Can I trust the Bible?
At a first glance, the Bible can be confusing. Opening it can feel a lot like reading Shakespeare in school; confusing, out of date, and probably irrelevant for my future.
If this is your perspective, that is exactly how I used to see it too.
When I began to study it though, what I found firstly is it is far more complex than how it is often described. It isn’t like any other book. In fact, it’s more like a library of 66 different books. Produced by around 40 authors, written in three languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, it covers thousands of years of history. This collection of books vary genre: history, narrative, law, poetry, meditations, architectural plans, and prophecy, to name a few. And yet, despite its complexity, what I found most intriguing about this ancient text was that it pointed to one singular story. One of a God reaching out to his creation seeking for them to be reunited with him. But this didn’t mean it was necessarily trustworthy. There are many brilliant pieces of literature that make less outlandish claims than the Bible. Complexity doesn’t equal truth and uniqueness doesn’t prove these scriptures can be trusted.
Given our scientific age, how are we meant to believe in a book that is packed with weird supernatural stuff: miracle stories of people rising from the dead, or the existence of angels and demons?
Given the polarisation of our tribal age, are we really expected to believe that a book that has been copied countless times over the generations, and translated by powerful people into new languages, hasn’t simply been altered to suit political agendas?
Why should I want to trust a book that has been used to justify slavery and holy war? Never mind the list of contradictions.
To each of these critiques, scholars have brought an abundance of reasons to suggest that the Bible is both true and good. The following blog is simply the first step for someone looking to investigate whether or not the Bible stands up to scrutiny.
The first way to test whether the Bible is trustworthy is to ask whether the Bible corresponds with the world we experience. The Bible claims to be down to earth. It claims to describe reality on this planet and human experience. Therefore, we should expect to see things that the Bible claims in the natural world and in our human experience. Take science, for example, the finding that the universe began at a single moment in which time, space, matter, and energy came into existence. Although this Big Bang hypothesis was confirmed by science in the mid-20th century, the first time the idea of the universe having a beginning was penned was in the opening lines of Genesis. Or the experience we have as people: everyone has value and is worthy of respect, there is a true right and wrong, justice ought to always be pursued. These ideals we hold dear are not provided by a secular story, but the one proposed by the Bible.
Another way of investigating whether the Bible is trustworthy is to look at the historical evidence to see whether they support the events penned in the Bible. Biblical events have a habit of being verified by archaeologists and historians. More and more evidence seems to pop up. The site now known as the Pool of Siloam where Jesus healed a blind man was only discovered in 2004, a tablet held in the Louvre called the Moabite Stone contains the name of the King of Moab during 840 BCE, and the Epic of Gilgamesh a Mesopotamian poem describing a flood similar to Noah’s, all corroborate narratives within the Bible. But this should all come with a big disclaimer. So much of the ancient world remains unverifiable. If your requirement for trusting all of the events is external evidence, you will probably be disappointed. That standard is simply too high. Lost to the sands of time, much of the ancient world is sought through fragments. So to ask for detailed forms of evidence simply isn’t possible. This is specifically true of history with the Old Testament period and contemporary societies.
As for the New Testament, specifically in the gospels (Matthew, Mark Luke, and John), there are many more reasons to suggest that we can trust them, and from them; the rest of the Bible. The gospels contain the biographical accounts of Jesus. The argument follows: if there is good reason to believe the gospel accounts and their description of Jesus being from God, then we can trust Jesus’ affirmation of the Bible being trustworthy. If Jesus was from God, and he affirms the trustworthiness of the Bible then we can trust them. So the question is, are there any arguments or that show these accounts are legitimate?
There are a multitude of reasons scholars put forward to support the reliability of the gospels. They include: embarrassing details with the text, evidence of eyewitness testimony, and the cost of the disciple’s testimony.
i) Embarrassing details within the text:
Creating credibility is essential for any new leader seeking influence. This assumption is true of the early disciples, who sought to convert people of this new religion. If they were trying validate their own credibility we would be expect their descriptions of as heroic, loyal followers who understood Jesus’ teachings. This is not what we see in the Gospel accounts. The disciples are noted as doubtful, violent, often confused by Jesus’ teachings, and at the crucifixion, the pinnacle of the gospel accounts, many fearfully abandon Jesus. Why would they include such embarrassing details? It would make most sense, that while writing these accounts of Jesus’ life they were seeking to write history rather than validate themselves with testimony. Even in the ancient world, people weren’t compelled to follow cowardly leaders.
ii) Evidence of eyewitness testimony:
Within the gospel accounts, the writers describe highly specific details about the events they claim to have witness. They include information that would only be known to someone who had been in specific places at certain times. The nature of hills near towns, the time it took to travels between locations, political tensions, unique religious customs, clothing worn in specific areas, even the nature of plants in a region during a certain season, are accurately described by the gospel writers. All of which they did without help from Google or Wikipedia. The question is, what is the best explanation to these earthy details? Unless the gospel writers could afford a large detailed search operation, the best explanation would be that the writers were present when these events occurred. This is what makes these accounts stand apart from later accounts and gospels. The Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Thomas, mentioned in the Da Vinci Code and Zeitgeist, fail to mention similar details removing their historical likelihood.
iii) The disciple’s costly testimony:
The disciples of Jesus paid a great cost for their claims. Beaten, robbed, ship-wrecked; the disciples gained little in claiming to have seen the resurrected Jesus. Most of them were killed for what what they claimed they saw. But this isn’t unusual in our era. Haven’t others died for other beliefs? Does this make those other beliefs true? The example of the disciples’ martyrdom stands as unique not because they died for their beliefs, but because they claimed to be eyewitnesses. Few people have died for claiming to be eyewitnesses to their religion’s defining moments. If the disciples had not seen the risen Jesus, they knew they would be dying for a lie.
Not only did the disciple have a lot to lose, they also had little to gain. Neither wealth nor political power was available to them. In fact, as believing Jews, the disciples also risked judgement in the next life. To unrepentantly claim that Jesus was God meant blasphemy - a sin punishable by eternal separation by God. For the disciples, their claims cost them greatly and, as they understood it, would have an eternal consequence.
These three, out of the many available, give us some good reasons to trust the gospels. But this means we have good reason to trust the man they point to, Jesus. A man who claimed that all of the Old Testament was from God and worthy of our trust.
If you begin your own investigation of the legitimacy of the Bible and what it claims, don’t look only for the events and beliefs it expounds, but to the person it points. The gospel writers are quite clear in their intentions; to trust in the Jesus they claim to have witnessed