Havben't got time for a long discussion on this. Suffice it to say I believe the Bible is inspired as it claims.
Here is a lecture outline I prepared that responds to the issue of the Bible's reliability, trustworthiness and claims.
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The Uniqueness and Reliability of the Bible
Introduction: What They Have Said about the Bible
U.S. Presidents:
"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." – George Washington, 1st U.S. President
"That Book, sir, is the rock on which our republic rests." – Andrew Jackson, 7th U.S. President
"I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to men. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through this Book." – Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President
"There are a good many problems before the American people today, and before me as President, but I expect to find the solution of those problems just in the proportion that I am faithful in the study of the Word of God." – Woodrow Wilson, 28th U.S. President
"The Bible is endorsed by the ages. Our civilization is built upon its words. In no other book is there such a collection of inspired wisdom, reality, and hope." – Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President
"Within the covers of the Bible are all the answers for all the problems men face. The Bible can touch hearts, order minds, and refresh souls." – Ronald Reagan, 40th U.S. President
Others:
"I have known ninety-five of the world's great men in my time, and of these eighty-seven were followers of the Bible." – W.E. Gladstone
"The Bible has been the Magna Charta of the poor and the oppressed. The human race is not in a position to dispense with it." – Thomas Huxley
"The Bible contains a complete series of acts and of historical men to explain time and eternity, such as no other religion has to offer. If it is not the true religion, one is very excusable in being deceived; for everything in it is grand and worthy of God. The more I consider the Gospel, the more I am assured that there is nothing there which is not beyond the march of events and above the human mind. Even the impious themselves have never dared to deny the sublimity of the Gospel, which inspires them with a sort of compulsory veneration. What happiness that Book procures for those who believe it!" – Napoleon Bonaparte
"The New Testament is the very best Book that ever was or ever will be known in the world." – Charles Dickens
“"The Bible is worth all other books which have ever been printed." – Patrick Henry
"The existence of the Bible, as a book for the people, is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced: Every attempt to belittle it is a crime against society." – Immanuel Kant
"It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the ground-work of human freedom." – Horace Greeley
“What the brush is to the artist in painting a picture, what the hammer is to the carpenter in driving a nail, what water is to the laundress in washing clothes, so the Bible is to God in saving souls.” – Donald Grey Barnhouse
The Uniqueness of the Bible
I. Uniqueness Seen in It’s Continuity:
A. HERE IS A BOOK THAT WAS WRITTEN...
1. Over a long period of time
a. About 1600 years
b. A span of 40 generations
2. By approximately 40 authors from every walk of life
a. Moses, political leader trained in the universities of Egypt
b. Peter, fisherman
c. Amos, herdsman
d. Joshua, military general
e. Nehemiah, cup bearer to the king of Persia
f. Daniel, prime minister in the courts of Babylon
g. Luke, physician
h. Solomon, philosopher king
i. Matthew, tax collector
j. Paul, rabbi and tentmaker
3. In different places
a. Moses in the wilderness
b. Jeremiah in a dungeon
c. Daniel on a hillside, and in a palace
d. Paul inside prison walls
e. Luke while traveling
f. John in exile on the isle of Patmos
g. Others in the rigors of a military campaign
4. At different times
a. David in times of war
b. Solomon in times of peace
5. During different moods
a. Some writing from the heights of joy
b. Others from the depths of sorrow and despair
6. On three continents: Asia, Africa, Europe
7. In three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek
8. With subject matter involving hundreds of controversial topics, such as:
a. The origin of man and the universe
b. The nature of God
c. The nature of man, sin, and man's redemption
B. YET THERE IS HARMONY AND CONTINUITY...
1. For example:
a. "The Paradise Lost of the book of Genesis becomes the Paradise Regained of Revelation."
b. "Whereas the gate to the Tree of Life is closed in Genesis, it is opened forevermore in Revelation." (Geisler and Nix)
2. Compare the continuity of the Bible with any other writings of men
a. Imagine what you would have it you took just ten authors...
1) From one walk of life, one generation, one place, one time, one mood, one continent, one language
2) Speaking on just one controversial subject b. You would have a conglomeration of conflicting ideas, not harmony!
II. Uniqueness Seen in It’s Circulation:
A. THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE...
1. One of the first major books translated
a. E.g., the Septuagint version of the OT
b. Translated into Greek in 250 B.C.
2. By 1800 there were 66 languages with some portion of Scripture, 40 with the whole Bible.
Since 1800....
B. THE CIRCULATION OF THE BIBLE...
1. As of 1804 - 409 million copies
2. As of 1932 - one and a third billion copies --
"The world's best-selling and most widely distributed book is the Bible, with an estimated 2.5 billion copies sold, 1815- 1975." - Guinness Book of World Records
"No other book has known the anything approaching this constant circulation" – The Cambridge History of the Bible
III. Uniqueness Seen in It’s Survival:
A. ITS SURVIVAL THROUGH TIME...
1. Though written on material that perishes...
a. ...having to be copied and recopied for hundreds of years by hand
b. ...its style, correctness, or existence did not diminish
2. Compared with other ancient writings, the manuscript evidence of the Bible:
a. Is greater than any 10 pieces of classical literature combined!
b. Is sufficient to ensure that we are reading the words of the original
B. ITS SURVIVAL THROUGH PERSECUTION...
1. Many have tried to burn it, ban it, and otherwise outlaw it
a. From the days of Roman emperors
b. To the present Communist-dominated countries
2. Two illustrations of its survival through persecution:
a. In 303 A.D., the Roman emperor Diocletian issued an edict to stop Christians from worshiping, and to destroy their scriptures. Only 25 years later the Roman emperor Constantine called for 50 copies of the Bible to be prepared at the expense of the government!
b. Voltaire, French atheist who died in 1778, predicted that Christianity would be swept from existence and pass into history within 100 years of his time. 50 years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society used his printing press and house to produce stacks of Bibles!
"All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the LORD endures forever."
IV. Uniqueness Seen in It’s Claims:
2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work
2 Peter 1:20-21
20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 5:18
18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
The Reliability of the Bible
I. The New Testament
• Manuscripts: There are more than 24,000 partial and complete manuscript copies of the New Testament and they are available for inspection now.
• Variants: In the many thousands of manuscript copies we possess of the New Testament, scholars have discovered that there are some 150,000 "variants."Many of these variants simply involve a missing letter in a word; some involve reversing the order of two words (such as "Christ Jesus" instead of "Jesus Christ"); some may involve the absence of one or more insignificant words. Really, when all the facts are put on the table, only about 50 of the variants have any real significance - and even then, no doctrine of the Christian faith or any moral commandment is effected by them.
• Time Gap: The average secular work from antiquity survives on only a handful of manuscripts; the New Testament boasts thousands. The average gap between the original composition and the earliest copy is over 1,000 years for other books. The New Testament, however, has a fragment within one generation from its original composition, whole books within about 100 years from the time of the autograph [original manuscript], most of the New Testament in less than 200 years, and the entire New Testament within 250 years from the date of its completion.
• Early Citations: There are over 86,000 quotations of the New Testament in the early church fathers. There are also New Testament quotations in thousands of early church Lectionaries (worship books). There are enough quotations from the early church fathers that even if we did not have a single copy of the Bible, scholars could still reconstruct all but 11 verses of the entire New Testament from material written within 150 to 200 years from the time of Christ.
"If we compare the present state of the text of the New Testament with that of no matter what other ancient work, we must...declare it marvelously exact."
– B.B. Warfield
“The evidence for the New Testament writing is ever so much greater than for many writing of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning... And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would be regarded as beyond all doubt.”
– F.F. Bruce
I. The Old Testament
• The Scribe - The scribe was considered a professional person in antiquity. No printing presses existed, so people were trained to copy documents. The task was usually undertaken by a devout Jew. The Scribes believed they were dealing with the very Word of God and were therefore extremely careful in copying. They did not just hastily write things down. Samuel Davidson describes some of the disciplines of the Talmudists (scribes) in regard to the Scriptures.
“A synagogue roll must be written on the skins of clean animals, prepared for the particular use of the synagogue by a Jew. These must be fastened together with strings taken from clean animals. Every skin must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex. The length of each column must not extend over less than 48 or more than 60 lines; and the breadth must consist of thirty letters. The whole copy must be first-lined; and if three words be written without a line, it is worthless. The ink should be black, neither red, green, nor any other color, and be prepared according to a definite recipe. An authentic copy must be the examplar, from which the transcriber ought not in the least deviate. No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory, the scribe not having looked at the codex before him …… Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene; between every new parashah, or section, the breadth of nine consonants; between every book, three lines. The fifth book of Moses must terminate exactly with a line; but the rest need not do so. Besides this, the copyist must sit in full Jewish dress, wash his whole body, not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink, and should a king address him while writing that name he must take no notice of him."
Davidson adds that "The rolls in which these regulations are not observed are condemned to be buried in the ground or burned; or they are banished to the schools, to be used as reading books."
• The Massoretic Text - During the early part of the tenth century (916 A.D.), there was a group of Jews scribes called the Massoretes who were also meticulous in their copying. The texts they had were all in capital letters, and there was no punctuation or paragraphs. The Massoretes would copy Isaiah, for example, and when they were through, they would total up the number of letters. Then they would find the middle letter of the book. If it was not the same, they made a new copy. All of the present copies of the Hebrew text which come from this period are in remarkable agreement.
• The Dead Sea Scrolls & Isaiah Scroll - In 1947, a young Bedouin goat herdsman found some strange clay jars in caves near the valley of the Dead Sea. Inside the jars were some leather scrolls. The scrolls have revealed that a commune of monastic farmers flourished in the valley from 150 B.C. to 70 A.D. It is believed that when they saw the Romans invade the land they put their cherished leather scrolls in the jars and hid them in the caves on the cliffs northwest of the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea Scrolls include a complete copy of the Book of Isaiah, a fragmented copy of Isaiah, containing much of Isaiah 38-6, and fragments of almost every book in the Old Testament. These materials are dated around 100 B.C. Interest in it was especially keen since it antedates by more than a thousand years the oldest Hebrew texts preserved in the Massoretic tradition.”
A comparison of the Qumran manuscript of Isaiah with the Massoretic text revealed them to be extremely close in accuracy to each other: A comparison of Isaiah 53 shows that only 17 letters differ from the Massoretic text. Ten of these are mere differences in spelling (like our "honor" and the English "honour") and produce no change in the meaning at all. Four more are very minor differences, such as the presence of a conjunction (and) which are stylistic rather than substantive. The other three letters are the Hebrew word for "light." This word was added to the text by someone after "they shall see" in verse 11. Out of 166 words in this chapter, only this one word is really in question, and it does not at all change the meaning of the passage. We are told by biblical scholars that this is typical of the whole manuscript of Isaiah."
Conclusion: The “Diary of a Bible”
Jan. 15 -- Been resting for a week. A few nights after the first of the year my owner opened me, but no more. Another New Year's resolution gone wrong.
Feb. 3 -- Owner picked me up and rushed off to Sunday school.
Feb. 23 -- Cleaning day, dusted and put back in my place.
April 2 -- Busy day. Owner had to present the lesson at a church society meeting. Quickly looked up a lot of references.
May 5 -- In Grandma's lap again, a comfortable place.
May 9 -- She let a tear fall on John 14:1-3.
May 10 -- Grandma's gone. Back in my old place.
May 20 -- Baby born. They wrote his name on one of my pages.
July 1 -- Packed in a suitcase -- off for a vacation.
July 20 -- Still in the suitcase. Almost everything else taken out.
July 25 -- Home again. Quite a journey, though I don't see why I went.
Aug. 16 -- Cleaned again and put in a prominent place; the minister is to be here for dinner.
Aug. 20 -- Owner wrote Grandma's death in my family record. He left his extra pair of glasses between my pages.
Dec. 31 -- Owner just found his glasses. Wonder if he will make any resolutions about me for the new year.
“Sin will keep you from this Book - or - this Book will keep you from sin” – D.L. Moody