HJnA Hoe kan ons glo dat die Bybel die Woord van God is?
Ek gesels met n nuwe vriend, n Nederlander wat agnosties groot geword het, en nou in sy 20s voel dat hy “iets” in sy lewe mis. Hy ondersoek nou geloof in die algemeen.. hierdie is een van die vrae wat hy het:” I find the Old and New Testament irreconcilable; and also, I’m not sure how Christians can believe that the Bible is actually the word of God.”
Hi Thomas
No problem, I hope you enjoy the “Can I trust the Bible?” videos (sien onder) when you get time to watch. Yes, Wesley Huff is great. He has also had some interesting interviews lately. He has an amazing testimony; as a child he suffered from acute paralysis, I suppose from a virus, and was in a wheelchair. But he was miraculously healed. He shares this in some of his podcasts. The fact that manuscripts have been faithfully transmitted of course doesn’t mean that these manuscripts are “the Word of God”. To get to that point, we have to really scratch beneath the surface of what we see.
So, I’m just going to continue talking, I hope it doesn’t get too much. But you’ve raised so many relevant points, I’m really hoping to be able to try to just give you a glimpse of the fact that there are actually answers to these objections. Unfortunately, the church in general doesn’t do a good job of answering the really tough questions. I will still get to tell you what set me on this path- this story has to do with the fact that one is not “born a Christian”. Christianity is not a religion you inherit from your parents; it is something that you believe irrespective of your background or upbringing.
I’m thinking of what you said, about the Old and New Testament being irreconcilable. The God of the Old Testament is in fact exactly the same as the God of the New Testament. One of the themes that run through the Old Testament, especially from King David onwards, is the “kingdom of God”, and this then finds the fulfillment in the New Testament. While it is true that Christ teaches forgiveness and love, what He really talks about, is actually the KINGDOM OF GOD, which I would love to tell you more about. If you read e.g. the gospel of Matthew, you will see the KINGDOM everywhere. The modern church focuses so much on personal salvation and “going to heaven”, that the message of the Kingdom, which was what Jesus preached, has gotten a bit lost. The kingdom He talks about is, as He says, “within” us. If you want to see what the kingdom is like, you can read the Sermon on the Mount…here Jesus gives a blueprint of a new kind of living; kind of an upside down kingdom- the first shall be last and the last shall be first. It is not a kingdom that is only for a specific time, place or people group. It is for everybody, everywhere and for all time. This is only one of the themes that start in the Old Testament and then in some way continue in the New I know that saying this opens a whole new set of questions- but I am now thinking of your question: how can we say that the Bible is the word of God?
The point is that, to evaluate any belief system, you actually have to examine the foundational texts. To see what it really is about. And also, to evaluate the Bible as the “Word of God” you have to really read through the whole of both Testaments.
Also, it is in the Old Testament, and not the New, in which God reveals Himself as a God of love. And more than that, if you see how many times Jesus and the authors of the New Testament books reference the Old Testament, you start seeing that they really are two parts of one continuous whole. Not only reconcilable, but each is essential to fully understand the other.
Your other questions about slavery, the Amalekites etc aside for now, I will get to what I think about that eventually, I think it is important to understand exactly WHAT the Bible is. I’m trying to get to the point that we believe that the Bible is the Word of God…
So, if one can understand that the manuscripts that eventually make up the Bible are authentic (like Wes says), something else that is important, is that the different books are written in different genres, ( e.g. history, wisdom, law, poetry, prophesy, eyewitness accounts, letters) over many years. One can say it like this: The Bible is not so much a book, as it is a library of books, by over 40 authors written over 1600 years, on three continents, in three languages, (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek), different genres, yet it tells one unified story of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom, which, as He says, in within us. Without any contradiction. So, the Bible is not just a book, but more the revelation of God which He has given through history and through the person of Jesus Christ. The Bible is the most complex and inexhaustible book that you will ever read. It will take a whole lifetime, and you still won’t get to the bottom of it.
It has been said that the Bible is so shallow that a baby cannot drown in it, yet so deep that a grown man cannot reach the end. It can be read and understood on different levels. A child can read it and understand that Jesus was our Saviour who died to save us from our sinful nature (NOT to “save us from hell”- you won’t find that in there), and at the same time, to fully grasp everything, it should be read in the context in which it was written i.e. ancient near eastern literature. It is also best read in the original languages, but then again, you can read it in any language on earth and still comprehend the overarching story. And everybody in between children and theologians can read it and understand it as well. Wikipedia and AI say that the Bible is the bestselling book of all time- this should tell us something.
It contains verifiable history which has been attested by archeology and literature. But more than that, it is also filled with metaphors and cyclical themes that can be found throughout the story, from beginning to end. It contains a rich typology, a literary practice by which the Source, God, embedded forward pointing patterns in the persons, events, institutions and places of the Old Testament- patterns that find their fulfillment in the New Testament and ultimately in Jesus Christ. Examples of this are Adam, the Garden of Eden, the Exodus from Egypt, the great flood, the Tabernacle, John the Baptizer.
One could destroy every copy of the Bible and still one will be able to piece together the complete story from art, music, history, archeology and its artifacts, and documents such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is the only book ever written that has given people of all times, all backgrounds, all cultures, all languages the same hope, joy and peace. There is nothing like it.
It contains the historical record of the people of Israel, who were first known as the Hebrews, but also the story of the earliest Christian communities. Contrary to the belief that Christianity is a “white man’s religion”, these communities were in Judea, and surrounding areas like Syria and Turkey, and countries in Africa like Egypt.
The Bible has been translated into every language on earth. It has been smuggled into the darkest of places. It has brought light into prisons and hope into hospitals. It has changed the lives of people of all backgrounds and languages. People have given their lives to protect it and faithfully transmit it in its entirety.
Remember that the thing about “choosing the books of the Bible” refers mainly to the New Testament. What we call the Old Testament is very similar to the Jewish Bible, and with regards to this I really recommend reading about the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were scrolls found in caves near Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, in 1947. It is a fascinating story. The scrolls contained copies of nearly every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, and also the oldest known copies of texts like Isaiah, Psalms and Deuteronomy. The entire book of Isaiah has been preserved, and shows that what we have in our Bible is basically exactly the same as the ancient scroll. This is truly amazing. I have a National Geographic edition which is dedicated to these scrolls, which shows that a secular publication like NG regards the Scrolls as authoritative. The scrolls show that what we have today is a reliable copy of the original.
If we look at the New Testament, it is composed of eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus, the history of the early church (Book of Acts), and letters written by eyewitnesses (Peter and James), and Paul, who falls in a category of his own. In reading these accounts and letters, one gets a sense of the character of God, how His “kingdom” works, and also the general plan of “salvation”. Jesus calls it a new, spiritual birth, Paul calls it righteousness, and a general concept linked to all of it is holiness, living a holy life. I would love to get deeper into all of this. But my point is, that this is what we find in the New Testament. Also, these authors were eyewitnesses to the life of Christ, and this is why the books were included in the canon. It is not, as popular stories go, that they were SELECTED by a group of men, but rather that they were RECOGNISED as authoritative.
With regard to the Bible being the WORD of God: As I’ve said, it is best to read the Bible in the language it was written in. Unfortunately, we don’t all read Koinine Greek, or Hebrew. English and our modern languages are completely different in the sense that where we have one word in English or Afrikaans or Dutch, a word in Greek consists of a whole phrase. A friend of mine, who is a Greek scholar, has explained it this way: In Greek, words don’t have meaning- meanings have words. Isn’t that beautiful? Unfortunately, this does mean that some of the meaning does in fact gets lost in translation.
So, we say that we believe that the Bible is the Word of God. If you look at the way in which it is used in the New Testament, you see that the phrase “Word of God” means more than “the printed words on a page”. God is a communicator and has been speaking into the human realm since the beginning. He speaks through His creation (Psalm 19:1), through the ancient prophets (Hosea 12:10; Hebrews 1;1), through the Holy Spirit (John 16:13; Acts 16:6), through Scripture (Hebrews 4:12), and through the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ (John 14:9).
In Hebrews 1:2 it says that He (God) has spoken through His Son, and that it is He, the Son, through whom everything was created. John 1:1 says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. In Genesis 1, God creates by speaking, and John1:3 also says that everything was created through Him. So the Word is simultaneously PART OF God, it is the vehicle THROUGH WHICH He acts, and it is also an INDICATION OF HIS POWER, all the while being a REVELATION of His Being and His purposes. It is a mystery how this can be.
The Greek dictionary that my friend gave me defines THE WORD (λόγος) “LOGOS” as: a title for Jesus in the Gospel of John as a reference to the content of God’s revelation and as a verbal echo of the use of the verbs meaning ‘to speak’ in Genesis 1 and in many utterances of the prophets. “The Word became a human being and dwelt among us” John 1:14.. In other words, the Word is both a Person and the revelation of Who He is, and of His Power. This is what the Bible means when it speaks of the Word of God.
I have read a wonderful article about Jesus as the co-creator, an expression of God’s Being. It goes into the Hebrew and the second temple Jewish thought about “the word”. It is beautiful. It shows how Jesus as the WORD was the fulfillment of their expectation from their own scriptures. It isn’t something that Christians imported into the religion; it was imbedded from the beginning. I will share it if you would like to read it.
OK…..this has gotten really long. As you can tell, I LOVE the Bible as the Word of God.
In conclusion: In the letter to the Hebrews, it says that the Word that God speaks is alive and active.. If you allow it, it can work in your heart; it can satisfy every hunger, it can direct every step you give, it can change you and it can give you LIFE. I do hope that this what you will find if you take time to investigate.
Wesley Huff: Can I trust the Bible. Hierdie is episode 1 van 3. Al 3 is beskikbaar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhVPBNBAGY0