Answers to your questions about life, religion and the Bible
The Bible … true or not?
Dear Father Paul: How did we get the Bible? How can we know that it is true? — Chris
Dear Chris: I’ll answer your second question first. The Bible is (by far) the most popular book on planet earth. Approximately 100 million Bibles are sold or given away free each and every year. In the Bible we learn about God, about his love, and about his plan to redeem mankind from sin and death through the salvation of his son, Jesus Christ.
The Bible is truly an awesome, even miraculous book, unique and totally unlike any other book … even other “Holy Books.”
This is borne out when we understand that the Bible is not one book, written by only one author, but is actually 66 separate books from Genesis to Revelation, books which were written by over 40 different authors, most of whom never met each other. The authors were from three different continents, and they wrote over a span of about 1,600 years, and in three different languages.
Considering these facts about the Bible, it is nothing short of amazing that every one of the Bible’s 66 books includes, in one way or another, the very same basic theme … God’s love for all of his creation, especially mankind, and his relentless effort to return mankind to the same close personal relationship he enjoyed with God before man’s sin and resulting separation from God.
Time after time over the centuries skeptics have attempted to disprove what the Bible claims about itself, namely, that it is indeed the “inspired” Word of God. The word “inspire” comes from a Latin root word which means “breathe on,” or “breathe into.” The Apostle Paul, author of much of the New Testament, speaks to this very point when he writes in II Timothy 3:16, that “all scripture is God-breathed.”
Being “God breathed” does not mean that God sat the 40 various authors of the Bible down and somehow put them into a trance and then “dictated” to them word-for-word the exact words of the Bible. Not at all. It does mean that God’s words were spiritually and divinely communicated by him to the various authors, then written down by them. The authors themselves were not spirits or angels but real flesh and blood people, just like you and me … people into which God “breathed” and inspired his timeless truths. One has only to read the Bible for oneself to sense its divine character.
In every single instance, efforts over the centuries, to “disprove” the Bible have crashed and burned, embarrassing their proponents. Because the Bible is indeed, inspired by God, the Bible can be counted on as “God’s very words and instructions to each of us personally,” and is intended by God to be the “foundation” upon which people base their lives.
So how did we get today’s Bible?
Keep in mind that the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Scripture, was already codified and accepted as divinely inspired by the Jewish people by the time of Christ. The new Christians accepted the Jewish Old Testament verbatim.
Following the death, burial, resurrection and return to heaven of Christ around 33 A.D., numerous letters, treatises, gospels and other writings began to spread throughout the young but growing church, Which of these were authoritative as “inspired’ or “God breathed” became a major issue for the early Christians. Which were “of God,” and which were potentially at least, “false teachings?” How to decide? Early on there developed several “tests” as to whether or not a writing was “inspired.” The most important of these tests was whether or not the writing was produced by one of Jesus’s original apostles. Another “test” was whether or not the writing was “orthodox,” i.e. was it what had been believed by all Christians , in all places since the time of Christ?
The four Gospel books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were universally agreed to by all of the church by around 280 A.D. The Council of Laodicea was held in 363 A.D. at which time all of the books of today’s New Testament, except Revelation were accepted as valid holy scripture.
In 367 A.D. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt produced an approved list of New Testament books identical to that of today (including Revelation) and with that the canon (list of approved books of the Bible’s New Testament) was deemed, and remains to this day, complete.
Do you have a question? Send it to me at [email protected] and I will try to answer your question in the paper.
Father Paul Massey is pastor emeritus of Church of the Holy Cross in Fayetteville, Georgia. Visit www.holycrosschurch.wordpress.com for information.
