Lecture

David: Well, today we begin a journey, where we are going to be examining three ways to defend the historic reliability of the Bible. We’re going to start by laying a foundation of understanding, really what the Bible is. So, it’s going to be an interesting journey.

Tony: Okay, that does sound very interesting, and we have another poll question, ready to go. So I’m going to push this one up right now, and this will be showing up in the chat window for those with us. The question is simply, if someone asked you to prove the Bible is historically accurate, could you do it? Yes, maybe, or no?

And again, in the chat window next to the video, if you’re on a computer, or below, if you’re on a mobile device, that you should see right between where it says, “Type this message” and “Ask a question.” It should show up with polls there.

David: And Tony this actually is a very important question for what we’re going to be studying and it’s an important question for those outside the Christian Faith. Is the Bible correct in what it says? Are the people, the places, the events that are mentioned in the Bible actually true, and did they happen? People really want to know that the Bible can be trusted. I remember when I was growing up thirty years ago or so there was kind of a general assumption, at least within American culture, that the Bible was kind of respected or true or revered in some way. That’s not necessarily so today. Hopefully we can give some information about the Bible and how we understand it. How are the results on that poll now?

Tony: Yeah, I’ll pull those up now. Maybe, the fact that we’re here, suggests that, I already know the answer to this question, but the Bible can be defended historically, is that correct?

David: Yes. At least, I hope so. We are going to give it a good try.

Tony: Alright, it looks like in the poll 15% said yes, 53% said maybe, 30% said no. So we got a range, and I think we’re all going to get a lot out of this tonight.

David: Okay. Well, I hope that we can at least push it more toward the “I know how to defend the Bible,” and maybe some of the things we’re going to be covering you already know, but we can give you some background in some of those areas and some new information.

So, let’s get started. As I said, we are starting our journey tonight by asking . . . really, we are looking at the reliability of the Bible and we are going to do so by asking three questions:

1. How do people view the Bible today? That’s going to give us a general understanding of where the Bible is in today’s culture.
2. We are going to look at what the Bible is. That may seem like a simple question to ask, but maybe the way we answer it will help you understand more why that’s an important question.
3. And then finally, can the Bible be defended? That is an important question as well because some people say, “Well, I simply have faith that the Bible is true.”

We do have faith, and we need to exercise faith. The Bible talks a lot about our faith in God, our faith in Christ, our faith in the Bible. But the faith that we have is not a blind faith, it’s an informed faith. When God is speaking about historical events, those events should be backed up with evidence of those things happening. We’re going to see that that in fact is true.

So, we are going to look at these foundational questions that we need to be able to answer. We are going to start with, how do people view the Bible today? It’s kind of a variety of surveys, one is from the Pew Research and the others from the Barna Group. Both great organizations that do a lot of surveys. We are going to be looking at various topics within these different surveys.

Bible Reading

We are going to begin with the topic of Bible reading. I think you may have a poll that you would like to start with.

Tony: I do, that’s coming up right now. How often do you read the Bible? is the question. Once a month or less, once a week, a few times a week? Go ahead and vote on those and David is going to walk us through some of the data.

David: The two questions that were asked about Bible reading, first of all, was, how much of the Bible have you personally read? This was taken within the American culture (United States), among adults. You can kind of see the results there. The red and the pink, the red colors are “none of it” or “only a few sentences.” Practically speaking, these will be people that have had very little exposure to the Bible, at least as far as reading the text. And that’s about almost 25% or 1 in 4 people. Just about the same amount, maybe just a few less than that, is in the brown and the tan. And that is, they’ve read all of it at least more than once, or they read it at least one time through. The majority of the people, 57%, are kind of in the middle there where we would say they’ve gotten some exposure to the Bible. They will say, “read several passages” or they at least read most of what is there.

Now the second question that they came up with was, Why have you not read the Bible more than what you have read it? There are some interesting answers here. The majority was, or at least one of the higher numbers was, “I don’t prioritize it.” We will see in one of the other surveys, as to what people do with prioritizing in their spiritual life. They don’t have time; they’ve read enough of it. I guess they are either tired or they know enough of it. They don’t agree with what it says. You kind of go on down to some smaller types of answers or demographics where they’re intimidated by the size of it. The last one there, “None of these.” I think there’s an answer that really has not been given that most people would probably fall into that 35%. And that is that I don’t understand it. I don’t really know what it’s talking about.

You can go to the Book of Amos or Obadiah or one of the other Major Prophets, especially in the Old Testament. Sometimes we pick up the Bible, we start to read, and we wonder, this seems so foreign to me. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know where we’re at in history. I don’t understand the customs. Maybe some of the language that people don’t understand, or it may be the translation they’re using is using some words that they’re not really that familiar with. So, I think a lot of people don’t read more of the Bible because of the reasons we see here, but also because they may just not understand what it is. I’m hoping that in this class, we can at least get a basis for what the Bible is. Then you can go to some of our other courses that we offer at Our Daily Bread University to dig in more as to learning what the Bible is all about. Do we have the results for the poll on reading?

Tony: We do indeed. I’m encouraged by them. It looks like 6% is once a month or less, 5% is once a week, 87% a few times a week or more. That would include people reading it every day or nearly every day.

These graphs you have, it says, “among Americans.” Is that among American Christians or is that among all Americans?

David: These were just done . . . mainly of people within the church. So, they’re looking at church numbers among Americans in the church, and these are all adults as well. This kind of is representative of where the church is today.

Tony: There were quite a few people then that are in the church that really haven’t read the Bible much or don’t read it as much as they would like to.

Views of the Bible

David: This is true. And we are going to find that out in some of the other statistics we will be looking at here in just a second. One of those is about views of the Bible by religious tradition. This one shows, if you’re a Christian, how do you view the Bible? They found out that 75% of Christians believe the Bible is actually the Word of God. That would mean that they believe that the Bible is inspired or at least special in that sense. That correlates very well with the 25% or so that said they don’t really read the Bible very much, or with some of those who said, I don’t think it has much to offer. So, among Christians, only 75% said that they believe the Bible to be the Word of God.

Compared to other religions, for example, within the religion of Islam. You’ll find that 81% believe that their book, the Quran, is actually inspired or is a word from God. Of the Jews, this one I think shocked me most, was only 37% of Jews today believe that the Torah, that’s the first five books of the Bible, is inspired and is, in fact, is given from God. I think that shows a lot about where the Jewish tradition has gone. It’s much more secular than it has been in the past. Only 37% of those believe that the Torah, the Books of Moses, are actually inspired in some way.

When they were asked the question of, how would you actually describe the Bible? This one gives us some information, again among Americans within the church. Which of the following describes the Bible in your mind? Many people said that it was a good source of morals, it was a historic account, helpful today, and people can give more than one of these answers, and it was true, and life-changing, and that it was a story, and we’ll read about that or talk about that here in just a moment. So, a good percentage of people see it in a mostly positive light. But, when you get down to some people, they would say, they believe it was outdated. Some have actually said that it is bigoted or harmful. Some would say they’re just not really sure whenever it comes to what the Bible is. So, there’s a variety of opinions, mostly good, but there still is a section of the church, a section of Americans that would say, I don’t really see the Bible in a positive light, though at least those in the church would say they do see it in a positive light.

Now the importance of the Bible in the Christian life is another kind of telltale sign of where we are at in the church. 42% say that they read the Bible, “reading the Bible is an essential part of being a Christian.” If you want to know about who God is, theologians talk about the Bible, as the special revelation. God gives a general revelation in the world. You can look at the stars and even the psalmist in Psalm 19 says “. . . you look at the stars and they pour forth speech; speaking about who God is . . .” Just the world around us speaks of a Creator but it’s the Word that really tells us who that Creator is. Only 42% of Christians say that this is an essential part of being a Christian. 37% say that the Bible is important but it’s not essential for a believer. And then there were 21% that say reading the Bible is not important in their Christian identity. That actually correlates to the very first one we saw, the 9%, that rarely read any of the Bible itself. These are some interesting statistics about where the church is today.

Bible Knowledge

As we move on, we are going to look at the idea of Bible knowledge. This was an interesting survey that was also done. They were asking people just some general Bible questions and asking what do you know about the Bible? It was discovered that 71% know that the Bible teaches that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. I would almost think it would be more, especially given the nativity story that is rehearsed every year at Christmas. Jesus, born in Bethlehem, the shepherds that came, and then later on the wise men that came to the family. But only 71% knew the Bible teaches that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. 63% could identify Genesis as the first book. That number actually greatly decreases when you start getting into maybe books like Jeremiah, or Isaiah, or other books, and some of the New Testament. In fact, most people could not name the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that really testify to who Jesus was and what He taught in his earthly ministry, only 45%. Finally, only 39% could identify who Job was, one of the oldest characters that we read about in the Old Testament. When it comes to content, people have a lot of information about the Bible, but it doesn’t seem that they know, they remember, or they are retaining some of the things that they’re hearing in sermons, or if it’s heard in Sunday school growing up.

Bible Confidence

Now, confidence in the Bible overall is in peril. They surveyed 20,000 believers and they revealed that many Christians among that 20,000 have a confidence problem with the Bible. By confidence problem, what they’re talking about is, there was a sense of uncertainty, a sense of skepticism. Even indifference toward the Bible among believers to say, “I’m not really sure that what it teaches is accurate or it is true.” Of course, that is the reason why we have this particular course that we’re doing here.

The Bible in the church

Now the last one, the last category, we want to look at is “the Bible in the church.” This is an important category and I think we are ready to ask a question about what people think of this.

Tony: Yeah, so you can see the question on screen, “In what ways, if any, do you encourage your congregation to read the Bible on their own?” So, how does your church encourage you to read the Bible? You can answer that question in chat. We are curious to see what your church does. Maybe it’s one of these things, maybe it’s something different. David, after we cover this, we have got some Q&A questions we can cover about this.

David: Okay. Well, as you see, this is really, how is the church trying to get people engaged in the Bible itself? Providing reminders in sermons, giving out free Bibles, doing reading plans, reading during worship services. Maybe a passage everyone reads together or reading before a sermon. These are very common things, and you can see there are a variety of ways that people in the church, pastors and leaders, are trying to get people engaged. One of the challenges I have found, at least in the church, is that a lot of times churches or leaders will teach a truth without really giving a biblical basis of why that truth is there. Maybe there is a particular denominational slant on this is what we believe about salvation, what we believe about, maybe the Bible or about Jesus Christ, or whatever it is, but they don’t give a biblical basis as to why they believe what they believe, and people are not going into those areas. You can see that there’s a lot of ways in which the church is trying to get people encouraged in reading the Bible and engaged in the Bible. But from the things that we are finding in the Pew Research and from the Barna Group, that doesn’t seem like as many people as we want are engaging or that when they are engaging, they’re not retaining what is there. I think part of this is, as I said, they’re just they’re not understanding it, but maybe it’s because they don’t really know what this book is and why this book is so important.

So let’s keep these surveys in mind as we move forward. And we ask another question here, which is, what is the Bible? Before we get to that Tony, you said you had some questions for us.

Tony: Yes, some questions about reading, reading the Bible and how often we’re reading it. Actually, with, How is your church encouraging you?, Nancy asks, “If you read literature that quotes Scripture, does that count?” I think you could even include things like, what part of the reading I do with my church, either in church or not. Does that count as Bible reading? Should I count that in my, how many times do I read the Bible in a week?

David: Well, I think quantity of reading is one thing, quality of reading is another aspect to Bible reading. And, I mean, any way that you can get the Word of God in your life, that’s an important thing. If it’s reading it during the worship service, if it’s memorizing verses on a card, that’s another way. If it’s reading a book that’s just filled with Bible passages, and you’re going in and reading those—all those are valid ways of reading the Word, you’re getting that in you.

But one of the things you may want to consider is reading the Bible in its context. So, if you’re reading a verse, for example, John 3:16, we’re all familiar with that verse: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life.” Very important verse, but it was spoken in the midst of an encounter with Nicodemus. And you have the beginning chapter of where Jesus is described as the Word and becomes manifest, and you go through chapter 2, and you finally get to chapter 3 where those verses are read.

So reading verses in their context or reading an entire book, that’s an important way as well to get the Word of God into you. And you’re reading it in the context and in the process of a story that the author is telling. So, I would say, if you’re reading verses in other/different literature, that’s great to do. But consider just trying to read the Bible, and get a translation that you can understand, and say—let me read this in the context of the story. And we’re going to be looking at that story of the Bible here in just a second and why that’s so important.

Tony: Ah, yeah. Cool. That’s great. I have one more question related to that, I think, “Is reading the Bible the right approach or is studying the Bible more important?” So that sort of gets into the depth thing again.

David: Well, yes. There’s actually . . . people will talk about—in spiritual formation or spiritual growth, discipleship; all the different words, referring to the same thing—as we grow spiritually, Bible reading is kind of talked about as transformational and informational.

Bible study when you dig into a word and you’re looking at a particular word, when you’re trying to outline, maybe a sentence . . . I know from years back, you know, you were doing diagramming sentences. Nobody wants to do that anymore. But as you’re kind of studying a Bible verse and in the context of its chapter and you’re looking into the history and the culture and all that, that’s informational reading. And that’s great to do. Because the more we get the Word in our minds, the more we have that background, and we understand how to effectively, I should say, and efficiently study the Word of God, the more our mind will be transformed. As we transform our minds with the Word, and we saturate our minds, that changes our thinking and that thinking then changes how we act, what we say, what we do. That’s informational Bible study and that’s an important part.

The other part of that is to say, okay, there needs to be more transformational reading. And this is taking the Bible and just saying, Let me just read and say, Lord, speak to me through Your Word. Give me something here. And as we read the story, just allowing the story to say what it has to say.

For example, if you’re reading a novel, you could study the background, the history, if they’re providing that, in a particular novel. But sometimes in doing that, you kind of miss the overarching story and the flow of the story, and that’s very important as well. And I’ve sometimes, you know, you’ll just sit down with the Bible and say, let me read John 3:16, but without trying to understand what every word means. And then maybe I’ve done that before and I’ve got the information; now, let me go back and read it for transformation. And just say: Lord, I want you to transform my heart with your Word. As I memorize this, as I meditate on it, and just speak into my life what this is saying. That can be a powerful way of reading it.

I think there needs to be balance. In the Christian life there always needs to be balance in what we do. So, hopefully, that will answer your question there.

Any others we want to deal with or move on?

Tony: I think we’ll move on. I just wanted to say, regarding reading versus studying—one of the courses we offer is how to study the Bible. And I think probably someone from our team can put that in the chat (https://odbu.org/courses/SF106). It’s a great instruction on getting deeper and reading the Bible in context.

Let’s move on to: what is the Bible? I think this is the Bible.

David: Yes, that is the Bible. That is why we’re asking a different kind of question rather than a specific object here. So what is the Bible? As I said, this could seem like a too simple of a question to start with. We may say, well everyone knows what the Bible is, but having been in church and talking to a lot of Christians, sometimes we miss what the Bible really is on a basic level. Now we are going to define the Bible really in four ways. First of all, and this is more of just a very high-level, I think it’s interesting trivia. It’s the most widely published book in history, and we probably all know that. Now if you look at the top six books that have ever been published, I went on, looked this information up. You may not know this, but number six, as far as the top six books published in history. The top one is Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, at least, that’s the English title. In America it’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Well, 125 million copies of that particular book have been published and have been distributed. Number five is The Little Prince. This is from 1943. It’s a book I had never heard of, but it’s considered one of the best children’s books, published in France, to begin with and then, going back to 1943, and 140 million copies of this book have been sold. Lord of the Rings is number four and 155 million copies—this is JRR Tolkien. As a side note, number nine, in this list, if we went back to the top ten and we went that far, number nine would be The Hobbit, and it sold 110 million copies. Number three is the Quran. This is the holy book within Islam and 800 million copies—we jump up quite a bit from The Lord of the Rings—that have been published. The number two spot goes to Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. And Mao Tse-tung was the leader of the communist movement in 1949. He published his sayings and that has been over 1.1 billion copies have been sold. Now, of course, the number one as I said is the Bible and it comes in at five billion copies and that includes manuscripts and all the different languages and the translations. As you can see by far the Bible outweighs, as far as publishing and distribution, any other book that has come on the scene.

Now a second way we can define this, and this is very important—it is a collection of individual books, with a single message. This is going to be important as we look at our third area. But I think a lot of people missed this point. People think the Bible is a single book. It is a single book; it is a canon. Canon simply means a list or an authoritative list of books. It’s a single book, but it has individual books that make it up. In fact, we know there are sixty-six different books that make up this particular, the Old and the New Testament. Sixty-six individual books that have been written over a period of about 1,600 years. That goes all the way from the time of the Torah, which you have Moses, all the way to John with Revelation. It was written by about forty different authors. Some of the authors, we don’t know, but there’s around forty of them. For example, the book of Hebrews, we’re not really sure who wrote that. That could be Paul, could be Apollos, a lot of different theories out there as to who it is. So, about forty different authors. It was written in three different languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, a very small portion in Aramaic, and in Greek. The New Testament is in Greek, the Old Testament is in Hebrew with a few passages in Aramaic. It covers the contents from the early years of creation through the church, all the way to the end of the age where you come to the Book of Revelation.

Now the book, as we know, is divided into two major sections, these sixty-six books. There are thirty-nine books in the Old Testament, and they make up the Hebrew scriptures, or what we call the Old Testament. That is the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. Law is the Torah, Prophets of course we know what that is, and the writings are the historical books, and any of the books that don’t fit into the first two categories. This is how the Jewish mind, or the Jewish scholars would divide the Old Testament up. They would call the Old Testament, not the Old Testament; they wouldn’t even necessarily call it the Hebrew scriptures. They would call it the Tanakh. The Tanakh is an acronym for the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. How they would say that in Hebrew are what is called the Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim.

Now Jesus in His ministry actually affirmed these particular books, the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, as Scripture. As you can see in John 5:39, He says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these [referring back to the Scriptures] that testify about me.” Now of course in the first century in the Jewish mindset, the Scriptures would be all thirty-nine books, specifically the Torah, but all thirty-nine books that had been identified and were being used in the Jewish tradition. So, Jesus affirmed all the books that make up our Old Testament today.

Now, the New Testament, it has twenty-seven other books and we divide that typically into the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the book of Acts, the Epistles. That’s Paul’s Epistles and some other General Epistles like James, Jude, and things of that nature. Then the Book of Revelation is set to itself as the last book that would have been written.

This makes up what the Bible is. And this is important because of the third way that we can identify and describe the Bible as a grand narrative. Now, when we think about this grand narrative, that means that there is a storyline that goes from Genesis to the Book of Revelation, from beginning to end. As we think about that particular narrative, remember that this is a Bible that has sixty-six individual books, over 1,600 years that it was written. It was written by forty different authors from different walks of life, and it was written in three different languages. Now, what I find miraculous about that, is that any book that is divided up like that and collated together, that any book of that nature would have a united theme that goes from beginning to end, it would be very difficult. It borders on the miraculous. That really, I think, is what the grand narrative is. Now, many people have tried to define what is the central theme of the Bible. Some have said well, the central theme of the Bible is God’s work within humanity or God’s work in history. Some have said it is Jesus Christ, and Jesus is, at least typologically, He’s on every page. Some would say it is the idea of redemption or it is the Covenant, the covenants that we find with Moses and Abraham and David and a New Covenant that Jesus establishes at the Lord’s Supper. Many people have searched for different themes and some people say that there’s a variety of them.

Common today is to look at the Bible through what they would call the Creation, Fall, Redemption theme. Of course, creation is Genesis 1 and 2, the fall in the first part of Genesis 3, and then when God comes in and has what many have called the protoevangelium, the first gospel message, the first good news. Where God announces He’s going to send a Redeemer. He’s going to send someone to correct this fall and from then on to the end of the book is all about redemption. Many people will say we need to add on that idea of consummation which we come to in the Book of Revelation. God consummates everything together and brings it all into His fulfillment.

So, this idea of creation, fall, redemption traces this idea of the fall in Genesis chapter 3. I would however say maybe there’s a little bit more to it. And that is a very important theme and that is one of the themes but when you come to the Book of Genesis, there is an interesting series of events that happens before you get to Abraham and God kind of kicks off this redemption strategy and it’s in Abraham. What I would suggest is, we look at three different chapters, you have Genesis 1 and 2 is the creation, but in Genesis chapter 3, there is the fall of humanity and there is where God says, you’ve sinned, you’ve gone against what I told you to do, you’ve eaten the forbidden fruit; therefore, you are now exiled, and then spiritual death entered into the human race. And all people have to be brought back with the presence of the Spirit, at least, in the New Testament as we understand it.

But in Genesis 6, there’s another event. That is another fall. It is a fall of a mixing of kinds. It talks about the sons of God and the daughters of men. Some say that the sons of God are the lineage of Shem from Noah and the boat. But when you look in Scripture, it seems to be that from Job and other places the sons of God are angelic beings. And there’s a lot that can be talked about in that, but it was a mixing of kinds, of angelic and human. And God said that is never to happen. In fact, in Genesis 1 and 2, you’ll find that God mentions over and over He created the trees after their own kind and animals after their own kind. Go through Genesis chapter 1 and look at that word “kind.” God is very specific that when He creates something, it stays within certain boundaries. That boundary was broken, and you find that there was this kind of angelic rebellion. The result of that was called “giants in the land” or “men of great renown.” And because of that, it says that mankind was kind of ruined. The thought of . . . every thought was evil. And it says that because of that God destroyed the world with a flood. He started over with Noah and his family.

And you’ll find these three acts of rebellion—and the third one, of course, is Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel. Where mankind says, we’re going to make a tower that will go to the heavens, and we will ascend there to be with the gods.

I find in each one of these, there’s kind of a self-exaltation. You know, in the fall it is—the serpent says: If you eat of this you will be like God. That’s a self-exaltation. In the mixing of the kinds, it produced these beings that were of renown, but they were evil and things were falling. And in the Tower of Babel it was to say: We’ll be like the gods. We’re going to exalt ourselves.

Of course, in Genesis 12, God comes to Abraham, and He begins the theme of redemption in doing what He’s going to do in history. And He says, Abraham, you’re not going to make your name great, but I’m going to do that. I’m going to give you a nation. I’m going to give you a land. I’m going to give you a people, and I’m going to bless all the nations through you. Ultimately, that would be in the person of Christ. And, I think, as we look at these three different events and the themes that they produced, you will find them, whether it is humanity’s need for salvation from Genesis 3; the reality of a spiritual realm and a spiritual warfare—definitely seen in the person of Satan who comes with Job and presents himself with the sons of God before the Lord and Job is presented there as a temptation to say: Have you considered my servant, Job? Even in the temptation of Christ, Satan is there and all the way to Revelation where you have Satan, that is, overthrown.

And, then in the Tower of Babel, this exaltation of this false kind of religion, you’ll find that you start a kind of tale of two cities. There’s Babel that becomes Babylon. And then there is Salem— which you have the Melchizedekian priesthood; Melchizedek comes to Abraham—and that becomes Jerusalem. And all through Scripture there is Babylon and Jerusalem.

And all these themes seem to be interwoven. They’re introduced in Genesis, they’re interwoven through the Scripture, and they all culminate in the Book of Revelation—where you have humanity’s need of salvation, that it is an ultimate redemption of God’s people in Revelation; there is the ultimate judgment of the angelic beings (Jude talks about this and 1st Peter talks about this, and even Satan thrown into the Lake of Fire). And then you have the destruction of a mystery Babylon, a mystery religion, and also, you have the bringing down of the New Jerusalem.

So, you find those themes in Genesis, these three that are set before Abraham right after creation, that find their way interwoven through the Scriptures, bringing us all the way to the end chapter in Revelation. And in the midst of that, there are a myriad of micro themes that you can find. These themes contribute to God’s work in history and redemption and overthrowing this idea—I mean, even in Colossians where it talks about how Christ announced His triumph over the spiritual realm and over those principalities and things.

So, I think those three themes, more than just creation, fall, redemption—which is very important—we need to see these three as this inner kind of a tapestry of themes that go through the Bible as we read it and as we understand it. So, that’s an important aspect of the Bible. Not only was it written over centuries by different people, but all of those themes are culminated in a very seamless tapestry of a story that we’re a part of, and we are able to read.

Now finally, we can go to the idea that the book is unique, and we can describe it as a book that claims to be inspired. And we’re very familiar with certain verses in the Scripture, especially, 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” And of course, that word “inspired” in the Greek is theópneustos. It means God-breathed. And God has breathed out His Word to us.

These are very important concepts to understand. And so that kind of gives us at least a basis for this idea of, what is the Bible? It is bringing all these things together, and as we start to study defending this Bible, we need to keep these ideas in mind.

That’s a lot of information. So, Tony, are there any questions that we may have at this time? I don’t want to move too fast here.

Tony: I have about a thousand questions, especially related to Genesis and those three chapters. That’s a lot. I mean, you’re really digging into even just those three chapters that are going beginning to end. And so, I guess my question, and I think there might be other people asking this too, is just simply—how do we know, how can we verify for ourselves that basically what you’re saying about those three chapters in Genesis is true? I mean, is that part of Bible reading? How do we verify that for ourselves?

David: As far as, are they the themes that go through Scripture?

Tony: Yeah.

David: If it’s the themes, I mean, the themes we developed, I mean, you’re not going to find a handbook that says, these are the themes of the Bible. As I said, the creation, fall, redemption—that’s a very popular one, and it’s a very good one, and it’s one of the ones I would identify from Genesis chapter 3. But I think there’s more than just one central theme. I think there’s three that intertwine. And that’s what I’ve discovered in reading the Scriptures, to say . . . And the more that you read the Scriptures, the more you will see these different themes kind of jump out. And as I said, again, there are a lot of micro themes that are accompanied by this. But the more you familiarize yourself with the Bible, the more you’re going to say, okay, let me put this from a higher perspective. It’s kind of like when you fly in a plane, you’re seeing the landscape that’s underneath you. When you get down low, you’re seeing the trees in it themselves. You may see there’s a lot of trees, but when you start to land you can find out: Oh! Those are pine trees or those are these kinds of hardwood trees. Studying the Bible is like that five-thousand-foot perspective. Understanding the themes and stuff, that’s more the thirty-thousand-foot perspective.

So, it does come back to reading and studying, listening to other people, what they have to say and what they’ve learned. And it’s all about “iron sharpening iron.” I mean, we’re all on a journey. None of us have arrived. I don’t think I have arrived at all. I mean, the more I study the Bible, the more questions I have. It’s just a plethora of, now I’ve got to answer that question; how do I understand that? But the Spirit is faithful in that He will lead us into understanding.

Tony: That helps. So if I read it, I could be able to understand some of that stuff better and that, you know, maybe taking a course like this will help me see some of that and figure it out. I don’t necessarily need a seminary degree. But again, like you said, you’re not finished learning about it either.

David: None of us have arrived. And it’s the same thing in the spiritual journey, none of us become perfect. I know there are traditions that say they may, you know, I’ve obtained a certain level of righteousness. But I, at least in my life, I have never attained that, and I’ve never attained a full, complete understanding of the Word of God. Now as we read it more, we’re going to narrow down that, we’re going to say, hey, I’ve got maybe 90% of it. And you’ve got people who’ve spent their entire life . . . scholars of the Old and New Testament. I mean, they know reams of information. They probably have forgotten more than I’ll ever know. But, as we dig into the Bible and dig into the Scriptures, we are going to learn. And we need to learn from each other. That’s why that idea of accountability and talking to other believers about what we’re reading is so important. I mean, because that’s where the iron sharpening iron really comes into focus.

Tony: Yeah, that’s helpful. There’s a couple of themes I’m noticing in some questions. Some of them we’ll get to later. I’m trying to pick out a good one here about the canon, basically, the biblical canon. Basically, were there some books left out of the Bible? How do we know the Bible we have is the right one? Let me see.

David: Okay. Well, let me answer that question really quick. We can answer some of these a little more next week, because we’re actually going to look at the textual transmission of the Old Testament and the New Testament. How do we get the Bibles that we have today and are they accurate to the original writings? That’s a huge point. That’s what we’re going to be looking at. Probably the most difficult aspect of what we’re looking at in this course is going to be next week.

But when it comes to the canon, as far as the thirty-nine books that we have for the Old Testament, these are the books that when you come into the New Testament period in the first century and the church is brought forth in Acts chapter 2, these are the books that the Jews had already said, these are authoritative scripture, the scriptures that they had set aside to say, we recognize these as inspired by God.

Now, there are other scriptures that are out there. There are what is called the Apocrypha. Some traditions will say, we believe that they are inspired as well. The Book of Sirach and you’ll find that there are probably twelve to fifteen, maybe even a few more, apocryphal writings that come back to during the time of the intertestamental period. Some maybe predate that, but those are important. And there’s even another group that is called the Pseudepigrapha writings. Those are writings that would get into like the Book of Enoch, you may have heard, or the Book of Jasher. These are books that are not even part of anyone’s canon in the New Testament. They’re books that are . . . they speak about the Messiah, they talk about themes that are related to the Old Testament, but they have not been included in any canon or even in the Apocrypha itself. Although, like The Book of Enoch, it is quoted in the New Testament, and you’ll find the Book of Jasher is quoted in the New Testament by Paul, and in the Old Testament it’s actually referenced as a work to be read. So there are books that are outside the Jewish canon that weren’t accepted, but the church in the early years said, these are the ones that the Jews had accepted, so they were part, and they became part of the Protestant Bible. In fact, the King James 1611 actually included the thirty-nine plus the Apocrypha in its first printings, but it was taken out later on.

Any other questions there?

Tony: You said we’d come back to more of the canon stuff next time. So I see a question . . . other similar questions to that. So, I’ll make sure we save those for next time. Debbie and others . . . Well, and also, maybe you can decide if this is the same question or not. There are a lot of questions about translations. We can come back to that in our Q & A time if you want or we’ll cover it in another session.

David: Okay, we can answer that when we get done here. We’re almost to the end, so I think we can come back to that one. That’s a good question to ask.

Alright, so let’s go to our third question of the night and that is—can the Bible be defended? And as I said, this is going to be short. It’s pretty much straight to the point. This gets into the area of apologetics. Apologetics simply means to . . . it is the act of strengthening a believer in their faith and answers the questions that are raised by those who are neutral or even hostile toward the faith. So it acts kind of as an evangelistic but also a discipleship tool. We want to be able to affirm what we believe and say it’s not blind faith, but it’s an informed faith. But we also want to be able to answer the questions that others are having.

And this idea of apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia. It does not mean to apologize, as some people have said. We never apologize for our faith, but it does come from a passage, there are several passages that use this word. First Peter 3:15 is one of the biggest ones. Peter says that “in your hearts honor Christ as Lord always.” That deals with salvation. We’ve come to faith in Christ. We set Him first. And what are we to do? Always being prepared to make a “defense,” and that is the word apologia, to give an apologetic to “anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; but do this with gentleness and respect.” So Peter says, when you go out and you are witnessing or you are living the faith—when someone says, why do you believe this about Jesus Christ? Why do you believe that He is the Messiah? Peter says be able to give them a reason for this. Why do you believe the Bible is the Word of God? We can say that “I have faith,” but we can also give them more reasons to say, “let’s clear away those obstacles that are keeping you from understanding the gospel or maybe accepting the gospel.” Ultimately, salvation is only a work of the Holy Spirit, but our job, as Peter says, is to be able to give a defense, allow the Spirit to be able to work in the lives of individuals.

And as we go through this series, these four weeks, the next three are going to be looking at three lines of evidence. As I said, we’ve laid the foundation tonight. We’ve looked at what is the Bible? How do people view the Bible? And can we defend it? We are called to defend it, and we should do so. But how do we do that? Well, we’re going to be looking, as I said, next week at the transmission of the text—Old Testament and the New Testament. These are two different paths that were taken, but we need to know where did our English translation or where did the Spanish translation or Portuguese—where did they come from? What are they based on? We’ll also be looking at archaeological evidence in the third week and we’re going to find some rather interesting discoveries, as they illuminate Old and New Testament passages, and it’ll be kind of story time there. I think you’ll enjoy that. And then finally, here’s one that some people don’t want to deal with and that is fulfilled prophecy. We’re going to find that the book of the Bible is unique, not only in how it was put together in its themes and things of that nature, its transmission (how God has kept it) and its historical reliability in archeological evidence, but it is the only book that predicts the future. And we’re going to look at some predictions that were made in the Old Testament, some 150, some 200 years before they happened. And we’re going to look at some miraculous ways of how, in very much detail, these things were fulfilled.

These are from writings, not of Christian, but of secular historians, so we have the historical record there that these things actually took place. We also will mention about how Jesus and His own ministry, His first Advent, fulfilled many, many prophecies. We will then look at what we find as far as the Prophet Daniel who says, let me give you an overview of history and let me show you where things line up. We will be looking at how Christ fulfilled a part of that. So, I think it’s going to be some interesting topics to display.

So, that’s pretty much what we have for tonight. Maybe we can go back to the question on translations, that would prepare us for next week. What was the question there?

Tony: There were a bunch of questions. I’ll pull some up as you’re answering it and identify who they’re from. But questions like, is some text left out of one version or another, which one is the best one, which one is closest to the original languages? We can start with that.

David: Okay, we will touch on this next week, but it’s good to lay a foundation here over the next few minutes. When it comes to translations, people say, are some things left out? Mainly that would come in, well, it applies to the Old and the New Testament. In the Old Testament you have, what has always been called the Masoretic text, that is the Hebrew text, dates from about 1000 AD. King James is based on that text, the Hebrew text. Now, since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, you find that people have gone back to some of the older Hebrew manuscripts. There’s a lot of congruity between that text that is a thousand years old back to the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was remarkable at keeping there, but there are some differences that you do find. There’s also the Septuagint which we will study. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and you’ll find some differences in how the wording is between the Hebrew text of about 1000 AD and the Septuagint that dates back to about 300 BC. There’s a lot of discussion going on about that.

When it comes to the New Testament, usually you’ll find that there’s some people that say, “well, I want to read the King James and I think that one is the text that is most accurate.” The King James Bible is based on what is called the Byzantine text, or the majority text. It is a text of the New Testament, usually Greek text and some could be in Latin later on, that have the greatest witness. There’s more of these texts.

The other translations, more modern translations like ESV and NIV and things of that nature, their philosophy is let’s go back to the oldest manuscripts. There’s less of them, but let’s get back to manuscripts that are within maybe a hundred years or two hundred years of the original languages. You’ll find that between these there are a couple different texts that will be included or some will be excluded. Usually in the modern translations most of these are noted. ESV will say “oldest manuscripts do not include this portion of Scripture,” but they will include it there. Sometimes they won’t, it just depends on the translation.

We will look at this more in depth because we need to get a lay of where these manuscripts are coming from. But it is a difference in translation theory as to how someone, what manuscripts they’re basing their translation on. Now, when it comes to the actual translation of many in English, and I can speak to the English side of it, there is a philosophy of whether you translate the older manuscripts, try to be as word for word—what would be called a formal equivalent. Or if you go more with a dynamic equivalent, which is saying, I’m going to translate the idea of what this language is trying to say. Because when you go from one language to another it’s never a one-to-one translation. You have to talk about, this word has a particular tense, it had a meaning. Some translations like the NLT or the NIV today would say, we’re going to translate adelphós—which is translated as “brothers”—we will say it is “brothers and sisters.” As they would say, well in the context that’s really who they were talking about, men and women. Whereas you have the ESV, they would say that we just go with “brothers,” trying to be a little bit more literal. You’ll find The New American Standard does that.

So, our translations have to do with which area of manuscripts, the oldest manuscripts or the more numerous manuscripts you use. And then what theory of translation, a dynamic or more formal equivalent, you are trying to produce. So, I hope that helps, I think when we get into this next week, when we start seeing the manuscripts and looking at when they were published, and what we have in our vault to say what we can rely on. I think a lot of that will become clear, but right now, we really don’t have time to get into all the background. We’ll touch on it, but maybe that will help at least from now till then.

Tony: It sounds like you are not going to tell me that the NIV or the KJV is the best translation, and we shouldn’t be using the other ones. That’s at least what you’re not telling me.

David: I wouldn’t say that there’s any one English translation that’s the best. If you want the best translation, read the Greek and Hebrew. Go back to the original sources and read that. Now most people can’t do that, so you’ll have to rely on some English translation. When you look at the ESV or NAS, that’s different from a King James or New King James, you are not going to find a doctrinal difference necessarily. Some would say, well one shows the Trinity. They both stipulate the Trinity. One may not be as explicit because they don’t have a verse in it, but you’re not going to find a difference in who Jesus Christ is, what is salvation, who is God. None of that is going to change between the two. It may be a difference in that passage or that the Pool of Bethesda and the movement of the waters wasn’t included, but that’s not going to change who you are as a believer and what salvation is. So, I would say read the version that you get the most out of and then do your research into the different manuscripts. Again, we’ll do our research next week and lay that foundation for people to understand as they begin to pick a Bible.

Tony: That helps, thank you. We’re getting close to the end of our time here. So we do have more questions, but I want to mention a couple of comments for those who are going to be leaving at 8 o’clock. This lecture will be available on this same page as early as tomorrow morning for us. So, in a few hours you can re-watch it if you want and that’ll be true for all the lessons. Every video will be recorded and put on the same page that you viewed it live on, the next day. So, if you miss one, no worries, you can watch it there.

Also, in between lessons, for those of you who are interested in purchasing a subscription, you can earn a certificate of completion, there will be discussion questions, and quizzes that you can complete in between the lessons and interact more with your peers.

These lectures, as you know, are free. There’s no charge for coming to the live session and viewing them. If you want to engage a little bit more, you are welcome to do that. We actually have a coupon code if you do decide to subscribe. We’ll make sure that ends up in the chat as well. The coupon code is ODBULIVE. It’s a nice discount so that you can engage if you would like to.

I think that’s all I needed to cover. Are you ready for another question?

David: Sure.

Tony: Alright, there are a number of people asking what’s a good place to start? What’s a good book to start with?

David: A lot of people will say, start with the gospel of John. John is an easy book to kind of wade into, John is simple to understand. Of course, someone said John is a book where an infant can wade into it, but an elephant can drown in it. There is so much in there you can dig into deeply, but it also has a very understandable message. I think if you are more of an analytical person, and say, “I’d like to see the whole story,” I would say read Luke and then read Acts. Luke and Acts pretty much covers all of the New Testament from the life of Christ, His birth, all the way through the birth of the church. For example, Paul’s writings, Timothy, Thessalonians, Titus, all the writings in Jude. All of that occurs in the context of the book of Acts. So if you wanted to just read the story of the New Testament, Luke and Acts, two volumes that Luke wrote. Those would be a good place to start.

I would not start with Revelation. I love the book of Revelation. I think it’s a fun book to study, but that can be confusing if you don’t understand the Old Testament. Now, if you really like to get from the beginning of the story to the end, then start with Genesis and work your way through. In fact, what we may see if we can put up on the page is a reading guide. If you want to go through the Old Testament, but you say I don’t want to read all thirty-nine books, because they confuse me. We have a guide that will take you through eleven books of the Old Testament, and in those eleven books, you have the overarching story of everything that happened. It begins with Genesis, it goes to Exodus, skips over some things because the books and the prophets all occur in the context of, for example 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Samuel, or it is in the time of the judges. So if you read these eleven books in the Old Testament, and if you go to our course Old Testament Basics (https://odbu.org/OT128), it’s a free course, you’ll find those books there. We call them the Color Books; they’re special books that bring the story along. In eleven books, you can read the overarching story of the Old Testament. Then you start putting in where these other things fit.

So, I would say that you have a lot of different choices. Either read from cover to cover, read the Old Testament as a whole, maybe the New Testament as a whole with Luke and Acts, or start with the Gospel of John. That’s another great discipleship testament to begin with.

Tony: That is very helpful, I hope, to many people. It seems like there are a lot of people who, like you said earlier, would like to read the Bible more, but they just don’t know where to begin or how to understand it, so I hope that can be helpful.

David: In relation to that other question, there are a lot of Bible reading guides that you can download for free from the internet. Read through the Bible in three months, six months, a year or even two years, if reading is not necessarily your thing. I remember growing up, reading wasn’t my thing. I didn’t like to do it. That’s kind of changed now, but I think you can get some of those reading guides and say, I just want to read two chapters a day. That eventually will get you through the entire Bible. So that’s another place to start.

Tony: Okay, I’ve got one more. This one is a bit of a softer question for you, David. What are your thoughts on The Chosen show? This person says that’s inspired him to get back into reading the Bible. Have you seen that?

David: You know, I’ve only watched part of one episode, and I haven’t had a chance to watch the whole thing. So I really can’t comment. I’ve heard good things about it. It seems to take you into the biblical era and to look at the customs, look at the terrain of what the New Testament world looked like. So, anything that can get you into reading the Bible, must not be all that bad. I don’t know how close it is to being accurate.

There was a movie that went around, it was called The Gospel of John. I think Lausanne put it out, I’m not sure who put it out, but it was being shown all over the world and seemed like it was a retelling of the Bible and that was a place many people would start. The Chosen, I haven’t seen it, so, I really can’t say how close it is or how much they follow. I do know that they take some liberties, of saying, here’s what we think would have happened. But again, when it comes to Scripture, we are not given all the information about conversations. So, some of that has to be done. I mean, some of the things that Hollywood puts out is like, I don’t even know if you read the Bible before you put this out. There was one that came out many years ago. Russell Crowe was playing Noah. I remember Lot was somehow on the boat and they had all kinds of things that were going on. I thought this doesn’t even hardly resemble the time of Noah except the fact that there’s a boat in both of them. That’s about all that there was and there’s a lot of water. So, sometimes you gotta be careful with what Hollywood puts out, but I haven’t heard anything necessarily negative about The Chosen.

Tony: That’s fair. I think, like you said, if it gets you into reading Scripture more, then that is what counts.

David: Even sometimes bad shows can get you into reading.

Tony: That’s true. So, I’ll just mention a couple of quick notes again. You can check your email for links to each lesson. The page you are on currently is the lesson page. You’ll see lesson one and lesson two there, but we’ll make sure to send you an email with the correct link for our time each week and we’ll be doing this for the next three Thursdays. So, it’s four weeks total.

David, if you want, there’s one more important thing. Would you mind closing us in prayer?

David: Certainly. Thank you everyone who showed up tonight and even those who are going to watch this in the future. We are so glad that you’re here, and I hope the next three lessons can really give you some good information about the Bible. I hope today that we’ve been able to at least give you a foundation. So, let’s close in prayer tonight:

Father, we thank you for your Word. We thank you that you have given it to us. You have kept it for us. We thank you that our faith is in you and that it is not, as we said, a blind faith, that it is an informed faith. And I pray that you will be with each one who is here tonight. That you would strengthen their relationship with you, their understanding of the Bible, and help me to better understand and help us all to grow and to encourage one another. Lord, we just ask that you be with us, that your Spirit is with us over the next three lessons, that we understand, that we dig in, and that we can come to a better realization of what you’ve given us in these sixty-six books. Such an important revelation of who you are. We thank you tonight and we praise you in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Good night, everyone.