Can We Trust the Hebrew Bible? Conclusion

There is a vast amount of evidence to support the veracity of the Bible. Even within the Bible itself God recognizes that people will ask this question: How do we know this is the Word of God? In fact, God states that to the Israelites in the Old Testament and says that they should ask that question because there are many people who will come along and make claims to truth, and makes claims about what the Bible claims to teach and try to make various alternate claims, saying this is what the Bible really says or this is what Christianity says. And we always have to go back and validate it in terms of what has been revealed and what has been said in the Word, and that is done basically through interpretation.

So there are a couple of different issues here. One is the issue of the veracity of the text itself, and one is clear interpretation. As we have seen in the past there are these two tests in Deuteronomy chapters 13 and 18. The first test is a test of consistency. When someone claims, “This saith the Lord,” is that claim consistent with that which has already been accepted as divine revelation and as absolute truth? Then when somebody comes along and claims to foretell the future, claims to be a prophet, in that process they have to be one hundred per cent accurate.

The next issue that comes up is: Can we really trust the Bible that we have? Can we really trust the Hebrew Old Testament and can we really trust the Greek New Testament? How did we get these books? Why these books and not other books? There have been claims of “other gospels” that never were accepted as part of the canon. Why weren’t they? Isn’t the Bible just another book expressing opinions about God? No, it is not just another human book, the claims that we find in the Scripture are that this is God’s Word to man mediated through the prophets of the Old Testament and apostles of the New Testament; and it is not expressing their opinion, it is rather expressing that which is revealed to them. So there is a uniqueness to the Bible in that we have these sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, written over 1500 years and which address every controversial topic known to man, and yet there is a one-hundred per cent agreement.

Is the Bible full of contradictions and errors? No, it is not. There are places where people will go to where on the surface there appear to be some contradictions or differences, but with a detailed study of these passages these surface contradictions or errors disappear. Another question often asked: Hasn’t the Bible changed over the years because it has been copied and translated so many times? That is a question we will answer. How can we be sure the Bible we have today is the same as that which was originally written? There are so many different interpretations of the Bible so how do we know which is right? Interpretation is a totally different issue from having the accurate text in front of us. It is one thing to have an accurate text; it is another thing to answer the question: What does it mean? That is interpretation. The next question: Isn’t the Bible a product of evolving religion that originated with the Babylonians and Assyrians? The answer is no, there is no evolution, no change from Genesis to Revelation; the Bible is really an integrated whole. There is development within a framework but that framework doesn’t change. In the ancient religions of Egypt, Babylon and Assyria there is really a degradation of what was revealed in the Bible. They come after the Biblical events and revelation and they show a degradation and a corruption of Biblical truth. Then doesn’t the Bible contain historical and scientific errors? It has been pointed out from archaeology that that is not true.

The question we want to look at now is: Can God protect His communication? Can He protect and preserve it so that what we have today is what He revealed to the original writers, so that we can have confidence that we have His revelation? Concluding that God can communicate clearly and protect His communication then His Word would have certain characteristics: it is consistent, accurate, supported through evidence, is eternally logical and rational, and it is without error. Therefore we can trust our lives completely to what the Word of God says.

The question of canonicity. The question that is usually ask is: How do we know we have the Word of God? How do we know it is accurate? How do we know we didn’t leave some books out? How do we know there aren’t some books out there that we could discover and add to the Scripture? These are questions that all point to the fundamental question of authority and truth. That really is the question that the Rabshakeh is addressing when he challenges and Hezekiah and the people of Judah in Jerusalem: Can you really trust this God? Does He really have the authority to say what he says and can He fulfill what He says he will fulfill? It always goes back to this issue of authority and truth. Is this Bible that we have just the word of man or is it the Word of God?

The key word that we will use here is the word “canon.” It derives from the Hebrew word which refers to a reed. In the early times of writing in Egypt they would take many papyrus reeds, pound them out flat and pressure them together, and this would form an early form of paper. But also a reed was used as a measuring device, and this was often the term used for what we would call a yard stick or measuring tape, or something like that. A reed was therefore a standard by which things were measured or evaluated. So “canon” came to mean something that was a standard, something that was accepted authority. When we talk about the canon of Scripture we are talking about the idea that there are certain books that are accepted as being authoritative—they have absolute authority and fit certain criteria, and because they fit that criteria they have been accepted by believers down through the ages. They were accepted as such by the Israelites in the Old Testament and they have been accepted by the majority of Christians in the early church, and the Councils just basically recognized what was already a reality. The Councils did not make or set these books as the cannon, they simply recognized or affirmed the reality of something that had been practiced and accepted throughout the Old Testament or the New Testament church. They were simply validating something that was already happening rather than imposing a standard upon the church.

Other religions have their religious books and they make certain claims, but the question should be: What is the validation for those claims? Can they be documented, validated historically or archaeologically? The unique claim of the Bible for both the Jews of the Old Testament as well as Christians in the New Testament is that this is the very Word of God, the actual Word of God; God is the one who is the source of this information, not man.

We will hear people sometimes say that the Old Testament canon was determined by a group of Pharisees, religious leaders who met in a town in Galilee in AD 90, and that that is where the Old Testament canon was established. But the facts are somewhat quite different. This was some twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple and the Pharisees and rabbis came together in order to reestablish and redefine the standards for a non-temple Judaism. They were simply affirming the same books that had already been the standard in the Old Testament times for at least a century, maybe even two or more. The New Testament, which was all written before approximately 95 AD, clearly recognizes the existence of an already existing Old Testament canon. Paul refers to this in 2 Timothy 3:15-17. Paul said to Timothy that he, Timothy, had from childhood known the sacred writings. When Timothy was a child, that was prior to any of the New Testament being written, so that the only sacred writings that Paul could be alluding to would be the Old Testament. His mother and grandmother brought Timothy up on the teachings of the Old Testament. By using that terminology Paul sets apart the Old Testament as having a unique claim to being revelation from God. Then when he states “All Scripture” in verse 16 he is referring back to those sacred writings, and so he primarily has in mind Old Testament Scripture.

The other verse we go to that emphasizes the uniqueness of the inspiration of the Old Testament is 2 Peter 1:2-21. Here Peter recognizes the uniqueness of Old Testament inspiration and that what is written by the prophets is distinct from any of the other things that are written. 2 Pet 1:20, 21 ^NASB “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is {a matter} of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”

The Old Testament itself recognizes in itself and its own writings that some books are authoritative; other books were not authoritative. There are various passages such as Exodus 24:4 ^NASB “Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. Then he arose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel.” So he writes down all of God’s Word, and this continues to be affirmed down through subsequent writings. Joshua 8:31 ^NASB “just as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded the sons of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses…” so Joshua affirms not only the Mosaic authorship but he is also confirming the fact that Moses wrote down what God had instructed him to write down. Then Joshua continues to pass this on and makes a copy of the law of Moses: Joshua 8:32 ^NASB “He wrote there on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written, in the presence of the sons of Israel.”

Joshua 8:34 ^NASB “Then afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the book of the law.” Then term “the law” is the Torah. It can mean law, or it can mean instruction or teaching, and it covers the first five books of the Old Testament.

Here we see the transmission of the text and subsequent generations emphasized the importance of it in the preservation it, so that Deuteronomy 31:26 states that a copy of what Moses wrote was put beside the ark of the covenant and kept there in the tabernacle and later in the temple so that there would be a record of that original revelation given to Moses. That would be the standard against which all copies would be qualified down through the centuries.

Later on there would be other writers down through the Old Testament who would affirm that what they were writing was from the Lord. In 1^st Samuel, Samuel explained to the people the behavior of royalty and wrote it in a book and laid it up before the Lord. So Samuel probably wrote parts of 1^st Samuel. He didn’t live to the end of the book of Samuel so there were others who wrote those books but they are simply named for him because he was the primary character at the beginning of Samuel. Daniel recognized the book of Jeremiah was unique and inspired by God. Daniel 9:2 ^NASB “in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was {revealed as} the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, {namely,} seventy years.” He relies exclusively on what Jeremiah said in terms of the seventy years captivity. Nehemiah, after the exile, also affirms the inspiration of Moses: that God revealed this to Moses and that there would be precepts, statutes and laws that were written by the hand of Moses the servant of God.

There are also in the Old Testament books that were written about or quoted that are non-inspired sources. This shows their historiography. They did research; there were other records that were kept during that time that were not inspired but were accurate to a decree, just as we have many that are accurate, and they are quoted by other writers of Scripture. This is not saying that those other books were inspired, it is just saying that they had accurate records that were quoted accurately in the Scripture. Joshua 10:13 ^NASB “So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go {down} for about a whole day.” Also there is another book called The Book of the Wars of the Lord mentioned in Numbers 21:14.

We note, too, that the Old Testament often refers to itself or to parts of itself as Moses and the prophets or the Law, the Torah, the Prophets and The Writings; and this is the way the Old Testament is divided. To understand how we got the Old Testament and why we know that these 39 books that were established and accepted by Jewish authorities before Christ we need to understand a little something about how the Bible is organized. The 39 books of the English Old Testament are divided up in terms of five categories: The Law (Pentateuch). We follow that in an English Bible by what we refer to as historical books. These are usually referred to in the Hebrew Bible as the early prophets, but the historical books in terms of the English organization begin with Joshua and go through Esther. So if you begin with Genesis and read all the ay to Esther you have covered the historical part of the Old Testament. The rest of the books of the Old Testament take place within that framework. So books like Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes fit within the historical framework of Genesis to Esther. Isaiah, Jeremiah, the prophets, they also fit within that framework. So in the way that the English Bible is laid out Genesis through Esther gives the chronological flow from the beginning of creation up through the exile and the return from the exile. So Joshua through Esther represent that historical flow, and then the poetry books—Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations (also referred to sometimes as wisdom literature).

Then the major prophets—in the English Bible, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel—are called major because they are longer books. Daniel, though, never holds the office of prophet. How do we distinguish between the office of prophet and someone who had the gift of prophecy. That is a deduction based on how they are referred to in the Scripture. For example, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Nathan, Gad. Others are referred to as seers or prophets, the prophet of the Lord, the man of God, things of that nature. But Daniel and David and a few others are not called prophets, though in their writings they do have prophecy. They have the gift of prophecy (foretelling the future) but they do not have the office or role within the theocracy of Israel of being a prophet. Then come what we refer to as the Minor Prophets because they are smaller, shorter books. That makes up the organization in the English Bible.

The Hebrew canon simply divided these books up a little differently. They have three divisions: Torah, Nebiim, Kethubim—Pentateuch, Prophets, Writings. Often Hebrew people will simply refer to the Torah which is the first five books of Moses. If they are talking about what we refer to as the Old Testament they refer to the Tenak. The consonants in this word, TNK, come from the first letters of the three words, Torah, Nebiim, Kethubim. The Torah is the same as what we have in the English Bible, the Law—Genesis through Deuteronomy. The Nebiim is divided up into two sections, the early prophets and the latter prophets. The early prophets are Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. The latter prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve. The Twelve are considered one book in the Hebrew canon. Then there are the writings. These are books that are neither the Torah or written by the prophets—Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Psalms, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Esther, Nehemiah, Chronicles. That is the Hebrew canon. Notice the order and the arrangement.

In the English Bible the first book in the Old Testament is Genesis and the last book is Malachi, but in a Hebrew Bible the first book is Genesis and the last book is Chronicles. We have to understand that arrangement if we are going to be able to accurately answer the question as to when the Old Testament canon really solidified and resolved. We have to recognize that in the Hebrew canon they have the same books that we do but have arranged them differently.

Some Bibles have a collection called the Apocrypha. Apocrypha is a term that means hidden, obscure or spurious. That means they are not authenticated books. The Apocrypha includes books such as Tobit, Judith, there are six chapters added to the book of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, the book of Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, the Prayer of Azariah or the Song of the Three Young Men, the book of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, I & II Maccabees. I & II Macabees is a good book to read historically because it covers the inter-Testamental period to some degree.

At the end of the fourth century AD the Pope commissioned Jerome, one of the most learned scholars of that time period, to translated the Scriptures into the common vernacular of the people, which at that time was Latin. Jerome sequestered himself in Bethlehem at the Church of the Nativity, where it is believed that Jesus was born. Jerome translated the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament into Latin, and he also translated the Apocrypha. But he says in his preface to his translation: “Anything outside of these [the 39 books of the Old Testament] must be placed within the Apocrypha.” But he included that in the Vulgate because he said these books were worthy to be read for the information that they had, but they weren’t on the same of inspiration or authority as the other 39. The problem was that once you take those books and stick them within the covers of your Bible it wasn’t long before people reading them (without reading what he said in the preface) just figured they were just as authoritative as the other 39. It wasn’t long before they were accepted as being of the same value and same authority as the other books in the Old Testament. Their acceptance in the Old Testament canon did not come until the Council of Trent in the middle 16^th century. It met as a reaction to the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic church then accepted these books as part of the Bible. However, no Jewish authority ever accepted them as part of the Old Testament canon.

There are four basic problems with the Apocrypha and why we do not accept it as part of the Word of God. First, they were written predominantly in the Greek. The exceptions are Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, part of Baruch and I Maccabees, which were written in Hebrew or Aramaic. The rest are all written in Greek, so they are written much later than the rest of the Old Testament. Secondly, they are written late after we know that the Old Testament canon was closed. We have statements made in ancient Jewish literature which indicate that the set number of books in the Old Testament was already established by the second century BC, before some of these books were even written. We also see that in these books there are numerous historical, geographical and chronological inaccuracies. For example, in Tobit 1:4, 5 it states that the division of the kingdom under Jeroboam 1^st in 931 BC after the death of Solomon occurred when Tobit was a young man. But Tobit was a young Israelite captive living in Nineveh under Shalmanezer in the late eight century or late 700s, 200 years later, so he would not have been alive at the time of the division of the kingdom. In Judith 1:1, “In the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar over the Assyrians at Nineveh, the great city; in the days of Arphaxad, which reigned over the Medes in Ecbatane.” But Nebuchadnezzar never did reign over the Assyrians at Nineveh, he was the second king of the neo-Babylonian empire and he reigned only at Babylon. So there are a number of errors like that which indicate that it is not from God. Then there are false doctrines. This is where are found the source for prayers and offerings for the dead, giving money as penance to make atonement for sin, the doctrine of the preexistence of souls, that the souls emanate from God; things like that. So they were not accepted by Jewish authorities.

The way that we can attest to the books in the Old Testament is from Jewish history. The Jewish community consistently recognized 22 or 24 books, depending on how they divided them. It is the same basic books. Remember that after the exile there were three basic Jewish communities: the one in Babylon, the one in Jerusalem, and one in Alexandria in North Egypt. In the Babylonian Talmud they list the same 22 books as authoritative that we have today. The Talmud was finally consolidated about 200 AD, but even though it was not written any later than 200 it does preserve Jewish tradition that extends back to at least 100 BC and maybe even earlier. Then the Palestinian community in Jerusalem which is represented by Josephus. In his writings Contra Apion he mentions that “we do not have an innumerable multitude of books among us that contradict or disagree with each other, but only twenty-two books which contain the records of all the past times which are justly believed to be divine.” Then he lists them. Then Philo who is an Alexandrian Jew living around AD 40 recognizes the same set of 22 books. This is all basically contemporaneous with the time of Christ. In the diaspora of the Jews as they were scattered around the Roman empire they all seem to recognize these same books.

Then when we get into the New Testament we reads passages such as Luke 24:44 when Jesus is talking to His disciples: ^NASB “Now He said to them, ‘These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’” Sometimes the Writings were referred to as the Psalms because that was the largest book and first book mentioned. So He recognizes the same division that we know was present in the Hebrew canon at that time. Matthew 23:35 ^NASB “so that upon you may fall {the guilt of} all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” When did Abel occur? Right at the beginning in Genesis chapter four. Who is Zechariah the son of Berechiah? He is a prophet who is killed near the end of 2 Chronicles. Remember that the Hebrew canon begins with Genesis and ends with 2 Chronicles, so what Jesus is stating there is that from the killing of Abel to the last part of the Old Testament, the killing of Zechariah—the first kill to the last kill—is His recognition that at the time of His incarnation the Hebrew canon was already set. We also know from the Septuagint which was translated as early as before 200 BC that it was the same 22-24 books that we have in our present canon.

Further, we know that the New Testament canon does not ever quote from any of the disputed books. Jude quotes from the book of Enoch but Enoch was never part of the Apocrypha. It was never under consideration to be in the Old Testament, so it is just another source that is quoted Jude. We know that the Old Testament canon was closed by, at the latest, 200 BC and that this is reflected by the things that are stated in the first century at the time of Christ.

Now the question is: How do we know that what we have is accurately preserved? When we look at our Bible the Old Testament is based on the Masoretic Text. The oldest copy of the Masoretic Text that we have dates to about the 9^th century AD. Up until the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered we did not have anything any older than that. The Dead Sea scrolls actually date to about 1000 years before that and they confirm the accuracy of what we had. What we have here is a tremendous confirmation that the Bible didn’t change. The Jewish community had a way of guaranteeing and protecting the text. They counted every text, they counted every word on every section, they knew what would be at the top of the scroll, the last word, the middle word, the first word of every sentence, and they memorized all of this and if there was the least deviation then that scroll would then be completely destroyed and burned so that they would be sure they had an accurate preservation of the text. So when we come to the question of whether we can trust the Hebrew Old Testament the answer is a resounding yes. It was revealed by God to the writers of the Old Testament—to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Daniel, Jeremiah; they wrote down that which was revealed to them and what was written down was carefully preserved and protected, God overseeing that process down through the ages so that there is no doubt that we have as the Hebrew text underlying our Old Testament translation is an accurate copy of what was originally given by God.

So as for the question: “Did God really say?” Yes, He did. This is the Word of God and anything else is not the Word of God. Therefore we can rely upon it completely and totally.

Illustrations