Bible Reliability:

1. What the Bible Is:

            

            The Bible did not begin as one solid bound printed book that we have today. In fact, paper was not invented and available back when the books of the Bible were written! We find the Bible written on papyrus, stone tablets, and ancient scrolls.

            The English word “Bible" is from the Greek word “Byblos" and the Latin “biblia" and both mean “books." These “books" are a collection of writings.

        It is important to know that you hold in your hand over 4000 years of history! It is also amazing that you understand that a not every book or manuscript that makes it for hundreds of years is available to everyone!

                1. *Caesar wrote a history of the Gallic wars around 50 B.C. There are only 10 good copies, the oldest being 900 years after Caesar died.

                2. *There are 7 manuscripts of Plato’s Tetralogies, with the earliest manuscript dating 1,250 years after the original.

                3. *For the New Testament, there are over 24,633 manuscript copies, all within 100-150 years of the originals! That is impressive!

        *It is important that we know that the Bible is by far the best-documented book in the history of mankind with more manuscripts and earlier manuscripts than any other classical work. There is not even a close second. The scholar, John Warwick Montgomery concludes: 

“To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested as the New Testament”.

        As you can see, the oldest book is most certainly the Bible. The Book of Job is the oldest book in the whole entire Bible. This dates the first written words around 4000 years ago. Was the idea that the world created itself without God older than the Bible idea that God created it? Here it is:

        3. Holy And Godly Men

            The biggest and only reason the Bible has lasted so long. (what we call was preserved) is because it is inspired by God himself. He is the author and he picked godly men. Holy men to write the Word of God and told them what to write. If you look into other ancient books to other religions, when you look at how those writers lived their lives, they lived wickedly, and not like God tells us to live. God cannot talk to someone who does not live righteous and walk with him!

            The important thing about living right with the Lord is that he can speak to us through His Spirit and convict us of right or wrongdoing. These Holy Men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (the Holy Spirit) 

                    Some writers heard the voice of God speaking verbally.

                    • Moses in Mount Sinai (God answered Moses by a voice. Exodus 19:19)

                    • Job (The voice of God sounded like thunder) (Job 37:5/ Job 40:9)

                    • David (The voice of the Lord being upon the waters and his voice thundering. Psalm 29:3)

                    • Ezekiel (Describes the noise of cherubim wings sounding like the voice of God Ezekiel 10:5) And his

                    voice was as the sound of many waters. (Ezek. 43:2)

            Hebrews 1:1 talks about that in the past God spoke unto the forefathers by the prophets. And now speaks to us through Jesus’ Words in the New Testament. For God to speak to the prophets of old, they must have been amazing men of God!

            In this lesson we learned three valuable things:

            What the Bible is,

            How old the Bible is,

            How God really talked to godly men full of the Holy Spirit to write his Words.

            So all other books claiming to be God’s Word are false because they did not have holy lives or the Spirit of God.