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| Rober G. Coleman, Author |
People who dismiss the Bible as unreliable and
unworthy of attention often challenge its historical credibility. The average
Christian usually does not know how to adequately respond to the sophisticated
form of this challenge. For instance a critic might submit as a historical
fact, an issue like the council of Nicaea during the fourth century to say that
this was the point at which Christians met to change things in the Bible to
suit their erroneous teachings.
For the skeptic this is a good strategy because if you
can prove the historical unreliability of the Bible, then Christianity, which
is perhaps the world’s most spiritually and morally disturbing faith (i.e. its
teachings hunts the human conscience with the issue of sin in the heart),
becomes minced meat. Truth be told, most Ghanaian Christians do not know much
about Christian Church history; they hardly look beyond their denominations.
Skeptics often argue against the Bible’s reliability
with reasons ranging from the Bible being a myth to having contradictions and
also to being textually unreliable. Of course, the implication of Christians
hinging their beliefs and way of life on a historically unreliable document is
very serious; the oft-repeated charge that Christianity goes against reason or
intellect will become valid if this is the case.
In fact, there is a growing number of Christian
youngsters in Ghana today who are questioning their beliefs about the Bible in
the face of some scientific theories, challenges from the popular New Atheists
in the West and sadly the irrational behaviour and practices of the present popular
Christianity in the country. Christianity in Ghana, in the past, has not faced
much intellectual attacks and as a result most present day Ghanaian Christians
honestly do not know how to deal with challenges to the credibility of the
Bible as a reliable historical document. This is understandable.
But Ghanaian Christians need to understand that the
times have changed. A increasing number of young people who were brought up on
Christian teachings are now rejecting the faith because they are not getting
reasonable or intellectually satisfying answers to their nagging questions.
Their present number may be relatively small in Ghana, since we have
historically not been a very questioning culture. But with more Ghanaians being
educated to higher levels, and having easy access to information around the
globe, the questions that their curious minds are raising should not be
ignored. They must be addressed head-on.
I am aware that there are huge volumes of books that
have responded to claims of the Bible’s unreliability so I will not pretend
that this short article will exhaustively address the challenges mentioned
above. What I want to do here is to whet the appetite of honest skeptics,
critics and seekers for embarking on an honest investigation of the Bible’s
reliability as a historical document. I use the word ‘honest’ because there are
those who, in their rhetoric, give the impression that they are intellectually
honest in their search for answers yet who have actually already made up their
minds not to seriously consider any evidence or argument that will go in favour
of the Bible or Christianity.
Such people are not my target readership because I am
convinced of the words of the sage who once observed that, “To give truth to
him who loves it not is but to give him plentiful material for
misinterpretation.” And let me also clarify that when I use the word “Bible,” I
am limiting it to the mainstream translations in the public domain which have
not been customized for the theologies of any particular church or fringe
group. Also this article defends only the historical reliability of the Bible
and not the truthfulness of its doctrines, which is a subject for another
article.
Myth or History
Christianity would not be so disturbing had it not
been for its claim that Jesus is the Son of God and that he is the only way to
God and also that these claims are recorded in the Bible. For some these claims
are uncomfortably exclusive and they find it easier to believe the hypothesis
that Christians in later generations actually invented these ideas which the
early disciples of Jesus (if there ever were any) never thought of. But the
fact is that this is simply not true! If Jesus’ divinity and claim of
exclusivity are myths invented by later generations then there must have been
at least two or three generations between the original eyewitnesses of the
historical Jesus and the universal belief in the mythic, divinized and
exclusive Jesus. Why? In the absence of this condition, the myth could not have
been believed as fact since it would have been refuted by eyewitnesses of the
real historical Jesus.
Both his disciples and his enemies would have had
reasons to oppose this new myth. Incidentally, we find no such evidence at all
of anyone ever opposing the so-called myth of the divine Jesus in the name of
an earlier merely human Jesus. The New testament manuscripts from first century
show that this idea of a divine Jesus originated from the very disciples and
followers of Christ right in the first century and no competent scholar today
denies the first-century dating of virtually all of the New Testament.
Further, the claim of Jesus to be God makes sense of
his trial and the Jewish leaders’ desire for his crucifixion. You see, the
Jewish sensitivity to blasphemy was a unique thing in the Roman world. No
sympathizers of any of the pagan religions at that time would have so
fanatically insisted on the death penalty as punishment for claiming divinity
because the prevailing attitude in the Roman world toward the gods was “the
more, the merrier.” For instance, a city like Athens had many altars for the
several gods yet just to make sure that they had not missed any god, they made
an altar “to an Unknown God” (Acts 17:23). Now if we still want to maintain
that the divine Jesus of the Gospels is a myth, then the question begging to be
answered is: who invented it? Whether it was Jesus’ first disciples or some
later generation, no credible motive can account for this invention.
Why do I say this? Until the Edict of Milan in AD 313,
Christians were subject to serious persecution. They were often tortured and
killed, and hated and oppressed for their beliefs. No one, especially a
skeptical first century Jew, would invent an elaborate practical joke in order
to be crucified, stoned or beheaded for it!
Textual Reliability
While some people who may have done some research on
the Bible love to point out what they believe to be inaccuracies in modern
Bibles as compared to earlier manuscripts, others who have done no study on the
subject will often use such purported inaccuracies as valid reasons for not
having anything to do with the teachings of the book. Can we trust the Bible as
we have it today?
When you take the story about Jesus for instance, we
have four Gospels rather than one. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by
four different writers, at four different times, and with four somewhat
different purposes and emphasis.
This makes cross-checking possible. Through a textual
comparison, we can fix the facts with far greater assurance here than with any
other ancient series of events about a historical figure. Like some historians
have observed, “The only inconsistencies are in chronology (only Luke’s Gospel
claims to be in exact order) and accidentals like numbers (e.g. did the women
see one angel or two at the empty tomb?)” Further, Historians evaluate the
textual reliability of ancient literature according to two standards: (1) What
he time interval is between the original and the earliest copy available and
(2) how many manuscripts are available.
Knowledge of Julius Caesar’s exploits in the Gallic
Wars are available today because of ten manuscript copies, the earliest of
which dates to within 1,000 years of the time it was written by Caesar,
somewhere 100-44 BC. Plato’s writings took place around 400 BC and there are
seven manuscripts available today, the earliest of which dates to within 1,300
years after Plato’s death. Homer’s ‘Iliad’ is much more reliable in terms of
time gap because the time gap between the date of its composition and the date
of the earliest copies available to us for examination today is 400 years.
It was composed in 800 BC and the earliest manuscript
copy dates around 400 BC. It is worthy to note that all we know about Socrates
today is known through his student Plato’s writings yet nobody doubts that
Socrates ever existed. Isn’t it interesting then to see people expressing
unease or trying to discredit the Gospels just because the disciples of Jesus
wrote them?
When we use these same standards above which
historians typically use, the New Testament stands impressively tall and
without equal when compared to other ancient documents. There are nearly 25,000
manuscript copies of the New Testament books available in Libraries and
universities around the world today. John’s gospel has the earliest manuscript
copies available to us today in the form of fragments (located in the John
Rylands Library, Manchester, England) dating to within 50 years from when the
apostle John authored the original between AD 50-100. Which ancient document
comes close to this? Further, the earliest Greek manuscript copies available
today of the Complete New Testament dates to 225 years from the original
writing.
This is about half the time gap for manuscript copies
of Homer’s Iliad, which is the most historically reliable ancient secular
document. This is simply impressive. People who accuse Christians of
adulterating and falsifying the current Bible need only to go to the Libraries
to do the comparisons. But of course it is easier to claim intellectual honesty
while making sweeping statements, perpetuating myths and accusing Christians of
rejecting their intellect since most unsophisticated Christians will not be
able to put up any formidable defence, isn’t it? Even more interesting is that
those who accuse Christians of doctoring the current Bible are hard-pressed to
produce any originals with which to compare. In essence, the critic is really
saying, “I don’t have any evidence but just take my word for it, your Bible has
been corrupted.” Quite sad!
As far as the Old Testament (The Jewish Scriptures) is
concerned, the standards for making copies were incredibly strict. The Jewish
scribes saw the discipline as a high spiritual calling. And the accuracy of
their copying has been confirmed by the discovery of the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ in
1947. Prior to 1947 the oldest complete Hebrew manuscript dated to AD 900. With
the discovery of 223 manuscripts in caves on the west side of the Dead Sea, we
now have Old Testament manuscripts that palaeographers have dated around 125
BC.
These are 1000 years older than the previously known
manuscripts. After the translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it has been
discovered that the text of the modern version of the Hebrew Bible is 95%
identical, with the 5% variation consisting mainly of spelling variations. This
is nothing short of impressive. And religiously speaking, this remarkably shows
how the Sovereign and All-powerful God, even while working with and through
fallible men, has preserved his teachings throughout the ages for the World so
that we may all get to know him as he is.
Contradictions
Contradiction is a serious thing anytime truth is in
question and since Christians claim that Christianity is a religion based on
truth, it is crucial that the charges of contradictions in the Bible be looked
at carefully. I am sure the critics have a tall list of what is believed to be
contradictions that are enough to bury the Bible. But like I indicated in the
beginning, this article is meant to whet the appetite of the honest skeptics
for investigating the historical reliability of the Bible. For this article I
have chosen to look at just a few regarding the story of Jesus Christ in the
gospels, in particular, the resurrection of Jesus Christ which is the linchpin
on which all of Christianity hangs. Christianity stands or falls on the
truthfulness of this story, and thus if the eyewitness accounts are essentially
contradictory, then there is a big problem – their story cannot be relied upon.
One critic has complained that:
“In Matthew, when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
arrived toward dawn at the tomb there is a rock in front of it, there is a
violent earthquake, and an angel descends and rolls back the stone. In Mark,
the women arrive at the tomb at sunrise and the stone had been rolled back. In
Luke, when the women arrive at early dawn they find the stone had already been
rolled back. In Matthew, an angel is sitting on the rock outside the tomb and
in Mark a youth is inside the tomb. In Luke, two men are inside. In Matthew,
the women present at the tomb are Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. In Mark,
the women present at the tomb are the two Marys and Salome. In Luke, Mary
Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and the other women are present at
the tomb.”
On the surface, this seems like a combination of
hopeless contradictions which should severely damage the narrative about Jesus’
empty tomb. But hold on a moment! Take a closer look at the each of the
narratives in the gospels and you will realize that the differences are in the
secondary details. There is actually a historical core to the story that can be
relied upon – that Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb and sealed with a rock, the
tomb was visited by a small group of women followers of Jesus early on Sunday
morning and they found it empty but they saw a vision of angel(s) saying that
Jesus had risen from the dead.
The differences in the names of the women, their
number, the exact time of the morning etc do not disturb the core of the story.
Besides the differences in the empty tomb narratives actually informs us that
we have multiple independent confirmation of the story. Indeed if all four
gospels were identical in the smallest details, it would raise suspicion of
plagiarism.
We must also note how history was recorded back then
and how different it is from our ‘journalist reports’ today. The oral
transmission of history focused on the major issues of the hero's life, not the
excruciating details of our 21st century style of reportage.
Historical documents of that age typically followed this principle and it is
not unique to the Bible. “We have two narratives of Hannibal crossing the Alps
to attack Rome, and they’re incompatible and irreconcilable. Yet no classical
historian doubts the fact that Hannibal did mount such a campaign.
That’s a non-biblical illustration of discrepancies in
secondary details failing to undermine the historical core of a historical
story,” quipped Dr. Lane Craig, a Christian Historian and Philosopher, in an
interview with former investigative journalist (also an
Atheist-turned-Christian) Lee Strobel. Most of what seem like contradictions in
the Bible could actually be resolved easily with some background knowledge and
an open-minded reading of the text. It is fascinating to watch people who
usually would boast of open-mindedness suddenly switching to closed-mindedness
mode when it comes to the Bible.
Conclusion
Those who reject the Bible on the grounds of
historical unreliability do so not because of the absence of evidence but
because of the suppression of evidence or unwillingness to pursue the evidence
wherever it may lead. Like I have indicated twice already, my hope is that this
piece whets the appetite of honest skeptics who probably thought the Bible was
not historically reliable, to embark on an investigative adventure. I also hope
that young Christians who may be doubting the historical reliability of the
Bible will find some confidence to keep studying about the Bible and come to
the point of wanting to study Bible’s contents and rightly applying them to
their lives. The beauty about the Bible is that it stands up to scrutiny.
Many have tried to argue against it, destroy it, bury
it, and falsify its contents by claiming things it never claimed but the
authentic Word of God continues to live on long after its opponents are dead.
If God is indeed sovereign and all-powerful God (which he is) then this is
exactly what we should expect – he keeps his Word from being lost, adulterated
or destroyed. I have little doubt that skeptics who will take my challenge to
do an honest investigation of the Bible’s credibility will find that not only
is the Bible historically reliable, but its ultimate Author – God – is very
trustworthy also.
By Robert G. Coleman, author of the book, ‘Why Don’t I
Feel My Faith’
(Contact Author: boabs2010@gmail.com; Blog: www.rgcoleman.wordpress.com
)
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