Is the Bible reliable? This is a highly debated issue with Christians and non-Christians. When was the original text written? Why should we trust it? How can we know it is reliable? How can we trust the Bible? Aren’t there hundreds of thousands of mistakes in the New Testament alone? The Bible is very reliable more reliable than any other historical article because of many reasons. To find out historical reliability historians use a method called source criticism. In source criticism they look at the external evidence, internal evidence, physical analysis, contextualization, and textual analysis.
O.T Reliability: External Evidence/Contextualization
External evidence refers to information obtained from independent sources, such as archaeological findings and historical documents. Numerous examples support the reliability of the Old Testament, including the Tel Dan inscription discovered in 1993. This ancient inscription, created by Hazael, king of Aram, contains a reference to the "House of David." The significance of this discovery lies in its corroboration of the existence and prominence of a figure named David, thereby lending support to historical claims made in the biblical text.
Another find that backs up the Bible is the Cyrus cylinder. Why does the Cyrus cylinder back up the Bible as historically accurate? In the book of Ezra, the ruler Cyrus makes a decree to let the Jews go back to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple. This seems like a story that could never happen skeptics would claim (before the Cyrus cylinder was found) why would a powerful king allow the Jewish people go back to their homeland just to rebuild their temple? The Cyrus cylinder is confirmation that this happened. In the Cyrus cylinder it tells people that they may go back and rebuild their cultic temples.
Also, the Hittites and the Pool of Siloam were thought to be made up. Until recent discoveries found that these were indeed real people and places. Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptians sources confirm Isreal as a nation, that they went to war with Isreal, the temple’s destruction, it also confirms biblical kings, etc. The Bible also includes real kings, places, and nations making it hard to make it just some fairy tale or mythical book. Archaeologically the Bible has overwhelming evidence just as much or more than any other historical text.
N.T Reliability: External Evidence/Contextualization
O.T Reliability: Internal Evidence
Internal evidence is what the text is saying/claiming about itself. Is the text showing accurate geographical features, time, and customs of the time? Does the text share embarrassing details that it would not include if it was made up? Is it consistent across multiple sources that are against and for the source?
The Bible does remarkably well in this category as stated before the Old Testament includes accurate geographical features, is in the right time setting, and has the right customs of the time. The Bible shares many embarrassing details that not many other ancient sources wouldn’t share. For example, the ancient text from the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Babylonians have almost no negative facts about their kings and wars. They only include victories in their battles and success in life.
In the torah Moses (who is writing) tells us how he sins and will not make it to the promise land because of his sin. In Judges and many of the prophets’ books it shares how the people of Isreal continually turn from God. In 1-2 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles and many other books it records how many of there kings were evil in God’s eyes. The Bible also records King David a man after God’s own heart committing adultery and murder. Finally, it records Solomon the wisest man ever to live committing idolatry. There are many other examples of the Bible including embarrassing details that no other sources would include.
Does the Bible stay consistent with other sources outside of it? Yes, as stated before the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians sources confirm many Biblical events.
O.T Reliability: Physical Analysis
Physical analysis is pretty much dating the writing looking at the form of writing, the material it was written on, carbon dating, and more. How does the Old Testament stand up against this test? The Dead Sea scrolls confirmed that the Old Testament was written well before the New Testament. Almost all historians will agree that the dead sea scrolls were written around 250 BC to 70 AD putting it before Christianity or at least its widespread. Carbon dating, the form of writing the material it was written on and the material found around it all point to it being from the time period mentioned before.
The Ketef Hinnom silver amulets is a little fragment of the book of Deuteronomy that dates to 600 BC this is the oldest surviving piece of the Bible. Why should we trust the Bible if it only dates back to 600 BC and claims to go back to the beginning? This is the case for many historical and religious documents. For example, Hindus sacred books, the Rigveda is thought to be composed around 1500 BC but are earliest copies aren’t till 1000 AD. That is 2,500 years they would have to preserve the text. The first surviving copy of Alexander the Great’s life is almost 300 years after his death.
The only original ancient text that survived from BC are inscriptions.
This is because the material most countries used was made out of weak material like papyrus or parchment. So it is not a problem that the Old Testament does not have original manuscripts, because no ancient text had original unless they were engraved on a stone or similar material, we still have old copies of the Bible, the text fits with other events said to be taking place, and lastly, the scribes whole job was to accurately copy the Old Testament the most sacred thing to the Jews.
N.T Reliability: Physical Analysis
O.T Reliability: Textual Analysis
Textual analysis looks at how many ancient copies, the consistency and errors in the copies, how is it written (like history, poetry or myth), what is the author’s purpose is the author bias? Just in the dead sea scrolls we have around 250 but there are also the Masoretic manuscripts which are a couple thousand, and the Septuagint Greek copies which are hundreds. This is more than any other ancient source besides one, and that so happens to be the New Testament.
Now does the text give a consistent story and are there any major errors? For the most part the Old Testament is very consistent throughout the text. There are few minor differences. In the Septuagint text we see that Jerimiah is about 1/8 the size that it is in the Masoretic manuscripts, but we find both in the Dead Sea scrolls showing that both existed early on. This is not a big deal because being shorter or longer does not have a major effect on the reliability of the book. This is similar to Esther.
Deuteronomy has one slight differences in 32:8 which says “the sons of Israel” in the Masoretic scripts and “the sons of God” in the Dead Sea scrolls.
This could be a typo or mistranslation, but it does not create any major problem for the reliability of Bible it only reflects minor theological differences. 2 Samuel has some missing lines throughout the different texts. There are also some confusing numbers and unclear lines. This shows that the Jewish scribes that copied these text made mistakes even though the process was very time consuming (they wrote one letter at a time and counted out the letters and took their time) this was a hard book to copy and had hard phrases and some verses that were grammatically weird.
These are the biggest textual differences, but nothing discredits the Bible’s reliability just reflect minor theological differences and different sizes of texts reflecting different theological points and also small scribal writing errors.