Here is a dialog between a Bible believer (c'est moi!) and a rather skeptical non-believer ("Hans Kritic"). The material has been excerpted and adapted from my True and Reasonable, 3rd edition (Boston: DPI, 1994). The debate will appear in several installments over the coming weeks.
Hans Kritic vs. the Word of God
Often it is confidently asserted that the Bible is not in fact the Word of God, but only the word of man. Critics state that we have no reason to trust the Bible, that what was originally said and meant by Jesus and others is long since lost to history. The aim of the following dialog is to show that this is false: the Bible is completely the Word of God, and God has preserved that Word faithfully for thousands of years. The conclusion, as we shall see, is that we are indeed able to take God at his word!
Deadly Recipe
Hans Kritic: Jacoby, my friend, I find it interesting that one as bright as you would hold everything in the Bible as the Word of God, when in fact it is just another work of men. It has some very good things in it, but I find it impossible to trust the Bible unconditionally. It is most likely that what was originally said and meant by Jesus and others is long since lost to history.
Douglas Jacoby, disciple: Mr. Kritic, if you will just give me a few minutes of your time and an open heart and mind, I can show you that the Bible is completely the Word of God, and God has preserved that Word faithfully over the last 2000 years. I would like for you to know why I have come to the conclusion that we are indeed able to take God at his word!
Imagine for a minute that you, Mr. Kritic, are invited to a dinner, and when the main course is served the host turns to you and says, "You're really going to enjoy this meal--it's sort of a game. Nearly every item on your plate is non-poisonous. Have a nice dinner!" What would you do? Hope the worst that could happen is indigestion, not death? Guess that it's only the mushrooms in the tossed salad that are deadly, and take your chances? Would you risk your life in order not to offend your host?
Hans: That's an interesting little riddle, Jacoby, but what's the point?
Douglas: Bear with me and I think you will see. Isn't it true, Hans (may I call you that?), that you would refuse to eat? Why play the game at all if there's no way to win? Either you must be able to trust all the ingredients in the meal, or you can trust none at all! It's all or nothing. In the same way, it's all or nothing with the Bible. Either you can trust God's Word (all of it), or you can't really trust any of it. For if some parts are in error, what reliable way would you have to sort out the bad bits? (Our own opinions and feelings are too unreliable.)
Hans: But, Jacoby, if someone is a lot more knowledgeable and experienced that I, he can still generally be trusted, even though he makes a few mistakes now and again. So why can't we just generally trust the Bible?
Douglas: Hans, that argument sounds good, but there is one important difference here. When it comes to matters of right and wrong, heaven and hell, it's just too risky ' eternal issues are at stake! We need to know whether we are on the right track or not. Critics of the Bible have correctly supposed that if they could discredit one or two teachings of the Bible, faith in the Bible would become unreasonable. If the Bible is wrong, let's say, about the experience of Israel at the Red Sea, how do we know it's not wrong about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead? And if it might be wrong about that, how do we know what in the world it is right about?Hans, would you agree that an infinitely powerful God could, if he chose to, communicate his word to people?
Hans: I'll admit the whole idea sounds rather strange to me, but I suppose I would have to agree that an infinitely powerful God could do whatever he chose to do.
Douglas: Exactly, and there is no reason on earth why he could not choose to give us his Word in a book! But how could we trust in God if his Word were true sometimes, and false at other times? (How could I trust you if I never knew whether or not you were telling the truth?)
Much Confusion
Hans: But, Jacoby, even loyal fellow that you are, you must admit that there is so much confusion about the Bible.
Douglas: Yes, but much of it is caused by people with strong opinions about the Bible, but who in many cases have hardly read it! Some of the opinions are held by religious people who give the impression that you don't have to believe the Bible (or even read it for that matter) to be a good Christian. Critics with certain impressive sounding credentials also cause a great deal of confusion, especially when they are readily believed by people who have never studied the Bible or known a practicing Christian. There are many men in high places (clergy types) who publicly deny one of the central Christian teachings: that Jesus rose from the dead. All these people are responsible for the confusion today about God's word, yet there is a group of people who I believe do even more harm. They are those who say, "I believe in the Bible."
Hans: I wouldn't have expected that from you, Jacoby. What on earth do you mean?
Douglas: Of course, I'm not saying that we shouldn't believe in God's Word, or tell others that we do. But these days most people who say, "I believe in the Bible" are very confused. You may ask them, "Do you accept what Jesus said about sex before marriage?" They say:
"Well, not that part. The Bible was written so long ago, and this is the 20th century!" (As though man has really changed!)
"How about the teaching of the Scriptures on the need to attend a strong church, and to share our faith with others?"
"No, I just don't have time for all that. I have such a busy life." (As though no one else does!)
"Then you mean that you don't believe in the Bible?"
"No, I do ' I believe in most all of it, except..."
"Except the parts you find inconvenient?"
"Well, yes. And also a passage or two of the Old Testament. I could never accept the story about Moses and the Ark."
"You mean Noah and the Ark?"
"OK, OK! What does it matter? All that counts is being a nice person, and I think I'm a pretty decent fellow."
Actually, it matters a lot. Either we can take God at his word, or we can't. Does this person (the one who claims to believe in the Bible) really believe in the Bible? No, he believes in himself, and the bible happens to support his opinions now and again. But whenever there is a conflict between his opinion and God's Word, he stops "believing" in the Bible. So who's the real authority: himself or God? Clearly such a person does not believe in the Bible at all.
Really, it's all or nothing! Let's not be confused.
Gossip!
Hans: But Jacoby, the original documents in the Bible were written several thousand years ago. How can we be certain that our Bible today is a reliable copy of the original (Hebrew) Old Testament and (Greek) New Testament books?
Douglas: I will agree, Hans, that this question is extremely important, because if there were significant changes, the message God gave could have been lost, or seriously distorted. How could God entrust such a vital task to humans, especially in the days before photocopiers!
Perhaps, Hans, you have played the game sometimes called "Gossip." A short message is whispered into the ear of the first person, who turns and whispers it to the next, and so on around the room. The end result can be surprisingly different to the original message
it may be much longer, and nearly always the content of the message is drastically altered.
I know that many people think of the modern Bible in the same way. They view their English translation as a translation of another language translated from another language from yet another language and so on...which may very well have been inaccurately copied from the original manuscripts. This notion is extremely common, and extremely misleading.
Variant Readings
Hans: But Jacoby, you surely know that all of the manuscripts of the Bible are not identical. Have you ever noticed those little notes at the bottom of the pages in your own Bible.
Douglas: You are right, Hans, there are differences in the manuscripts. There are about 1100 chapters in the Bible, and although copyists took great pains to avoid slips of the pen, there are thousands of "variants." Nearly all these variants are spelling mistakes, minor differences in word order (Christ Jesus instead of Jesus Christ), or instances of a copyist missing a word or line (Jesus sat down began to teach). When a manuscript has a variant, it is compared to other older manuscripts, and a decision is made about which reading is original. In over 99% of these cases agreement among scholars is total. (When it isn't, these trivial variants are indicated in the footnotes of the Bible.) What we are saying is that the manuscript variations are completely insignificant.
The Originals
The "originals" have been lost, but that is no reason to fear. The "originals" of nearly every work from ancient history have been lost ' but copies have been made, for the most part by very careful copyists. Whenever there is a difference between one copy and another, historians do their very best to reconstruct the original version accurately. Let me show you this little chart, Hans. As you can see, ancient manuscripts usually don't survive, so the oldest surviving copies tend to be much later than the original.
The Transmission of Various Ancient Manuscripts
Author Date Oldest Copy Interval Copies
Aristophanes 400 B. C. 900 A. D 1300 years 45
Aristotle 340 B. C. 1100 A.D. 1450 years 5
Caesar 50 B.C. 900 A.D. 950 years 10
Demosthenes 300 B.C. 1100 A.D. 1400 years 200
Julius Caesar 50 B. C. 900 A. D. 950 years 10
Herodotus 435 B. C. 900 A. D. 1350 years 8
Homer 800 B.C. 100 A. D. 900 years 643
Plato 360 B. C. 800 A. D. 1150 years 15
Sophocles 415 B. C. 1000 A. D. 1400 years 7
Thucydides 410 B. C. 900 A. D. 1300 years 8
Despite the long intervals between the time of the original texts and the oldest surviving copies, historians do not conclude that these writings are "unreliable" or "corrupt". If we refuse to accept the reliable transmission of the Bible, we would (logically) have to reject almost everything else from ancient history! Whether or not you are familiar with the writers mentioned above, you can easily appreciate the significance of the evidence when we consider the hard facts of the Bible.
It is true that the New Testament (N.T.) is supported by more manuscripts than the Old Testament, but both are extremely well attested. (The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947, prove the excellent transmission of the Old Testament.) And what exactly is the evidence for the New Testament?
Look, Hans, at what I call "the hard facts."
The Hard Facts
' Most of the New Testament was written between 50 and 70 A. D.
' The earliest fragment of a New Testament manuscript dates from 110 A. D., of the gospel of John ' written only a generation or two earlier!
' Manuscripts of entire books of the New Testament date from 200 A. D.
' Thus the interval of time in this case is only 100 years!
' The oldest copy of the complete New Testament dates from 325 A. D. ' a gap of only 250 years, compared with gaps of four or five times as long (1000 years or so) for most works of classical authors.
' The oldest copy of the complete New Testament dates from 325 A. D. ' a gap of only 250 years, compared with gaps of four or five times as long (1000 years or so) for most works of classical authors.
' There are over 5000 ancient Greek copies alone!
' Including ancient copies in other languages, there are well over 40,000 complete and partial manuscripts of the New Testament!
' In addition, there are tens of thousands of quotations from the N.T. in early writers, almost all of which date earlier than the oldest surviving N.T. manuscripts! Thus, even if all our N.T. manuscripts were lost, it would not be difficult to reconstruct most of the N.T. from these references. The Bible is by far the best attested book from ancient times! No other classical work even comes close.
The facts are impressive indeed. As we have seen, there is no reason whatsoever to doubt the reliability of the Biblical text as it has been passed down. His Word today is the same message that was preached thousands of years ago, and it is just as relevant now as then.
Conciseness:
The Bible packs an amazing amount into a few pages. Eastern scriptures, on the other hand, are so extensive that it could take the average person several lifetimes to read the scriptures of his religion. In Buddhism, for example, the scriptures are thousands of times longer than the Christian Bible. (No wonder scripture is played down!) The Hindu creation story is hundreds of pages long, whereas the Bible puts the creation into just a few verses. In addition, most of the Bible is easy to follow, whereas Muslim, Hindu and espe-cially Buddhist scriptures contain enormous numbers of obscure verses which even their top theologians cannot explain. Finally, many religions have very complicated laws and rituals out-side their scriptures. Biblical Christianity fits all its teaching within the pages of one Bible. We trust a concise speaker more readily than a rambling one--he is trying to make his point clear, not confuse, impress or cloud the issues.
Purity:
From my reading of the Koran, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Sutras, Analects of Confucius, and so forth, I am convinced that there is some truth in every reli-gion, but no religion comes close to the Bible either in the amount of truth conveyed or in the purity of the teaching. The mixture of truth and falsehood is obvious, whereas the Bible is pure. As David said in Psalm 12:6
"The words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a fur-nace of clay, purified seven times." If you're planning a very long lifetime, you may go ahead and systematically study all the scriptures of the world. But you'll save many years if you begin with the Bible.
Authority:
The Bible repeatedly identifies itself as the Word of God, and does not apologize for the fact. In other religions we find men hesitating to speak with the same authority, and saying that their words are their own views or opinions. We would certainly expect God's message to be concise and to the point. It would also be expected to identify itself as God's Word (otherwise how are we supposed to know that it's from God?).
Why do I trust the Bible? I trust it because of its remarkable preservation and transmission through the centuries. I also trust the Bible because it stands head and shoul-ders above all writings ever penned by man. But I trust it even more for one more vital reason: Hans, it works! I would like to introduce you to people who have taken its message seriously and let you see the impact that it has had on their lives. Their attitudes are different, their marriages are different, their relationships are different.
Hans, I appreciate your questions, but why not begin seriously reading the Bible today, with the attitude "I'll change anything I need to" in order to find not just the Word of God, but God himself.
Hans: Jacoby, I must admit you have caused me to rethink some things. What time did you say that Bible study group meets at your house?
Conclusion Clearly God has watched over his Word throughout history. As both the prophet Isaiah and the apostle Peter said, 'The word of the Lord stands forever' (Isaiah 40:8, I Peter 1:25).
His Word today is the same message that was preached thousands of years ago, and it is just as relevant now as then. We can have full confidence in God, and we can absolutely take him at his word!
Hans: But, Jacoby, you Christians aren't the only people who have scriptures. There are many other religions in the world that have their own and are just as devoted to them.
Douglas: First, Hans, I'm not sure how devoted some people are to their scriptures. In many religions their scriptures are seldom read, left instead for the "experts."
But, secondly, there are some major differences between the Bible and the scriptures of other world religions. I would like to list three.
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