Chapter 2. Are the Biblical Documents Trustworthy?
Having noted just a few of the many problems with the world’s current propositions {and given these problems I suspect more evolutionists will try to hide by talking up ideas like panspermia and multi-verses, thereby placing their “science” beyond reasonable examination; run Darwin run!}, we shall now show how the Bible is reliable, despite the abuse it has received over the last few centuries. We shall do this in three ways. First, we will continue our scientific inquiries by noting how the Bible’s controversial first book, Genesis, is actually very scientifically accurate. Second, we shall examine how archaeology also confirms the early histories found in Genesis (that are so often mocked). Last, we shall quickly run through the evidence that the books selected for canonization were faithfully chosen and accurately related throughout their many centuries of existence.
1. Explaining Our Age
Faith in the Bible is not blind faith. Very clearly this is a collection of documents that were written by someone who truly knows all, as the science of Genesis showcases.
Let’s begin demonstrating this with a few simple scientific laws/truths (most of which have already been mentioned above), showing how Genesis {and Job, which predates it} stated their existence thousands of years ago…
<The universe had a beginning (Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 1:10-12). Starting with the studies of Albert Einstein in the early 1900s and continuing today, science has confirmed the biblical view that the universe had a beginning. When the Bible was written most people believed the universe was eternal. Science has proven them wrong, but the Bible correct…
The Bible states that God created life according to kinds (Genesis 1:24). The fact that God distinguishes kinds, agrees with what scientists observe -- namely that there are horizontal genetic boundaries beyond which life cannot vary. Life produces after its own kind. Dogs produce dogs, cats produce cats, roses produce roses. Never have we witnessed one kind changing into another kind as evolution supposes. There are truly natural limits to biological change…
Our bodies are made from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7; 3:19). Scientists have discovered that the human body is comprised of some 28 base and trace elements -- all of which are found in the earth…
The First Law of Thermodynamics established (Genesis 2:1-2 {“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts” -- NASB}). The First Law dictates that the total quantity of energy and matter in the universe is a constant. One form of energy or matter may be converted into another, but the total quantity always remains the same. Therefore the creation is finished, exactly as God said way back in Genesis…*1
<The oldest book in the Bible, the Book of Job, pre-dates Christ by about two thousand years. Yet Job 26:7 says, "He hangs the earth on nothing." In the sacred books of other religions you may read that the earth is on the backs of elephants that produce earthquakes when they shake. The cosmogony of Greek mythology is at about the same level of sophistication. But the Bible is in a completely different class. It says, "He . . . hangs the earth on nothing"…
Job also says that the earth is "turned like the clay to the seal" (38:14, KJV*). In those days, soft clay was used for writing and a seal was used for applying one's signature. One kind of seal was a hollow cylinder of hardened clay with a signature raised on it. A stick went through it so that it could be rolled like a rolling pin. The writer could, therefore, roll his signature across the soft clay and in that way sign his name. In saying the earth is turned like the clay to the seal, Job may have implied that it rotates on its axis {also as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the fact that Jesus Christ predicted darkness and brightness being on the earth at the same moment (Luke 17:34-36; TR) shows his knowledge beyond the language of the people} (from You Can Trust the Bible by John Macarthur).
Moving on, it’s also astounding that all the pronouncements concerning the major themes of human life that we find in Genesis are still valid. For example, Adam was told that he would only eat bread by the sweat of his brow, and that thorns and thistles would spring up for him (Genesis 3:18-19). After thousands of years and after all the advances via technology, we are all still plagued by the weariness of the world of work and the constant little problems that spring up in the midst of our labours.
Eve was told that childbearing would be a very painful experience (Genesis 3:16). Despite all the epidurals and various other helps, medical science has still not been able to make this pronouncement void.
The years of man were set at the maximum of 120 years in Genesis 6:3; very few get close to this number, and even fewer ever transgress it. Again, medical science is no match for God’s Word.
In Genesis 8:22 it states, “Seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” [NASB]. Every season is a tribute to his faithfulness.
Why do we wear clothes? What is modesty? What is shame? Why do we feel bad when we transgress sound morality? Only Genesis can answer these questions.
Couple all these constants with the other bits of foreknowledge and we see a world remarkably predicted by God from the very beginning. Compare this to the olden poems of the pagans. They are filled with gore, carnal superstition, and the most banal allegorical explanations for the mysterious things of life…
<For, the whole universe consisting of moisture, and animals being generated therein, the deity above-mentioned took off his own head: upon which the other gods mixed the blood, as it gushed out, with the earth; and from whence were formed men. On this account it is that they are rational and partake of divine knowledge (from the History of Babylonia).*2
Finally, before leaving this topic, let’s call to mind one of the most important themes of Genesis and of the Bible at large: the remarkable Jewish people.
Why after thousands of years of recorded history is the little nation of Israel still the focal point of the world? Why is one small race still the most important? It’s been about 4,000 years since Abraham (Abram) was called out from Shinar to be the father of God’s inheritance in the early chapters of Genesis; how did Moses know that this would be a perpetually decisive act?
These people have been the object of the world’s hatred since that time, and yet they still thrive. Why have they had so many various enemies throughout history? Why do so many currently wish to see the nation of Israel pushed into the Mediterranean? What dark energy turns the media against this people and fills the minds of the brain-washed-millennials with anti-Semitism?
Their enemies cannot succeed because the Lord has sworn to multiply their number as the stars of the heaven and as the grains of sand on the earth. Incidentally, herein is found another interesting bit of science…
<The Bible compares the number of stars with the number of grains of sand on the seashore (Genesis 22:17; Hebrews 11:12). Amazingly, gross estimates of the number of sand grains are comparable to the estimated number of stars in the universe.*1
Think about it; how did ancient man know the stars were so numerous?
2. Dusty Witnesses
Let’s now move on to our second major set of evidences for this section, considering patriarchal archaeology in brief.
A. The Flood
<Biblical archaeology really begins with the Sumerian civilization of about 2500 BC. To date, numerous sites and artifacts have been uncovered that reveal a great deal about the ancient Mesopotamian culture. One of the most dramatic finds is the Sumerian King List, which dates to approximately 2100 BC. This collection of clay tablets and prisms is most exciting because it divides the Sumerian kings into two categories; those who reigned before the “great flood” and those who reigned after it. The lists are also dramatic because they include the ages of the kings before and after the “great flood,” which show the same phenomenal life span changes mentioned in the Bible. Actually, records of a global flood are found throughout most ancient cultures. For instance, the Epic of Gilgamesh from the ancient Babylonians contains an extensive flood story. Discovered on clay tablets in locations such as Ninevah and Megiddo, the Epic even includes a hero who built a great ship, filled it with animals, and used birds to see if the water had receded.*3
B. Ebla
In 1964 Italian archaeologists began excavating a mound in northern Syria. Eventually they would come across a vast store of clay tablets, dating back to 2500-2000 B.C. The name of the city was called Ebla, and in its documents many gems of Biblical significance were discovered.
<An Eblaite creation hymn was discovered among the tablets, existing in three distinct versions, all of which contain the following verse:
Lord of heaven and earth:
The earth was not, you created it
The light of day was not, you created it
The morning light you had not [yet] made exist…
… Archaeologist Giovanni Pettinato has noted a change in the theophoric personal names in many of the tablets from “-el” to “-yah.” For example “Mika’el” transforms into “Mikaya.” This is considered by some to constitute an early use of the divine name Yah, a god who believed to have later emerged as the Hebrew deity Yahweh…
…Many Old Testament personal names that have not been found in other Near Eastern languages have similar forms in Eblaite {this means that the Bible is accurate in using such names, not that these are records of the patriarchs/matriarchs themselves}, including a-da-mu/Adam, h’à-wa/Eve, Abarama/Abraham, Bilhah, Ishmael, Isûra-el, Esau, Mika-el/Michael, Mikaya/Michaiah, Saul, and David. Also mentioned in the Ebla tablets are many biblical locations: For example, Ashtaroth, Sinai, Jerusalem (Ye-ru-sa-lu-um), Hazor, Lachish, Gezer, Dor, Meggido, Joppa, and so on.*4
C. Sinuhe
Some say that the tale of Sinuhe is the world’s first novel (there’s a debate as to whether it’s fiction or non-fiction). It certainly is very old (c. 2000-1800 B.C.) and very interesting to students of the Bible. The main character flees Egypt and ends up in the land of Canaan; therefore we have a primary source of what life was like in the time of the patriarchs…
<Certain insights can be drawn from the account of Sinuhe’s years in Palestine. For example, Sinuhe’s father-in-law, Ammi-enshi, has an Amorite name. Therefore, the Amorites had definitely arrived in Palestine by the time of the story…
The story reflects a tribal society similar to that pictured in the Book of Genesis. In each account, one man controlled an extended family. When Sinuhe prepared to return to Egypt he turned his property over to his eldest son. The primacy of the eldest son is obvious in the patriarchal stories, most noticeably in the lives of Jacob and Esau.
The setting of the story was a time of tribal armies, serfs, and servants. The full story of Sinuhe reveals a Palestine in which there was crime, attack, plunder, murder, and captivity -- conditions also found in the patriarchal narratives. The story of Sinuhe mentions bows and arrows, shields, battle-axes, javelins, and daggers. This array provides some idea of the weaponry available to Abraham’s militia in Genesis 14. Like Abraham, Sinuhe never lost his outsider status. Abraham considered himself a sojourner in Palestine, and the people of Sodom called Lot an “alien.” Later on, Jacob worried that the local populace would unite against him. The story of Sinuhe illustrates how threatening life could be for an outsider.*5
D. Nuzi
Another ancient Mesopotamian city of Biblical significance is the city of Nuzi. It is located near the Tigris River and dates back to as early as the late third millennium B.C. About 5,000 tablets have been recovered from this site. Many of its customs have been learned, and some of these explain the occasional peculiar behaviour displayed by the patriarchs, such as the selling of Esau’s birthright to Jacob. It also explains the evil treatment of Hagar…
<One law stipulated that if a married couple did not bear children, the wife would permit her husband to lie with a handmaid to produce a child. This will help us to understand why Sarah told Abraham to have relations with Hagar.
The law also stated that if friction arose between the wife and the mistress, the wife could order both the mistress and the child to leave {which Sarah also did; see Genesis 20:10}.*6
E. Mari
A find similar in content to that of Ebla is the site of the city of Mari. It was a Sumerian and Amorite town on the western bank of the Euphrates. It flourished from about 2900 B.C. to 1759 B.C. Many tablets have been discovered there…
<The value of the Mari texts for Biblical studies lies in the fact that Mari is located in the vicinity of the homeland of the Patriarchs, being about 200 mi (320 km) southeast of Haran. It thus shares a common culture with the area where the Patriarchs originated. Some documents detail practices such as adoption and inheritance similar to those found in the Genesis accounts. The tablets speak of the slaughtering of animals when covenants were made, judges similar to the judges of the Old Testament, gods that are also named in the Hebrew Bible, and personal names such as Noah, Abram, Laban and Jacob. A city named Nahur is mentioned, possibly named after Abraham’s grandfather Nahor (Gn 11:22-25), as well as the city of Haran where Abraham lived for a time (Gn 11:31-12:4). Hazor is spoken of often in the Mari texts and there is a reference to Laish (Dan) as well.*7
F. The Hittites
Hittites are mentioned many times in Scripture, including the book of Genesis. Until archaeological finds proved their existence the Bible’s credibility was called into question…
<…In 1870 evidence begin to come to light. The Tel el-Amarna tablets…were found in Egypt. They mentioned the activities of a Hittite army in Palestine. These letters hinted that the Hittite people were based north of Palestine in Asia Minor. In the early 1900s in Boghazkoy, central Turkey, God produced “dead Hittite stones” with living messages. As the archaeologists excavated, inscriptions on massive stone buildings showed that the Hittite Empire flourished in Abraham’s day and that it formed a worthy third with two other empires of importance -- Babylonia-Assyria and Egypt.*8
G. A Narrow Time Frame
<Another interesting archaeological detail confirming the Biblical narrative’s depiction of the lives of the patriarchs is the fact that excavations of places where Abraham lived have shown that these places were occupied only during his lifetime. Places such as the Negev, which in the biblical narratives was frequently visited by Abraham, were not occupied earlier than Abraham’s day or for some eight hundred years later.
Furthermore, the freedom with which Abraham moved through the territories of the ancient Near East is a true reflection of the times in which he lived. Such free access to various lands and countries, such as Syria and Egypt, would not have been possible at other periods of time…
…Joseph was sold into slavery in Genesis 37:28. The biblical narrative records that price as twenty shekels of silver. From the laws of the Babylonian king Hammurapi, a contemporary of Joseph, we know that the price of a slave was precisely twenty shekels.*9
H. The Mural of Khnum-hotep II (an Egyptian Official)
<Dating from the early nineteenth century B.C., this mural shows a group of thirty-seven “Asiatics” arriving in Egypt from the desert. Its inscription reads, “The arrival, bringing eye-paint, which thirty-seven Asiatics brought to him [Khnum-hotep].”
According to the biblical chronology, Jacob and his sons entered Egypt in the year 1876 B.C. That would have been at the last years of the Middle Kingdom, during the reign of Sesostris III (1878-1841 B.C.), the greatest king of the twelfth dynasty. He is known for his administrative reform that took the political power of that region out of the hands of the local feudal lords (nomarchs) and centralized it into the office of a single administrator, the vizier. Though Joseph is not mentioned anywhere in the Egyptian inscriptions, the administrative achievement during the reign of Sesostris is virtually identical to that of the biblical story of Joseph (Gen. 41:41-57).*10
3. Textual Gems
A. The List of Inspired Books (i.e., the Canon)
The way some people speak of the Biblical canon one would think there was some ancient war where hundreds of terrific documents were set aside in lieu of a disputed handful that somehow served the purposes of sinister church fathers. Such ideas are complete fiction. First of all, well over half the canon, i.e., the Old Testament, was personally verified by Jesus Christ and the Apostles, as is easily proved through the New Testament, which not only referred to most of the Old Testament books, but also quoted from the Septuagint.
The Septuagint (abbreviated by the Roman numeral “LXX”) is the major translation of the Old Testament into the Greek language that took place approximately 100-300 years before the birth of Christ. All the books that are in the standard Old Testament are there along with a small collection of other works which some Christian denominations also regard as inspired.
Here’s a snippet about the antiquity of some of the recovered manuscripts:
<The oldest manuscripts of the LXX include 2nd century BCE fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BCE fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Alfred Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943). Relatively complete manuscripts of the LXX postdate the Hexaplar rescension and include the Codex Vaticanus from the 4th century CE and the Codex Alexandrinus of the 5th century. These are indeed the oldest surviving nearly complete manuscripts of the Old Testament in any language; the oldest extant complete Hebrew texts date some 600 years later, from the first half of the 10th century. The 4th century Codex Sinaiticus also partially survives, still containing many texts of the Old Testament.*11
Another great proof of the antiquity of the Old Testament canon is Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. Jerome (c. A.D. 347 - 420) directly translated the Old Testament from the Hebrew into Latin. His major contribution to our discussion is that he translated the standard thirty-nine books. Although he also translated some of the other material from the LXX he didn’t regard this as canonical because it wasn’t in the Hebrew. So here’s a great scholar who worked directly with ancient Hebrew texts and he gives us the exact same Biblical content which we acknowledge today. Moreover, because he wrote such extensive correspondence throughout his translating career it is impossible to deny the historicity of Jerome.
As for the New Testament canon, most of the books were accepted as Scripture almost immediately, as can be seen from internal evidence {i.e., Paul quotes Luke as Scripture -- compare 1 Timothy 5:18 with Luke 10:7; Peter says the writings of Paul are Scripture -- 2 Peter 3:15-16; Jude says the writings of Peter are Scripture -- compare Jude 1:17-18 with 2 Peter 3:3} and from the Muratorian Fragment. The Muratorian Fragment is a 7th century Latin text translated from an early Greek source (c. A.D. 170).*12
It gives a list of books that the church accepted as inspired. The list includes 4 gospels (although two cannot be read because of the state of the fragment, the last two are Luke and John), all of Paul’s letters (except for Hebrews), Jude, two epistles of John, and Revelation (which the writer assumes is written by John as well). There would be a bit of debate about some of the latter Epistles off and on, but it must be stressed that there were only a few that were seriously considered for the canon that didn’t make it, not hundreds!
<There were…several books vying for canonical status that were not included. The overwhelming majority of these were spurious works written by second-century Gnostic heretics. These books were never given serious consideration. (This point is missed by critics who allege that over two thousand contenders yielded a list of twenty-seven. Then they ask, “What are the odds that the correct twenty-seven were selected?”) In fact, only two or three books that were not included ever had real consideration. These were 1 Clement, The Shepherd of Hermas, and The Didache. These books were not included in the canon of Scripture because they were not written by apostles, and the writers themselves acknowledged that their authority was subordinate to the apostles (R.C. Sproul; from Essential Truths of the Christian Faith).
Now since it’s normally the Gospels that are attacked, let’s look at a quote from F.F. Bruce which demonstrates the early acceptance of our current four…
<The first steps in the formation of a canon of authoritative Christian books, worthy to stand beside the Old Testament canon, which was the Bible of our Lord and His apostles, appear to have been taken about the beginning of the second century {the phrase ‘second century’ means from A.D. 100-200; I say that because so many speak as if it means 200-300}…
At a very early date it appears that the four Gospels were united in one collection. They must have been brought together very soon after the writing of the Gospel according to John…About AD 115 Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, refers to ‘The Gospel’ as an authoritative writing, and as he knew more than one of the four ‘Gospels’ it may well be that by ‘The Gospel’ sans phrase he means the fourfold collection which went by that name…About AD 170 an Assyrian Christian named Tatian turned the fourfold Gospel into a continuous narrative or ‘Harmony of the Gospels’, which for long was the favourite if not the official form of the fourfold Gospel in the Assyrian Church…and a fragment of Tatian’s Diatessaron in Greek was discovered in the year 1933 at Dura-Europos on the Euphrates…By the time of Irenaeus, who, though a native of Asia Minor, was bishop of Lyons in Gaul about AD 180, the idea of a fourfold Gospel had become so axiomatic in the Church at large that he can refer to it as an established and recognized fact as obvious as the four cardinal points of the compass or the four winds…*12
B. Accuracy
So even if we know that the books have existed in some form for thousands of years, how do we know they’re accurate? For the Old Testament this question was answered thunderously by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This is the mother of all archaeological finds. In 1947 this antique library that extends to B.C. times was discovered near the Dead Sea. Although portions of just about every Old Testament book have been retrieved, the diamond of diamonds was the recovery of a complete scroll of the book of Isaiah, arguably the most important Old Testament book for Christians. I’ll quote at length about what we’ve learned from it regarding the integrity of our modern Bible. On a footnote, Qumran also proves that as time goes on and more archaeological discoveries come to pass, we are able to come to a more accurate study of the Bible, and not a less accurate one; this directly contradicts the conspiracy theory idea.
<The significance of the find, and particularly the complete book of Isaiah, was recognized by Merrill F. Unger when he said, “This complete document of Isaiah quite understandably created a sensation since it was the first major Biblical manuscript of great antiquity ever to be recovered. Interest in it was especially keen since it antedates by more than a thousand years the oldest Hebrew texts preserved in the Masoretic tradition.”
What was learned? A comparison of the Qumran manuscript of Isaiah with the Masoretic text revealed that both were extremely close in accuracy to each other. “Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen letters in question. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the sense. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word “ligh,” which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly…Thus, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word (three letters) in question after a thousand years of transmission – and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage.”
World-renowned archaeologist Gleason Archer states that the Isaiah copies of the Qumran community “proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The five percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling.”
In his book, Can I Trust My Bible, R. Laird Harris concluded, “We can now be sure that copyists worked with great care and accuracy on the Old Testament, even back to 225 BC…indeed, it would be rash skepticism now to deny that we have our Old Testament in a form very close to that used by Ezra when he taught the word of the Lord to those who had returned from the Babylonian captivity.”
The Dead Sea Scrolls overwhelmingly confirm that the Old Testament has navigated the centuries well. As Notre Dame professor Eugene Ulrich, chief editor of the Qumran Biblical texts for the Oxford Discoveries in the Judean Desert series, observed:
“The scrolls have shown that our traditional Bible has been amazingly accurately preserved for over 2,000 years.”*13
As for New Testament accuracy, let’s look at another quote from F.F. Bruce…
<Perhaps we can appreciate how wealthy the New Testament is in manuscript attestation if we compare the textual material for other ancient historical works. For Caesar’s Gallic War (composed between 58 and 50 BC) there are several extant MSS, but only nine or ten are good, and the oldest is some 900 years later than Caesar’s day…The History of Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC) is known to us from eight MSS, the earliest belonging to c. AD 900, and a few papyrus scraps, belonging to about the beginning of the Christian era. The same is true of the History of Herodotus (c. 48O-425 BC). Yet no classical scholar would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest MSS of their works which are of any use to us are over 1,300 years later than the originals.
But how different is the situation of the New Testament in this respect! In addition to the two excellent MSS of the fourth century mentioned above {referring to the two famous Alexandrian ones}, which are the earliest of some thousands known to us {about 5,000}, considerable fragments remain of papyrus copies of books of the New Testament dated from 100 to 200 years earlier still.
The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, the existence of which was made public in 1931, consist of portions of eleven papyrus codices, three of which contained most of the New Testament writings. One of these, containing the four Gospels with Acts, belongs to the first half of the third century; another, containing Paul’s letters to churches and the Epistle to the Hebrews, was copied at the beginning of the third century; the third, containing Revelation, belongs to the second half of the same century…
…Earlier still is a fragment of a papyrus codex containing John xviii. 31-33, 37ff, now in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, dated on palaeographical grounds around AD 130, showing that the latest of the four Gospels, which was written, according to tradition, at Ephesus between AD 90 and 100, was circulating in Egypt within about forty years of its composition (if, as is most likely, this papyrus originated in Egypt, where it was acquired in 1917). It must be regarded as being, by half a century, the earliest extant fragment of the New Testament.
A more recently discovered papyrus manuscript of the same Gospel, while not so early as the Rylands papyrus, is incomparably better preserved; this is the Papyrus Bodmer II, whose discovery was announced by the Bodmer Library of Geneva in 1956; it was written about AD 200, and contains the first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John with but one lacuna (of twenty two verses), and considerable portions of the last seven chapters…*12
Having thousands of Greek manuscripts and fragments to compare (many of which are quite ancient), along with the voluminous use of the New Testament by the early church Fathers, we have the ability through Textual Criticism to uncover the accuracy of the original documents in a more certain manner than is possible with any other ancient book in the world.