Validity of the Bible: Responses (Originally posted June 2007)

I have decided to begin with the discussion concerning the inspiration and canonization of the Scriptures. I cannot think of a discussion of greater importance than this. Everything that we believe, even stake our lives on, rides on the validity of the Scriptures. Yet, the sad truth of the matter is that far too many Bible believing Christians have very little knowledge regarding this matter, or concern for it. However, that does not mean that there not answers out there. The topic of canonicity is a huge one. We can only hope to scratch the surface in this discussion by talking about specific points of interest. With this being said, I want to recommend some books that can give a more comprehensive knowledge of this (I can lend these out if you anyone's interested). I will only deal with OT canon in this discussion.

General Introduction to the Bible, David D. Wegner- ISBN 0310453712

From God To Us: How We Got Our Bible, Geisler and Nix- ISBN 0802428789

The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of the Bible, Paul D, Wegner- ISBN 0801027993

The Process
First of all, there is little known information as to how the process of the OT canon came to be in terms of specific times and locations. That is to say we have no hard facts concerning any councils that took place among Masoretes, Rabbis, or Scribes. However, that does not mean that there was not a process by which it came to be. Our best look at the actual criteria by which it came to be comes from Josephus (37AD-around 100AD.) in his work Contra Apion. The main goal of this work was to show the great antiquity of the Jewish people, as opposed to the Greeks, who had customs of very recent origin. In this work he gives 3 main criteria:

1) It does not contain contradictions
2) It was written by a prophet or someone recognized as having divine authority
3) It was accepted by the Jews as authoritative

Concerning 2.
In my opinion, this the most tangible of the 3 criteria listed, especially when it comes to the Prophets. Why would a writing from a prophet be considered reliable, or divinely authoritative, if he had not proven himself to be reliable among Israel? For instance, the prophets that warned against the coming Assyrian and Babylonian invasions would not be considered very good prophets if those invasions never occurred. In fact, under the Law, they would be killed (Duet. 18.20). However, this point is not limited to the prophets alone. All genres of literature in the OT can be prophetic. Even narratives such as in the book of Genesis can have poetic discourses that speak of the future (Gen 49). I can only think of 3 OT books off the top of my head that don't seem to be blatantly prophetic at first glance.

Dating of Texts
The issue of prophecy directly relates to the dating of texts. Generally speaking, the presupposition from liberal scholarship is that prophecy does not happen. Many times, this is the overriding factor and sol rational for attributing a latter date to some texts. Or at the very least, they assert that there was an original text but the prophetic parts were added to it after the event prophesied took place. This is why most liberal scholarship, concerning the Servant Songs in Isaiah, leading up to 1947, suggested that they were added in from post AD sources as an apologetic for Christianity. As Patrick mentioned, this assertion was proven wrong by the finding of the Isaiah scroll (in the Dead Sea Scrolls) which was completely in tact and contained all of the Servant Songs. Moreover there is even proof of a messianic interpretation of these texts prior to the coming of Christ due to one of the DSS writers who believed that he was the Messiah because he suffered as the Servant did in Isaiah. Or take for instance the idea that Gen 49 is post monarchial (after David) because of its blatant prediction of a coming ruler from the tribe of Judah. I don't presume to assert that the presupposition that prophecy does not exist is the only factor that liberal scholarship takes into account when dating texts, but many times, it seems to be the overriding one.

Source Criticism
The nature of scholarship is that it builds off scholarship. For instance, the dating of texts, as discussed above has much to do with Source Criticism. When scholarship places a date on a given text, that date limits the amount of sources that could have been possibly used in the formation of that text, according to the date that it is given. In other words, 1 Samuel could not have used the gospel of John as a source because the gospel of John did not exist at the time of the writing of 1 Samuel. But suppose that we found out that the 1 Samuel was written by a by a Jew living in the 2nd century AD. It would at least be possible for the writer of 1 Samuel to have used the Gospel of John as a source. This example may seem a bit ridiculous but things like this happen. Example: One of the common beliefs among liberal scholars is that the Genesis account of creation is based on an “earlier” writing known as the Enuma Elish (Akkadian creation narrative). I personally remember seeing this very thing in my world history book my junior year of high school. However the earliest discovered copy of the Enuma Elish is from around 750 BC The actual autograph is thought to be from around 1700 BC This date has also been challenged by many. Some have dated the original autograph around 1500 BC or even 1400 BC The problem here is that the modern view of the original autograph(s) of the Pentateuch does not even put the Pentateuch on the same playing field with any of these texts. The idea that Enuma Elish could have borrowed from the Pentateuch does not even show up on the radar of liberal scholarship because it has wholeheartedly built its view of the date of the Pentateuch on the scholarship of Julius Wellhausen and his Documentary Hypothesis (J-850 BC, E- 750 BC, D 621 BC, P- 450 BC) as opposed to a Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch (around 1400 BC).

Time of Canonization
As mentioned above, we have no records of any councils that took place among Masoretes, Rabbis, or Scribes. However, we do have a general idea of the latest date that the OT could have been canonized. This is due to the name of the OT canon that begins to show up in writings in the 2nd century BC. This name serves as a three-fold division of OT canon, The Law, The Prophets, and The Writings. (We get the name "TaNaCH" from the transliteration of the first character of these three words in Hebrew.) The earliest that we see the name, in a literary work, is in a work called the Prologue to Sirach/Ecclesiasticus (132 BC), only the writer speaks of “the Law, the Prophets and the others that follow them.” The idea here is that from the 132 BC on, the OT seems be have a name by which it is called. A formal name begs the idea there be a formal reorganization of this three-fold division of the OT.

This is complicated, and too much to tackle here. What I have mentioned above is one of the main points of interest. I would refer to the reference works above to get a better idea of all the available texts that clue us into the timing of the OT canon.

Circular Reasoning
I wholeheartedly agree that most of the time, the canon is talked about in a manner that uses circular reasoning (the Bible is the word of God because the Bible says it is). I want to propose 2 ways in which scripture can be used in support of the canon without being considered circular reasoning.

1) Scriptures that claim that scripture is inspired (2 Tim 3:16) may be used to show that inspiration is not something that people have assigned to it. Rather, scripture claims inspiration for itself.

2) Scriptures that allude to other scriptures may be used to determine the timing by which criteria 3 (Josephus) came to be. For instance, Joshua 1:8 says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” This shows the author of the book of Joshua’s perspective of the “Book of the Law.” Whether the book of Joshua is inspired by God or not, we have here a documented pre-exilic book that contains an opinion of the “Book of the Law”. (This final point is a product of textual criticism, which gleans facts apart from the consideration of inspiration. It is the approach most often employed by liberal theologians in their hermeneutical practice. - MR)

Validity of the Bible: Part 2 (Originally posted June 2007)

Once you begin to consider the reasonability of self-authoritativeness as a method of validating the Bible, you must eventually backtrack to consider also the theologians’ methods of analyzing the texts. In other words, no one can reasonably designate a text as inspired until they have first sufficiently substantiated its more superficial claims, such as the time in which it was written and its authorship. We must never forget the inherent weight of the adjective, divinely inspired. A claim as heavy as this one invites a level of critique probably far more severe than we have yet had to accommodate, and yet we often treat such critiques as trifle annoyances. What a Christian experiences as a bothersome triviality might, for the non-believer, seem an insurmountable obstacle to belief. My question, then, is how these more superficial claims are being tested by researchers within the field. Are the methods employed sufficient? Are the conclusions drawn continuous with the evidence?

As a necessary preface to this discussion, let me cite Richard Dawkins’ argument for how faith can be positively examined by science:

“’The net, or magisterium, of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the old clichés, science gets the age of rocks, and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven (quote by Stephen Jay Gould).’…The moment religion steps on science’s [turf, however,] and starts to meddle in the real world with miracles, it ceases to be religion in the sense Gould is defending, and his amicabilis concordia (lit., friendly agreement) is broken (The God Delusion, pg. 55, 60).”

To paraphrase Dawkins’ argument for our purposes: Although religion might claim certain attributes of itself ‘beyond the realm of science’, there are inarguably certain instances in which the two overlap (such as claims to the age of the earth, the feasibility of Noah’s ark, and - of special concern to our present argument - dates and events cited in biblical texts). Each of these things can be objectively examined within the realm of science, history, or whatever particular field the claims or events happen to infringe upon. However crystal clear this concept might be, and however simple it might sound to distinguish fact from fiction upon these guidelines, the pursuit of truth proves as difficult as ever, as I intend to demonstrate.

Historical researchers often employ science to support or lend credibility to a potential historical truth, but the application of science to the process is limited at best. Historians - or as far as it concerns the Bible, theologians - often adopt a set of criteria by which to analyze the scriptures in order to achieve the most balanced picture of what really happened. Such criteria differs between schools of thought (whether conservative or liberal) and might include such considerations as language used; cohesiveness of thought; literary structure; references to people, dates, or events; plausible influences; cultural conditions; authorship; extent of circulation and reproduction; and archaeological evidence. Historical truth, therefore, is achieved by determining the most likely scenario given the totality of evidence. The items which compose this list of criteria, as well as the priority that each item is given, is going to differ between different schools of thought. One example, and possibly that of greatest consequence to our discussion, deals with the treatment of prophecy. Among conservative theologians, the presence of prophecy within a text might suggest very little in regards to the date of the text; that is to say, prophecy within a text probably holds only little priority in the overall analysis of the text’s age. In contrast, liberal theologians might reasonably consider seemingly prophetic writing as evidence of actual foreknowledge (the writer either experienced or was familiar with the event). There is an underlying assumption, completely justifiable within the secular worldview, that true prophecy (that is, the foretelling of future events) is not possible. From that stance, it might be reasonable to assume that any prophetic passage within a text was either inserted at a later date by an author who possessed knowledge of the particular event - and possibly, whose agenda would benefit from the pretense of prophetic authority - or that the later accounts (i.e., accounts of Jesus’ lineage or nationality) were adapted in order to fulfill the existing prophecy. From the beginning, there is sown within the mind of the evaluator an underlying distrust (it might also be fairly called an objective skepticism) of biblical content. Among conservatives, there is an equally damning presumption of divine inspiration and the authenticity of prophecy. This is how the board is set…our job, then, becomes to find a common ground upon which to intelligently and objectively discuss the matter.

The products of these two methods of biblical analysis are so worlds apart that any comparison between the two would be about as useful as comparing apples to oranges. By the time we get to discussing the conclusions each school of thought has developed, we’ve already wandered too far away from the real important issue. While the products/conclusions are all that matter in science, with history, it’s the assumptions that bear all the scrutiny. While there are certainly reasons certain groups choose to consider particular items in higher priority than others, these reasons are not all equally valid. Justin, since you are more familiar (I’m assuming) with the actual lists employed by liberal theologians versus conservative theologians to analyze biblical texts, would you mind explaining the strengths and weakness of each criteria set? If you could also maybe reference how this whole process has come to exclude certain other texts from that same period (Gnostic gospels, apocryphal books, etc.), I would appreciate it. Also, maybe write something about the Dead Sea scrolls and how their discovery has effected each methodologies claims (i.e., The Isaiah scroll containing messianic prophecy, thus supporting conservative theologians’ assumptions that such prophecies were not edited in, etc.).

Like I’ve previously pointed out, an error in the conservative theologians’ analysis undermines the claim of divine inspiration; conversely, an error in the liberal theologians’ (or secularists’) analysis of scripture potentially opens the door to the reality of prophecy, thus substantiating the Bible’s claims of divine inspiration. Either way, I think within Dawkin’s frame of mind there is room to test the bible to see whose viewpoint withstands the scrutiny (is based on sound reason) and whose doesn’t. If I need to, I’ll cite particular claims made my Dawkin’s refuting the bible’s accuracy and we can deal with those one by one to see what comes up.