Bible Origin
Investigation of the origin of the Bible can start with The Acts of the Apostles
("Acts"), which is a methodical account of the first Christian church written
by a medical doctor named Luke, who served as the assistant to and the note taker for
the Apostle Paul.
Acts ends without mentioning Jerusalem being sacked in
70 AD or Nero burning Rome in 64 AD and blaming the fire on Christians to
start the great persecution. Since Acts ends with Paul's arrival in Rome to
start his imprisonment in 60 AD, it was most likely completed in 60 AD.
Luke begins Acts with,
"The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that
Jesus began both to do and teach..." (Acts 1:1)
The
"former account" that Luke referred to is what we call today the Gospel of Luke, which was also
dedicated to this man named Theophilus:
"Inasmuch as many
have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have
been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good
to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very
first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that
you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed."
(Luke 1:1-4)
The delivered eyewitness accounts Luke mentions above are what we today call
the Gospel of Matthew, written by one of Jesus' twelve Apostles, and the Gospel
of Mark, written by the assistant to and the note taker for the Apostle Peter.
If we estimate a 3-5 year gap between Acts and the Gospel of Luke and
another 3-5 year gap between the Gospel of Luke and the Gospels of Matthew
and Mark, this means that three of the four Gospels were written around
50-57 AD, or only about 20 years after they last saw Jesus in 33 AD.
Some of the other New Testament books were written before and some after
these Gospels, but all were written by eyewitnesses of Jesus or their note
takers, and read by people who were also eyewitnesses and could validate
their details.
Why weren't the Gospels written right after Jesus' ascension?
Communication was predominantly oral back then. Things tended to be
written down when the speakers felt they won't be able to speak about the
content for much longer, towards the end of their lives.
Isn't 20 years enough time for inaccuracies to creep into their memory?
Not in this case, for 4 reasons:
1. The modern digital society deluges the human memory with an unprecedented
amount of information at an unprecedented speed, but is relatively tolerant
of inaccuracies in the information retained since reliable digital copies
of the information exist elsewhere. By contrast, oral society of the
antiquity didn't deluge the human memory with such information overload, but
was also intolerant of inaccuracies in it. Modern standards of recollection cannot be imposed on the oral society of the antiquity.
2. The Gospels didn't record their recollection of things that happened 20
years earlier and then hadn't been revisited until 20 years later. The
Gospels recorded what they had been talking about everyday during those 20
years. The recorded content wasn't 20 years old; it had been kept fresh for
20 years.
3. The events recorded weren't mundane everyday affairs. They were
astounding miracles and incidents that defined history. Imagine you had been
next to the US President John F. Kennedy's slow moving limousine when
he was shot. Even in a digital society, wouldn't you clearly
remember what you witnessed even after 20 years?
4. The people who listened to the Apostles during those 20 years and read
the Gospels after they were written included many who also had witnessed the
spoken and written content, and they confirmed the accuracy of what the
Apostles said and wrote or had written.
When was the New Testament closed?
Some claim that the Council of Nicea "picked" the books to be included in
the New Testament. This is false. That council, convened in AD 325 by
Constantine - the newly minted "Christian" emperor - merely affirmed for the
emperor's new official purposes what had already been recognized as the New Testament for two
hundred years. The four Gospels, for example, were stitched together as
early as the first century AD to distinguish them from the many dubious writings
that already tried to parade as Gospels inspired by God.
The New Testament was closed in late 1st century AD when John, the
last surviving Apostle, closed the last book of the Bibl
e with the following stern warning:
“For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book:
If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are
written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of
this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the
holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." (Revelation
22:18-19)
Why weren’t other writings included?
Recognizing a writing as the Word of God wasn’t done on someone’s whim or
personal preference, but based on whether or not it met the
criteria of “canon”: the writer had to have been one of Jesus' Apostles or
their note taker, the writer at least had to claim
to have written from divine inspiration (which then needed to be confirmed), and
the content could neither contradict what had already
been recognized as the Word of God nor contain other errors.
For example, contrast John’s closure in Revelation above with Macabees’
closure of Macabees 2:
“If it is well told and to the point, that is what I
myself desired; if it is poorly done and mediocre, that was the best I could
do.” Since the author doesn’t even claim divine inspiration, there is no
need to confirm it.
Or consider the following verses from the so called
“gospel” of Thomas, one of the many writings that various people, cults and
sects through the centuries have put forth as “lost” or “newly discovered”
word of God:
“Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females
don't deserve life." Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male,
so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every
female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven."
(Gospel of
Thomas 114)
“Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that
the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and
the lion still will become human." (Gospel of Thomas 7)
The only thing such writings call into question is the mental soundness of
their proponents.
How do we know that today’s Bible accurately represents the original?
The New Testament was originally written in Greek. The earliest Greek
manuscripts of the New Testament discovered date to about three
centuries after Christ, and the number of ancient Greek manuscripts or
fragments of the New Testament discovered to date exceeds 5,600.
Two things can be said about this. Firstly, what we know about the history
of the Roman Empire is based largely on
The Annals of the Roman
Empire, written by the Roman historian Tacitus in 116 AD.
There are only two manuscripts in the world of that in the original
language. One dates from the 9th century and the other dates from the 11th
century. Therefore, the details about the
history of the Roman Empire stand on two manuscripts written about 1000 years
after the original, while the details about the Bibl
e stand on over 5,600
manuscripts that date from about 300 years after the originals. In other
words, there is far stronger written evidence for the Bibl
e than for the
history of the Roman Empire.
Secondly, these 5,600+ manuscripts of the New Testament in the original
Greek were discovered over a vast geographic area that stretches from the
Middle East to Ethiopia, Spain, Ireland and Germany. Imagine a kindergarten
class playing a game of whisper telephone. The teacher whispers, "Johnny
gave a candy to Laura near the swings yesterday" to two children, and they each
whisper to two other children, and so on. If after ten generations, a child
at one corner of the room reports, "Johnny kissed Laura by the swings today"
while a child at another corner reports, "Johnny pushed Laura on the swings"
the kids won’t know what the teacher had whispered originally. But if the
two kids at the distant corners say exactly same thing, the original message
can be deduced without having been heard by all.
What's the point?
The copies of the Gospels penned by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have not
been and most likely will never be found since they most likely disintegrated
long ago from having passed from hand to hand to be read and copied. But
almost all (95-99%) of the 5,600+ manuscript copies all say in effect,
"Johnny gave a candy to Laura near the swings yesterday." So we can deduce
that what was originally penned is what is in those 5,600+ copies, and the
New King James Version (NKJV) used in these studies is translated directly
from those copies.
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