Does God Exist? Part 8: Knowing and Showing the Bible is God’s Word

My mother loves me. That is something I know intuitively. I never really need a matrix of psychological, sociological, and physiological data points to know my mom loves me. I just know it intuitively. Nevertheless, knowing I am loved by my mom is still tethered to something real. She cooked my meals, washed my dirty laundry, encourages me when I need encouragement, cries for me when I am in pain, tells me she loves me, and so forth. I know my mom loves me intuitively, but her love is still shown in genuine acts of motherly love. There is a difference between knowing and showing. I can know my mom loves me without fully grasping the magnitude of ways her love is expressed. Nevertheless, I can still apprehend a number of the ways I am loved by her. A similar thing can be said about knowing the Bible being the Word of God.

The Bible declares itself to be the Word of God, but why should we accept this as the truth? I can know this intuitively — like motherly love. As I read and meditate upon the Scriptures, there is something from deep within that says, “Yes, Warren, this is the Word of God.” Theologians called this the internal testimonial of the Holy Spirit. I can know the Bible is the Word of God intuitively on account of the internal testimonial of the Holy Spirit; however, this knowing is still tethered to reality.¹ Objective evidences to support the Bible’s declaration of being the Word of God can still be demonstrated. In this blog, I will look at three of them.

First, the Scriptures we possess today have been faithfully transmitted through the centuries. It is true that the autographs (i.e. the original compositions) have ceased to exist. It is also true that the scribes who reproduced the Scriptures by hand made mistakes. As they copied the text they either unintentionally or intentionally omitted words and sentences,  inserted words and sentences, inverted the order of words in sentences, altered spelling of words, and so forth.² Despite all of this, we have sufficient numbers of existing ancient manuscripts that allows us to do textual criticism, i.e. “the study of copies of any written work of which the autograph (the original) is unknown, with the purpose of ascertaining the original.”³

The existing Masoretic texts, copies of the Old Testament in the original languages (mostly Hebrew with some Aramaic) produced by Jewish scribes called the Masoretes, were produced between AD 895 and AD 1105. Then there are the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), which included preserved copies of every text from the Old Testament except for Esther. The DSS are believed to have been produced between 250 BC and 100 BC. The Masoretic texts and the DSS provide us with copies of the Old Testament from two different periods of time about a millennium apart but “remarkably, a comparison of the DSS and the Masoretic text reveals a fairly small number of discrepancies.”⁴

Ancient copies of the Greek New Testament number over 6000. There are even papyri fragments from John 18 (p⁵²) and the epistles of Paul (p⁴⁶) dating within 30 years of the originals.⁵ We do have substantial numbers of existing ancient manuscripts of Homer’s Illiad (1757), Plato’s Tetralogies, Tacitus’ and Annals (31 from the 15^th century); however, the New Testament manuscripts out number them over a thousand-fold. From the standpoint of the bibliographical test, if we can be confident that the existing manuscripts of the Illiad, Tetralogies, and Annals reliably preserve with some reliability the compositions of Homer, Plato, and Tacitus, then how much more can the same be said for the New Testament.⁶

Existing ancient manuscripts demonstrates that the Bible has actually been quite well preserved despite the introduction of copyist errors.⁷ According to Andreas Kostenberger, we can be assured that “none of the variant readings (including omissions) affect the central message or theological content of the Scriptures” and “it can confidently be asserted that the text of the Bible today is an accurate and faithful representation of the original autographs.”⁸

Second, the Scriptures tell of people, places, things and events that are corroborated by archaeology and ancient history. Here are several examples from archaeology:

1) The Merneptah Stele at Thebes is a pagan monument constructed in the early thirteenth century BC that mentions the nation of “Israel,” which suggest the Hebrew people were established in Canaan prior to that time.⁹

2) The Tel Dan Stele is a pagan monument constructed around ninth century BC that makes mention of the “House of David.”¹⁰ This is evidence corroborates the biblical testimony about Israel’s great monarch.

3) The stone with the Latin inscription “CAESARIENES. TIBERIÉVM PONTIVS PILATVS PRAEFECTVS IVDAEAE DÉDIT” (“Pontius Pilatus, Prefect of Judea, has presented the Tiberinéum to the Caesareans”) was excavated at Caesarea in the summer of 1961, which was the first archaeological evidence for the existence of Pontius Pilate ever discovered.¹¹

4) The ossuary (a limestone chest containing bones) from the first century inscribed with the name Yehosef bar Qayafa (“Joseph, son of Caiaphas”) was uncovered in the Old City Jerusalem in November 1990, which were likely the bones of the high priest of the Gospels.¹²

5) The original site of the Pool of Siloam unearthed near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount in 2004, which is where Jesus miraculously healed a blind man (Jn. 9:1-11).¹³

All this never means archaeology offers evidence for every single person, place, thing or event mentioned in the Bible, but that the testimonial of the Scriptures is continually being vindicated from the discovery of artifacts from ongoing excavations happening in biblical lands.

There are also extra-biblical sources attesting to the fact there was a man named Jesus who lived in Palestine in the first century and was crucified. For example, Tacitus wrote:

But all human effort, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiation of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hand of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a deadly superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but also in the City, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world meet and become popular.¹⁴

The Babylonian Talmud indicates,

Jesus was hanged on Passover Eve. Forty days previously the herald cried, “He is being led out for stoning, because he practiced sorcery and led Israel astray and entice them into apostasy. Whosoever has anything to say in his defense, let him come and declare it.” As nothing was brought forward in his defense, he was hanged on Passover Eve.¹⁵

Flavius Josephus reported:

About this time arose Jesus, a wise man (if indeed it be right to call him a man). For he was a doer of marvelous deeds, and a teacher of men who gladly receive the truth. He drew to himself many persons, both of the Jews and also of the Gentiles (He was the Christ). And when Pilate, upon the indictment of the leading men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him at the first did not cease to do so (for he appeared to them alive on the third day – the godly prophets having foretold these and ten thousand other things about him). And even to this day the race of Christians, who are named from him, has not died out.¹⁶

None of these writers were Christians. Neither do they appear to be favorable to Christ, His teachings, nor His followers. They had nothing to gain in mentioning Jesus in their histories except for simply presenting reliable history. It is clear from their statements that Jesus truly lived. What is present in the Scriptures corresponds to ancient history.

Finally, there are signs of the supernatural preserved on the pages of the Scriptures. Throughout the Bible there are predictions and fulfillments which defy any naturalistic explanation, like history written in the form of prophecy (i.e. vaticinium ex eventu); rather, they are best understood as divine revelation concerning future things that ordinary people could never have foreseen any other way.

One predictive prophecy is the birth of the Christ (i.e. the Messiah). God declared through the prophet Micah, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, | who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, | from you shall come forth for me | one who is to be ruler in Israel, |whose coming forth is from of old, |from ancient days” (Micah 5:2).¹⁷

The prophet Micah came from Moresheth, a town southwest of Jerusalem. He ministered during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (Micah 1:1a), rulers of the southern kingdom of Judah.¹⁸ Their reigns spanned from around the mid-eighth to early seventh centuries BC.¹⁹ The prophet ministered in both Jerusalem — the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah — and Samaria — the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel (Micah 1:1b).

It is hardly a coincidence that when the Magi from the east visited the court of Herod in Jerusalem and inquired about the birthplace of the Messiah that the chief priests and scribes present at that time would include in their answer the reference to Micah 5:2 (cf. Matt. 2:1-6). Hank Hanegraaff puts it this way: “Seven hundred years before Jesus was born, the prophet Micah prophesied the the birthplace of the Messiah would be Bethlehem. Not just any Bethlehem, but Bethlehem Ephrathah on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Not Bethlehem in Zebulunite territory eleven kilometers northwest of Nazareth…Had Jesus been born anywhere other than Bethlehem Ephrathah, Micah’s prophecy and consequently the whole of biblical prophecy would have been disqualified as distinctly divine as opposed to merely mortal in origin. Instead, in concert with the Scriptures, Jesus was born precisely where predicted.”²⁰ The Christ was born exactly where Micah predicted centuries prior, and this is the sort of stuff that can never be made up.

Another sign of the supernatural in the Scriptures is Jesus’ own prediction of His death and resurrection. Jesus continually reminded the disciples that He would die and rise again after “three days and three nights” or “after three days” (Matt. 12:40; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; John 2:19). He also made statements about dying and resurrecting on the “third day” (Matt. 16:21; 17:23; Luke 9:22; 18:33; 24:7, 21, and 46). The Scriptures also indicate that Christ burial took place prior to the start of the Sabbath (Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:50-56; John 19:31-42), and that the empty tomb was discovered after the Sabbath ended (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:1) on the first day of the week (Matt. 28:1; Mark. 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1).

The New Testament Gospel writers were either eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life and resurrection, closely connected to eyewitnesses, or a combination of both. Moreover, there is good reason to believe that the statements Jesus made about dying violently and rising on the third day, as found in the Gospels, were authentic sayings of the Lord. In other words, Jesus actually said them as opposed to them being legendary sayings of Christ that developed over time in the post-Easter Christian community.

Jesus knew his death would be violent, and He prayed, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will” (Mark 14:36). It is normal for us to tell stories about our heroes without mentioning any of their flaws. If heroes die, their deaths are noble ones, and they meet their ends with a stoic demeanor — calm, peaceful, and accepting of their fate for the sake of a greater good. IIt is like the death of William Wallace in the movie Braveheart. He willfully accepts a painful death and even refuses to drink a remedy to dull the pain. He is tortured and disembowel without crying out in pain or asking for mercy. At the end of his grueling torture, Wallace signals victory in shouting out, “Freedom!” That is a hero’s death. But Jesus does none of that. Rather, the Lord displays a genuine human revulsion to the anticipation of certain excruciating pain. New Testament scholar Craig Evans notes, “This short pithy prayer is certainly authentic. It is difficult to imagine why an early Christian would invent an utterance in which Jesus appears frightened and reluctant to go to his death.”²¹

Jesus’ violent death was inextricably woven together with belief in the resurrection of the last days, and many first century Jews shared the same belief. Jesus responded to the criticism of the Sadducees who denied the resurrection (Mark. 12:18-27). The Lord even taught about showing kindness to those unable to return the favor and being repaid in the resurrection (Luke 14:13-14). The Lord’s statements about resurrecting on the “third day” or “after three days” allude to Hosea 6:2, which reads, “He will revive us after two days; | He will raise us up on the third day, | That we may live before Him.” More precisely, Jesus is reflecting an Aramaic paraphrase of Hosea 6:2, which reads, “He will give us life in the days of consolations that will come, on the day of the resurrection of the dead he will raise us up.” Evan’s notes, “Jesus presupposed the interpretive orientation reflected in this later Aramaic paraphrase. He alluded to this passage in his expression of confidence that he would be raised up ‘after three days’ (or ‘on the third day’), that is, ‘on the day of the resurrection of the dead,’ which given the nearness of God’s kingdom, must surely be at hand.”²² Even in Jesus’ day there existed “a strong tradition of pious Jewish martyrs who expect vindication through resurrection after their violent and cruel deaths,” as in the case of 2 Maccabees 7.²³ The Gospel writers included in their narratives numerous instances of Jesus talking about resurrecting on the third day, we can be certain that those statements were authentic, in other words, they capture what the Lord actually taught, and the resurrection prediction came to pass to boot!

One more sign of the supernatural in the Scriptures is Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem. Responding to comments made about the beautiful stones adorning the Jewish temple along with all the votive offerings received, the Lord said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Luke 21:6, cf. Matt. 24:1-2; Mark 13:1-2). The disciples were utterly perplexed with what their teacher said. Nevertheless, forty years later — the span of a generation — there came about a failed Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire, which ended with the razing of Jerusalem and the temple.

Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Jewish temple is hardly the imaginative product of a post-AD 70 Christian community. For example, it is generally understood that the composition of Gospel of Luke preceded the Acts of the Apostles (cf. Luke 1:1-4 and Acts 1:1-2). The abrupt ending in Acts of the Apostles with Paul being under house arrest in Rome but having the opportunity to share the message of Christ with visitors suggest an early date of composition around AD 60-62. It also can be pointed out that “Acts makes no mention of several key events from the period 65–70 that we might have expected it to mention: the Neronian persecution, the deaths of Peter and Paul, and the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans,”²⁴ and “Especially important is the lack of mention in either Luke or Acts of the fall of Jerusalem. So cataclysmic an event in the history of the Jewish people is unlikely to have gone completely unmentioned in books that focus so much on the nature and theological continuity of Israel and the people of God.”²⁵ The composition of Acts can be dated around AD 62 and Luke before that. Luke then preserves a teaching of Jesus concerning the destruction of the Jewish temple decades prior to its occurrence. This is truly a sign of the supernatural recorded on the pages of the Scriptures.

Just as I intuitively know that my mother loves me, I intuitively know the Scriptures are the Word of God. Yet, these intuitions are tethered to verifiable realities. The Scriptures’ claim to be the Word of God is tethered to the realities of its reliable transmission through the centuries, its corroboration with historical fact, and the signs of the supernatural preserved on its pages.

I think it is right at this point to address apparent Bible contradictions in the next blog post.

“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” (Psa. 19:7).

— WGN

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Notes:

1. For further reading on the internal testimonial of the Holy Spirit, see James N. Anderson, “The Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit: How Do You Know That the Bible Is God’s Word?” Christian Research Journal, 39, 6 [2016]: https://www.equip.org/article/internal-testimony-holy-spirit-know-bible-gods-word/
2. For a detailed outline of scribal errors, cf. J. Harold Greenlee, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989) 63-68, and Ellis R. Brotzman, Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994), 107-121.
3. Greenlee, 11.
4. Andreas J. Kostenberger, “Is the Bible Today What Was Originally Written?” Evidence for God: 50 arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science, ed. William A. Dembski and Michael R. Licona (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2010), 208.
5. Kostenberger, 209
6. Clay Jones, “The Bibliographic Test Updated,” Christian Research Journal, 35, 3 [2012], https://www.equip.org/articles/the-bibliographical-test-updated/
7. Examples include: The ending to the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:13), the ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20), the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11), and the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:8). The line “The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works” from Psalm 145:13 was also recovered from the DSS, which never appeared in the Masoretic Text (cf. ESV and NRSV). Likewise, the extended ending to 1 Samuel 10:27 was recovered from the DDS — “Now Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had been grievously oppressing the Gadites and the Reubenites. He would gouge out the right eye of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer. No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan whose right eye Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had not gouged out. But there were seven thousand men who had escaped from the Ammonites and had entered Jabesh-gilead” (cf. NRSV).
8. Andreas J. Kostenberger, “Is the Bible Today What Was Originally Written?” Evidence for God: 50 arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science, ed. William A. Dembski and Michael R. Licona (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2010), 209.
9. Paul Maier, “Biblical History: The Faulty Criticism of Biblical Historicity,” Christian Research Journal, 27, 2 [2004]: https://www.equip.org/article/biblical-history-the-faulty-criticism-of-biblical-historicity/#christian-books-3
10. Mark D. Janzen, “The Firm Foundations of the House of David: A Defense of King David’s Historicity,” Christian Research Journal, https://www.equip.org/article/the-firm-foundations-of-the-house-of-david-a-defense-of-king-davids-historicity/ and Maier, “Biblical History: The Faulty Criticism of Biblical Historicity.”
11. Paul L. Maier, In the Fullness of Time: A Historian Looks at Christmas, Easter, and the Early Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1991), 145.
12. , 112
13. Biblical Archaeology Society Staff, “The Siloam Pool: Where Jesus Healed the Blind Man,” https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/biblical-archaeology-sites/the-siloam-pool-where-jesus-healed-the-blind-man/
14. Tacitus, Annals 15.44, as cited in H. Wayne House, Chronological and Background Charts of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981), 78
15. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, as cited in House, 77.
16. Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.63-64, as cited in House. Scholars believe the parenthetical statements are highly suspect as having come from Josephus. They were more likely added by a Christian scribe (Ibid).
17. All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
18. After the reign of Solomon, there came about a civil war, which divided the Davidic kingdom in two, with an alliance between the tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the south ruled by Rehoboam, and an alliance between the remaining ten tribes of Israel in the north ruled by Jeroboam. Nineteen generations of kings reigned in the northern kingdom of Israel from the tenth century to the eighth century when the nation was taken into Assyrian captivity. Twenty generations of kings that reigned in the southern kingdom of Judah from the tenth century to the late sixth century BC when they were taken into Babylonian exile. Both kingdoms cycled through sin, periods of experiencing divine wrath, occasions of repentance, and the renewal of the covenant; however, human sin would eventually lead them into exile for seventy. The times of the kings of Israel and Judah are described in 1-2 Kings and 2 Chronicles
19. John H. Walton, Chronological and Background Charts of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1978, 1994), 30.
20. Hank Hanegraaff, Has God Spoken: Proof of the Bible’s Divine Inspiration (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 191.
21. Craig Evans, “Did Jesus Predict His Violent Death and Resurrection?” Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science, ed. William A. Dembski and Michael R. Licona (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2010)161.
22. Ibid., 162.
23. Ibid., 162-163.
24. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament, Second Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 207.
25. Ibid., 208.

For a helpful treatment on the manuscript, archaeological and prophetic evidence for the reliability of the Bible, I recommend Has God Spoken: Proof of the Bible’s Divine Inspiration (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2011) by Hank Hanegraaff.