Ultimately,
the Christian faith stands or falls based upon the reliability of Bible. If the
message of the Scripture is not true then we have no basis for Christianity.
The truth claims of the faith are inseparably linked to the text of the Bible. This
is why the enemy of men’s souls exerts so much energy attacking it. From the
very beginning Satan has aimed to cast doubt on the Word of God thus cutting at
the very root of faith. The very first words of the enemy that are recorded are
“did God actually say...” (Genesis 3:1 ESV)
His tactics
have not changed. The enemies of the Gospel do not always need to directly
attack the message, sometimes they can be very effective simply by casting
doubt upon whether we actually even possess the message. Nearly every believer
has or will eventually run into several common attacks upon the reliability of
the New Testament.
We hear
nonsense about how we can’t trust what it says because translation is like some
sort of giant game of “telephone”. People who know virtually nothing about
Church history will confidently repeat the gross untruth that the Emperor
Constantine chose books that only supported his view to be included in the
Bible at the Council of Nicaea. We hear that the early Christians transformed
the stories about Jesus the rabbi into stories about Jesus claiming to be God.
Some will simply claim that the early copyists were uneducated and sloppy so
our copies are unreliable.
Most of the popular
distortions are so lazy and riddled with obvious mischaracterizations that they
have little impact other than to reinforce the misconceptions of people who
already agree with them. There are, however, more well thought out and
sophisticated questions about the integrity of the biblical text. There are
scholarly and better-argued positions from which these popular tropes devolve. So
then, how strong are the skeptical arguments? Did God really say what our modern
Bibles record?
For those who
want to learn more about the texts from which our current Bibles are translated
I highly recommend this faithlifeTV video. It was a single showing release
several months ago and I missed it. I was happy to see that it was re-released
this week. You can buy it to stream on FaithlifeTV or you can buy it as a DVD.
If you are curious about what is behind the text of your Bible or want to know
more about the manuscripts used in textual criticism and analysis you will find this worth the time. The video
covers several aspects of important New Testament manuscripts including how
they were produced, how they are dated, the extent to which they agree with one
another, etc.
The video
does a good job of showing the remarkable story of the transmission of God’s
Word. As a Christian, it was a great reminder of how absolutely unique this
Book is in every way. Not only its contents, but its history as well. No other
ancient book can come close to the stability the New Testament text. God has spoken...
and quite clearly.
