This is hard to understand. Can a book, a book like the Bible, be a ‘truth’ to who we are? Yes, the Bible can help us view life, and tell us all of the issues that it understands. It can also help with understanding of what we call the ‘truth’ in our lives. Again, this is hard, because we believe that we are ‘good’ and the Bible may not seem to believe the same. So, let’s look at the Bible and understand what it is, and then we can start to look at “how can we tell” aspects within the Bible.
Looking at the Bible
The Bible is not just a book, it is a set of 65 books and each book is different. Each of the 65 books talks about its stories as the author would like to share it with us. There are two divisions within the Bible, The Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament and New Testament are named after the Old Covenant and New Covenant. The word for “covenant” in Hebrew word, ‘b’rit’ is sometimes translated “testament” or “testimony”. The books in the Old Testament fall into four major groups: law, history, poetry, and prophecy. Of these four groups, there are 38 books in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, these books are the four gospels, the Epistles (letters to churches that are from the Apostles) and the Book of Revelation and there are 27 books in the New Testament.
The difference between the Old and New Testament is the birth of Christ. Jesus is the Christ and the New Covenant that He brings, and his teachings were very inspiring. The Gospels talk about what Jesus did and what He taught. The Gospels are written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. As you begin to understanding the gospels, Luke wrote both the Gospels of Luke and Acts of the Apostles (which is called Acts). Acts is a book that continues from Jesus’s resurrection into the creation of the early church in all the cities.
Each book has chapters and each chapter has verses. So, when you look at the Bible, you need to know the book, for example, the book might be in Genesis, or Samuel, or maybe Colossians or Luke. From the book, you need to know that chapter and the verses you need to read, but this takes real time. As an example, you may want to look at 1 Corinthians 15: 3-7[1]. Here, in these verses, the ‘1’ is the first book in the Bible, there are two books. The ‘15’ is the chapter in the book, and the verses are from ‘3’ to verse ‘7’. The ‘7’ means the you should also read verse ‘7’, as well.
As we look at the Bible, how do we know that it is real? If you look in the Bible, and you search for 1 Corinthians 15: 3-7[2], you will see that this text is written by a man called Paul, and he is writing to the church in Corinth, which was one of the first “Christian” churches (the name for a Christian came from Corinth). Paul was an outcast from the other 11 apostles. Paul wanted to be a part of the church, because Paul was first a Pharisee. Remember, it was Jesus that came to him on the road. (Acts 9: 1-9)
A Pharisee is a Jewish religious leader and, in Paul’s case, he was very good at the Law. From this perspective, the other 11 apostles were concerned for what Paul was doing. You see, the old Paul was trying to kill them, because they were trying to deface Judaism. If you read verse 9, Paul says that he “persecuted the church of God” and, therefore, was very frustrated by this.
But as you read 3 to 7 (inclusive of seven), you can see:
3For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures 4and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, (Cephas is Peter in the New Testament) then to the twelve. 6Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me. 11Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you believed. (1 Corinthians 15: 3-11)
Paul wrote this text 4 years (it could be as much as 7 years), after the resurrection of Jesus. This is not a falsehood. This is an open letter to an entire church in Corinth. It talks about some of the issues and trials that the church was having. And Paul talks about all of it. Because these letters are real, even though there 2,000-year-old, when Paul wrote them, there were people we could say that the letters to Corinth, or the Corinthian letters, are true. The Corinthians text is part of the New Testament, which is relatively new. Yes, it would be hard to find a 2,000-year-old man to talk to, so the questions still stands.
Let’s look at the non-Christian evidence that is early enough to be of value to understanding the Bible. There are four people (there are more, but I would like to talk about these four) who wrote about Christianity, and they are: Josephus (Flavius Josephus), Tacitus, Pliny (Pliny the Younger), and Suetonius.
Here, we see Flavius Josephus as one of the non-Christian witnesses that wrote in this time period. Josephus was born in 37 AD and died in about 100 AD. He was a Roman–Jewish historian and he was a military commander of the Galilean forces of the army that opposed Rome for two years. He was best known for writing “The Jewish War”[3]. He was born in Jerusalem and move to Rome.
Josephus was a Jewish rabbi, scholar, and historian. He joined the Pharisees when he was in Jerusalem. While on a diplomatic mission he was impressed by the culture and sophistication of Rome, and in the Jewish revolt of 66–70 AD he eventually joins the Roman league, then part of the Roman province of Judea.
Josephus wrote that his revelation had taught him a few things: that God, the creator of the Jewish people, had decided to “punish” them; that “fortune” had been given to the Romans.
Josephus had also seen Jesus in his travels. “As quoted by Eisler, both Hierosolymitanus and John of Damascus claim that “the Jew Josephus” described Jesus as having had connate eyebrows with goodly eyes and being long-faced, crooked and well-grown.” (Josephus dated circa 93–94 AD).
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known as Tacitus was a historian and politician (circa 116 AD). Tacitus was a famous Roman historian, who wrote The Annals. Motivated by a desire to destroy the city, Nero[4] secretly sent out men pretending to be drunk to set fire to the city. Nero watched from his palace on the Palatine Hill. Hundreds of people died in the fire and many thousands were left homeless. In The Annals, book 15, chapter 44 (116-120 AD) Tacitus mentioned Christians and Christ in describing Emperor Nero’s act of blaming and persecuting the “Christians” (this is pronounced ‘Christians’) for the great fire of Rome (64 AD). Tacitus also referred to Christ, his execution by Pontius Pilate, and the existence of early Christians in Rome in his final work, Annals (116 AD), book 15, chapter 44. The text reads: “called Christians by the populace.”
The next known reference to Christianity was written by Pliny the Younger, who was the Roman governor of Bithynia and Pontus during the reign of emperor Trajan (112 AD). Pliny the Younger was writing about persecuting Christians in his province and mentions Jesus. He says, “I discovered nothing more than an innocuous superstition. They don’t do all that much. They meet before daybreak. They sing hymns and they worship Christ as if he were a god,” and then he says, “They take an oath, but not an oath to do anything bad, rather an oath only to be good.”
Suetonius is our last reference, in his book Lives of the Caesars (120 AD), he mentioned that Emperor Claudius, around 49 AD, expelled the Jews from Rome because of trouble caused by “Chrestus,” (this is pronounced ‘Christ’). Suetonius also confused Christians with Jews and Judaism, an easy mistake for a non-Christian to make of the early emerging Christian movement.[5],[6]
In this text, we have four people who are Roman and Jewish historians who actually talk about Christianity and they understand, from their own perspective, what’s going on in Jerusalem and in the neighboring cities, within their text. Josephus actually wrote his understanding of Christianity at about the year 80 AD, which is about the same time that Luke was actually writing his gospel (80 AD). Around this time the church started to really move.
Three of the people, Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger all knew that Jesus was living and that He had a following. We know that these people had an interesting perspective on them (the old Church). But they did exist, and they existed in very real terms.
The real issue here is the existence of Christ Jesus and what does that say to us? If we understand what Paul’s letters are telling us about the Corinth church and the issues that they were having, and that these letters are open and available for all, then we need to wonder about the question. Also, three of the people we talked about above knew that Jesus was real, and they had their issues with what the Christians were doing. If we look at Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger, and we understand what Jesus was doing, the New Testament is real, and therefore, it is not just a hoax.
If the New Testament is real, then we need to understand what we think of Jesus as a Messiah or Savior. Because if we don’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah, then the rest of the Bible is material, and worthless. However, if we believe that Jesus was a very real Messiah, then we need to consider what he thought about the Bible and where we go from here.
Jesus really believed in the Old Testament. He listed out and talked about the rules of Moses, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, the Book of Malachi, and the Book of Micah. If Jesus is the Savior, and He is the purpose of the Bible, then you have to understand his reasons for believing in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the foundation of what was said about who He was before he existed, and therefore, is primary for his existence here on earth. So, if Christ thinks that the Old Testament is accurate, then we have a really hard time assuming that it is not. If we believe in what Christ says, then the Old Testament is true, and therefore, the whole Bible is the truth as we see it.
Is the Bible accurate?
How can we tell the accuracy of the Bible? How can we tell if the Bible has been changed? This is a good question. From the linguistic experts of the Bible, the definition of the Bible has not changed at all. As we review what the manuscripts say, and the definitions throughout history, these manuscripts show that the Bible has been translated accurately. Despite common skeptical claims that the Bible has often been changed through the centuries, the physical evidence tells another story. The New Testament records are incredibly accurate. There is no change to the content or the language of the Bible.
When linguists and experts compared the old scrolls with the text, there was a word-for-word accuracy of 95% (+/- for all text) after more than 1,000+ years of translation. That makes a strong case that the Bible we have today is indeed the Bible in its original form. This is evidence of how accurate the copying process was. Using the science of textual criticism, we know for certain about 99.5 percent of the original contents of the Bible in the original languages, and in the other 0.5 percent, we know what all the linguistic options are for the text that is changed. If you would like to understand the Bible in its original format, you can read these web pages. https://www.thearamaicscriptures.com/[7], and https://studybible.info/[8].
How can we tell what the Bible is saying?
The New Testament might be fine, but there are problems within the Old Testament, and this is very real. Two of the problems that are within the Old Testament are polygamy and murder[9]. When people see these, they are scared. “How can a ‘Good Book’ include this in it?”
Let’s look at polygamy first. Polygamy is when a man has multiple wives. In the Bible, there is a man who had many wives, and his name was King Solomon. King Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. This is in the Bible and you can look it up. Let’s look at what it says:
1 King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the Israelites, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for they will surely incline your heart to follow their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. 3 Among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. 4 For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David. (1 Kings 11:1-4)
So, we understand what the Bible is telling us about King Solomon. But, if you read all of the Kings, you will see that Solomon had a very ‘ruff’ time and he died a non-believer. A non-believer is not what God would want Solomon to be. He wanted Solomon to be a huge believer so that he could be welcomed into heaven. But his wives wanted to “change his mind” about their Gods and what they did. The Bible is telling people that this is not a good idea and that polygamy is wrong with God.
In the New Testament, there are three statements that say that polygamy is wrong (1 Timothy 3:2, 1 Timothy 3:12, and Titus 1:6). Why is this so? A man and a woman are equals within the way of God, and therefore, a man can only have one and only one wife and a wife can only have one and only one husband. In the Bible, polygamy is wrong, and it is not in God’s way.
In the Bible, the discussion of King Solomon is in the narrative form, and it talks all about the “badness” of the king and tells the people the way it should not be done. Each of the books in the Bible has a different form that it is written in, and because of this form, it is difficult to understand all these things. But in the end, the Bible is correct in saying that King Solomon was wrong and polygamy is awful.
Now, let’s look at murder. Murder is always wrong, and we know it. To help us evaluate this, we have Cain and Abel. There was a man called Adam, and he had a wife called Eve. Adam and Eve two boys called Cain and Abel and they enjoyed themselves. Let us read this and understand what it says:
8Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! 14 Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” 15 Then the Lord said to him, “Not so. Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him.
(Genesis 4: 8-15)
Here in this text, Cain killed Abel, and yes, the Bible tells us why he did, but we have to ask: “Why do you care?” If a book of the Bible can talk about murder, then why should I read it? Because, this book is written in a narrative form, which means that it tells you all kinds of horrible things, even things like murder, and murder is within our understanding as people.
Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! What do you think of this? Can you hear what Cain is telling the Lord? Cain is saying that his life is at an end because he is “cursed from the ground” that he is walking on. When we see that God is taking action to avenge Abel, this is not nothing. God is angry at Cain for what he did to Abel. Why doesn’t God kill Cain? Because God is a real God, and He doesn’t believe in killing people, and we should consider the same.
In this next text, we see that God tells Adam (Adam is Cain’s father), that he and also his relatives will have dominion over the world. Because Adam’s children are Cain and Abel, they also have dominion over the world like Adam did. Let’s look:
28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis 1: 28)
With this in mind, God won’t kill Cain, but God can make Cain’s life hard, this “punishment is greater than I can bear!” says Cain. And that is what God would want. Sometimes you have to live through your issues, and this was not what Cain wanted.
From this new perspective, we can see that the Bible is true on these issues, like polygamy or murder, and they are not condoned. The problem with understanding the Bible is not reading it all because the Bible is a reflective book. It is good for you to read it completely, but remember that the Bible is a book for reflection. An idea you might have is to read a chapter, and then put the Bible down and think it through, then try to think through what the book was trying to tell you. With this in mind, you would have a better way to understand what the Bible is telling you.
So, we understand that the Bible is true and that we can start to see the truth, and we see that Jesus was known by Paul, Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger and that now we understand that polygamy and murder are wrong within the Bible and that these, the one that was involved in polygamy are suffered with their actions. There is only one more issue we need to resolve, and the issue is faith. Faith is not easy. But there is just as much faith in saying that “god is wrong for me” as saying, that “God is good for me”. Why is this true?
Faith, and why do I need it?
As we consider our faith, we need to understand what our faith is about. If our faith is in politics, then we believe that politics is the right way to go. If we believe, or have faith in business, then business is the right way to go. However, if you believe in God, then God is the right way to go. Business and politics don’t provide us a stream of self-renewal where God does. There is no forgiveness, and certainly not deep forgiveness, in business or politics, but there is in God. God is specific about the rules we are supposed to keep, but very generous in what we do with them, and within the rules there is deep forgiveness.
The question of faith is one of Jesus’ in our life today. Why did God put Jesus on the earth for us to experience and understand? Jesus is actually a bridge that binds earth and heaven as one instance of reality. If this is true, then we only have to believe in Jesus to attain that bridge. Remember, faith is about belief, about true belief within oneself, not a physical entity in the world today.
Let’s look at Jesus and why he is the bridge. When Jesus was born, He was a kid, a little kid. He had to grow and become a man, a man on his own. Through this, Jesus became a true follower of God, not only by what Mary and Joseph (his earthly parents) were telling him, but on his own as well. Let’s look at the text that talks about God and Jesus in the temple:
48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” 49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
(Luke 2: 48-50)
Here, Jesus is talking to his mother and father about being in the “house of His Lord”, his Father in heaven, and they should not worry. This is hard for a parent to understand, or to agree with, but Mary and Joseph understood what Jesus was going through and we see that Jesus was excited and anxious to learn about his Father.
At this young age, Jesus understood the bridge-nass of his actions, and he understood what he had to do for his Lord in Heaven. With this in His mind, he started to grow the church, first with His baptism, then with a set of disciples, then with sermons, and then with his death and resurrection. Without the resurrection, Jesus would only have been a person, but with the resurrection, Jesus was God’s chosen one and very special.
Hence, Jesus is the bridge from heaven to earth and, therefore, we as people of this planet, have a “viable” avenue from earth to heaven “directly” through Jesus. How can I have a “viable avenue” from anywhere? This is faith. There is just as much faith in saying that “god is wrong for me” as saying, that “God is good for me”. If you don’t have faith in either one, you miss out.
So, what is faith? Faith is an opportunity to look at something, and believe that what you are looking at is right. Faith means that you actually believe that it is true, even though you cannot see it now. As an example, let’s say we have a tent, it is a simple tent, if you would like, you can put it in a park, but let’s say there is a tent and this tent has its flaps closed. So, it’s just a tent. If I ask you, “Are there any labrador retrievers in the tent?” The response would be, “No, there are no labrador retrievers in the tent.” now let’s play the same game with no-see-um.
What is a “no-see-um?”[10] It’s an insect that breeds in wet sand and prefers humid environments. They can be found near bodies of water, like gardens and ponds. They live in the New York Adirondacks, or in the Great Lakes of New York, and they are so small that they can fly through the screen of a tent and nibble on you if it wants to. And yes, they do exist. So, now if I ask you to look in the tent and see if there are any no-see-ums in the tent, your answer could be, “No, I don’t see them.”
But are they there? If they’re so small that you can’t see them, are they actually in the tent? This is a faith question. If you look in a tent, and can’t see a bug, then you’re sure that there aren’t any. What happens if you can see them, and your bit by them? A faith question is not about proof, it’s about what you believe is true.
Now you could say, yes, there are no-see-um in the tent, even though there aren’t? What do you call this? Can anybody lie to themselves or to anybody else about what they see, or don’t see? And even if you don’t see them, and they’re not there, does that mean they don’t exist? This is the problem that we have with faith. Faith is something that is intrinsic to who we are, and what we are. If you don’t have faith, then nothing will work in your spiritual realm, because you must have faith in order to have a spirit at all. And, there is a ‘spirit’ in all of us. If you are an atheist, or an agnostic, you still have faith. You may have faith that you don’t believe in God, but you still have faith in something, and this something is still faith-based. So, it takes more work to ignore God, than it does to accept God.
Let’s review
Let’s review: we understand what this question is: is the Bible true and how can I tell? We’ve already established the Bible is in fact true from four people, Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius that Jesus was living in and around Jerusalem and so we understand that the Bible is true.
Now let’s look at the first question “how can I tell”: We also understand that polygamy and murder are not valid within the Bible, even though the Bible does give us these details. And now we understand that Faith is something that we believe deep within ourselves and that we all have it.
The real point of all this, is what will you do now?
When it comes to understanding how you can grow your own faith, I cannot give you any text that can help you with this, but I can talk to you at any point. I am in the United Methodist Church at Shrub Oak in Shrub Oak, New York. Please let me know how you are doing.
[1] New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, May 2022
[2] NRSV Updated Edition, ibid – This Bible will be used though this set of text.
[3] Johnstone, Christian Isobel; Josephus, Flavius; The Wars of the Jews, Franklin Classics, Reprint 2018
[4] Nero is one of Rome’s most infamous rulers, notorious for his cruelty, debauchery and eccentricity.
[5] The Historicity of Jesus: Ancient Pagan Sources, https://3dchristianity.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/the-
historicity-of-jesus-ancient-pagan-sources/, April 17, 2012, Shiao Chong
[6] Google, Google sites and information, Alphabet Google, 2024, https://www.google.com.mx/
[7] This Website features The Holy Aramaic Scriptures, as preserved in the ancient Eastern Aramaic Text of The New Testament, in manuscripts such as The Yonan Codex, The Khabouris Codex, The 1199 Houghton
[8] Read and search the Bible, Study online Hebrew and Greek interlinear translations and Bibles with Strong’s Greek and Hebrew Lexicon numbers attached.
[9] Keller, Timothy, The Reason for God, Dutton, 2008
[10] Google, Google sites and information, Alphabet Google, 2024, https://www.google.com/search/ an insect
called no-see-um