding the "sacred" writings or scriptures, he was refering to their character as being "pure", "holy" or "set apart". In an earlier post in this series we explored at at length the meaning and significance of this term "sacred" and "holy". Paul in effect is saying that the Bible's authority as God's Word is due to the fact that is without error as originally revealed. That absolute quality as describing the original manuscripts or autographs is the base for the Bible's authority. Moreover, such authority carries on down the stream of every copy and translation that stays true to the wording of the originals. 

As scholar Dr. Wayne Grudem has noted in His Systematic Theology: “For most practical purposes, then, the current published scholarly texts of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are the same as the original manuscripts. Thus, when we say that the original manuscripts were inerrant, we are also implying that over 99 percent of the words in our present manuscripts are also inerrant, for they are exact copies of the originals. Furthermore, we know where the uncertain readings are (for where there are no textual variants we have no reason to expect faulty copying of the original).” So the Bible is the only trustworthy Word of God due to the fact it is perfectly written or without error, both in fact of its original production and inasmuch as the copies and translations are faithful to those words. But notice a second point....

2. Preserved down to today. 2 Tim 3:15. 
This closely related truth is significant, in that the words in our Bibles today are claiming to be the same as those originally written. When comparing all of the manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments, the tedious and technical science of textual criticism has aimed for the past two centuries to recover what the original wording would had been like, since we don't possess the original documents of the Old or New Testaments. 

Keeping all of these details in their proper perspective can enable specialists and non-specialists alike to avoid the extreme skepticism of those scholars that doubt the reliability of the Bible. Paper trails, whether in the world of banking, housing or Biblical studies gives evidence and proof of authenticity and reliability of the documentation. Even within the manuscripts themselves, as time went forward, the knowledge of variants between the manuscripts prompted scribes to preserve all of them. Why? To have a paper trail and to assert the belief that not one of God’s words had been lost in the copying process. Much like the paper money in wallet, whereby the one using it has confidence in the reliability of the money they use despite never having seen the original mint plates from whence they were made, such is the case with the Bible. We can trust that the inerrancy of scripture that originally made up the autographs of the Old and New Testament carries down in the doctrines, details and words preserved and faithfully translated in accords with those documents.

It always amazes this writer how easily skeptics will accept other writings of antiquity with no issue and yet level unwarranted criticism at the Old and New Testament writings. How does the Bible stack up in the time between its original production and copies, as well as the rate of accuracy? Dr. Randall Price, Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Liberty University, notes the following:

Author      Approx.     Earliest     Time     Number
                 Date           Copy        Span      Copies
                 Written
Caesar     100-44bc     900 ad     1000 yrs   10
Livy         59bc-17ad   350 ad      400 yrs     27
Plato       420-347bc   900 ad      1200 yrs   7
Thucydides  460-400bc  900 ad   1300 yrs    20
Tacticus      5-120 ad    1100 ad  1000 yrs    3
Suetonius   6-140 ad    950 ad     800 yrs    200+
Herodotus  484-425bc  1st cent.  400 yrs     75
Homer       900 bc        400 bc     500 yrs    643
New Test.  40-95 ad   100-150 ad  25-50 yrs 6800     
Concerning the rate of accuracy between the copies of ancient manuscripts, scholarship applauds if there is anything approaching 90%. All the non-biblical ancient manuscripts above never get higher than 90%. Yet the Hebrew Old Testament, having some 3,000 Hebrew copies plus translations, averages over 95% accuracy and the New Testament boasts an over 99% accuracy rate of copying among its 25,000 plus manuscripts and ancient translations. 

So with manuscripts with admitted differences between them, did that mean then that the Word of God itself, as well as its authority as the inerrant, infallible rule and standard of faith and practice cease to exist? Jesus didn't think so (Matthew 5:18; 24:39), nor the apostles (2 Timothy 3:15). The quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament stem from the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Moreover, of church history records statements by Christian leadersregarding how they viewed the Bibles of their day:

1. Clement of Rome: “The utterances of the Holy Ghost” (95 A.D)

2. Clement of Alexandria “Receive from God through the scriptures” (150-211 A.D)

3. Origen notes that the authorship of the Holy Spirit precludes mistakes of the human authors (185-250)

4. Irenaeus “Scripture is the perfection of God’s words” (200 A.D)

5. Polycarp “Scripture is the voice of the most high God” (65-155 A.D)

6. Tertullian “writings and words of God” (160-225 A.D)

7. Samuel Rutherford “Bible is surer than a direct oracle from heaven” (1600-1661)

8. Luther notes that the “scriptures are the throne upon which Christ presides over His church” (16th century)

9. Richard Baxter (1615-1691); Calvin (1483-1546); Knox (1509-1564); Wesley (1714-1770) all affirm this doctrine.


Like us today, the Christians and church throughout the centuries understood that they still had the words of God, even though they, like us, worked with copies or translations of the scriptures. This issue is peristently attacked today by extreme skeptics, and yet when compared to the evidence, there is no good reason to deny the trustworthiness of the Bible as God's Word when it comes to its perfect writing (inerrancy) nor it preservation. Now lets consider one final area... 


3. Clearly revealed to be understood (and thus lived out in our daily lives). 2 Tim 3:16. 
We have already explored in more depth in previous posts the exact meaning and significance of Divine inspiration. Inspiration refers to the writing down of God's revelation by the Prophets and Apostles. Inspiration tells the reader about the "event" of the production of sacred scripture, even though we are not privy to its exact details. (see 2 Peter 1:20-21) The word in 2 Timothy 3:16 that we are interested in today's post is the word translated "profitable". When something is profitable, it has within it the quality of being clearly understood as being so. This of course does not mean that all scripture will be as easy to understand as other scriptures. However, as the scripture is studied and as other scripture is brought to bear in shedding light on other portions, the meaning of the scripture will be made clear by the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:10-13; 1 John 2:20,27). As Paul lays out to Timothy the profitability or clear applicability of scripture:

1. For teaching, which tells me what is right

2. For reproof, to alert me when I'm not right

3. For correction, to show me how to get right

4. For training in righteousness, to show me how to stay right

Then 2 Timothy 3:17 notes - "so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." The word translated "equipped" refers to someone being "well put-together". Only a book that is made clear by the Holy Spirit and having been originally inspired by Him could perform all the functions explained in this post. 

Closing thoughts
Today we looked specifically as to why anyone should trust the Bible as the only Trustworthy Word of God. We labored to show three reasons:
1. Perfectly written
2. Preserved
3. Clearly revealed to be understood, and thus lived out in our daily lives

P8 Why the Bible alone is the trustworthy Word of God - What I teach

2 Timothy 3:15-16 "and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness."

Introduction:

I have so appreciated the reader's patience these last several days as we have been making our journey through this series I'm entitling "Why the Bible". Though it may appear at times we are unnecessarily diving into techinicalities, yet the reader needs to know why the Bible they have is the Word of God. Today's post is partially devoted to reviewing what we have covered thus far in this series and partially devoted to moving ahead. We want to bring into the discussion the specific issue of the Bible's inspiration and consider it in relationship to all that has been already covered. Perhaps more for this blogger than anyone else, the attempt is being made to lock into the heart and mind this vast but important area for the Christian - namely showing why the Bible alone is the trustworthy Word of God.

What I teach regularly when it comes to the revelation and inspiration of the Bible.

The doctrine of revelation has to do with God communicating His Word(s) to the Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. Once that process began, the biblical authors, by the superintending work of the Holy Spirit, wrote down in each of their own writing styles the words of scripture by a process called "inspiration". Two chief texts provide the foundation for these two closely related truths of revelation and inspiration. 2 Peter 1:20-21 "But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, 21 for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." The word underlined in Peter's text, "moved", refers to the manner in which a ship would had been borne or "moved" along by the wind. The second text is the one mentioned at the beginning of this post, 2 Timothy 3:16 - "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness." The word translated "inspired" gives the idea of God "exhaling" his breath and words into the words that the prophets and apostles wrote. To borrow an illustration from Genesis 2:7, just as God breathed into the nostrils of Adam to make him a living soul, God breathed into the words of the scriptures to make them a living set of Divinely authoritative books. 

The very words in which the prophets and apostles wrote were superintended and preserved from error by the Holy Spirit. Consider this logical argument:

1. God cannot lie nor speak error when he reveals information (Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18-20). 

2. The Person of the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4; 2 Corinthians 3:17)

3. The Person of the Holy Spirit is credited as being the primary author and revealer of the words written down by the prophets and apostles. (1Peter 1:10-11; 2 Peter 1:20-21)

4. Hence the Bible is the Word of God, without error.

The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (BFM 2000) is the particular doctrinal statement to which I subscribe and does a very good job in summarizing the entire teaching of the Bible as God's Word. Here is what it says: "The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation." Within the BFM 2000 article on scripture, the following scriptures are listed that show from whence this statement is derived: Exodus 24:4; Deuteronomy 4:1-2; 17:19; Joshua 8:34; Psalms 19:7-10; 119:11,89,105,140; Isaiah 34:16; 40:8; Jeremiah 15:16; 36:1-32; Matthew 5:17-18; 22:29; Luke 21:33; 24:44-46; John 5:39;16:13-15; 17:17; Acts 2:16ff.; 17:11; Romans 15:4; 16:25-26; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; Hebrews 1:1-2; 4:12; 1 Peter 1:25; 2 Peter 1:19-21. 

The reader can refer to these verses and see firsthand that the Bible has to say for itself in regards to its Divine inspiration and authority. This is what this blogger teaches, preaches and proclaims every week and also undergirds the entirety of this blogsite. Tomorrow we will continue consideration of the Bible alone being the trustworthy Word of God. To God be the glory. 

P7 Why the Bible? The trustworthiness of the words in the Biblical text

2 Timothy 3:15 "and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."

Introduction:
So when we read the words above, are we reading the same words that Paul wrote in the first century? For that matter, did Paul even write those words, or was 2 Timothy the product of another author writing at a later time? Such questions, believe it or not, are hotly contested in the world of New Testament studies. Not much time will be spent in addressing the second question, since authorship issues (called in Biblical studies "higher criticism", which is concerned with authorship and development of the document itself) is not the focus of today's post. 1

The particular matter of which we are concerned about has to do with the very words of the Bible itself. Establishing whether or not the text of our English Bibles, other translations and ancient copies of the Hebrew and Greek originals are the same as those originals is of huge importance for the Christian. Why? If the Bible from whence I preach and teach and from whence Christians do daily devotions and memorize is not the wording and message that the original documents composed by the Prophets and Apostles, then the whole discussion over the Bible being God's word is a moot point. However, the aim of today's post is to demonstrate that the words originally given by God and in turn written by the prophets and apostles have been preserved in all the copies and translations. This matter deals in the area of the trustworthiness of the Biblical text or the specific area of lower or textual criticism. 

A quick tour of how we got our Bibles from original writing to modern day translations
To avoid getting too bogged down in technical details and to make this post as useable as possible to a wider audience, I will divide the history of how we got our Bibles into three stages.

Stage One: Revelation and inspiration 
The Old Testament books were written in whole or in part by different authors originally in Hebrew and a few chapters in Aramaic over a period of 1,000 years. Moses wrote the Pentateuch (first five books) in 1446-1406 b.c with Malachi penning the last Old Testament book in 396 b.c. Dr. Robert Jeffress, Pastor at First Baptist Church of Dallas, mentions the following verses that proclaim the divine revelation and writing down or inspiration of the Bible: Exodus 20:1; Isaiah 1:2; Jeremiah 1:1-2; Psalm 95:7b-8; Hebrews 3:7; 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21; Matthew 19:4-5; Matthew 24:39; Matthew 22:31-32).2

Stage Two: Transmission (copying) 
The ancient Hebrew in which those documents would had been written may had looked something like the below figure:

Hebrew is a language that reads right to left and as seen in the above example, the text would had been continuous with no breaks in between the words. After the Jews went into exile in Babylon in 586 b.c, they adopted the Babylonian language of Aramaic and its lettering style, which in turn took the ancient Hebrew lettering (called paleo-Hebrew) and made it look more like the below figure with what is called "Aramaic Square Script".
 A fragment from the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, written between the close of the Old Testament Canon (396 b.c) and the coming of Jesus. israelseen.com

Despite the change in font, the Old Testament retained the same wording as it was copied down through the ages. As the Jews kept copying the Hebrew scriptures from the time between the Old and New Testament to what is called the Middle ages (400b.c-1,000 A.D), little "dots" or vowel points were inserted to aid in knowing how to pronounce and read the text. The next picture depicts a portion of Joshua 1:1 from the famous Aleppo Codex, dated in the tenth century A.D or 1,000 years after the Dead Sea Scrolls:




People of course wonder how much the text and wording of the Hebrew Bible had changed during all those transitions and events (there is far more, but for our purposes here we'll just stick to this skeletal outline). 

The Hebrew Bibles we have today, like a page of one pictured below, contain 419, 687 words. 


For a manuscript (which is a hand-copied document) of the Hebrew Bible, like Isaiah, produced in 1,000 A.D compared to the overall Old Testament books found at the caves of the Dead Sea at Qumran (the famous "Dead Sea Scrolls), there was found to be only 5% difference, and that being mostly spelling differences or words like "and". The Old Testament as a collection of books displays this overall figure of over 95% continuity between the older manuscripts and newer ones and translations. The point? The Old Testament text is remarkable in its preservation or transmission of the original words.   

The New Testament books demonstrate an even more remarkable accurate rate of copying when it comes to comparing the manuscripts. The 27 books of the New Testament were composed 45 A.D (book of James) to 95 A.D (Book of Revelation). All of them would had been originally written on an ancient form of paper called "papyrus" and in rolls or "scrolls". Since the chief language of the New Testament era was Greek, every New Testament book would had been composed in that language, particularly the common or "Koine" Greek of the day. Below is an photograph of the famous Bodmer Papyri from the second century A.D. This aids the reader in seeing what the text of the New Testament may had looked like when it was first written.

The New Testament books came to be used and copied, first in Greek, and then in other languages. From the first century until the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in the 1450's, over 6,000 hand-copied Greek manuscripts were produced, with an additional 20,000 ancient translations from those copies. Below is an example of a beautifully produced Greek manuscript from the fourth century, the Codex Siniaticus: 


As the New Testament was being copied, the papyrus roll gave away to what was called the "codex" (as seen in the above picture), the forerunner to modern day books. According to Greek Scholar Dr. William Mounce, The New Testament as a collection of books contains 138,162 words. As inevitable differences can occur in scribes copying the New Testament documents, the consistent testimony of conservative and liberal critics alike maintain that there is 99.5% agreement between all of those manuscripts. 

In general, much like the Old Testament text, the overwhelming majority of those differences (or variants as they are called) are minute spelling differences, use or absence of the words "the", "and" and "an". Moreover, whether talking about the Old or New Testament text, consistently and without controversy it has been shown that not one major doctrine, historical recording or scientific fact in our translations and ancient copies differs in any fashion from the production of the original manuscripts. 

Stage Three: Translation and our English Bibles
The translation of the Bible books from Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek into other languages is about as old as the transmission and copying of those texts itself. We have established that the original documents were conceived and composed by the Biblical authors as the Holy Spirit revealed and inspired their writing of them. We next established in broadbrush fashion the reliability of the copying of those manuscripts (i.e hand-written documents). But now what about translation? Is anything lost in translation? When Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:15, he was writing to a man who would had heard the Old Testament taught to him from the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint, translated in stages from 250 b.c - right before the coming of Jesus. Moreover, Jesus and the Apostles, who would had spoken in Aramaic, undoubtedly would had used either the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew scriptures (Targums) and would had been very familiar with the Greek translation. None of the Apostles nor Jesus had issue with referring to the translations and copies of their day as "God's Holy, inerrant, infallible Word". 

According to Bible scholar Dr. Donald Brake in his book: "A Visual History of the English Bible", page 16, there have been nearly 40 major English translations produced from the first (Wycliffe's 1384) to the latest (NET Bible 2005).3 This of course does not include the numerous versions and lesser known English translations and versions of the Bible not listed by him. In having studied the original languages of the Bible for 20 years and having been a regular user of English translations for an even longer period of time, this blogger can say with confidence that nothing is lost in translation. The Bible from whence I preach, read and that hopefully every Christian memorizes and lives out is the same Word of God as those inerrant words originally given by the Spirit to the Prophets and Apostles. 

Closing thoughts:
Today's post was all about introducing the reader to the subject of the trustworthiness of the words in the Biblical text. We considered this issue in three parts or stages: 1). The revelation and inspiration of the Bible. 2). The transmission or copying of the Bible 3). Translation and our English Bible. Clearly this is an enormous subject which can be either covered in too much detail or not enough. My prayer is that this particular post has proven useful to the reader. To God be the glory.

Endnotes:
1. To be brief, there are some clues that would indicate that Paul is undoubtedly the author of 2 Timothy (clues which may seem obvious to the readers of this blog, including this blogger, but for technical reasons proposed by critics, are not obvious). First of all, Paul identifies himself as the author of 2 Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:1 "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ", just as he does in his other letters that are not question by the critics. Secondly, Paul makes reference to people that we see appear in his other letters, such as Timothy (2 Tim 1:2), Onesiphus (2 Timothy 1:6, who is the same one  in his letter to Philemon and in Colossians 4:9) and the Ephesian Christians and church itself. Thirdly, the testimony of the first three centuries of church history ascribe Pauline authorship to this letter. Thus issues such as these establish in brief the authorship of 2 Timothy.

Why be concerned over who wrote 2 Timothy? Moreover, why be concerned over the matter of words period? Because authorship is important when discussing the issue of Biblical authority, since in all cases, the book in question needed to be demonstrated as having been written by an apostle or an associate of one (as with Mark and Luke). 

2. Dr. Robert Jeffress is pastor at First Baptist Church of Dallas and preached a series entitled "How can I know". The specific message consulted here can be found on the church's website: www.firstdallas.com. The reader can find the series and then the message in the website's search engine. Its well worth the listen!

3. Donald L. Brake. "A Visual History of the Bible". Baker Books. 2008. Page 16