The Book of Books

1. The Book of Books • Is the Bible superior to all other books? • Is today’s Bible the true message of God to mankind?

2. Consistency • 66 books in one book, one message • 40 men over 1,500 years • Divinely inspired 2 Tim 3:16; 1 Cor 2:10-13 • No contradictions; many interwoven facts • Two sections: Old and New Testaments • Three divine dispensations • Earth’s history: beginning to 1st century

3. Authority • Canonicity of a book is not the same as its authority. • Books of the Bible were included in a canon because they were authoritative. • Councils only recognized as canonical those books which had proven themselves most valuable.

4. Transmission • Logical that God, who wrote the Bible, also preserved it for all time. • God obligated Himself to protect His word from destruction. 1 Peter 1:22-25 • God obligated Himself to keep His word pure, uncorrupted. James 1:25; 1 Pet. 2:2 • Claiming His word is all-sufficient obligated God to make it so. 2 Tim 3:16-17

5. Transmission • 3 ways in historiography to test historical reliability of ancient writings • (1) Bibliographical test • (2) Internal test • (3) External test • Bibliographical test alone shows the Bible message was transmitted through manuscript copies to our time with no consequential change.

6. Bibliographical Test • “Of all of the literary compositions by the Greek people, the Homeric poems are best suited for comparison with the Bible… In the entire range of ancient Greek and Latin literature, the Iliad ranks next to the New Testament in possessing the greatest amount of manuscript testimony.” • Bruce Metzger • Chapters in the History of New Testament Textual Criticism

7. Literary Works of Antiquity Compared • DateEarliestTimeNo. of • WrittenCopySpanCopies • Homer's Iliad900 BC 400 BC 500 yrs 643 • Caesar's Gallic Wars58-50 BC 850 AD 900 yrs 9-10 • Livy's Roman History59BC-17AD 4th Century 20 • (Only 35 of 142 books remain) • Plato's Tetralogies427-347 BC 900 AD 1,200 yrs 7 • Sophocles 496-406 BC 1,000 AD 1,400 yrs 193 • Aristotle 384-322 BC 1,100 AD 1,400 yrs 10 • New Testament40-100 AD 125 AD 25-85yrs 24,000+ • (All 27 books are intact!)

8. ExternalTest • “It… may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible.” • Nelson Glueck • Rivers in the Desert • p. 136 (full reference p. 11, Bible Study for Joy and Profit)

9. External Test Biblical archaeology • Begins with Sumerian civilization: 2500 BC • Lists found of kings before and after the great flood confirming Biblical life spans. • Record of global flood found in many cultures • Law Code of Hammurabi dated to 1750 BC contains many civil laws similar to those in the first five books of the Bible.

10. External Test Biblical archaeology • Shishak Relief depicts Egypt's victory over King Rehoboam in 925 BC mentioned in 1 Kings 14 and 2 Chronicles 12. • Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser (841 BC) found in ancient palace of Nimrud describes victories of King Shalmaneser III; shows Israel's King Jehu kneeling before Assyrian king in tribute. 2 Kings 9-10

11. External Test Biblical archaeology • Empires and cities named in Bible long before archaeology proved them real: Hittite and Babylonian Empires; Askelon, Shechem, Dan, Beersheba, Gibeah, ancient Jerusalem and many more cities. • Prophets predicted destruction of Askelon 100 years before it happened in 604 BC.

12. 100s of detailed fulfilled prophecies about nations, cities, events and people Internaltest • Three types of internal evidence: • Unique unity of Bible content • Unique power to change lives • Fulfilled prophecy

13. Prophecy • Messianic prophecy: • 300+ OT predictions of the coming Jewish Messiah • Different writers spanning 1,000 years • What are the odds of only 7 of these 300+ predictions being fulfilled in 1 person?

14. Messianic Prophecy Odds 104 105 105 106 106 106 106 • Prophecy • Descendant of David • Born in Bethlehem • A miracle worker • Came as King riding on donkey • Betrayed for 30 pieces of silver • Was crucified • Present Himself as King 173,880 days from Artaxerxes’ decree to rebuild Jerusalem

15. Messianic Prophecy • What is the total probability, without God, of one man fulfilling these 7 prophecies? • 1038 or… • 1 in 100 billion, billion, billion, billion !! • What are the odds of only 48 coming true in one man? • 10157

16. Divine Author • God is the true author of the Bible. • Intelligent Design proves there is God. • Information Theory states that concept and design can come only from a mind. • In last 20-30 years, advances in molecular biology, cybernetics and computer technology disprove Darwin’s theory.

17. Origin of Life • Creation or spontaneous generation? • Sir Arthur Keith, British evolutionary anthropologist and anatomist: • “Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.”

18. Miracle of Life • Mathematicians say life could not evolve randomly from inorganic matter. • Harold Morowitz calculated odds as 1 chance in 10100,000,000,000. • Sir Fred Hoyle: odds of only proteins of an amoebae arising by chance are 1 in 1040,000.

19. Miracle of Life • Fred Hoyle stated that the probability of spontaneous generation • ‘…is about the same as the probability that a tornado sweeping through an (auto) junk yard could assemble a Boeing 747 from the contents therein.'

20. Origin of Life • Francis Crick, winner of Nobel Prize in biology for his work with DNA molecule, stated in 1982: • “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”

21. God Exists!