Looking at DVC
movie opened
blurs line b/t fact & fiction
conspiracy theory
Bible born from conspiracy
is it trustworthy?
we preach on weekly basis, urge you to live life by it
“The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. . . . The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God…it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.” (DVC page 231).
we’ll address in some detail today
“Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic and inspirational leader the world has ever seen. . . .More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion. . . .” (231)
80 gospels?
“Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false.” (235)
REALITY Dan Brown is false about Constantine Bible & Nicea
got date right: council in A.D. 325
key issue: Jesus’ divinity, much more next week on that
nothing to do with Bible
Dan Brown has stirred a good question:
why should I believe the Bible?
there are other holy books—what’s unique?
Brief TRUE history of the Bible
can get really technical
do the best we can in ½ hour
further resources available
watch for these things:
reliability—can we trust?
uniqueness—does it offer something no one else does?
History:
last week talked about revisionist history & real events
Lee Strobel: former legal editor of Chicago Tribune
journalist
Historians: ways of testing reliability of ancient accounts
applies to Bible
Ask questions like:
• Are there multiple sources reporting on the same event?
• Are the accounts rooted in eyewitness testimony?
• Are the reports written soon after the event, before legend can contaminate it?
• How carefully have these accounts been transmitted through history?
• Is there confirmation from archaeology?
• Is there embarrassing material in the accounts that would have been edited out if the writer felt free to whitewash the record?
• Is the writer biased? Does he have an ulterior motive to lie or mislead?
3 Aspects to Bible’s history:
Transmitted by Dedicated Individuals
Affirmed by a Growing Community
Inspired by a Sovereign God
TRANSMITTED BY DEDICATED INDIVIDUALS
2 Peter 1:20-21:
20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
starting point: a man sat down to write
Greek, everyone knew
(inspiration of God through Holy Spirit; come back to that later)
we don’t have any originals--why?
probably written on papyrus, not durable
“paper”
we are dependent on copies
earliest copies on papyrus--about 100 copies
constitute over ½ the NT
earliest dated to A.D. 125
beginning of 4th century (300’s) medium changed
parchment or vellum (animal skins)
much more durable
about 300
beginning of 9th C (800’s), changed lettering
about 2813
lectionaries, NT passages organized for daily reading, about 2200
Greek total manuscripts: over 5500
Besides Greek, other languages: 30,000 versional copies in Latin, Coptic, and Syriac
over 1 million references to the NT in the early church Fathers
Compare other ancient books:
CHART
Compare Shakespeare: died in 1616
recent compared to Bible, 2000 years ago
“With perhaps a dozen or twenty exceptions, the text of every verse in the New Testament may be said to be so far settled by general consent of scholars, that any dispute as to its readings must relate rather to the interpretation of the words than to any doubts respecting the words themselves. But in every one of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays there are probably a hundred readings still in dispute, a large portion of which materially affects the meaning of the passages in which the occur.” --from an 18th century author, just about 200 years removed from Shakespeare
Dan Brown: other gospels omitted—true why?
how was the Bible formed?
RECOGNIZED BY A GROWING COMMUNITY
Community = Church
Church as institution did not exist yet
Introduce word: “Canon”
not weapon of war
measuring rod
defined list of books
multiple books out there
narrow down to the ones that reflect God’s truth
By A.D. 180 we have two lists of books for canon
both are clear on the 4 gospels and do not allow for any more
Synod of Hippo in A.D. 393 listed 27 books of NT
When it did so,
it did not confer upon them any authority which they did not already possess, but simply recorded their previously established canonicity. –F.F. Bruce
Why a defined list?
Teaching: Church needs to know which writings to listen to
Heresy: need to separate truth from false teachings
EX: how do we counter what Dan Brown says?
Persecution: need to define what books are worth dying for
A.D. 303, Emperor Diocletian issued edict:
destroy churches: stop worship
destroy Christian Scriptures
On what basis was book included or excluded?
authorship: connection to an apostle
message: consistent with the truth we know (Jesus, OT?)
impact: did it reflect power of Holy Spirit to change lives?
Other texts: Gospel of Judas, recently
EX: Gospel of Thomas, 3 tests
7. Jesus said, “Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human.”
Timeline
see early dates
amazing considering
DECAY
ATTEMPTS TO DESTROY
INSPIRED BY A SOVEREIGN GOD
2 Timothy 3:16
16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…
“God-breathed”--Inspired
2 Peter 1:20-21
20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
God initiated the writing and oversaw the preservation
Professor M. Montiero-Williams, former Boden professor of Sanskrit (language of Hinduism), after spending 42 years studying Eastern books, compared them with the Bible:
“Pile them, if you will, on the left side of your study table; but place your own Holy Bible on the right side—all by itself, all alone—and with a wide gap between them. For…there is a gulf between it and the so-called sacred books of the East which severs the one from the other utterly, hopelessly, and forever…a veritable gulf which cannot be bridged over by any science of religious thought.”
Many books, One message: Jesus: MORE NEXT WK
writers were different
John 5:39-40…
39You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, 40yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
Dan Brown may attack the Bible
Voltaire, died in 1778,
predicted that within 100 yrs Christianity would be dead
50 years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society used his press and house to produce stacks of Bibles.
1 Peter 1:24-25
“All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
25 but the word of the Lord stands forever.”
