As we continue with our consideration of the reliability of the Bible (with special attention being paid to the writings of the New Testament), I would like to review the premise and the three basic historical facts we looked at earlier.

The premise from which we are operating is as follows: the reliability of the Bible is important as it is from the Bible that we learn information about the person of Jesus: who He is, why He came, and what He has done and is doing.

We believe this is a matter of paramount importance. Can we trust what we read in our Bibles? Behind this specific consideration is the larger theological issue of revelation and the modern skepticism concerning the reality of it. But Christianity is a revealed religion, and, in fact, is the steward of the definitive revelation of God in Christ. It is through the teachings of the Bible that we learn about Christ. Thus, our confidence in scripture is our confidence in the revealed truth of God, or God’s word.

The three basic historical facts that will continue to frame our discussion are:

1. The books of the New Testament were written. The original manuscripts are called “the autographs”
2. Immediately, copies began to be made of the autographs and spread throughout the world. We refer to these as “the New Testament manuscripts.”
3. In the year 367 AD, Athanasius, in his Festal Letter, provided the earliest known list of the 27 books of the New Testament as we know them.

We will be giving the first two facts particular attention.

No other ancient work has such a strong body of manuscript evidence as close to the time of its writing as does the Bible.

One of the significant arguments for the reliability of the Bible has to do with the manuscript evidence that we possess. In order to get at this, we will need to remember especially those first two facts. Let us use 1 Corinthians as a case study. First, let us realize that 1 Corinthians was written by Paul in the mid 50’s AD.

The original letter, the first edition of 1 Corinthians, is call “the autograph.” We do not possess it. We do not possess any of the New Testament autographs. However, what we do possess are numerous copies of the original letter.

So how do we know what 1 Corinthians says? Primarily by looking at the earliest manuscripts. The earliest manuscripts are usually given the greatest weight because they were copied closest to the time of the original writing. Then we look at all the manuscripts we have for 1 Corinthians, comparing them as we go. We also consider the writings of the earliest church fathers and how they referred to and quoted or paraphrased 1 Corinthians. In this way, we are able to see what the original said. The process is a lot more complicated, of course, and there are specialists in numerous fields that contribute to this process, but, in general, this is how we come to know what, say, 1 Corinthians says.

It has become fashionable for critics to harp on the fact that we only possess copies of the New Testament writings and not the originals. As we have already said, this is not terribly significant. Papyrus and other mediums do not last forever and the fact that the autographs have not survived is neither here nor there. Perhaps God in His wisdom knew that the Church would be tempted to make an idol of the original writings had they survived. And, of course, perhaps they have survived and have not yet been discovered. Exciting early manuscript finds happen all the time!

No, the truth is that, what we have with the New Testament and its manuscripts is, in the words of Dan Wallace, “an embarrassment of riches.”

What does he mean by that? What he means is that the manuscripts we have for the books of the New Testament are so voluminous and are so much closer to the time of the writing of the biblical autographs than are the manuscripts for other ancient works that are generally trusted today that if we cannot trust the Bible, then we have much more reason not to trust these other works.

Let me demonstrate. Below is a series of ancient works. Their authors are listed as are the book/s they wrote, the date they were written, and the date of the earliest surviving copy we have for that book. We likewise possess none of the autographs, the originals, for any of these writings. Then the time gap between the date of the writing of the autograph and the date of the earliest manuscript is written along with the number of manuscripts we have for that work. Let us consider how the New Testament stacks up to these other works of antiquity.

An embarrassment of riches indeed! This is simply staggering. Let me share Dr. Wallace’s conclusion concerning this amazing comparison:

In terms of extant manuscripts, the New Testament textual critic is confronted with an embarrassment of riches. If we have doubts about what the autographic New Testament said, those doubts would have to be multiplied at least a hundred-fold for the average classical author. And when we compare the New Testament manuscripts to the very best that the classical world has to offer, it still stands head and shoulders above the rest. The New Testament is far and away the best-attested work of Greek or Latin literature from the ancient world. Precisely because we have hundreds of thousands of variants and hundreds of early manuscripts, we are in an excellent position for recovering the wording of the original. Further, if the radical skeptics applied their principles to the rest of Greco-Roman literature, they would thrust us right back into the Dark Ages, where ignorance was anything but bliss. Their arguments only sound impressive in a vacuum.[1]

The late Frederic Kenyon, famed British paleographer and classical scholar, put it even more poignantly:

The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.[2]

Church, marvel at the amazing evidence and the mountain of confirmation that God has left His people concerning the reliability of His word.

The variants in the manuscript copies are almost completely trivial.

But let us go back a moment to the autograph and the manuscript copies.

The next question is do the manuscript copies we have contain discrepancies between themselves? In other words, if we compare all of the copies do they all completely agree? And the answer is clearly no. There are discrepancies among the manuscripts.

Much is made of this fact by detractors of the Bible. Indeed, of all the arguments marshaled against scripture, this is one of the most common. It is asserted with confidence that since there are discrepancies among the manuscripts we therefore cannot know what the Bible says. But when this attack is made, those making it are really revealing their own biases and personal agendas.

In point of fact, discrepancies among the manuscripts do not matter and do not touch on the reliability of the Bible for two important reasons.

The first is that the doctrine of inerrancy, or the idea that the Bible has no errors, applies to the autographs, to what Paul or Matthew or John or whomever actually wrote, not to later copies. For instance, were I to ask all of you to open your Bibles to the little book of Philemon in the New Testament and then give you all pen and paper and ask you to copy the book of Philemon, I guarantee you there would be discrepancies in our copies. But the fact that you and I might have made mistakes in copying the book does not mean (a) that the book itself has errors or (b) that our errors make the original wording of the book unattainable.

The doctrine of inerrancy has always applied to the autographs. The classic evangelical statement on inerrancy is the 1978 “Chicago Statement on Inerrancy.” It is a very interesting and well-done statement that should be closely considered. A few of its affirmations and denials are especially apropos for our considerations.

Article VI. We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.

Article X. We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.

            We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.[3]

Thus, any discrepancies in the manuscripts simply cannot touch the doctrine of inerrancy. But what of the discrepancies? What kind of variances are there? Are they so great that they conceal the wording of the original from view? Hardly. The fact is that the vast, vast majority of these discrepancies are matters of spelling or obscurity.

This certainly takes a good deal of steam out of the bluster of the critics. Theologian Wayne Grudem has summarized the differences in the manuscripts like this:

…for over 99 percent of the words of the Bible, we know what the original manuscript said. Even for many of the verses where there are textual variants (that is, different words in different ancient copies of the same verse), the correct decision is often quite clear, and there are really very few places where the textual variant is both difficult to evaluate and significant in determining the meaning. In the small percentage of cases where there is significant uncertainty about what the original text said, the general sense of the sentence is usually quite clear form the context.[4]

More significant is the conclusion of Bart Ehrman concerning these differences. His conclusions are significant because Ehrman is a former evangelical turned atheist New Testament scholar. He is the current media darling on these matters and has made quite a comfortable living attempting to debunk and cast doubt on the New Testament in particular. To be clear, he feels that there are a few places where the discrepancies really do matter, but in his book, Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman, in answering a question posed to him by the editors, likewise admitted that the presence of discrepancies is not simply shattering to Christianity and that the vast majority of them simply do not matter.

Why do you believe these core tenets of Christian orthodoxy to be in jeopardy based on scribal errors you discovered in the biblical manuscripts?

Essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.[5]

Furthermore, last year, in a June 19, 2014, blog post entitle, “Who Cares?? Do the Variants in the Manuscripts Matter for Anything?” Ehrman spoke further to this when he said the following:

“[T]he vast majority of the…differences are immaterial, insignificant, and trivial…Probably the majority matter only in showing that Christian scribes centuries ago could spell no better than my students can today…[N]one of the variants that we have ultimately would make any Christian in the history of the universe come to think something opposite of what they already think about whatever doctrines are usually considered ‘major.’”[6]

Church, given the staggering amount of manuscript evidence over the first fifteen hundred years of the Christian era, we would expect human errors in the copies. What is truly wonderful, however, is that the insignificant and truly petty nature of over 99% of these discrepancies in no way affect our understanding of what the original manuscript said. You may therefore hold your Bible with confidence, especially in the face of uniformed challenges to its reliability from those who, on the basis of a surface reading and understanding of the data, think they have found an irrefutable silver bullet against the faith.

Jesus and the Apostles viewed the Bible as reliable and God-given and quoted from it extensively.

Above all of these reasons, however, is one that is more significant than all others. We can get at this reason by listening closely to what Jesus said in His wilderness temptations in Matthew 4.

¹ Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ² And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. ³ And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” ⁴ But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” ⁵ Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple ⁶ and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” ⁷ Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ⁸ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. ⁹ And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” ¹¹ Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

Do you notice how Jesus began all three of his responses to the devil?

⁴ It is written…

⁷ Again, it is written…

¹⁰ For it is written

“It is written.” Jesus appeals three times to the writings. What writings? The writings of scripture.

Jesus thought the Bible was reliable and authoritative. He agreed that the scriptures are theopneustos, God-breathed.

This is the evidence above all other evidence, the proof above all proof: Jesus, the Son of God, quoted and relied upon scripture. Furthermore, so did the apostles. In fact, the New Testament is filled with references to the Old Testament. Here, for instance, is a chart showing every place in which the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, in which any portion of scripture references any other portion:

And here is another showing how often Jesus quoted the Old Testament:

The evidence is undeniable: Jesus and His apostles felt that the scriptures were authoritative and reliable. In his essay, “New Testament Use of the Old Testament,” Roger Nicole writes:

[A] very conservative count discloses unquestionably at least 295 separate references to the Old Testament [in the New Testament]. These occupy some 352 verses of the New Testament, or more than 4.4 per cent. Therefore one verse in 22.5 of the New Testament is a quotation.

If clear allusions are taken into consideration, the figures are much higher: C. H. Toy lists 613 such instances, Wilhelm Dittmar goes as high as 1640, while Eugen Huehn indicates 4105 passages reminiscent of Old Testament Scripture. It can therefore be asserted, without exaggeration, that more than 10 per cent of the New Testament text is made up of citations or direct allusions to the Old Testament. The recorded words of Jesus disclose a similar percentage. Certain books like Revelation, Hebrews, Romans are well nigh saturated with Old Testament forms of language, allusions and quotations…

If we limit ourselves to the specific quotations and direct allusions which form the basis of our previous reckoning, we shall note that 278 different Old Testament verses are cited in the New Testament: 94 from the Pentateuch, 99 from the Prophets, and 85 from the Writings. Out of the 22 books in the Hebrew reckoning of the Canon only six (Judges-Ruth, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezra-Nehemlah, Chronicles) are not explicitly referred to. The more extensive lists of Dittmar and Huehn show passages reminiscent of all Old Testament books without exception.

Nicole then says this about the New Testament use of the Old Testament.

The New Testament writers used quotations in their sermons, in their histories, in their letters, in their prayers. They used them when addressing Jews or Gentiles, churches or individuals, friends or antagonists, new converts or seasoned Christians. They used them for argumentation, for illustration, for instruction, for documentation, for prophecy, for reproof. They used them in times of stress and in hours of mature thinking, in liberty and in prison, at home and abroad. Everywhere and always they were ready to refer to the impregnable authority of Scripture.

Jesus Christ…quoted the Old Testament in support of his teaching to the crowds; he quoted it in his discussions with antagonistic Jews; he quoted it in answer to questions both captious and sincere; he quoted it in instructing the disciples who would have readily accepted his teaching on his own authority; he referred to it in his prayers, when alone in the presence of the Father; he quoted it on the cross, when his sufferings could easily have drawn his attention elsewhere; he quoted it in his resurrection glory, when any limitation, real or alleged, of the days of his flesh was clearly superseded. Whatever may be the differences between the pictures of Jesus drawn by the four Gospels, they certainly agree in their representation of our Lord’s attitude toward the Old Testament: one of constant use and of unquestioning endorsement of its authority.[7]

The Bible is authoritative and reliable and trustworthy. It is God’s word to us. It is the Bible that Jesus quoted and pointed to time and again. It is the Bible that the apostles quoted in advancing the gospel in the world. It is the Bible that the early church fathers pointed to and quoted and alluded to time and time and time again. It is the Bible that the followers of Jesus wrote then copied over and over and over and over again. It is the Bible that was spread and sent and carried throughout the world. It is the Bible that followers of Jesus have labored to copy and preserve and whose value many of them have demonstrated and confirmed with their own blood. It is the Bible that this Church preaches and on which we stand.

It is God’s word to humanity. It points us to Jesus, the Word who was with God and who is God. It is the infallible, inerrant, trustworthy, reliant word, the scriptures that still reveal the power of the gospel and teach us divine truth and draw our eyes to Jesus.

[1] (2013-07-01). In Defense of the Bible: A Comprehensive Apologetic for the Authority of Scripture (Kindle Locations 3210-3219). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] Quoted in F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), p.20.

[3] Carl F.H. Henry. “The God Who Speaks and Shows: Fifteen Theses, Part Three.” God, Revelation, and Authority. Volume IV. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), p.213.

[4] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), p.96.

[5] Referenced by Dan Wallace at the 50.20 mark in his 2013 Ouachita Baptist University lecture, “How Much Did the Scribes Corrupt the New Testament?” https://vimeo.com/74471900

[6] https://ehrmanblog.org/who-cares-do-the-variants-in-the-manuscripts-matter-for-anything/

[7] https://www.bible-researcher.com/nicole.html

In Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial, a man named Josef K. (referred to simply as “K.” throughout the book) is arrested on charges that are never explained to him by a court that is shrouded in mystery, presided over by judges that wield seemingly arbitrary power, and in which lawyers and agents of the court appear to be experts in obfuscation. K. attempts to live his life like normal in the midst of this odd ordeal, per the instructions of the court, but the ever-looming trial haunts and torments him, pulling him further and further into the depths of the system’s insanity.  Ultimately, K. is taken out by two agents of the court and executed with a knife.

This is a strange, frustrating, but intriguing and provocative tale.  The genius of Kafka was in creating mysterious, nightmarish tales that are open to various interpretations.  There is an absurdity about this story that is terrifying because it evokes the absurdity of life as we oftentimes actually encounter it.

The story left me with many questions.  What is the trial?  Is K. Kafka and is this a psychological or spiritual autobiography?  Is this a story about religion?  If Kafka saying that life itself is a strange trial the rules of which are never made clear to us, that God is the ominous Judge before whom we are somehow guilty and from whom we can never escape?  Is it a story about government, its power over man, its stifling and absurdist bureaucracy and labyrinthine red-tape, or is it simply a commentary on the suffocating, vicious underbelly of society and its power structures?  Is the trial more personal, a projection of Kafka’s own sense of being trapped in something he cannot possibly begin to understand, of being doomed by ominous forces outside of his control?  Is this an ode to existential despair, pessimism, nihilism even?

Is the key to the story to be found in the final words (or what appear to be the final words – Kafka never finished and polished the story, and fragments remain, but this appears to be the conclusion), K.’s final observation at the moment of his murder as the knife is plunged into him:  “Like a dog”?  Does that mean that Kafka’s tale is about how the maddening and nonsensical dynamics of life that we find ourselves trapped in eventually succeed in robbing us of our dignity and our humanity, that they reduce us to animals, “like a dog”?

There is a despair about this story that is unsettling, that somehow resonates with much that we experience in life.  It is reminiscent of Solomon’s more pessimistic musings in the book of Ecclesiastes, yet without the overarching hope of God’s deliverance.

This is a book to read more than once, but likely with some time in between.  I suppose the genius of Kafka is that he taps into the human sense of angst that all of us, at times feel.  I was drawn to and repelled by this story.

K.’s conversation with the priest in the cathedral had the most overtly theological (or theodical?) tone to it, and there I was close to concluding that this story is an accusation against God, that, in reality, The Trial is putting God on trial.  But I am not sure.  I fluctuated between thinking that and thinking that The Trial is simply life itself and its penchant for absurdist, inescapable dehumanization.  In that view, it is not unlike his story, The Metamorphosis [which I reviewed here].

I’m not sure what to say in terms of recommendation.  I can imagine many folks not liking this story at all.  But if you would like to see an attention-grabbing exercise in existential anxiety, and if you enjoy trying to decipher literary riddles, you should probably check this out.

I’m not going to say much about this here.  I’ll just let the sermon speak for itself until I decide to address the issue further.  But, for numerous reasons, I did something yesterday (Saturday) that I almost never do.  I set aside the sermon I had worked on all week and wrote a new one in light of the recent Supreme Court decision concerning marriage.  I am not a political preacher.  I’m a Jesus preacher.  But I simply felt that I had a responsibility to speak from a gospel perspective to this issue.  I am grateful to pastor a church where I can simply share my heart on such controversial matters.  Here’s the sermon.

Exodus 17

¹ All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. ² Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” ³ But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” ⁴ So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” ⁵ And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶ Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. ⁷ And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” ⁸ Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. ⁹ So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” ¹⁰ So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. ¹¹ Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. ¹² But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. ¹³ And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. ¹⁴ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” ¹⁵ And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner, ¹⁶ saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”

There is a story behind the following picture that lends it more significance than we might otherwise imagine at first glance.

This is a picture of Theodore Roosevelt on the back of a train during his 1906 visit to the then-being-built Panama Canal. He had gone to Panama to see and inspect the work as well as to inspire the workers in their grueling and dangerous efforts to complete the canal. His visit was significant. It was the first time a sitting president of the United States had visited a foreign country while in office, so to say it created quite a stir would be an understatement.

In his amazing book, The Path Between the Seas, David McCullough writes of the effect that the sight of Roosevelt had upon many of those who saw him.

To the majority of those on the job his presence had been magical. Years afterward, the wife of one of the steam-shovel engineers, Mrs. Rose van Hardeveld, would recall, “We saw him . . . on the end of the train. Jan got small flags for the children, and told us about when the train would pass . . . Mr. Roosevelt flashed us one of his well-known toothy smiles and waved his hat at the children . . .” In an instant, she said, she understood her husband’s faith in the man.” And I was more certain than ever that we ourselves would not leave until it [the canal] was finished.” Two years before, they had been living in Wyoming on a lonely stop on the Union Pacific. When her husband heard of the work at Panama, he had immediately wanted to go, because, he told her, “With Teddy Roosevelt, anything is possible.” At the time neither of them had known quite where Panama was located.[1]

That strikes me as very interesting, perhaps because the modern American political landscape has engendered such skepticism among people that one wonders if the sight of any leader could actually inspire anything like hope in people today. It is also interesting because it points to, at least, the potential impact that a lone person can have on others. But even as I say that I realize it is too simplistic. What caused this wife to immediately take courage and have hope for the future was not Roosevelt per se, but what Roosevelt had come to represent: American ingenuity, resolve, determination, and strength. In other words, Roosevelt himself had become a symbol of greater realities, realities that contained what was necessary to lift embattled laborers out of despair and into new vistas of hope and optimism.

Symbols can do that. There mere sight of the right symbol can do that. I think we see this dynamic at work all throughout scripture. I believe we certainly see it at work in Exodus 17. The chapter contains two different stories that are united by common symbols: Moses and his hands and his staff. And, like all symbols, these encouraged the people by pointing to realities that far superseded a man and a staff.

God gave Israel a symbol that reminded them of past deliverance.

We begin, amazingly, with yet more complaints about water. Water has played a large part in the story of Exodus thus far, both on the far side of the Red Sea and, of course, through the Red Sea, and now on the promised land side as well.

¹ All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. ² Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” ³ But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” ⁴ So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” ⁵ And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶ Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. ⁷ And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Yes, from the waters of the Nile, to the waters of the Red Sea, to the bitter waters of Marah, to the absence of water at Rephidim, water shows up again as both a necessity and a barrier. Above all, it (or its absence) shows up as an opportunity for the Lord God to prove once again his faithfulness.

The miracle at Rephidim is straight-forward enough: the children of Israel encamp, the children of Israel cry out for water, Moses, following the instructions of Yahweh God, strikes a rock and water gushes forth saving the life of God’s people yet again.

The IVP Bible Background Commentary rightly points out that “sedimentary rock is known to feature pockets where water can collect just below the surface. If there is some seepage, one can see where these pockets exist and by breaking through the surface can release the collected waters.” However, it also rightly goes on to say, “however, we are dealing with a quantity of water beyond what this explanation affords.”[2] We again see that naturalistic explanations will not work, even if God employed natural materials to work His wonders.

We see a pattern forming among the people of God: blessing – forgetfulness – complaint – rebuke – deliverance – blessing – etc. Time and time again we see this pattern or some variation of it. It is frustrating to observe, until, that is, we remember that we perpetuate this pattern in our own lives.

We are struck by the wonder of yet another miracle pointing to the glory of our great God. However, what stands out here is God’s instructions to Moses concerning how he was to approach the rock.

“Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶ Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.”

There is an element of theater here that catches our attention. Moses is to (a) take his staff, (b) walk before the people, and (c) take with him some of the elders. He is then to (d) strike the rock with the same staff with which he had struck the Nile. This was also the same staff that Moses held over the waters of the Red Sea as God divided the waters and then returned the waters. We see this in Exodus 14.

¹⁵ The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. ¹⁶ Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.

²¹ Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.

²⁶ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.” ²⁷ So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. ²⁸ The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. ²⁹ But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.

I am struck by these gestures that God repeatedly called upon Moses to employ and enact. After all, it was God working the miracle, not Moses, not his hands, and not his staff. So why ask Moses to act out these elements? There may be many reasons. Undoubtedly there is a certain element of leadership verification. God was thereby showing His own people that Moses was His divinely called instrument whom He was empowering to lead His children. Undoubtedly there was an element of clarification to Israel’s enemies as well. By allowing them to see that God was working through Moses, specifically, God was removing any temptation His enemies might have had of claiming that these events were simply freak occurrences.

There is something here about the abiding power of symbols and their importance in keeping God’s people focused and thinking clearly. At this point in the wilderness account, it is clear that Moses and his hands and staff had become symbols for the people of God. Simply put, they were symbols of God’s faithfulness, God’s might, God’s strength, and God’s love for His people.

Here at Rephidim, then, Moses walking before the people with his staff and his striking the rock was a way of reminding the people that the same God who turned the waters of the Nile to blood was the same God who divided the waters of Red Sea and was the same God who had turned the bitter waters of Marah sweet.

Thus, God was establishing among His people a symbol to remind them of past deliverance so that they would not lose heart in a time of present trial.

Of course, God has done the very same thing with His people today, the Church.

²³ For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11)

Bound up with all of this, of course, is the cross itself that the Church the world over has adopted as a symbol of the love and faithfulness of God.

God has left us physical symbols because Christians are not Gnostics. We do not consider all material creation to be evil. As physical beings, it is oftentimes through physical symbols that we are most helped to remember divine truths. Thus, the bread and the wine remind us, just as Moses and his staff reminded the Israelites, that God has not abandoned us, that God is with us, that God has not brought us into the wilderness to die of thirst, and that God will provide for His people.

Once again, God worked a miracle through Moses and his hands and his staff. At Rephidim, this miracle reminded the people. Then, on the heels of this great work, God called upon Moses and his hands and his staff to once more symbolize His divine power and majesty. This next miracle was occasioned by Israel’s first armed conflict since leaving Egypt.

God gave Israel a symbol that assured them of future victory.

Having provided miraculous waters, the Lord now moved to provide deliverance from an attacking army of Amalekites.

⁸ Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. ⁹ So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.”

The Amalekites were the descendants of Esau. They set upon the Israelites in the wilderness believing they could wipe out the wandering people. Of course, this was not to be. The Israelites were God’s people under divine commission to survive the wilderness and take back the land of promise. This meant that no army, be it the mighty army of Pharaoh or the undoubtedly less impressive but still dangerous army of the Amalekites, would conquer them. However, their victory still involved their obedience.

Moses called upon Joshua to act. This is the first time we meet Joshua. He was to play a crucial role in Israel’s eventual conquest of the land. Here, he is called upon to muster what troops he can to go and face the Amalekites. Tellingly, Moses said to him, “Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.”

Here is the point of connection between the two stories: Moses, his hands, the staff, and the power of God. Tomorrow, Moses would once again be the instrument through which God would work. Peter Enns has pointed out something telling about the use of the word “tomorrow” in verse 9.

“Tomorrow” Moses will climb a “hill” with “the staff of God in [his] hand.”…Why wait until “tomorrow”? Throughout Exodus “tomorrow” represents the time in which God will act to punish Israel’s enemies. We saw this in the plague narrative (8:23,29; 9:5,18; 10:4). Most recently the word was used in 16:23 with respect to Israel’s gathering of bread on the sixth day in anticipation of the Sabbath. In other words, tomorrow is when something “big” happens. That the defeat of the Amalekites is to take place “tomorrow” signals to the reader that this is another redemptive event. It is a plague on another of Israel’s enemies.[3]

This is intriguing to be sure. Indeed, something “big” did happen on the morrow! Thus, Moses made preparations for the children of Israel to engage in its first war as a post-Egyptian-exile people. Old Testament scholar Douglas Stuart calls this conflict between Israel and the Amalekites “an example of Old Testament holy war.” He then offers twelve characteristics of holy war for Israel based on Deuteronomy 20:1-20 and other passages in the Old Testament. These characteristics are:

1. No standing army was allowed.
2. No pay for soldiers was permitted.
3. No personal spoil/plunder could be taken.
4. Holy war could be fought only for the conquest or defense of the promised land.
5. Only at Yahweh’s call could holy war be launched.
6. Solely through a prophet could that divine call come.
7. Yahweh did the real fighting in holy war because the war was always His.
8. Holy war was a religious undertaking, involving fasting, abstinence from sex, and/or other forms of self denial.
9. A goal of holy war was the total annihilation of an evil culture.
10. The violator of the rules of holy war became an enemy.
11. Exceptions and mutations were possible, especially in the case of combat with those who were not original inhabitants of the promised land.
12. Decisive, rapid victory characterized faithful holy war.[4]

These points describe the recurring pattern of Israel’s conflicts with it enemies in the wilderness wanderings and conquest, and deviations from these guidelines resulted in great catastrophe. But here Israel was faithful and the people of God were victorious and received God’s favor and blessings as our text recounts.

¹⁰ So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. ¹¹ Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. ¹² But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. ¹³ And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. ¹⁴ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” ¹⁵ And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner, ¹⁶ saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”

Moses, standing upon a hill, led the children to victory. When his hands were raised, Israel triumphed. When he lowered them, the Amalekites began to win. Therefore two men, Aaron and Hur, helped keep his hands up. In so doing, they demonstrated once again that while the victory was wholly God’s, the symbolic means through which God worked His wonders mattered greatly. The hands needed to be raised.

Thus, the symbol of remembrance before the rock gushing water became also a symbol of victory, present and future, here on the hill above the raging battle. The same symbol therefore pointed backward and forward. It reminded and it anticipated.

Earlier we pointed to the Lord’s Supper as God’s final symbol of remembrance for His people. At Rephidim, God had established a symbol of past deliverance for grumbling Israel, just as, in the Supper, Christ established a symbol of remembrance for His beleaguered Church. Interestingly, the Lord’s Supper, like Moses and his hands and his staff, is also a symbol of present and future victory. Notice the anticipatory element in the words of institution concerning the wine.

²⁵ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11)

The Lord’s Supper is a symbol that we do over and over again “until he comes.” It is an act of remembrance and anticipation. The Church needs ever and again to be reminded of her Champion.

Israel knew that God was with them when they saw Moses upon the hill with his arms upraised.

The Church knows that God is with us when we see Jesus with His arms outstretched.

Moses’ upraised arms meant victory by might was assured.

Jesus’ outstretched arms mean that victory is assured by love, by forgiveness, and by obedience.

The cross is the living symbol of God’s presence, God’s mercy, God’s love, and God’s faithfulness.

There on the hill we still see the symbol of life for us: the cross upon which Jesus died. And we also see the empty tomb, reminding us that Jesus has overcome sin, death, and hell.

The people of God still need reminders that we have a Champion and that His arms are raised forever for us.

[1] McCullough, David (2001-10-27). The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 (pp. 499-500). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

[2] John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p.92.

[3] Peter Enns, Exodus. The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), p.346.

[4] Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus. Vol.2. The New American Commentary. New Testament, Vol.2 (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 2006), p.395-397.

If you grew up in church, it is likely that one of the first songs you ever sang as a child went like this:

Jesus loves me

This I know

For the Bible

Tells me so

Little ones

To Him belong

They are weak

But He is strong

Yes, Jesus loves me

Yes, Jesus loves me

Yes, Jesus loves me

The Bible tells me so

It is a sweet and, indeed, powerful little song…and it is gloriously true! The song makes a fundamental theological assertion: Jesus loves me. Then it twice gives the basis for our ability to know this fact: “the Bible tells me so.” This little song also points implicitly to a historical reality: the fact that the Church throughout time has stood confidently upon the claims of the Bible and what it says about God and us. But today that little statement, “the Bible tells me so,” is much more likely to be met with indifference or outright scorn than with confidence.

There can be no question that the major attacks on Christianity today are centered around the Bible. The average college student today or the average person with a normal amount of exposure to the major media outlets today will have heard numerous times that the Bible is unreliable, that it was written so far after the events that they purport to record that it cannot be trusted, that powerful leaders and churchmen altered the true message of the Bible to make it say what they wanted it to say, and that what we have is riddled with errors and contradictions and outright lies. In truth, the fundamental confidence in the Bible that many of you grew up feeling and seeing around you has largely been eroded in modern culture. More than that, any weight that the statement, “Because the Bible says so…” might have had at a certain point in our cultural history is by and large gone today.

Because of this, the Church needs to talk about how we got the Bible and the process of its formation. In truth, modern skepticism about the Bible presents the Church today with a unique opportunity to learn again the story that too many Christians today have never even heard, namely, the story of how the Bible came to be. It is, in fact, a truly amazing story and one that should engender faith and confidence in the Church. Young people in particular need to know that they can trust the Bible they hold in their hands, that they can have confidence that what they are reading is what was written, and that God speaks today through His word just as He has for two thousand years.

For our purposes today, I will be focusing on the New Testament in particular since that brings the topic into more manageable parameters in terms of size and since the New Testament in particular is the main point of the attack today for Christians. I am approaching this message with a particular premise in mind. That premise is this: the reliability of the New Testament is important as it is from the Bible that we learn information about the person of Jesus: who He is, why He came, and what He has done and is doing.

Let me also present three very basic facts related to the historical development of the Bible that will frame the presentation today.

1. The books of the New Testament were written. The original manuscripts are called “the autographs.” The autographs were written between 50-100 AD. None of the autographs have yet been discovered.
2. Immediately after the autographs were written, copies began to be made of the autographs and spread throughout the world. We refer to these as “the New Testament manuscripts.” We currently have around 5,800 Greek fragments, partial manuscripts, and complete manuscripts of the books of the New Testament. We have over 20,000 if we include manuscripts written in Latin and various other languages.
3. In the year 367 AD, Athanasius, in his Festal Letter, provided the earliest known list of the 27 books of the New Testament as we know them.

These three basic facts will be important as we work through the issues surrounding the question of the reliability of the New Testament.

The Bible claims to have been inspired by God.

The most basic and fundamental fact is that the Bible claims divine inspiration for itself. That is, the writers of the Bible saw the Bible as having come from God, as having been inspired by God.

We find the key passage for this in 2 Timothy 3.

¹⁶ All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

The Greek word for “breathed out” is theopneustos. Theo = God, pneustos = breathed out. “All Scripture is theopneustos.” “All Scripture is God breathed.” Mark Strauss has offered some helpful insights on this word that provide a needed nuance to our understanding of it.

The Greek word translated “God-breathed” is theopneustos, a term possibly coined by Paul himself to express the nature of inspiration. The King James Version rendering, “inspired by God,” finds it roots in the Latin Vulgate (divinitus inspirata). Unfortunately “in-spired” might suggest that God “breathed into” Scripture its authority, while theopneustos more likely means that God “breathed out” Scripture. Inspiration does not mean divine validation of a human work, but God’s self-revelation of his own purpose and will.[1]

God, therefore, breathed out the scriptures. While it is true that “the scriptures” Paul would have been referencing in this particular verse would have been the Old Testament Scriptures (for the New Testament was obviously in the process of being written), it is clear that the New Testament writers saw their writings as being likewise scripture and therefore likewise God breathed. For instance, in 2 Peter 3, Peter referred to Paul’s writings as “scripture.”

^15b just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, ¹⁶ as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.

The Bible proclaims divine inspiration for itself. It sees itself as more than a collection of mere writings. It sees itself as God’s words to man mediated through inspired writers. For the skeptic, this will be an insufficient argument, for skeptics would simply point out that the Bible saying that the Bible is divinely inspired is a circular argument. But for the Church this is the first place to start: the Bible is God’s word.

The doctrine of inspiration, as in God’s inspiration of scripture, is closely related to a larger doctrine, the doctrine of revelation. Revelation refers to the broader idea of God’s disclosure of otherwise hidden truths. Thus, in the case of the Bible, God has revealed truth by inspiring men to write His word.

I believe the doctrine of revelation is ground zero in the battle for truth in the world today. When all is said and done, the first question that must be answered is the question that the serpent asked Eve in Genesis 3:1 in the garden of Eden: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say…’” Along side the serpent’s question we should also put Pontius Pilate’s question from John 18:38, “What is truth?”

“Did God actually say?”

“What is truth?”

These two questions asked at two critical points in human history (the temptation of Eve and the crucifixion of Jesus) are still the questions being asked today. Has God actually spoken? Has God truly revealed anything about Himself? Does truth exist? How can we know it if it does? From where does truth come?

This is what is at stake in the modern world and, in truth, this is what has been at stake in every age of the world’s history: can we know the truth.

For Christians, the answer is a definitive, Yes! We know the truth because the Truth, Jesus, has come among us. “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Jesus is the apex, the summit of God’s revelation of Himself. But we know about Jesus through the scriptures that have been divinely inspired. Therefore, the Bible is not our object of worship. That would be idolatry. But the Bible does point toward the object of our worship, Jesus. To do so with any integrity, however, the Bible must be true and reliable and without error. And this is what the Bible is claiming for itself when it uses the word theopneustos, God breathed.

The writers of the Bible were aware of the need for accuracy and attested to the fact that they had been very careful in what they wrote.

The Bible is God’s word, but, again, it was mediated through men who were inspired by God to write the words. It is therefore profoundly significant that the writers of scripture gave testimony concerning the care they took with their writings. Consider, for instance, Luke’s preface to his book in Luke 1.

¹ Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, ² just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, ³ it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, ⁴ that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Luke acknowledges that many had written about the life of Christ and the beginnings of the Church, that these who had written had received and were now passing on the eyewitness accounts of those who saw and experienced the crucial events of the life of Christ, that he had closely studied the things that he was now writing, that he was structuring his letter in an orderly and careful way so that it would be accessible and understandable, and that the point of his gospel was that we “may have certainty concerning the things [we] have been taught.”

Certainty. This is what Luke felt the writings of the scripture could give us.

The point is that Luke makes a clear assertion of historical reliability and care with what he has written. Paul made the further point in 1 Corinthians 15 that the events described in his own teachings (and, by extension, his own writings) could be verified because many of the people who were hearing Paul were alive to witness the things about which he was teaching and writing.

³ For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. ⁶ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. ⁸ Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. ⁹ For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. ¹¹ Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Paul therefore leaned heavily on the fact of eyewitness corroboration for his teachings. This emphasis on accuracy and reliability is telling. Paul was not trying to spin a yarn for money or fame. Rather, he was passing on a story that had been verified by many others and for which he was willing to die.

Peter made it very clear that accuracy and reliability were important to him as well. In 2 Peter 1, he wrote:

¹⁶ For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

Peter bases the accuracy of his writings on the fact that he was writing about things he had personally seen. He was an eyewitness. He was not making up a story. He was simply reporting the facts.

Church, if skeptics and critics wish to say that the biblical writers were intentionally and deliberately conspiring to mislead a gullible public, they can do so…but that is what they will, in fact, have to say. The writers of scripture were abundantly clear that they were passing on accurate and reliable information.

While the canon of the New Testament was not formally recognized until the late 4^th century, the writings of the New Testament were being read and referred to by early Christian writers as early as the AD 90-110.

These writings, as we have said, were not formally codified until the 4^th century. This fact has led some to the profoundly over-simplistic conclusion that there was no Bible for four hundred years. This is extremely bad thinking, however. What the Church did in the 4^th century was finally and formally recognize the canon and establish the parameters of the definitive contents of the Bible, but in doing so they were not creating the Bible, they were simply and finally acknowledging what the Church had known for four hundred years already.

We know this because we have the writings of the church fathers, that is, the writings of those men who wrote immediately after the close of the canon. And guess what we find in the writings of the church fathers of the first three hundred years? A staggering number of references to the writings of the New Testament.

In his book, Is the New Testament Reliable? A Look at the Historical Evidence, Paul Barnett notes that three early Christian writers referenced the vast majority of the New Testament in their writings from 96-110 AD.

Clement, writing around 96 AD, references Matthew, Mark, Luke, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, James, and 1 Peter.

Ignatius, writing around 108 AD, references Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 3 John, and Revelation.

Polycarp, writing around 110 AD, references Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and 1 John.

Paul Barnett concludes that “on the basis of these three early Christian authors it can be stated that twenty-five pieces of the New Testament were definitely in circulation by about the year 100.”[2] This is compelling evidence of the early writing and accessibility of the New Testament that we have today.

In addition to these, the New Testament quotations of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Eusebius have been counted and, in all, these early writers quote from or reference or paraphrase the gospels, the book of Acts, Paul’s letters, the general epistles, and Revelation 36,289 times. This evidence led famed Princeton scholar Bruce Metzger to write, “so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of the entire New Testament.”

Dan Wallace, perhaps the leading evangelical New Testament scholar today, observes of these patristic allusions to the New Testament:

Commentaries, homilies, and other writings by ancient church leaders known as church fathers are so plentiful that if all the Greek and versional witnesses were destroyed, the text of the New Testament could be virtually reconstructed just from the data in these patristic writings.

The quotations of the New Testament by the fathers number well over a million. The fathers write as early as the late first century, with a steady stream through the thirteenth, making their value for determining the wording of the New Testament text extraordinary.[3]

Furthermore, Josh McDowell passes on this telling story:

Sir David Dalrymple was wondering about the preponderance of Scripture in early writing when someone asked him, “Suppose that the New Testament had been destroyed, and every copy of it lost by the end of the third century, could it have been collected together again from the writings of the Fathers of the second and third centuries?” After a great deal of investigation Dalrymple concluded: “Look at those books. You remember the question about the New Testament and the Fathers? That question roused my curiosity, and as I possessed all the existing works of the Fathers of the second and third centuries, I commenced to search, and up to this time I have found the entire New Testament, except eleven verses.”[4]

Even the physical forms of the writings we have bear testimony to the early Church’s acknowledgment of and dependence upon the writings of the New Testament. Paul Barnett explains:

Justin, a leader of Christianity in Rome in the middle of the second century, refers to the memoirs composed by the [apostles], which are called gospels, are read as long as time permits…Justin describes how the church leaders read and applied the message of the Gospels to the assembled believers each Sunday in every city. This is only one of numerous examples indicating that the Christians of the second century read the New Testament, as well as the Old Testament, in their Sunday-by-Sunday church gatherings. Consistent with this is the recovery in recent years of manuscripts of the New Testament texts. Significantly these papyrus records are written on both sides indicating that they were parts of books that scholars call codices. A scroll was usually written on only one side, but the codex, which consisted of separate sheets stitched together, was really an early form of a book. It seems that the Christians of the second century moved away from using scrolls (which were cumbersome) and (perhaps) pioneered the employment of the codex for its convenience for reading and teaching in the churches. As it happens we have the four Gospels and the Acts in a single codex (P45), Paul’s letters and Hebrews in a single codex (P46), and the Revelation in a single codex (P47). It is reasonably clear that these codices had been assembled for reading in churches and for instruction based on those readings. Many scholars date these three codices approximately to the end of the second century, though it is not possible to be absolutely precise. The critical observation is that the texts of the New Testament were thoroughly established within a century or so of the end of the era of the apostles.[5]

It is a beautiful thing to behold! Very early in the Church’s history we find her doing exactly what we are doing today: gathering together in worship around the written word of God and hearing what the Spirit was saying to the Church. They did so because they believed the scriptures to be God’s word and they believed them to be accurate and reliable.

So can we, to the praise and glory of God.

[1] Hays, J. Daniel; Duvall, J. Scott (2012-04-01). How the Bible Came to Be (Ebook Shorts) (Kindle Locations 82-89). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] Paul Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), p.39.

[3] Hays, J. Daniel; Duvall, J. Scott (2012-04-01). How the Bible Came to Be (Ebook Shorts) (Kindle Locations 535-539). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[4] Josh McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), p.43.

[5] (2013-07-01). In Defense of the Bible: A Comprehensive Apologetic for the Authority of Scripture (Kindle Locations 4827-4840). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

That’s the headline of this article.  It is worth reading and the videos embedded therein are worth viewing.

I am preaching a sermon series on apologetics right now…but this article provides more evidence for the truth of the gospel of Christ and what Jesus can do with a human heart than anything I could or will say.

Love and forgiveness are and will always be the greatest apologetic.

Pray for the suffering believers in Charleston.