Five Minute Defense of Bible History

You Can Trust the Bible (Short Version)

No other book has received the furious attacks directed at the Bible. Ancient texts such as The Iliad are lauded as culturally significant, and few people bother with questioning their origin. Religious texts (take The Quran for instance) are not under fire in anywhere close to the same manner as the Bible (perhaps these "truth-tellers" and fearless skeptics are afraid of what a truly violent and dangerous religion might do to them). Few YouTube channels (except for Christian apologetics) are devoted to outlining the errors of the Vedas or the work of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. There is a special energy reserved for attempting to expose the Bible as unreliable and more full of holes than a block of Swiss cheese.

These critics all have their pet reasons why the Book cannot be trusted. For one thing, it has been translated so many times. Translation after translation makes the Bible rather like a game of telephone, does it not? No one can say if the Bible is anything like the original. Can they? This argument flops faster than LeBron James for at least two reasons (remember this is a three minute drill so we are hitting the highlights).

One, translation does not in itself disqualify something from being accurate. It is used for legal documents, contracts, treaties, and a whole host of other important written communication. If translation by definition meant that a document was now riddled with errors, it would never be used for documents of such gravity. The translators of the Bible were some of the most gifted individuals in history (Jerome, Erasmus, William Tyndale, etc.) and performed their work with the utmost meticulosity (I thought I had coined my own word here, but alas...). This was no Gringo-on-Duolingo job or horribly dubbed Hindi film. The best of the best scholars took the best manuscripts and produced fantastic translations.

Two, we have manuscripts incredibly close to the originals and they match what we have now with accuracy that will knock your socks off. There are fragments of the New Testament that have been dated back to the second century, only a hundred years after it was written. For context, as The Institute of Creation Research points out, one has to wait a 1000 years for the earliest manuscript for another famous ancient text, Julius Caesar's The Gallic Wars. As far as I know, there are no channels dedicated to discrediting this work (if you are out there, feel free to reach out!).

The nature of translation, the accuracy of the manuscripts, and their proximity to the time the Bible was written rule out this whole Telephone idea. This was no garbled message hopelessly distorted but a clear one scrupulously translated and passed from generation to generation. If it was a baton pass, it would be this (starts at 2:30) not this.

But Bible critics do not lose heart when this line of attack falls short. While we may have matching manuscripts that are quite old, the reason they match is because somebody or a dark council of somebodies (probably popes and bishops and others in clerical garb) burned all the competing manuscripts. Obviously, the documents line up because the church pulled a Google and bought out or destroyed all the competition. Because the church had the manuscripts, they got to decide which ones were accurate, and now all we have is their version. And who knows how accurate that might be?

The other argument flopped. This one dives like a Peregrine falcon. When it comes to a coverup or a mass roundup of anything, the key is to nail the timing (I say this from observation not from personal experience). Once the objects in question have spread far and wide like the ex-Babel builders, they cannot be corralled and dealt with. The Biblical manuscripts turned out to be exceedingly troublesome in this regard. They multiplied faster than Catholic rabbits as people copied and copied the gospels and the letters of the apostles. They were distributed throughout the empire with astonishing speed.

The conundrum any proponent of this objection must solve is the time at which all these manuscripts were commandeered and corroborated. The sheer number of manuscripts that have been collected, their precise agreement, and their early dating stipulate that it must have been near the very beginning of the Christian faith. The issue with this idea is that Christians were a persecuted minority during this entire period. There was no power base that could have accomplished such a feat.

By the time Christianity gained the formal structure that would have been absolutely necessary to change the manuscripts, they were scattered across the face of the earth. It would be impossible to collect them all in one location or even track them down. The boat had sailed (literally in some cases) on altering the manuscripts and merging them into a unified whole. The good news is that by God's grace, they already were.

These are just two attacks on the integrity of the Scriptures. Ardent critics will not be deterred by this little drill and will continue to rain their blows on God's book. But for any who wonder if the record of how the Bible came to us can be defended, let me assure you that it can. Sharper intellects than mine have cut through even the most vicious critiques (I will direct you to their work below). When it comes to the transmission of the Old Testament and New Testament texts, Christians should stand tall and refuse to yield an inch. So next time a skeptic quibbles with you about translations and men in dark robes executing manuscripts, tell them to go attack some other book. The Gallic Wars could be a place to start.

To go further on this topic, check out these resources:

Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then? (Dr. Dan Wallace)

Evidence That Demands A Verdict (Josh McDowell)

J. Warner Wallace

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