CHAPTER 7

Why are attacks on the
Bible's reliability FAULTY?

Attacks on Bible's reliability faulty

Now having considered some of the standard arguments against belief in the Bible as a contradictory, a historical document, what has survived? The Bible has been shown to be historically reliable, and that its supposed "contradictions" can be explained. The discoveries of archeology and the preserved writings of various pagan historians mostly agree with it. Any remaining discrepancies are something apt even by secular standards to be resolved in the Bible's favor in the future, as Jericho's case shows.

The Bible's text can be determined to be reliable, as the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries indicate. The argument from silence and the assumption nothing supernatural (from God) could have led to the Bible's writing have been both exposed as fallacies. Undeniable evidence for Jesus rising from the dead exists for those with open minds: The evidence from ANY ancient historian is more easily denied than that for the New Testament.

Higher critics should reply to the standard conservative / fundamentalist Christian scholarship, something which Bill Moyers' series on the Book of Genesis on PBS intentionally omitted. Judging from their poor track record over the past 150 years, it's time to be more skeptical of the skeptics themselves. Time and again, the skeptics' claims against the Bible have been proven false; Why should you believe in them instead of it? It's time to be open-minded towards, and accept, the Bible as the word of God.

FOR FURTHER READING

• Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1982).

• F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1960)

• The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988).

• Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989) [This work is by a secular historian, and not a believer in the Messiah].

• Norman L. Geisler, Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Co., 1976).

• Jehovah's Witnesses, The Bible: God's Word or Man's? (New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of New York, 1989).

• C.S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1960); The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1962); Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1952);

• C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Walter Hooper, ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970).

• Paul Little, Know Why You Believe (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988).

• John Warwick Montgomery, Evidence for Faith: Deciding the God Question (Dallas: Probe Books, 1991).

• Josh McDowell, More than a Carpenter (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1986); Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1979), vol 1; More Evidence that Demands a Verdict (San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, 1981); The Resurrection Factor (San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, 1981); with Don Stewart, Answers to Tough Questions (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1986); with Bill Wilson, He Walked Among Us: Evidence for the Historical Jesus (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1993).

• J.P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Co., 1987).

• Frank Morison, Who Moved the Stone? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1958).

• Henry Morris, Scientific Creationism (El Cajon, CA: Master Books, 1974);

• Henry M. Morris and Henry M. Morris, III, Many Infallible Proofs: Evidences for the Christian Faith (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1996).

• Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow From Pagan Thought? (Richardson, Texas: Probe Books, 1992).

• Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968).

• R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984). [Warning!--only for the determined reader!]