The Encourager
“Can We Believe the Bible by Dan King”
Question: What proof do we have that we can trust the Bible for everything it says. The Bible has been handed down so many times. The translation has been changed and everybody knows when you're passing on information the meaning never comes back the way it originated. One word changed can change the whole meaning of the passage. The Bible was written so long ago how do we know its meaning is still the same and how do we know it's not just another manmade project.
Answer: The proof that you ask about is found in many places. First, there is archaeology. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence in many places and from across many centuries about many different aspects of the Bible. For example, at one time skeptics doubted whether the Hittites, which are mentioned only briefly and with little detail in the Genesis account, actually ever existed at all. Eventually archaeological discovery in Asia Minor uncovered an entire civilization, with their distinctive culture, language and history. The simple biblical references were found to be representative of a people who settled and traded throughout the entire ancient Near East in the time of Abraham and the other patriarchs. Many biblical cities have been uncovered and excavated to reveal distinctive events such as destruction layers which coincide with the biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt and capture of many of the cities of ancient Canaan in the books of Joshua and Judges. Many other such things are well attested in both the literature of other peoples and from excavation activities. For example, during the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC, the book of Jeremiah (with 2 Chronicles and 2 Kings) represents the fall of the surrounding cities while Jerusalem lay under siege. In the excavation of the city of Lachish, the so-called "Lachish letters" were found, which detail the gradual capture of the towns precisely as Jeremiah and the books of history describe. Furthermore, it mentions some who were "weakening the hands of the people" in the midst of the siege, which is precisely the charge leveled against the prophet Jeremiah in the book by his name. There are many other things, far too numerous to mention here, which establish the general tenor of the biblical writings as recording genuine history. Further, as to the fact that the Bible has been handed down to us in the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament through many hands and many centuries, let it be noted that the Bible is the best attested ancient book in the entire world. There are literally thousands of copies of both the OT and the NT in their original languages which have come down to us - some of them extremely ancient. For example, many copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Hebrew manuscripts of OT books) go back to the first century before the time of Jesus, others perhaps even a century earlier than that. If we may trust that we have the works of Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and the host of other ancient writers whose materials are not nearly so well attested, why would we not also be able to believe that we have the precise words of Christ and his apostles, as well as those of Moses and the Old Testament prophets? As to whether the words were changed in the process of time and transmission to our day, you must remember that the transmitters (scribes) of ancient times were extraordinarily careful, believing that a curse from heaven was upon the one who would change even a single word of Holy Scripture (see Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Matt. 5:18; Rev. 22:18, 19). But since mistakes did occasionally occur because of oversights and writing errors, it was the hundreds of other copies of the scripture that acted as a countermeasure to assure the mistakes could be corrected. This process of establishing the original text has come to be called "the science of textual criticism." The translation process itself is really the most convincing part. Think of all the translations there are out there - literally hundreds of different ones in the English language alone. Take a few translations and compare them side by side. You know what happens? You come up with very little difference between them. Most only differ in the different ways of saying the exact same things!
The ultimate answer is YES, we can definitely trust the Bible.
