The book that we refer to as the Bible is actually a collection books, a gathering of 66 ancient manuscripts written over the course of about 1500 years. The Scriptures were penned by men of all walks of life the rich, the poor, poets, historians, evangelists, apostles, and kings. The Scriptures contain a single consistent theme of the spiritual redemption of humankind, or the spiritual renovation, the spiritual restoration of people, to God; the drawing of people to God and the meaning that this redemption has on the life that now is and the life that is to come.
In order to determine whether a collection of ancient manuscripts is trustworthy, we must look at the contents of the manuscripts and the date and the distance between the actual events and the time the manuscripts were written. The Bible as a whole is the most precisely copied collection of books from the ancient world. There is no other book in the world that has as many manuscripts, as early, and as accurately copied as the Bible (Geisler). The Bible is authentic among other ancient literary works in terms of the number of ancient manuscripts found and the small gap of time scale between when the work was first written and the oldest surviving copy, thus minimizing the possibility of alteration from the original (Lisle).
We only have a few copies of various other written works from the ancient world. For example, there are only seven surviving copies of the works of the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder. There are only ten surviving copies of the works of Caesar. There are only seven surviving copies of the works of Plato. There are only 643 surviving copies of Homer’s work entitled The Iliad. There are, however, about 5,686 copies of the ancient manuscripts that make up the New Testament, which have survived to this day and the space of time between the original copy and the first surviving copies is only 25 years. The amount of time between the copies of the Iliad by Homer and the original is 500 years and the amount of time between the original copy and the first surviving copy of Plato is 1200 years. The distance of time between the original and the earlies surviving copies of the works of Caesar is 1,000 years. However, no really questions how historically reliable these works are. People study the works of Caesar, Homer, and Plato in schools and universities and seldom, if ever, do they raise any doubt about their trustworthiness. When it comes to the Scriptures, we have an abundance of copies—over 10,000 ancient manuscripts of the Old Testament and there are around 6,000 manuscripts of the New Testament, which are written close to the events they speak of. The number of surviving manuscripts is important because a wealth of manuscripts allows for the reconstruction of the original text and clear translation into English and other languages without losing meaning. However, those who might fully accept the works of Plato and Homer, which have few manuscripts to strengthen their reliability, are skeptical when it comes to the Bible, even in the face of its multiplicity of ancient manuscripts. No one can doubt the reliability or accuracy of the Bible without also doubting, or being skeptical of every other ancient literary work because every other ancient literary work has far fewer ancient manuscripts supporting their authenticity.
It is the careful copying of the ancient manuscripts that has enabled the Bible to be accurately translated, which preserves the content, or the message, of the text. Princeton Professor, Bruce Metzger, compared the Iliad by Homer with the New Testament and concluded that the Iliad is 95 percent pure. The New Testament, according to Professor Metzger, is 99.5 percent pure; 99.5 percent error free (Geisler, Turek, 229). The .5 percent was due to textual variants such as differences in spelling and word order, none of which harm the message or meaning of the text. The New Testament alone is the best attested book from ancient times because of the overwhelming number of manuscripts and the closeness of those manuscripts to the date of the originals. This means that when you pick up a Greek New Testament today, you can be confident that you are reading the text as it was originally written (Craig).
An observation by John Rittenhouse of Biola University, illustrates how seriously ancient writers engaged in the copying of the Bible. According to Rittenhouse, the ancient writers did not copy phrase for phrase or word for word, but letter for letter, in order to ensure that what they were copying was precise. Additionally, Rittenhouse points out that when ancient copyists got to the name of God in the text, they would put their regular writing pen down, wash their hands, pick up a different pen which was only used to write the name of God, with this pen, they would write God’s name, put the pen down, wash their hands, and pick up the old pen and proceed with the copying of the text letter for letter. This illustrates how reverently and meticulously those of the ancient world copied the Scriptures.
We can trust the contents of the Bible not only because of the multiple number of accurate copies, but also because the Bible’s contents are supported by history and archeology. For example, in the nineteenth century, some scholars questioned whether the biblical people known as the Israelites existed. Many came to the conclusion that such a people never lived. However, in 1896 in Thebes, Egypt, a seven foot piece of black granite was discovered. The piece of granite is called a “stela,” which is a vertical stone column that usually displays an inscription. The inscription on this column of ancient black granite spoke of Merneptah, an Egyptian pharaoh. The inscription contained a reference to pharaoh’s conquest of the Israelites (Hutchinson, 24). According to Robert Hutchinson, “Archeologists have precisely dated the stela to year 1209/1208 BC. This is definitive proof that, not only did a people known as Israel exist in the 1200s BC, but they were known in Egypt.”
It was believed by those who refuse to accept the Bible that no such figure as Abraham existed. However, during the early 1920s to the Mid-1930s, archeologist Leonard Wooley excavated the city of Ur, Abraham’s city, Genesis 11:28, 31. It was also believed that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was a myth. But in 1964, archeologists from the University of Rome discovered a palace in the northern part of Syria called Tell Mardikh. Within the palace they discovered 15,000 tablets dated around 2300 BC. The tablets recorded laws, activities, and events of the day. The tablets also mentioned the five cities on the plain… “8 And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim,” Genesis 14:8. It was believed that these cities, and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah never existed. The discovered cities were geographically arranged just as the Old Testament depicts them. Archeologist Clifford Wilson, who wrote Rocks, Relics, and Biblical Reliability, stated that there is enduring evidence in this location, of the great inferno that took place in the long distant past (Strobel, 408). For example, constructions that housed the dead and buried members of this society were destroyed by fires that started on the rooftops, which implies that the fire was “rained down.”
Skeptics once questioned Isaiah 20:1, “1 In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod, (when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him,) and fought against Ashdod, and took it,” because they could find no proof that King Sargon existed. However, in 1843, the palace of King Sargon was discovered at the Assyrian capitol, Khorsabad. The discovery of the palace also included a discovery of both an inscription on a wall and documentation in a library confirming the battle with Ashdod, which is the city mentioned in Isaiah 20:1.
A smart guy named Thomas L. Thompson at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark stated that King David never existed. However, in 1993, archeologists working at Tel Dan in northern Israel discovered a basalt stone which had an inscription on it written in Old Aramaic language. The inscription contained the words, “The House of David.” The rest of the inscription referred to events mentioned in the Old Testament book of 2 Kings. The stone was dated between the end of the ninth or the beginning of the eighth century BC. Also, a stone known as the Moabite stone, which contained several lines of text, stated in line 31, “…And the house of David dwelt in Hauranen…” The Moabite is dated 930 BC (Hutchinson, 25).
Skeptics asserted that there was no evidence that Pontius Pilate existed. Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect, or governor, of the province of Judah, to whom Jesus Christ was delivered to be tried. Pontius Pilate served under the rule of Tiberius Caesar. In 1962, an Italian archaeologist working at Caesarea Maritima discovered an inscription which read, “Tiberius/Pontius Pilate/Prefect of Judea” (Hutchinson, 28).
Sir William Ramsay, a scholar who served as professor of humanities at Aberdeen University in Scotland, who had received the Nobel Peace Prize, and was a specialist when it came to the history and geography of ancient Asia Minor. William Ramsay has been called “one of the greatest archaeologists ever to have lived” (McDowell, 93). Despite Sir William Ramsay’s skepticism of the Bible, he began to investigate the writings of Luke, who was known as the Apostle Paul’s great physician. After Sir William Ramsay’s intensive investigation of the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, the two biblical books written by Luke, Ramsay concluded that, “Luke’s history is unsurpassed in regards to its trustworthiness. You may press the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historian, and they will stand the keenest scrutiny and the hardest treatment. Luke is a historian of the first rank. This author should be laced along with the very greatest of historians…not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy…this author should be placed along with the greatest of historians” (Ramsay, 222). It has been noted that Luke names 32 countries, 54 cities, and nine islands without error (Geisler, 47).
The historical reliability of the Scriptures (much more could be said here) supports the view that the Bible is trustworthy. But the Bible claims to be “inspired of God,” which means that it is “God breathed,” which is the definition of the word “inspiration,” in 2 Timothy 3:16, 17: “16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.”
