The Book, Part 2

In my last post I touched on the incredible uniqueness of the Bible.  I also lamented the fact that so many people believe that this amazing book is riddled with inaccuracies and historical inconsistencies.  This belief (interesting choice of words) is based largely on ignorance. In an effort to dispel some of this ignorance I devoted most of the post to evidence for the reliability of the Old Testament.  This post is focused on the New Testament's reliability.  Once again, this information is adapted from Josh McDowell's excellent book The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict.

Is the New Testament Historical?

Tests for the Reliability of Ancient Literature

C. Sanders, in Introduction to Research in English Literary History (New York: Macmillan Co., 1952, pg. 143), lists and explains the three basic principles of historiography.  These are:

1. The Bibliographical Test
2. The Internal Evidence Test, and
3. The External Evidence Test

The Bibliographical Test

Extant Greek Manuscripts
Uncials	307
Minuscules	2,860
Lectionaries	2,410
Papyri	109
Subtotal	5,686
Manuscripts in Other Languages
Latin Vulgate	10,000+
Ethiopic	2,000+
Slavic	4,101
Armenian	2,587
Syriac Pashetta	350+
Bohairic	100
Arabic	75
Old Latin	50
Anglo Saxon	7
Gothic	6
Sogdian	3
Old Syriac	2
Persian	2
Frankish	1
Subtotal	19,284+
Total All MSS	24,970+
Information gathered from the following sources: Michael Welte of the Institute for New Testament Studies in Munster, Germany; Kurt Aland’s Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 87, 1968; Kurt Aland’s Kurzgefasste Liste der Griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, 1963; Kurt Aland’s “Neve Nevtestamentliche Papyri III,” New Testament Studies, July, 1976; Bruce Metzger’s The Early Versions of the New Testament, Clarendon Press, 1977; New Testament Manuscript Studies, (eds.) Merrill M. Parvis and Allen Wikgren, The University of Chicago Press, 1950; Eroll F. Rhodes’s An Annotated List of Armenian New Testament Manuscripts, Tokyo, Ikeburo, 1959; The Bible and Modern Scholarship, (ed.) J. Phillip Hyatt, Abingdon Press, 1965.

This test 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 (MSS), or handwritten copies, and the time interval between the original and extant (currently existing) copies?

F. E. Peters states that “on the basis of manuscript tradition alone, the works that made up the Christians’ New Testament (NT) were the most frequently copied and widely circulated books of antiquity.” (Peters, F. E. The Harvest of Hellenism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971, pg. 50)  As a result, the fidelity of the NT text rests on a multitude of manuscript evidence. Counting Greek copies alone, the NT is preserved in some 5,686 partial and complete manuscript portions that were copied by hand from the second through the fifteenth centuries (Geisler, Norman L. and William E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Chicago: Moody Press, 1986, pg. 385)

The table to the right summarizes these MSS as well as those we have from other (non-Greek) languages.  All told we have more that 25,000 manuscript copies of portions of the NT in existence today. No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers and attestation.  In comparison, Homer’s Iliad is second, with only 643 manuscripts that still survive.  The first complete preserved text of Homer dates from the thirteenth century. (Leach, Charles. Our Bible. How We Got It. Chicago: Moody Press, 1898, pg. 145)

The importance of the sheer number of manuscript copies cannot be overstated.  As with other documents of ancient literature, there are no known extant (currently existing) original manuscripts of the Bible (e.g., letters in Paul’s own handwriting).  However, the abundance of manuscript copies makes it possible to reconstruct the original with virtually complete accuracy. (Geisler, Norman L. and William E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Chicago: Moody Press, 1986, pg. 386)  In the case of the NT, this could be compared to having 25,000 eyewitnesses to an event, the event in this case being the original texts.

John Warwick Montgomery says that “to be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.” (Montgomery, John W. History and Christianity. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1964. pg. 29)

Sir Frederick G. Kenyon, who was the director and principal librarian of the British Museum and second to none in authority for issuing statements about MSS, states that

Besides number, the manuscripts of the New Testament differ from those of the classical authors….  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 (trifling scraps excepted) are of the fourth century – say from 250 to 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 that 1400 years after the poet’s death. (Kenyon, Frederick G. Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. London: Macmillan and Company, 1901, pg. 4)

Kenyon continues in The Bible and Archeology: “The interval between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has been removed.  Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.” (Kenyon, Frederick G. The Bible and Archeology. New York: Harper & Row, 1940, pg. 288)

In Josh McDowell's book, this goes on for another 10 pages, but you get the picture.

Internal Evidence Test

This is a very broad and detailed subject.  Here I will offer only a few considerations, but rest assured that there are many more where this came from.

He was known around the seminary as the man who had learned over thirty languages, most of them languages of Old Testament times in the Middle Eastern world. Dr. Gleason Archer, who taught for over thirty years at the graduate seminary level in the field of biblical criticism, gives the following modest description of his qualifications to discern the meaning of difficult biblical texts:

As an undergraduate at Harvard, I was fascinated by apologetics and biblical evidences; so I labored to obtain a knowledge of the languages and cultures that have any bearing on biblical scholarship.  As a classics major in college, I received training in Latin and Greek, also in French and German. At seminary I majored in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic; and in post-graduate years I became involved in Syriac and Akkadian, to the extent of teaching elective courses in each of these subjects.  Earlier, during my final two years of high school, I had acquired a special interest in Middle Kingdom Egyptian studies, which was furthered as I later taught courses in this field.  At the Oriental Institute in Chicago, I did specialized study in Eighteenth Dynasty historical records and also studied Coptic and Sumerian.  Combined with this work in ancient languages was a full course of training at law school, after which I was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1939.  This gave me a thorough grounding in the field of legal evidences.

Dr. Archer, in the forward to his Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, gives this testimony about the internal consistency of the Bible:

As I have dealt with one apparent discrepancy after another and have studied the alleged contradictions between the biblical record and the evidence of linguistics, archaeology, or science, my confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture has been repeatedly verified and strengthened by the discovery that almost every problem in Scripture that has ever been discovered by man, from ancient times until now, has been dealt with in a completely satisfactory manner by the biblical text itself—or else by objective archaeological information.  The deductions that may be validly drawn from ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, or Akkadian documents all harmonize with the biblical record; and no properly trained evangelical scholar has anything to fear from the hostile arguments and challenges of humanistic rationalists or detractors of any and every persuasions.

Dr. Archer concludes, “There is a good and sufficient answer in Scripture itself to refute every charge that has ever been leveled against it.  But this is only to be expected from the kind of book the Bible asserts itself to be, the inscripturation of the infallible, inerrant Work of the Living God.” (Archer, Gleason L., Jr. Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982, pg. 12)

There are many other excellent sources available for this section, but the following stands out.  Many liberal scholars are being forced to consider earlier dates for the New Testament’s original sources.  Dr. John A. T. Robinson, no conservative himself, comes to some startling conclusions in his groundbreaking book Redating the New Testament.  His research has led to his conclusion that the whole of the New Testament was written before the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. (Robinson, John A. T. Redating the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976)

External Evidence Test

Do other historical materials confirm or deny the internal testimony provided by the documents themselves?  There are a number of extra-biblical sources that confirm the events and people of the New Testament.  Here are a few:

Christian sources

• Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History III.39, preserves writings of Papias, bishop of Heirapolis (AD 130)
• Irenaeus, Biship of Lyons (AD 180) Against Heresies III
• Clement of Rome (AD 95)
• Ignatius (AD 70-110)
• Polycarp (AD 70-156) a disciple of John; martyred for refusing to recant
• Tatian (AD 170)

Non-Christian sources

• Tacitus (first century Roman historian)
• Suetonius, chief secretary to Emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138)
• Josephus (AD 37-100) a Pharisee of the priestly line and Jewish historian working under Roman authority.  Probably the single most prominent extra-biblical, non-Christian source.
• Thallus (AD 52) as quoted by Julius Africanus (AD 221)
• Pliny the Younger (AD 112)
• Emperor Trajan (AD 112)
• The Talmud (AD 70-200)
• Lucian (2^nd century)
• Mara Bar-Serapion (late first and early third centuries)
• The Gospel of Truth (Gnostic gospel written perhaps by Valentinus AD 135-160)
• The Acts of Pontius Pilate (a missing document referred to  by Justin Martyr, AD 150, and Tertullian, AD 200)

Dr. Geisler summarizes the information to be gleaned from these sources:

The primary sources for the life of Christ are the four Gospels. However there are considerable reports from non-Christian sources that supplement and confirm the Gospel accounts.  These come largely from Greek, Roman, Jewish and Sameritan sources of the first century. In brief they inform us that:

1.     Jesus was from Nazareth;

2.     He lived a wise and virtuous life;

3.     He was crucified in Palestine under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar at Passover time, being considered the Jewish King;

4.     He was believed by his disciples to have been raised from the dead three days later;

5.     His enemies acknowledged that he performed unusual feats they called ‘sorcery’;

6.     His small band of disciples multiplied rapidly, spreading even as far a Rome;

7.     His disciples denied polytheism, lived moral lives, and worshiped Christ as Divine.

This picture confirms the view of Christ presented in the New Testament Gospels. (Geisler, Norman L. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998, pg. 384-385)

For Further Study

J. N. D. Anderson, Christianity: The Witness of History

F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, C. F. Cruse, trans.

Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews

Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson, He Walked Among Us

G. Habermas, The Historical Jesus, chapter 9

Lucian of Samosata, The Works of Lucian of Samosata

Origen, Contra Celsus

Pliny the Younger, Letters. W. Melmoth, trans.

A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers

Suetonius, Life of Claudius

Suetonius, Life of Nero

Tacitus, Annals

A Final Quote on Archaeology:

Nelson Glueck, the renowned Jewish archaeologist, wrote: “It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference.  …the almost incredibly accurate historical memory of the Bible, and particularly so when it is fortified by archaeological fact.” (Glueck, Nelson. Rivers in the Desert: History of Negev. New York: Farrar, Stratus, and Cadahy, 1959, pg. 31)

Wrapping It Up
It is popular for critics of the Bible and the belief systems it chronicles to assert that the early adherents of these beliefs took poetic license over the years with these texts in order to achieve their religious ends.  The facts tell a different story.  Christians can stand tall on the books of the Bible with an assurance that they accurately reflect the original writings of their authors unpolluted by transmission through the ages.  Whether these authors ran fast and loose with the truth is another issue, but let's put to rest these ridiculous notions regarding inaccuracies due to the transmission of the scriptures over the years.  

The Book

This used to be what they called it.  It didn't need any introduction.  It was (and still is) THE Book.  You see, the English word "Bible" comes from the Greek word for book, "biblio."  Those who knew it well added the word "Holy."  The Holy Book.

Holy.  Now that isn't a word you see very often, is it?  But then, the Bible isn't really a regular book.  I mean, think about it for a second.  This thing is ancient.  We're talking Indiana Jones here.  The first parts of the Bible date from around 1,400 BC.  The most recent parts were written about 100 AD.

So it's old.  Really old.  Now most books are popular for a couple of months.  Very few are lucky to top the bestseller lists for a few years.  The longest run on the New York Times Best-Seller list was The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck at 300 weeks (who, not coincidentally, also happened to be a Christian).  The Bible, however, was not only the very first best-seller, it has never left the best-seller list. In fact, so many Bibles are sold worldwide each year that it is basically excluded from best-seller lists since it would never leave #1.

Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book. (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218fa_fact1#ixzz1InZoWUVn)

So it's got a catchy title, it's old and it's the bestest (yeah, that's not a word, but you find yourself having to invent superlatives to describe this book) seller of all time.  The problem is that way too many people think the Bible is unreliable, inaccurate and riddled with mistakes and fabrications. Unfortunately, these people merely repeat what they have heard, or think they have heard (or wish they had heard) and have never really looked into the facts.  That is really ironic if you think about it since it turns out that these people are the ones who are unreliable, inaccurate and riddled with mistakes and fabrications.  So let's look at the facts, starting with the Old Testament...

Is The Old Testament Historically Reliable?

Material adapted from The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Josh McDowell.

Manuscripts (i.e., hand-written copies)

Transmission (inaccuracy from the copying process)

Names of kings: There is astonishingly accurate agreement as to the spelling and order of foreign kings in the Old Testament (OT) and monuments and secular documents.  According to Professor Robert Dick Wilson there are about 40 of these kings living between 2000 BC and 400 BC.  Each appears in chronological order with reference to kings of the same country and with respect to the kings of other countries.  Wilson states, “…no stronger evidence for the substantial accuracy of the Old Testament records could possibly be imagined, than this collection of kings.”  Wilson computes the probability of this accuracy occurring by mere circumstance to be one in 75,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.  (Wilson, Robert Dick. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament. Chicago: Moody Press, 1959)

Copying Tradition: The earliest surviving complete manuscript of the OT is the Codex Bablylonicus Petropalitanus (AD 1008) located in Leningrad.  The OT doesn’t have nearly the number of manuscripts as the New Testament.  This is mainly because the intricate traditions of the scribes made them so confident that new copies were as accurate as the old that older copies were considered inferior and usually destroyed in favor of the newer copies. 

The Masoretes (Jewish scholars between 500 and 950 AD) were well disciplined and treated the text with the greatest imaginable reverence.  They devised a complicated system of safeguards against scribal slips.  They counted, for example, the number of times each letter of the alphabet occurred in each book; they pointed out the middle letter of the Pentateuch and the middle letter of the whole Hebrew Bible, and made even more detailed calculations than these.  “Everything countable seems to be counted,” says Wheeler Robinson, and they made up mnemonics by which the various totals might be readily remembered. (Bruce, F. F. The Books and the Parchments: How We Got Our English Bible. Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1950. Reprints: 1963, 1984)

Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian writing in the first century AD, states, “We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own Scriptures.  For, although such long ages have now passed , no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable; and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth, to regard them as the decrees of God, to abide by them, and, if need be, cheerfully die for them. What Greek would endure as much for the same cause? Even to save the entire collection of his nation’s writings from destruction he would not face the smallest personal injury.  For to the Greeks they are mere stories improvised according to the fancy of their authors; and in this estimate even of the older historians they are quite justified, when they see some of their own contemporaries venturing to describe events in which they bore no part, without taking the trouble to seek information from those who know the facts.”

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls we had no way of knowing whether the version of the OT we have was an accurate representation of the original.  Since the earliest manuscripts were dated in the tenth century AD, had it been corrupted over the centuries as it was copied over hundreds of times?  As World War II was drawing to an end, a Bedouin shepherd boy would stumble upon a trove of ancient scrolls that would provide the answer.  Among the scrolls was the complete book of Isaiah.  Paleographers have dated the Isaiah manuscript around 125 BC.  This predates the earliest manuscript we previously had by over a millennium.  By comparing these two manuscripts we can get an impression of the accuracy with which the Jewish scribes transmitted their sacred scriptures.

As one example, of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen letters in question.  Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the sense[ of the passage].  Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions.  The remaining three letters comprise the word “light,” which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly.  Furthermore, this word is supported by the LXX (Septuagint) and IQ Is (one of the Isaiah scrolls found in the Dead Sea caves).  Thus in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word (three letters) in question after a thousand years of transmission—and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage. (Burrows, Millard. The Dead Sea Scrolls. 1955)

Isaiah 53 is no insignificant passage as its prophetic depictions of the Jewish Messiah have led some to believe that it had been tampered with by Christians to make it better fit the events surrounding Jesus.  The Dead Sea Scrolls put these accusations to rest for good.  Isaiah 53 is reproduced below from the New American Standard Translation:

Isaiah 53

     Who has believed our message?
         And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
     For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
         And like a root out of parched ground;
         He has no stately form or majesty
         That we should look upon Him,
         Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
    He was despised and forsaken of men,
         A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
         And like one from whom men hide their face
         He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
    Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
         And our sorrows He carried;
         Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
         Smitten of God, and afflicted.
    But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
         He was crushed for our iniquities;
         The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
         And by His scourging we are healed.
    All of us like sheep have gone astray,
         Each of us has turned to his own way;
         But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all
         To fall on Him.
    He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
         Yet He did not open His mouth;
         Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
         And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
         So He did not open His mouth.
    By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
         And as for His generation, who considered
         That He was cut off out of the land of the living
         For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?
    His grave was assigned with wicked men,
         Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
         Because He had done no violence,
         Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
    But the LORD was pleased
         To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
         If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
         He will see His offspring,
         He will prolong His days,
         And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.
    As a result of the anguish of His soul,
         He will see it and be satisfied;
         By His knowledge the Righteous One,
         My Servant, will justify the many,
         As He will bear their iniquities.
    Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,
         And He will divide the booty with the strong;
         Because He poured out Himself to death,
         And was numbered with the transgressors;
         Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,
         And interceded for the transgressors.

Archaeological and Historical Confirmation

A complete description of all of the archaeological findings that have confirmed Biblical accounts would fill volumes.  The following are offered as a sampling of some of the most significant.

 

Sodom and Gomorrah

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the book of Genesis was thought to be spurious until evidence revealed that all five of the cities mentioned in the Bible were in fact centers of commerce in the area and were geographically situated as the Scriptures describe.  The biblical description of their demise seems to be no less accurate.  Evidence points to earthquake activity, and that the various layers of the earth were disrupted and hurled high into the air.  Bitumen is plentiful there, and an accurate description would be that brimstone (bituminous pitch) was hurled down on those cities that had rejected God.  There is evidence that the layers of sedimentary rock have been molded together by intense heat.  Evidence of such burning has been found on the top of Jebel Usdum (Mount Sodom).  This is permanent evidence of the great conflagration that took place in the long-distant past, possibly when an oil basin beneath the Dead Sea ignited and erupted.  Such an explanation in no way subtracts from the miraculous quality of the event, for God controls natural forces.  The timing of the event, in the context of warnings and visitation by angels, reveals its overall miraculous nature. (Geisler, Norman L. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998, pg 50,51)

 

Jericho

During the excavations of Jericho (1930-1936) Garstang found something so startling that he and two other members of the team prepared and signed a statement describing what was found.  In reference to these findings Garstang says: “As to the main fact, then, there remains no doubt: the walls fell outwards so completely that the attackers would be able to clamber up and over their ruins into the city.  Why so unusual?  Because the walls of cities do not fall outwards, they fall inwards.  And yet in Joshua 6:20 we read, ‘The wall fell down flat. Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.’ The walls were made to fall outward.” (Garstang, John. The Foundations of Bible History; Joshua, Judges. New York: R. R. Smith, Inc. 1931, pg 146)

Bryant Wood, writing for Biblical Archaeology Review (Wood, Bryant G. “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho?” March/April 1990, pg 44-59), includes a list of collaboration between archaeological evidence and biblical narrative as follows:

1. The city was strongly fortified (Joshua 2:5, 7, 15; 6:5, 20)
2. The attack occurred just after harvest time in the spring (Joshua 2:1; 3:15; 5:16)
3. The inhabitants had no opportunity to flee with their foodsheds (Joshua 6:1)
4. The siege was short (Joshua 6:15)
5. The walls were leveled, possibly by and earthquake (Joshua 6:20)
6. The city was not plundered (Joshua 6:17)
7. The city was burned (Joshua 6:24)

Saul, David and Solomon

Archaeological findings have confirmed many details in the biblical accounts of these first Israelite kings.  From the use of slings as a primary weapon to the locations and gods of Canaanite temples to validating the architectural accuracy of the account of David’s capture of Jerusalem, findings continually confirm the cultural and geographical accuracy of the biblical accounts. (Geisler, Ibid.)

 

King David

Avaraham Biram (“House of David,” Biblical Archaeology Review. March/April 1994, pg 26) speaks of a new discovery in 1994:

A remarkable inscription from the ninth century BCE that refers to both the [House of David], and to the [King of Israel]. This is the first time that the name of David has been found in any ancient inscription outside the Bible.  That the inscription refers not simply to a [David] but to the House of David, the dynasty of the great Israelite king, is even more remarkable…this may be the oldest extra-biblical reference to Israel in Semitic script. If this inscription proves anything, it shows that both Israel and Judah, contrary to the claims of some scholarly biblical minimizers, were important kingdoms at this time.

Summary

Henry M. Morris observes: “Problems still exist, of course, in the complete harmonization of the archaeological material with the Bible, but none so serious as not to bear real promise of imminent solution through further investigation.  It must be extremely significant that, in view of the great mass of corroborative evidence regarding the biblical history of these periods, there exists today not one unquestionable find of archaeology that proves the Bible to be in error at any point.” (Morris, Henry M. The Bible and Modern Science. Rev. ed. Chicago: Moody Press, 1956, pg 95)

“In every period of Old Testament history, we find that there is good evidence from archaeology that the Scriptures speak the truth.  In many instances, the Scriptures even reflect firsthand knowledge of the times and customs it describes.  While many have doubted the accuracy of the Bible, time and continued research have consistently demonstrated that the Word of God is better informed than its critics.

“In fact, while thousands of finds from the ancient world support in broad outline and often in detail the biblical picture, not one incontrovertible find has ever contradicted the Bible.” (Geisler, Ibid., pg 52)

Reliability of the Old Testament History

Textual criticism of the biblical histories has taken a dramatic turn in the past 50 years.  W. F. Albright describes the change in attitudes:

Until recently it was the fashion among biblical historians to treat the patriarchal sagas of Genesis as through they were artificial creations of Israelite scribes of the Divided Monarchy or tales told by imaginative rhapsodists around Israelite campfires during the centuries following their occupation of the country.  Eminent names among scholars can be cited for regarding every item of Genesis 11-50 as reflecting late invention, or at least retrojection of events and conditions under the Monarchy into the remote past, about which nothing was thought to have been really known to the writers of later days. (Albright, W. F. The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra. New York: Harper & Row, 1963, pg 1,2)

Now it has all been changed, says Albright:

“Archaeological discoveries since 1925 have changed all this.  Aside from a few die-hards among older scholars, there is scarcely a single biblical historian who has not been impressed by the rapid accumulation of data supporting the substantial historicity of patriarchal tradition.  According to the traditions of Genesis the ancestors of Israel were closely related to the semi-nomadic peoples of Trans-Jordan, Syria, the Euphrates basin and North Arabia in the last centuries of the second millennium BC, and the first centuries of the first millennium.” (Albright, Ibid., pg 1,2)

In order to detail the discoveries that have precipitated this shift, it would take many pages.  For a great summary, I refer you The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell, pages 99-115.

Conclusion

As you can see, those know-nothings who so quickly deride the accuracy and reliability of this amazing text are quite ill-informed.  Christians (and Jews) should hold their heads high and not accept these assertions as anything less than lies and propaganda.  If you are a person of The Book, then I implore you to not stand idly by in the midst of such rumor mongers. Kindly and respectfully correct them.

Next post, the New Testament...