29 Oct 2023
The Reliability of the Bible
Passage 2 Peter 1:16-21
Speaker Chris Haley
Meeting Evening
Series Grill a Christian for Christians
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Passage: 2 Peter 1:16-21
Transcript
Introduction
Let me show you some artefacts that you may not have seen before. Artefacts that belong to a bygone age. Does the fact that something’s old mean it’s naff? Does the fact something’s from a long time ago mean it no longer has any relevance and what it says is less likely to be true? This evening we’re gonna ask those questions of the Bible. We’re going to look at it thinking about how someone with questions might approach this, with an eye to answering those kinds of questions. I often, people are often mistaken in what we’re claiming, given that other faiths and religions have holy books and make claims about them. So let’s start by defining terms and clarifying the claims we’re making.
What the Claim Is
The claim that the Bible makes is to be the message that God has communicated to the world. He did it through human authors in various different contexts and in various different ways. It didn’t drop from the sky. It wasn’t dictated by an angel like Muslims claim the Koran was. Yet the claim is that this is God’s message to humanity and as such the authority on all matters and the way God has told us how we can enjoy a relationship with him on into eternity. In the claims it makes it is infallible—always right. So then whether we can trust it then really matters, because if the claim is true then this is massive. Our creator has communicated with us. Told us why we are here. What life is all about. That’s what we as Christians believe. But there are a few problems that people have.
Problem 1: It’s a Book
It’s a book, and you can write what you like in a book. Why couldn’t God provide stronger evidence? People look down on books, because, well you can write anything can’t you. I could write that a man walked on water—but I could just be making it up. But a video of a man walking on water—that would be something. The thing is that now videos can be faked, photographs can be doctored. If there was a video of Jesus walking on water or rising from the dead would most people believe it? I suspect they wouldn’t. I suspect most people would think it was faked or special effects. You could have the evidence right in front of you and still not believe. And I get that—who saw the ‘aliens’ from Mexico last month? I used to be really into the X-Files and aliens, and all that, but I came to the conclusion long ago that they simply don’t exist. Do you know what I thought when I saw these alien corpses—how long until they’re discovered as fakes? To a believer in aliens this would be proof. To me, it was just a curiosity. Many people take that view with the Bible. We have a big hurdle, humanly speaking, to overcome there. So a book might seem unimpressive. In defence of books though, books though do provide a more permanent record than just passing the information on verbally. It means there’s less chance of it changing over time. And now we can still look back at older texts and know with confidence that what we have today in the Bible was what they had back then when it was first written. We can show the game of Chinese whispers hasn’t happened.
Problem 2: What the Book Claims to Be
The second problem is what the Bible claims to be. The Bible claims to be the ultimate authority on everything. It claims to be God’s view on things. But in doing so it sort of makes a catch 22. If the Bible is the ultimate authority on all things to what authority do we go to prove that. Do you see the problem? Imagine Wikipedia said definitively the Bible was what it claims to be and we believe the Bible because Wikipedia says it’s true. Then what you’re actually saying is that Wikipedia is a higher authority than the Bible, and what you really trust is Wikipedia not really the Bible. The point is that if the Bible is to be what it claims then the evidence must come from the book itself. If we look for conclusive proof anywhere else then even though we might not realise it we have already made our mind up that the claim is not true. See the problem? That’s not to say that we shouldn’t look at evidence elsewhere. But in the end all I will be able to prove to you then is that the Bible is indeed old and it say now what it did then. And we can do that at least. If you go to Manchester you can see this. It’s called P52. It’s dated end of the first century or early part of the second depending on who you ask, but all agree it’s old! It’s part of John 18. And all the scholars agree that was the last Gospel to be written, so the other Gospels must date earlier. It’s Egyptian in origin so it would mean time enough had passed for the texts to be disseminated long distances. The Gospels are also dated later than most of the letters, which again pushes the dates further back. What this means is that the New Testament was written around the time it claimed to be. And this one Papyrus is by no means alone. You can go to London and view ones only a few years after—I have seen them with my own eyes. And actually it wouldn’t matter anyway if we didn’t have any of the New Testament as we have quotes of nearly the whole thing from letters that people wrote to each other in the hundred or so years that followed. And literally thousands of copies soon afterward. All of this is important, but it will not tell you if it’s true. What do I mean? You see the Harry Potter series has sold 450 million copies worldwide, I’m pretty sure that if this world is still around in 2000 years’ time there will be fragments of those books which have survived the ravages of war, fire, flood and our format of books becoming obsolete. We may be able in 2000 years’ time to establish that the book did indeed originate in this part of the world and around this time in history. What question they won’t be able to answer is: is it true? Now with Harry Potter it’s not true is it—I hope we all agree on that, however old or new it might. I’m sure that in 4013 it still won’t be true. But the Bible claims to be true, not just old.
Why Trust the Bible?
So why think the Bible is true and not just old? Why trust it? Well let me tell you what convinced me. I haven’t always believed the Bible. I’m not from a Christian family. I wasn’t brought up to believe the Bible. Three things convinced me from within the Bible. I find it helpful to talk about personal experience if you can.
The Prophecies of the Bible
The first thing that convinced me was the prophecies in the Bible. Especially the prophecies about Jesus. Passages like Isaiah 53 which speak in detail about Jesus’ death. For many years this passage was believed to have been added by over zealous Christians who somehow managed to insert it into the Jewish Bible. This was blown out of the water with the discovery in 1946 of the Dead Sea Scrolls. A set of scrolls preserved in caves around the Dead Sea. The scroll with this passage on has been carbon dated by sceptics to be between 335-100 BC. There were 22 copies of this book found. It is not a later addition. Neither had it changed over time. The scribes who copied these texts believed they were handling the very word of God. If a mistake was made the whole page was thrown away. If there was a peculiar wording or spelling of something they would note at the side that this was the case in the one they were copying. Which explains why it had changed so little in between, the next full copy available dating from 1000AD! The same was true of the other prophecies that are contained in the Bible. That is the prediction of future events which have now happened. This was one of the main things that convinced me that this was no ordinary book. The Bible predicts many things especially about Jesus. Things that were beyond his control. For example the tribe which he would be from. That he would be a descendent of the great king David which he was through Mary his mother and by Joseph his adopted father. That he would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2) which really was a little town of no more than 500 to a thousand people maximum. Otley’s not a big place and we’re 15 to thirty times the size of Bethlehem then. And all these things happened before he was even born. It also predicted things about his death over which he had little control. That he would be betrayed for money (Zechariah 11:12-13) and that the money would be used to buy a field. That his hands and feet would be pierced (Psalm 22:16), but not a bone of his body would be broken (Psalm 34:20). That he would be buried with rich people (Isaiah 53:9). That he would rise from the dead (Psalm 16:10, Psalm 49:15). And that’s without the predictions that were made by Jesus in his own lifetime. For obvious reasons these were written down after the event. But the fact still stands that his disciples claimed that he said those things and equally taught them not to deceive people!
The Honesty of the Bible
The second thing that convinced me was the honesty of the Bible and the way it all hangs together. It all fits together despite being written by different people over a long time period. And there’s so much stuff that points to Jesus as you’d expect. But there’s also a realism to the Bible. The fact it doesn’t airbrush stuff. Think about the ‘heroes’ of the Bible we know of. Abraham, marries his half sister, has a son by his wife’s maid, and almost pimps his wife to the king of Egypt, because he’s basically lied to keep himself out of trouble. Moses; murders an Egyptian in cold blood, initially refuses to go to Pharaoh when God tells him to, never makes it to the promised land because he claimed credit for things God had done. David, the adulterer. Samson, the womaniser, who breaks his vows. The 12 disciples; spend all their time squabbling over who is greatest among them, don’t believe Jesus when he says he will die and rise again, look like idiots as they don’t understand simple things Jesus is telling them. Peter; denies that he even knows Jesus three times when he’s on his way to die. All these things, why would you include them if they weren’t true? Why would the Jews make their founding father Abraham do so many questionable things? Why would the Christians make their leaders look like idiots. It doesn’t make sense unless it’s true. The Koran, written hundreds of years later, misses most of these stories out. It airbrushes the stories. That would be what you’d expect if the stories had been changed, not the other way around, you wouldn’t put these things in. Why make your origin stories worse?
The Effect of the Bible
The final thing that convinced me was the effect the Bible has on people. I saw as a young teenager lives being changed as people read and put the Bible into practice. I saw people living it out in the little church I’d started going to over in Drighlington. Now don’t get me wrong, lots of books change lives. Completely agree with that, but not like this book. What’s in this book has turned murderers to missionaries, slave-owners into abolitionists, haters into lovers of their very enemies. It’s no understatement to say this book has turned the world upside down. It’s harder for us to see it because we live in a world that has already been turned in many ways. When I saw the Bible lived out I saw though that it did something, that it was powerful. The effect of the Bible was another bit of evidence that convinced me that the Bible is true. And that is something that happens still today. The Bible is not an ancient relic like my VHS collection. It is a living thing that still affects lives today, thousands of years after it was written. The question I like most to ask people is have you read it? Would you be up for reading it with me? If you believe it a powerless outdated old book, then what have you got to lose? On the other hand, if it is a living active, life-changing book then you’ve got lots to gain.