There are many, many direct and indirect claims for inspiration in the Old Testament. According to one count, some 3,808 times in the Old Testament we find the formula, "Thus saith the LORD," or some slight variation of that phrase!6 It should thrill your heart and encourage your faith to examine just a few of these many clear statements that God is the divine author of the Bible we have!
Claims to inspiration begin with the very first section of scripture, the Pentateuch. These first five books of Moses are seen separately in our Bibles, but are one indivisible unit in the eyes of the Holy Spirit (see Deuteronomy 31:24; Joshua 8:31; Ezra 6:18; Mark 12:26). Direct claims that the very words of God are recorded can be seen throughout the Pentateuch in passages such as Genesis 1:26, 2:16, 3:9, etc.; Exodus 3:4, 20:1, etc.; Leviticus 1:1, 8:9, 11:1; Numbers 1:1, 2:1, 4:1, 5:1, 6:1, etc.; Deuteronomy 1:3, 9:12-13, 32:48.
The same marks of inspiration are found in the historical books, beginning with such passages as Joshua 24:26; and continuing through Judges 1:1-2, 6:25; I Samuel 2:27-36; II Samuel 7:8-16; I Kings 3:11, 17:2; II Kings 1:16, 3:16-17; I Chronicles 17:3, 28:3; II Chronicles 1:7, 7:12.
As for the books of prophecy, Norman Geisler has said, "The latter prophets abound in claims of divine inspiration. The familiar 'Thus says the LORD' with which they introduce their message occurs hundreds of times. From Isaiah to Malachi the reader is literally bombarded with divine authority."7 Zechariah, one of the last to speak in the Old Testament, places the seal of inspiration on all the prophets before him when he said, "Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in His Spirit by the former prophets:" (Zechariah 7:12; cf. 1:4).
The poetic books bear the distinct marks of inspiration, as well. The character of inspiration is evident throughout Job, especially in passages such as 1:6-12, 2:1-6, and chapters 38-41. The greatest number of Psalms were written by David, who gave clear testimony of inspiration in II Samuel 23:2. The book of Proverbs sets forth the wisdom given to Solomon by the Lord (I Kings 4:29-32) and claims divine authority in Proverbs 22:20-21. Ecclesiastes has the same ring of God's authority in 11:9 and 12:13-14.
A few books of the Old Testament do not directly claim to be the Word of God. Song of Solomon is one, but the first verse credits Solomon, who received spiritual wisdom from God, as has been mentioned (I Kings 4:32). There is reason to believe Ruth was originally attached to the book of Judges, which clearly bears the imprint of inspiration. Tradition credits Ezra the scribe with the recording of I and II Chronicles, as well as with the book that bears his name. In Ezra 10 he is seen functioning as a prophet of God, which would speak for the inspiration of his book. Exactly the same can be said for Nehemiah, who takes the role of prophet in chapter 13 of his book.
The book of Esther has troubled some Bible scholars because it nowhere contains the name of God. However, Graham Scroggie has shown how God's name appears four times in acrostic form in the original Hebrew in ways that defy mere coincidence8. Also, Esther claims to be a true record of the providential acts of God in delivering His people who remained under Persian rule after the Babylonian captivity. In it is given the origin of the Jewish feast of Purim which has been celebrated by the Jews since that day. For these reasons, orthodox Jewish scribes never seriously questioned its inspiration.
NEW TESTAMENT VERIFICATION OF OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION
The inspiration of the Old Testament is never questioned in the New Testament; rather, it is repeatedly verified! Our key verse, II Timothy 3:16 is just one example. The word scripture used in this passage is the most common expression used to describe the Old Testament in the New. Everywhere it appears, the word carries with it all the authority of God's very utterance (see Matthew 22:29; John 10:35; Acts 17:11; I Corinthians 15:3-4; II Peter 3:16) The title, the Word of God, is used synonymously with scripture, and clearly identifies God as the source of what has been written (see Mark 7:13; Luke 5:1; John 10:35; Acts 13:7; Romans 9:6; II Corinthians 4:2; I Thessalonians 2:13).
The expression, the Law, is sometimes used of the first five books of Moses (the Pentateuch), but can also refer to the whole canon of Old Testament scripture (see John 10:34, where Psalm 82:6 is quoted and referred to as the Law. See also John 8:17, 12:34 and 15:25). Similarly, the Law and the Prophets does not refer only to the Pentateuch and the prophetic books, but is taken for the entire Old Testament (see Matthew 7:12; Luke 16:16; Acts 13:15). Other similar expressions include Moses and the Prophets (Luke 16:29); The Prophets (Luke 18:31, 24:25) and The Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms (Luke 24:44). All these titles at times refer to the whole canon of Old Testament scripture, and all bear the very definite impress of God's inspiration and authority.
Other expressions that confirm Old Testament inspiration include the oracles of God (Romans 3:2), it is written (appears more than ninety times in the New Testament; three times in the temptation of Christ -- Matthew 4:4-11), and that it might be fulfilled (Matthew 24:35; Mark 15:28; Luke 24:44; John 19:28, 36; Acts 1: 16). Unquestionably, the Lord and His apostles believed every word of the Old Testament was the inspired Word of God!
THE NEW TESTAMENT CLAIMS CONCERNING ITS OWN INSPIRATION
It's true that Jesus never wrote a word of Scripture. It is also true that He promised the Holy Spirit, Who would enable the men He chose to remember everything He said (John 14:26) and know the truth and foresee things yet to come (John 16:13-15)! These are the promises of divine inspiration for the New Testament, before it was written down!
The powerful claim of II Timothy 3:16, that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God," was certainly intended to apply to the New Testament just as definitely as it applies to the Old. There are several reasons why we can make that statement.
First, II Timothy was one of the last books of the New Testament to be written. Even a casual reading of chapter four will tell the reader that Paul was convinced he would soon be put to death and his career of service to the Lord would be over. All of his own epistles had been written by this point and should therefore be included under the umbrella of this one verse.
If it is scripture, it’s inspired, says Paul. Did the New Testament writers consider their works to be on the same level as Old Testament scripture, then? In Ephesians 2:20, Paul tells us the Church, or, the household of God," is "built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone." It's evident that there were men of God recognized as His spokesmen, enabled by the Holy Spirit to write, and at times speak the very utterances of God. While these men lived, the Church had their authoritative witness as to what was scripture and what was not.
We see the evidence of this authority in II Peter 3:15-16. There, Peter indicates he has access to copies of Paul’s epistles and he plainly classifies them all as scripture in verse 16! Likewise, Paul quotes Luke’s gospel in I Timothy 5:18 and calls it scripture (two verses are quoted in this passage, Deuteronomy 25:4 and Luke 10:7).
One thing that identified a written work as authoritative in the early church was public reading in the assembly. Normally, only scripture was to be read in the public meetings. Note the reference to this custom, and how it is applied to New Testament writings, in I Timothy 4:13; Colossians 4:16, and I Thessalonians 5:27.
The gospels of Matthew and John were written by two of Christ’s twelve apostles and so bear all the authority conferred on them by Christ (see Matthew 10:14, 28:19-20; Mark 3:14-15; John 20:22, 21:24). Mark was not one of the twelve, but was an eyewitness of the Lord’s incarnation and a close companion of Paul (Mark 14:51-52; Acts 12:25; Colossians 4:10; II Timothy 4:11). Luke, too, accompanied Paul (Acts 16:10, 20:6; Colossians 4:14, II Timothy 4:11) and claims to be writing authoritative accounts of the Lord’s life and the continuing acts of Christ through the early Apostolic church (Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-2).
All of Paul’s epistles claim divine inspiration, either explicitly (openly and plainly stated) or implicitly (not openly stated but understood through what is said). See especially the following: Romans 16:26; I Corinthians 14:37; II Corinthians 13:3; Galatians 1:8-12; Ephesians 3:3; Philippians 3:15-16, 4:9; Colossians 1:25; I Thessalonians 2:13, 5:27; II Thessalonians 3:14; I Timothy 4:11-13; II Timothy 1:13; Titus 2:15; Philemon 8. The epistle to the Hebrews rings with divine authority throughout, especially in passages such as Hebrews 2:3-4 and 13:22.
James’ epistle is marked as scripture through its authoritative tone and its undisputed authorship (James 1:1; Acts 15:13; I Corinthians 15:7; Galatians 1:19). Peter claims apostolic authority for his epistles in I Peter 1:1, 5:1, 12; II Peter 1:1. Note how in II Peter 3:2, Peter equates the teaching authority of the apostles with that of the Old Testament prophets! The scriptural authority of John’s epistles can be found in I John 1:1, 4:1-3; II John 5, 7; III John 12. Jude’s exhortation to "earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints" places a seal on the authority of the rest of the New Testament writings and implies its own authority.
No book has a stronger, clearer claim to divine inspiration than the book of Revelation, seen plainly from the first verse and all through the first three chapters. The chilling warning in Revelation 22:18-19 not only affirms the absolute authority of everything in the book of Revelation, but may be applied to the entire New Testament and the completed revelation of the Bible itself!
We can conclude that the whole Bible strongly teaches its own inspiration, from Genesis to Revelation. We, as the Church, treasure and uphold this doctrine, and defend it when necessary. It is foundational to the authority of the Word of God in all our preaching and in our own lives.
SECTION II -- INERRANCY & INFALLIBILITY
Let’s begin this section with clear definitions for our terms. Inerrancy simply means, "without error." When we say the Bible is inerrant, we are saying it is entirely accurate and truthful in everything it says. The infallibility of the Bible has to do with its authority for faith and practice. When we say the Bible is infallible, we are saying it is wholly trustworthy as the final guide and authority for our lives. In other words, the Bible is incapable of leading us astray. It is infallible because it is inerrant.
The doctrine of inerrancy logically follows because of the Bible’s inspiration. The basic argument is this: A} The Bible is verbally inspired [II Timothy 3:16]. It’s very source is God Himself. B} God cannot lie [Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18]; nor can He err [Psalm 18:30; Psalm 147:5; James 1:17]. therefore; C} the scriptures are entirely without error. This is called the deductive argument for the inerrancy of the scriptures. Deductive means that we draw a specific conclusion through reasoning from general principles.
Many today attack or deny the inerrancy of the Bible. They argue that God used fallible men to record His word and that fallible character must have entered into the finished product with the result being an imperfect or fallible Bible. This point of view presents a serious challenge to the stability of Christian thought and practice. Theologian James Orr has said, "in each great epoch of Church history, the Church has been forced to grapple with one facet of the Christian faith that has had a real bearing on the future direction of the Church."9 For Orr, the issue for this particular epoch is the issue of inerrancy.
You can see how critical it is to understand and accept the doctrine of the Bible’s inspiration. If inspiration is properly understood and believed, the claim to inerrancy really presents no problem!
THE THEANTHROPIC BOOK
The Bible may be called the theanthropic book. That is, it is the God-man book -- Theos means God and anthropos refers to man. This term refers to the Bible’s unique character of dual authorship, having been truly authored by God, but through the instrumentality of human writers. The question we must address, then, is, "to what extent, if any, did the fallible character of man affect the overall character of God’s Book?"
For the answer, it seems proper to compare the Theanthropic book to the theanthropic man -- the written Word of God to the living Word of God!
For the purpose of the incarnation of His Son, God was able to use a fallible, sinful woman (see Luke 1:47, 18:19; Romans 3:10-23) to bring into the world a perfect, impeccable person -- the Lord Jesus Christ. Over and over, the scripture verifies that the Theanthropic man was entirely without sin -- see II Corinthians 5:21; I Peter 2:22; Hebrews 4:15 and I John 3:5. Thus, God was able to use a fallible human vessel and still produce an infallible product -- the spotless Lamb of God! He was able to do so for one reason -- His Holy Spirit perfectly overshadowed the human vessel, Mary, preventing any of her sinful nature from entering into the finished product (carefully read Luke 1:35).
We believe what is true for the theanthropic man holds for the theanthropic book, as well. God certainly used fallible men to accomplish His aim, but He used them in such a way as to prevent their fallible character from corrupting the finished product. According to what we believe about inspiration, we can say that God’s Holy Spirit overshadowed the men He used to record His revelation, preserving the perfect, infallible character of His Word (II Peter 1:20-21; I Corinthians 2:13).
THE INDUCTIVE ARGUMENT FOR INERRANCY
As with the doctrine of inspiration, we can look to the Bible itself to see what it says regarding its own inerrancy. This involves the process of induction -- arriving at a general conclusion from the study of particular instances. Whereas in the deductive argument, we reasoned from general principles to a specific conclusion, in the inductive argument we will make a general conclusion based on a number of particular statements:
Psalm 12:6: "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." Psalm 19:7-10: "The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether." {note: these terms, "law," "testimony," "statutes," "commandment," "precepts" and "judgments" all have reference to the scriptures} Psalm 119:89: "For ever, O LORD, Thy word is settled in Heaven." Psalm 119:128: "Therefore I esteem all Thy precepts concerning all things to be right;" Psalm 119:140: "Thy word is very pure: therefore Thy servant loveth it." Psalm 119:142: "Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and Thy law is the truth." Psalm 119:151: "Thou art near, O LORD; and all Thy commandments are truth." Psalm 119:160: "Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever." Psalm 119:172: "My tongue shall speak of Thy word: for all Thy commandments are righteousness." Psalm 138:2: "I will worship toward Thy holy temple, and praise Thy Name for Thy lovingkindness and for Thy truth: for Thou hast magnified Thy word above all Thy Name." Proverbs 30:5: "Every word of God is pure: He is a shield unto them that put their trust in Him." John 17:17: "Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth."
The above are just some of the verses that describe God’s Word as true, flawless and pure. Thus, we may conclude inductively that the Bible undeniably claims to be inerrant as well as inspired.
CHRIST’S VIEW OF SCRIPTURE
The writer of the book of Hebrews makes this extremely significant statement: "God, Who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son . . ." (Hebrews 1:1-2a). Jesus Christ Himself, as the incarnate Word of God, is the very fullest revelation of God to man, being, in fact, "God ... manifest in the flesh." Therefore, we have the unique opportunity of examining what the incarnate Word of God had to say about the written Word of God. Our examination ought to tell us whether God holds His Word to be inerrant and just how far He is willing to take inerrancy in actual practice.
In fact, it is abundantly clear that Christ upheld the inerrancy and infallibility of the scriptures in all that He said and did. The following is quoted at length from an excellent paper by John W. Wenham titled, "Christ’s View of Scripture:"
"Jesus consistently treats Old Testament historical narratives as straightforward records of fact. He refers to Abel (Luke 11:51), Noah (Matt. 24:37-39; Luke 17:26-27), Abraham (John 8:56), the institution of circumcision (John 7:22; cf. Gen. 17:10-12; Lev. 12:3), Sodom and Gomorrah (Matt. 10:15; 11:23-24; Luke 10:12), Lot (Luke 17:28-32), Isaac and Jacob (Matt. 8:11; Luke 13:28), manna (John 6:31, 49, 58), the snake in the desert (John 3:14), David eating the consecrated bread (Matt. 12:3, 4; Mark 2:25-26; Luke 6:3-4), David as a psalm writer (Matt. 22:43; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42), Solomon (Matt. 6:29; 12:42; Luke 11:31; 12:27), Elijah (Luke 4:25-26), Elisha (Luke 4:27), Jonah (Matt. 12:39-41; Luke 11:29, 30, 32), and Zechariah (Luke 11:51). The last passage brings out Jesus’ sense of the unity of history and His grasp of its wide sweep. His eye surveys the whole course of history from "the creation of the world" to "this generation." He repeatedly refers to Moses as the giver of the Law (Matt. 8:4; 19:8; Mark 1:44; 7:10; 10:5; 12:26; Luke 5:14; 20:37; John 5:46; 7:19). He frequently mentions the sufferings of the true prophets (Matt. 5:12; 13:57; 21:34-36; 23:29-37; Mark 6:4 [cf. Luke 4:24; John 4:44]; 12:2-5; Luke 6:23; 11:47-51; 13:34; 20:10-12) and comments on the popularity of the false prophets (Luke 6:26). He sets the stamp of His approval on such significant passages as Genesis 1 and 2 (Matt. 19:4-5; Mark 10:6-8)."10
Certainly, this is solid proof that Christ regarded the Old Testament as thoroughly sound, literally true and historically accurate! Wenham goes on to make this insightful comment: "Curiously enough, the narratives that are least acceptable to the "modern mind" are the very ones that He seemed most fond of choosing for illustrations." Included in that category would be the account of creation in Genesis and the record of Jonah swallowed and later vomited out by the great fish; both of which are frequently attacked by modernists while plainly alluded to as historical fact by Christ.
Hear the words of John Warwick Montgomery: "Christ’s attitude toward the Old Testament was one of total trust: nowhere, in no particular, and on no subject did he place Scripture under criticism. Never did He distinguish truth "in faith and practice" from veracity in historical and secular matters, and He told the Evil Foe in no uncertain terms that man lives "by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4, quoting Deut. 8:3). To His apostles, under whose scrutiny the New Testament would be written, He promised His Holy Spirit, Who "shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14:26, cf. II Peter 3:15-16). "Inerrancy? Yes. Induction? Yes. The way out of the fly bottle? Approaching Scripture always and everywhere as did the Lord Christ." 11
THE HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE CHURCH ON INERRANCY
As has been mentioned, it is only in relatively recent times that the question of inerrancy has really become a "watershed" issue in the Church. Down through the centuries, the record shows that the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of scriptures was "a given." Lutheran theologian H. Echternach said, "The infallibility of Scripture was the consensus of the Church, irrespective of denominational lines, until long after 1700 AD"12 The authority of the Bible was not seriously challenged; rather, as other doctrines became subjects of major debate among professing Christians, it was ever the scriptures that were appealed to as the final source of authority in deciding these issues!
Augustine was a very prominent church "father" who strongly maintained the inerrancy of the scriptures, saying, "Freely do I admit to you, my friend, that I have learnt to ascribe to those Books which are of Canonical rank, and only to them, such reverence and honour, that I firmly believe that no single error due to the author is found in any one of them. And when I am confronted in these books with anything that seems to be at variance with truth, I do not hesitate to put it down either to the use of an incorrect text, or to the failure of a commentator rightly to explain the words, or to my own mistaken understanding of the passage."13
The great reformer, Martin Luther, was equally strong in his convictions, stating, "The scriptures have never erred," "The scriptures cannot err," "It is impossible that Scripture should contradict itself, only that it so appears to the senseless and obstinate hypocrites," "One little point of doctrine means more than heaven and earth, and therefore we cannot suffer to have the least jot thereof violated," and, "For it is established by God's Word that God does not lie, nor does His Word lie."14
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, called "the prince of preachers," spoke of the Bible's infallible character in a sermon he delivered in 1855:
"Then, since God wrote it, mark its truthfulness. If I had written it, there would be worms of critics who would at once swarm on it, and would cover it with their evil spawn; had I written it, there would be men who would pull it to pieces at once, and perhaps quite right too. But this is the Word of God. Come, search, ye critics, and find a flaw; examine it from its Genesis to its Revelation and find an error. This is a vein of pure gold, unalloyed by quartz or any earthy substance. This is a star without a speck; a sun without a blot; a light without darkness; a moon without paleness; a glory without a dimness. O Bible! it cannot be said of any other book, that it is perfect and pure; but of thee we can declare all wisdom is gathered up in thee, without a particle of folly. This is the judge that ends the strife where wit and reason fail. This is the book untainted by any error, but is pure, unalloyed, perfect truth. Why? Because God wrote it. Ah! charge God with error if you please; tell Him that His book is not what it ought to be . . . . Blessed Bible, thou art all truth."15
These remarks have been recorded here as representative of the vast majority of Christian leaders and thinkers across the centuries. Only for sake of space and time have we not recorded many, many more quotations to the same effect. The utter inerrancy and infallibility of scripture is undeniably the orthodox and historical position of the Church of Jesus Christ. It is, in fact, foundational to "the faith which was once delivered unto the saints!" (Jude 3c).
THE MODERNIST OR "LIBERAL" POSITION
Modernism, sometimes called "liberalism," offers a different point of view on inerrancy. Within the last 35 years, it has become popular to speak in terms of two types of statements in scripture -- those statements that are revelational and those that are non-revelational. Revelational scripture is said to include all statements pertaining to knowledge that "makes men wise unto salvation." Non-revelational scripture includes statements that pertain to knowledge of math, science, historical accuracy and other matters that are part of man's understanding of the physical, material realm and natural phenomena.
Daniel Fuller of Fuller Theological Seminary is one scholar who has taken such a position. Fuller makes a distinction between revelational and non-revelational scripture and claims that the Bible is inerrant in revelational matters, but that it contains errors in non-revelational statements. Fuller believes that there are errors in the Bible in some of the statements it makes concerning science, math, history, etc., therefore, the Bible itself cannot claim to be inerrant "in all its parts." He states that an accurate approach to teaching inerrancy "is to understand that verbal plenary inspiration involves accommodation to the thinking of the original readers in non-revelational matters."16 In other words, according to Fuller, men who wrote the Bible would naturally write at their own limited level of understanding in describing the universe and its natural laws. All they wrote concerning spiritual matters would, of course, come directly from God and would be free of error and wholly trustworthy. All they wrote concerning science would be without the benefit of centuries of advancement and would be consistent with the erroneous beliefs of the times.
There are several problems with such thinking. First, scripture itself never makes any kind of distinction between revelational and non-revelational statements. Again, Christ affirmed that men are to live by "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." The Psalmist said, "Therefore, I esteem all Thy precepts concerning all things to be right." (Matt. 4:4; Psalm 119:128). In fact, so-called revelational issues are often founded in what modernists would deem non-revelational statements. For instance, the impeccability of Christ is dependent on the scientific fact of the Virgin Birth. The thrust of Paul's doctrinal argument in Romans 5 is dependent on the historical fact of Adam's fall.
Second, if scripture cannot be trusted in things which can be proven and measured such as science, math and history, how can it be trusted in those things which cannot be proven or measured; i. e., unseen spiritual facts concerning eternity and salvation?
Third, if we can only trust scripture in revelational matters and not in non-revelational matters, whom can we trust to discern between the two? Someone will have to make that distinction throughout scripture and who will that be? and what method will they employ to make the final determination?
SCRIPTURE CONSISTENTLY PROVES RELIABLE
A thorough and impartial study of attacks on the Bible through the ages shows that time after time when skeptics claim they have discovered errors in the scriptures, evidence has eventually emerged to vindicate the inerrancy of the Word of God in what modernists would consider "non-revelational" matters.
One classic case is that of the Hittites. Here is a nation mentioned many times in scripture (see Genesis 23:10, 26:34; Joshua 11:1-9; I Samuel 26). Yet, for centuries, there was no evidence for their actual existence outside of the Biblical accounts! As late as 1850, educated men mocked Bible-believing Christians on this point, referring to the Hittites as a mythical or imaginary people. Many were quite convinced that the Bible had at least one obvious error in its historical record.
No serious scholar disputes the existence of the Hittites today. Excavations around Carchemish began to unsurface remnants of the Hittite civilization in the 1870's. In 1884 two scholars, William Wright and A. H. Sayce were able to publish histories of the Hittite empire. Beginning in 1906, archaeologists uncovered 10,000 clay tablets revealing a wealth of information about the Hittite people. Today, you can take a class in the Hittite language at Harvard University!
John Elder says, "one of the striking confirmations of Bible history to come from the science of archaeology is the 'recovery' of the Hittite peoples and their empires. Here is a people whose name appears again and again in the Old Testament, but who in secular history had been completely forgotten and whose very existence was considered to be extremely doubtful."17
Fred Wight says, "Now the Bible picture of this people fits in perfectly with what we know of the Hittite nation from the monuments. Nothing discovered by the excavators has in any way discredited the Biblical account. Scripture accuracy has once more been proved by the archaeologists."18
Critics again challenged the inerrancy of scripture in looking at Matthew 13:31-32, where Christ calls the mustard seed "the least of all seeds." Botanists are quick to point out that, indeed, it is the orchid seed and not the mustard seed that has the distinction of being the smallest of all seeds. Hence, they say, the Bible contains error in matters of science.
The confusion is easily cleared up when it is realized, first, that Christ used a comparative adjective rather than a superlative in the original Greek. The phrase could as well be translated "the lesser of all seeds" rather than "the least." A superlative adjective would have made the statement absolute rather than comparative, and more open to scientific criticism.
Furthermore, Christ specifically used a term that refers to the mustard tree as a garden plant. There were no Jews planting orchids in their gardens in the first century AD for the orchid was unknown to the people of Palestine in those days! It would have been erroneous for Christ to refer to the orchid seed as the smallest of all garden plant variety seeds in such circumstances!
There are many other instances where seeming errors and contradictions in the Bible have eventually been adequately explained after further research and continuing discoveries have yielded new information. Such instances reveal two important things we will note.
First, they show that God's Word is truly inerrant. Men tend to think that as we advance in thinking and scientific discovery we will find more obvious errors in the Bible and expose it as merely an imperfect collection of mythical, religious writings. The reverse is true. Again and again, the critics have been silenced and embarrassed as advancement has underscored the Bible's trustworthiness in all matters. Closer study and continued research have consistently verified the Bible rather than discredited it. This ought to fortify the Christian who has a tendency to grow a little anxious when challenged on any point of fact contained in the Bible's statements.
Professor Robert Wilson wrote, "For forty-five years continuously, since I left college, I have devoted myself to the one great study of the Old Testament, in all its languages, in all its archaeology, in all its translations, and as far as possible in everything bearing upon its text and history. . . I may add that the result of my forty-five years of study of the Bible has led me all the time to a firmer faith that in the Old Testament we have a true historical account of the history of the Israelite people; and I have a right to commend this to some of those bright men and women who think that they can laugh at the old-time Christian and believer in the Word of God."19
As Earl Radmacher has said, "There is not a man alive intelligent enough to prove an error in the scriptures."
In the second place, the record of such instances reveals that there is a mindset in this world-system that is hostile to Biblical truth and pre-disposed to rejecting it. This is precisely what the Scriptures themselves tell us. "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." (John 3:19). "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (I Corinthians 2:14).
Christians should not expect the world with all its intellectual pride to affirm with them that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. If we admit the Bible is inerrant, than we must admit it is infallible. If the Bible is infallible, we must by necessity submit to its authority. This is the very thing the natural man is violently unwilling to do. This is why no matter how many times apparent contradictions are explained, scientific and mathematical problems are resolved, and historical statements verified by archaeological findings, there will still be skeptics about who will be quick to find another apparent contradiction, another scientific "error," another historical "inaccuracy." The faith of the Bible will always be foolishness to this world until Christ returns and "takes this world by force."
In light of this, Christians should take heart. Our faith is in the God Who has given us a pure and wonderful revelation. He asks us to live by that faith, looking to Him and waiting on Him when skeptics challenge and when things around us appear to make Him a liar. He is not a liar and we honor Him when we trust Him in the face of all attacks and the most unnerving circumstances. This is Biblical Christianity. In time, we will no longer need to walk by faith, but our faith will be sight, and every tongue that criticizes and challenges the Bible's authority will be forever silenced. Until then, we endure the attacks of men and love them in return, hoping to win them for Jesus for all eternity.
"Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee." Titus 2:13-15
SECTION III -- CANONICITY
The word canon means a "rule or standard of measurement." When applied to the Holy Scriptures, the term Canon refers to the complete and exclusive collection of all inspired writings which God intended to be part of His revelation to man. This includes the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments that we know collectively as our Bible today. It is "the rule of faith" for believers and that by which all else must be judged.
Canonicity refers to the qualities that make a particular book a part of the Bible or the recognition of a particular book as part of the Bible because it has those qualities. For our purposes, canonicity may be defined as that which sets a written work apart from all others and causes it to be included among the true collection of sacred scriptures.
People often have the notion that, although God definitely inspired certain books, He left it up to fallible men to figure out for themselves which books belong in the Bible and which do not. It's commonly held that the books included in our Bible were determined after the Apostles died by councils of men who did the best they could through discussion, deliberation and educated guesswork. This is not at all true. In fact, it is a very grave misunderstanding because it casts doubt on the infallibility of God's Word.
John Calvin has said: "There has very generally prevailed a most pernicious error, that the Scriptures have only so much weight as is conceded to them by the suffrage of the Church; as though the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended on the arbitrary will of men. For thus, with great contempt of the Holy Spirit, they inquire: Who can assure us that God is the author of them? Who can with certainty affirm that they have been preserved safe and uncorrupted to the present age? Who can persuade us that this book ought to be received with reverence, and that expunged from the sacred number, unless all these things were regulated by the decisions of the Church? . . . But such cavillers are completely refuted even by one word of the Apostle. He testifies that the Church is "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets" [Ephesians 2:20]. If the doctrine of the prophets and apostles be the foundation of the Church, it must have been certain antecedently to the existence of the Church . . . It is a very false notion, therefore, that the power of judging of the Scripture belongs to the Church, so as to make the certainty of it dependent on the Church's will. Wherefore, when the Church receives it, and seals it with her suffrage, she does not authenticate a thing otherwise dubious or controvertible; but, knowing it to be the truth of her God, performs a duty of piety by treating it with immediate veneration."20
GOD'S SOVEREIGN WILL IN DETERMINING THE CANON
Although the people of God have played their part in the overall process of canonization, we must emphasize that it is ultimately God Who truly has undertaken to give us a Bible that includes every one of the 66 books He intended it to include; no more and no less! As Norman Geisler has said, it is God Who determines canonicity; men of God merely discover it.21 page 18 --
The one determining factor in canonicity is inspiration -- is this book the very utterance of God? If it is, its canonicity is a settled fact. The same God Who inspired His books gave men the ability to recognize and detect His inspiration.
It's crucial that we recognize God's very desire to reveal Himself and His sovereignty in ensuring that that revelation be definite and pure, not corrupt and shrouded in doubt. It is crystal clear that God wants men to know Him. He has said, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth . . ." (Jeremiah 9:23-24). This is His expressed desire, that we understand and know Him.
It's also clear He is sovereign in carrying out His will. "Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure." (Isaiah 46:9-10).
Finally, it's clear His sovereign and perfect will has ensured that we have His thoughts, as He has seen fit to reveal them, complete and preserved for us, in the written record we call our Bible. "The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations." (Psalm 33:11). "For ever, O LORD, Thy word is settled in Heaven." (Psalm 119:89). ". . . and the Scripture cannot be broken . . ." (John 10:35). If we will only take God at His word, then, we can be fully confident that He in His sovereignty has overseen the whole process of canonization and that the books He intended to be in our Bibles are the very ones we have there.
In light of this understanding, exactly what exactly has man's part been in the establishment of the Canon? We can regard it as threefold: 1} Receiving revelation from God and recognizing it for what it is according to His leading, 2} Collecting the sacred books and preserving them according to His direction and guardianship, and, 3} Honoring, studying, teaching and obeying what God has delivered unto His Church as a sacred trust.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
It was God Who took the first step in the canonization process, telling Moses His words were not only to be hearkened to, but also set apart as holy and kept as an heritage to future generations (Deut. 4:1-2; 6:1-2, 6-9). When the Pentateuch was completed, Moses instructed the Levites to place the original inside the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies (Deut. 31:24-26). This became the practice that was evidently followed for Old Testament scriptures that came after the Pentateuch, as well (See Joshua 24:26; I Samuel 10:25; II Kings 22:8).
The Lord further confirmed the canonicity of the Pentateuch to Joshua (Joshua 1:1-8), and Joshua considered his book on the same level as that of Moses (Joshua 24:26-27).
Gradually, the Old Testament canon took shape as a collection of the inspired books was gathered: note how events from Joshua's book are referred to in Judges 1:1, 20-21, 2:8; incidents from I and II Samuel are cited in I Kings 3:14, 5:7, 8:16, 9:5; various Psalms are quoted in their entirety or in part in II Samuel 22 and Jonah 2:2-9; Daniel refers to Jeremiah 25:11-12 while Ezekiel refers to Noah, Job and Daniel (Ezekiel 14:14, 20) and Zechariah calls to mind the words of all the "former prophets," (Zechariah 1:4-6).
Malachi closes the Old Testament revelation with a final reference to Moses and Elijah (Mal. 4:4, 5). It seems these two men are intended to represent the twofold division of the Old Testament canon, the Law, represented by Moses, the lawgiver, and the Prophets, represented by Israel's pre-eminent prophet, Elijah (Daniel 9:6, 13; Neh. 9:14, 30; Matt. 11:13; Luke 16:29, 31).
The New Testament reveals in no uncertain terms that God entrusted the sacred Old Testament "oracles" to the nation of Israel (Romans 3:2). Within Israel, the priests and scribes of the tribe of Levi, in particular, were directly involved in witnessing to the canonicity of the inspired books (Deut. 17:18, 31:25-26; Ezra 7:6-11; Malachi 2:7). There also came to be a "school" or registry of recognized prophets, begun in Samuel's day and known as "the sons of the prophets" (I Samuel 19:20; Amos 7:14). Certainly, this suggests that the prophetic gift and prophetic writings were capable of being recognized and identified by God's people. God was speaking to and through these men to deliver His Word and cause it to be recognized for what it was.
The Jews did not take their responsibility lightly, and ultimately they did not fail, as the Holy Spirit put His stamp of approval on the completed canon through the words of Christ and the New Testament apostles and prophets (see Matt. 5:18; Acts 24:14; II Tim. 3:15-17; Hebrews 1:1; II Peter 1:20-21). The Old Testament writings, then, were recognized as canonical as they were written and added to the collection of sacred scriptures.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON
Circumstances were different in the establishment of the New Testament canon. 1} After the persecution that dispersed the Jerusalem Church in Acts chapter 8, there was no one central location for record-keeping, and certainly no one "tribe" of priests specifically charged with keeping the books of scripture. 2} The New Testament collection of books grew up much faster than the Old (27 books written in about 60 years, compared to 39 over a period of 1100 years). 3} Books were addressed and sent out to areas across the known world, rather than limited to one main geographic location ( Romans 1:7; I Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:2; Eph. 1:1; James 1:1; I Peter 1:1; etc.). 4} Persecution was extremely intense for much of the first two and a half centuries of the Church's existence -- from Nero to Emperor Diocletian (305 AD), Christians were killed and their scriptures burned by madmen. 5} Heretics arose, such as Marcion of 140 AD who regarded only the Gospel of Luke and 10 of Paul's epistles as canonical.
Humanly speaking, these circumstances put pressure on the early Church to have a clear definition of exactly which books made up the canon of scripture. At the same time, they must page 20 --
have made it hard for the dispersed, persecuted young Church to arrive at a universal consensus. But they did not present a problem to God. We can see the clear evidence of His work of canonization as the New Testament was in the process of being written!
Paul describes in Ephesians 2:20 how the Church is built upon "the foundation of the apostles and prophets." This foundation is none other than the unveiling of the "mystery" of Christ, as seen in Matthew 16:16-18; I Cor. 3:11; Ephesians 3:1-5. This passage is speaking of direct inspiration through these two groups, apostles and prophets, the writers of New Testament scripture.
The title "Apostle" was unique to the 1st century church and conveyed divine authority (I Cor. 9:2, 12:28; II Cor. 12:12; Gal. 1:1). The Apostles included, first of all, Jesus' original 12 disciples. These men were eyewitnesses to the events of His life as well as to His majesty and glory (see I John 1:3; II Peter 1:16). They were specially commissioned with feeding His flock (John 21:15-17; Acts 2:42) and Christ promised them "the Spirit of Truth" would come after His departure and "guide them into all truth" (John 16:13). "All truth" would certainly include the recognition of God's true Word as it was given to these very men.
Paul was definitely not a companion of Christ's during His incarnation, yet he repeatedly is called an Apostle, as well (Romans 1:1, 11:13; I Cor. 1:1, 9:1-2, 15:9; etc.), and he was given authority equal to that of "the twelve" (II Cor. 11:5; Gal. 1:1, 2:6-11). He was promised direct revelation from Christ (Acts 26:16) and claimed to be acting on that revelation on several occasions (Acts 22:17-21; I Cor. 14:37; II Cor. 12:1-9; Gal. 1:11-12, 2:2).
The "prophets" of Ephesians 2:20 were not the Old Testament prophets, but saints of the Church age who gave forth His Word at times of direct inspiration either orally (Acts 21:9, 10; I Cor. 12:10, 13:8-9, 14:1-40) or in written form (Romans 16:26). It's clear the Holy Spirit was using these men in laying the doctrinal foundation upon which the Church was to be built for all time. As the Spirit gave utterance, He would also both authenticate His utterance and give the ability to discern it as His true and living Word (I Cor. 14:29, 37; II Cor. 12:12; Hebrews 2:3-4).
We see examples of this discernment taking place as the New Testament revelation was unfolding: Luke wants to write an account of Christ's life that would record with certainty what He did and said in view of the many varying accounts that were circulating (Luke 1:1-4). John, as one of the eyewitnesses, affirms the truth of his gospel account in John 21:24. Paul calls those who are "spiritual" to discern that the things he writes to them are the very commands of God in I Cor. 14:37. He boldly curses anyone who comes and preaches a "gospel" that varies from the one he preached to the Galatians in Galatians 1:7-9, and speaks of the existence of a counterfeit epistle in II Thessalonians 2:2. Again, Peter refers to the collected writings of Paul as "scripture" in II Peter 3:15-16 and Paul cites Luke 10:7 as scripture in I Timothy 5:18. The writer of Hebrews describes how God confirmed the Apostles' teaching in Hebrews 2:3-4.
One way the Church marked books as truly inspired was to have them read publicly when they gathered themselves together for worship. This custom was begun with Moses (Exodus 24:7), carried on by Joshua (Joshua 8:34), Josiah (II Kings 23:2), and Ezra (Nehemiah 8:8), and continued as a practice in the Apostolic Church (I Timothy 4:11-13, Colossians 4:16, I Thessalonians 5:27).
Finally, Jude speaks of a body of revealed truth which he calls, "the faith once delivered unto the saints" (literally, "the faith once for all delivered unto the saints" -- Jude 3). And John forbids any tampering at all with the particular book he has written (and, by implication, with the whole New Testament) in Revelation 22:18-19. These passages suggest the recognition of a completed New Testament canon before the last Apostle passed off the scene.
Just as the Old Testament scriptures were recognized as authentic and canonical by the scribes and the prophets as they were written, so the establishment of the New Testament canon took place as the books were being written and circulated under the supervision of the Apostles and N. T. prophets! Canonicity was not determined by councils of men years after the last Apostle died, but was clearly established during the Apostolic age of the Church. Geisler calls the Apostles the "living canon" which "became the criterion by which the earliest canonical writings were recognized."22
THE POST-APOSTOLIC CHURCH
In the case of both Old and New Testament, some uncertainty as to the canon eventually did creep in among God's people. Many non-inspired religious books were written which some claimed should be given status equal or nearly equal to that given the earlier canonical books. This, of course, caused the people of God to examine more closely the character of truly inspired writing and the criteria for including books in the canon of scripture. In the process, a few of the inspired books of both Testaments were at times questioned as to their authenticity.
As men of God came together to look into these things, it was determined that any book thought to be inspired would be examined according to five principles to determine canonicity:23
1} Is it Authoritative? In other words, does the book claim to be of Divine origin? This is sometimes seen in a strong tone of authority, as with the book of James, and often through the direct use of words such as "Thus saith the Lord," or "the Word of the Lord came unto..." etc. Note the repetition of such phrases in Zechariah 1:1-4 and Amos 7:15-17.
2} Is it Prophetic? That is, is it written by someone recognized to be a prophet (or Apostle)? Notice how Paul makes certain to authenticate his epistles for this very reason (Galatians 6:11; II Thessalonians 3:17). The office of Apostle confers authority on what he has to say, because it marks him out as a bona fide spokesman for God (Gal. 1:1; Ro. 1:1).
3} Is it Authentic? This criterion has to do with the verifiable truth of the writing. Jesus said of the scriptures, "Thy Word is Truth" (John 17:17). If it truly is inspired, it will be free of factual error and contradiction. Many of the so-called apocryphal books can be easily rejected on this basis. On the other hand, there have been a number of believers (including one Martin Luther) who have seriously questioned the canonicity of the epistle of James because it seems to contradict the clear Pauline teaching of salvation by grace alone through faith alone.
4} Is it Dynamic? God's inspired Word is powerfully convicting and life transforming: "The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12) "Is not My word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" (Jeremiah 23:29). Although this is, by nature, a very subjective test, it is true that there ought to be a certain power in those writings which are truly inspired, and a lack thereof in those that are not.
5} Is it Received? Was the book initially recognized and accepted by God's people as inspired? As mentioned earlier, the books of Moses were marked out as canonical in the presence of the Levites (Deut. 31:24-26). Paul commends the Thessalonian believers because they recognized his words "not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God," (I Thessalonians 2:13). Though the messages brought by the prophets were often unpopular, God was always able to confirm His Word when necessary and see to it a permanent record of His revelation was preserved and revered by His people (Jeremiah 36:27-32; see also I Kings 22:1-38).
By these principles, various Church leaders and councils eventually confirmed the definitive marks of inspiration for every one of the 66 books in our Bible. Non-inspired books were rejected. Many of these may have been written by men of God, but, though they may declare the highest spiritual thoughts of men, they fall infinitely short of that which is breathed out of the mouth of God! Other books may have some historical value, while still others contain error and outright heresy. In any event, those who went before us did perform a valuable service in "removing the dross" that some were identifying with the pure Word of God.
The question may be still asked, what if someone somewhere made a mistake, and some truly inspired writings were lost, or somehow false writings were added to what we consider the canon today? The very question shows that we are losing sight of the sovereignty of God and that is something we must never do. We must remember that the determination of the canon was never left up to the arbitrary will of men but was, from first to last, determined and overseen by the true Author of all sacred scripture, the Lord of the universe! The God who can number all our hairs (Matt. 10:30), as well as the stars in the sky (Psalm 147:4), is certainly not going to lose track of any portion of His most holy Word!
"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever." (Isaiah 40:8)
SECTION IV -- PRESERVATION
By now, you can see how much utterly depends on the Bible's divine inspiration. From inspiration follows inerrancy; because God-breathed words cannot err. Inspiration also suggests canonicity; because in order for God's people to profit from inspired writings, they must be able to recognize which writings truly are inspired!
In the same vein, it's only reasonable that if God cared to leave an infallible record of His Word to men, He must somehow have ensured that that record remain intact for as long as His people need it in their earthly pilgrimage. Therefore, the preservation of the Bible also follows from the doctrine of inspiration!
As Edward F. Hills has said, "If the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the Old and New Testament Scriptures is a true doctrine, the doctrine of the providential preservation of the Scriptures must also be a true doctrine. It must be that down through the centuries God has exercised a special, providential control over the copying of the Scriptures and the preservation and use of the copies, so that trustworthy representatives of the original text have been available to God's people in every age. God must have done this, for if He gave the Scriptures to His Church by inspiration as the perfect and final revelation of His will, then it is obvious that He would not allow this revelation to disappear or undergo any alteration of its fundamental character."24
John W. Burgon wrote, "There exists no reason for supposing that the Divine Agent, who in the first instance thus gave to mankind the Scriptures of truth, straightway abdicated His office; took no further care of His work; abandoned those precious writings to their fate."25
But what does the inspired Word say for itself? Has God, in fact, ever promised that He would safeguard His revelation to man, or are we simply to make assumptions and hope for the best as we use our Bibles today?
It is the conviction of this writer after careful study that God has not only clearly promised to preserve His inspired Word for all generations, but that He has, in fact, kept His promise down to this day. Following are several passages that declare God's intention that His revelation to man be an enduring one. I urge you to spend some time prayerfully meditating on these scriptures that you, too, may have an unshakeable confidence that we have a completely trustworthy Bible today:
Psalm 12:6-7: "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace on earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever." Although a number of scholars have argued that the promise to "preserve" in verse seven here refers to the "poor" and the "needy" mentioned in verse five of the same psalm, that interpretation seems to break of the flow of thought in the psalm and would call for an abrupt shift from the focus of verse six. Jack Moorman has pointed out that the whole psalm centers around a contrast between the words of men and the words of God:
Man's words: flattering, double, proud -- though they boast that they will prevail (verse 4) yet they will be cut off (verse 3)
God's words: pure -- thou shalt keep them, O LORD thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever (verse 7)26
It seems perfectly natural to see the psalm in this light and to understand that God is promising to preserve His pure, fire-tried words, rather than the poor and needy. If this is correct, the passage is one of the strongest, clearest promises of the transmission of a pure text of scripture.
Psalm 33:11: "The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations". Where are the "counsel of the LORD" and "the thoughts of His heart" recorded for us but in the Bible? If we could not be certain that our Bible has been faithfully preserved, how could we say we knew thoughts of His heart?
Psalm 100:5: "For the LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting; and His truth endureth to all generations." Again, if His Truth is to "endure to all generations," it must be that the Bible that declares that truth will endure. Christ said, "Thy Word is Truth" in His prayer to the Father in John 17:17.
Psalm 119:89: "For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven." The Word of God has Heaven as its source "where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal;" and where no scribe doth err in his copying! As D. A. Waite has said regarding this verse, "Something which is settled is determined and even more solid than steel or concrete!"27 That infinite stability is surely not limited to some master copy that exists in perfection only in the heavenly domain, but must transfer to the sacred text copied and read by men down on Earth -- because it is on Earth that the stability of Heaven is needed!
Psalm 119:152, 160: "Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou hast founded them for ever." "Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever." Psalm 119 (the longest psalm and longest "chapter" in the Bible) is, from beginning to end, a song of praise to God for the perfections of the holy scriptures. Again and again, the psalmist sings joyfully of the purity, trustworthiness and endurance of the written Word.
Isaiah 40:8: "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever." All of man's physical surroundings are perishable. God's Word, on the other hand, is imperishable! (see also Matthew 24:35, Luke 21:33 and I Peter 1:23-25)
Matthew 5:17-18: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." The terms, "law" and "the law or the prophets," are used in this context to refer to the Old Testament scriptures (see page 7 of this text). The phrase, "till heaven and earth pass," was a Jewish expression indicating unlimited duration. Jesus is here affirming the preservation of the inspired Word in the strongest terms possible.
John 10:35: "If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;" The word, "broken," literally means to be forced apart or destroyed by dismantling. The scriptures are referred to as one indivisible whole that cannot be taken apart and emptied of their collective force.
Thus, we have the promise of God that the Word He revealed to men would also be guarded and preserved so that all generations should have a reliable record of that revelation. A consistently Christian view of the scriptures will not ignore this, but begin and continue on the basis that we do have God's promise.
It is also a strong testimony to the preservation of the Old Testament scriptures that Christ and the Apostles constantly quoted them without ever suggesting they had been corrupted or rendered uncertain by centuries of copying errors. Isn't it reasonable to assume that the New Testament scriptures also have been kept pure over time?
Still, we must face the fact that we do not possess the autographa (original writings) of any of the Old Testament or New Testament books! What we do have is a vast collection of ancient manuscripts (the word manuscript simply means hand-written copy) that leave a trail from the original documents to the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in the 15th century. We must further admit that among the many, many manuscripts there are variant readings. That is, the copies are not all perfectly identical down to the very word; we do find some differences in wording between manuscripts.
The work of sifting through manuscripts, recording and evaluating any variant readings and trying to determine the true and original reading in each case is called Textual or Lower Criticism. It is one of two areas of the larger realm of Biblical Criticism. Higher Criticism, the other area in this realm, is a separate pursuit which claims to investigate the authorship and historical settings of the books of the Bible.
Lower Criticism is a valid and necessary discipline when done reverently and dependently by believing Bible scholars. Higher Criticism has sometimes been helpful in bringing to light facts concerning the historical circumstances of Bible books, but has more often manifested itself as a destructive and false "science" and a favorite platform for Liberals and unbelievers to join together in an arrogant, faithless assault on God's Holy Word.
These are areas usually left to the very scholarly and intellectual. Laymen may find them intimidating and confusing, but can and should have at least a basic understanding of the issues involved. There are crucial lessons for the believing Bible student in the wealth of ancient manuscripts that exist. There are key truths they tell us concerning the preservation of our Bible.
GOD'S PROVIDENTIAL PRESERVATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
As mentioned in section III, the orthodox (conventional or traditional) Jewish community kept for us the oracles of God (Romans 3:2). Augustine called the Jewish scribes "the librarians of the Christian Church,"28 because the Christians so benefited from their careful work of copying and preserving the Old Testament documents. God early instructed Moses to charge the Levites with guardianship of the sacred texts (Deuteronomy 31:24-26). When copies of the Torah (the Law of Moses, or, first five books of the Bible) were made for the King, it was to be done under direct supervision of this Levitical community (Deuteronomy 17:18).
The Bible records that the Levitical priests were not always faithful at their God-given task, so they, and all Israel with them, suffered the consequences for a while (II Chronicles 15:3; Micah 3:11-12). Nevertheless, their function was restored following the Jews' return from Babylonian captivity, in the days of Ezra, "the ready scribe" (Ezra 7:6-11; Nehemiah 8:1-8). Jewish history and tradition tell us in these days began "the Great Synagogue," a school of scribes and scholars diligent in keeping and copying the sacred scriptures.
The progression of this school is divided up into periods. The first period is considered the period of Ezra and the reestablishment of the Temple worship following the Babylonian captivity -- 535 to about 400 B.C. Following Ezra, the school of scribes took the name Sopherim (students or scholars of the Law). Their period dates from 400 B.C. to almost 200 AD Following the Sopherim came the Talmudic period, from 200 to 500 AD, and following the Talmudic period came the Masoretic scribes (masar means "to hand down") -- from 500 to about 950 AD
The Jewish scribes over all these centuries were characterized by extreme care in copying the Old Testament texts, that the scriptures might be transmitted down through time in a completely pure and uncorrupted state. Old Testament manuscripts existing today are not nearly so plentiful as New Testament manuscripts, partly because the master copies were destroyed or buried by the Jewish rabbis as soon as they became worn out or disfigured in any way that might cause them to be misread. However, the Old Testament manuscripts we do have are incredibly uniform -- there are very, very few variant readings of any significance at all! This is due to an almost superstitious reverence the scribes had for the scriptures, and to the fact that they were able to clearly establish a standard text for the scriptures that was adhered to by those who came after them.
Consider this description of the work of these scribes by bibliologist Rene Pasche:
"These were the rabbis of Tiberias and of Babylon, who, from the fifth to the tenth century AD, accomplished a remarkable task. They established the text, choosing the best manuscript from those at their disposal. They copied it with extraordinary care. We are even told that an error in one single letter could have made the manuscript useless. The Masoretes also annotated the text, as a precaution against any addition or omission, indicating in the margin the number of letters, the repetitions of certain expressions, the middle letter, and the word and the verse in the middle of each book or collection of books. In this copying of what we call the Old Testament, they noticed that the letter aleph occurs 42,377 times, the letter beth 38,218 times and so on."29
The procedure of counting included words and phrases, as well as letters. The totals were then recorded at the end of each book, enabling any copyist to check his work for errors. All he had to do was make sure his numbers were precisely the same as the numbers recorded in his master copy. The standardized text that emerged from these careful labors (and that Jews and Christians rely on even today) is known as the Masoretic text, named for the last school of scribes to be recognized.
That their work was not in vain is confirmed in several ways. One strong confirmation is the tremendous uniformity of Old Testament manuscripts today. Critics have in fact been terribly frustrated in their efforts to search for variant readings and cast doubt on the Old Testament. Hear the complaint of one, for instance:
"In truth, but for those precious negative conclusions that people have come to (in other words, that there is a remarkable lack of variant readings among the manuscripts), the direct result obtained from the consumption of so many men's lives in these immense researches may seem to amount to nothing; and one may say that, in order to come to it, time, talent and learning have all been foolishly thrown away."30
In short, we have every reason to believe that the Old Testament scriptures we read today have been transmitted down to us by God in pure form. As Dr. Merrill Unger wrote, "This text, moreover in the light of the phenomenal labors of the Masoretic scholars and their loyal devotion to traditional readings and to the scriptures as the revered, inspired Word of God, inviolable and holy, may be considered as a faithful reproduction not only of the text of about AD 90, but of the autograph copies themselves."31
THE PROVIDENTIAL PRESERVATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
The transmission of the New Testament has had a different character from that of the Old. For one thing, we have a great many more New Testament manuscripts. The official registry maintained by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Munster, Germany gives us a total count of 5,336 handwritten copies of the New Testament in the Greek language alone! Of this number, 88 surviving manuscripts are called papyrii, because they were written on a kind of primitive "paper" made from the highly perishable papyrus reed.
Most other existing manuscripts were written on parchment (goatskin or sheepskin) or vellum (the skins of calves or antelopes). These manuscripts are divided into two groups: uncials, which were generally copied on more expensive and durable material entirely in "capital" letters (about 274 of these exist today), and miniscules, which were copied in smaller, "lower case" letters (there are a total of 2, 795 of these, according to the registry). The total number of manuscripts also includes about 2,000 lectionaries. These are old church service books which contain a number of scripture passages to be read in the public assembly on set days according to the church calendar.
It should be understood that the great majority of existing manuscripts are partial copies; in fact, a number of them are really only fragments of various books of the New Testament, but when considered together, these comprise a tremendous wealth of documentation for our New Testament today! There is absolutely no other ancient book that has anything close to the manuscript authority that exists for our New Testament.
In addition to the 5,336 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, we also have about 10,000 ancient Latin manuscripts; that is, partial and complete copies of the New Testament, not in the original Greek language, but translated into Latin and copied by hand to be distributed among the people. There are also about 9,000 ancient manuscripts in languages besides Greek and Latin, including Slavic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Syriac, Bohairic, Arabic, etcetera. Altogether, the "official" number of New Testament manuscripts in existence is 24, 633.
Along with this enormous wealth of manuscript evidence comes greater variance among the manuscripts that do exist. Again, what we mean by variant is the different readings that do exist from manuscript to manuscript. Altogether, the number of variants within the New Testament manuscripts is estimated at about 200,000 -- significantly higher than what we find for the Old Testament. This higher number can be attributed, first of all, to the sheer number of manuscripts compared to the Old Testament. When there are more manuscripts, there are obviously many more opportunities for variants to exist.
Other possible reasons for so many variants have been suggested by different schools of thought among Bible scholars and critics. These possibilities bring us into an area of controversy that is very pertinent to Bible believers today. We will look at some of the thinking prevalent in this controversy as we continue our discussion of the transmission of the New Testament text.
THE PROBLEM OF VARIANTS AND PRESERVATION
Often when a believer first learns of these variants among the manuscripts, he or she may be startled and begin to question whether God really has preserved His Word in pure form. The "cold, hard facts" may seem to indicate otherwise! Obviously, the scribes who copied the precious words of scripture were only fallible men. Obviously, the manuscripts they made contain some errors, or all would agree 100% -- there would be no variants! Who's to say they aren't full of errors, and that the Bible we have today isn't just an imperfect and uncertain reflection of the original Word of God? Be assured that it's normal for such questions to cross our minds. I believe it's also imperative that we look to the Lord and study further that we may arrive at truthful answers!
First, it's important that we put this discussion of variants in its proper perspective. The number 200,000 is not quite so alarming when we realize that these 200,000 variants exist in only about 10,000 places. You see, the method of counting the variants requires that the actual variants that occur be multiplied by the number of manuscripts in which they occur. In other words, if one word in one verse is misspelled, but it is misspelled in 3,000 manuscripts, it is counted as 3,000 variants.
Furthermore, many of the variants are nothing more than spelling or word order differences, such as the occurrence of "The Lord Jesus Christ" versus "Jesus Christ, the Lord." After studying the whole scope of variants himself, Philip Schaff stated that really only 400 alter the sense of scripture at all, and only about 50 have "any real importance for any reason whatever -- none touches on any article of faith not forcibly supported by other entirely clear passages." F.J.A. Hort gave his conclusion in 1882 that "scarcely more than a thousandth part of the text can be called, in any sense whatever, a substantial variation."
It is also important to realize that most of these variants really exist in about 10% of the manuscripts -- the great majority of Greek manuscripts really show remarkable uniformity! As Hort reported in his Introduction to the Greek New Testament, "An overwhelming proportion of the text in all known cursive manuscripts except a few is, as a matter of fact, identical." (emphasis added).
Yet, to say that these variants pose no problem at all is to go too far, even when all the relevant information is taken in. Evangelicals ought to be aware of the questions raised in the area of textual criticism and be able to give a reasonable answer. We'll look at three distinct schools of thought regarding the transmission of the New Testament text in this regard.
THE "RESTORATION" OF THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT
In 1516, the Western world was on the threshold of the "Great Reformation." For nearly 1000 years, the Roman Catholic hierarchy dominated Christendom and suppressed the key truths of the Christian faith. Many hearts were now ready to hear again those truths and God had His men in place to bring those truths to light. One of those men was the great scholar, Desiderius Erasmus.
Erasmus was the foremost intellect of his generation. He studied and taught at several of the great universities of Europe. He was ordained to be a Catholic priest, but there is no record to suggest he ever functioned as one. In fact, although Erasmus never clearly claimed to be a Reformer himself, he spent his later years in the constant company of the Protestant thinkers and reformers of his day.
Erasmus first translated the New Testament into Latin while at Oxford during the years 1505-1506. From that time on, he grew more and more interested in establishing a standardized text for the Greek New Testament from the manuscripts available. In 1516, Erasmus published his first edition of that Greek New Testament.
Records show Erasmus relied mainly on five manuscripts in his possession at that time. He also certainly had notes from his previous translation work at Oxford, and we know that associates sent him readings from Greek manuscripts that he did not have at his fingertips. It is important to realize that, while five manuscripts may not seem enough for such an important undertaking, Erasmus could go ahead with the utmost confidence, because those five manuscripts faithfully represented the overwhelming majority of manuscripts known to exist in that day! These were the manuscripts that had been faithfully copied, read and propagated by true believers through the ages and had escaped the destruction of the Roman Catholic inquisition and great persecutions. The early Reformers attested to their genuineness and Erasmus, the greatest mind of his day, believed they truly comprised the New Testament, preserved and intact. page 30 --
Erasmus' first edition was somewhat rough, however; in part due to printing errors that were no fault of his own. He produced four other editions altogether, the last one being published in 1535, just one year before his death. Others saw the need for further adjustment and produced editions of the New Testament text of their own, some using his third edition as their starting point. Cardinal Ximenes was actually working on his own edition at the same time as Erasmus, but his Complutensian Polyglot was not published until 1522; Colinaeus produced an edition in 1534; Stephanus (Robert Estienne) published four editions between 1546 and 1551; Theodore Beza published nine editions between 1565 and 1604; and the Elzevir brothers (Abraham and Bonaventure) came out with seven editions in the years from 1624 through 1678.
The second edition of the Elzevirs included a statement in the preface that has become rather famous. They referred to the Greek text contained in that edition as "textum ab omnibus receptum" (the text now received by all). It's from this statement that we get the name "Textus Receptus," or, "the Received Text."
Though there was obviously some revision from edition to edition, all these works by their various editors can be said to reflect, for practical purposes, the same Greek text! Most of the differences between them merely amount to a matter of "fine-tuning," or the preference of one reading over another when both may seem to be strong possibilities. Luther’s German Bible and all the early English translations (The Tyndale New Testament, The Matthews Bible, The Great Bible, The Geneva Bible, The Bishop's Bible and the King James Bible) were done from this Greek New Testament text in one edition or another.
The Textus Receptus is also known as the Traditional, Byzantine or Syrian Text. It's sometimes called the Majority Text, as well, but this title is not completely accurate, because the Textus Receptus in a few places has readings found in the manuscripts of Latin versions and not in the majority of Greek manuscripts. One such case is the Johannine comma (I John 5:7 KJV).
Beginning in the late 1700's, scholars began to doubt the conviction of Erasmus and others that the New Testament had been preserved in whole form in the Textus Receptus. In 1859, a German textual critic named Count Tischendorf obtained a very ancient vellum manuscript of nearly the entire New Testament from St. Catherine's monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai. That manuscript, known as Codex Sinaiticus, or Aleph, is believed to have been made about 350 AD
Another vellum manuscript, known as Codex Vaticanus, or B, was made available for study by the Roman Catholic Church within a few years of Tischendorf's discovery. Before that time, textual scholars knew of its existence in the Vatican archives, but were usually unable to get permission to see it and study it from Roman Catholic leadership. Vaticanus is believed to have been made as early as 325 AD These two manuscripts were the earliest and most complete copies of the Greek New Testament known in the world at the time of their publication.
Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are not identical -- in fact, there are some 3,000 differences between them in the four gospels alone. But they are close enough that they are said to reveal a "type" of Greek New Testament text that is at variance with the Textus Receptus. Textual critics began to suggest that the text of these two older manuscripts must be closer to the original New Testament writings than was the "Received Text."
In 1881, two Englishmen, B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, took a radical step and published a Greek New Testament text that heavily favored readings found in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus over those displayed in the Textus Receptus. This text became the basis for the English Revised Version and the American Standard Version that followed it.
Westcott and Hort also published a theory at that time that has deeply influenced textual criticism and translation work since their day. Zane Hodges and Earl Radmacher have concisely outlined that theory and some of the developments that have come since then:
Westcott and Hort believed that they could write an essentially accurate -- if sketchy -- picture of the history of the transmission of the New Testament text. According to them, three forms of text preceded the existence of the Majority Text (which they called "Syrian") in the manuscripts. One of these was the "Western text" which was reflected in a very small handful of Greek manuscripts and in some of the ancient translations. Another form of the text was called by them the "Neutral text" and was best represented in the two Greek manuscripts (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) mentioned above. A third form of text, much less important in their view, was called "Alexandrian." Westcott and Hort thought that the "Alexandrian" text was an edited form of the "Neutral" text and that it had been influenced by readings from the "Western" side of the manuscript tradition. Finally, Westcott and Hort propounded the theory of an official, ecclesiastical revision of the New Testament text as an undertaking which produced the "Syrian" text (i.e., the Majority Text). But this text, in their view, had no independent value of its own since it was simply a composite of the three earlier forms of text -- the "Western," "Neutral," and "Alexandrian." The fact that it was produced and promoted by official ecclesiastical sanction accounted for its wide spread and for its numerical predominance in the surviving Greek manuscripts. Westcott and Hort believed that the Majority Text could be largely neglected in editing a Greek New Testament. Such were the major tenets of their reconstruction of textual history. Almost certainly, not one of these tenets is correct. Each has been subjected to intensive and virtually unanswerable criticism. To begin with, the very existence of a "Western text" has been seriously questioned. Indeed, its only real Greek representative is the highly idiosyncratic 5th century manuscript called Codex Bezai Cantabrigiensis. But the kind of text found in Codex Bezae may go back no further than its immediate ancestor and, as Kurt Aland points out, it was a text that "in its day attracted only a limited following; what the nineteenth/twentieth century made out of it is incredible." But even before the "Western" text came to be seriously questioned, scholars had concluded that the grounds for distinguishing the "Alexandrian" and "Neutral" texts from each other were inadequate. Furthermore, the designation "Neutral" was perceived as inappropriate and scholarship rightly rejected the idea that Codex Vaticanus (B) and Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph) were the products of a fundamentally pure ("neutral") stream of transmission. Vaticanus, in particular, could not be relied upon as though it were a basically uncontaminated witness to the original text. Finally, although Westcott-Hort's theory about the Majority text proved very tenacious, gradually it came to be realized that there was no real proof that this text originated in some specific revision, much less in an official, ecclesiastical revision. And while some textual critics still hold this opinion, the evidence for it is virtually non-existent. Yet, strangely, despite the total collapse of Westcott and Hort's reconstruction of manuscript history, their results largely remain in place. The so-called "new textus receptus" -- the N/A and UBS editions -- do not differ a whole lot from the text produced by Westcott-Hort in 1881. While the justification they offered for their text has been disastrously eroded, the essential form of their text continues to be the standard text of today.32
At the heart of the theory of Westcott and Hort, and of the legacy they have left, is the belief that the Church of God has, for most of its history, been forced to rely on a text that was not purely preserved. The majority of textual critics today aim at "reconstructing" the New Testament as it originally existed in the autographs. Their method is to try to piece together what must have been the original text through their scholarship and analysis, based largely on even earlier manuscripts that have been found within the last 75 years.
The problem is this work is extremely complex and highly, highly speculative. There are so many variables involved that many reputable scholars have despaired of ever being able to adequately reconstruct the New Testament text. Robert Grant wrote, "The primary goal of New Testament textual study remains the recovery of what the New Testament writers wrote. We have already suggested that to achieve this goal is well nigh impossible."33
An even greater problem with the goal of "reconstruction" of the Greek Text is it denies the doctrine of preservation. It seems as though God's sovereignty and His promises to the Church are set aside in favor of what's called a "scholarly consensus" and the latest exciting manuscript discoveries.
The fact that a manuscript is earlier does not necessarily make it "better." As David Otis Fuller has said, "The worst corruptions to which the New Testament has ever been subjected originated within a hundred years after it was composed. The African fathers and the whole Western, with a portion of the Syrian Church, used far inferior manuscripts to those employed by Erasmus and Stephanus thirteen centuries later when molding the Textus Receptus."34 Heretical groups seemed to abound and scribes from these groups made additions and deletions to the text, claiming they were "correcting" them. The fact that corrupt manuscripts have survived the years only shows they were not "read to pieces" by the Church, but were taken out of use and stored away on some shelf or in some closet where they were little used.
Yet through all the heretics, the persecutions and Church divisions over the centuries, a substantial majority of the manuscripts still exist in remarkable agreement. East and West came together as the true Church re-emerged at the end of the dark ages, and, as Greek majority and Latin majority manuscripts were collated and compared, devoted and learned men agreed that God had preserved in pure form a single text for the New Testament scriptures. That text has stood the test of time and has served as the foundation of the Church of God for these last 480 years -- through the Reformation and the "Great Awakening" and down to the present day.
The position most consistent with faith and with reason is that God did preserve His Word, just as He promised, in the Masoretic Text for the Old Testament and the Textus Receptus for the New. He never promised that He would preserve the autographs themselves. Neither did He promise that corrupt manuscripts would not exist to make their claim against the true text. He did promise His people "light . . . until the day dawn." (II Peter 1:19) Page 33 --
Remember how God used the Levitical scribes to preserve His Old Testament text. The New Testament knew no "official" scribal community. There was, in fact, no provision of God for a particular group set aside as His "priests" within the larger community of the universal Church. Instead, it has pleased God to confer on all His New Testament saints "the universal priesthood of believers!" (I Peter 2:9-19; Revelation 1:5-6).
It is this universal priesthood that God has charged with the keeping of His sacred New Testament texts. It is to the true believer He speaks when He says, "If a man love me, he will keep my words; (John 14:23). Paul, who was used of God to write a substantial portion of the New Testament, wrote passionately to Timothy, "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust," (I Timothy 6:20); and, again, shortly before his own martyrdom, "Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." (II Timothy 1:13).
Only a true believer will take seriously the words of the Holy Spirit in Revelation 22:18-19: "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." It is only reasonable, then, that if we are to discover the true text of the New Testament, we need only look to the true people of God, and the text they have used, and believed, and given their common consent to, and been willing to die for.
Edward F. Hills has said it well: ". . . God in His mercy did not leave His people to grope after the True New Testament Text. Through the leading of the Holy Spirit He guided them to preserve it during the manuscript period. God brought this to pass through the working of His preserving and governing providence. First, many trustworthy copies of the original New Testament manuscripts were produced by faithful scribes. Second, these trustworthy copies were read and recopied by true believers down through the centuries. Third, untrustworthy copies were not so generally read or so frequently recopied. Although they enjoyed some popularity for a time, yet in the long run they were laid aside and consigned to oblivion. Thus as a result of this special providential guidance the True Text won out in the end, and today we may be sure that the text found in the vast majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts is a trustworthy reproduction of the divinely inspired Original Text."35
"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." -- John 14:26
If you have questions or comments, email me at
romans44@missions2ukraine.com