Is the Bible Valid?

October 1, 2016October 9, 2016 Restoration Magazine 0 Comments

by Al Penner

Is the Bible real or is it full of made up stories designed to control how we think and act? This question might not mean much to the believer, who accepts the word by faith. Others that have accepted the Bible as valid has accepted it because they were raised in a home where this was the traditional teaching, however, true believers are required by that same word to go into the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in (Luke 14:23). Who has ever proved to you that Christ is the Son of God? Did he really rise from the dead? Was there any such thing as an Exodus? Believing in the Bible is easy, but proving that the Bible is a valid work, which was inspired from a supreme being, presents a challenge to even the most faithful.

There are millions of people today who have never read the Bible or who reside in various parts of the world where they practice other religions that use other religious books such as the Alkitab Alaqdas (Baha’i Faith); Tripitaka (Buddhism), Bhagavad-Gita (Hinduism), etc. How do you prove to them that the Holy Bible that you read is the only sacred Bible that was inspired by the only true God?

How often have you heard people state that the Bible has been changed over the years by King James and other translators? Their unwillingness to accept its writings would be justified, if by their reasoning, man has tampered, changed or altered the words to push THEIR religion. When Americans reach for their Bibles, more than half of them pick up a King James Version (KJV), according to a new study advised by respected historian Mark Noll. There is over 323 million American’s living in the United States today in which 55% of them read from the King James Version. If we profess to serve the one true God, the one that created the heavens and earth, he would be smart enough and more than capable of preserving his instructions to the world. If these instructions are to lead us to the ultimate reward in the afterlife, evidence of these writings could and must be validated.

Below are excerpts showing the comparison from translations of the dead sea scrolls in comparison to the King James Bible

[

Dead Sea scrolls translated into English]

{Verse 27} Mark, the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. It shall be a sacred occasion for you; you shall practice self-denial, and you shall bring an offering by fire to the LORD;

[King James Version]

Lev 23:27 also on the tenth day of this seventh month there shall be a Day of Atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD. (KJV)

[Dead Sea scrolls translated into English]

{Verse 25} You shall not work at your occupations; and you shall bring an offering by fire to the LORD.

[King James Version]

Lev 23:25 Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD. (KJV)

Historical and archeological finding is one sure method of validating the Bible. One such proof comes from the Dead Sea Scrolls

Date and Contents of the Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls include three types of documents: the earliest existing copies of books from the Hebrew Bible, known in Hebrew as the Tanach; copies of other early works that are not part of Tanach; and works related to a specific sect that existed among the Jews at the time of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. There were also ancient tefillin scrolls and archaeological artifacts, such as mikvahs, ritual baths.

Scholars were anxious to confirm that these Dead Sea Scrolls were the most ancient of all Old Testament manuscripts in the Hebrew language. Three types of dating tools were used: tools from archaeology, from the study of ancient languages, called paleography and orthography, and the carbon-14 dating method. Each can derive accurate results. When all the methods arrive at the same conclusion, there is an increased reliability in the dating.

The Old Testament that we use today is translated from what is called the Masoretic Text. The Masoretes were Jewish scholars who between A.D. 500 and 950 gave the Old Testament the form that we use today. Until the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947, the oldest Hebrew text of the Old Testament was the Masoretic Aleppo Codex which dates to A.D. 935.{5}

With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we now had manuscripts that predated the Masoretic Text by about one thousand years. After years of careful study, it has been concluded that the Dead Sea Scrolls give substantial confirmation that our Old Testament has been accurately preserved.

The Messianic Prophecies and the Scrolls

One of the evidences used in defending the deity of the Christ is the testimony of prophecy. There are over one hundred prophecies regarding Christ in the Old Testament. These prophecies were made centuries before the birth of Christ and were quite specific in their detail. There is strong evidence that the Old Testament canon was completed by 450 B.C.

One of the most important Dead Sea documents is the Isaiah Scroll. This twenty-four foot long scroll is well preserved and contains the complete book of Isaiah. The Isaiah Scroll has been carbon-14 dated at least four times. The four studies produced date ranges between 335 BC and 107 BC. and contains one of the clearest and most detailed prophecies of the Messiah in chapter fifty-three, called the “Suffering Servant.” Although some Jewish scholars teach that this refers to Israel, a careful reading shows that this prophecy can only refer to Christ.

Here are just a few reasons. The suffering servant is called sinless (53:9), he dies and rises from the dead (53:8-10), and he suffers and dies for the sins of the people (53:4-6). These characteristics are not true of the nation of Israel. The Isaiah Scroll gives us a manuscript that predates the birth of Christ by a century and contains many of the most important messianic prophecies about Jesus. Skeptics could no longer contend that portions of the book were written after Christ or that first century insertions were added to the text.

EXTERNAL VALIDITY

Hezekiah’s Tunnel

The account of the construction of Hezekiah’s water tunnel under Jerusalem by King Hezekiah shortly before the city was besieged by Sennacherib in about 701 BC is described in 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:2-4, 30. (Incidentally modern radiometric dating of the Siloam Tunnel in Jerusalem by a team led by Amos Frumkin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows that it was excavated about 700 BC and can thus be safely attributed to the Judean King Hezekiah.)

Pool of Siloam

This tunnel, discovered in the 19th century, is a third of a mile long, (approximately 1,800 feet) usually less than three feet wide. It winds in an S-shape from the Gihon Spring, an important site in Old Testament Jerusalem, to the Pool of Siloam, an important New Testament site (in the New Testament, a blind man was told by Jesus to go wash his eyes in this pool (John 9:1–12).

The Destruction of Jerusalem

For scoffers at the supernatural, this prophecy must be one of the most indigestible in the Old Testament. With utmost transparency, it says that soon after the death of the Messiah, the Jews would suffer a great disaster. The aftermath of His death falls into four distinct stages.

A foreign people would invade the land and attack Jerusalem.

The end of the assault upon Jerusalem would come as a “flood.” The sense is figurative, as in Daniel 11, where the same word describes a rapidly advancing army (Dan. 11:22, 26, 40).

The enemy would destroy both the city and the sanctuary. Further desolating conflict would ensue, continuing until the end of the war.

THE RAINBOW

13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:15 And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction, and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multi-colored arc. A phenomenon is something (such as an interesting fact or event) that can be observed and studied and that typically is unusual or difficult to understand or explain fully. Before there was Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein, there was God Almighty, the Chief Scientist. He understood the rainbow because he created it, making a covenant with the earth not to destroy it with a flood ever again.

There is much more proof that can be shown if further evidence is needed, but the conclusion is that we serve an awesome God that has preserved his writings and teaching, so that we all can be saved. Since we are required to “prove all things” we can use both internal validity (Bible) and external validity (history, artifacts, ruins, etc.) to show that the Bible can be validated and that it is a true inspirational writing given from the Father which has been passed down throughout the generations without any corruption.

https://www.probe.org/the-dead-sea-scrolls/#text6

Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Viking Press, 1955), 304, quoted in Norman Geisler and William Nix, General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 367.