Trusting Your Bible

Here is a recap of Monday's lesson:

What is the Bible?
The Word of God. God's special revelation to humanity recorded in words (in contrast to general revelation, ie. nature, providential acts in history, moral consciences)

What is so unique about the Bible?
Compared to the holy books of other religions usually written by one person in the span of one lifetime, the Bible stands in a class of its own. It was written over a span of 1600 years by over 40 authors spanning over 60 generations. The authors came from different social backgrounds and wrote in different settings under different circumstances and in three different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek). One would expect to find chaos and contradictions when you compile all the 66 books together, but instead we find continuity and an overarching narrative weaved throughout all the books.

Where did the Bible come from?
The Bible is a divinely inspired book given to us through human authors (1 Tim 3:16, 2 Pet 1:20-21). We believe that all (plenary/full) the words (verbal) of Scripture and not just the ideas are from God, and that what is written is without error (inerrant). Hence the label: verbal, plenary, inerrant inspiration. According to 2 Tim 3:16, God breathed out his words through the human authors using their perspectives and personalities. The divine-human nature of the Bible is often compared to the divine-human nature of Christ. Jesus is both God and man united in a single person. In the same way, Scripture is one book with both a divine and human element.

Does the Bible really have no errors?
If God is true (1 Jn 5:20) then anything he breathes must also be true. When we say the Bible is inerrant we mean that the Bible does not communicate falsehood/lies but truthful statements without error. Every word down to the last letter in the Bible (in the original writings) can be trusted as coming from God. This was Jesus' view of the OT (Jn 10:34 - every word; Mt 5:18 - every letter; Mt 22:32 - every tense).

Now when we say "without error" that cannot be interpreted in a purely scientific or strictly literal way. Inerrancy simply means that - b/c the Holy Spirit carried them along - the human authors made no mistakes in communicating what it was they meant to say. Remember that our claim of the Bible inerrancy must be qualified. We can allow for...
1) Different literary genres (ie. dont read poetry as literally as you would history),
2) Ordinary language of everyday speech (ie. figures of speech, approximations, imprecision)
3) Loose or free quotations from the OT (authors usually quoted ideas and not exact words)
4) Grammatical mistakes ("Jason be an man from America" is still a true statement)
5) Limited or general accounts of a story (explains why one Gospel mentions 2 blind men while another only mentions one man in the same story)
6) Transmissions error as the books were copied down

If inerrancy is limited to the original writings, then how can I trust my Bible?
We can trust our Bibles because we have very reliable copies to compare against. For example, before 1947 the earliest OT manuscript we possessed was dated back to 895 AD called the Masoretic text. Unfortunately that is a long time since the last book of the OT was written (Malachi ~ 5th century BC). But when we found the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 we now possess copies of all the OT books (expect Esther) that date back to the 2nd to 1st century BC. And after comparing, we discovered that the Masoretic text (that all our OTs are based off of) is high accurate and reliable.

As for the NT, there is more evidence supporting its reliably than all the other ancient literature in its day (books that most people just take for granted as reliable!). There are over 24,000 manuscript copies of portions of the NT in existence today, ranking first in manuscript evidence among books of antiquity. The Iliad by Homer comes in second with a measly 643 surviving manuscripts.

WORK	WHEN WRITTEN	EARLIEST COPY	TIME SPAN	# COPIES
Homer (Iliad)	900 B.C.	400 B.C.	500 years	643
New Testament	40-100 A.D.	125 A.D.*	25 years	24,000+

Note that the time span from "when written" to "earliest copy" is only 25 years for the earliest surviving copy of the NT compared to 500 years for the earliest surviving copy of Iliad. What that chart is saying is that if you buy a copy of The Iliad from Chapters and read it trusting that what is written in your book accurately reflects what Homer wrote and communicated, then how much more should we trust that the Bible is God's word communicated to you as you read it?