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Dr.
Michael - The Bible Guy
IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD
Question: Is the Bible the Word of God?
Response: Your timing is uncanny. As a matter of fact, I too have been thinking about and looking into pretty much this same thing for the last couple of months myself. I have even been reading a new book that I came across, “Misquoting Jesus”. It’s a pretty technical and in-depth work that explores just how the Bible as we have it today came to be in its current form. It is written by a guy with a bunch of initials after his name who is the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has spent the last 30 years of his life investigating this issue. The book is chalk-full of what I consider very interesting details about the cultural and socioeconomic structure of the 1st three or so centuries of the middle and near east following Jesus’ life here in the physical. The book exposes many of the various changes and edits that were made to the manuscripts that were ultimately used in the compilation of the Bible, from the earliest available up through the New Testament manuscripts that were circulating during the Middle Ages.
One of the points made early on in the book is that the vast majority of the people of this time, even up to the industrial revolution, were illiterate, which only makes sense. Before the industrial revolution survival was based primarily on having the skills necessary to produce the most basic necessities of life—food and shelter. Formal education was a luxury few but the wealthy and ruling classes could afford. During the times of Jesus, and the years following, very few people could read or write. There were of course scribes, and some slaves, who worked for the regional governmental bodies or the powerful and influential families, but their skills in the letters varied greatly, just as any skilled labor has throughout history. Not to belabor the point here too much, but one piece of information brought out in this book that I had never really clued into before is that the book of Acts, (4:13) records that the apostles Peter and John were both illiterate. King James translates the Greek as “unlearned and ignorant”, but the literal translation is “illiterate and ignorant/unlearned”. And yet tradition and the Bible itself both claim that this John wrote the most ethereal, inspirational, intellectually provocative, and spiritual of the four gospels, along with three epistles, and debatably Revelation; while Peter is supposedly the author himself of two of the epistles included in the New Testament. Peter and John were peasant fishermen mending their nets when Jesus called them to join Him.
So in my mind the questions lately have been: who really wrote the 27 books of The New Testament, but more importantly why were they written. How and why were these books included in the cannon of scripture and so many others excluded? (There were hundreds of writings and teachings in circulation and used in church meetings that were not included in the New Testament, but rather once and for all banned from use during the mid fourth century). Because there was such a wide gap of time between the writing of the original documents and the events they recorded, generally acknowledged to be in the neighborhood of about 30 to 150 years, none of which have survived: and yet the oldest copies of these writings that have survived are estimated to be no closer to their originals than perhaps 100 years, most of which however are centuries removed from the penning of the originals, how faithful to the originals are they? In fact, of the 5700 or so New Testament manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts of varying completeness and age which have been examined to date, it is estimated that between all of them there are hundreds of thousands of variant readings, or differences, between them when read side-by-side. The majority of these differences are minor, such as word order and the like, but there are a number of more significant variations, such as the addition and/or deletion of words, lines, and even entire narrative stories. And because none of the original documents have survived, but only copies which vary in degree from one to another, copied and recopied over the generations, by copyists of varying skill, some of whom could not read what they were copying, some who have altered the documents that had been handed down to them, both by accident and intention; how can we know what is the actual Word of God?
Like you, I too wonder what makes Christians believe that everything in the Bible is God’s Word, straight from His mouth, so to speak. I think in large part, it is because they are told that they will go to hell if they don’t believe it. Not in so many words, but more in the fashion of, ‘The Bible is the Word of God given to His people, which spells out His plan for salvation for all who choose believe and accept it. Those who do will be saved and spend eternity in heaven; those who choose to turn their back on God will be condemned to spend eternity in hell.’ So, out of fear of spending eternity in hell, they choose to believe, and by doing so they believe that, as part-and-parcel of the bargain, they must also accept the Bible as the inerrant and infallible Word of God. Just my somewhat simplified view. On the other hand, there are others who have made their own independent investigations into the Bible, and still choose to accept it as the literal and inerrant Word of God, warts and all.
To belabor the point a bit more, there is a Point of Faith doctrine adhered to by the Born Again, Protestant elite, the high-brows who tend to be the out-front leaders; the evangelists of radio and television, preachers, and other pundits of The Faith. This is the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, (Latin for scripture alone) meaning that scripture, the Bible, is the only inerrant rule for deciding issues of faith and morals. Piggy-backed onto this doctrine is their belief that the entire Bible is given to man by God, and as such is inerrant and infallible. Now, I would never claim to be a biblical scholar, however in my limited studies and investigations, I have found many instances within the Bible that just fly in the face of it being infallible and inerrant. There are many examples, but just one that comes immediately to mind is the opening of Mark’s Gospel. In the 1st chapter, 2nd verse, it says, “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, Who shall prepare thy way.’” This was not written in Isaiah, but in Malachi. Seems like an error to me. It is certainly not one that at all shakes my faith in the Bible, or God, but an error none the less. And, like I said, there are many other occurrences in the Bible where the facts just do not match up.
To be fair though, this doctrine, or point of faith held so dearly by the protestant evangelicals, that establishes once and for all the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible actually applies only to the autographs, those original, first edition manuscripts written in the original author’s hand. But since none of those documents exist today for us to benefit from, not even the first copies of the copies, of the copies of the originals, then what is the point of claiming inerrancy and infallibility? This is one of those finer points that the majority of the laity is not aware of though; most evangelicals just assume that it applies to our Bible today and accept its inerrancy as a matter of faith.
By the way, going back to the mistake I cited in the 1st chapter of the Gospel of Mark; in the older, and less reliable manuscripts that were used in the translation of the King James Version of the Bible, the scribes changed “Isaiah the prophet” to read “the prophets” in order to “correct” this inconsistency. That change remains in the KJV today which reads, “As it is written in the prophets, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way for thee”. However, in the newer translations that have used the older, more reliable manuscripts as their source text, such as the NIV, New American Standard, and others, you will find the quote is left just as the older manuscripts have it—mistakenly attributed to Isaiah.
All that being said, I think you know that I do hold the Bible as one of the most important sources of inspiration. It is invaluable for living this life to its fullest, and for reminding us that we are all divine children of the most high God, created in His image and after His likeness. As far as I’m concerned, the Bible holds within its pages the mysteries of life, of God and of Spirit; why we are here and how we got here. It is a blueprint of our psyche, and a road map of our journey from a dense materialistic/animal consciousness to that in which we are reunited with God, so to speak, as Spirit. I think of it as my Owner’s Manual. But, is the Bible as we have it today, the Word of God?
I had been struggling with that question for a long time. Mainly because I wasn’t so sure what the term meant. Like most things from and about the Bible, I’m sure it has many different meanings, depending on who is using it. If it means that the entire contents of the Bible are the exact words of God, somehow dictated by God and written down so long ago for posterity then no, I don’t believe that is the case. However, in the New Testament the word translated as “Word” is the Greek word Logos, which, in its ultimate or highest meaning is “divine expression”. In the opening chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus is called the Word. And who would argue with that, Jesus certainly is The Divine Expression. In John’s 1st epistle, he calls Jesus the Word of Life—the divine expression of life. The meaning behind those two examples of “The Word” is one that I can totally get behind. So, in that sense then, yes, the Bible, for the most part, most definitely is The Word of God, His divine expression to His creation. I just wouldn’t call it the word-for-word, Word of God.
Because I say that the Bible is, for the most part, the Word of God, I’m sure that many people would reply, “well, is it, or isn’t it? Either it is the Word of God, or it is not the Word of God.” Well, there are a couple of reasons why I believe that much of the Bible is directly from God, while others are not; while much of the Bible is God’s ultimate Truth, some portions of it, as I see it, are not. To say that the Bible is the Word of God is to say that its writers were inspired by God, meaning that God was speaking directly to and/or through the authors of the 66 books that make up our Bible, directing every word that was written. I think that even, or especially, the born again evangelicals would agree that every human being, even those who wrote the books of the Old and New Testaments, are in one way or another, are flawed. When God spoke to or through these people, did they get every word and thought 100% correct and as God intended? This obviously is a question of faith for every reader of the Bible to decide for themselves.
More to the point of whether or not every word, line and thought recorded in the Bible have come directly from God; there are portions of the Bible, New Testament and Old, that are clearly commentary and judgments related to local sociological norms and standards that applied to that particular culture at that particular point in time. Much of this sort of thing can be seen in the epistles of the New Testament. These are letters, for the most part written by the apostle Paul, following up with the churches he had established while spreading the gospel throughout Asia Minor, advising them on how to conduct the business of running their churches; how men and women should attire themselves, who can talk during a church service and who is forbidden to talk, etc. Granted, Paul wrote a great deal about Christian doctrine, but much of what he wrote had nothing at all to do with God, or Jesus, or love, or service, or our relationships with one another. I find it difficult to believe that God would pull Paul aside and tell him to write about how He wanted people to dress or talk or act when attending church. I also believe that much, if not most of what Paul wrote was more influenced by his “Old Testament” education as a Pharisee than by direct revelation from God.
One last observation before I leave this issue concerns the New Testament book of Acts. This book is an account of the development of the Christian movement immediately following the death and resurrection of Jesus. It chronicles the missionary journeys of Paul, and his establishment of a number of churches. It gives us a history of the Jerusalem church of the first century, while also documenting some of the power struggles, and debates relating doctrine and law between the early leaders, mainly between Peter, Paul, and James. Acts is a history book written by Luke, also author of the gospel that bears his name. Luke was with Paul as an eyewitness throughout much of its writing. Was the writing of every word of this documentary either dictated or otherwise inspired by God? I wouldn’t think so, but there are those who would disagree.
Even with all of the changes and edits the Bible has gone through over the last two millennia, I think that the newest translations, or versions, that we have today are probably pretty close to the “original”. Archeology seems to be finding new evidence all the time in the form of ancient biblical manuscripts, which is proving to be invaluable in reconstructing what the original manuscripts may have held. With these new discoveries Bible scholars and historians have the material they need to compare and evaluate against our extant best available manuscript evidence of New and Old Testament writings, and by the highly developed science of textural criticism, correct and update if necessary. Although somewhat over simplified, this is generally the process used in producing a new translation of the Bible, which is why the newest versions of the Bible will likely be a closer facsimile of what the original author may have actually written. There still remain mistakes and errors, many of them known, many unknown; some by accident, and some by intention. To believe otherwise is to ignore the evidence.
In order to have a fuller understanding of just what the Bible is, and is not, it’s important to know something about the development and growth of the Church and evolution of its sacred text, the Bible.
At the very beginnings of the Christian movement, the Word of God was in fact, the Word of God, as I have presented my view of it in the preceding paragraphs. The Word was clear and powerful, just what was needed at that time for the fledgling Jesus Movement, as the new Christianity was called at the time, to begin to establish itself. As the movement began to grow and expand further afield, the original Word began to be modified here and there, in ways that would attract new converts, but still kept its central message intact. By the middle of the fourth century there were hundreds of different writings that had grown out of the first original few, all to serve the purpose of fulfilling Jesus’ Great Commission; “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.” At this time Christianity was fairly widespread but very loosely knit together. There was little, if any structure, with each community having its own collection of doctrine and teaching that it espoused and adhered to. If the Church was to survive it desperately needed structure and boundaries. If allowed to continue to faction and dilute its central message it would soon dissipate into obscurity.
During the third and fourth centuries there were a few prominent bishops in the church who had recognized the need for a “standardized Christianity”, and so issued their own decrees, dictating to the churches under their influence which of the manuscripts in circulation were to be considered authoritative and which were not. One of the earliest to do this was the bishop of Lyons in Gaul, (modern day France), Irenaeus. By his reckoning, because there are four zones of the world, (north, south, east, and west) and there are four principal winds, then it is only fitting that the church should have four gospels, or pillars, as Irenaeus called them. And, again, in Irenaeus’ estimation those four gospels were to be Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I guess that’s about as good a method as any to establish the four most important books to be included in the Christian Bible.
Another notable powerhouse of the early Christian church was the Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius. In the year 367 he wrote in his annual pastoral letter to the churches of Egypt that in his estimation there were only 27 books then in circulation that he deemed authoritative, and thereby worthy of Scriptural status. These are the same 27 books that comprise the New Testament we have today. This list of 27 was based in good measure on the work of the early third century theologian Origen and his mentor, Eusebius. From early on in the third century until Athanasius decreed his List of 27, there was a great deal of fierce debate about which of the Christian writings should be “in”, and which should be “out”. So, by the close of the fourth century we pretty much had our New Testament. Or, at least they did; for although the books themselves are now a finite set, the errors in their copying continued for another thousand years, when Gutenberg’s printing press came onto the scene.
Because these “approved for use” manuscripts were all written in Greek, this new mandate worked quite well for the Greek speaking population of the Roman Empire who fell under the Eastern Greek Orthodox Church. However much of the Western Roman Empire, which fell under the Roman Catholic Church spoke Latin, not Greek. These westerners wanted the sacred scripture in their own language. So, just as with the Greek manuscripts, from early on in the third century several Latin translations began to circulate among the western communities. And, like their Greek counterparts, these writings also differed widely from one to another. The situation had become so out of control that by the end of the fourth century Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome, his theological advisor and perhaps the most scholarly man of the time, to produce the “official” Latin version of the sacred text. Jerome’s translation, called the Latin Vulgate (meaning vulgar or common) became the Bible of the Middle Ages.
The Vulgate would eventually outlast its intended purpose. As the centuries passed, Latin would morph into its daughter languages of Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and others. Once this took place Latin became the language of only the highly educated. Rather than producing new translations of the Bible in the native languages that the people could understand, the Roman Catholic Church instead clung to Latin, not only as the language of the Bible, but also as its official language for all liturgical and scriptural readings. This move by the Church kept the people completely at the mercy of the clergy for any teaching they would receive. The Roman Catholic Church continued its use of Latin as its primary liturgical language even up to the mid 1960’s, at which time the Second Vatican Council finally decided that the various world-wide vernacular languages of the faithful could be allowed into the liturgy.
This Church controlled scriptural dissemination continued unchallenged until 1382 when John Wycliffe, an Oxford College professor who had spent much of his life criticizing the Church for its mistreatment and exploitation of the people, and for its false teachings, translated the Latin Vulgate into English; the first European language translation of the Bible in more than 1,000 years. To show their appreciation for his efforts, the Church summarily dismissed Wycliffe from his teaching post at Oxford. Forty four years after his death the Pope ordered his bones exhumed and burned, along with any of his Bibles that could be found. Severe persecution by the Church put an end to his followers and to his public teachings. This however was not the end of a Church Reformation, but the spark of its beginning.
Fast forward to the first half of the 16th century: William Tyndale was a brilliant clergyman living and working in the southwest countryside of England. Fluent in seven languages, including Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, Tyndale decided to make his own translation of the Bible, using not only the Vulgate, but also the ancient Greek and Hebrew manuscripts available at the time. While at university Tyndale became big fan of the ideas of John Wycliffe, believing that the church had become corrupt and self-serving. Like Wycliffe, Tyndale thought it was important that people had the opportunity to read and interpret the Bible for themselves. He was convinced that the way to God was through His Word and that scripture should be available even to “a boy that driveth the plough”. Branded a heretic by the Church for his controversial views, Tyndale left England for Germany in 1524 under a pseudonym to begin work on his English translation of the Bible. When smuggled copies of his Bible began showing up in England a year later, Tyndale was condemned a heretic. Over the next few years more than 18,000 of his Bibles were smuggled into England.
In 1530 Henry VIII gave the order that all English Bibles were to be destroyed. Anyone caught distributing the Tyndale Bible in England were burned at the stake. This attempt to destroy Tyndale's Bible appears to have been fairly successful as only two copies have survived. In 1535 William Tyndale was arrested in Antwerp, found guilty of heresy and in 1536, he was strangled and then burned at the stake. He would have been burned alive were it not for the intercession of his friend and admirer Oliver Cromwell, who pleaded with the Church for leniency on Tyndale’s behalf.
During this same time period, around 1534, Martin Luther published about 100,000 copies of his German translation of the Bible. It was now not long before translators across Europe made the “Word of God” available in every major language. One would think that after so many centuries of living in darkness, that this new found abundance of the Bible now available to the common man in his native language would be a welcome change. Not so. James I, King of England from 1603 to 1625, was quite disturbed by all the versions of the Bible now available, so he commissioned a group of biblical scholars to produce an authorized version, working from the best of earlier translations. The Authorized Version, written in the language of the day, was first published in 1611, making it the first Bible produced by an authorized group of scholars, thus inaugurating the standard method of translation for the majority of Bible versions that we have today.
So this pretty much brings up to date with the development of the Bible as we have it in our modern translations today. As I said earlier, the translations of the Bible today, I believe, are a much closer facsimile to the originals than they have been since about the fourth or fifth centuries. And, as new, older manuscripts are discovered and examined under the light of modern critical methodologies, our current somewhat hazy image of the “original” Word of God draws ever closer into focus. But even though the Bible that we have today is an imperfect book, it is none the less an invaluable repository of God’s wisdom. As one of Christianity’s original and most influential theologians said 1800 years ago concerning the sacred manuscripts, only perhaps 50 to 130 years removed from their originals:
“True there are imperfections in the Bible: antilogies, (a contradiction in
terms: a phrase that contradicts itself or negates its meaning),
repetitions, want of continuity; but these imperfections become
perfections by leading us to the allegory and the spiritual meaning.”
Origen (185-232)I am in lock-step agreement with Origen; although there are imperfections in the Bible, these imperfections compel me to a deeper exploration into God’s Word, revealing the story beneath the story. While many of the jots and tittles of the Bible have changed over the centuries, and some narratives changed, added or deleted, God’s message written beneath them has not.
Given the countless opportunities to corrupt God’s Word over the centuries by an incalculable number of scribes and copyists, it is nothing short of a miracle that we have today a Bible that conveys God’s message as reliably as it does. I believe this is testimony to the reality that God’s hand has been protecting and promoting His message that was written to His people from antiquity. By His providence archeologists of the nineteenth and twentieth century have uncovered a treasure trove of very ancient manuscripts throughout the near and middle east.
Without question the most notable and important of these discoveries occurred near the shores of the Dead Sea and along the banks of the Nile River in Upper Egypt near the village of Nag Hammadi. Neither the Dead Sea Scrolls nor the Nag Hammadi Library were unearthed by prominent teams of archeologists, but were discovered by pure “chance”. In the spring of 1947 a Bedouin goat-herder found the Dead Sea Scrolls while looking for one of his strays in some caves near Qumran, just 13 miles east of Jerusalem. And barely a year and a half earlier, in December of 1945, two brothers, farmers by trade, were digging for fertilizer when they came across a large earthenware jar containing more than 50 New Testament era manuscripts. Because this treasure was found near the village of Nag Hammadi, the brother’s discovery came to be known as the Nag Hammadi Library. Was this just dumb luck or coincidence that by “accident” the two most important archeological discoveries of modern times, each destined to shed so much new Light onto the Word of God, were made just months after the conclusion of the most gruesome and deadly war the world had ever known? I don’t think so. It’s got to be God, once again providing for His creation just what it needed, at the time it was needed.
From the most ancient of times, this has been one of the ways that God kept in touch with His people. During Old Testament times, God raised up the great Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the inaugurators of a new faith—a faith that would turn the people away from empty idol worship and focus their lives on reuniting themselves with the living God. When the people needed help in turning their lives around God brought in the likes of Moses, and Joshua, and David. God communicated to His people through His prophets of Old Testament times, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and others, using them to remind the people of their direct connection with Him. And, in the fullness of time, God sent Jesus to remind us of our unity with Him.
God, from the very beginning, has been guiding His creation back to Him. He has done this through the people he has raised up throughout history, and through the people he has chosen to record His-story. Whether the events chronicled in the Bible are history, allegory, metaphor, myth, symbol, or parable, they all serve in one way or another to bring us back to God. And it has been the scribes and copyists and translators, the archeologists and goat herders and farmers through whom God has been working, and will continue to work through, so that we can continue to receive the ever clearer message of our oneness with God.
Forgive Them Father
The Number 40
Mediums - Stoning - Burnt Offerings
Is The Bible The Word of God