The authors claim that what they wrote came straight from God. As a starting point, it's important to realize that the authors of the various books within the Bible claimed that they were passing on revelation directly from God. 2 Timothy 3:16 states that "All Scripture is Godbreathed.." The Greek word translated God-breathed means "breathed out, " and so the idea is that the Scriptures represent the words of God as if God Himself were speaking them. So, for example, in recording the circumstances surrounding the writing down of the Ten Commandments, Exodus 34:27,28 states, "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.'...And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant--the Ten Commandments." To give another example from the Old Testament, Jeremiah the prophet claimed that his words were God's words, "For twenty-three years...the word of the Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened (Jeremiah 25:3)." In fact, the expression "Thus says the Lord" appears no less than 359 times in the Bible. To give an example from the New Testament, the apostle Paul writes, "...when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God ... (I Thessalonians 2:13)."
In fact, one can scarcely open up the Bible at any point and read for very long before one is struck by the fact that the authors write as if they are passing on God's direct revelation--and not merely their own thoughts. This of course does not prove that the Bible is the inspired word of God. But it does disprove the notion that the Bible represents "normal" writing that acquired the status of divine revelation over time. The notion that the Bible is the inspired word of God is not the product of tradition. It is the recorded statement of the authors themselves.
The authors of the individual books of the Bible were--for the most part-individuals whose authority was attested to by great works from God. In the Old Testament, Moses, Joshua, Solomon, and Jeremiah were just a few individuals whose service for God was attested to by great miracles. In the New Testament, the ministry of the apostle Paul and the original disciples of Christ--and their associates--was conducted amidst many confirming signs and wonders. Thus, much of the Bible was written by individuals whose trustworthiness as representatives of God was established by public demonstrations of supernatural acts. There are at least two objections to this line of argument.
The first is that the primary record of the attesting miracles is given in the Bible. Is there any confirming record outside the Bible of supernatural events? While a detailed answer to this question cannot be given here, consider the following. Something was responsible for the phenomenal growth of Christianity in Jerusalem shortly after the public crucifixion of Christ. This is a historical fact. It is especially difficult to understand how Christianity was so enthusiastically embraced by Jews living in Jerusalem--the world capital of Judaism--given that its core message was that (i) Jesus Christ had risen from the dead--a preposterous claim that was made even more preposterous by the fact that his death on the cross was publicly witnessed by so many; and (ii) that the Jewish people had collaborated in the killing of their Messiah. Why would anybody be willing to believe these crazy claims, unless there were some powerful, corroborating demonstrations that this teaching was true and straight from God?
The second objection is how can we be sure that Moses actually wrote the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch), or that Paul was the author of the books traditionally credited to him? With respect to the Old Testament authors, this problem is a legitimate concern. It's just very difficult to prove authorship so far back in antiquity. With respect to the New Testament, virtually no scholar today doubts that the apostle Paul was the author of the great majority of the letters attributed to him. We can be confident of this because we have records of individuals who lived in Paul's own lifetime, who knew both him and his writing, and acknowledged that the writings attributed to him were from him.
For example, in the book of 2 Peter in the New Testament, generally recognized as being written in the 60's to 70's A.D., the author writes, "...our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures ... (2 Peter 3:16)." Already by the early part of the second century--when people were still alive who would have personally known Paul--the writings of Paul were collected together and circulated under one cover (commonly called the "Apostolos") with Paul's authorship acknowledged explicitly. Thus, our reason for believing that Paul wrote the letters attributed to him is the same for why we believe that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address--those people who personally knew Lincoln vouched for the authorship of Lincoln on the Gettysburg Address--and we accept their testimony as reliable.
Jesus Christ Himself attested to the inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures. Christ made many references to the Old Testament scriptures during his ministry. His statements attesting to the divine source of these writings can be grouped in three categories. First, Christ referred to the regulations of the Old Testament as the "commands of God;" and he referred to the writing of the Old Testament as if it were spoken directly by God. For example, in discussing the Old Testament command to honor one's father and mother, Christ said, "...why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and mother'...(Matthew 15:3,4)." Second, he referred to the authors of the books of the Old Testament as "prophets," that is, spokesmen for God; and their writings as prophecies. Examples are Matthew 12:39 where Christ says, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah." And in Matthew 11:13, he says, "For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. " And third, Christ confirmed that the Old Testament prophecies were divinely inspired by his confidence that all prophecy contained in the Scriptures would be "fulfilled" in their entirety. So he says in Matthew 5:17,18: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." Especially startling in this context is Christ's claim that the Old Testament scriptures prophesied his own coming: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life (John 5:39,40)."
It is difficult to explain the fulfillment of many biblical prophecies if one denies to the inspiration of the Scriptures. A detailed discussion of the many prophecies made in the Bible that were later fulfilled is beyond the scope of this brief article. The interested reader is referred to McDowell (I 979), particularly chapters 9 and 11. One of the most amazing prophecies in the Old Testament concerns the ministry of the "Suffering Servant" prophesied in Isaiah 52:13-53:12. This prophecy details a coming servant who would die for the sins of others:
Not only would this coming servant die and take the sins of the world upon himself, but he would also rise again from the dead:
Another argument in favor of the Scripture are the many statements that evidence a knowledge of science far in advance of what was known at the time. In Isaiah 40:22, it states that "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth." However, until relatively recently, it was generally understood that the earth was flat. Further, in the book of Job it is written, "He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing (Job 26:7). " Here we have a clear statement that the earth hangs suspended in space, far removed from the picture of Greek mythology where Atlas held the earth on his shoulders. How does one explain a statement like this? One last example is the statement in Leviticus 17:11 that the "life of the creature is in the blood." The great scientist William Harvey took these words at face value and devoted his investigations to demonstrating that this biblical statement was literally true. We now take these words as statements of obvious scientific truth--but they predated their scientific confirmation by approximately two thousand years! The Bible is not a scientific textbook. But when it speaks on matters that touch on science, it is without exception scientifically accurate, even when the respective scientific knowledge was not discovered until many centuries in the future.
Bruce, F. F. The New Testament Documents- Are They Reliable? Downers Grove, U,: InterVarsity Press. ISBN: 0-85110-307-3.
Comfort, Philip Wesley, editor. The Origin of the Bible. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 1992. ISBN: 0-8423-4735-6.
McDowell, Josh. Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Revised Edition. San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, Inc., 1979. ISBN: 0-918956-46-3.
Bob Reed
Associate Professor
Economics
If you have any questions or comments you can E-Mail me at BREED@OU.EDU