Have you ever sat in a circle and whispered a secret in the ear of the person next to you? By the time the secret reached the end of the circle it was totally different. That is what some people claim has happened to the Bible over the past two thousand years. They wonder whether or not we can trust the Bible.
But the New Testament we have today is not something the church has created over the years. The New Testament we read today is based on over 5,200 early manuscripts or pieces of manuscripts all written in the original Greek. These Greek manuscripts were found throughout the known world of New Testament times from Rome to Alexandria. What is surprising is how little these manuscripts deviate from each other. Besides minor discrepancies that never alter the meaning of any text, the bulk of these manuscripts agree word for word with one another. There is no other ancient document that even approaches the New Testament in manuscript integrity and evidence.
In the past some scholars taught that the New Testament was written in the late second, third, fourth and fifth centuries after Christ. They then argued that the New Testament does not represent what really happened in the early church but is a record of the myths and stories that developed sometimes hundreds of years later. But one archaeological find smashed that whole school of thought. A fragment of the Gospel of John dated AD. 130 was found in Egypt. Today this papyrus is in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, England. And no scholar thinks this is an original. They would say it was a copy of a manuscript written thirty to fifty years before that.
The New Testament was written in the first century. Luke begins his Gospel, "Since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught" (Lk 1:3-4). Luke was a meticulous historian. John begins his first letter, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life" (1:1). John claims to be writing an eyewitness account.
There are no contradictions in the Gospels which would cause us to question their credibility. There are some mysteries but no contradictions. Some used to claim that the pool in Jerusalem surrounded by five covered colonnades referred to in John 5 was a figment of John's imagination. Recently it was uncovered in an archaeological dig. Archaeology has validated many of the place names, governors, magistrates and emperors referred to in the historical narratives of the Bible. At no point does archaeology contradict the New Testament.
The apostolic fathers quoted the New Testament. A letter sent to the Corinthian church by Clement, bishop of Rome, about AD. 96, quotes Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Titus, Hebrews and 1 Peter. Letters written by Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, as he traveled to his death as a martyr in Rome in A.D. 115, quote Matthew, John, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 Peter and 1 John. For these reasons—internal consistency, literary style of historical narrative, archeological evidence and a large collection of early Greek manuscripts—we can trust the New Testament as historically accurate.
We can read the New Testament for what it claims to be, an accurate, eyewitness account of the historical Jesus Christ. But now that we know the New Testament gives us an accurate picture of Jesus Christ and the early church, we must still ask, Is it true in what it says about God? This is a more complex issue that people have to decide for themselves. As a Christian I believe what Jesus and the biblical authors said is true and can be trusted. I believe that the Holy Spirit guided these writers to tell us what God wants us to know. Thus the Bible is more than just a history book. It is God revealing himself through the written word. It is the Word of God.
People who want to know if what the Bible says is true should try to read it openly and honestly. They should ask themselves. Do the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus ring true? If someone were making all this up, would they do it this way? Do the characters in the Bible sound like mere religious fanatics who are out of touch with real life, or do the prophets and apostles sound like they have a handle on what is real? Another interesting exercise is to compare Old Testament prophecies about the Jewish Messiah (for instance, Isaiah 52:13—53:12) with how they were fulfilled hundreds of years later in the life of Christ.
It is only as we explore the claims of the Bible, studying its teachings and putting them into practice to see if they work, that we will be able to know if the Bible is true and trustworthy. As we experience more of the truth contained in Scripture, the more we can trust it and the more we can put our trust in the one the Bible points to, Jesus Christ.
Mark Twain once said, "It's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that disturb me, rather it's the parts of the Bible that I do understand that disturb me." The Bible is actually all too clear on the basics—God has revealed a few moral standards; we have broken those standards; the penalty for our breaking God's law is death and eternal separation from God and if we will turn to Jesus Christ and simply put our faith and trust in him, he promises to forgive us and to give us eternal life—these are all clearly revealed in Scripture. The Bible speaks plainly on the issues we need to understand. But Mark Twain put his finger on another problem: It is not that we are unable to understand; rather, the problem is that we often do not want to obey.
Besides the plain essential teachings, there are of course some parts of Scripture that are difficult to understand. But the promise of Jesus Christ is that his Holy Spirit will take up residence within each one of us and will begin to open our eyes to the truth that the Scriptures reveal. The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 2:14, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." I have a lot of friends who before they received Christ could not understand a thing in the Bible. But after they had come to put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit opened their eyes so they could understand and apply God's Word to their lives.
Another reason Scripture is sometimes obscure is that it reflects places, histories, cultures and languages different from our own. The New Testament was written nearly two thousand years ago and the Old Testament was written four hundred to fifteen hundred years before that. Even though Bible translators have done a tremendous job in bridging the gap between biblical times and our own, there are still some things in the Bible we can't understand without knowing some background information. It is only as we learn the histories of Israel and the surrounding nations, the geography of the land and the way of life of the people will some passages in Scripture become understandable. But again I hasten to add that the essential teachings of Scripture are clear and obvious.