1. We can support our faith with reason and evidence
Why do you believe?
We can support our faith with reason and evidence
Well congratulations, you made it through the tough issues about truth and science. – whew!
Now we come to what many of you are most interested in – the Bible. And then next week Jesus.
Sometimes if I ask a Christian how we know God exists they may say “because the Bible tells me so”. And if I ask how they know the Bible is true, they will say it is because it is the word of God. Although I believe that is true, it is a logical fallacy called circular reasoning and is not a valid argument. You cannot use the Bible to prove God and then turn around and use God to prove the Bible.
For nonbelievers, even if they have some level of support for the idea of God, many object to the Bible or Christianity as anything exclusive because there are other religions, other holy scriptures, and other so-called gods. So explaining how we know we can trust the bible and address all the challenges and criticisms is very important to helping a nonbeliever clear up misunderstandings they may have about the Bible.
Let’s get started.

2. Agenda Session 1 – Intro, strategy, questions, challenges
Session 2 – Truth, God exists - arguments
Session 3 – Science key terms & issues
Session 4 – Bible reliability
Session 5 – Jesus, Trinity, Atheism/Agnosticism, POE
Session 6 – Islam, cults, other religions
Session 7 – Predestination/free will, those who never hear, NDE
Session 8 – Review & Final Q&A
I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist – Geisler/Turek
Tactics – Greg Koukl
Who Moved the Stone – Frank Morison

3. Session 4 – Bible reliability
Challenges
No original Bible or any of the 66 books
Myth and legend
Written 300 yrs post Christ
200,000 so-called errors (variants)
Scribal variants – John 7-8, end of Mark
Higher criticism (sources/dates/authors)
Anti-supernatural bias
Canon
Apocrypha
Deuterocanonical - (second Canon/Catholic)
Maccabees, Baruch, etc (11 works)
Pseudographa (false) – Gnostic gospels
Gospel of Barnabus, Philip, Thomas, Judas, etc
At best they are 2nd cent. Originals - contradictions

4. Session 4 – Bible reliability - OT
Early
Dead Sea scrolls - <1st century AD/some 3rd century BC
All books except Esther
Nash Papyrus – 2nd century BC
Earliest likely written by 1400 BC
Masoretes added vowels, punctuation, verses in 3rd century
Abundance
10,000 found in Cairo Geniza (200k fragments)
600 more found at Qumran/Dead Sea scrolls
Accuracy
Professional scribes learned 4,000 rules/avg 9 months
½ pg/full pg character count – pins, thread, wrote between
Isaiah Dead Sea copy - 2nd century - almost word for word compared to next recent copy 900 years later
Textual criticism - 95% accuracy among copies
Minor variants – copying, grammar errors
William Albright – “no doubt…substantially as written.”
5 min

5. Session 4 – Bible reliability - NT
Early
1 Cor. - AD 55 confirmed by even critical scholars
15:3-8 1st creed w/in 1 yr of resurrection
Acts in AD so Luke earlier
Other gospels same narrative so all valid
No mention
Fall of Jerusalem/temple, Jewish rebellion
Death of Paul, James
Why? Had not yet occurred
Too fast for myth/legend (need 300 yrs)
5 min
We need to understand that the bible is not like other scriptures from other religions. The Bible is a historical record of what took place. First, historians say it takes at least 300 years for myth and legend to develop. Although the actual collection of books we now call the Bible was put together about 300 years after Jesus, the individual scriptures were written much sooner than that.
Some were written as soon as 25 years after the resurrection.
1 Cor is a key book and accepted by the most critical non-Christian Nt scholar, Bart Ehrman, as written in AD 55 by the apostle Paul. In 1 Cor Paul refers to other scripture so those must have been written sooner.
1 Cor. 15: 3-8 is a very important scripture. It is an early creed that dates back to within months of the resurrection and contains the basic story of Christ.
Bible scholars accept that the book of Luke was written in AD 60 and it mentions the other books (Acts) so that must have been written even earlier.
Because the basic facts and stories of the other gospels are similar to Luke, it means that those gospels are also reliable and written in the same time period. This evidence shows that the first scriptures were written far too soon to be considered myth or legend.

6. Session 4 – Bible reliability - NT
Earliest dates to AD
John Ryland Papyri – 4 verses from John
Entire book – AD 200
Bodmer papyri
Most of NT – AD 250
Chester Beatty papyri
Qc7 – conservative dated
4 Mark fragments – AD 50
Acts, Rom., 1 Tim., 2 Pet., James – AD 60-70
12 from 2nd century
64 from the 3rd century
48 from the 4th century
Codex Vaticanus – AD
Most of OT Septuagint and NT in Greek (inc. apocrypha)
Codex Sinaiticus – 4th century
>half of Septuagint and almost all of NT - Greek

7. Session 4 – Bible reliability - NT
Abundance
Greek copies, partial or full
9,000 other translation copies
Only 7 copies of Plato, 49 Aristotle, 150 Homer’s Iliad
Most ancient docs have 7-10 copies
Accuracy
Manuscript scholar Sir Fredrick Kenyon
“…no doubt…substantially as written.”
American scholar Bruce Metzger % accurate
Greek scholar A.T. Robertson % accurate
Most of NT quoted outside of the Bible (36k quotes)
Simon Greenleaf – Harvard Law
Law enforcement rules for eyewitness testimony
Gospels would stand up in court as reliable
5 min

8. Session 4 – Bible reliability
Other ancient works comparison
Homer’s Illiad – 643/500 yrs after original
Plato – 49/1300 yrs after original
Aristotle – 7/1400 yrs after original
Alexander the Great
Earliest written copy – 2nd cent. AD
Lived 4th cent. BC
500 yrs later

9. Session 4 – Bible reliability
Errors and Changes
Errors almost exclusively grammar, typos
No important meaning or doctrine changed
No known copying process for NT
Scribes made some changes (brackets)
Noted at bottom of page in Bible
Canon - books considered divinely inspired
By apostles, prophets and accepted/used scripture
No quotes from apocrypha
Apocrypha added in 1500’s
No inspiration claims
Therefore the Bible is historically reliable
Reliability of the NT – Ehrman/Wallace debate
5 min
As far as the critics who say there are hundreds of thousands of errors, it is misleading. Almost all errors are copying errors or grammar errors. They calculate the errors by adding up an individual errors that might appear in thousands of copies after and including that in the total.
So if there is one copying error that appears in three thousand of the copies, it is considered three thousand errors. There are no errors among all the manuscripts that involve any important meaning or doctrine.
Canon is what we call the books of the Bible that were accepted as divinely inspired. If they were not considered divinely inspired they were not included in the bible. There are other books such as the gospel of thomas, judas and Barnabas that are not considered divinely inspired and were not included.
The decision on what was divinely inspired was either that it was written by a prophet, or apostle or widely accepted at the time and used as teaching.
Some people say that the scribes (the ones who recorded the copies) added or deleted scripture. In some minor areas this is true but there is no deception. They may have had reasons for minor changes but all are noted at the footnote of your pages in the Bible if a change was made.

10. Session 4 – Bible reliability
Why all the Bible versions?
Update in modern language
Subtle changes in scholar translation
Word for word – Formal equivalence
Thought – Dynamic equivalence
Combination - Optimal equivalence
Earliest/fewest vs. later/more
Majority text vs. Critical text
Cannot determine “best” - subjective
5 min

11. Session 4 – Bible reliability
Inerrancy
Be careful to understand this
Inerrancy (no errors)
Can only be attributed to the originals
Inerrancy correct definition
What the Bible teaches/affirms
Bibles are translated
Do not have the exact words of Jesus in every case
Gospel accounts have word variants
ipsissima approxima not vox
Paraphrased not exact words
Do not think if one word of the Bible is found to be in error we lose inerrancy
5 min

12. Session 4 – Bible reliability
Was it true? Embarrassing details
Disciples often dull, did not understand
Disciples didn’t understand Jesus was God ‘til near crucifixion
All ran when Jesus was arrested
Only John and the women were at the crucifixion
Peter denied Jesus 3 times
Jesus was said to be crazy by His family at one time (Mark 3:21)
James did not believe in Him until the resurrection
Many disciples deserted him after the last supper
Jesus accused of being demon-possessed by religious leaders
Jesus (God) described in terrible pain and suffering
Jesus spent most of his time with sinners
Jesus said love your enemies
Jesus called the religious leaders hypocrites and snakes
Jesus asked God why forsaken
Jesus died on a cross (considered a curse)
Women first witnesses to empty tomb/resurrected Jesus
Simple unexaggerated descriptions of miracles/resurrection

13. Session 4 – Bible reliability
Authority of Bible confirmed by Jesus
Divine authority – Matt. 4:4, 7, 10
Indestructability – Matt. 5:17-18
Infallibility /unbreakability – John 10:35
Ultimate supremacy – Matt. 15:3, 6
Factual inerrancy – Matt. 22:29; John 17:17
Historical reliability – Matt. 12:40:24;37-38
Scientific accuracy – Matt. 19:4-5; John 3:12

14. Session 4 – Scripture comparisons
Islam
Human vision – attacked by demons?
Corrupt – Bukhari 6:
Hinduism
Myth and legend – no historical figures
Judaism
Deny NT but why? Isaiah 53 – Messiah/Jesus
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Reinterpret passages showing Jesus is God (John 1:1-3)
Mormonism
Human vision from 1800’s then created their own scripture
Gal. 1:8; 2 Cor. 11:4; Rev. 22:18-19
Any other gospel…even if from angel…let them be cursed
Bible unity
40 authors wrote 66 books over 1,500 years
Different languages, backgrounds, occupations
One common theme – Messiah/Jesus
Only intelligent design explains organization and consistency among all books
5 min

15. Resources www.resurgensconsulting .com - My site/blog General
I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist – Geisler/Turek
More than a Carpenter - Josh McDowell
Science
Dr. Hugh Ross
The Case for Christ - Lee Strobel
Genesis Question
Why the Universe is the way it is
Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
Tactics – Greg Koukl
Jonathan Wells
Islam
Icons of Evolution
Nabeel Qureshi – Seeking Allah Finding Jesus, No God but One
Michael Behe
Darwin’s Black Box
Dr. Stephen Meyer
Darwin’s Doubt
Signature in the Cell
Dr. Craig Keener - Miracles

16. Contact Info
Tom Griffin,
Apologetics for Tweens
Books by Thomas J. Griffin
Apologetics for Tweens – 5th-8th grade curriculum
$170-$245 complete set
$40-$86 per year w/Leader’s Guide
The Last Premise - $4.99 on Amazon Kindle
Geopolitical fictional novel nearing apocalypse – apologetics, romance, black ops
Letters from Art – Private/Unpublished
Historical romance novel from the depression era
Legacy of a Christian Father – Private/Unpublished
Guidance from a father to his son
Contact me for any questions you may have or if I can help you somehow or maybe you wish to be on my monthly list for updates about our progress in my ministry activities.
Review slide.