The Lord preserves His Word. It’s certainly not a human work. The Bible is amazing in that it’s self-authenticating. The more you read, the more you see and understand. I’m thankful I’ve been given eyes to see.
My only real takeaway is that it can’t be 100% correct all the time because of ingredients like this ...
Deuteronomy 21:18 - 21:21
I'm as flummoxed by soycd as you are, but I'm afraid the above statement is wrong.
Only G-d Himself is self-authenticating. The Bible can only be believed because G-d has vouched for it.
The Bible does not provide internal proof for the authorship of the Books of Moses nor the four Gospels nor several of the Epistles. It does not even "authenticate" what its own books are.
The Bible does not define itself: it does not have a "ship manifest" to tell you what's on board, what's part of the cargo and what is not. It doesn't have its own Table of Contents. It did not drop down from Heaven as a set of handsome matched scrolls, and it did not put itself together in leather binding with an index tab for each book. It could not, since so many Bibles have different books.
Somebody put the Bible(s) together. Some assembly was needed.
In order to do that, the person (or body or community) that did that, would have to have authority; because otherwise you have a supposedly authoritative book with no fully authoritative content: impossible.
Either Yohanan ben Zakkai and his circle had the authority, or the 70 scholars of the Septuagint had the authority; or Beth Shammai, or Beth Hillel; or the Masoretes had the authority (6th-10th century AD --- and they were the first ones to devise a Hebrew text with vowels!); or the early Church in its practice and its councils had the authority; or the Syriac, or Armenian, or Georgian, or Egyptian Coptic and Ethiopian Churches had the authority; or a committee of 17th century British royalists in London; or maybe the Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City; maybe they had the authority --- or not.
You've heard this before.
Where in the above list would you put your checkmark? Or do you have a different authority? Your own?
In what sense can the Bible be said to be self-authenticating?
Or maybe the Oral Torah is to be included, since according to the sages, it was communicated to Moses on Mount Sinai along with the written Torah (the Scriptures). For centuries, the Torah appeared as a written text only when transmitted in parallel with the oral tradition, whichguaranteed its authentic interpretation. ("Authentic." What does this do to the concept of "self-authenticating"?)
This authentic communication was memorized and often transmitted ipsissimi verbi by singing/chanting through the generations until Rabbi Yehudah haNasi was granted authority to inscribe it. His edition of Oral Torah is called The Mishnah. If that's part of God's Own revelation of Himself at Sinai, and it originated from God and had been preserved by His Providence for all the generations of His Chosen People from Moses to Yehuda haNasi, that's Torah, too.
St. Jerome didn't advert to it, as far as I know, though the Mishna in written form had been around for a century or more.
Interesting.