Let us start with the beginning…
Most of Apologetics treaties consider 1 Peter 3:15 as their biblical motif, and I won’t differ: “...always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have”. This verse prevents Apologetics to be considered only for big Christian scholars; the challenge then is up to everyone who calls himself a Christian.
However, to be honest, we don’t do this very well. At best, Christians embark on the task of sharing the Gospel, providing scriptural verses, but sometimes we meet people who don’t believe in the Bible, casting doubts about its origins, transmission, compilation and reproduction. So, what do we do when we face a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon who have their own Bibles? How about a Muslim with his Koran? Or simply an atheist who denies everything the Bible has to say? (A great number of them have gone deep digging into hard passages and Bible “inaccuracies”) How do we prove the Bible is just not another book, but the word of God? Certainly the Bible stands above any other book that has ever existed, but do we know about it?
We certainly know that the word of God is “alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb. 4:12), but we also need to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5). Therefore, to know about these topics become an important duty if we really want to stand for our faith.
It is never my intention to elevate the information on this website as equal as the Bible; my intention is to share helpful information that will equip those who are genuinely interested in sharing the Gospel, but sometimes find barriers in arguments against the Bible. Holy men like Josh McDowell, C.S. Lewis, Robert Dick Wilson, John Warwick Montgomery, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, R.C. Sproul and others, who are bastions of Christian Apologetics of this present age, have done the same thing awesomely, providing great arguments in an era where everything is relative, the truth belongs to anyone, and where people openly deny the Bible as the word of God.
This website is based mainly in the work of Josh McDowell’s book “Evidence that demands a verdict”. In the future, new posts will be added, including refutations against renowned philosophers and atheist, such as Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley.
Lastly, a word of advice: your motivation to study this should not be to win an argument, but to glorify and magnify Jesus, just as the first words of the same verse we quoted before: "but sanctify the Lord in your hearts..." In preparing yourself you will sanctify the Lord.
Lastly, a word of advice: your motivation to study this should not be to win an argument, but to glorify and magnify Jesus, just as the first words of the same verse we quoted before: "but sanctify the Lord in your hearts..." In preparing yourself you will sanctify the Lord.
I really hope you persevere through this valuable material, so you might be a skilled servant at the Lord’s service.
Huri Cañas
Singularity of the Bible
[This material is a brief compilation of Chapter 1 from the book “Evidence that demands a Verdict”, Josh McDowell]
Basic point: to show how singular a book is does not prove its veracity, but if we are intelligent people, we are going to fell compelled to read that book which has attracted the attention more than any other book in the whole world. If a person is really seeking for the truth, he would do well in taking a look to the Bible, the most singular book in the whole world.
Cold Facts
Trying to keep things brief, we will consider the following characteristics:
- Continuity
- Circulation
- Translation
- Survival
- Veracity
- Influence
- Continuity
No other book in the history of mankind can boast of being written:
- in a period of 1600 years
- through 60 generations
- by 40 different authors of different social status (shepherds, kings, fishers, doctors, etc)
- in different places (desert, prison, palaces)
- in different times (war, peace, captivity)
- in 3 different continents (Asia, Europe, Africa )
- in 3 languages (Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic)
Moreover, the Bible contains in it many controversy aspects and hard topics, and yet, it maintains total harmony and continuity since Genesis to Revelation, with no contradictions whatsoever, because it develops one only story: The redemption of man by God.
Few things in life can be said the same. It is just like the human body, where many different organs and parts functions in harmony and can be only explained in the context of the whole human body.
One last aspect could be said is the great literary variety included in the Bible; from history, different kind of laws, poetry, lyrical poesy, didactics, parables, allegories, biographies, personal correspondence, memories and diaries, including prophecy and apocalyptical writings. Nonetheless, the Bible can’t even be considered as an anthology, since an anthologist would be needed, and no human being ever compiled the Bible.
- Circulation
- Translation
According to human records, the Bible is the first book to be translated. This translation is known by “The Septuagint” or LXX, which is a Greek translation of the Old Testament. And one more time, the Bible is the most translated book in human history.
The whole Bible has been translated into 400 languages (some say more, some say less). Here is a table that gives us a better idea:
Region | Portions | Testaments | Bibles | Total |
213 | 279 | 149 | 641 | |
223 | 228 | 119 | 570 | |
Pacific | 168 | 204 | 33 | 405 |
110 | 31 | 62 | 203 | |
40 | 26 | 7 | 73 | |
Central & South America | 127 | 244 | 21 | 392 |
Constructed Languages | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
Total | 883 | 1,012 | 392 | 2,287 |
[retrieved from: http://www.biblica.com/bibles/faq/19/] | ||||
- Survival
This feature encloses at least 3 different aspects in which the Bible has survived: time, persecution and critics.
New Testament. Thus, if anybody consider himself skeptical about the New Testament, then he can kiss goodbye and throw into darkness all classic literature of the first centuries, because neither document of this period of time is so well bibliographically supported as the New Testament. What book can boast of being preserved in such a way that even their paragraphs, words, syllables and letters were counted? The Masoretes had this special kind of men whose exclusive mission was to preserve and transmit these documents with perfect fidelity and accuracy. Not even the works of Plato or Aristotle, Cicero or Seneca were ever considered in such a way. Its accuracy beats even Shakespeare writings (with only 4 centuries of age). Persecution:
Without a doubt, it can be said that the Bible has been the most persecuted book ever. Many have tried to burn it, prohibit it and consider it illegal since the times of the Roman Empire until today’s Communism controlled nations. It is well known the case of Voltaire, who foresaid that there would be no more Bibles after 100 years of his age; but instead, 50 years after his death, the Biblical Society of Geneva used his own printing press and his own house to produce bulks and bulks of Bibles. Also, Diocletian, roman emperor in the 303 AC, gave orders to destroy all the Bibles together with the Christians, but his successor Constantine
Critics:
Of greater relevance is the case of the High Criticism and its “confirmed results”. Regarding the Documentary Hypothesis, it was said that Moses writings were not possible since it was proven that the writings didn’t exist in his time. Thus, the Pentateuch had to be written after Moses (whose period was around 1200 BC). But then, a discovery was made: the Hammurabi Code, who was written not only before Moses time, but in times of Abraham (2000-1800 BC). This code was at least 300 years older than Moses. Another example could be said of the Hittites, whose existence was denied by the critics (affecting the Jericho Walls account in the book of Joshua), but because of archeological research, hundred of references about the Hittite civilization cover at least 1200 years of existence.
- Veracity
This aspect refers to the accomplishments of prophecies made by the Bible, specially the ones regarding the coming of the Messiah. Other religions such as the Muslims cannot point to a single prophecy regarding the coming of Muhammad (or any other prophet whatsoever) made hundreds of years before his birth. A lot could be said regarding how history proves the accomplishment of biblical prophecies; but this deserves a longer study.
6. 
Influence
InfluenceIt is said that if all the Bibles could be destroyed, the book can be restored almost in its totality based on the quotes made of the Bible in the shelves of the public libraries. There are writings from almost all the great literary writers dedicated specially to highlight the influence the Bible has had over them.
Conclusion:
Basic point: Explain how the books from the Bible where included in the canon (or index), reasons why establishing a list of books and the difference between the inspired books and the apocrypha.
We need to stress in the fact that the Church did not create the canon or the included books, what we call Scriptures today. The Church only recognized the books that were inspired since their beginning. They were inspired by God at the moment they were written.
These books were the ones who weren’t considered inspired by God for the following reasons:
No other document of antiquity even begins to approach the number of manuscripts of the New Testament (from 13,000 to aprox. 24,000, according to various sources). In comparison, the “Iliad” by Homer is second with only 643 manuscripts that still survive.
We possess so many manuscripts, and we are aided by so many versions, that we are never left to the need of conjecture as the means of removing errata. What would the reader of Eschylus give for the like guidance through the obscurities which vex his patience and mar his enjoyment of that sublime poet?
The earliest versions were prepared by missionaries to assist in the propagation of the Christian faith among peoples whose native tongues was Syriac, Latin or Coptic. Syrian and Latin versions of the New Testament were made around 150 AD. This brings us back very near to the time of the originals.
Literally critics still follow Aristotle’s dictum that the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the document itself, not arrogated by the critic to himself. Therefore, one must listen to the claims of the document under analysis and not assume fraud or error unless the author disqualified himself by contradictions or known factual inaccuracies.
It was at one time conceded that Luke had entirely missed the boat in the events he portrayed as surrounding the birth of Jesus (Lk. 2:1-3). Critics argued that there was no census, that Quirinius was not governor of Syria
Granted, as amazing as all these features might appear, they don’t prove that the Bible is true. But, certainly all this becomes an irrefutable proof that from all the books that have ever existed, the Bible stands alone as the most singular piece of work. Thus, we would do well in reading the book that has caught the attention more than any other book, in order to find the truth in it.
Canonicity of the Bible
[This material is a brief compilation of Chapter 3, from the book “Evidence that demands a Verdict”, Josh McDowell]
Basic point: Explain how the books from the Bible where included in the canon (or index), reasons why establishing a list of books and the difference between the inspired books and the apocrypha. Cold Facts
Regarding the Canonicity of the Bible, we will see:
- Generalities of the word canon
- Tests for the books to be included in the canon
- Factors that determined the necessity of a canon
- The Apocrypha
- Generalities of the word canon
The word canon comes from a root that means “cane” (kanon in Greek). The cane was utilized to measure and eventually it came to mean norm. Applied to the Scriptures, the canon means an official list of accepted books.
We need to stress in the fact that the Church did not create the canon or the included books, what we call Scriptures today. The Church only recognized the books that were inspired since their beginning. They were inspired by God at the moment they were written.
The following table helps us understand this better:
The Incorrect View | The Correct View |
The Church is Determiner of Canon | The Church is Discoverer of Canon |
The Church is Mother of Canon | The Church is Child of Canon |
The Church is Magistrate of Canon | The Church is Minister of Canon |
The Church is Regulator of Canon | The Church is Recognizer of Canon |
The Church is Judge of Canon | The Church is Witness of Canon |
The Church is Master of Canon | The Church is Servant of Canon |
Source: Evidence of Christianity, Josh McDowell, pg. 43 |
- Test for the books to be included in the canon
Basically there were five principles used to determine whether or not a book was canonic.
a) Is the book authoritative? Does the book say “thus says the Lord…”?
b) Is it prophetic? Was it written by a man of God?
c) Is it authentic? The fathers of the Church had the mentality of “if it is doubtful, reject it”
d) Is it dynamic? Does it have the power of God to transform lives?
e) Was it received, used, read? Was it accepted for the people of God?
An example of this could be seen when Peter acknowledged Paul writings as Scriptures, at the same level of the Old Testament content (2 Pe. 3:16).
- Factors that determined the necessity of a canon
Regarding the Old Testament, the Judaic system of sacrifices concluded with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple
The earliest record of a three-fold division of the Old Testament is in the prologue of the book “Ecclesiasticus” (130 BC): “…The Law, the Prophets and the other books of the fathers”. There existed three definite divisions of Scripture. Also, Josephus (end of the first century AC) writes: “from Artaxerxes until our time, everything has been registered, but it has not been considered as faithful as all the prior content, for the exact succession of prophets ended”. Moreover, the Babylonian Talmud says that “after the latest prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, the Holy Spirit departed from Israel
Regarding the New Testament, the basic factor for determining NT canonicity was inspiration by God, and its chief test, apostolicity. Some of the reasons to determine a New Testament canon were: a) Marcion (140 AC), was a heretic who developed his own canon and began to propagate it. The Church needed to offset his influence by determining what was the real canon of New Testament Scripture; b) Many eastern churches were using books in services that were definitely spurious, and it called for a decision concerning the canon; c) The edict of Diocletian (303 AC) declared the destruction of the sacred books of the Christian, and who wanted to die for just a religious book? They needed to know.
When at last a Church Council – the Synod of Hippo in 393 AC- listed the twenty seven books of the New Testament, it did not confer upon them any authority which they did not already possess, but simply recorded their previously established canonicity. Since this time, there has been no serious questioning of the 27 accepted books of the New Testament by either Roman Catholics or Protestants.
- The Apocrypha
a)
b) They teach doctrines which are false and foster practices which are at variance with inspired Scripture.
c) They resort to literary types and display an artificiality of subject matter and styling out of keeping with inspired Scripture.
d) They lack of distinctive elements which give genuine Scripture their divine character, such as prophetic power and poetic and religious feeling.
Jerome (340-420), the great scholar and translator of the Vulgate, rejected the Apocrypha as part of the canon. He disputed across the Mediterranean with Augustine on this point. He at first even refused to translate these books into Latin, but later he made a hurried translation of a few of them. After his death, and literally “over his dead body”, these books were brought into his Latin Vulgate directly from the Old Latin Version; and in 1546, in a polemical action at the Counter Reformation Council of Trent, did the Apocryphal books received full canonical status by the Roman Catholic Church.
Conclusion:
It is important to acknowledge the importance of what is implied in the word Canon: the official list of accepted books. However, the Church nor any group of man did not decided what books should be included in what we call Scriptures today. The Church only recognized the books that were inspired since their beginning, and their inspiration came from God at the moment they were written.
Reliability of the Bible
[This material is a brief compilation of Chapter 4, from the book “Evidence that demands a Verdict”, and Chapters 1,2 and 4 from “Evidence for Christianity”, Josh McDowell]
1. Confirmation through the Historical Text
2. Confirmation through Archeology
- Historical Text
What we are establishing here is the historical reliability of the Scripture, not its inspiration. We will see this through the three basic principles of historiography: the bibliographical text, the internal evidence and the external evidence.
a) The Bibliographical Text
This is an examination of the textual transmission by which documents reach us. In other words, since we do not have the original documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to the number of manuscripts and the time interval between the original and extant copy?
Not quite. For example, there is an ambiguity in saying there are some 200,000 variants in the existing manuscripts, since these represents only 10,000 places in the New Testament. If one single word is misspelled in 3,000 different manuscripts, this is counted as 3,000 variants of reading. Besides, setting aside differences of orthography, the words in our opinion still subject to doubt only make up about 1/16 of the whole New Testament. Moreover, only about 1/8 of all the variants had any weight, as most of them are merely mechanical matters such as spelling or style. Of the whole then, only one-sixtieth rise above “trivialities” or can in any sense be called “substantial variations”. Mathematically this would compute to a text that is 98.33 percent pure.
If no objective textual evidence is available to correct an obvious mistake, then the textual critic must perforce employ the art of conjectural emendation - an art that demands the severest self-discipline. The emendation must commend itself as obviously right, and it must account for the way in which the corruption crept it. In other words, it must be both “intrinsically probabe” and “transcriptionally probable”. It is doubtful whether there is any reading in the New Testament which requires it to be conjecturally emended. The wealth of attestation is such that the true reading is almost invariably bound to be preserved by at least one of the thousand of witnesses.
Added to this, no fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading. It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain. The number of manuscripts, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.
Besides number, the manuscripts of the New Testament differ from those of the classical authors, and the difference is clear gain. In no other case is the interval of time between the composition of the book and the date of the earliest extant manuscripts so short as in that of the New Testament. The books of the New Testament were written in the latter part of the first century; the earliest extant manuscripts are of the fourth century – say from 250 – 300 years later. This may sound a considerable interval, but it is nothing to that which parts most of the great classical authors from their earliest manuscripts. We believe that we have in all essentials an accurate text of the seven extant plays of Sophocles; yet the earliest substantial manuscript upon which it is based was written more than 1400 years after the poet’s death.
Author | When Written | Earliest | Time | No. of |
Copy | Span | Copies | ||
Caesar | 100-44 BC | 900 AD | 1000 years | 10 |
Livy | 59 BC - AD 17 | 1200 years | 20 | |
Plato (Tretalogies) | 427-347 BC | 900 AD | 1000 years | 7 |
Tacitus | 100 AD | 1100 AD | 900 years | 20 |
Pliny the Younger | 61-113 AD | 850 AD | 750 years | 7 |
Thucydides | 460-400 BC | 900 AD | 1300 years | 8 |
Suetonius | 75-160 AD | 950 AD | 800 years | 8 |
Herodotus | 480-425 BC | 900 AD | 1300 years | 8 |
Horace | 900 years | |||
Sophocles | 496-406 BC | 1000 AD | 1400 years | 193 |
Lucretius | 55 BC | 1100 years | 2 | |
Catullus | 54 BC | 1550 AD | 1600 years | 3 |
Euripides | 480-406 BC | 1100 AD | 1500 years | 9 |
Demosthenes | 383-322 BC | 1100 AD | 1300 years | 200 |
Aristotle | 384-322 BC | 1100 AD | 1400 years | 49 |
Aristophanes | 450-385 BC | 900 AD | 1200 years | 10 |
Just to have a better idea, it is said that Homer was, without a doubt, the most widely read author in antiquity. But see the differences between his book “The Iliad” and the New Testament:
Work | When Written | Earliest | Time | No. of |
Copy | Span | Copies | ||
Homer (Iliad) | 900 BC | 400 BC | 500 years | 643 |
New Testament | 40-100 AD | 125 AD | 25 years | 13000-24000 |
Also, the Fathers of the Church provide great evidence. Suppose that the New Testament was destroyed and every copy of it lost by the third century, could it have been collected together again from the writings of the Fathers of the second and third centuries? The answer is yes, except for only 11 verses.
Regarding the Masoretes, they accepted the laborious work of editing the text and standardizing it. Their work was so reliable that the Masoretic text is the standard Hebrew text today. They counted the number of times each letter of the alphabet occurred in each book, they pointed out the middle letter of the Pentateuch and of the entire Hebrew Bible. They even made calculations which do not enter into the ordinary sphere of textual criticism. They enumerated verses which contained all the letters of the alphabet. These trivialities had yet the effect of securing minute attention to the precise transmission of the text.
b) Internal Evidence
In this context, the Bible does not present contradictions, but difficulties, and difficulties do not constitute objections… unsolved problems are not of necessity errors. Difficulties are to be grappled with and problems are to drive us to seek clearer light; but until such time as we have total and final light on any issue we are in no position to affirm ‘here is a proven error, an unquestionable objection to an infallible Bible’. It is common knowledge that countless ‘objections’ have been fully resolved since this century began.
On top of that, we must highlight the fact that the Bible speaks authoritatively about itself, not hiding anything, “for this has not been done in a corner” (Acts. 26:26).
c)
Do other historical materials confirm or deny the internal testimony provided by the documents themselves? In other words, what sources are there apart from the literature under analysis that substantiate its accuracy, reliability and authenticity?
Many authoritative figures confirm the testimony of the Scriptures. We can quote, for example, the words from Irenaeus: “so firm is the ground upon which these Gospels rest, that the very heretics themselves bear witness to them, and, starting from these (documents), each one of them endeavors to establish his own particular doctrine”.
- Archeology
It may be stated categorically that no archeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, certain phases of which still appears periodically, has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history.
Old Testament examples:
a) Genesis derives the ancestry of Israel from Mesopotamia . It is this fact with which archeological findings concur. It is beyond reasonable doubt that Hebrew tradition was correct in tracing the Patriarchs directly back to the Balikh Valley in northwestern Mesopotamia . The evidence is based on the coincidence of biblical and archeological findings tracing the movement of these people out of the land of Mesopotamia
b) Jericho
New Testament example:
Sir William Ramsay is regarded as one of greatest archeologist ever to have lived. Having prejudices against Luke as an historian, he wrote in his 30 years research: “Luke is an historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy… this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.
First of all, archeological discoveries show that the Romans had a regular enrollment of taxpayers and also held censuses every 14 years. This procedure was indeed begun under Augustus and the first took place in either 23-22 BC or in 9-8 BC. The latter would be the one to which Luke refers. Also, evidence was found that Quirinius was governor of Syria
Conclusion
In this section we have seen from two different angles that the Bible is in deed a reliable and trustworthy document: the bibliographical and the archeological point of view. This same standard has to be applied to the Scripture, just as the other literary works, since many people want to apply a different standard or test to the Bible. Therefore, having done this, we can hold the Scriptures in our hands and say “the Bible is trustworthy and historically reliable”.
