The Historicity and Authority of Scripture

It is no exaggeration to say that no book has impacted the world like the Bible has. The Bible has shaped culture, particularly our western culture so deeply that we legitimately don’t know a world without the influence of the Bible. Like the Odyssey and the Iliad and other classic stories, people have enjoyed the narratives of the Bible. The stories of the bible are part of the very fabric of our society and history. But are those stories actually true? Is the book that has impacted the whole world for over 2000 years actually true? Does it have any authority in our lives?

30,000 Foot Overview

We’ll use Q&A to address your more specific questions

Canon

Before we can talk about the Historicity of the Bible, we must agree on the books that are in the Bible.

66 books written over the course of 15oo years by over 40+ authors.

39 books in the Old Testament, 27 books in the New Testament.

OT

Josephus and the list of the OT canon

Jewish Roman historian from the first century

Antiquity of the Jews, 8.37-43

“and this is justly, or rather necessarily done, because every one is not permitted of his own accord to be a writer, nor is there any disagreement in what is written; they being only prophets that have written the original and earliest accounts of things as they learned them of God himself by inspiration; and others have written what hath happened in their own times, and that in a very distinct manner also. 8. (38) For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have], but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; (39) and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; (40) but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. (41) It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time; (42) and how firmly we have given credit to those books of our own nation, is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem those books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them. (43) For it is no new thing for our captives, many of them in number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theatres, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws and the records that contain them;” Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987), 776.

22 books (but these are combined, kings, samuel, jeremiah-lamentations, judges-ruth, etc, minor prophets on the same scroll, etc.)

Strong testimony from the ancient world for the canon of the Old Testament

Jesus treats the OT canon as closed.

Luke, Emmaus Road, all

Read quote from Biblical Authority Josephus chapter.

NT

Nicea (325 A.D.)

The council was not even meeting with the purpose of affirming the canon but instead was addressing theological heresies of the day.

Even before Nicea we have sources confirming the Christian canon

Early Church Fathers

Irenaeus

2nd century A.D., disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of the apostle John.

Muratorian Fragment

This fragment, named after its discoverer Ludovico Antonio Muratori, contains our earliest list of the books in the New Testament. While the fragment itself dates from the 7th or 8th century, the list it contains was originally written in Greek and dates back to the end of the second century (c.180). What is noteworthy for our purposes here is that the Muratorian fragment affirms 22 of the 27 books of the New Testament. These include the four Gospels, Acts, all 13 epistles of Paul, Jude, 1 John, 2 John (and possibly 3rd John), and Revelation. This means that at a remarkably early point (end of the second century), the central core of the New Testament canon was already established and in place.

Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, p. 231, “The canon of the New Testament was ratified by widespread consensus rather than by official proclamation.” (Oxford University Press, London, 2005)

Apocrypha

Tobit, 1 and 2 Macabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, etc.

Many misconceptions

Apochrypha were writings that people believed were wise but not Scripture.

Inter-testamental Period

Josephus quote about no

“It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time; “

Explain the new exodus theme and 400 years

God is making a theological point with the end of the OT, Inter-Testamental Period, and the NT.

Mirrors the Exodus

Exodus

About 400 years in without having authority over themselves. They were ruled by another people.

Seeming silence from God.

Then God sends a man through whom He will lead His people out of captivity, defeat His enemies, save them by the power of His mighty outstretched arms, and establish them as a new people for Himself with a covenant as a holy nation meant for His glory.

New Exodus is the same.

Jerome (400s A.D.) even mentions the apocrypha as separate in his introductions to the Latin Vulgate

It wasn’t until Trent until the Apocrypha is officially cited as Scripture.

Check this

Lost Gospels

Peter Williams names and dating points

Josephus line here about the Inter-Testamental Period

Evidence for the Historicity of Scripture

So many examples we could say but I’ll just mention a few.

Silver Amulet Scrolls

The Silver Amulet scrolls are possibly the oldest manuscripts we have. They date 400 years before the Dead Sea Scrolls. They date before the exile of 580 BC and are the oldest references to Yahweh outside of the Bible. The manuscripts are so old, that ancient literary scholars had to devise a new way to unroll the scrolls and read them so they wouldn’t crumble because they were fragile from old age. The scrolls contain the verses Numbers 6:24-26, which were used as benedictions by priests.

Dead Sea Scrolls

the scrolls were discovered in 1947 in a cave in the West Bank by some local shepherds. The scrolls are a collection of 931 documents from the library of a sect of first century Jews named the Qumran. Inside this library are the oldest copies of the Hebrew Old Testament we have today as well as many other pieces of writing on the culture of those people. A fragment of every book of the Old Testament is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls with the exception of Esther. The Dead Sea Scrolls are so significant because not only do they shed light on a vast amount of information regarding ancient Jewish history that we had yet to discover, but they confirm the accuracy of the texts of the Bible we have today. The Scrolls have even helped Bible scholars improve their interpretation of certain passages of scripture. Thanks to the wealth of new information on Jewish history discovered in the library, we can better understand the context and culture surrounding the Bible.

Inscription confirming the existence of Pontius Pilate

Hezekiah’s Tunnel

One of my favorite biblical discoveries is known as Hezekiah’s Tunnel, which is mentioned in 2 Kings 18 and 20 as well as 2 Chronicles 32. This tunnel was what the people of Jerusalem used to funnel water into the city of Jerusalem while it was under siege from Sennacherib, the King of Assyria, in 700 BC. The Assyrians were blocking food and water from getting in the city and were starving the citizens of Jerusalem. Judah’s king Hezekiah told the people of Jerusalem to trust in God. Soon after, they began to dig a secret tunnel that brought in water from the watercourse known as Gihon. At points, the tunnel is 131 feet underground, 1750 feet long, and shoulder-width wide, with a precise .6% grade slope. Two teams dug from opposite sides and met in the middle to complete the tunnel. An inscription can be found in the tunnel where the teams met, describing it all. You can actually walk through this tunnel today.

Times when Scripture was thought to be wrong but was proved right

Pool of Bethesda

John 5 (and possibly 2 Kings 18:17) speak of a notable pool in Bethesda where people would go to be healed by the water. John 5:2 describes the pool like this: “Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.” Previously thought to be a mistake in the Bible because it could not be found, the pool was ultimately discovered. Even more impressive is the accuracy of the Bible’s description of the pool, which confirmed the site. Down to the very location and number colonnades, the discovery matches the exact biblical accounts.

Synagogue in Capernaum

Mark 1:21 and John 6:59 both state that Jesus taught in a synagogue in Capernaum. For years, the only ancient synagogue archeologists could find in the biblical location of the town was dated to nearly 400 years after Christ’s death. After further excavation, it was discovered that the synagogue dating after Jesus’ death was actually built directly on top of the ruins of an older synagogue which has been dated back to the time period Jesus’ lifetime.

Politarchs

In Acts 17:6, Luke refers to the Thessalonian city officials as “politarchs”. For years, not once was the term found in ancient literature or archeology. For years, the term was considered false and Luke was considered to be mistaken. Then, things got interesting as archeologists discovered a first-century inscription using the term. Following this discovery, over 35 more inscriptions using the word were found. Luke wasn’t mistaken, rather he was dead on accurate.

Hittites

The most notable instance of this doubt erasing came with the discovery of the Hittites. A century ago, scholars claimed the Bible’s authors made up the people group after no evidence of them was found. The Hittites were seen as a made up literary character to make a moral point in the Bible. Newer excavations have unearthed the Hittite capital city east of Turkey. Now we have a myriad of information regarding the history and culture once thought to be imaginary. It is because of the Bible’s descriptions of the Hittites that we now know a great deal about this ancient group of people.

Peter J. Williams 300 silver coins example.

I want to look at one final archeological point that will help us transition into a discussion on biblical translation.

From around 700 B.C.

KJV point

2 Kings 18:13-16 (ESV)- “In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. 14 And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong; withdraw from me. Whatever you impose on me I will bear.” And the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the LORD and in the treasuries of the king’s house. 16 At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the LORD and from the doorposts that Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria.”

Now let’s read this in the 1611 King James Version.

KJV 2 Kings 18:13-16- Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them. 14 And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me: that which thou puttest on me will I bear. And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king’s house. 16 At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the LORD, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.”

Historical Biblical claims here: (Peter Williams point these out)

There was a Judean king named Hezekiah

All of the fortified cities of Judah were captured except Jerusalem

The Assyrian king Sennacherib captured these cities

Sennacherib particularly fought against Lachish

Hezekiah was fined 30 gold talents

Hezekiah was fined 300 silver talents

Hezekiah gave all of the silver in the king’s house and temple

Modern archaeology did not begin until the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, just over 200 years ago when he brought his army through Egypt and had men dig up the lands for purposes of historical discovery.

But the King James Version of the text we read is from just over 400 years ago, or 200 years before the advent of modern archaeology. This means that anything present in the KJV couldn’t have been put there because of archaeological discovery.

It was in the text because it was faithfully passed down from generation to generation in manuscripts going back to when the original was written.

When the King James Version was written, the majority of the manuscripts the translators were relying on were from no earlier than the 1100s A.D.

This means there was about 1800 year time gap between when the original autograph was penned of the passage and the manuscripts being used to translate the KJV.

How many of the things that the readers of the original KJV would have believed about world history, without knowledge of archaeology, have been shown to be true in latter days because of archaeology? They would have believed all of the things we listed just now. The Old Testament lists 5 kings of Assyria and it lists 4 of them in specific order. The readers of the KJV would have believed this without help from archaeology. They would have also believed in the kings of God’s people. So would any of these belief held by the original readers of the King James before the advent of archaeology been accurate?

The answer is an overwhelming yes!

We now have clear archaeological evidence to show that the names and chronological order of the kings of Assyria that the Bible lists are exactly right.

We also have clear extra-biblical evidence to show that the names of the biblical kings are correct and in the correct order, even just as mentioned in the writings of the Assyrian kings.

In the British Museum, you can go look at the stone carvings that tell all of the stories of Sennacherib’s victories in battle, include an explicit reference on the stone to the battle Lachish.

We also have 3 ancient copies of a stone prism that details out Sennacherib’s own words on a number of topics. One of those topics is what is discussed in our 2 Kings passage. Here’s what Sennacherib says:

“As for Hezekiah, the Judean, I besieged 46 of his fortified walled cities….I conquered them and took out 200,150 people….He himself I locked up within Jerusalem, his royal city, like a bird in a cage...Hezekiah was overwhelmed by the splendor of my lordliness and he sent me...30 talents of gold and 800 talents of silver.”

Notice that it starts out with almost the same wording as 2 Kings as Sennacherib says besieged many fortified walled cities.

We can also see just how humble Sennacherib is. But notice how he spins the scenario with Hezekiah. This is typical of Egyptian kingly writings as well. Sennacherib never actually successfully conquers Hezekiah in Jerusalem so he spins it to say that he locked Hezekiah up in the city like he’s in a cage because of course Sennacherib can’t say that he wasn’t able to conquer the city.

Notice how he even explicitly mentions the 30 talents of gold like was mentioned in 2 Kings.

But what about the 800 talents of silver? Isn’t that an error from scripture since the Bible said 300? Not at all. The Bible says that the fine was 300 talents of silver but Hezekiah actually pain Sennacherib all of the silver he had in his house and temple. Hezekiah, being surrounded in Jerusalem by the Assyrians would have been scared and would have wanted to do something to try to appease the king. Doing it with money is an effective way to please the king.

We need to take a second and feel the weight of the accuracy of all of this here. In our day and age where verification is as easy as hopping on google, it is worth noting that verification across national, time, and language barriers was incredibly difficult. To even just have generally agreeing facts would be impressive. But to have an assyrian document that was found through archaeology and translated from the original Assyrian thousands of years after the original biblical event is written down that lines up perfectly, even down to an exact number of silver coins is virtually unheard of in archaeology. This is amazing!

But it doesn’t stop there. Notice in 2 Kings 18:17 how it mentions the words Tartan and Rabsaris. These are Assyrian words for second in command (Tartan) and Overseer (Rabsaris, which is like our word rabbi). In the last century or two, we have translated Assyrian and we can actually verify if the Hebrew scribes who did not know Assyrian actually passed down the Assyrian words correctly. What we find is that the Hebrew scribes who did not know Assyrian perfectly passed down the Assyrian words for years and years after Assyrian had become a defunct language. Handing down words in their correct phonetic form from languages that no one speaks anyone is actually incredibly difficult, yet the Hebrew scribes did it perfectly.

So sum all of this up with me.

The readers of the King James Bible before the time of archaeology would have had perfectly true beliefs about the historical factual information on this passage before there was ever any archaeology to confirm it and before there was any deciphering to translate and check the Assyrian in the passage. They relied on translation from Hebrew manuscripts from around the time 1100 A.D. which means that manuscripts and records were faithfully passed down over 1800 years so that readers of the King James Bible were reading perfectly true things before they ever had the means to confirm it. It all lines up. That’s incredible.

Ignorant monk would have the right info.

Translations

Popular understandings of translations are often wildly inaccurate

It’s not like the telephone game

Before we can understand translation we must understand manuscripts.

We have an incredible wealth of manuscripts of copies of the the bible or books or passages of the bible

The Bible compared to other ancient texts

The Bible dominates any test we want to put on it. We often end up holding the Bible to a double standard to Because

How were these biblical manuscripts produced? How accurate are they?

Rules for Hebrew Scribes

When writing or binding text only clean animal skins could be utilized.

Scribes had to count and make sure that every column of text had between 48 and 60 lines.

A precise recipe had to be used to produce the ink, and the ink had to be black and only black.

Scribes had to speak each word before writing it down.

Before using the name of God, scribes had to clean their bodies along with their writing utensils.

Every 30 days the text copied had to be checked. If 3 or more pages called for editing, the entirety of the text written up to that point had to be copied again.

Scribes had to count the paragraphs, words, and even the letters of the text they had copied. Should two of the letter intersect, they entire text had to be rewritten. Scribes even checked the middle word, paragraph, word, and letter of what they had scribed so as to ensure that their copy matched the original document.

The manuscripts copied could only be kept in places deemed sacred like synagogues

Our manuscripts are incredibly accurate and widespread across the globe. The scribal tradition is amazing

80-85% of all of the texts of ancient biblical manuscripts, after being translated, sync up and are in agreement, including spelling and punctuation.32 After you remove meaningless errors such as spelling, inverted phrases, punctuation, and words that don’t translate well between languages, the Bible becomes incredibly accurate. The Bible is so accurate that according to world renown New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger, the New Testament manuscripts agree with 99.5% congruency. It doesn’t get much better than that. It’s important to note that the few remaining errors in the texts don’t impact the doctrine of the Bible at all.

If you hand copied a book of the bible you have today you would assuredly have errors. The fact we have this much accuracy over 5800 manuscripts copied by thousands of different individuals from different times and different places is incredible. Short of computer technology, how much more accuracy could we ask for?

We can reconstruct the text.

Significance of manuscripts

How modern translation is done

Straight from the original languages

Inspiration

B.B. Warfield’s definition

“A doctrine which claims that by a special supernatural influence of the Holy Ghost, the sacred writers have been guided in their writing in such a way, as while their humanity was not superseded, it was yet so dominated that their words became at the same time in the words of God, and thus in every case and all alike, absolutely infallible.”

Internal and external clues

There are several ways that we can know that the Bible is inspired. Probably the easiest and most basic way to see that the Bible is divinely inspired is to notice the way it coheres. Remember that the Bible is a collection of texts written by over 40 authors in different locations over a period of 1500 years and yet it fits together perfectly. This would be hard to do in an age of instant communication, let alone when communications between some of the Bible’s writer’s would have been impossible. As you read the Bible, it becomes apparent that there is a divine thread woven throughout the entirety of the text that holds it all together. Sometimes, to show us the divine origins of the Bible, God will provide for us great miracles in the text that could only be explained through supernatural means so as to wake up our wonder. One form of these great miracles and wonders that God gives us in the texts comes in the form of prophecy. Because later on in this work there is an entire chapter of this book dedicated to prophecy and its incredible nature, I will refrain from saying too much so you don’t end up reading the same thing twice. Here’s all that I will say until we get to the chapter on prophecy: the odds for just 13 of the 2500 biblical prophecies being fulfilled are somewhere in the area of 1 in 102000.81 There have been over 2000 biblical prophecies fulfilled to date. The odds for that kind of fulfillment are at a level so amazing that no human mind could comprehend it. There is no reasonable naturalistic explanation that I’ve ever heard that can better explain this incredible fulfillment of prophecy than the supernatural explain of God’s providential plan and His work in humanity.

At this point, some of you might be saying,” I get that those numbers are incredible, but aren’t the Bible’s prophecies merely self-fulfilling?” This is a fair objection. The Bible has verse such as John 19:36 which begins by saying: “For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled…”

It seems like we have a problem here. If the Bible’s prophecies are merely self-fulfilling, then the incredible odds of their fulfillment become drastically more believable. This was an objection that bothered me for quite some time until I realized two things. First, I realized that the bible’s prophecies aren’t self-fulfilling because they’re real life events lived out by people that typically weren’t alive when the prophecy was first uttered. So it wasn’t the case that the same person who wrote the prophecy was instructing someone to fulfill the very thing he prophesied. Plus, many of these prophecies were to incredible for someone to fulfill short of supernatural aid even if they were trying to fulfill the prophecy themselves. The other thing I found that ended the sting of this objection for me was the book of Daniel. For those who might be objecting that the Bible’s prophecies are merely self-fulfilling, read the book of Daniel, an amazing book of prophecy and a man going against the flow. You’ll find the Bible predicting the rise and fall of Alexander the Great, as well as the subsequent events following his fall, 300 years before he lived. That’s not self-fulfilling prophecy. This was an event that took place outside of the Bible’s typical historical covering. I’ve yet to hear a naturalistic explanation that accounts for this fulfillment better than the supernatural explanation.

Another way we can see that the Bible is divinely inspired is by seeing what the Bible has to say about itself. Sometimes, rather than making us search and read between the lines of the text to determine its inspiration, God will just flat out tell us that the Bible’s ultimate origin is Him. Time and time again, the Bible proclaims its divine inspiration. This may sound like a circular argument, but hear me out.

If there was a single biblical author proclaiming the divine inspiration of his own book, then the argument would be truly circular, but this is not the case with the Bible. Remember again, the Bible was written by over 40 authors over a period of 1500 years. In the Bible, you have many different authors recognizing the divine inspiration of books of the Bible other than their own. And this doesn’t even include the thousands of lay people and early church fathers that recognized this inspiration as well. If we have good reasons and evidence to trust what the Bible says about history and even many supernatural claims, then we must trust it when it claims to be divinely inspired until we’re given a defeater to all of our great proof for the rest of the Bible’s claims. Basically if we can trust the Bible about everything else, we have good reason to trust it when it claims to be divinely inspired.

One of example of God bluntly telling us that the Bible finds its origins in Him comes in the hundreds of times in the Old Testament where, before a prophecy is revealed, you’ll see this phrase, “Thus says the Lord”. The prophets are making clear that the following information that they are about to utter is coming straight from the Lord. Peter confirms this when he says: “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”- 2 Peter 1:21

But what about all of the other passages that don’t begin with “Thus says the Lord”?

We have good reason to believe that those passages are divinely inspired too. In the New Testament Jesus affirms for us that even passages that don’t explicitly say “Thus says the Lord” are still Scripture. For example in Matthew 19, the Pharisees, trying to trip Jesus up, ask Him: “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” His reply is revealing. Jesus says: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Jesus is quoting Genesis 2 which was written and narrated by Moses. But what you’ll notice is that Jesus attributes that passage to the Lord. This doesn’t discount that Moses ultimately wrote the passage, but it shows us that the ultimate author of the passage is God. Jesus is calling Moses’ writings Scripture.

Another example of one biblical author claiming that a text not written by him is Scripture can be seen in 2 Peter. For example, Peter calls the work of Paul Scripture in 2 Peter 3:15-16 when he says: “And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.” Peter is equating Paul’s writings with Scripture written in the Old Testament.

Yet another example of one biblical author inferring the inspiration of other biblical texts comes in 1 Timothy 5:18 which says: “For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages.’” Paul is inferring multiple passages from separate parts of the Bible as scripture. When he talks about not muzzling an ox when it treads out grain, Paul is quoting Deuteronomy 25:4. When he talks about the laborer deserving his wages, Paul is quoting Luke 10:7. One verse is from the Old Testament, and another is from the New Testament, and yet Paul is calling both Scripture.

Even in the very last verses of the Bible God is affirming for us that His words are found in the Bible when, in Revelation 21:6, we find this phrase after an incredible and beautiful prophecy: “Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” By no means are these examples exhaustive, but they can at least give us a level of confidence that not only did thousands of Jews (in terms of the Old testament) and early Christians view the Bible as Scripture, but the authors of the Bible viewed the collection of texts as scripture too.

Jesus view of the Scripture

OT is important for our lives

How our lives are similar to OT faithful

Biblical inspiration compared to the Quran or other documents

Original languages and the holy spirit vs Arabic with the Quran

Authority of Scripture in Our Lives

So what do we make of this? If the Bible is the holy, inspired, inerrant Word that