This is the third post of a series about the Bible—specifically some of those central and important questions asked about the Bible. The first post in this series introduced the acronym M-A-P-S as a way to remember the answer to the question, “How can we know the Bible is the Word of God?” In that first post, I discussed what the first letter represented: Manuscript Evidence. The second post addressed the A, which stands for Archeological Evidence. We saw that the Bible is trustworthy regarding its historical claims, but what about its spiritual claims? Some of the Bible’s spiritual claims are contained in its prophecies. This post is going to address the P, which stands for Prophecy. I know there is someone reading this and already thinking, “There are a lot of other ancient books that contain prophecies, what makes the Bible any different?” The difference between the Bible and other ancient books of prophecy is that the prophecies in the Bible are specific and they are fulfilled. We are going to examine just a couple of those prophecies in this post because of space constraints. My goal in this post is to demonstrate the nature of some of these prophecies and their fulfillment. It is not my intention to give an exhaustive treatment regarding all of the prophecies in the Bible that have been fulfilled.

With all of that being said, there is probably still someone thinking, “The Bible is not the only book to have prophecies that have been fulfilled. Nostradamus wrote many prophecies that have been fulfilled.” This argument simply does not hold water when all the facts are known. Did Nostradamus write prophecies? Yes, he wrote a lot of prophecies contained in what is known as Les Propheties. He recorded all of his prophecies in a particular form known as quatrains. He also used veiled language. He did this in a purposeful attempt to make it difficult to understand his prophecies. Why might he do this? It was to avoid persecution by the church. The method Nostradamus used in order to come by his predictions was Alchemy. During his lifetime, this was viewed in a bad light by the church and had even been condemned by the church in previous years. So the prophecies that people proclaim are so clearer fulfilled were written to avoid being understood by his contemporaries. Now we read them some 500 years removed and think we can understand them, I think not.

The prophecies in the Bible (for the most part) do not use veiled language but are very clear and easy to either demonstrate as fulfilled or false. Take for example the prophecy that the Israelites would be allowed to return the their homeland and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. This was predicted in Isaiah and Jeremiah:

This is the second post in a series looking at the many questions surrounding the Bible. In my previous post, I began answering the question of how we can know the Bible is the Word of God. I gave the acronym M-A-P-S as a guide and a helpful way to remember the answer. I began by tackling the first letter in the acronym, which stands for Manuscript Evidence. I also answered the question of whether or not the Bible is riddled with errors—as many as 300,000. This post is going to deal with the second letter of the acronym, which stands for Archeological Evidence. Does archeology support the Bible or does it contradict the Bible?

Archeological Evidence
Before one can answer this with a simple yes or no, some things have to be understood about archeology, the Bible, and how the two relate. Archeology is a very limited field of study. It is a discipline in which one attempts to reconstruct the past through the evidence on hand. Now, this is not unlike modern forensics that has been so famously featured on shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigators. However, forensics looks at recent evidence that is often abundant whereas archeologists look at ancient evidence that is often in poor shape and is rather scarce.

Often times, what archeologists are able to locate is what would be considered garbage. Discarded pottery, utensils, and human remains comprise the majority of evidence submitted into the archeological forensic laboratory. Some of these can be quite helpful. For instance, pottery is very helpful in dating an archeological site because there are very distinct patterns on pottery through different periods. However, pottery cannot tell an archeologist about the daily life of the people who owned it nor can it disclose the religious beliefs of those people.

The limits of archeology are truly highlighted by the fact that far less than 5% of historical sites have been excavated whatsoever and far fewer have been meaningfully excavated. So we have very little in terms of the available archeological evidence on hand. Furthermore, as I noted above, most of this evidence is “left-overs” from the culture. Even more problematic is the fact that most of what archeology has discovered in the way of artifacts is not published and, therefore, is not available for review or for information purposes.

It is also important to understand how archeology and the Bible relate. The Bible was not written to be a historical record. Its purpose was not to record details in a historical light; its purpose was to record details in a theological light. The Bible deals with information about God, the spiritual realm, salvation, etc. and these are all things with which archeology cannot interact.

So where does archeology fit into the Bible? While the Bible does not primarily deal with history, it does record historical facts. This is where archeology comes into play. For example, Luke records a lot in the way of historical facts in the book of Acts located in the New Testament. Likewise, there are names of people groups, cities, kings and the like mentioned throughout the Bible. This is where archeology has aimed its sights at proving or disproving the Bible.

At this point, one must note that the possibility exists for archeology to prove the Bible false on these historical facts. However, this would only prove the Bible historically inaccurate at that singular point at best and wholly inaccurate at worst. Even more important to realize though, is that this does nothing to prove or disprove the Bibles spiritual claims—and this is the Bible’s primary focus and purpose.

While the possibility exists for archeology to show the Bible historically inaccurate, this simply has not been done at this point in time. There are many places in the Bible where it has been attempted to show that archeology demonstrates the Bible to be unreliable or wrong. Some of these examples include the Exodus event, the Hittites mentioned in the Old Testament, and Luke’s details in the book of Acts.

The Exodus Event
It has long been argued that the events as recorded in the book of Exodus could not have occurred or that they vary from the account contained in the Bible. The biggest “fact” cited in opposition to the Exodus event is that no evidence can be found which places the Israelites in Egypt—at all. There is one serious problem with this notion. The Egyptians were notorious for destroying historical records. Some of these examples include the “erasing” of Queen Hatshepsut (see left), the Hyksos rulers, and Akhenaten. With examples like these of strong revisionist history in Egypt, should it come as a surprise that there is no evidence in Egypt that the Israelites were there—slaves that eventually ruined their land and then left without as much as a skirmish.

Even though this is the case, there is a discovery that corroborates the timeline of the Exodus event. The discovery is known as Merneptah’s Stele (see right). It is a catalogue honoring Pharoah Merneptah’s military campaigns leading up to his defeat of the Libyans. The stele mentions his defeat of Israel and places them in the land of Canaan at about the same time as what is recorded in the book of Judges or possibly the end of Joshua.

The Hittites
For a long time, the naming of this and other people groups mentioned in the Old Testament (specifically Genesis) was cited because there was no evidence of them. However, recent archeological finds discovered documents and remains of what is considered to be their capital city located in modern day Turkey.

Luke’s Historical Record in Acts
For centuries, scholars attempted to show that Luke was not an accurate historian because he incorrectly used names regions, cities, routes, etc. One of the specific instances of this was Luke’s use of politarchai to describe the city officials in Thessalonica. This criticism has been shown to be unfounded since the word was inscribed in stone at the base of an arch as well as in several other inscriptions. So the argument that Luke made this word up because it was not used anywhere else simply failed to materialize in support of the claim that Luke was inaccurate when recording the names and places found in Acts.

Archeology has not proven the Bible to be historically wrong thus far. In fact, it seems quite the opposite has been the case. Where archeology and the Bible has intersected, it has demonstrated the Bible to be historically accurate. But can the Bible be trusted with its spiritual claims? It is this question I will answer in the next post.

It seems like there is no scarcity of questions regarding the receiving and transmission of the books contained in the Bible. Questions like: How can we know that the Bible is the Word of God? How did we get the Bible as we know it today? Why is the Bible so important anyways? These are important questions that deserve answers. Much of Christian practice and beliefs is rooted and founded upon the Bible. Therefore, the answers to these questions shape how a Christian will approach the Bible and then apply the truths they see contained therein to everyday life—both for the individual and the church. This will be the first post of many, which are going to be devoted entirely to answering those questions. And the first question is...

How can we know that the Bible is the Word of God?
The answer is simply M-A-P-S. This is the acronym that I like to use in order to give people a way to remember the information. One reason I particularly like giving this acronym is because nearly every Bible in print today contains a section of maps in the back.

Manuscript Evidence
Archeological Evidence
Prophecy
Statistical Probability

Manuscript Evidence
When one looks at the manuscript evidence regarding the Scriptures, it is abundant and convincing. For comparison, take Plato’s Tetralogies. There are only 7 copies in existence and those copies are 1,200 years removed from the time Plato penned the work. Pliny the Younger, who was a historian in the first century AD, penned his historical writings of which we only have 7 copies that are 750 years removed from the time he composed his work. Furthermore, Homer’s Iliad, which has arguably the best manuscript evidence of all the writings of the ancient world, has only 600 copies in existence that are 1,000 years removed from the original date of composition. When textual critics look at these documents they do not question the reliability of them but regard them as historically accurate.

How does the Bible stack up in comparison? The Old Testament has a great abundance of manuscript evidence—over 11,000 copies. These copies include the Septuagint (LXX), which was a Greek translation of the Hebrew texts. It also includes the Qumran texts more popularly known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are some of the earliest copies we have today. There are a lot of other copies that give a wealth of information regarding the Old Testament texts. This towers over the evidence of all other ancient documents, like Homer’s Iliad, Plato, Pliny the Younger, etc. But does the New Testament also have the same abundance of information?

The New Testament also has a lot of copies available, some 5,366. The New Testament has received a lot more attention than the Old Testament. Authors such as Bart Ehrman appear to constantly be attacking the New Testament. What is interesting about these attacks is not that he argues the textual support is lacking in the way of sheer volume of copies, but that the copies have been corrupted. So you hear Ehrman and others throwing out statements similar to the following: “The New Testament contains over 300,000 errors.” That sounds like a whole lot of errors and would be reason enough to question the reliability of the New Testament. However, a quick introduction to textual criticism will help clear up this statement that seems to deal such a fatal blow to the reliability of the Bible.

Textual criticism is the study of manuscripts by comparing copies to one another in order to determine the original reading of the source document. Comparing these documents side-by-side yields a pretty good picture of what errors were introduced into the text; the more copies available and the closer those copies are to the original, the better textual critics can determine what errors were introduced. Now, how do we get a number like 300,000 when there aren’t even that many words in the New Testament (there are only 181,253 words)? It is because of the way errors are counted. Spelling errors are counted in that number. Also, if a spelling error is copied 100 times, that is 101 errors. When a word is copied twice, that is an error. How did this happen? Sometimes those copying the texts would take a break to eat, sleep, or something else and would come back and they would copy the same same word two times, consecutively. Every time this error was copied, it counts as another error. Words copied out of order are also counted as errors. Now, this might sound like a big deal at first, but English and Greek are very different in regard to grammar. Word order is not as important in Greek as English. In other words, there is not subject verb agreement necessary in the Greek; word order was used mainly for emphasis. Once again, every time this was copied, it is counted as another error. Once you understand this, it becomes easy to see how one can get to a number like 300,000 errors.

In reality, there are only three places in the New Testament that have any question about authenticity. The first of these three places is found at the end of the gospel of Mark. Many newer translations make note of this fact. The New International Version (NIV) puts a line through the middle of the page after verse 8 and before verse 9 with the statement: The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20. Other translations such as the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the English Standard Version (ESV), and the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) don’t make note of it in the same dramatic manner as the NIV, but they all make note with brackets or parenthesis and a note to the same effect as the NIV. The scholars have discovered that many of the earliest copies did not have these verses, but the vast majority of the later copies did contain these verses. The NIV translators felt there was enough evidence to question the authenticity of these verses, but rather than risk removing something that could possibly have been original in the text they came to the resolution to make a note that these verses were questionable. However, even if these verses were left out of the gospel of Mark, they change nothing concerning salvation; the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ; or that Jesus was God in the flesh.

The second place that is questioned is located in the gospel of John. The passage in question is the story of the woman caught in adultery and brought to Jesus by the Pharisees. Once again the NIV separates out this section with a line across the page and the statement: The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-8:11. Just like the passage in the gospel of Mark, this passage changes no doctrine of the church whatsoever. The last place in question is found in 1 John. Here, the passage is almost certainly an addition to the text. Following is 1 John 5:7-8 quoted first as it reads in the NIV and then the KJV (emphasis mine):