AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE

April 5, 1999

By: Harold J. Sala, Ph.D.

      I n spite of the fact that most of us rebel against it, authority in our world is as necessary to the survival of the human race as good nutrition and clean air. When everyone is a "law unto himself" there is no law; anarchy eventually leads to chaos, and chaos to annihilation. From the time a child voices his first, "Why not?" until we defy the probability of death in our old age, we constantly challenge boundaries. While that may not be altogether bad, it is certain without some kind of established order, there could be no civilization.

I n the realm of religion, the issue of authority is critically important. Who says that you should believe this or disbelieve that? Your parents? Your pastor or religious leader, or your conscience? Is challenging the status quo a right or rebellion? At the same time, it seems to me that a great many today, perhaps yourself included, lack any rational foundation for what they believe. For example, why are you a Christian and not a Buddhist, or a Muslim, or an animist?

W hy do you believe what you do? Some appeal to their experience saying, "I feel it down in my heart!" On Easter Sunday morning millions of believers sing, "You ask me how I know He lives, He lives within my heart." Or "Well, this is what I think!" not realizing that others, apart from Christians, also base their beliefs on experience and feelings. Most individuals involved in cults are convinced in their hearts that they are right. The person whose beliefs are resting simply on feel-it-evidence is on shaky ground. Your security is at the mercy of someone with the facts.

I s there a valid basis of validating experience, or determining what to believe?

F or about l900 years, there has been an authority by which men and women have a basis for Christian doctrine and teaching, a core of evidence against which everything can be measured: it is the Bible. But in recent years even this has been challenged. When Western Reserve University sent out 10,000 questionnaires asking, "Do you believe the Bible to be the Word of God?" 7,442 responded. Of these, 82% of the Methodists, 89% of the Episcopalians, 81% of the United Presbyterians and 57% of Baptists and Lutherans said, "NO!" The majority of those who responded challenged the authority of the Bible.

S adly enough, there is often more faith in the pew than in the pulpit, but does that mean that some religious leaders know something which lay people don't, or have they been taught by blind leaders of the blind?

T he facts still assert the authority of the Bible regardless of the prevailing winds of unbelief which attack it. The case for the authority of the Bible is two fold: internal evidence supporting this authority, including what the Bible says about itself, its unity and indestructibility; and external evidence, which includes the correlation of prophecy and secular history, manuscript evidence, the verdict of archaeology, the evidence from science supporting the authority of the Bible, and, finally, the pragmatic test--what it does to those who follow its teaching.

M ay I leave you with a closing thought? This issue of authority is vital when it comes to your personal faith. You can afford an ignorance of many things, but not an ignorance of what the Bible is all about. Why? Simply put, everything you know about God, what you know about Jesus Christ, His resurrection, and what lies beyond the grave hinges on this book, the Bible.

T he matter of Biblical authority is not a casual matter for discussion: it is an issue that is crucial to our lives. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17:3).

April 7, 1999

AUTHORITY,

By: Harold J. Sala, Ph.D.

V oltaire, the French agnostic, said that Christianity would not survive him by a hundred years, yet a hundred years after his death the Geneva Bible Society purchased his old home and upon Voltaire's own press, printed a complete edition of the Bible.

V oltaire was neither the first nor the last to attack the Bible, striving to deal it such a blow that it would be set aside once and for all. The eighth century BC prophet Jeremiah tells us how Jehoiakim, the king, didn't happen to like what he heard which Jeremiah had written. The king took his penknife, cut up the parchment and threw it into the fire. But that was not the end of the message, for Jeremiah simply rewrote the book which has long since survived the king.

U pon occasion, kings and rulers have ordered the destruction of all Bibles. Diocletian, the Roman emperor, tried it in 303 AD, ordering all Bibles to be collected and destroyed, yet a decade after that, Diocletian was succeeded by Constantine, who declared Christianity to be the state religion and pagan temples were turned into churches. The paranoia which some have had over this book has to be a measure of its true stature and power century after century.

Y et it outlives its critics.

Someone put it poetically: Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith's And heard the anvil ring the vespered chime, Then looking in, I saw upon the floor Old hammers worn with beating years of time. "How many anvils have you had?" said I, "To wear and batter all these hammers so." "Just one," said he; then, with a twinkling eye-- "The anvil wears the hammers out, you know. And so, thought I, the anvil of God's word. For ages skeptic blows have beat upon; Yet though the noise of falling blows was heard, The anvil is unharmed--the hammer's gone."

T he first book to be printed by Johann Gutenberg and the first book to be taken to the moon by Astronaut Ed Mitchell was – yes – a Bible. No other book in all history has been so much in demand by so many and has so endured the test of time.

W hy? There is but one reason: This book is no ordinary book. Given by God, it has an authority that rings loud and clear. No other book so lucidly tells me of my own sinful condition, but dashes the despair by telling me how salvation and forgiveness are possible through Jesus Christ.

N o wonder the Gospel is called Good News. The indestructibility of the Bible is one of the witnesses to the authority of this book.

U ltimately you accept this authority by faith and submit to it or else you push it aside and reject it, which is like refusing to recognize the periodic chart of the elements, or refusing to acknowledge the metallic pull of the north pole, or the warmth of the sun.

B ut the argument for the authority of the Word doesn't stop with the simple fact that it has outlived its critics. There are five powerful voices, which are all external testimonies to this authority:

1) The fulfillment of the prophecies of the Bible, documented and verified by secular history such as the establishment of the modern state of Israel;

2) The spade of the archaeologist, which has only supported the historical statements of the Bible, such as the existence of the Hittites, the names of Biblical characters and secular rulers as Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Abraham, and David;

3) Science also verifies the statements that the Bible makes;

4) The abundance of manuscript evidence supporting the integrity of the text itself; and

5) Changed lives, which can support the simple allegation that it works. Yes, the issue of authority is important, very important today! "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever" (1 Peter 1:24,25).

AUTHORITY

By: Harold J. Sala, Ph.D.

I n 1861 the French Academy of Science printed a brochure stating that there were 51 uncontroversial facts, which are direct contradictions of the Bible. Today, a century and a third later, there is not one reputable scientist anywhere who would believe a single one of them.

W hy? Has the Bible changed? No, but science has, and especially in what is considered to be a scientific fact. A fact is an axiomatic truth, which can be proven anywhere, under any given set of circumstances. A theory, however, is a plausible explanation of a phenomenon, but it cannot be conclusively proven; otherwise, it would be considered to be a fact, not a theory.

T he Bible is not a textbook on science; it is a textbook on life and living; yet, the Bible is accurate in the scientific statements it makes which gives it a timeless ring of authority in an uncanny way that defies human explanation. This is an awesome occurrence when you realize that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, not a thousand years ago, or even two thousand years ago, but almost 3400 years ago. Almost all of the writers who made comments about the earth and our universe, made statements which were contrary to what was commonly believed in their day, statements that now square with what we know to be scientific facts.

T ake, for example, what Moses said about creation. The New Testament quotes Stephen, that Moses was schooled in the wisdom of the Egyptians (Acts 7:22), and from secular history we know that the Egyptians of the 12th to 14th century BC believed that the earth was hatched from an egg. If you question that fertility model, check out the number of eggs on ancient sarcophagi and tombs in Egypt.

M oses, though, didn't advance the egg theory. He said, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth!" Again, Moses contended that the life of all flesh is in the blood. Even Hypocrites, the father of Greek medicine, would not have agreed with Moses. It actually took science 3000 years to catch up with that one. In 1628 Sir William Harvey discovered the principle of circulation, and his contemporaries scoffed at him, but he eventually proved it. How did Moses know that the life of all flesh is in the blood if it was not that God revealed something to him, which was eventually borne out by science but was contrary to the thought of his age?

I saiah lived about seven centuries before Christ during a period when the Persian astronomers were convinced that the earth was flat, but not Isaiah. He pictured the earth as a circle and recorded that in the book that bears his name (Isaiah 40:22).

T he Apostle Peter said that the heavens would pass away with a great noise and the elements would melt with fervent heat (See II Peter 3:10), and for centuries men scoffed at Peter's wide-eyed imagination. But no longer. The Italian scientist Enrico Fermi and his colleagues at the University of Chicago split the atom, and since then, nobody doubts that the heavens could pass away with a great nuclear noise. All of the firepower of World War 2, including the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, equaled only 3 megatons of nuclear power.

T hree hundred megatons of nuclear power would destroy every major city in the world, but today there are more than 20,000 megatons of destructive nuclear power available. Yes, Peter's comments were far, far beyond his day. The point is simply this: The statements the Bible makes of a scientific nature are accurate, and this only adds to the authority of this grand old book. Read it friend, and realize it is God's Word for today.

"For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21).

AUTHORITY

By: Harold J. Sala, Ph.D.

A uthority is an issue today--in science, in business, in government, and even in religion. By whose authority do you do this? And what backs up this authority? At no point is this issue more pronounced than when it comes to the Bible.

I s this book simply a collection of religious writings that need to be dusted off occasionally in the 220 section of a library, grouped under the Dewey decimal system? Or is the Bible different because of irrefutable evidence demanding that its authority be recognized. To pronounce the Bible authoritative simply because it says it is an authority is circular reasoning. I can say that I am an elephant, but that doesn't give me a long trunk and tusks of ivory. So there has to be a demonstration of credibility which gives authority to this book, the Bible, outside of the Bible itself. I contend that five disciplines give it that ring of authority:

1. The collation of prophecies found in the Bible with secular history;

2. The verification of scientific statements with scientific facts;

3. The modern science of archaeology confirming names and geographic places mentioned in the Bible;

      4. Manuscript evidence; and

5. The testimonies of men and women whose lives have been powerfully changed by this Book.

L et's start with a definition. Archaeology is the scientific study of the remains of a past civilization. It's far more than just digging up relics from the past. There's no second chance for the archaeologist, and it is a scientific discipline which has added repeated confirmation that what the Bible says is true. "Like what?" you may be thinking. Well, for a starter, take the book of Genesis. Until archaeologists unearthed the extensive finds at Mari, in Syria, some contended that writing hadn't even been developed by the time of Moses; but the thousands of tablets at Mari demonstrated that names such as Abraham, and Sarah, and David were common 1400 years before Christ. The Mari tablets not only demonstrated conclusively that people could write, but that there were libraries full of tablets containing highly developed language skills. Score one for archaeology.

I f the Bible is only a collection of myths and fables, it would be only a matter of time until archaeologists should prove the inaccuracies of geography and culture, but the main findings of archaeologists have only confirmed the statements of Scripture. I can't help but think of the Hittites whom Moses talked about, whose existence was denied by many because there were no records of them apart from the Bible. Then archaeologists came up with documents proving their existence. "Ah, I guess they existed after all," they concluded.

T he person who denies the accurate history of the Bible, considering it only literature, is neither an historian nor a literary critic; he or she, a priori, is prosecutor, jury, and hangman. Relating to archaeology is the discovery of manuscripts thousands of years old, which can be compared to the biblical texts of our day, and what they reveal only adds to the credibility and authority of the Bible. For almost 2000 years scrolls were buried at Masada in Israel when the Romans destroyed that last fortress of first century Israel, and then they were unearthed following the establishment of the modern state of Israel. Moshe Perlman says of this, "The Psalms of David as recited in today's synagogues are the same as those uttered by the Zealots in their synagogue – the same Hebrew words, the same sentence structure, the same beginning and end of each chapter."

S hould you be one who has never considered the evidence for the authority of this unique book, don’t depend on what others say with sweeping, categorical statements. Find out for yourself. It is well worth your time to discover that the evidence demands a verdict. Yes, you owe it to yourself to find out what this book is all about.

"Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?" (Matthew 21:23).

AUTHORITY

By: Harold J. Sala, Ph.D.

T here are two kinds of people who are ignorant – those who have never had an opportunity to learn, and those who are willfully ignorant because they refuse to get the facts. There are millions of people in the world, trapped by poverty and economic stagnation, who are ignorant because they have no choice, but the latter category includes some who have Ph.D.s and advanced degrees by the handful. Those who refuse the truth purposefully, are not only ignorant, they are to be pitied.

I couldn’t help thinking of that when I had a conversation with a brilliant scientist, a man who has been honored by several countries for outstanding achievements in his chosen discipline. In our conversation I quoted the words of John 11 when Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live" (John 11:25, NJKV). "How do we know Jesus ever said that?" was his response.

A nswering that question is important. Have you ever wondered how certain we are that some of the statements found in the Bible are authentic, say, as opposed to someone adding them or putting words in God’s mouth that suits their purpose?

"What do you know about manuscripts or textual criticism?" I asked. The answer was nothing. "If I read anything that makes a case for the credibility of the Bible," he argued, "to be fair, I would have to read those who opposed biblical authority." But the point is that he had read nothing. Willful ignorance is to be pitied.

F ocusing on the one statement of Jesus which is found in John’s Gospel, I pointed out that John wrote this Gospel in the last decade of the first century, yet we have a portion of that same Gospel, known as Ryland’s Papyri 457, now in the library of the University of Manchester in Britain which dates to 125 ADùonly – 30 years after it was written.

T he science of studying and collating biblical manuscripts is known as textual criticism, and it’s a fascinating study. Today literally thousands of biblical manuscripts have been found, coming from all over the Middle East. We now know that as the early Christians scattered under persecution.

AUTHORITY

By: Harold J. Sala, Ph.D.

I gnorance can be a wonderful thing. It saves you from having to think. Therefore, you avoid the consequences of facing what you don’t know, right? Dead wrong! That lump that you thought was nothing was cancer, but you didn’t really want to know and it didn’t go away. When you could avoid the issue no longer, you faced serious consequences of which could have been avoided had you faced the issue head-on.

T here’s also a strange, willful ignorance today when it comes to the authority of the Bible. Some folks just donÆt want to know, thinking that this lets them off the hook when it comes to what Jesus Christ said and did. Let me back up for a minute. There’s been a monolith of ignorance with us for a long time that says the biblical manuscripts have been passed down from generation to generation, and like a whisper that goes around the room at a party, it’s not the same at the end as at the beginning. Thus, if the source is discredited, the whole structure comes down.

T he Princeton scholar, Dr. Bruce Metzger, says that today there are more than 5,000 ancient manuscripts of the Bible of prime importance. Of these, 4400 are over 1000 years old. Additionally there are more than 13,000 fragments of biblical writings including orders of service (called lectionaries) and sermons of the early church fathers, mostly written in Latin, quoting Scripture which gives us the biblical text at that given period of history. To that massive body of history, add 1400 manuscripts of the Gospels alone more than 1,000 years old with portions of them going back to the year 125 AD, shortly after the last New Testament book was written.

N ow, compare this vast body of documents – all of which are biblical texts – with one copy of the Roman historian Tacitus, 23 manuscripts of Plato more than 1000 years old, and 10 copies of Caesar’s Gaellic Wars. But nobody bothers to assail either the historicity of Tiberius Caesar, Tacitus, or any of the other historical figures of the first century.

T he science of studying these various manuscripts, striving to determine what is the pure text as it was given when the author first wrote it is called textual criticism, and rather than being destructive, it has given us tremendous confidence that the Greek and Hebrew texts which are the source of our modern translations are accurate, completely accurate for all rights and purposes.

T he materials upon which the biblical manuscripts were written also tell a story, along with the penmanship – whether it was flowing handwriting or block letters, and understanding all of this has been aided by scientific analyses such as carbon dating and even DNA which identifies the protein structure of the materials upon which Scripture were written. At times, God raised up schools or groups of men who dedicated their lives to preserving the Word of God. Fearing that the New Testament was about to displace the thirty-nine books we call the Old Testament, Jewish rabbis in both Tiberias and Babylon dedicated themselves to preserving the Jewish Scriptures, which make up the Old Testament in your Bible.

M asoretes, they were called, and between the fifth and tenth centuries these dedicated scholars preserved and codified the Old Testament Scriptures, but thatÆs a story in itself which I’ll share on the next edition of Guidelines. So what’s the bottom line? The evidence demolishes the argument of ignorance that we can’t be sure the Bible has authority and credibility. If you chose to disregard or ignore what God tells us in the Book, do so because you chose to do that, but don’t hide behind a cloak of ignorance, pretending that there is no support for its authority and credibility.

T he choice is obvious: either this book was given by God and has been preserved by dedicated scholars who recognize that, or else it is the world’s greatest fraud. It’s one or the other, but not both.

“Is not my word like fire,” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” (Jeremiah 23:29).

AUTHORITY

By: Harold J. Sala, Ph.D.

T owards the end of the first century, the last New Testament book as we know it today was written by the Apostle John as he was living in exile on the island of Patmos. But that didn’t mean that the 27 books were ready to go to the printer. Not exactly. First, there was no printer at that time, and secondly, it took another two hundred years for the New Testament church to decide what was the New Testament. You think that it’s tough for folks to agree on things today! It was even worse then. An interesting fact is that no church council ever met and rendered an authoritative decree saying, "These books are in, and those are not!" Universal acceptance of these 27 books was a gradual thing as the Holy Spirit began to bear witness in the lives of godly men and women (mostly men, however, because the women weren’t invited to church councils) that certain books bore biblical authority.

B y the Council of Nicea, however, in the year 325 AD, the issue was settled. By the end of the fifth century, the New Testament was widely read and distributed throughout the Middle East and Europe – something that caused Jewish rabbis to have great consternation. With the growing popularity of the New Testament, they feared that the Scriptures known as the law, the prophets and the writings (We call those books the Old Testament) were going to fall by the way side and be replaced with this new collection of writings that Christians revered. "We have to do something," they agreed, and I hasten to say that agreement among the ancient rabbis was about as unusual as agreement among Christians today. What they did, however, fearing that the Old Testament scriptures might disappear in time was to establish two schools: one in Tiberias on beautiful Galilee, and the other in Babylon – both of which were dedicated to preserving the Old Testament text.

L ittle did Christians realize what a great contribution these Jewish schools were about to make to the church, which was born in the framework of Old Testament doctrine and teaching. Remember, if you would, that what you probably call the Old Testament was the Bible, the Word of God, to Jesus. It was from the prophets that He read when He went into the synagogue at Nazareth.

F riend, the next time you pick up your Bible and read from the book of Psalms, or marvel at how God raised up Moses and used him to deliver God’s people from Egypt, or read about Elijah or the prophets, thank these men we call Massoretes, for they were the ones whose dedicated efforts preserved these Old Testament Scriptures.

J ust who were they and what did they do? Obviously, they were rabbis who began to collect Old Testament texts and then classified and codified them. They standardized the spelling of words, eventually adding vowels. So concerned were they that the manuscripts be copied accurately, they counted the words in the various Old Testament books, and the exact number of letters in each word. This information was recorded in the margins of their manuscripts, and the work was done with dedication, and intensity. Simply put, they standardized the Old Testament, giving us one that for more than 1000 years, has been the basis of study for both Jews and Christians. Known as the Masoretic text, it is the common, unchallenged, authoritative text used by serious students of the Word all over the world to this day.

T hey would have heartily endorsed what Isaiah wrote in the seventh century BC: "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever" (Isaiah 40:8). Fearing that Christianity would displace these Old Testament scriptures, little did the rabbis of the Masoretic schools know what a great contribution they were making to the very Christians they feared. ". . . and the Scripture cannot be broken"-- Jesus in John 10:35.

AS A FOOT NOTE:

In 1957 & 1958 while serving in the US Navy I was stationed in Turkey. Nicea is located not far from Istanbul – across the Biospheres and a bit North East of Troy. There is not a lot left at the ruins, at least back then. I did have an experience that will never be forgotten. While walking around, Bob Henry (An Air Force officer traveling with me), and as we walked around the un-developed area we came across a mound. Our guide began to explain what it was that we saw. We were shocked when he led us to an arch that broke down into a V shaped area (the guide informed us that it was the entrance to a Coliseum – and, that not long after the Council of Nicea there was many Christians thrown to the Lions. There was a pit in the floor of the Coliseum and after the Lions were done – they would strike the heads with a large object to make sure the Christian was dead – then their bodies would be thrown into the pit. Then the real shocker came when the guide ask, “would you like to see?” He led us down the embankment and at the bottom there was a small opening about 4' by 4', and as we stooped down there was a small tunnel. With a flashlight both Bob Henry and myself were able to crawl into the opening – the walls, floor & ceiling were a mixture of earth and rabble. The shocking this was the remaining bones. For years I had in my position a small part of a bone I retrieved from that hideous place.

– Robert B Craig

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