Welcome back to Mishkan Katan, where we have been in a series of teachings on the fall festivals of the Bible. The third major festival, Sukkot, ended this past Friday night. Sukkot is a seven-day festival. It is followed by a one-day festival called Shemini Atzeret, or in other words, the eighth day. You can see why it’s called the eighth day, because it follows the seven days of Sukkot. And then, there is a holiday called Simchat Torah, which on this year’s biblical calendar fell on this past Sunday. Now, Simchat Torah is a day on which the Bible is celebrated big time, among those who keep this holiday. In Israel, it is my understanding that Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are celebrated on the same day, whereas outside the beautiful Land, they are two separate days. On Simchat Torah, there are morning and evening services where the scrolls of scripture are paraded around the room seven times and happy songs are sung, while people kiss the Torah scroll. Sometimes, the celebration spills out into the street. Every member present is given a blessing. Children figure prominently and often receive treat bags. The end of the Torah reading cycle, the last verses from Deuteronomy, as well as the first verses from Genesis, are read, to emphasize the continuity of the yearly Torah reading cycle. Festive meals, featuring cylindrical foods like cheese blintzes or cabbages rolls, to mimic the shape of the Torah scroll, are prepared and enjoyed. I’ve been in some of those services. It’s truly a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving to God for His written word.
So, I thought it would be cool for us to celebrate the Bible on our broadcast today. I remember one of the very first messianic gatherings I attended. It was very crowded, in the home of a believer, the host. I had no place near my chair to lay my copy of the scriptures. So, I laid it on the floor. One of the other attendees gently picked up my Bible and placed it elsewhere. She made the comment that because the Word of God is so precious, it should never be placed on the floor. I really hadn’t thought about the scriptures in those terms, but this person’s behavior showed respect for the Word of God.
The Bible is not something that most Christians generally think about. They know it’s there. They may study it from time to time, or they may be a believer who’s not really very interested in deeply studying the Bible. According to Bible scholar Jim Staley, of Passion For Truth Ministries, only 34% of believers in Yeshua today believe in an absolute moral truth. Yet, the Christian church today is not open to learning new insights from the Word of God. God’s people feel like they have learned all they need to know, and they will not entertain ANY challenges to their religious beliefs. No one wants to re-evaluate, much as Martin Luther did. They intuitively feel as though they are missing something, but they feel as though they are not smart enough to figure it out. This is a deception from the Enemy of Souls.
It is ok to question and investigate deeply what you have been taught about the Bible. C. S. Lewis is famous for saying, and I am paraphrasing, the Bible is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Just turn it loose and it will defend itself! So, the Bible can stand up to your questions.
One of the hardest things for people to do is admit they might be wrong.
Not because people don’t make mistakes, but because sometimes admitting you’re wrong means admitting you believed something for years that wasn’t actually true.
And I think this is especially dangerous when it comes to Scripture. We can hear something from our parents, our church, a pastor, a teacher, or whoever we learned the Bible from, and eventually we stop questioning it. It becomes “what the Bible says” in our mind, even though we’ve never actually gone back and searched it for ourselves.
I don’t think we should be afraid of doing that.
If I believe something is true, I should be able to open Scripture and examine it. If someone shows me something I missed, I should be willing to look at it. And if I’m wrong, I’d rather find out than spend the rest of my life defending something simply because I’ve always believed it.
Don’t be afraid to question what you believe. Be afraid of being so convinced you’re right that you won’t even search to find out.
That’s where deception becomes dangerous.
This italicized portion above is from Melissa Lawrence, on Facebook.
I have noticed that there are basically two types of Bible studies. One type is very focused on how people relate to each other, on emotional support, on activities and topics that tend to make the participants feel better about themselves by giving them the chance to have lots of discussion that pertains to their personal experiences. And there’s nothing wrong with those kinds of studies. They have their place. But typically, the studies may or may not touch on either one verse, or just a very few verses of Scripture. Generally speaking, at these types of studies, deep study of scripture does not occur. The other type of Bible study does focus on looking at larger portions of scripture in their original contexts, and digging into them. The culture and setting of the words are examined. Related passages that helped to illuminate the passage being studied are drawn in. Passages which help to connect the passage being studied with the message of the Bible as a whole are also featured. Sometimes extra-biblical commentaries or other sources are mentioned. To repeat, both types of Bible studies have their place.
But again, most Christians just sort of take the Bible for granted. Some, apart from the weekly sermon or pastoral teaching, never study it at all. And then, when they encounter someone who questions the place of honor that the Bible occupies in the believer’s life, the child of God generally doesn’t understand the skepticism. To us, the Bible is so foundational to our faith that we don’t question it very much. Non-believers do, though. And I thought it would be helpful for us this morning to look at some proofs for the Bible that come from outside of scripture and maybe some that come from inside scripture as well. So that’s what we’re going to do together this morning.
One of the saddest moments of my life was when one of my children made this statement to me as a teenager. He said, “What kind of person builds her life upon a book?” Undoubtedly, he had heard such a derisive comment from one of his pagan friends. The fact that he viewed the Bible as “just another book” broke my heart.
Why do you think people reject the Bible as the word of God?
I think they do so for three reasons, maybe more.
One reason is ignorance. Ignorance here is defined as a lack of knowledge. They just don’t know that much about the Bible, and they simply have formed their opinion based on what they’ve heard.
Another reason is pride or rebellion. People do not want God telling them what to do with their lives.
And then another reason is immorality. Pagan people with unregenerate hearts basically love sin and want to continue in it. The Bible goes against these desires. Therefore, people who want to remain in their sin hate the Bible.
One of the saddest reasons people reject the Bible is because they have been hurt deeply by people who claimed to follow the Bible. This is one of Satan‘s greatest tools, to use so-called Christians to deeply hurt other people, which keeps those people far away from a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
Yet another reason is pseudo-intellectualism. This is the philosophy of those who say that you can’t be smart or intellectual, and believe the Bible. They say it’s old-fashioned, out of date, not worthy of consideration. Of course, people who say this generally have as their root objection one of the first four reasons I mentioned earlier.
Can we make a compelling case for the Bible being the supernaturally inspired word of God to mankind? Let’s give it a shot. As I began to create this lesson, I went to a wonderful resource that I recommend to all followers of Yeshua. It is “The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict”, by Josh McDowell.
First of all, the Bible is a unique, one-of-a-kind book.
It was written over a time span of approximately 1500 years.
It was written by more than 40 authors. These men were from all different walks of life. Some were fisherman. Some were tax collectors, some statesman, scholars, kings, poets, military leaders, and others.
The Bible was written in different places. Parts of it were written in the wilderness, the desert of the Middle East. Parts of it were written in a dungeon. Parts of it were written from inside prison walls. Parts of it were written while the author was in exile. Parts of it were written during times of war, and other parts during times of peace. It was written on three different continents… Asia, Africa, and Europe. It was written in three languages… Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
Yet, despite these diversities, the Bible presents, a single unfolding story: the story of God‘s pursuit of the heart of mankind, and of his desire for mankind’s redemption. Salvation is the unifying thread from beginning to end. It is the unfolding revelation of God Himself, in various presentations, to different men and women of faith. And sometimes to men and women without faith.
The Bible is the most widely-read book of the past 4000 years. Before the creation of the printing press, copies of the Bible were written by hand. It’s impossible to say how many copies of the scriptures, first the Old Testament, and then the Old and New Testaments, were written by hand. But since the creation of the printing press, literally billions of copies of this book have been produced, more than any other book in known history.
When I was a child in elementary school, I vividly remember being given a copy of a Gideon’s New Testament, when these big, usually older, men in suits would visit the classrooms and hand them out. Sad that is no longer allowed in the public schools, because the public education system has declared God unwelcome there.
The Bible has been translated into more than 2200 languages. It is the primary vehicle of communication for over 90% of the world‘s population. No other book in history has been translated, re-translated, or paraphrased more than the Bible. Let’s be honest. This phenomenon is mainly due to the evangelistic nature of Christianity, regardless of the motive of some sects. Judaism will flat-out tell you that it is not evangelistic, despite Hashem’s desire that His chosen people be a light to the nations. It is the Christians who have spread the Word of God around the world, by and large.
Another thing that makes the Bible unique is that it has survived more than any other book. Compared with other ancient books, the Bible has more manuscript evidence to support it than any other piece of literature, and more than any 10 pieces of classical literature combined.
Furthermore, there are today approximately 25,000 ancient manuscripts copies (some are fragments) of the Greek New Testament. The available manuscripts of the New Testament are overwhelmingly greater than those of any other work of ancient literature. Do you know what book from antiquity comes in second place? The Greek writer Homer’s book, The Iliad.
Although there are thousands of fragments and scrolls from the Old Testament, the Dead Sea scrolls are the most significant. These manuscripts, found in caves in the area of Israel called Qumran, date from between the third century BCE and the fourth century CE. The significance of this amazing archaeological find is that these much earlier manuscripts confirm the accuracy of other, later, manuscripts which had been found and preserved. Until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered the earliest Masoretic manuscript modern scholars had was the Cairo Codex, which was from 895 CE.
The Jews were masters at manuscript reproduction and preservation. They had special classes of men within their culture, whose life’s calling was to preserve and transmit the Scriptures with perfect accuracy.
I want to read to you from page 74 in McDowell’s previously mentioned book, concerning the rigorous processes employed when copying a Torah scroll, so that you can have a clear idea as to what was involved.
“ A synagogue roll must be written on the skins of clean animals, prepared for the particular use of the synagogue by a Jew. These must be fastened together with strings taken from clean animals. Every skin must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex. The length of each column must not extend over less than 48 or more than 60 lines; and the breadth must consist of 30 letters. The whole copy must be first-lined; and if three words be written without a line, it is worthless. The ink should be black, neither red, green, nor any other color, and be prepared according to a definite recipe. An authentic copy must be the exemplar, from which the transcriber ought not in the least deviate. No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory, the scribe not having looked at the Codex before him… Besides this, the copyist must sit in full Jewish dress, wash his whole body, not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink, and should a King address him while writing that Name he must take no notice of him.”
If a mistake was made, the entire scroll was relegated to the synagogue’s wooden cupboard called a gheniza, and when the cupboard got full those scrolls were burned.
Due to the rigor of this transmission process, the Jews gave little credence to the age of a manuscript, deeming the newer ones to be even more reliable than the older ones, because the older ones were more likely to have been damaged or to have deteriorated over time.
The Bible has withstood demonic attack from its enemies. If this book had not been the supernatural, inspired Word of God, men would have destroyed it long ago. Our Savior was right when He said “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will be no means pass away.”
Then, the Bible is unique in its teachings. For one thing, the Bible contains much predictive prophecy. There are prophecies predicting what will happen to individual nations, to the nation of Israel, to all the peoples of the Earth, to certain cities, and a large body of prophecies concerning the Messiah. Several Mishkan Katan lessons could be taught looking at various ones of these prophecies that have already come true. The Bible is the only religious text that contains predictive prophecy. Other religious books claim that they have been divinely inspired. These include the Quran, the book of Mormon, parts of the Hindu text called Veda… but, none of those books contain predictive prophecy, much less evidence that such prophecies have come true. The Bible has such evidence “in spades”. Hundreds of such prophecies, some of them given hundreds of years in advance, have been literally fulfilled, down to the letter.
Next, let’s consider the character of the Bible, not the characters, the character of the Bible itself. “ Lewis Chafer, of Dallas Theological Seminary, had this to say…” the Bible is not such a book a man would write if he could, or could write if he would.”
What does this mean?
The Bible, although a theological book, does not sugarcoat the failures and foibles of its characters, even when those sins reflect badly on God’s chosen people. The sins of the patriarchs are laid out in full view. The sins of groups of people are revealed and denounced. The apostles are very open about their own faults. As the People of the Way are getting organized as a group, arguments and disorder within the church are exposed, especially in the books of Corinthians. The Bible presents unvarnished reality, the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the joy and the pain. If you were trying to convert people to your religious way of thinking, would you have been so honest? I doubt it. I don’t think I would have.
The Bible has had a unique influence on other literature of the world. It has been said that if every Bible in the world were destroyed, it could be reconstituted and restored in all of its essential parts by gathering quotations from the Bible that are on the shelves of any city library. It is the most often quoted book in the world. The degree to which the Bible has permeated the literature of the western world cannot be easily fathomed.
Now, all of that being said, what we Protestant Baptists think of as “The Holy Bible” with its 66 books, it’s not exactly the same that all religions of the world consider the same. For example, Jewish people do not consider what we call the New Testament as part of the inspired Scriptures. Other denominations that worship Jesus Christ, as Savior, Lord and King, have Bibles that contain more books than does the Protestant Bible. The Roman Catholic Bible contains 7 more books in its Old Testament, the so-called Apocrypha. And then the denominations in Africa and Asia have Scriptures with more books than even those.
However, it’s important to know that there were five core principles that were used to determine if a book, if a writing, could be included in the holy scriptures for the Christian faith.
Was it written by a prophet of God?
Was the writer affirmed by acts of God? Did God give signs to substantiate the writer’s words, miracles to confirm his message?
Did the book present false claims about God? Did the message tell the truth about God? The early church fathers had a policy of “if in doubt, throw it out”. So, they were very rigorous about which books they deemed to be valid.
Did the book have the power to change a life? Did it have a transforming force to transform the life of the reader?
Did the book have a wide acceptance by the people of God? When a book was received, collected, read, and used by the people of God, as the Word of God, then it was deemed to be acceptable for inclusion in the biblical canon. For example. In second Peter three verse 16, the apostle Peter acknowledged that Paul’s writings were scriptural on par with the Old Testament Hebrew Bible.
The book of Hebrews, that amazing book, almost did not “make the cut.” One of the chief problems was its obscure authorship. Even today, although many consider it to have been written by Paul, there is disagreement on that point. One of the more interesting theories is that it was written by Apollos, a Greek Jew who was brilliant, or by Priscilla (of Priscilla and Aquila) two dear friends of Paul. Both of those authorships would have excluded this great book from the NT canon. Many believe it was attributed to Paul so that it could be included. I am so glad it is part of our Bible. One of my favorite books!
What other books almost were rejected, but were ultimately included?
In the NT, Revelation, 2 and 3 John, Jude, James and 2 Peter. In the Tanakh, the Old Testament, the hotly-contested books were Esther, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Ezekiel. You might ask, “Why was poor old Zeke given such a hard time?” Well, if you are familiar with the book it is full of apocalyptic imagery; but, the primary objection from some of the rabbinical leaders was that the Temple Ezekiel foresaw differed from the previous Temples in size, in construction and in Temple practices.
By the year 367 CE, there was an early list of New Testament books, which exactly matches the present-day Protestant New Testament. This was disseminated in a letter to the churches by an early church father named Athanasius of Alexandria.
As for the Old Testament, none other than our Yeshua confirmed its authenticity. The Old Testament canon was solidified approximately 400 years before Jesus was born. The Jews were convinced that from the fourth century BCE and onward that the voice of God had ceased to speak directly. In other words, there were no new writings, no new scriptural revelation in writing, after that period. The last books written were Malachi and the two books of Chronicles. These books appear with the rest of the Hebrew Bible books, and the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint, which was translated from Hebrew into Greek, around 250 BCE. Jesus said in the upper room in Luke 24:44“all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms concerning me”. In so saying, Jesus referred to the three sections into which the Hebrew Bible was divided… The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. The book of Psalms is the first and longest book in the section called the Writings, which is probably why Jesus mentioned it specifically. Furthermore, in both Luke 11:51 and Matthew 23:35, Jesus uttered these words: “ from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah.” Abel was the first martyr recorded in scripture, in Genesis 4:8. Zechariah was the last martyr to be named in the Hebrew Old Testament order. He was stoned while prophesying to the people in the court of the house of the Lord. This is recorded in second Chronicles 24:21. So, Jesus was basically saying from Genesis to Chronicles or according to how we order the books from Genesis to Malachi, the entire Hebrew Bible has God’s divine authority and is divinely inspired.
Does the Bible contain “errors” or discrepancies? That is a common accusation. Let me see if I can shed some light on this.
Given the diversity of facts concerning how the Bible came to be written and compiled, you would expect that so many different authors, over so many years, would make errors…unless of course you believe as I do that this sacred book was dictated in the Spirit and put together by none other than God Himself, working through the instruments known as the human writers.
Listen to the personal testimony of one of the most gifted Bible scholars who ever lived, Dr. Gleason Archer.
I am quoting from Pp. 45-46 of Josh McDowell’s book here.
“As an undergraduate at Harvard, I was fascinated by apologetics and biblical evidence; so I labored to obtain a knowledge of the languages and cultures that have any bearing on biblical scholarship. As a Classics major in college, I received training in Latin and Greek, also in French and German. At seminary, I majored in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic; and in postgraduate years, I became involved in Syriac and Akkadian, to the extent of teaching elective courses in each of these subjects. Earlier, during my final two years of high school I had acquired a special interest in Middle Kingdom, Egyptian studies, which was furthered as I later taught courses in this field. At the Oriental Institute in Chicago, I did specialized study in 18th Dynasty historical records and also studied Coptic and Sumerian. Combined with this work in ancient languages was a full course of training at law school, after which I was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1939. As I have dealt with one apparent discrepancy after another, and have studied the alleged contradictions between the biblical record and the evidence of linguistics, archaeology, or science, my confidence in the trustworthiness of scripture, has been repeatedly verified and strengthened by the discovery that almost every problem in scripture that has ever been discovered by man, from ancient times until now, has been dealt with in a completely satisfactory manner by the biblical text itself, or else by objective archaeological information. The deductions that may be validly drawn from ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, or Acadian documents, all harmonize with the biblical record; and no properly trained evangelical scholar, has anything to fear from the hostile arguments and challenges of humanistic, rationalists or detractors of any and every persuasion.”
It is hard to imagine any scholar more qualified than this doctor, Gleason Archer. What a learned man! He spent his whole life studying discrepancies, so-called, in the holy Scriptures. Basically, if someone makes an allegation that there is an error in the Bible, that allegation is usually rooted in a failure to recognize basic principles of interpreting ancient literature.
In his book, on page 47, McDowell lists 15 principles that can apply to resolve what appear to be discrepancies or errors in the biblical text. We are not going to look at all 15 of them this morning.
Let’s do look at the first one, though, and then I want to apply it through an example. The first principle says, “the unexplained is not necessarily unexplainable.” The example is of Judas Iscariot’s death by suicide, the accounts in Matthew and Acts. Let’s look at each passage. First, the Matthew verses, from chapter 27, verses 3-5.
3 When Y’hudah, who had betrayed him, saw that Yeshua had been condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the head cohanim and elders, 4 saying, “I sinned in betraying an innocent man to death.” “What is that to us?” they answered. “That’s your problem.” 5 Hurling the pieces of silver into the sanctuary, he left; then he went off and hanged himself.
Pretty straightforward and brief as to the cause of death, right?
Now, let’s compare Luke’s verses from Acts 1:18-19.
18 (With the money Y’hudah received for his evil deed, he bought a field; and there he fell to his death. His body swelled up and burst open, and all his insides spilled out. 19 This became known to everyone in Yerushalayim, so they called that field Hakal-D’ma — which in their language means “Field of Blood”).
Luke was a physician. So, it is reasonable to see how he would have provided more anatomically correct details. But, do these two accounts actually conflict? Or, are they complementary? Together, do they form a more complete picture?
It is entirely possible that Judas did hang himself, from a tree at the edge of a cliff, which descended to sharp, jagged rocks at the base, and that either while he was being asphyxiated or shortly thereafter, his body slipped the tree branch and fell onto the jagged rocks below.
We must realize that each biblical writer wrote to a specific audience with specific goals in mind. In his gospel, Matthew was drawing parallels between Judas Iscariot and Absolom, the rebellious, mutinous, traitorous son of King David. Absolom also died from complications of a hanging, although his death was not a suicide.
On the other hand, in addition to his additional details regarding Judas’ body, Luke, in the book of Acts, draws parallels to an Old Testament character named Ahab (1 Kings 21 and 2 Kings 9). Ahab did evil toward a man named Naboth, whose field Ahab wanted. Like Judas, Ahab exploited his influence within the nation of Israel; and like Judas, he betrayed innocent blood for the sake of material gain; and consequently, like Judas, Ahab died a similarly ignominious death.
Well, we are getting a bit far afield here… (argh! Awful pun!)
We don’t have time this morning to fully examine the evidence from outside the Bible, such as historical sources which testify to the supernatural characteristics or the Bible, or the evidence from archeology, and science, and so on.
But, let’s at least touch on these just a bit.
The renowned Jewish archeologist, Nelson Glueck, said this: “It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference.”
A common area of disagreement between archaeology, science, and the Bible concerns dating, that is, dating the age of something from the past that has been found in the present. Dating is the most shaky area in current archaeology. It is often not founded on solid, empirical analysis. When this is absent, and when enormous predisposition against the supernatural is present, you can expect to see archaeology, science, and the biblical text disagree. On the whole, however, archaeology has without question strengthened confidence in the reliability of the scriptural record. As one example, archaeology has provided additional and older manuscripts of the books of the Bible. The fact that these older manuscripts match almost exactly to the newer ones, strengthens our confidence in the reliability of the Bible.
Additionally, while the book of Luke had been at one time thought to be filled with errors, Luke is now regarded as one of the greatest historians of his time. In all, Luke names 32 countries, 54 cities and 9 islands, all without error. Archeology has substantiated his records and locations. Most of the ancient cities he mentioned have through archeology been located, and as a result the missionary journeys of the apostle Paul can now be accurately traced.
This last example ties in with some of my own personal experience. Until 1961 there was no archaeological evidence of Pontius Pilate’s name and the title of Prefect of Judea. But, an Italian archaeologist in 1961 by the name of Antonio Frova, discovered a stone slab at Caesarea-By-The-Sea, near where Herod the Great had built his magnificent, seaside, palace complex. On the slab was an inscription in Latin. There are four lines in the inscription, with only three of them being readable. Roughly translated, they say this:
Tiberium
Pontius Pilate
Prefect of Judea.
I had the occasion to see this stone slab with my own eyes, in 2023, during my last trip to Israel. Another amazing archaeological discovery that confirmed the accuracy of the Holy Scriptures.
In Proverbs 3:1-10, God issues to us an appeal to honor His written word. Let’s turn there and read it together. When each of our sons married, my husband and shared these verses with them and their guests at the pre-wedding rehearsal meal.
"Dear child of mine, do not forget my Torah, but let your heart keep my commandments. Doing so will add to you length of days, long life, and peace. Do not abandon the heart of Your Father by losing sight of mercy and truth; No! Tie them around your neck; inscribe them upon the table of your heart, that is, make them part of your inner being and will. Doing so will reveal my grace and good understanding before the eyes of God and others. Trust in your heavenly Father with all your heart and don't seek to be in control, trying to figure everything out on your own. Listen for your Father’s voice in everything you do; in all your ways know His heart, and then your ways will be directed in the truth. Don't assume that you know it all; abandon your self-conceit: Revere your heavenly Father and flee from what you know is self-destructive and evil! Doing so will impart healing to you: your body will glow with health, your very bones will vibrate with life! Honor your Heavenly Father with everything you own; give him your first and the best of what you have; then your barns will burst with plenty, and your wine vats will be overflowing" (Prov. 3:1-10).
