To the saints of God and to all who are searching for truth-
In recent years, I have met a number of people who claim that the bible is not the authoritative word of God because the content has been changed since each book was received. This is my response.
METICULOUS COPYING
The Jewish bible, which forms the Christian old testament, has been very
meticulously copied since it was first written. The Hebrews have always been
incredibly picky about how carefully they copy the scriptures. This tradition
was also observed by clerics long after the destruction of the Hebrew nation by
the Roman Empire. First, the copiers did not copy word
by word. They copied letter by letter. Each letter was assigned a specific
numerical value. At the end of a line, the copier would add up the value of the
letters and perform a "checksum" against the original document.
The copier was allowed three mistakes. On the first mistake, he was allowed to
erase. On the second, he was required to throw the page out and start again.
Upon making a third mistake, he would be required to rip up the entire document
and start completely over.
And of course, we mustn't fail to factor in the reverence observed by
these clerics. When one wrote a title of God, such as "Lord", he would
wash his hands. Writing the actual name of God called for a complete bath.
These people had neither the opportunity nor the desire to make any errors.
PLENTY OF EXAMPLES
The New Testament is quite a different story. Because
it was expedient to circulate epistles quickly, they used a very different
method of copying. One person would read the original, and a roomful of
listeners would transcribe the words as fast as they could. While this did make
for a number of minute errors (This accounts for all the errors in scripture,
and they total much less than 1%. The errors have tended to be homonyms which
although different in meaning, do not change the overall meaning of the
scripture.) we can compare all of the many copies available to see exactly
which ones are the errors.
COMPARING NOTES
We have been blessed in that we are privileged to have some very, very old
copies of scripture. They may not be the originals, but time-wise, they are
very close. By comparing these old documents with modern copies, we have been
able to determine that no appreciable change has taken place since the time of
Moses. The only real difference which surfaces in the old testament is that
around 500 AD, Vowels were added. (Previously, Hebrew only used consonants,
allowing vowels to be inferred from context.)
The library of Qumran (Dead Sea scrolls) has been extremely helpful in this, since it contained every known
book of the Old Testament, with the exception of Esther.
HISTORY
In a discussion of the validity of the scriptures, I heard a self-proclaimed
pagan make the assertion that no historical records exist to back up the events
described in the bible. This person cites Roman and Egyptian records in
particular.
As far as Egypt is concerned, this is hardly surprising. Pharaohs often practiced revisionist
history. The exodus was a literally humiliating defeat for the pharaoh, and it
is no wonder that all mention of it should be scrubbed from Egyptian history.
But Egypt did
not control the records of other nations. The surrounding countries still have
in their archives records of Egypt's
dealings with the "Apiru" (Meaning people without a country, later
adopted and changed to "Hebrew")
As far as Rome is concerned, the
statement is just plain false. There were those who tried to revise history,
but the Roman Empire was far too bureaucratic for such a
thing. Government documents, articles, letters and interviews abound, and jive
perfectly with the stories of scripture. Even the story of Esther and the
origin of Purim, thought by many to be fiction, is supported by the histories
of neighboring countries.
OTHER APPEARANCES
Ever since scripture was first written down, people have been citing it. By
looking at exactly what others wrote and comparing them to scripture, we can
check to see if it has changed since the scripture was cited. By doing this, we
have been able to determine that no scripture has changed since its citation at
least as far back as the first century.
OTHER LANGUAGES
Going to other languages is a valuable way to look for errors. If an error or
change has occurred in the English bible, we can always check it against a much
older translation in another language, such as Egyptian, which would be very
unlikely to have the same change.
NEW TRANSLATIONS
Because dialects change, it is sometimes necessary to update the bible so that
it can still be understood. For example, the King James 1611 is written in such
an ancient dialect that few alive today would be able to understand it. A
common misconception is that new English translations are made from old ones.
This is rarely the case. It is an unwritten law that new translations be made
from the original Hebrew and Greek, and that the texts used be
as close to original as possible. This is true for the most widely accepted
versions of the bible, the modern King James, New International Version, the
New American Standard, and the New King James.
THOROUGH TESTING
Through the years, scripture has endured testing that would have broken any
other document. To this day, no one has ever been able to prove any part of it
false. The best anyone has done is take passages out
of context. I am reminded of Carl Segan quoting a passage in Psalms. "He
sits enthroned above the circle of the Earth." Segan argues that the Earth
is a sphere, not a circle. Thus, the bible contains error, thus, the entire
thing is false. Mr. Segan, I'm sorry to say, was an idiot. First, Psalms is a
book of poetry and does not have to be literal. Second, show any child a beach
ball and ask them what shape it is.
But not everyone is like Segan. There are those who applied hard logic to the
task. In fact, there was a long series of men who tried, one after the other,
to take the bible down. Every one of them, without exception, received Christ
as saviour before he was done. The most notable of these is Josh McDowell, who
has become a champion of the scriptures and creator of the bible-based
Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts". None of them ever found a single
error.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
Invariably, wherever biblical account has suggested there should be evidence of
an event, there has been. Whenever there has not, it has always turned out that
archaeologists were mixing tradition with history and looking in the wrong
place. For example, no one had ever found evidence to suggest that Moses had
actually led the Hebrews between the two halves of the parted Red
Sea. In fact, many liberal bible scholars took this to be a
spelling error, insisting that Moses had crossed the "Yam Suph", the
"Sea of Reeds",
a swamp where the water is only an inch deep. Well, we
know that can't be true, since in later centuries, Solomon had his entire fleet
anchored in the Yam Suph. While this means "Sea
of Reeds", it is in fact a name for the Red Sea.
By ignoring tradition altogether, biblical archaeologists were able to look at
the biblical account and discovered that Moses did indeed cross the Red Sea-
just in a different location that previously thought. It was in the Gulf of Aquaba, the northeast arm of the
Red Sea. There, they found a gently sloping beach where,
were the water forced back, a large number of people would be able to walk
across. Upon examining this area, they discovered a strip of coral, which
occurs nowhere else in the entire Gulf of Aquaba. This coral is growing in
formations which look strangely like *gasp!* Egyptian chariot wheels and axles!
And made out of gold, which neither rots not harbors coral,
and thus has been preserved to this day, a golden wheel, which could
only have come from the chariot of a Pharaoh. How do you suppose that got
there?
PROPHECY
One can also check the validity of scripture by checking prophecy against
reality. In the book of Daniel, Daniel (and Nebuchadnezzar,
in a way) prophecy that there will be five great world empires in addition to
the two already past. The first was Babylon,
the second, Meado-Persia. The third, Greece. The fourth, Rome. The fifth would be the revived Roman Empire,
an internally weak conglomeration of now dissimilar nations from what was once
the \Roman Empire\. In our lifetime, we have seen this
empire start to rise. It is called the European Union. The bible also predicted
the re-creation of the nation of Israel,
an event which many scholars believed impossible and therefore figurative. This
happened in 1948. These are only a few of the predictions which we have seen
come true. To this date, not a single one has failed. Not all have yet come to
pass, but neither have any been wrong.
CONCURENT DOCTRINES
In no part of the bible is there any new doctrine which contradicts any other
part of scripture. Some may argue that the New Testament contains one new
doctrine- that of loving one's enemies. I argue that this is hardly new. Take
for example the Gibeonites. The Lord was understandably upset with the
Caananites. These people were performing horrible atrocities, including such
things as burning babies alive and ritualistic rape. After giving them many
years to change their ways, he sent the Hebrews in to wipe them out. The
Gibeonites knew that they stood now chance against the Hebrews and their God,
so they made a peace treaty, using deceit, convincing the Hebrews that Gibeon
was far, far off.
God could have declared the treaty null and void. Instead, he punished the
Gibeonites by forcing them to work in his temple- a place the Levites were working
in as a reward for their loyalty. Isn't that odd?
By the time of Nehemiah, the Gibeonites are no longer considered foreigners.
Instead, they are honored and privileged as servants of the temple.
God loves his enemies, and is willing to give them every last chance to receive
Him. When they do, he adopts them as sons and takes them into his bosom. This
has been true since the fall of Eve and is true today. How can we do any
differently? No, this doctrine is not new.
PROMISES WITHIN SCRIPTURE
2 Peter 1:20 Above
all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the
prophet's own interpretation. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke
from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
And from the Lord's very mouth:
Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one
jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
(In the first century, scripture was often referred to as "the law".)
NEGATIVE ARGUMENTS
God loves us. We can take this as a given. If we believe that the bible has
been altered and is no longer definitively the word of God, we must conclude
that there are only two possibilities. 1) That God does not love those of us in
the 21st century enough to provide us with his word. We know that this cannot
be right. 2) God is incompetent. Riiiiiiight!
The argument that scripture has been altered necessarily ignores what the
bible says about itself, saying that these are not part of the original texts.
This is a circuitous argument, and is akin to the famous picture of the cow
eating grass. A child holds up a blank page and says "I drew a picture of
a cow eating grass."
"There's no grass."
"The cow ate it all."
"Where's the cow?"
"It went off to find more grass."
Or a better example- M.C. Escher's famous picture of a hand drawing a second hand, which is drawing the first hand. While the system appears to make sense when taken as a whole, it completely disregards the laws of physics, as the erroneous bible argument must disregard the scads of evidence which we have gone through in this letter.
I submit to you, in light of this evidence, that the Bible is the true, reliable and unaltered word of God, and that we must therefore take all that it says as authoritative.
-Oren
August 20, 2005
March 25, 2006