Is The Bible Trustworthy? Series

Mankind has asked, “Is The Bible Trustworthy?” or similar questions for thousands of years. To know if something is trustworthy or not, it is wise to consider not only what it appears to be today but also be aware of its verifiable history.

What were the earliest languages and written translations of the biblical scrolls? Many Pastors and umpteen Deacons could probably answer that with a fair degree of accuracy. But the rest of us may have only been able to conjure obscure ideas on this topic. Was the Bible written in one of those “dead” languages, like ancient Greek? Maybe even Latin, perhaps? What was the original written language, and how did today’s Bible come to be what it is?

The Bible is essentially a history of spiritual matters and prophecies fulfilled and those to be consummated in the future. Even those who wrote the Bible made it clear it was not meant to be a secular chronicle, even though secular events are frequently referenced. It is a book about God and his relationship with man. Our Bible has two main parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament. Both of those are composed of several books cobbled together by several different authors. The Bible is the amalgamated result of many scrolls revealing the Old and New Testament books. Among all the works ever written, the Bible has the most remarkable qualities. Within the thirty-nine Old Testament and twenty-seven New Testament Books, there is a unity of the overall message despite having forty (or so) authors writing over a period of roughly 2,000 years. These sixty-six books were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Writing from prisons, palaces, and wilderness camps, the authors had wide-ranging professions. They were trailblazers, shepherds, kings, physicians, fishermen and even a despised, most likely corrupt tax collector.

Despite its wide variety of themes and contributors, the Bible exhibits an internal consistency that reinforces the various theological messages.

Originally, the Oral Law of the Jews was not transcribed on scroll or papyrus. Instead, it was passed by word of mouth from father to son or taught by a male teacher to the students. Ancient Hebrew is a Semitic language that dates back past 1500 BC. Its alphabet consisted of 22 characters, all of which were consonants. Don’t worry; vowels were eventually added. Hebrew was the tongue of the ancient Israelites and is written from right to left. How the Word of God has traveled through languages and cultures is simply amazing.

As far as written languages are concerned, non-biblical cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs were used thousands of years before Jesus walked this earth. The Sumerians from Mesopotamia developed a system of writing called cuneiform and quickly began keeping records of many aspects of their lives. Not long after, the Egyptians began using hieroglyphics and also kept extensive records. Many of these ancient records survived and have been translated. Cuneiform markings are one of the earliest records of writing, distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made through the tip of a blunt reed used as a stylus.

Judah ha-Nasi, a 2nd century Rabbi, warned because of the Exile and continuing persecution of the Jews that the details of the Jewish oral traditions would be forgotten if not recorded. He, therefore, assembled the scholars of his generation and compiled his known collection of oral teachings. This 1st Century AD written collection is called the Mishnah.

If you research Biblegateway dot com on the internet, you will find there are more than fifty versions of the Bible available. While I frequently utilize several of them in my research, the New King James Version is my preference.

So, let's study the modern NKJV Bible reflected against three standards of trustworthiness:

Is the Bible Historically Faithful?

Is the Bible Scientifically Correct?

Have Biblical Prophecies Been Fulfilled?

Is the Bible Historically Faithful?

The Bible was not written to be a history book, it was written to tell us of God's plans and handiwork from before the very beginnings of our earth. Even so, within the Old Testament scripture, a substantial number of historical facts are presented.

Up until the latter portion of the 19th century, some scholars ridiculed the idea that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. These “expert” scholars scoffed, “In the days of Moses men didn't know how to write. So how could he have written the Pentateuch?” However, in 1887, in northern Egypt, a few of the Tell el-Amarna Tablets were discovered by a lady tilling her garden. Others searched for and gathered up more of the clay tablets and sold them to antiquities dealers. When a more structured search was conducted, a total of 382 tablets were unearthed.

Cuneiform was mainly used for records of assets like cattle and grains or other items of intrinsic value. Hieroglyphs were mainly used to report tales of Egyptian kings and their self-proclaimed status as gods. Accounts from Egyptian pharaohs were written by scribes and sent out. Return tablets were received from the kings of Assyria, Babylonia, and Cyprus, and other outlying governmental officials, but the majority corresponding tablets came from rulers in Syria and the eastern Mediterranean coastal areas during a brief 25-year span in mid-century, thirteen hundred BC.