Authority of Bible: How can we trust that the Bible is inerrant word of God? 1

HOW WE GOT THE BIBLE
CANONICITY: WHO DECIDED WHAT TO INCLUDE IN THE BIBLE?
Many people believe that the Church (especially the Catholic Church) had a human agenda to fulfill in their canonizing of the Bible. They claim that the popes and those in authority gathered pieces of sacred literature to propagate a certain agenda and maintain the church’s political control. Yet nothing is further from the truth. The fact is that the church did not decide which books to include in the canon. A better way to put it would be that the church merely passively recognized which books were marked by the inspiration of God and were already in use by the community of believers. Simply put, it means that they had no part in any way of editorializing the content of the text; they didn’t fiddle around with the internal words, narrative, and history within Scripture nor did they make up stories that were not true. There was no addition of new writings or subtraction of portions of Scripture during the canonization process.

5 principles to recognize whether the book was inspired by God (Rule of faith)

1. Was it written by a prophet of God?

2. Was the writer confirmed by acts of God? This sometimes included miracles. Miracles were often the way God confirmed His message given to the prophet.

3. Did the message tell the truth about God? Anything that went in contradiction to the knowledge of God was thrown out.

4. Was it powerful and transformative? Did it have the power to transform a person’s life?

5. Was it accepted by the church? Was it widely used and recognized by the church?

*It was never some council that determined what books were to be read but the community of Christians already practicing their faith that recognized the transformative power of the text and gradually as time passed came to accept the writings as being normative to their faith.

What was the need for canonization?
1. They were prophetic
2. Early Church needed to know which books to be read, revered, to apply to their often hostile social religious environment. They needed to know how to apply the teachings in their daily lives.
3. Rise of Heretics- Marcion tried to come up with his own canon. The Church needed to counter his influence by gathering which books were canonical.

4. The existence of many other false writings circulating around.

5. Need for missions encouraged translation of books in other languages. They needed to know which ones were canonical in order to translate them to other languages.

6. Persecution. Diocletian called for destruction of Christian sacred books.
Many people have tried to destroy the Bible, but have failed.
“The Bible enemies come and go, but the Bible remains. Jesus was right when He said, ‘Heaven earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away’” (Mark 13:31 NKJV)

H.L. Hasting:
If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago. Emperors and popes, kings and priests, princes and rulers have all tried their hand at it; they die and the book still lives. (Lea, GBW, 17-18).

The 27 books of New Testament were first canonized in 393 AD Synod of Hippo. There has been no conflict or dilemma since that time regarding the authority and canonicity of these 27 books.

OLD TESTAMENT CANON
Jamnia Theory: AD 90. Council of rabbis got together in Jamnia to finally agree upon which books be included in the Hebrew canon. Their concern was the right of certain books to remain in the canon, not acceptance of new books. “No human authority and no council of rabbis ever made and [Old Testament] book authoritative. It was recognizing God’s stamp of authority- divine authority in them.

Authority of Bible: How can we trust that the Bible is inerrant word of God? 2

MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE!
One thing that the New Testament excels monumentally over other ancient writings of its time is the overwhelming number of manuscripts copies and the surprisingly short time interval between the original writing and its oldest manuscript.
In answer to the question “Is the New Testament Historically Reliable?”
There are two factors that determine the accuracy of ancient texts.
1. NUMBER OF COPIES OF MANUSCRIPT IN EXISTENCE
2. THE TIME INTERVAL BETWEEN THE ORIGINAL WRITING AND ITS OLDEST MANUSCRIPT (COPY)

The more copies there are of the original writing the greater chance to compare between versions to weed through any errors and see if it is accurate to the original. As for the time interval, the shorter the time interval between the original and its oldest copy, the less chance of any information being distorted or forgotten.

The Bible has more manuscript evidence to support it than any ten pieces of classical literature combined. John Warwick Montgomery observes: “to doubt the evidence of New Testament is to allow all other classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no other textual document of the ancient period is as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.”

Old Testament Manuscript Evidence:
Bernard Ramm states that the Jews kept tabs on every letter, syllable, word and paragraph. They had special classes of men (scribes/masorites) within their culture whose sole duty was to preserve and transmit these documents with perfect fidelity.

In the North American Review:
Although Shakespeare’s writings are merely 208 years old, they are far less accurate than the New Testament which has been around over 18 centuries. Except in a few dozen to 20 areas the text of every verse in NT is far more settled (deemed accurate in its wording, grammar, and placement). Any dispute they have is regarding the meaning and interpretation of the words and not upon content. In contrast, in every one of Shakespeare’s 37 plays there are around 100 readings still in dispute- a large portion of which affects the meaning of the script significantly.

There are over 5600 Greek manuscripts of NT. Over 10,000 in the Latin Vulgate, 9300 early versions. Close to 25,000 manuscript copies in existence.

No other ancient document has as many manuscript copies
Homer’s Iliad second to the New Testament has 643 manuscripts. In no other ancient literary work is the time difference between original writing and its oldest manuscript as short as that of NT. The original writing of the New Testament is dated around the latter part of first century. Oldest manuscripts are from 4^th century. That is 250-300 difference. This may seem like a lot, but compare this to that of the plays of Sophocles.

We believe we have seven of Sophocles plays intact. Yet the earliest manuscript copy upon which they are based was written 1400 years after the poet’s death. The oldest manuscript of most Classical Greek authors date 1000 years after the writers’ death. The New Testament manuscripts, however, is written within 300 years, and some as short as within a century of the original writings.

The following is a chart that shows the date of original writings for well known classical texts, the time gap between the oldest manuscripts, and how the New Testament figures in comparison.

AUTHOR	BOOK	DATE WRITTEN	EARLIEST COPIES	TIME GAP	NO. OF COPIES
Homer	Iliad	800 B.C.	c. 400 B.C.	c. 400 yrs.	643
Herodotus	History	480-425 B.C.	c. A.D. 900	c. 1,350 yrs.	8
Thucydides	History	460-400 B.C.	c. A.D. 900	c. 1,300 yrs.	8
Plato		400 B.C.	c. A.D. 900	c. 1,300 yrs.	7
Demosthenes		300 B.C.	c. A.D. 1100	c. 1,400 yrs.	200
Caesar	Gallic Wars	100-44 B.C.	c. A.D. 900	c. 1,000 yrs.	10
Livy	History of Rome	59 B.C.- A.D. 17	4th cent. (partial) mostly 10th cent.	c. 400 yrs. c.1000 yrs.	1 partial 19 copies
Tacitus	Annals	A.D. 100	c. A.D. 1100	c. 1,000 yrs.	20
Pliny Secundus	Natural History	A.D. 61-113	c. A.D. 850	c. 750 yrs.	7
New Testament		A.D. 50-100	c. 114 (fragment) c. 200 (books) c. 250 (most of N.T.) c. 325 (complete N.T.)	+50 yrs. 100 yrs. 150 yrs. 225 yrs.	5366

The books of the New Testament were written down not a century or more after the events described in them but during the lifetimes of those writers themselves. If the disciples had spread false reports or wrote things that were not accurate there would have been many eyewitnesses alive to have refuted their false evidence, and this not only from the faithful followers of Jesus but especially from those hostile to the Church who would have loved to catch some slight error so they could put a stop to the growth of the Church.