Richard M. Riss
Christian Evidences, Part I
THE IMPORTANCE AND VALIDITY OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS
As Christians, we are enjoined in I Peter 3:15 to sanctify
Christ as Lord in our hearts, always being ready to make a
defense to every one who asks us to give an account for the hope
that is in us, yet with gentleness and reverence.
The word "apologetics" is taken from the Greek word ,
translated "defense" in this passage. The same word is used in
Philippians 1:16, where the apostle Paul states that he knows
that he is "appointed for the defense of the gospel."
The validity of Christian apologetics, or of the defense of
the gospel, is taken for granted in the New Testament. This is
particularly clear in the book of Acts, which is filled with
accounts of the defense of the faith by Peter and John, Stephen,
Paul, and other leaders of the Church, all of whom were prepared
to lay down their very lives in the defense of the Gospel.
Not all of the early Christian leaders were intellectuals,
but all of them defended the Gospel. The task of apologetics is
for all Christians. All people have the same questions, whether
they are sophisticated or naive and whether they are well-
educated or not.
Some Christians are fearful of the use of the intellect, or
of the use of human knowledge, in the defense of the faith. This
was certainly not the case for the apostle Paul, who was one of
the best educated people of his day. He freely conversed with
the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece about the
things of God, and defended the Gospel in their midst at the
Areopagus in Athens, and some people were brought to faith as a
result of his efforts.
If we do not make use of our own God-given intellect in the
proclamation of the Gospel, then we should not be surprised if no
one takes us seriously. Either Christianity is completely
consistent with what we know to be true of reality, or we should
not believe in Christ. The intellectual integrity of Christian
truth should always be of central concern to all people.
There is always a grave danger in the attitude that one must
not ask questions, but simply take everything on faith. This
engenders doubts unnecessarily. The heart cannot delight in what
the mind rejects as false. If there are intellectual reasons for
believing, why should we not allow people to know about them? To
do otherwise would be unkind and unfair.
We must have enough compassion to learn the questions of our
generation and answer them. The great twentieth century
apologist Francis Schaeffer understood this very well. He wrote,
"There is indeed the danger of falling into a proud
intellectualism. But there is also the danger of lacking a love
and compassion for men great enough to inspire the hard work
needed to understand men's questions and to give them honest
answers. Throughout his ministry, Paul talked to people with
this kind of love and compassion, and he wrote this way, for
example, in Romans 1-2. Christ, too, gently answered questions
and discussed issues during his earthly ministry."1
Some people will insist that even the soundest apologetic
has no power to cause anyone to repent and believe the Gospel
apart from the work of the Spirit of God and that debate and
argument can never really lead to anyone's conversion, only to
endless argument and heresy. But not every intellectual question
is a moral dodge. There are honest intellectual questions, and
they must be answered. Although it is true that apart from the
work of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel will fall upon deaf ears, and
although He creates the capacity for receiving God's truth,
nevertheless, the Spirit makes use of evidence to convince people
of the truth. We are to be ready to make a defense to those who
have questions, but we are to do so with gentleness and
reverence. Then, God will bring about conviction of the truth,
making use of whatever facts are at hand.
Other opponents of Christian apologetics will say that it
really does not matter whether the Bible is reliable
historically, or whether the Biblical world view is valid. As
far as they are concerned, as long as we are good Christians and
retain our moral standards, it makes no difference whether the
Bible is accurate. This viewpoint fails to take into account
that Christianity is not merely a philosophy or a religion. As
F. F. Bruce has pointed out, the Gospel "is intimately bound up
with the historical order, for it tells how for the world's
redemption God entered into history, the eternal came into time.
. . . This historical 'once-for-all-ness' of Christianity, which
distinguishes it from those religious and philosophical systems
which are not specially related to any particular time, makes the
reliability of the writings which purport to record this
revelation a question of first-rate importance."2
The importance of Christian apologetics is underscored by
consideration of the role that it plays in our own deep personal
appreciation for all that God has done for us. When Thomas was
given proof for the resurrection by Jesus himself, it evoked a
spontaneous expression of worship and adoration. He suddenly
realized without doubt that it was all true, and he was ecstatic.
The Christian Gospel truly is good news to those who suddenly
understand it or recognize its truth. It means our release from
slavery to sin, disease, death and mortality, and provides for
our translation to an existence with no hint of sorrow or
sadness, but filled with unending joy in paradise. It is one
thing to hope that these things might possibly be true, but it is
quite another thing to know without doubt that these yearnings of
all of creation will actually be fulfilled. When God quickens
this knowledge to us, He does so using all available evidence.
_______________________________________
1Francis A. Schaeffer, The New Super Spirituality (Downers Grove,
Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1972), p. 20.
2F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?,
fifth ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1960), p. 8.
WHY THE BIBLE CANNOT BE LEGEND
Everybody knows that all historical events are interrelated.
They have observable consequences in the real world. Whenever it
is asserted that something has happened in the past, we can
always test the assertion by determining whether or not
subsequent events are best explained by it. For example, if it
is claimed that God, through Moses, visited Egypt with ten
plagues, we should ask ourselves, "what would be the results of
such an event?" What evidence do we have in our own day that
would corroborate such a claim? What if it had not taken place?
What would we expect should be true in our own day if it had not
happened? How do we best explain the existence of the Jewish
nation? Do we, in fact, know of any better possible explanation
for the release of the Jews from slavery to Egypt? What other
factors could have induced Pharaoh to give up the free slave
labor that the Egyptians had in the Jewish people? What other
explanations can be offered for all of the facts? How did
hundreds of thousands of people survive in the desert for so long
without dying of thirst if God did not miraculously provide water
for them? Or, if we hypothesize that they were not in the
wilderness, can we still adequately explain what is known to be
true on other historical grounds?
When something happens, its effects are inescapable. This
will be true whether or not the event can be classified as a
miracle. If a given event takes place, it will have certain
effects. If the effects are not there, then the hypothesized
cause cannot be there.
Thus, if Jesus Christ has really risen from the dead, there
will be certain consequences which cannot adequately be explained
apart from the resurrection. Such consequences include the
changed lives of the early Christians, the change of sabbath from
Saturday to Sunday, and the courage of the Christian martyrs, not
to mention the very existence of the Christian Church.
The marks of God's intervention in the affairs of men cannot
be erased; they have had effects that have resounded down through
the corridors of time, and having taken place, will continue to
have effects. Everything that happens brings certain results
which cannot be explained without the causes.
Consider another example. The Bible claims that God created
the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh.
If we do not accept the historicity of the creation story and of
the giving of the law to Moses on Mt. Sinai, we are forced to try
to find plausible alternative explanations as to why in our own
day we have seven days in the week and why the Jewish people
celebrate a sabbath on the seventh day. Will any explanation be
fully adequate to explain these facts other than that the
Biblical accounts are trustworthy?
Every historical event is unique, and causes a unique set of
results which cannot arise under any other set of circumstances.
This makes history verifiable, and enables us to investigate any
historical claim. Moveover, the events of history are
inextricably interwoven. Every event that actually takes place
is interconnected with all others that occur at the same time and
place. To deny the historicity of a single event requires a re-
explanation of all of the circumstances surrounding its
occurrence. Biblical history and secular history are completely
interrelated. They interpenetrate each other to such a degree
that it is impossible to divorce them. A denial of Biblical
history would entail a denial of what is known about secular
history, because both are interwoven into the same fabric. The
facts recorded in the Old Testament, including the supernatural
events, are integral to the secular history of Israel and the
nations that surrounded her before the time of Christ. In the
same way, the facts recorded in the New Testament are integral to
the history of the Roman Empire. If we did not take the Bible at
face value, it would be difficult to explain the rise of
Christian faith in the midst of persecution in the Roman Empire
until it eventually became the preferred religion almost three
hundred years later.
Any historical narrative purporting to have occurred at a
particular time and place is going to have countless effects upon
both other events of that time and upon later events. Because of
the many intricacies of detail in history, it would be impossible
to invent alternate accounts of events that have already
transpired which do not have serious deficiencies in their
effectiveness in accounting for various attending circumstances.
These characteristics of history are of tremendous relevance to
the study of the Bible, which, after all, is a historical book.
It is filled with information directly relevant to the study of
ancient political entities, governments, geography, biography,
customs, languages, and history. Had the Bible, or portions
within it, been forgeries, these constant allusions to historical
data would contain countless inaccuracies and anachronisms. The
absence of such signs of forgery forces us to come to grips with
the genuineness of the Bible. It must be a record of events that
actually happened to real people at specific times and places.
There has been too much corroboration of the Biblical details,
both through archaeological findings and through other ancient
documents, for us to conclude otherwise.
Many people attempt to say that archaeology does not prove
the Bible to be true. Yet, any forgery containing enough
specific historical details will quickly betray its own
speciousness when compared with other evidence bearing upon the
times, places, and events that it describes. If you study the
archaeological evidence in confirmation of the Biblical accounts,
you find such a correspondence between the events described and
the artifacts, inscriptions, and monuments bearing upon them as
to leave very little room for doubt about the historical
trustworthiness of the Bible. If you bear in mind the vastness
of the possibilities for historical error for any ostensibly
accurate historical account, and add to it the realization that
all historical events are inextricably intertwined, it strains
your credulity to be told that the archaeological evidence in
corroboration of the Bible is not conclusive.
Another aspect to consider is geography. The Bible is
replete with extremely precise geographical details which
correspond exactly with what is presently known about the
geography of Palestine and of the other regions which form the
setting of the Biblical narratives. The Biblical accounts would
be reduced to nonsense if they alluded to various incidental
geographical factors in any way differently than they actually
do. In Joshua 10:10,11, for example, there is a description of
the retreat of the Canaanites from before Joshua and his armies.
The geographical details provided in this passage are very
precise. Those who are well versed in historical geography
recognize that this narrative could not possibly have been
fabricated, but that it is rooted in reality. Many of these
geographical factors are actually an essential part of the story,
such that without them, the events could not have taken place the
way in which they are described. The military importance of the
Central Benjamin Plateau has not changed for millennia, and its
strategic value was as clear to twentieth century Israelis as it
was to Joshua and his enemies more than three thousand years ago.
The Gibeonites had surrendered to Joshua knowing that they lived
in the territory that he would have to conquer next in order to
gain control over Palestine. Its strategic importance lay in its
position as the major approach to Jerusalem, and is underscored
by the fact that in the six-day war of 1966, when the Central
Benjamin Plateau was taken, it was announced that Israel had
taken the West Bank, although most of the West Bank had not yet
actually been taken. It was recognized on all hands, however,
that what remained was a mere matter of mop-up operations once
the Central Benjamin Plateau was in Israeli hands. In just the
same way, when the Gibeonites formed an alliance with Joshua, the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon
would have known immediately that they were very seriously
threatened. The sneak attack of the kings of these cities with
their armies against the Gibeonites would have been the logical
consequence of such an alliance. After the defeat of these
kings, their retreat along the road from Beth-Horon to Azekah
would have been their only live option. It is at this point that
the sun stood still upon Gibeon and the moon in the Aijalon
valley, enabling Joshua and his men to pursue them. On March 19,
1985, a leading present-day historical geographer of Palestine,
James M. Monson, said with respect to the geographical factors of
this narrative in Joshua that, "this is a very, very precise
description, and it's not something sort of manufactured. And
today people are saying, 'but Joshua really didn't exist.' . .
.But the geographic factors are correct, you know, because they
are so exact. We cannot deny those. So I think it's rather hard
to have some guy making up a story . . . . It takes more faith
for me to believe some guy fabricated this and it all fits nicely
than to say that this really happened." The Biblical stories are
precise in all of their details, and it is very exciting to see
how well they fit into their geographical context.
The interconnectedness of historical circumstances is as
evident in the relationship of the Bible to classical writings as
it is in its correspondence with archaeological and geographical
data. If the Bible is historically trustworthy, it should come
as no surprise that Herodotus, for example, in Book II, section
141 of his History, gives an account of Sennacherib's invasion of
II Kings 19:35. Nor should we be surprised that Megasthenes
stated that one of the Assyrian kings, when on his deathbed, said
that his empire was to be overturned by the Medes and the
Persians. While Megasthenes was astonished at this, the Bible
indicates that the king had been informed of this fact by the
prophet Daniel (Daniel 2:38-39).
There are many passing references to names, places and
events in the New Testament made by various classical writers,
many of whom were pagans, Jews, infidels, or Greeks who had no
interest in maintaining the credibility of the Christian faith.
Among them were Josephus, Philo, Cicero, Tacitus, Ulpian,
Hermogenian, Marcian, Celsus, Petronius, Dio, and Suetonius.
These writers referred to many of the same people to whom the New
Testament refers, and many of the same facts about them are
mentioned in both places. If the Bible had been legendary, all
statements made, even with casual references to accidents of
circumstance, would nevertheless have had to agree with an entire
spectrum of first-century sources bearing upon Palestine, with
all of its intricacies of geography, politics, government,
culture, and religion, a monumental task at best.
That the documents within the Bible are genuine is evident,
not only from the wealth of instances of correspondence on
incidental matters between the Bible and extrabiblical sources,
but also from innumerable cases in which there is a similar
correspondence in incidental historical matters between two or
more documents within the Bible itself. The very nature of
history is such that if a given document is authentic, it will
dovetail very easily with its historical setting. The historical
context of many documents of the Bible consists, in part, of
other Biblical documents that also bear upon the period in
question. While obvious agreement on major matters of fact can
always be the result of fabrication, if there is agreement on a
multitude of minor details, many of which bear only a very
incidental relationship to matters of major concern to the
authors, there can be very little room for doubt with respect to
the authenticity of the documents in question.
In a court of law, the purpose of the cross-examination of a
witness is to determine, among other things, whether his
testimony is consistent with itself, and whether it is consistent
with the circumstances concurrent with the events about which he
or she is testifying. A false witness will not knowingly provide
any information that might be open to contradiction. When he
testifies, he will attempt to express himself in very general
terms, with as few specifics as possible. Cross-examination
forces a witness to be specific, and if the witness is not
telling the truth, the necessity of supplying specific details
often results in contradictions which expose his testimony as
false. The Bible freely supplies details of every kind, whether
or not they are central to the topic under discussion. Such
details are supplied in abundance, a strong indication of the
trustworthiness of the testimony of the Biblical writers.
The supernatural elements in the Bible interact with the
natural; there is an imperceptible trailing off of the natural
into the supernatural and a merging of the miraculous into the
non-miraculous. There is no real possibility of separating the
miraculous from the non-miraculous elements of the Bible, as some
people have attempted to do.
People who are familiar with a wide range of literary genres
have often concluded that the Bible has an entirely different
flavor to it than accounts of mythology or legend. The miracles
of the Bible are more natural; they do not jolt the reader with a
sense of inappropriateness or incongruity. They do not seem
arbitrary, contrived, or artificial. Their effects upon other
events and upon people who witness them are believable and
realistic. The accounts in the Bible are too true to life to
have been the product of fabrication. This fact has been
established very convincingly by John. J. Blunt in his Undesigned
Coincidences.
Remember, also, that the Biblical narratives carry with them
the claim of authenticity for the very events they describe. As
Erich Auerbach wrote in Mimesis, "The Scripture stories do not,
like Homer's, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they
may please us and enchant us." Rather, they carry with them the
claim to be describing events that have really happened. The
Biblical authors believed that whatever had previously been
recorded in Scripture had actually taken place. The book of
Joshua, for example, presupposes that the events recorded in the
Pentateuch had actually happened. After Joshua sent two spies to
Jericho, Rahab the harlot hid them from the king of Jericho
because, as she said, "we have heard how the Lord dried up the
water of the Red Sea for you, when you came out of Egypt."
(Joshua 2:10). This is not an isolated example; the Bible
consistently builds upon the historicity of previously recorded
events and is intelligible only if these prior events really
happened.
People often raise an objection to Biblical infallibility
based upon the observation that there are many cases in which it
appears that the Biblical writers contradicted one another. This
is an interesting objection, because it would be much easier to
dismiss the Biblical accounts if there were no apparent
inconsistencies. One of the characteristics of false testimony
is that, while it cannot remain consistent during effective cross
examination, it is studiously consistent with that which is
asserted by any other collaborating false witnesses. The fact
that there are apparent contradictions in the Bible is one of the
strongest arguments in favor of its historicity. If the Bible
were false, those who wrote it would have been very anxious to
cover up any inconsistencies. The fact that the writers of the
Gospels did not see a need to appear uniformly consistent with
one another in relating historical facts is a strong indication
that they were eyewitnesses of the events about which they were
writing.
It is often the case that archaeological discoveries will
clear up apparent inconsistencies. For example, if two accounts
in the Bible refer to separate kings reigning at the same time
and place, an inscription might be uncovered indicating that
there was a co-reign of the two kings at the time in question.
The world view of western civilization has been changing
rapidly in the past few hundred years such that there has been a
marked departure from the Biblical world view. Yet the Bible
claims to be reporting events that actually took place. It
asserts more than that its principles are true. It insists upon
its own world view; any who disagree with it are considered to be
in rebellion. In its exclusion of all counterclaims, it becomes
irreconcilable with the antisupernaturalism presupposed by modern
man.
Some people suggest that there are great differences between
contemporary scientific language and the "highly symbolic"
language of the Bible. It is inescapable, however, that the
world view of Western culture has changed quite drastically since
the late nineteenth century. Prior to that time, the Bible was
accepted as normative in all of its statements, whether they were
"religious" principles or propositions about the material world.
Prior to the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859,
almost all scientists believed, for example, that all people were
descended from Adam and Eve, and that physical death and
suffering were a result of the fall of man.
Before the recent shift in world view, science and the Bible
were in agreement. This is evident in the works of Cotton
Mather, Sir Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and
the general scientific literature of the early nineteenth
century. In fact, it was the Christian faith that spawned the
development of science, which assumed that there is a God who
orders the universe, and that this order can be studied in a
systematic fashion. However, until the time of Hume, it was
usually assumed by all but the Deists that God could and
sometimes would suspend this order when He so chose.
There has been a tendency in modern historiography to treat
the prevalence of works in early nineteenth century America
assuming the harmony of Christianity and Science as an innovative
approach spawned by Francis Bacon. This view is based upon the
false assumption that scientific truth and religious truth are
two different genres of truth, and ignores the writings of late
Puritanism in America which also assume basic agreement between
science and Christianity.
The attempt to differentiate between religious and
scientific truth is incommensurate with the Biblical approach.
The Bible treats its propositional statements as more than mere
examples from which to learn life principles. One cannot examine
the Biblical documents without being continually reminded that
the Biblical writers not only believed that the events described
in the Scriptures actually took place, but also that all other
opinions must be subordinated to the Biblical world view.
Many theologians suggest that whatever truth may be found in
the Bible is relative to the world view of the culture in which
it was written. According to this view, the Bible was written
with the assumption that the world is flat and that the earth is
stationary while the sun travels above it from east to west.
They suggest that while the Bible reflects the understanding
prevalent at certain points of time in ancient history, the Bible
is still the word of God in that the principles about which the
authors were writing are no less valid. In such statements there
is often an antisupernaturalistic undercurrent of thought, and
implicit in some of such statements is the idea that while the
Bible is expressed in categories that allow for miracles to
occur, we now know such things to be mere superstition.
It is important to recognize that such thinking often either
stems from a strong presuppositional bias against the miraculous,
or makes too many concessions to such a bias. There is no
conclusive evidence that the Bible presupposes either a flat
earth, or an earth that is stationary relative to the sun, or,
for that matter, a three-storied universe, as has been maintained
by some people.
Also, our own understanding of the universe is undoubtedly
just as culture bound as that of our predecessors. Is it not
likely that people living one thousand years hence would find our
own world view as strange as we find that of earlier ancient
cultures? What if our own criticisms of the Biblical world view
were to become as ridiculous to later generations as we now think
the ideas of the ancients to be? It would be rather haughty of
us to think that we have the last word in our understanding of
the universe.
The idea that the Biblical documents reflect an outmoded
world view is, of course, irreconcilable with the Bible's
treatment of itself. It treats itself, not only as a special
reservoir of principles by which we may conduct our lives, but,
far more than that, it insists upon subordinating to itself all
other theories of truth. Moreover, the Biblical writings span
about as great a period of time as has passed since its most
recent portions have been written, yet there is no indication
that the book of Revelation disdains the world view of the book
of Genesis. On the contrary, this last book of the Bible assumes
the divine authority of all of the other books of the Judaeo-
Christian canon, and this is especially evident in its allusions
to the book of Genesis.
If we reject the claims of the Bible for itself, then we are
beset with an imposing set of difficulties arising from the
interpenetration of Biblical history with secular history, both
in the past and in the present. History does not take place in a
vacuum. The Bible claims that its accounts are not legend. If
this claim is rejected, then one must find some way of explaining
the existence of a body of literature which, although falsified,
corresponds, down to its minutest details, to all that is known
about the history with which it claims to be contemporaneous, and
which, if it had not taken place, leaves unexplained the myriad
of effects that have ostensibly occurred as a result of the
events that it describes.
THE HISTORICAL TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE BIBLE
The trustworthiness of the Bible's historical statements has
been corroborated again and again both through archaeological
discoveries and through close correlation of the Bible's content
with other independent ancient sources. A comprehensive study of
this topic would be far beyond the scope of these lectures, but
for the purpose of illustration, it will be possible to examine
briefly the accuracy of Luke as a historian.
Luke, the friend and companion of Paul, is the author of the
third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, which may be two parts
of one continuous historical work.1 Luke mentions three emperors
by name: Augustus (Luke 2:1), Tiberius (Luke 3:1), and Claudius
(Acts 18:2 and Acts 11:28). The birth of Jesus is fixed in the
reign of the emperor Augustus, when Herod the Great was king of
Judaea, and Quirinius governor of Syria (Luke 1:5, 2:2). Luke
dates by a series of synchronisms in the Greek historical manner
the beginning of John the Baptist's ministry (Luke 3:12), just as
the Greek historian Thucydides dates the formal outbreak of the
Peloponnesian War in his History, book II.2 Luke accurately
names the Roman governors Quirinius, Pilate, Sergius, Paullus,
Gallio, Felix, and Festus, Herod the Great and a few of his
descendants, including Herod Antipas the tetrarch of Galilee, the
vassal-kings Herod Agrippa I and II, Berenice and Drusilla,
Jewish priests such as Annas, Caiaphas, and Ananias, and
Gamaliel, the great Rabbi and Pharisaic leader. An author
relating his story to the wider context of world history must be
careful, because he affords the reader abundant opportunities to
test the degree of his accuracy. Not only does Luke take this
risk, but he stands the test admirably. F. F. Bruce writes:
One of the most remarkable tokens of his accuracy is his
sure familiarity with the proper titles of all the notable
persons who are mentioned in his pages. This was by no
means such an easy feat in his days as it is in ours, when
it is so simple to consult convenient books of reference.
The accuracy of Luke's use of the various titles in the
Roman Empire has been compared to the easy and confident way
in which an Oxford man in ordinary conversation will refer
to the Heads of Oxford colleges by their proper titles--the
Provost of Oriel, the Master of Balliol, the Rector of
Exeter, the President of Magdalen, and so on. A non-Oxonian
like the present writer never feels quite at home with the
multiplicity of these Oxford titles. But Luke had a further
difficulty in that the titles sometimes did not remain the
same for any great length of time; a province might pass
from senatorial government to administration by a direct
representative of the emperor, and would then be governed no
longer by a proconsul but by an imperial legate (legatus pro
proetore).3
F. F. Bruce gives multitudes of specific examples of the
incredible accuracy of Luke as a historian.4
Among the many supposed mistakes of Luke that have since
been vindicated was the mention in Luke 3:1 of Lysanias the
tetrarch of Abilene in the fifteenth year of Tiberius (A.D. 27-
28). The only Lysanias of Abilene otherwise known from ancient
history was a king who was executed by the order of Mark Antony
in 34 B.C. We now have archaeological evidence of a later
Lysanias who had the status of tetrarch. An inscription
recording the dedication of a temple reads, "For the salvation of
the Lords Imperial and their whole household, by Nymphaeus, a
freedman of Lysanias the tetrarch." The reference to "Lords
Imperial," which was a joint title given only to the emperor
Tiberius and his mother Livia, the widow of Augustus, establishes
the date of the inscription to between A.D. 14 and 29, the years
of Tiberius' accession and Livia's death, respectively.5
In the book of Acts, chapters 27 and 28, Luke records a sea
voyage from Palestine on which he was shipwrecked en route to
Italy with Paul and his companions. H. J. Holtzmann describes
this as "one of the most instructive documents for the knowledge
of ancient seamanship."6 James Smith of Jordanhill, an
experienced yachtsman who was quite familiar with the part of the
Mediterranean Sea on which Paul sailed, bears witness to the
remarkable accuracy of Luke's account of each part of the voyage.
He writes:
I do not even assume the authenticity of the narrative
of the voyage and shipwreck contained in the Acts of
the Apostles, but scrutinise St. Luke's account of the
voyage precisely as I would those of Baffin or
Middleton, or of any antient [sic] voyage of doubtful
authority, or involving points on which controversies
have been raised. A searching comparison of the
narrative, with the localities where the events so
circumstantially related are said to have taken place,
with the aids which recent advances in our knowledge of
the geography and the navigation of the eastern part of
the Mediterranean supply, accounts for every
transaction--clears up every difficulty--and exhibits
an agreement so perfect in all its parts as to admit
but of one explanation, namely, that it is a narrative
of real events, written by one personality engaged in
them, and that the tradition respecting the locality is
true.7
Concerning the accuracy of Luke as a historian, F. F. Bruce
writes:
Now, all these evidences of accuracy are not accidental. A
man whose accuracy can be demonstrated in matters where we
are able to test it is likely to be accurate even where the
means for testing him are not available. Accuracy is a
habit of mind, and we know from happy (or unhappy)
experience that some people are habitually accurate just as
others can be depended upon to be inaccurate. Luke's record
entitles him to be regarded as a writer of habitual
accuracy.8
Sir William Ramsay writes:
The present writer takes the view that Luke's history
is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness. At
this point we are describing what reasons and arguments
changed the mind of one who began under the impression
that the history was written long after the events and
that it was untrustworthy as a whole.9
Concerning Luke's accuracy as a historian, Henry J. Cadbury,
a professor from Harvard University, writes:
The historical worth of the Acts of the Apostles is not
to be expressed merely in such negative terms. In
itself it often carries its own evidences of accuracy,
of intelligent grasp of its theme, of fullness of
information. Its stories are not thin and colorless
but packed with variety and substance. There is reason
for the modern scholar to ponder them carefully, to
examine them in detail and to compare them point for
point throughout the volume. . . . The data which
throw light on the history in Acts are also the data
which confirm its place in history. But there is a
difference in the approach. To a large extent the
material with which I shall deal is capable of an
apologetic use. It can be cited to show that the
author of Acts is dealing with facts and reality.10
_______________________________________
1F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They
Reliable?, fifth ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press,
1960), p. 80.
2See The Complete Writings of Thucydides, trans. Joseph
Gavorse (New York: Random House, 1934), Book II, Chapter VI, p.
84.
3Bruce, p. 82.
4Ibid., pp. 82-92.
5Eduard Meyer, Ursprung Und Anfange Des Christentums
(Stuttgart: J. G. Cottaishe, 1962), pp. 46-49.
6H. J. Holtzmann, Hand-Commentar zum Neuen Testament
(Freiburg: Akademische Verlagsbuchhandlung Von J. C. B. Mohr,
1889), pp. 420-426.
7James Smith, The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul (London:
Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1848), pp. v-vi.
8Bruce, p. 90. See Also Sir William M. Ramsay, The Bearing
of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915), p. 80.
9Sir William M. Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on
the Trustworthiness of the New Testament (London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1915), p. 81.
10Henry J. Cadbury, The Book of Acts in History (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1955), pp. 3, 4.
ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE
The subject of Biblical archaeology is a vast one, so it
will be necessary to confine comments here to only a few of the
multitude of cases in which archaeological discoveries have
vindicated Biblical claims.
At many times in the past, scholars have assumed the Bible
to be inaccurate until new archaeological evidence necessitated a
reversal of scepticism on the point in question. For example,
for many years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica referred to the
Hittites as "a mythological civilization mentioned only in the
Bible." Then, suddenly, a great deal of archaeological evidence
was found in modern Turkey for the existence of the Hittites.
The next edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica then carried a
great deal of material describing the Hittite civilization in
considerable detail.1
Similar reversals have taken place among scholars with
respect to the Horites, the historicity of Sargon II (722-705
B.C.), the existence of Belshazzar, the use of alphabetic writing
in Canaanite cultures before 1500 B.C., and many other matters.2
By 1960, in a book endorsed by an editorial board consisting
of American Liberal Clergymen, John Elder had written:
It is not too much to say that it was the rise of the
science of archaeology that broke the deadlock between
historians and the orthodox Christian. Little by little,
one city after another, one civilization after another, one
culture after another, whose memories were enshrined only in
the Bible, were restored to their proper places in ancient
history by the studies of archaeologists. . . .
Contemporary records of Biblical events have been unearthed
and the uniqueness of Biblical revelation has been
emphasized by contrast and comparison to newly discovered
religions of ancient peoples. Nowhere has archaeological
discovery refuted the Bible as history.3
There have been many scholars, such as Sir William Ramsay,
who have become Christian believers as a result of confronting
the archaeological evidence for the validity of the Biblical
claims over a lifetime of study.
Some of the most startling archaeological finds bear upon
the historicity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, a
portion of the Bible that even some Bible-believing scholars have
had difficulty accepting at face value. Among these is the
Temptation Seal, found among ancient Babylonian tablets, and
presently in the British Museum, depicting the Garden of Eden
story. In its center is a tree, with a man on the right, and a
woman on the left plucking fruit. Behind the woman is a serpent,
standing erect, as if whispering to her.4
The "Adam and Eve" seal depicts a naked man and a naked
woman walking as if utterly downcast and brokenhearted, followed
by a serpent. Presently in the University of Pennsylvania Museum
in Philadelphia, this seal was found in 1932 by Dr. E. A. Speiser
near the bottom of the Tepe Gawra Mound, 12 miles north of
Nineveh. He dated the seal at about 3500 B. C. and called it
"strongly suggestive of the Adam and Eve story."5
A stele (or monument) discovered at the site of Ur in
ancient Babylon depicts the various activities of Ur-Nammu, who
was king of Ur from 2044 to 2007 B.C. According to the stele, he
began construction of a great tower. According to a clay tablet
unearthed at the same site by George Smith of the British Museum,
the erection of the tower offended the Gods, who "threw down what
they had built. They scattered them abroad, and made strange
their speech."6 This is very similar to the account of the tower
of Babel found in Genesis 11:1-9.
Other archaeologists, including E. A. Speiser and S. N.
Kramer of the University of Pennsylvania, and Oxford cuneiformist
Oliver Gurney, have found evidence that the ancient Sumerians
believed that there was a time when all mankind spoke the same
language and that at a particular time, the God of Wisdom
confounded their speech.7
One of the many archaeological scholars who began his
studies convinced that the Bible was legendary, but later became
very conservative in his approach to the Biblical narratives was
William F. Albright. This change of viewpoint was the result of
many years of archaeological discoveries disconfirming the
hypothesis that the Bible was legend. For example, Genesis 14:
5,6 refers to a number of cities by way of which the four Eastern
kings came against Sodom. These cities were so far east of the
ordinary trade route that Albright once considered it evidence of
the legendary character of Genesis 14. However, in 1929, he
discovered in Hauran and along the eastern border of Gilead and
Moab, a series of tells of cities that flourished about 2000
B.C., demonstrating that it was a well-settled area, and a trade
route between Damascus and Edom and Sinai.8
The Biblical account of the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah has been corroborated by surface surveys undertaken on
the east side of the Dead Sea, which have revealed a series of
five ancient cities dating back to the Middle Bronze era. There
is strong evidence that various layers of the earth were
disrupted and hurled high into the air. Because much of this
material was bituminous pitch, these five cities were covered
with it. The layers of sedimentary rock at these sites were
molded together by intense heat, as is evident on the top of
nearby Jebel Usdum (Mount Sodom). Geologists have hypothesized
that an oil basin beneath the Dead Sea ignited and erupted,
causing a rain of fire and debris upon these cities.9
_______________________________________
1Francis A. Schaeffer, Tape, "Five Problems With Those Who
Deny the Claims of the Bible Concerning Itself" (Huemoz,
Switzerland: L'Abri Tapes, n.d.)
2Gleason L. Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1974), p. 165.
3John Elder, Prophets, Idols and Diggers (New York: Bobbs
Merrill, 1960), p. 16, as quoted by Archer, p. 166.
4Henry H. Halley, Halley's Bible Handbook, 24th ed. (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1965), p. 68.
5Ibid., pp. 68-69.
6Quoted by Ibid., p. 84 and Clifford A. Wilson, Rocks,
Relics and Biblical Reliability (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan,
1977), p. 29.
7Wilson, pp. 29-31.
8Halley, p. 97.
9Wilson, pp. 41-42.
CONFIRMATIONS OF THE BIBLE IN THE CLASSICS
AND IN OTHER INDEPENDENT ANCIENT SOURCES
Heretics, Jews, pagans, and Christians all inadvertently
confirm the trustworthiness of the Bible by their incidental
references to many of the same things to which the Bible refers.
One of the most exhaustive studies of this topic was done by
Thomas S. Millington, in his book, The Testimony of the Heathen
to the Truths of Holy Writ (London, 1863). Subtitled A
Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, Compiled Almost
Exclusively from Greek and Latin Authors of the Classical Ages of
Antiquity, this book systematically covers the entire Bible,
chapter by chapter, citing all references from ancient writers
that support the statements of the Bible.
Another approach that is sometimes taken is to compile all
of the references to the New Testament by the earliest
extrabiblical sources to demonstrate that it was already in
widespread circulation in ancient antiquity. Almost the entire
New Testament can be reconstructed from these writings,
especially since the early Apostolic Fathers quoted extensively
from the New Testament within a few decades of the time it was
written.1
Even the earliest enemies of the Christian faith provide
abundant evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament by
their constant references to it. Moreover, the early opponent of
Christianity, Celsus, wrote of the companions of Jesus that they
lived just a few years before his time. He also acknowledged the
miracles wrought by Jesus Christ, but ascribed them to "the magic
art" which, according to him, Christ learned in Egypt.
Another early enemy of Christianity, Lucian, in his account
of the death of the philosopher Peregrinus, bears authentic
testimony to the major facts and principles of Christianity. In
a work entitled Alexander or Pseudomantis, he talks of those who
are well known in the world by the name of Christians, and that
they are formidable to cheats and impostors.
Even Pontius Pilate sent an account to the emperor Tiberius
of Christ's life, miracles, crucifixion, resurrection and
ascension. References to these Acta Pilati (Acts of Pilate) can
be found in the writings of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus,
Clement, and Eusebius.
One must exercise caution in accepting the claims on non-
Christian historians about classical references to the Christian
faith. For example, Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, vol. II, states that there was a silence of all writers,
except the evangelists, on the darkness over the land at Christ's
crucifixion, and that Pliny, who devoted a whole chapter to the
enumeration of eclipses and strange things, does not mention it,
and would surely have done so if it had been true. However,
Pliny's "chapter" is only eighteen words in length: "eclipses are
sometimes very long, like that after Caesar's death, when the sun
was pale almost a year." Pliny does not mention the darkness,
but Celsus does, as do Thallus, Phlegon, Origen, Eusebius,
Tertullian, and others, some of them Christians and some
opponents of Christ. David Nelson commented, "I am sorry you
took the word of that author [Gibbon], splendid as were his
talents; for he sometimes penned falsehood without scruple, if
religion was his topic."2
Some of the early opponents of Christianity were converted
to Christ. For example, Aristides was a Greek philosopher at
Athens who renounced heathenism and wrote a letter to the emperor
describing those who had been healed and restored by the apostles
in his day.
There are many allusions of first and second century Roman
historians to Christianity. For example, Suetonius wrote, "owing
to the tumults which the Jews stirred up at Rome, at the
instigation of one Chrestus, Claudius decreed their expulsion
from the city."3 In his Life of Nero (xxvi. 2), he wrote,
"Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men
addicted to a novel and mischievous superstition."
In an account of the great fire at Rome in A.D. 64, the
great Roman historian Tacitus wrote as follows about the rumor
that Nero was responsible for its instigation:
Therefore, to scotch the rumor, Nero substituted as
culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of
cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the
crowd styled Christians. Christus, from whom they got their
name, had been executed by sentence of the procurator
Pontius Pilate when Tiberius was emperor; and the pernicious
superstition was checked for a short time, only to break out
afresh, not only in Judaea, the home of the plague, but in
Rome itself, where all the horrible and shameful things in
the world collect and find a home.4
Elsewhere, Tacitus describes persecution at Rome during
which the apostle Paul was put to death, and he called those who
were burned "ingens multitudo," a vast crowd.
There are, of course, countless allusions to various
historical circumstances common both to the Bible and to other
contemporary writings. An overview of some such references
appears in a 60-page article by G. F. MacLear, "Historical
Illustrations of the New Testament Scriptures," volume VII of the
Religious Tract Society's Present Day Tracts (London, 1886). One
of the most obvious illustrations is the account by the Jewish
historian Josephus (Antiquities xix. 8, 2) of the sudden death of
Herod Agrippa I, which corresponds closely with the account of
the same event in Acts 12: 19-23. MacLear concludes his survey
as follows:
[The Gospel] Story is in its outline attested by
Classical authors of repute, and this attestation
remains certain and indisputable, even supposing the
New Testament had never been written at all. We must
destroy the Annals of Tacitus, the Lives of Suetonius,
the Letters of Pliny, if we wish to get rid of their
testimony that in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius one
called Christ existed; that Judaea was the place of His
teaching; that He was put to death at the command of
Pontius Pilate; that in spite of His death, His
doctrines rapidly spread throughout the Roman world;
that they attracted a vast number of converts; that, in
consequence, the ancient sacrificial system gradually
disappeared; that the Christians worshipped Christ as a
God; and for His sake suffered cruel persecution. . . .
Is it possible to believe that the narrative of His
Life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, and of the
foundation of His Church, which at this moment notoriously
exists, could have been described by the writers of the new
Testament with a wealth of incidental allusions to the most
complicated political and historical facts, attested in many
of the minutest particulars alike by classical historians,
and by monumental and numismatic inscriptions, and at the
same time be untrue? Is this conceivable?5
_______________________________________
1Committee of the Oxford Historical Society of Historical
Theology, The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1905) provides a systematic study of this
subject.
2David Nelson, The Cause and Cure of Infidelity (New York:
American Tract Society, 1841), p. 79.
3Suetonius, Life of Claudius xxv. 4.
4Tacitus, Annals xv. 44.
5MacLear, pp. 59-60.
THE VERIFIABILITY OF HISTORY:
EVERY EVENT HAS COLLATERAL CIRCUMSTANCES AND CONSEQUENCES
In a previous chapter, "Why The Bible Cannot Be Legend," it
was shown that because everything that happens has both
consequences and a definite context, it is possible to determine
whether or not a given historical account is trustworthy. This
is especially clear in the historical accounts of the life of
Christ in the New Testament. Consider the following observations
by the Roman Catholic Scholar, Daniel-Rops:
The life of Christ is set definitely in historical time, not
in some remote legendary period as are the traditions
concerning Orpheus, Osiris or Mithra. The Roman Empire of
the first century is known to us in remarkable detail.
Great men like Livy or Seneca, whose work has come down to
us, were writing when Jesus was alive. Virgil, had he not
died at the early age of fifty-one, might have been living
in his childhood; Plutarch and Tacitus were of the
generation that followed him. Furthermore, very many of the
personages who appear in the narratives concerning Jesus
appear also in other historical documents--for example,
those whom St. Luke mentions in the third chapter of his
Gospel, Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, the priests
Annas and Caiphas, and John the Baptist, whose life and
apostolate are recounted by Josephus.
And that is not all: the ideas and the behavior, the
whole setting which precisely dates a human existence, are,
for those who take the trouble to compare, exactly those
depicted for us by contemporary Palestinian sources.
The man therefore is fixed in a social and political
milieu which has been exhaustively studied. No mythical
existence could be related so precisely to its setting.1
In the opening sections of his book, Daniel-Rops relentlessly
forces the reader to come to grips with the inescapable reality
of Jesus Christ, and he does so by confronting us with the fabric
of history into which Jesus is interwoven, and by demonstrating
to us that what presently exists could not possibly exist apart
from the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The
miracles of the life of Christ "cannot be detached from the stuff
of his existence, except by rending the whole fabric, denying
this existence, casting doubt on all those who have testified to
him."2
The life of Christ made an indelible imprint on all of
humanity, yet that this should have happened at all is in itself
a miracle. "That this man of poor and uncultivated stock should
remake the basis of philosophy and open out to the world of the
future an unknown territory of thought; that this simple son of a
declining people, born in an obscure district in a small Roman
province, this nameless Jew like all those others despised by the
Procurators of Caesar, should speak with a voice that was to
sound above those of the Emperors themselves, these are the most
surprising facts of history."3 In our own day and age we live
with these consequences of the life of Christ. Whether we like
it or not, he made an indelible mark upon all of humanity. If we
deny his existence, not only do we do violence to the fabric of
history, but we deny what is presently the case.
_______________________________________
1Daniel-Rops, Jesus and His Times (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.,
Inc., 1956), p. 11.
2Ibid., p. 10.
3Ibid.
THE LONG DAY OF JOSHUA
One of the evidences for the historicity of the long day
recorded in Joshua 10:13 and reiterated in Habakkuk 3:11 lies in
the large body of traditions from many parts of the world
according to which there was a long day (or night, or evening,
depending upon the location) at about the same time that Joshua
lived. David Nelson dramatically informs us of this fact as
follows:
Chinese history speaks of Yao, their king, declaring
that in his reign the sun stood so long above the
horizon that it was feared the world would have been
set on fire; and fixes the reign of Yao at a given
date, which corresponds with the age of Joshua the son
of Nun. . . .
The Latin poet Ovid amuses the school-boy greatly, in
his fanciful narrative of Phaeton's chariot. This heathen
author tells us, that a day was once lost, and that the
earth was in great danger from the intense heat of an
unusual sun. . . . Our notice is somewhat attracted, when
we find him mention Phaeton--who was a Canaanitish prince--
and learn that the fable originated with the Phoenicians,
the same people whom Joshua fought. If you ask an
unbeliever of these incidents, or of the common traditions
with early nations that a day was lost about the time when
the volume of truth informs us that the sun hasted not to go
down for the space of a whole day, you will find that he had
never thought on these points: they are not of the character
which he is inclined to notice.1
T. W. Doane relates the following facts concerning these
traditions:
There are many stories similar to this, to be found
among other nations of antiquity. We have, as an
example, that which is related of Bacchus in the Orphic
hymns, wherein it says that this god-man arrested the
course of the sun and the moon. An Indian legend
relates that the sun stood still to hear the pious
ejaculations of Arjouan after the death of Crishna. A
holy Buddhist by the name of Matanga prevented the sun,
at his command, from rising, and bisected the
moon. . . . The Chinese also, had a legend of the sun
standing still, and a legend was found among the
Ancient Mexicans to the effect that one of their holy
persons commanded the sun to stand still, which command
was obeyed.2
Doane refers to Anacalypsis by Higgins, Buddhist Legends by Hardy
and Bud. & Jeyens by Franklin in support of his statements.
In 1940, Harry Rimmer summarized these traditions as
follows:
In the ancient Chinese writings there is a legend of a long
day. The Incas of Peru and the Aztecs of Mexico have a like
record, and there is a Babylonian and a Persian legend of a
day that was miraculously extended. Another section of
China contributes an account of the day that was
miraculously prolonged, in the reign of Emperor Yeo.
Herodotus recounts that the priests of Egypt showed him
their temple records, and that there he read a strange
account of a day that was twice the natural length.
Rimmer concludes this section with a lengthy quotation from the
Polynesian account of this event.
In 1950, Immanuel Velikovsky came out with his controversial
book, Worlds in Collision, based on the premise that the account
of the long day in Joshua is accurate, accounting for many other
unsolved scientific mysteries. In support of his premise, he
also refers to the ancient traditions of a long day:
In the Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan--the history of the
empire of Culhuacan and Mexico, written in Nahua-Indian in
the sixteenth century--it is related that during a cosmic
catastrophe that occurred in the remote past, the night did
not end for a long time. . . .
Sahagun, the Spanish savant who came to America a
generation after Columbus and gathered the traditions of the
aborigines, wrote that at the time of one cosmic catastrophe
the sun rose only a little way over the horizon and remained
there without moving; the moon also stood still.4
In a footnote, Velikovsky states that the Mexican Annals of
Cuauhtitlan, were also known as the Codex Chimalpopca, and that
these manuscripts contained a series of annals of very ancient
date, many of them going back to more than a thousand years
before the Christian era.
Velikovsky's theory was that at some time in the middle of
the second millennium B.C., either the earth was interrupted in
its regular rotation by a comet, or the terrestrial axis was
tilted in the presence of a strong magnetic field, so that for
several hours the sun appeared to lose its diurnal movement.
Velikovsky's book brought about quite a bit of discussion on
this topic. "The Day The Sun Stood Still," by Eric Larabee was
published in Harper's in January of 1950. It was reprinted in
the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune on February 5 of that year, with
the comment that "The article on this page--`The Day the Sun
Stood Still'--will quite probably become the most discussed
magazine piece of 1950. It was published in the current issue of
Harper's Magazine, and the Tribune is the first newspaper to
reprint it. The account is based on a book, Worlds in Collision,
by Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky. The article has created such
interest in publishing circles that, the Tribune has learned, the
editors of Collier's and of The Reader's Digest have other
presentations of the same idea in preparation. This Week
magazine, which is a section of the Sunday Tribune and twenty-
five other Sunday newspapers, is preparing a pictorial
presentation of some of Velikovsky's unusual theories which lace
together elements of religious beliefs and scientific events and
try to explain that once--within the recorded history of man--the
sun stood still."5
Gordon A. Atwater, curator of the Hayden Planetarium, wrote
at the time, "The theories presented by Dr. Velikovsky are unique
and should be presented to the world of science in order that the
underpinning of modern science can be re-examined . . . I believe
the author has done an outstanding job."6
Another indication of the trustworthiness of Joshua 10:13
can be found in astronomical data. It appears that one full day
is missing in our astronomical calculations. On different
occasions, Sir Edwin Ball, the great British astronomer, and
Professors Pickering of the Harvard Observatory, Maunders of
Greenwich, and Totten of Yale have traced this back to the time
of Joshua. If we disregard calendar changes and deal only with a
chronology based upon solar motion, and go back to the earliest
available records, and trace the calendar through to the time of
Joshua, the day of Joshua's battle was on a Tuesday, whereas if
we compute backwards to the time of Joshua from the present day,
the day of the battle would have been on a Wednesday. The day of
the month is the same, but it is a different day of the week.
In other words, if we reckon from the first recorded
solstice in the ancient Egyptian records, the day is Tuesday, but
if we reckon back from the most recent solstice, the day is
Wednesday. These facts are extensively corroborated with
astronomical data by Charles A. L. Totten in Joshua's Long Day,
and the Dial of Ahaz (New Haven: Our Race Publishing Co., 1890).
These facts came to widespread public attention in the late
1960's, after Mary Kathryn Bryan published an article in the
Evening Star of Spencer, Indiana, about Harold Hill, President of
the Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore, Maryland, a consultant to
NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
According to the article, computer calculations bearing upon the
positions of the sun, moon and planets were not coming out
properly. These calculations were necessary, and had to be
exact, in order to lay out the orbits of satellites and manned
space flights. However, once the long day of Joshua and the
retreat of the sun backward ten degrees in II Kings 20:9-11 were
taken into account, all of the calculations worked out perfectly.
This article was widely quoted, and copies of it appeared in
many places for several years. Harold Hill later published his
own account of these events in the thirteenth chapter of How To
Live Like A King's Kid, which was substantially the same as that
in Kathryn Bryan's article. In his account, he wrote:
Later, someone sent me a clipping . . . saying I had
admitted the whole thing was a hoax. Shortly
thereafter, numerous religious magazines, some of them
Christian, began repeating the false "retraction" and
apologizing for their original participation in the
rerun of the article. Not one of them ever checked
with me as to the truth or error of the article as
originally published.
For the record--the report is true, the retraction
false. . . . The whole sequence of events has
demonstrated to me how prone even Christians are to
believe a lie instead of the truth.7
In an appendix to this chapter, Hill published a review of
Totten's book written by V. L. Westberg, who stated:
While Mr. Totten suggests an intervening comet perhaps
caused the slow day by cutting off actinic rays, I feel
a more realistic theory is to examine the possibility
of a huge meteor or asteroid plunging into the earth's
mantle slowing it down about one revolution while the
inner molten core continued to rotate and eventually
pull the mantle back in speed. Mr. Totten recounted
how Newton demonstrated how the earth could be suddenly
slowed down without appreciable shock to people.
I have examined several maps of the Pacific Ocean
which lend support to this theory. The October 1969
map in National Geographic Magazine shows a large sink
area between Hawaii and the Philippines with long
fracture lines in the ocean bottom radiating outward to
the continents. The effect of such a crash would be
maximum there at the equator on slowing the earth and
would result in huge tidal waves which might help
explain Dr. Northrup's studies on California's sand
deposits. The size of the asteroid needed to slow down
the earth one revolution could be calculated if mantle
thickness were known and it could have been as large as
Ceres--480 miles diameter.8
_______________________________________
1David Nelson, The Cause and Cure of Infidelity (New York:
American Tract Society, 1841), pp. 26-27.
2T. W. Doane, Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions,
fourth ed. (New York: Charles P. Somerby, 1882), p. 91.
3Harry Rimmer, The Harmony of Science and Scripture (William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1940), pp. 269-270.
4Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1950), pp. 45, 46.
5Quoted by O. E. Sanden, Does Science Support the Scriptures?
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1951), p. 9.
6Ibid., p. 10.
7Harold Hill, How To Live Like A King's Kid (Plainfield, NJ:
Logos International), p. 71.
8Ibid., p. 76.
JONAH
Many people feel that the account given in the Bible of
Jonah is legendary, since even if there were a fish big enough to
swallow a man, certainly no man would be able to survive three
days in its digestive tract and then escape to the outside world.
However, again and again, Jesus referred to this as a historical
event, and even pointed to it as a foreshadowing of his own death
and resurrection.
There are, however, several documented accounts of people
who have been swallowed by whales and large fish, and have lived
to tell about it, even after several days. One species of fish,
the "Sea Dog" (Carcharodon carcharias), is found in all warm
seas, and can reach a length of 40 feet. In the year 1758, a
sailor fell overboard from a boat in the Mediterranean and was
swallowed by a sea dog. The captain of the vessel ordered a
cannon on the deck to be fired at the fish, which vomited up the
sailor alive and unharmed after it was struck.1
Sperm whales can swallow lumps of food eight feet in
diameter. Entire skeletons of sharks up to sixteen feet in
length have been found in them. In February of 1891, James
Bartley, a sailor aboard the whaling ship "Star of the East," was
swallowed by a whale in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands. He
was within the whale for more than forty-eight hours, and after
he was found inside the whale, which had been harpooned and
brought aboard the whaling ship, it took him two weeks to recover
from the ordeal. Sir Francis Fox wrote as follows about this:
Bartley affirms that he would probably have lived inside his
house of flesh until he starved, for he lost his senses
through fright and not from lack of air. He remembers the
sensation of being thrown out of the boat into the
sea. . . . He was then encompassed by a great darkness and
he felt he was slipping along a smooth passage of some sort
that seemed to move and carry him forward. The sensation
lasted but a short time and then he realized he had more
room. He felt about him and his hands came in contact with
a yielding slimy substance that seemed to shrink from his
touch. It finally dawned upon him that he had been
swallowed by the whale . . . he could easily breathe; but
the heat was terrible. It was not of a scorching, stifling
nature, but it seemed to open the pores of his skin and draw
out his vitality. . . . His skin where it was exposed to
the action of the gastric juice . . . face, neck and hands
were bleached to a deadly whiteness and took on the
appearance of parchment . . . (and) never recovered its
natural appearance . . . (though otherwise) his health did
not seem affected by his terrible experience.2
Another individual, Marshall Jenkins, was swallowed by a
Sperm Whale in the South Seas. The Boston Post Boy, October 14,
1771, reported that an Edgartown (U.S.A.) whaling vessel struck a
whale, and that after the whale had bitten one of the boats in
two, it took Jenkins in its mouth and went under the water with
him. After returning to the surface, the whale vomited him on to
the wreckage of the broken boat, "much bruised but not seriously
injured."3
There is, of course, a great deal of historical and
archaeological evidence for the ministry of Jonah in Nineveh.
Prominent among the divinities of ancient Assyria was Dagan, a
creature part man and part fish. This was sometimes represented
as an upright figure, with the head of a fish above the head of a
man, the open mouth of the fish forming a miter as the man's
sacred head-dress, and the feet of a man extending below the tail
of the fish. In other cases, the body of a man was at right
angles to the conjoined body of a fish. Images of this fish-god
were found guarding the entrance to the palace and temple in the
ruins of Nineveh, and they appear on ancient Babylonian seals, in
a variety of forms.
Berosus, a Babylonian historian, writing in the fourth
century B.C., recorded the early traditions concerning the origin
of the worship of this fish-man. According to the earliest
tradition, the very beginning of civilization in Chaldea and
Babylonia was under the direction of a person, part man and part
fish, who came up out of the sea. During Jonah's time, the
people of Nineveh believed in a divinity who sent messages to
them by a person who rose out of the sea, as part fish and part
man, and they would undoubtedly have been very receptive to
Jonah's ministry if he had been vomited out of a fish. H. Clay
Trumbull wrote of this as follows:
What better heralding, as a divinely sent messenger to
Nineveh, could Jonah have had, than to be thrown up out
of the mouth of a great fish, in the presence of
witnesses, say, on the coast of Phoenicia, where the
fish-god was a favorite object of worship?
. . . The recorded sudden and profound alarm of
the people of an entire city at his warning was most
natural, as a result of the coincidence of this miracle
with their religious beliefs and expectations.4
Berosis gives the name of the Assyrian fish-god as "Oannes,"
while he mentions the name "Odacon" as that of one of the avatars
of Oannes. Since the name Dagan appears frequently in the
Assyrian records from earlier dates, and no trace has been found
in them of the name "Oannes," it is possible that this name is a
reference to Jonah, as the supposed manifestation of the fish-god
himself. The name Oannes for Jonah appears in the Septuagint and
in the New Testament with the addition of I before it (Ioannes).
However, according to Dr. Herman V. Hilprecht, the eminent
Assyriologist, in the Assyrian inscriptions the J of foreign
words becomes I, or disappears altogether. Hence Joannes, as the
Greek representation of Jonah would appear in Assyrian either as
Ioannes or as Oannes. Therefore, in his opinion, Oannes would be
a regular Greco-Babylonian writing for Jonah.5
The preservation of the name "Yunas" or "Jonah" at the ruins
of Nineveh also confirms the historicity of the Jonah story. As
soon as modern discoverers unearthed the mound that had been
known for centuries by the name of "Neby Yunas," they found
beneath it the ruined palaces of the kings of Nineveh.6
_______________________________________
1Ambrose John Wilson, "The Sign of the Prophet Jonah and Its
Modern Confirmations," The Princeton Theological Review 25
(1927): 638. footnote 20.
2Quoted in Ibid., p. 636.
3Ibid., pp. 636-637.
4H. Clay Trumbull, "Jonah In Nineveh," Journal of Biblical
Literature 11 (1892): 10-12.
5Ibid., p. 14.
6Ibid., pp. 17, 18.
THE FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY
The fulfillment of the prophecies of the Bible is a vast
subject. In fact, the Messianic prophecies alone have provided
enough material for the publication of many books. Other books
have been written solely about the Old Testament prophecies
concerning certain cities or about certain world empires, while
still others consider the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies in
the twentieth century.
Some authors have identified more than 300 Old Testament
passages that are cited by the New Testament as having been
fulfilled by Jesus Christ. The question of the New Testament's
treatment of the Old Testament will be treated in a later
section, but it is certainly clear that Jesus fulfilled a great
many of the Messianic prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. The
study of the libretto for Handel's Messiah is very instructive in
this regard, because although the story line portrays the life of
Jesus, many of the passages used for this purpose are taken from
Old Testament prophetic passages concerning the Messiah.
Some of the fulfillments of the Messianic prophecies in
Jesus were as follows: He was to be the seed of the woman (Gen.
3:15) who was to bruise Satan's head (Gal. 4:4). As the seed of
Abraham (Gen. 22:18, Gal. 3:16) and the seed of David (Psalm
132:11, Jer. 23:5, Acts 13:23), he was to come from the tribe of
Judah (Gen. 49:10, Heb. 7:14).
He was to come a specified time (Gen. 49:10, Dan. 9:24-25,
Luke 2:1), born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14, Matt. 1:18-23), in
Bethlehem (Micah 5:2, Matt. 2:1, Luke 2:5,6). Great persons were
to visit Him and adore Him (Psalm 72:10, Matt. 2:1-11), and
through the rage of a jealous king, innocent children were to be
slaughtered (Jer. 31:15, Matt. 2:16-18). He was to be preceded
by a forerunner, John the Baptist, before entering His public
ministry (Isaiah 40:3, Mal. 3:1, Luke 1:17, Matt. 3:13).
He was to be a prophet like Moses (Deut. 18:18, Acts 3:20-
22), and to have a special anointing of the Holy Spirit (Psalm
45:7, Isaiah 11:2, Isaiah 61:1,2, Matt. 3:16, Luke 4:15-21,43).
He was to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek (Psalm
110:4, Heb. 5:5,6). As the servant of the Lord, he was to be a
faithful and patient redeemer for the Gentiles as well as for the
Jews (Isaiah 42:1-4, Matt. 12:18-21).
His ministry was to begin in Galilee (Isaiah 9:1,2, Matt. 4:
12,16-23); He was later to enter Jerusalem (Zech. 9:9, Matt. 21:
1-5) to bring salvation. He was to enter the temple (Hag. 2:7-9,
Mal. 3:1, Matt. 21:12). His zeal for the Lord is mentioned
(Psalm 69:9, John 2:17); His manner of teaching was to be by
parables (Psalm 78:2, Matt. 13:34-35); His ministry was to be
characterized by miracles (Isaiah 35:5-6, Matt. 11:4-6, John
11:47). He was to be rejected by His brethren (Psalm 69:8,
Isaiah 53:3, John 1:11, John 7:5), and a "stone of stumbling" to
the Jews--a "rock of offense" (Isaiah 8:14, Rom. 9:32, I Pet.
2:8).
He was to be hated without cause (Psalm 69:4, Isaiah 49:7,
John 7:48, John 15:25), rejected by the rulers (Psalm 118:22,
Matt. 21:42, John 7:48), betrayed by a friend (Psalm 41:9, Psalm
55:12,14, John 13:18,21), forsaken by His disciples (Zech. 13:7,
Matt. 26:31-56), sold for 30 pieces of silver (Zech. 11:12, Matt.
26:15), and His price given for the potter's field (Zech. 11:13,
Matt. 27:7). He was to be smitten on the cheek (Mic. 5:1, Matt.
27:30), spat upon (Isaiah 50:6, Matt. 27:30), mocked (Psalm 22:7-
8, Matt. 27:31,39-44), and beaten (Psalm 50:6, Matt. 26:67,
27:26,30).
His death by crucifixion is described in Psalm 22. The
meaning of His death, as a substitutionary atonement, is provided
in Isaiah 53. His hands and feet were to be pierced (Psalm
22:16, Zech. 12:10, John 19:18, John 19:37, John 20:25), yet not
one of His bones was to be broken (Ex. 12:46, Psalm 34:20, John
19:33-36). He was to suffer thirst (Psalm 22:15, John 19:28) and
be given vinegar to drink (Psalm 69:21, Matt. 27:34). He was to
be numbered with the transgressors (Isaiah 53:12, Matt. 27:38).
His body was to be buried with the rich (Isaiah 53:9, Matt.
27:57-60), but was not to see corruption (Psalm 16:10, Acts
2:31). He was to be raised from the dead (Psalm 2:7, 16:10, Acts
13:33), and ascend to the right hand of God (Psalm 68:18, Luke
24:51, Acts 1:9, Psalm 110:1, Heb 1:3).1
It is sometimes asserted that Jesus did not fulfill all of
the Messianic expectations outlined in the Hebrew Scriptures,
only many of them. It must be remembered, however, that Jesus
said repeatedly that he would be coming again in glory, and there
is every reason to expect these additional passages to be
fulfilled at that time. Certainly the vast number of prophecies
that he did fulfill defies all odds, such that, after considering
them carefully, it would take more faith to believe he was not
the Messiah than to believe that he was.2
The Biblical prophecies concerning Tyre, Sidon, Capernaum,
Chorazin, Bethsaida, Samaria, Ashkelon, Gaza, Jericho, Jerusalem,
Palestine, Moab, Ammon, Egypt, Assyria, and Edom, to name just a
few places, have all been fulfilled to the letter. Detailed
explanations of how these prophecies have been fulfilled can be
found in many books on the subject.
One of many examples would be the prophecy concerning Tyre
found in Ezekiel 26: 3-5,7,12,14,16:
Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against
thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up
against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up.
And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break
down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her,
and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a
place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the
sea. . . . For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will
bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon . . .
and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy
dust in the midst of the water. . . . And I will make
thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to
spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I
the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord God. . . .
Then all the princes of the sea shall come down from
their thrones, and lay away their robes, and put off
their broidered garments: they shall clothe themselves
with trembling.
This prophecy was written in 590 B.C. Four years later,
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, began laying siege to Tyre, a
process that took thirteen years. When he finally captured the
city, he broke down her walls and towers, but the rulers of Tyre
had taken everything of value to an island about half a mile off
the coast. Nebuchadnezzar simply destroyed the coastal city,
left it in ruins, and returned to Babylon.
In 322 B.C., Alexander the Great decided to capture the
island city of Tyre. In order to do this, he built a causeway
from the mainland to the island, taking stones, timber, and dirt
from the ruined city. His army then marched to the island city
and captured it. Other neighboring cities were so frightened by
the conquest of Tyre that they surrendered to Alexander without
opposition.
Today, the fresh water springs of Tyre still send out more
than ten million gallons of water a day, yet despite this source
of abundant drinking water, Tyre has never been rebuilt.
However, the seacoast for miles on either side of the springs is
now in use by fishermen. A photograph of the fishermen spreading
their nets over the ancient city of Tyre appears in Fulfilled
Prophecies That prove the Bible by George T. B. Davis.3
_______________________________________
1See Fred John Meldau, Messiah In Both Testaments (Denver:
Christian Victory Publishing Co., 1956).
2See, for example, Peter W. Stoner, Science Speaks, third ed.
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1969), chapter 3, which considers the vast
mathematical improbability that any man could fulfill just eight
of the most obvious Messianic prophecies fulfilled by Jesus.
3George T. B. Davis, Fulfilled Prophecies That Prove The Bible
(Philadelphia: Million Testament Campaign, 1931), p. 9.
PITCAIRN'S ISLAND
The story of the Pitcairn Bible is a testimony both to the
providence of God and to the value of the Bible in saving society
from chaos. Ginny Hastings has written of it, "with no law to
guide them, the mutineers of the Bounty turned an island paradise
into a living hell of sexual abuse, drunkenness and murder.
Their society was on the brink of collapse when one of the men
discovered an ancient book from the Bounty."1
The story begins with the events described in the well-known
book, Mutiny on the Bounty. Fletcher Christian, acting 2nd
Lieutenant, irritated at the arbitrary conduct of Lieut. Bligh,
began constructing a raft in order to leave the ship by night.
Another sailor suggested to him that he may as well take the ship
and turn the Captain adrift, since they were all dissatisfied.
He followed this suggestion, and the next day, April 28, 1789,
more than half the ship's company joined in the mutiny. The
Captain and his party were sent adrift, and after much suffering,
reached Timor.
Fletcher Christian took the Bounty and the rest of the crew
to Tahiti, where they had been previously. In September of the
same year, he and eight other men from the Bounty, six Tahitian
men, eleven Tahitian women and one child, sailed away from the
others, leaving them there at their request. At the beginning of
the following year, they landed on an uninhabited island,
Pitcairn's, and burned the ship in order to escape detection.
At first, the island seemed a paradise. But then the
Englishmen mistreated the Tahitians and stole one of their wives,
causing a rebellion. Within four years, all of the Tahitian men
and all but four of the Englishmen had been murdered. The only
survivors were Alexander Smith, Edward Young, Matthew Quintall,
William McCoy, ten women and some children.
McCoy learned how to distill liquor from the roots of the ti
plant, and eventually the men were drunk almost all the time,
living in a continual orgy with some of the women. Fearing for
their lives, the women and children fled to another part of the
island and build a fort for protection.
McCoy threw himself over the cliffs while drunk. Matthew
Quintal became drunk and insane, threatening the lives of
everyone else. Smith and Young had to axe him to death for the
safety of the others on the island.
Smith finally destroyed the still and all the liquor on the
island, and went through several months of withdrawal from
alcohol. Young was taken in by the women because he was dying of
consumption. While he was living alone for months, Smith
discovered the Bible and a Book of Common Prayer from the remains
of the Bounty, but he was illiterate.
Eventually, Young and the women returned to the village
where Smith was, where he taught Smith to read using the Bible,
and died in 1801. Alexander Smith continued to read to Bible in
its entirety, and grew to understand it over a period of several
years. Seeing the importance of teaching it to others, he began
teaching the children how to read, and eventually some of the
mothers learned as well. Using the Bible, he taught everyone
about the Christian faith and instituted a daily prayer time,
grace before meals, and Sunday worship. One of his prayers was
as follows:
Suffer me not O Lord to waste this day in Sin or folly.
But Let me Worship thee with much Delight. Teach me to
know more of thee and to serve thee better than ever I
have done before, that I may be fitter to dwell in
heaven, where thy worship and service are everlasting.
Amen.2
In 1808, Pitcairn's Island was discovered by captain Mayhew
Folger of an American ship. The members of the crew were shocked
to find that the island was inhabited by thirty-five English-
speaking people of Polynesian blood who were practicing the
Christian faith. The outside world was fascinated with the news
that Fletcher Christian's community had been discovered. The
English instructed every captain sailing to the south Pacific to
search for any mutineers so that they could be arrested and
deported to England to be punished for their crimes. Later, when
two British ships did visit Pitcairn's Island, they found such an
orderly colony that they decided to disobey orders and not report
their find of the Bounty survivors to London, although they did
annex the Island as a British colony.
King George of England later sent Captain Waldgrave to visit
Pitcairn's. Waldgrave wrote:
It was with great gratification that we observed the
Christian simplicity of the natives. They appeared to
have no guile. Their cottages were open to all and all
were welcome to their food.3
A Church and a school were later built on the island.
Alexander Smith felt a personal responsibility for the Christian
nurture and care of the many children on the island. After 1808,
as a precaution against the possibility of deportation on charges
of mutiny and murder, he changed his name to John Adams in honor
of the second president of the United States.
Smith (a.k.a. Adams) died in 1829 at the age of seventy, but
by 1840, Pitcairn's Island was still a thriving Christian colony.
A visitor at that time wrote as follows:
I then walked round and questioned several of the
people on the texts, and some of the chief Scripture
facts and doctrines, and most of them gave ready and
suitable answers. . . .
The islanders have prayers twice on the Sabbath; after
which Mr. Nobbs reads sermons from Burder, Watts, Blair, or
Whitefield. There is also a Sabbath-school, a Bible-class
is held on the Wednesday, and a day-school every morning and
afternoon.4
Before his death, Smith (a.k.a. Adams), whose eyesight was
failing, gave the Pitcairn Bible to Levi Hayden in exchange for a
Bible in larger print. In 1840, it was passed on to Rev. Daniel
Miner Lord, pastor of the Mariners' church in Boston, where it
became the subject of hundreds of addresses to Sunday Schools,
churches, and various religious meetings.5 It was later placed
in the Lenox Library collection of old and unusual Bibles at the
New York Public Library.
_______________________________________
1Ginny Hastings, "Ship of Fools: Mutiny on the Bounty," Issues &
Answers, Vol. 5, No. 8 (November, 1982), p. 1.
2Ibid., quoting Thomas B. Murray, Pitcairn: The Island, The
People and The Pastor (London: SPCK, 1877), p. 338.
3Ibid., quoting Harry L. Shapiro, The Heritage of the Bounty (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1936), p. 83.
4Thomas Heath, "The Pitcairn Islanders," The Evangelical Magazine
and Missionary Chronicle 19 (New Series) (October, 1841): 520-
522.
5New York Public Library, The Pitcairn Bible (New York: The New
York Public Library, 1934), p. 12.
THE AMAZING SURVIVAL OF THE WORD OF GOD
No book has ever been the subject of more continued attacks
upon it than the Bible. Despite the assaults mounted upon it for
millennia, it has emerged unscathed. F. Bettex of Stuttgart,
Germany has written:
Unchanged and unchangeable, this Bible stands for
centuries, unconcerned about the praise and the
reproach of men. With sublime freedom it strides
through the history of mankind, dismisses entire
nations with a glance, with a word, in order to tarry a
long time with the deeds of a shepherd. It rises like
an angel to heights that make peoples, passing hither
and thither, appear like swarms of grasshoppers, yea,
all nations like a drop in a bucket.1
In a book entitled The Wonder of the Book, Dysan Hague
described in detail how the Bible has withstood all of the
attacks upon it through the centuries. He wrote:
It is almost the only Book in the world that has stood
age after age of ferocious and incessant persecution.
Century after century men have tried to burn it and to
bury it. Crusade after crusade has been organized to
extirpate it. Kings of the earth set themselves, and
rulers of the church took counsel together to destroy
it from off the face of the earth. Diocletian, the
Roman Emperor in 303, inaugurated the most terrific
onslaught that the world has known upon a book. Almost
every Bible was destroyed, myriads of Christians
perished, and a column of triumph was erected over an
exterminated Bible with the inscription: "Extinco
nomine Christianorum" (the name of the Christian has
been extinguished). And yet not many years after, the
Bible came forth, as Noah from the ark, to repeople the
earth, and in the year 325 Constantine enthroned the
Bible as the Infallible Judge of Truth in the first
General Council.
Perhaps the most deadly persecution of all has been
during the last one hundred and fifty years. The
bitterest foes of the Bible, curiously enough, were men
who claimed liberty of thought; and Bolingbroke, and
Hume, and Voltaire, seemed so confident of the
extermination of the Bible, that the Frenchman declared
that a hundred years after his day not a Bible would be
found save as an antiquarian curiosity. Then came the
German rationalistic host, with the fiercest and
deadliest of all the attacks. Bauer, Strauss, and the
Tubingen School took up the cry of the Children of
Edom: "Down with it, down with it, even to the ground."
But "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh;
Jehovah shall have them in derision" (Ps. 2:4).
For here it is today; stronger than ever. It stands,
and it will stand. Yes, in spite of these age-long
persecutions the Word of the Lord is having free course
and is being glorified. It is being circulated at the
rate of millions of copies a year, in almost every
language of the globe. It has an influence it never
possessed before, greater in power, greater in life,
greater in freshness and the beauty of spring.2
One of the many books written expressly for the purpose of
discrediting the Bible was Bradlaugh's The Bible, What It Is
(London, 1857). The author of the book wrote, "this work was
intended to relieve the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
from the labor of re-translating the Bible, by proving that it is
not worth the trouble and the expense."3
Wilbur M. Smith went to the trouble to compare the
publishing history of Bradlaugh's book to that of the Bible in
the twentieth century. As of the time that Smith did his
investigation, not one single edition of Bradlaugh's book had
been published since 1905, while Great Britain had published over
400 million Bibles, and the entire Bible had been translated into
320 new languages from the time Bradlaugh wrote his book.4
The number of examples of failed attempts to discredit the
Bible is nearly endless, yet the Bible remains the most widely
read and sought-after book of all time.
_______________________________________
1Quoted by George T. B. Davis, Fulfilled Prophecies That Prove
the Bible (Philadelphia: Million Testaments Campaign, 1931),
p. 112.
2Dyson Hague, The Wonder of the Book (London: Marshall, Morgan &
Scott, n.d.), quoted in Ibid., pp. 108-110.
3Quoted by Wilbur M. Smith, Chats From A Minister's Library,
p. 256.
4Ibid.
DATE AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
In the early twentieth century, most scholars dated the New
Testament documents as follows:
Matthew, A.D. 851
Mark, A.D. 60-652
Luke, A.D. 80-853
John, A.D. 90-954
Pauline Epistles, A.D. 48-645
For the four Gospels, these were the latest possible dates
of authorship; there were excellent reasons for earlier dating.
C. E. Raven wrote:
That Acts was written before St. Paul's trial at Rome
seems a strong probability, and the case for a
subsequent incorporation of Mark is not strong. The
general habit of placing the Synoptic Gospels in the
period A.D. 70-100 is inexplicable; for the evidence is
weaker than the objections. They reflect a time before
the scattering of the Palestinian Church and the
dispersion of the local and conservative community, a
time utterly unlike the age of experiment and
syncretism which followed Nero's persecution and the
sack of Jerusalem.6
Most scholars have considered Luke and Acts to be two parts
of one document.7 Because the book of Acts gives a detailed
account of the later portion of the life of the Apostle Paul, but
ends abruptly in A.D. 63 with Paul's two years at Rome (Acts
28:30) without mentioning that he was tried in Rome and martyred
under Nero,8 it would be reasonable to date the Gospel of Luke
and the book of Acts prior to A.D. 63 or 64.
Moreover, the temple at Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70,
and the city was overtaken at that time.9 The Jews and the
Palestinian church were scattered, causing conditions totally
different from what one would expect during the time of the
writing of these documents.
Because of these considerations and others, in the second
half of the twentieth century there was a trend toward an earlier
dating of the New Testament. For example, in a 1963 interview
with Christianity Today magazine, William F. Albright (1891-1971)
stated:
In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was
written by a baptized Jew between the forties and
eighties of the first century A.D. (very probably
sometime between about 50 and 75 A.D.)10
Albright was one of the world's foremost biblical archaeologists.
He distinguished himself enough to have an article devoted to him
in the 1966 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which stated
that he "considerably influenced the development of biblical and
related near eastern scholarship."11 His opinion was that of one
who had taken into account all the considerations involved in
making such a judgment. Because he was probably better informed
of these considerations than almost anyone else at the time, and
because he had first-hand knowledge of them, his opinion carried
tremendous weight.
For this reason, other scholars later began to reconsider
the matter. For example, John A. T. Robinson's book, Redating
the New Testament, dates all of the New Testament documents
between A.D. 47 and A.D. 70.12 It should be noted, however, that
early tradition assigns a later date to the works of the apostle
John, who wrote Revelation while in exile on the island of Patmos
(Rev. 1:9) in the fifteenth year of the reign of the emperor
Domitian (A.D. 96), according to Eusebius, Ecclesiastical
History, Book III, Chapter 18. This is confirmed by an earlier
source, Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book V, Chapter XXX,
section 3.
In the middle of the nineteenth century it had been
confidently asserted by the very influential Tubingen school that
the four Gospels and the book of Acts did not exist before the
thirties of the second century A.D.13 Yet even at the time there
was sufficient evidence to demonstrate that this assertion was
completely unfounded as was shown by Lightfoot,14 Tregelles15 and
Tischendorf,16 as well as others.17 The amount of evidence later
increased to the degree that the Tubingen views were no longer
held by scholars.18
The evidence for the New Testament writings has always been
considerably greater than the evidence for most classical works,
and historians have therefore protested vigorously against the
excessive skepticism of theologians in dealing with the
historical writings of the New Testament. Examples of such
scholars include Eduard Meyer,19 A. T. Olmstead,20 William M.
Ramsay21 and Henry J. Cadbury.22
There are in existence over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the
New Testament, as well as 8,000 manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate
and 1,000 of other early versions.23 Some of the best and most
important of the Greek New Testament go back to about A.D. 350.
Two important manuscripts are the Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican
Library in Rome and the Codex Sinaiticus in the British Museum.24
From the four hundreds A.D., we have the Codex Alexandrinus in
the British Museum, and from a hundred years later, the Codex
Bezae in the Cambridge University library, which contains the
Gospels and Acts in both Greek and Latin.25
The textual advantage of the New Testament documents over
all other ancient manuscripts is that, in no other case is the
interval of time between date of authorship and date of earliest
extant manuscripts so short.26 Furthermore, the number of extant
manuscripts is far greater for the New Testament than for any
other classical work.27 For other ancient works, manuscript
attestation is poor in comparison. For example, we have, of the
seven surviving plays of Sophocles, four manuscripts that are of
any value, the earliest being written in the eleventh century,
1400 years after the poet's death.28 For Plato, we have eleven
manuscripts, the earliest being written about 1250 years after
his death.29 The History of Thucydides has eight manuscripts,
the
earliest being from the tenth century, 1300 years after his
death,30 and Herodotus also has eight manuscripts, the earliest
being from the tenth century, again 1300 years after his death.31
Yet there is no classical scholar who will doubt the authenticity
of these works, despite the paucity of extant manuscripts and
despite the gap of over 1,000 years between the time of
authorship and the time the earliest extant manuscript was
written.
Yet, in addition to the examples of the Greek manuscripts of
the New Testament documents that have been mentioned, we have the
Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, containing eleven papyrus
codices, three of which contain most of the New Testament
writings. The first contains the four Gospels and Acts and was
copied between A.D. 200 and 250, the second contains the letters
of Paul and Hebrews and was copied at about the same time, and
the third, which includes the book of Revelation, was copied
about 50 years later.32
Another discovery consists of some papyrus fragments dated
not later than A.D. 150 by papyrological experts, which consists
of fragments of an unknown gospel and other early Christian
papyri.33
An earlier fragment, the John Rylands Fragment, dated on
paleographical grounds around A.D. 130, is a papyrus codex
containing John 18:31-33, 37-38, which was found in Egypt in
1917.34
The papyrus Bodmer II, written about A.D. 200, contains the
first 14 chapters of John with the exception of 22 verses and
portions of the last seven chapters.35
Frederic C. Kenyon, who was keeper of manuscripts in the
British Museum, wrote:
But besides confirming the . . . authenticity of the
canonical books, the new evidence tends to confirm the
general integrity of the text as it has come down to
us. . . . The interval then between the dates of
original composition and the earliest extant evidence
becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the
last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have
come down to us substantially as they were written has
now been removed. Both the authenticity and the
general integrity of the books of the New Testament may
be regarded as finally established.36
In the writings of the early church fathers, we find
extensive quotes from the New Testament. The letter of Barnabas,
it is now agreed, could not be any later than A.D. 150 and might
be as early as A.D. 70.37 This letter quotes from Romans,
Ephesians, and Hebrews, and demonstrates a knowledge of eight
other New Testament books.38 Although the dating for the Didache
is not firmly established, there is good reason to believe that
it was in circulation prior to A.D. 70.39 The Didache
demonstrates a knowledge of Matthew, Luke, Acts, Romans,
I Corinthians and I Peter, and possibly Hebrews and Jude.40 The
Epistle to the Corinthians of Clement of Rome also had early
circulation and popularity in the first century.41 This letter
quotes from Romans, I Corinthians, Hebrews and possibly Acts.
Extensive familiarity with nine other New Testament books is
demonstrated.42 The letters of Ignatius of Antioch, all written
before his death, which could not have been later than A.D.
117,43
refer to Matthew, John, Romans, Galatians, Ephesians,
Philippians, I Timothy, II Timothy, Titus, and possibly eleven
other New Testament books.44 Polycarp's Letter to the
Philippians, also written prior to A.D. 117,45 quotes John,
Acts,
Romans, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians,
Philippians, Colossians(?), II Thessalonians, I Timothy, II
Timothy, Hebrews, James and I John.46 Other early Christian
writings (such as The Shepherd of Hermas and II Clement) contain
extensive quotations of the New Testament documents.47
From the writings of the Gnostic school of Valentinus which
were recently discovered, we know that before A.D. 150 most of
the books of the New Testament were well known among the people
of this sect.48
A great deal of external evidence exists for the
authenticity of the New Testament documents. Papias (A.D. 60-
130), bishop of Hierapolis, writes the following on the basis of
information obtained from the "presbyter" John:
This also the Presbyter used to say, "When Mark became
Peter's interpreter, he wrote down accurately, although
not in order, all that he remembered of what was said
or done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord nor
followed Him, but later, as I have said, he did Peter,
who made his teaching fit his needs without, as it
were, making any arrangement of the Lord's oracles, so
that Mark made no mistakes in thus writing some things
down as he [Peter] remembered them. For to one thing
he gave careful attention, to omit nothing of what he
heard and to falsify nothing in this."
Now Matthew collected the oracles in the Hebrew
language, and each one interpreted them as he was
able.49
Irenaeus was a student of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna,
martyred in A.D. 156 after being a Christian for 86 years.
Polycarp had been a disciple of the Apostle John himself.
Irenaeus had often heard from Polycarp the eyewitness accounts of
Jesus received from John and others who knew Jesus.50 In
Adversus
haerese, III. I (ca. 180), Irenaeus writes:
Now these, all and each of them alike having the Gospel
of God,--Matthew for his part published also a written
Gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, whilst
Peter and Paul were at Rome, preaching, and laying the
foundation of the Church. And after their departure,
Mark, Peter's disciple and interpreter, did himself
also publish unto us in writing the things which were
preached by Peter. And Luke too, the attendant of
Paul, set down in a book the Gospel preached by him.
Afterwards John the disciple of the Lord, who also
leaned on His Breast,--he again put forth his Gospel,
while he abode in Ephesus is Asia.51
The high importance of this testimony of Irenaeus is
demonstrated in the book, The Irenaeus Testimony to the Fourth
Gospel: It's Extent, Meaning, and Value, by Frank Grant Lewis.52
_______________________________________
1Burnett Hillman Streeter, The Four Gospels, A Study of Origins
(New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925), p. 487, and Vincent Taylor,
The Gospels, A Short Introduction (London: Epworth Press, 1930),
p. 96.
2Streeter, p. 487, and Taylor, p. 59.
3Taylor, p. 86.
4Ibid., p. 99.
5F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
(Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1943), pp. 13, 14.
6Charles E. Raven, Jesus and the Gospel of Love (New York: Henry
Holt and Co., 1931), p. 128.
7Sir William M. Ramsay, Luke the Physician (New York: A. C.
Armstrong and Son, 1908), p. 6. However, Luke may have written
his Gospel earlier, while he was with Paul in Caesarea (Acts 23:
33-27:1), A.D. 58-60. See, for example, James Tate, The Horae
Paulinae of William Paley (London, 1840), Appendix E, pp. 162-
165.
8John Warwick Montgomery, History and Christianity (Downers
Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1964), p. 35. Paul's martyrdom
may have taken place in A.D. 67 or 68 after a release from his
Roman imprisonment in A.D. 64, enabling him, in the interim, to
travel to Philippi, Ephesus, Crete, Troas, Corinth and Miletus as
indicated in Phil. 2:24, I Tim. 1:3, Tit. 1:5, and II Tim.
4:13,20.
9Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago: William Benton, 1966), XII,
1008.
10Christianity Today, VII, 359, January 18, 1963, "Toward a More
Conservative View," interview with William F. Albright.
11Ibid., I, 531.
12John A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1976), p. 352.
13Albert Schwegler, Das nachapostolische Zeitalter in den
Hauptmomenten seiner Entwicklung (Tubingen: Ludwig Friedrich
Fues, 1846), Vol. II, pp. 115-123.
14J. B. Lightfoot, Essays on the Work Entitled Supernatural
Religion (London: Macmillan and Co., 1889).
15Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, An Account of the Printed Text of
the
Greek New Testament with Remarks on its Revision upon Critical
Principles (London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1856).
16Constantine Tischendorf, When were our Gospels Written? (New
York: American Tract Society, 1866).
17F. W. Farrar, The Life and Work of St. Paul (New York: E. P.
Dutton & Co., 1879), Vol. I, pp. 10ff.
18Sir William Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the
Trustworthiness of the New Testament (London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1915), p. 38.
19Eduard Meyer, Ursprung Und Anfange Des Christentums (Stuttgart:
J. G. Cottaishe, 1962).
20A. T. Olmstead, Jesus in the Light of History (New York:
Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1942).
21William Ramsay, Luke the Physician (New York: A. C. Armstrong
and Son, 1908).
22Henry J. Cadbury, The Book of Acts in History (New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1955).
23A. T. Robertson, An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of
the
New Testament (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1925), p. 70; Bruce
M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, 2d ed. (New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 32-33, 36, 76; Norman L. Geisler
and William E. Nix, A General introduction to the Bible (Chicago:
Moody Press, 1968), p. 285.
24F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
(Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1960), p. 16.
25Ibid., p. 16.
26Frederic G. Kenyon, Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the
New
Testament (London: Macmillan and Co., 1901), p. 4.
27Ibid., p. 4.
28F. W. Hall, A Companion to Classical Texts (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1913), pp. 270-271.
29Ibid., pp. 259-260.
30Ibid., pp. 279-280.
31Ibid., pp. 237-238. See also Metzger, p. 34, and Geisler and
Nix, p. 285.
32Bruce, p. 17, and Metzger, pp. 37-38.
33H. Idris Bell and T. C. Skeat, Fragments of an Unknown Gospel
and Other Early Christian Papyri (London: Trustees of the British
Museum, 1935).
34C. H. Roberts, An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel
(Manchester University Press, 1935).
35Bruce, p. 18; Metzger, pp. 39-40.
36Sir Frederic Kenyon, The Bible and Archaeology (New York:
Harper
and Brothers, 1940), pp. 288-289.
37J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Baker Book House, 1978), p. 134.
38Committee of the Oxford Historical Society of Historical
Theology, The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1905), pp. 1-23.
39Jean-Paul Audet, La Didache Instructions Des Apotres (Paris:
Libraire Lecoffre, 1958), pp. 187-210.
40The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, pp. 24-36.
41Glimm, p. 4.
42The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, pp. 37-62.
43Edgar J. Goodspeed, The Apostolic Fathers (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1950), p. 204. Ignatius was probably martyred c. A.D.
108-110.
44The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, pp. 63-83.
45Lightfoot, p. 92.
46The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, pp. 84-104.
47Ibid., pp. 105-136.
48Bruce, p. 19.
49This quotation from Papias is cited in Eusebius' Historica
ecclesiastica, III. 39, reprinted in Roy J. Deferrari, Eusebius
Pamphili Ecclesiastical History (New York: Fathers of the Church,
Inc., 1953), p. 329.
50Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book 5, Chapter 20, reprinted
in Roy J. Deferrari, Eusebius Pamphili, Ecclesiastical History
(New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1953), p. 329. Eusebius
writes as follows:
In the letter to Florinus which we have mentioned
above, Irenaeus again speaks of his association with
Polycarp, saying: ". . . so that I can tell even the
place where the blessed Polycarp sat and talked, his
goings and comings, and manner of his life, and the
appearance of his body, and the discourses which he
gave to the multitude, and how he reported his living
with John and with the rest of the Apostles who had
seen the Lord, and how he remembered their words, and
what the things were which he heard from them about the
Lord, and about His teaching."
51Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 3, Chapter 1, reprinted in
John
Keble, Five Books of S. Irenaeus Against Heresies (London:
Rivingtons, 1877), p. 204.
52Department of Biblical and Patristic Greek, University of
Chicago, Historical and Linguistic Studies in Literature Related
to the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1908), Vol. 1, pp. 451-514.
MANUSCRIPT ATTESTATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
There are many important old manuscripts of the Old
Testament. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of
the most ancient of these was the Cairo Codex, containing the
former and latter prophets, copied in A.D. 895 by Moses Ben
Asher, a leader of the Masoretes, in Tiberias, Palestine.
One of three important manuscripts copied in the 900's A.D.
was the Leningrad Codex of the prophets (copied in A.D. 916),
containing only the latter prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
and the twelve minor prophets). Two others are the Aleppo Codex
(copied by Aaron ben Asher in A.D. 930) and the British Museum
Codex (copied in A.D. 950).1 The Aleppo Codex was complete until
it had to be rescued from a burning synagogue in Aleppo, Syria in
1948 and smuggled into Israel. The British Museum Codex
(Oriental 4445) is an incomplete manuscript of the Pentateuch,
containing Genesis 39:20 through Deuteronomy 1:33.
The Leningrad Codex (copied in A.D. 1008) is now the largest
and only complete manuscript of the Old Testament. It had been
copied from a corrected codex prepared by Rabbi Aaron ben Moses
ben Asher before A.D. 1000. The Reuchlin Codex of the Prophets
was copied in A.D. 1105, while the Cairo Geniza fragments (6th-
9th centuries A.D.) contain over 120 Biblical manuscripts
discovered during the rebuilding of the synagogue at Cairo,
Egypt, in 1890.2
The accuracy of these manuscripts has been corroborated not
only by their faithfulness to the Septuagint (a translation of
the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek done during the third and second
centuries B.C.)3 and the Vulgate (a translation into Latin
completed by Jerome in A.D. 405), but by their striking
faithfulness to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Dead Sea Scrolls (copied between 130 B.C. and A.D. 70)
consist of 40,000 fragments. Five hundred books have been
reconstructed from them, one hundred of which are from the Old
Testament in Hebrew. The only book of the Old Testament not
represented is the book of Esther. Included is a complete
manuscript of the Hebrew text of the book of Isaiah copied in 125
B.C., which is almost identical to the Masoretic text of A.D. 916
(the Leningrad Codex of the prophets), indicating the unusual
accuracy of the Masoretes as copyists over the period of one
thousand years.4
____________________________
1Gleason L. Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction,
Revised Ed. (Chicago: Moddy Press, 1974), p. 43, states that this
manuscript was actually copied in A.D. 850, but that the vowel
points were added a century later.
2Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to
the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1968), pp. 249-250.
3Ibid., pp. 253-254.
4Ibid., p. 254-263.
THE FORMATION OF THE CANON: THE OLD TESTAMENT
The Hebrew Scriptures were recognized as authoritative at
their inception, and were immediately accepted as such by the
Jewish people. The acceptance of the Pentateuch, for example, is
recorded in Deuteronomy 32:46-47, and in Joshua 1:7,8.
As a matter of course, the Church of the first century
regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as inspired. Jesus, in Luke
24:44, refers to the Law, the prophets, and the psalms (or the
writings) as divinely authoritative and canonical.
The Jews accepted all of the 39 books of the Old Testament
as inspired. A confirmation of public opinion along these lines
was made at the synod at Jamnia. When the destruction of
Jerusalem was imminent in A.D. 70, Yochanan ben Zakkai, a great
Rabbi in the school of Hillel in the Pharisaic party, obtained
permission from the Romans to reconvene the Sanhedrin on a purely
spiritual basis at Jabneh or Jamnia. Objections had been raised
by some of the Jews to the canonical recognition of a few books
(Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Esther), and their
canonicity was reaffirmed at this time. All of the books that
they decided to acknowledge as canonical were already generally
accepted, although questions had been raised about some of them.
On the other hand, those that they refused to admit, such as
Ecclesiasticus, had never been included.1
Philo (20 B.C. - A.D. 50), the learned Jew in Alexandria,
accepted the Hebrew canon. For him, the Law (the five books of
Moses, or the first five books of the Bible) was pre-eminently
inspired, but he also acknowledged the authority of the other
books of the Hebrew canon. He did not regard the apocryphal
books as authoritative. This suggests that, although the
apocryphal books were included in the Septuagint (the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures), they were not really
considered canonical by the Alexandrian Jews.
Josephus, the eminent Jewish historian who lived in the
first century A.D., also echoes prevailing opinion about which
books were canonical and which ones were not. Although he used
the Septuagint freely, he, also, did not regard the Apocrypha as
canonical.
The earliest extant Christian list of Old Testament books
was recorded by Melito, bishop of Sardis in A.D. 170. This list
does not mention Lamentations (which was usually understood to be
part of the book of Jeremiah), or Nehemiah, which was normally
appended to Ezra. The only other omission was the book of
Esther.
The late fourth century writer Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis
in Cyprus, quoted another ancient list from the second century
which included all the books corresponding to our thirty-nine,
except Lamentations, which was probably considered an appendix to
Jeremiah.
Origen (A.D. 185-254) also provided a list of the Old
Testament books in use corresponding to what we now accept as the
Old Testament.2 Athanasius (c. 296-373), bishop of Alexandria,
in his Easter Letter (A.D. 367), provides the same list, except
that he omits Esther and appends Baruch to Jeremiah and
Lamentations. The Easter Letter also names other books which he
stated were not canonical but suitable to be read to new
converts. Among these were some of the Old Testament apocryphal
books and the book of Esther.
Jerome (A.D. 347-420) began translating the Bible into the
Latin Vulgate in A.D. 382. The Old Testament portion of this
version of the Bible was completed in A.D. 405, and also
contained the 39 books we recognize as the Old Testament. He did
not hold the Old Testament apocryphal books in high estimation,
but he later translated a few of them, although reluctantly.3
For Christians, the canonical authority of the Old Testament
is established beyond doubt by the fact that the Hebrew Canon of
the Old Testament was accepted as divinely authoritative by Jesus
Christ and by His disciples.4
____________________________
1F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments, third ed. (Westwood,
NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1963), pp. 97-98.
2Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book VI, Chapter 25.
3Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to
the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1968), p. 338.
4Edward J. Young, "The Canon of the Old Testament," in Carl F. H.
Henry, ed., Revelation and the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Book House, 1958), p. 168.
THE FORMATION OF THE CANON: THE NEW TESTAMENT
The determination of the Canon of the New Testament was not
the result of any pronouncement, either by an official of the
Church or by an ecclesiastical body. Rather, the Canon was
determined by the use of these books throughout all of the
Churches during the first and second centuries. The
establishment of the Canon was the process by which formal
recognition was given to the writings of Scripture already
recognized as authoritative.
Most of the New Testament Scriptures were accepted
immediately. For example, in II Peter 3:16, it is taken for
granted that the Pauline epistles were Scriptures on a par with
the Old Testament.
The early heresies of the Church played an important part in
influencing the Christians to make clear determinations as to
which writings were authoritative as Scripture. The heretic
Marcion had excluded everything except ten Pauline epistles and
certain selected portions of the Gospel according to Luke.
Moreover, the Gnostics were introducing secret "Gospels,"
attempting to advance them as authoritative Scripture.
One of the earliest writers to respond to the Gnostics was
Irenaeus. His writings assume the authority of the books of the
New Testament in common use during the second century, although
his citations are from only 23 of the 27 New Testament books.
Three of the four books that he does not cite were cited as
Scriptures by earlier Christian writers,1 and the fourth
(III John) was probably not cited simply because of its brevity;
Irenaeus probably simply did not have occasion to use it during
the course of his arguments.
An early list of the books of the New Testament (A.D. 170)
appears in the Muratorian fragment, found by L. A. Muratori in
manuscript form and published in 1740. Although the fragment is
mutilated, it attests to the widespread use as Scripture of all
books of the New Testament except Hebrews, James, I and II Peter.
However, the Apostolic Fathers had already cited all of these
four books as Scripture. The Muratorian fragment also mentions
The Shepherd of Hermas as worthy to be read in church, but not to
be included with the apostolic writings. Curiously, the Wisdom
of Solomon, an Old Testament Apocryphal book, is also included as
canonical.
Another early list appeared in the Codex Barococcio (A.D.
206), which included 64 of the 66 books of the present-day Bible.
Esther and Revelation were omitted, but Revelation had formerly
been regarded as Scripture by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of
Alexandria, Tertullian, and the Muratorian Canon.
In A.D. 230, Origen (A.D. 185-254) stated that all
Christians acknowledged as Scripture the four Gospels, Acts, the
thirteen epistles of Paul, I Peter, I John, and Revelation. He
added that the following were disputed by some people: Hebrews,
II Peter, II John, III John, James, Jude, the Epistle of
Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and the Gospel
according to the Hebrews.2 In other words, all the churches by
this time were in agreement about most of the books, but a few
doubted some of the epistles that were not as well known. Others
were inclined to include a few books that eventually did not
secure a permanent place among the canonical books.3
By A.D. 300, all the New Testament books we presently use
were generally accepted in the churches, although in a few
places, James, II Peter, II and III John, Jude, Hebrews, and
Revelation were not in use.4 Doubts about these books faded
during the next fifty years, so that by A.D. 367, Athanasius
listed all the 27 books as canonical in his Easter Letter, which
also recommended certain other books for private reading only,
such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache.
The Synod of Hippo (A.D. 393) and the third synod of
Carthage (A.D. 397) also recognized these 27 books as canonical,
as did the highly influential church Fathers Jerome (A.D. 340-
420) and Augustine (A.D. 354-430). They did not confer upon
these any authority that they did not already possess; they
merely recognized their previously established canonicity.5
____________________________
1Ignatius refers to Philemon, while Clement of Rome cites James
and II Peter. The Epistle of Barnabas also cites II Peter.
2Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book VI, Chapter 25.
3F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments, third ed. (Westwood,
NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1963), p. 112.
4Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book III, Chapter 25.
5Bruce, p. 113.
TRANSMISSION OF THE BIBLE
The accuracy of the present-day Hebrew version of the Old
Testament is a result of the fastidious care with which the
Sopherim and the Masoretes transmitted it. The Sopherim copied
manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures from about 300 B.C. until
A.D. 500. According to the Talmud, they came to be called
"Sopherim" because, in their endeavor to preserve the text from
alteration or addition, they counted the number of words in each
section of Scripture, as well as the number of verses and
paragraphs.
During this time, there were two general classes of
manuscript copies, the synagogue rolls and private copies. Even
the private copies, or "common copies" of the Old Testament text,
which were not used in public meetings, were preserved with great
care. For the synagogue rolls, however, there was a very
elaborate set of rules for the copyists. The manuscript had to
be prepared by a Jew, written on the skins of clean animals and
fastened together with strings taken from clean animals. Every
skin was to contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout
the codex. The length of each column was to be no less than 48
and no more than 60 lines. The breadth was to be 30 letters.
The ink was to be prepared according to a definite special
recipe. An authentic copy was to be used from which to copy, and
the transcriber was not to deviate from it in the least. No word
or letter, not even a yod, was to be written from memory. The
scribe was to examine carefully the codex to be copied. Between
all of the consonants of the new copy, a space of at least the
thickness of a hair or thread had to intervene. Between every
parashah, or section, there was to be a breadth of nine
consonants. Between every book, there was to be three lines.1
During the period A.D. 500-900, the text of the Hebrew Bible
was standardized by the Masoretes, who were also very careful in
the transmission of the text. They counted every letter and
marked the middle letter and middle word of each book, of the
Pentateuch and of the whole Hebrew Bible, and counted all
parashas (sections), verses, and words for every book. These
procedures were a manifestation of the great respect they had for
the sacred Scriptures, and secured their minute attention to the
precise transmission of the text.
The Masoretes also introduced a complete system of vowel
pointings and punctuation for the text. Because of their high
regard for faithfulness to the text in transmission, wherever
they felt that corrections or improvements should be made, they
placed them in the margin.2 They retained certain marks of the
earlier scribes relating to doubtful words and offered various
possibilities as to what they were. Among the many lists they
drew up was one containing all the words that occur only twice in
the Old Testament.
Accuracy was also a primary consideration in the
transmission of the books of the New Testament. After
Christianity became legal in A.D. 313, commercial book
manufacturers, or scriptoria, were used to produce copies of the
New Testament books. Bruce Metzger wrote:
In order to ensure greater accuracy, books produced in
scriptoria were commonly checked over by a corrector
. . . specially trained to rectify mistakes in copying.
His annotations in the manuscript can usually be
detected today from differences in styles of
handwriting or tints of ink. . . .
When prose works were copied, a line called a
stichos, having sixteen (or sometimes fifteen)
syllables, was frequently used as a measure for
determining the market price of a manuscript. . . . The
application of stichometric reckoning served also as a
rough and ready check on the general accuracy of a
manuscript, for obviously a document which was short of
the total number of stichoi was a defective copy. . . .
In order to secure a high degree of efficiency and
accuracy, certain rules pertaining to the work of
scribes were developed and enforced in monastic
scriptoria. The following are examples of such
regulations prepared for the renowned monastery of the
Studium at Constantinople. About A.D. 800 the abbot of
this monastery, Theodore the Studite, who was himself
highly skilled in writing an elegant Greek hand,
included in his rules for the monastery severe
punishments for monks who were not careful in copying
manuscripts. A diet of bread and water was the penalty
set for the scribe who became so much interested in the
subject-matter of what he was copying that he neglected
his task of copying. Monks had to keep their parchment
leaves neat and clean, on penalty of 130 penances. If
anyone should take without permission another's
quaternion (that is, the ruled and folded sheets of
parchment), fifty penances were prescribed. If anyone
should make more glue than he could use at one time,
and it should harden, he must do fifty penances. If a
scribe broke his pen in a fit of temper (perhaps after
having made some accidental blunder near the close of
an otherwise perfectly copied sheet), he had to do
thirty penances.3
The accuracy of the present-day Greek version of the New
Testament has resulted from the comparison of thousands of
manuscripts by textual critics who have been able to separate
them into families on the basis of certain variations that each
manuscript family has in common. The principles of textual
criticism enable scholars to determine which versions of the text
are predecessors of the others, thereby coming close to the
original reading.
While there are many variant readings in the documents of
the New Testament, the vast majority of them are of very minor
significance, and, according to A. T. Robertson, affect a
"thousandth part of the text."4 This minuscule portion of the
text does not affect any aspect of Christian doctrine. F. C.
Grant wrote in his Introduction to the Revised Standard Version
of the New Testament that, of the variant readings in the New
Testament manuscripts, "none has turned up thus far that requires
a revision of Christian doctrine."5 Philip Schaff wrote that not
one of the variant readings affects "an article of faith or a
precept of duty which is not abundantly sustained by other and
undoubted passages, or by the whole tenor of Scripture
teaching."6
The great multitude of variant readings of the text supplies
abundant means for checking on the accuracy of those variants.
The criteria used in choosing among conflicting readings in New
Testament texts can be found in the introduction to Bruce M.
Metzger's A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (United
Bible Societies, 1971), pp. xxiv-xxviii.
_______________________________________
1Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to
the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1968), pp. 240-241, citing
Samuel Davidson, The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament, 2d ed.,
p.89.
2Gleason L. Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction,
Revised ed. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1974), p. 63.
3Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, 2d ed. (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 15, 16, 19.
4Archibald T. Robertson, An Introduction to the Textual Criticism
of the New Testament, p. 22, as quoted by Geisler and Nix,
p. 366.
5F. C. Grant, An Introduction to the Revised Standard Version of
the New Testament (1946), p. 42, quoted by F. F. Bruce, The Books
and the Parchments, third ed. (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell
Co., 1963), p. 189.
6Philip Schaff, Companion to the Greek Testament and the English
Version, 3d ed., rev., p. 177, as quoted by Geisler and Nix,
p. 366.
THE INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE
In II Timothy 3:16, it is stated that "all Scripture is
inspired by God." The Greek word , translated here
"inspired by God," literally means "God-breathed." That is, the
Scriptures are a product of the creative activity of the divine
breath. As Alan Stibbs has observed, this "indicates that
Scripture has in its origin this distinctive hallmark, that it
owes its very existence to the direct creative activity of God
himself."1
It is