Is Our Bible Accurate?

CAN THE BIBLE BE BELIEVED? IS THE BIBLE AS WE HAVE IT TODAY ACCURATE?

Consider the following excerpt:

The science of archaeology has actually helped to confirm the predictions that will be analyzed. It may be true that religion-a vast and nebulous term-may be discredited by the finds of science, but not the truth or the historical facts communicated in the Bible.

The reason many people of a religious nature may disdain “rational discourse” and “reasoned argument” is that they either don’t have the facts to back up their claims to a particular religious belief, or they are just ignorant of the facts and become frustrated when trying to prove that what they “know” is true. The latter applies to Christians at large. It is important to take note that by Christians we are not referring to that mass conglomeration of religions that espouse Christian beliefs but rather those individuals who believe that Christ lived and died and rose from the grave on the third day, and that one must accept Christ as Savior in order to have eternal life with God after death. The Bible only uses the term Christian three times in the entire New Testament text. It is the Christian, as just defined, who particularly sets up barriers to skepticism and argument owing to the fact that most do not know the facts that substantiate the claims to their faith or how to effectively reason with someone who initially approaches the claims of the Scriptures from a cerebral point of view. For one of a non-Christian background, the Bible can appear to be a maze with no more authority than any of the other thousands of “religious” books man has followed.

The goal of this chapter is to give thinking persons compelling evidence that will cause the Bible to be looked upon in a new light. I was fortunate in harnessing the time, resources, and assistance of Josh McDowell, one of the world’s leading apologetic authorities. Apologetics is the study of the historic authenticity of the Christian faith from a factual perspective. McDowell’s texts were developed out of an unusual course of events. As a brilliant university student, he set out to disprove the Christian faith with arguments based upon historical facts. After two years he found the physical evidence so overwhelming, that he became a Christian as earlier defined. Now, many years later, McDowell is acknowledged to be one of the foremost university campus lecturers speaking before an estimated three-quarters of a million people every year. It is upon McDowell’s and Mark Lundeen’s research that we will base this section of the text.

The area of discussion we will pursue in this chapter is biblical prophecy. The reason this particular subject has been chosen is because one can analyze specific facts of a historical nature and then make an intelligent decision based upon these facts rather than one’s own philosophy- A random statement such as, “I would believe in biblical prophecy if it could be proven scientifically,” does not apply. Scientific proof is based on showing that something is a fact by repeating the event in the presence of the person questioning the fact. There is a controlled environment where observations can be made, data drawn, and hypotheses empirically verified.

The scientific method, however it is defined, is related to measurement of phenomena and experimentation or repeated observation. When dealing with a historical event and a prediction made before the event in question, one must apply legal-historical proof, a term coined by McDowell. Testing the truth of a hypothesis by the use of controlled experiments is one of the key techniques of the modern scientific method. Far example, somebody says, “Ivory soap doesn’t float.” So I take the person to the kitchen, put eight inches of water in the sink at 82.7°, and drop in the soap. Plunk. Observations are made, data are drawn, and a hypothesis is empirically verified: Ivory soap floats.

Now if the scientific method was the only method of proving something, you couldn’t prove that you went to your first hour class this morning or that you had lunch today. There’s no way you can repeat those events in a controlled situation. Now here’s what is called the legal-historical proof, which is based on showing that something is fact beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, a verdict is reached on the basis of the weight of the evidence. That is, there’s no reasonable basis for doubting the decision. It depends upon three types of testimony: oral testimony, written testimony, and exhibits (such as a gun, bullet, notebook).

Using the legal method of determining what happened, you could pretty well prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you were in class this morning: your (friends saw you, you have your notes, the professor remembers you. The scientific method can be used only to prove repeatable things; it isn’t adequate for proving or disproving many questions about a person or event in history. The scientific method isn’t appropriate for answering such questions as “Did George Washington live?” “Was Martin Luther King a civil rights leader?” “Who was Jesus of Nazareth?” “Was Robert Kennedy attorney general of the U.S.A.?” “Was Jesus Christ raised from the dead?” These are out of the realm of scientific proof, and we need to put them in the realm of legal proof.”

As we will be dealing with predictions of specific historical events, we shall define history as, “knowledge of the past based upon testimony.” As McDowell stated, there are three kinds of testimony. We shall only be concerned with the qualifications of written testimony, since we will deal with predictions that were written. There are three tests to establish the validity of written testimony. They are the bibliographical test, internal-evidence test, and external test. The bibliographical test can be defined as follows:

The bibliographical test is an examination of the textual transmission by which documents reach us. In other words, not having the original documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to the number of manuscripts (MSS) and the time interval between the original and extant (existing) copy?

As an English major in college, I was taught that Homer had written the Illiad. This is based upon the fact that we have 643 manuscripts which are ascribed to Homer, the earliest of which dates to 400 B.C.. As the Illiad was originally penned by Homer around 900 B.C., a gap of 500 years exists between the original text and the extant (existing) text. The New Testament, in comparison, offers us over 24,000 manuscripts. William Albright, one of the world’s foremost biblical archaeologists, stated: “We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about AD. 80.

Sir Frederic Kenyon, who was the director and principal librarian at the British Museum and second to none in authority in issuing statements about manuscripts, concludes:

“The interval then between dates or original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity ot the Books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.”

We shall deal with the bibliographical test for the New Testament a little later. The internal-evidence test determines whether the written record is credible and to what extent. John W. Montgomery states:

“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.”

The internal evidence test will be applied to both the Old and New Testament to verify the historical content and accuracy of transmission of both texts. The last test is that of external evidence. Here we are concerned with “whether other historical material confirms or denies the internal testimony of the documents themselves. In other words, what sources are there, apart from the literature under analysis, that substantiate its accuracy, reliability, and authenticity.”

We will apply each test to both the Old and New Testament. As you follow carefully along, you will discover some of the most incredible facts of the most published book in history. After we have tested the validity of Ihe physical accuracy of the Bible, we can then examine the prophecies made, and you will discover that there is no book that has ever been penned in the history of the world that has the same perfect record concerning the predicting of historical events.

THE OLD TESTAMENT
There are only a few hundred manuscripts that we have for the Old Testament. The Old Testament track record of being duplicated by hand-written means is stunning when one is aware of the rigid laws governing the transcribing of the Scriptures. Samuel Davidson in the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament lists regimens that the Talmudists (A.D. 100-500) observed. Here follows a sampling:

1. An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from which the transcriber ought not in the least deviate
2. No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory
3. Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene
4. Between every book, three lines
5. The copyist must sit in full Jewish dress
6. Wash his whole body
7. Not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink

Between the seventh and tenth centuries B.C.; Jewish scholars called Masoretes gathered primarily in Tiberias and developed an intricate system for transcribing the Old Testament, which has resulted in the standard Hebrew text used today. Below are a few of their meticulous rules for transcription:

1. Counted the number of times each letter in the alphabet occurs in each book
2. Numbered the verses, words, and letters of every book and calculate the middle letter of each
3. Pointed out the middle letter of the Pentateuch and the whole Hebrew Bible (It should be noted that these calculations were made and committed to memory by mnemonics and always checked against the original text.)

Is it any wonder then that the Old Testament is almost a carbon copy of that which was originally penned? The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 completely solidified the question of whether the scrolls had been precisely transmitted since the initial completion of the Old Testament in 400 B.C. The argument that persisted prior to this great discovery was this:

Since the oldest manuscript that we have dates around A.D. 900, how do we know that the Old Testament was accurately transmitted since the time of Christ in A.D. 32? The Dead Sea Scrolls answered that question forever. The date of the writing of the different scrolls dates as early as 200 B.C. The Book of Isaiah, for example, is dated by paleographers around 125 B.C. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed the unprecedented accurate transmission of a document of antiquity over a period of 1000 years!

As the bibliographical test for the Old Testament has been passed with flying colors, let us take a look at the internal and external evidences that support the historical exactness of the Old Testament.

DR. WILSON, STAND AND TAKE A BOW
Modern archaeology has confirmed the accuracy of biblical reporting. An argument that persisted among liberal theologians was that Moses could not have written the first five books of the Old Testament-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy because there wasn’t a written language in existence during the lifetime of Moses. This theory fell in 1974 when Dr. Paolo Matthiae, one of Italy’s leading archaeologists, discovered the greatest archaeological find of the seventies: Ebla. At this find, located in northeast Syria between the cities of Ur and Aleppo, were discovered over 16,000 cuneiform tablets in several different languages which predated Moses by one thousand years! And the languages demonstrate the same degree of sophistication as the Old Testament text penned by Moses. Ebla also confirmed the actual existence of several key cities listed in the Old Testament that were thought to be fictitious. Two of these cities were Sodom and Gomorrah. In the tablets discovered, were economic transactions that showed Ebla was a powerful city and collected taxes from Sodom and Gomorrah-cities that many thought were invented in the Old Testament text to illustrate the serious consequences of what happens to a people when they turn from God. There are literally hundreds of other examples that could be quoted to demonstrate the astounding accuracy of the historical content of the Bible. We will examine one of these discoveries made by the amazing Dr. Robert Dick Wilson.

Born in 1886, in Pennsylvania, Dr. Wilson received his doctorate at the College of New Jersey, which later became known as Princeton University. He subsequently attended the University of Berlin, in Germany, and then taught Old Testament courses at Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh. When in Germany, Dr. Wilson made a decision. This is his own personal account. “I was twenty-five then; and I judged from the life of my ancestors that I would live to be seventy; so that I should have forty-five years to work. I divided the period into three parts. The first fifteen years I would devote to the study of the languages necessary. For the second fifteen I was going to devote myself to the study of the text of the Old Testament; and I reserved the last fifteen years for the work of writing the results of my previous studies and investigations so as to give them to the world.” “Most of our students used to go to Germany, and they heard professors give lectures which were the results of their own labours. The students took everything because the professor said it. I went there to study so that there would be no professor on earth that could lay down the law for me, or say anything without my being able to investigate the evidence on which he said it.”

“Now I consider that what was necessary in order to investigate the evidence was, first of all, to know the languages in which the evidence is given. So I determined that I would learn all the languages that throw light upon the Hebrew, and also the languages into which the Bible had been translated down to A.D. 600, so that I could investigate the text myself.”

This statement was not a casual one for Dr. Wilson mastered forty-five languages and dialects in his first fifteen years! He was able to read the New Testament in nine different languages and had memorized a Hebrew translation of the New Testament text syllable for syllable! Dr. Walvoord, president of Dallas Theological Seminary, called Dr. Wilson “probably the outstanding authority on ancient languages of the Middle East.” Dr. Wilson’s forty-five years of research led him to make the following conclusive statement, “I can affirm that there is not a page of the Old Testament concerning which we need have any doubt.” What follows is an example unparalleled by any other document of antiquity for transmission over a period of over a thousand years of historical information.

Take the following case. There are twenty-nine ancient kings whose names are mentioned not only in the Bible but also on monuments of their own time; many of them under their own supervision. There are one hundred and ninety-five consonants in these twenty-nine proper names. Yet we find that in the documents of the Hehrew Old Testament there are only two or three out of the entire hundred and ninety-five about which there can be any question of their being written in exactly the same way as they were inscribed on their own monuments. Some of these go back for two thousand years, some for four thousand; and are so written that every letter is clear and correct. This is surely a wonder.

Compare this accuracy with that of other writings–take the list made by the greatest scholar of his age, the librarian at Alexandria in 200 B.C. He compiled a catalogue of the Kings of Egypt, thirty-eight in all; of the entire number only three or four of them are recognizable. He also made a list of the kings of Assyria; in only one case can we tell who is meant; and that one is not spelled correctly. Or take Ptolemy, who drew up a register of eighteen of the kings of Babylon. Not one of them is properly spelled; you could not make them out at all if you did not know from other sources to what he is referring. If any one talks against the Bible, ask him about the kings mentioned in it. There are twenty-nine kings of Egypt, lsrael, Moab, Damascus, Tyre., Babylon, Assyria, and Persia, referred to and ten different countries among these twenty-nine; all of which are included in the Bible accounts and those of the monuments. Every one of these is given his right name in the Bible, his right country, and placed in the correct chronological order. Think what that means!

Thanks to Dr. Wilson’s efforts, one can be assured beyond a reasonable doubt that the Bible is an astoundingly accurate document that is unmatched for the transmission of historic events when examined through either external or internal evidential proofs. For those seriously interested in other evidences confirmed through archaeological discoveries, I suggest consulting the source Notes for this chapter.

WILL THE NEW TESTAMENT TAKE THE STAND?
As has been demonstrated through an examination of the evidence, the Old Testament is a trustworthy and sound historical document. If the Old Testament is not historically sound, then we would have no assurance that the predictions which will now be examined in the Old Testament were not changed down through the centuries. The New Testament has just as an astounding track record.

When applying the bibliographical test as earlier stated, we have over 24,000 manuscripts versus the Illiad’s 643. So, from a manuscript position alone, the New Testament has more manuscript authority than any ten pieces of classical literature of the same time period combined! What is even more striking is the time variance. There is a time lag of 500 years between the original text of the Illiad and the extant copy, while the New Testament dates about A.D. 80 or roughly 50 years after the historical events documented. William Albright states:

In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew between the forties and the eighties of the first A.D. (very probably sometime between about 50 and 75).

We can conclude that the New Testament meets every requirement to pass a rigid bibliographical test. The historical accuracy of the New Testament can now be scrutinized for internal and external proofs. Because of the short time span between the accounts detailed in the New Testament and their being written down and distributed, the writers had to be deadly accurate in their reporting, or critics could easily discredit the new Christian faith. The New Testament accounts of the life of Jesus and His teachings, for example, were written by men who were either eyewitnesses or who recorded eyewitness accounts of the events and teachings surrounding the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word have handed them down to us, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus. Luke 1:1-3 NAS

For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. 2 Peter 1:16 NAS

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the regions of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene. Luke 3:1 NAS

If there were discrepancies of either an intentional or unintentional nature, there would have arisen statements from critics to set right the inaccuracies. Nothing has been found to make a significant case from contemporaries of the apostles.

The New Testament accounts of Christ were being circulated within the lifetimes of those alive at the time of His life. These people could certainly confirm or deny the accuracy of the accounts. In advocating their case for the gospel, the apostles had appealed (even when confronting their most severe opponents) to common knowledge concerning Jesus. They not only said, “Look, we saw this” or “We heard that …” but they turned the tables around and right in front of adverse critics said, “You also know about these things … You saw them; you yourselves know about it.” One had better be careful when he says to his opposition, “You know this also.” because if he isn’t right in the details, it will be shoved right back down his throat.”

Acts 2:22 (NAS) illustrates this point:
Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know….

New Testament scholar Robert Grant of the University of Chicago concludes:

At the time they (the synoptic gospels) were written or may be supposed to have been written, there were eyewitnesses and their testimony was not completely disregarded…. This means that the gospels must be regarded as largely reliable witnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.”

Will Durant, who was trained in the discipline of historical investigation, and spent his life analyzing records of antiquity, writes:

Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelist, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed-the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest, Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character. and teaching of Christ remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.”

There is little doubt that the writers of the New Testament tried, in as fair and as straightforward a manner as possible, to put down the facts with the information that they had available to them. This information was derived from their own eyewitness accounts as well as the eyewitness accounts of others. Archaeological discoveries have consistently borne out the historical accuracy with which the events in the New Testament were detailed. The delails of the circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus are another example of sound historical documentation.

There was a time when scholars believed that Luke was inaccurate in detailing the events at the time of the birth of Christ. The argument persisted that: (1) there was no census; (2) Quirinius was not the governor of Syria; (3) everyone did not have to return to his ancestral home.

First of all, archaeological discoveries prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Romans had a regular enrollment of taxpayers and also held censuses every 14 years. This procedure was indeed begun under Augustus and the first took place in either 23-22 B.C. or in 9-8 B.C.

Secondly, we find evidence that Quirinius was governor of Syria around 7 B.C. This assumption is based on an incription found in Antioch ascribing to Quirinius this post. As a result of this finding, it is now supposed that he was governor twice. Once in 7 B.C. and the other time in A.D. 6.

Lastly, in regard to the practices of enrollment, a papyrus found in Egypt gives directions for the conduct of a census. It reads: “Because of the approaching census it is necessary that all those residing for any cause away from their homes should at once prepare to return to their own governments in order that they may complete the family registration of the enrollment and that the tilled lands may retain those belonging to them.”

Even under minute scrutiny the New Testament has an amazing track record concerning seemingly insignificant documentation.

Also in doubt were Luke’s usages of certain words. Luke refers to Philippi as a “part” or “district” of Macedonia. He uses the Greek word meris which is translated “part” or “district.” F.J.A. Hort believed Luke wrong in this usage. He said that meris referred to a “portion” not a “district,” thus, his grounds for disagreement. Archaeological excavations, however, have shown that this very word, meris was used to describe the divisions of the district. Thus, archaeology has again shown the accuracy of Luke.

The stunning accuracy of Luke’s account of the gospel caused a former skeptic of the New Testament’s historical accuracy to recant his former opinions in light of key archaeological discoveries. Sir William Ramsay, one of the greatest archaeologists of all time wrote:
Luke is an historian of the first rank . .. this author should be placed along with the greatest of historians.

Luke has demonstrated great accuracy in the recording of two books he has written in the New Testament. Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix demonstrate an even greater accuracy, for the transmission of the entire New Testament in relationship to other works of antiquity when they conclude that:

The New Testament has about 20,000 lines …; the Illiad has about 15,000. Only 40 lines (or about 400 words) of the New Testament are in doubt whereas 764 lines of the Illiad are questioned. This 5 percent textual corruption compares with one half of one percent of similar emendations in the New Testament.

We have now established two axioms vital to the investigation of several specific biblical prophecies:
1. The predictions we will pursue can be categorically assumed to have been transmitted accurately due to the historical proofs provided and demonstrated.
2. We can also conclude that the historical events recorded in the New Testament are accurate due to the scrutiny of bibliographical, internal, and external proofs applied to the text.

An excerpt taken from the book The Fakers 1980 by Danny Korem and Paul Meier M.D. published by Fleming H. Revell Co.

May God bless you as you diligently study His word!

© Curtis Bond 2023