August 15 1999:10.00a.m.
2 Peter 1:16-21
'Isn't the Bible full of contradictions?'
I hold in my hand the world's best-selling book. This is surely a remarkable
fact. Although the lists of best-sellers that booksellers publish never list the
Bible, it far outstrips any other book ever published? It is a book which
through the centuries of history has wielded great power over the lives of men
and women. It is one which has provoked fierce controversy; a book over which
blood has been spilt. It is a book on which, in most civilised western countries
legal oaths are sworn.
Here at Christ Church, in common with many
churches, we claim to be Bible-believing Christians. This doesn't mean that we
believe in a book. We believe in God and in his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ as
Saviour. But we do believe that all that we can know about God, Jesus and
salvation is contained in the Bible, and that the Bible is an infallible,
accurate record; that it is God-inspired. And therein lies the rub! Since the
Age of (so-called) Enlightenment, many people have cast doubt and scepticism on
the Bible, even sadly within the Christian churches. The most commonly levelled
charge, at the popular level at least, against the Bible is that it is full of
contradictions.
More fundamentally, the Bible is a collection of 66
separate books, written by 40 different authors over a period of more than 1,500
years, stretching from the first five books (Genesis to Deuteronomy) written by
Moses (even that is a bone of contention- when I did my Reader's training I was
told that these books were by many authors unknown and edited centuries later)
and down to the Christian apostles. For this cause many people say that it is
scarcely credible to rely on all the events recorded in Scripture, still less on
the detailed statement.
Let me first of all deal with the matter of the supposed contradictions, then
look at some of the other issues. I'll try to do it in as painless a manner as
can be! I think we can make two comments:
-first of all, many of the
so-called 'contradictions' are not really contradictions at all
-secondly,
many seeming discrepancies are apparent rather than real
Let us
first look at what a contradiction is. My Concise Oxford Dictionary defines
'contradiction' as 'denial', 'opposition' or 'statement contradicting another'.
This has never been found to occur in the Bible. Rather there is a remarkable
degree of consistency in a collection of books written by so many human authors
over so long a period of time.
Having said that there are apparent
discrepancies in matter of detail. I would deal briefly with three.
i. Paul
writes in 1 Corinthians 10 to warn his readers of disobeying God. He quotes
examples from Old Testament history. In verse 8 he warns, We
should not commit sexual immorality as some of them did- and in one day
twenty-three thousand died. Now if we turn to the account in Numbers to
which Paul refers we read in those who died in the plague numbered 24,000. Oh
dear! How can we trust Scripture?! But let us note that Paul says they died in
one day, absent in the Numbers account- Paul is just emphasising the suddenness
of judgment.
In passing, a note for those who say the God of the Old
Testament is not the God Jesus revealed. He wouldn't judge so harshly- would he?
Would he? Paul actually never infers that 'God isn't really like that!' Rather
the contrary. He's saying, 'Beware"!
ii. Daniel begins his book referring to
the initial exile to Babylon in 608B.C., saying In the third year of the reign
of Jehoiakim, king of Judah. Your informed sceptic will immediately refer you to
Jeremiah 46:2, where, reading of the same period we have this: in the fourth
year of Jehoiakim, king of Judah. Tut tut!!
The point is this. Daniel
wrote in the exile in Babylon. In the Babylonian system of computing years of a
king's reign, years were accounted according to years after accession- much as a
baby becomes one year old one year after its birth. By the Judahite system the
first year counted from the beginning of the reign: a new-born baby would be age
'one'.
iii. Then there are the famous discrepancies of the resurrection
accounts. Who went to the tomb first? How many angels were there? And so on.
Without going into detail, John Wenham has written a book called the 'Easter
Enigma' in which he dovetails all the accounts and shows that each writer took
an account from a different perspective.
But now I want to pass on from the straight seeming 'contradictions' to look
at other difficulties people have with the Bible. For many people the Old
Testament is but a series of myths, legends or else accounts written down long
centuries after the events. The Gospel accounts are seen as open to much
'Chinese whisper' type of error that it's not trustworthy. Above all the
manuscripts we have were written date from so long after the originals we can't
rely on them- they must be full of copyists errors.
The fact is that
whenever the Biblical account is examined it is found to be accurate and true!
Whenever the events recorded in the Bible can be checked against external
sources they are found to be correct. There is an account in the Old Testament
of the sun standing still in the heavens for a day- similar accounts are found
from around the world for it to be mere fabrication or something ill-remembered.
Countless races have accounts in their folk-lore of an early flood. Events in
non-biblical history concur with the Old Testament account.
Where the
biblical account can be checked out by archaeology it is proven true in every
case. There have even been some surprises. Thus in John's Gospel we have the
account to a man healed at the Pool of Bethsaida. Now for years no such place
was known of: there was no archaeological support and no other historical
document referred to it. Then one day archaeologists working in Jerusalem found
its remains- just as described in the Gospel.
In terms of the accuracy of the biblical text, let us take two facts into
account:
i. The Old Testament scripts were copied with extraordinary care
and accuracy. The texts used for our Old Testament is the so-called Masoretic
Text, dating from the 10th Century AD. Now it's interesting to know that amongst
the Dead Sea Scrolls (which have been the source of much controversy) there have
been found scripts for nearly all the Old Testament. The variations between Dead
Sea Texts and the Masoretic are negligible!
ii. The New Testament is better
attested than any other historical document of the same era. We have far more
copies of the text, dating back to much nearer the event No historian has
ever cast doubt on the authenticity of, for example, Caesar's Gallic Wars. Yet
the earliest document is of about 9th Century date compared to the New Testament
which exists in part back to the 2nd.
There are places where the Bible seems too accurate for credulity. Your
sceptic will try and explain that away. Take the book of Daniel, for example.
Much of it is prophecy and describes events of history in the 2nd and 3rd
centuries BC is great detail and accuracy. The Bible-critic will say.'Well,
Daniel purports to be written in 6th Century exile, but it can't really have
been written until 160BC. Let me to finish put before you the evidence for the
Bible's own view that Daniel wrote prophetically:
i. In Matt 24:15, the Lord
Jesus Christ speaks of the prophet Daniel. This firmly lays the Bible, even more
so Jesus himself on-the-line.
ii. Daniel is mentioned three times in
Ezekiel- no one doubts Ezekiel was a 6th century prophet.
iii. Daniel
himself consistently places himself in 6th Century Babylon- his own veracity is
thus on the line
iv. Daniel has a internal consistency of style
v. Had
he written in the 2nd century he would have been ignorant of the Babylonian
reckoning of kings' reigns. He also mentions other legal and geographical
details, for example of the destroyed Babylon.
vi. Daniel is in the Jewish
canon which was closed in the 4th century BC.
vii. The Jewish historian
Josephus states that Alexander the Great was shown a copy of Daniel in 365BC
viii. Daniel contains specific Messianic prophecy, including a prediction of
the exact date of the Crucifixion-which is proven spot on. Hallelujah!
I would like to end with a personal word of testimony. There was a time in my
life when, on account of Biblical criticism, and also because of personal
disbelief, I doubted the truth of the Bible. I decided to launch into an
investigation of the Synoptic Gospels. Whatever was common to all three and
could not have been added later to 'prove doctrine' I would accept. This
happened, believe it or not, after I had become a child of God. God is his mercy
protected his child and had mercy beyond measure. Before I even started on this
project I got pointed down another which resulted in my personal Baptism in the
Spirit. In our reading this morning from 2 Peter we had this;
No prophecy of Scripture
came about by the prophet's own interpretation..
men spoke from God as they were
carried along by the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit immediately filled
me with an absolute certainty of the authority of Scripture. I didn't have to
prove it (less still, try to disprove it). It was a rock-solid unshakeable
certainty.
I want to finish with a quotation from Dr J I Packer
Liberal theology in its pride has long insisted
that we are wiser than our fathers about the Bible, and must not read it as they
did, but must base our approach to it on the 'assured results" of criticism,
making due allowance for the human imperfections and errors of its
authors....The effect....The Bible...cannot be know to be 'God's Word
written"...The result? The spiritual famine of which Amos spoke.
God judges our pride by leaving us to the
barrenness, hunger and discomfort which flow from our self-induced inability to
hear his word.
Let us pray for the humility that we may know that everything
that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance
and encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.