The Integrity of the Bible

Introduction:

Why a course on the fidelity or integrity of the Bible? Why is this an important topic for us today? Why should we care? I want to look at a few things in this introduction that I hope will be thought-provoking and stimulate discussion about the topic of the Bible’s integrity.

First off, I want to make it clear that this course is not about religion, theology, philosophy, or even the thoughts and concepts written in the Bible. There are plenty of Bible studies, theological works, etc. where people who are interested in such things can go to learn and explore. This course is about the Bible itself. Before we get to ideas about God, theology, religion, even translations, we need to first understand how the Bible came to humanity, who wrote it, how they wrote it, and how it was preserved throughout the ages. I will particularly focus on how well it was transmitted down through the ages and how original or early copies of biblical manuscripts match our modern Greek and Hebrew scholarly Bibles, as well as translations derived from all of the above. This is crucial stuff. With so many people nowadays thinking the Bible is corrupt and contains errors, etc, we need to take a solid look at the things I described, all about the integrity of the Bible. Then you can make a more reasonable decision about whether or not you think it is worthy of reading and studying.

I want to talk about my own reasons for developing this course, and I’ll be upfront about what I believe about it. You won’t have to guess where I’m coming from.

Take a look around you. Everything is about relationships. Even those who try to stay away from most relationships tell you something about their view of relationships, that they are important, either to engage or to refrain. Everything we do has to do with relationships with others. What brings most people peace? Having solid family relationships. I’m not saying we all have that, but it is, wouldn’t you agree, an ideal? We, ideally, want those who are closest to us to be, well, in a good relationship with us. They would be for us, encouraging, loving, giving, and the things we want deep down.

It goes much further than family relationships. How about friends? Of course. Neighbors, schools, clubs, sports groups, or teams, whether thrown together for a common interest or joined specifically because they are like-minded, we are in and part of groups of all varieties.

Then we have systems of relationships that have been established. Governments of cities, townships, counties, states, regions, national-level governments. Why?  Because we all, deep down, have a need to live in harmony with one another. It’s built into human nature.

Now, about human nature. Our human nature has a common set of needs. One of the most central needs is justice. Fair play. We all have it. How is that? Is it a product of random-chance macro-evolution, as some would say, or is it built into each one of us because we are that way by design?

I don’t mean for this to be apologetic for faith, so I won’t get into all the alternatives and argumentation for design vs. randomness for how and why the universe exists and runs. For the rest of this course, I will be explicit about what I believe. That way you don’t have to guess at it or wait for a time while you try to discern it. I really don’t like that sort of approach, and I hope you will agree that it is best if people lay their belief structures out right away so we know where they are coming from.

I am a Christian; a Jesus follower. I am not particularly extreme on any front, but try to keep to what the Bible teaches as much as possible as far as my beliefs and how I live. The most important part of the Bible for me, central to how I live and hold relationships, is, love your neighbor as yourself and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. These are my ruling laws if you will, about relationships.

Now back to the common need for things like love, peace, joy, justice, etc. I think these things come from God. I think we all have these needs because it is part of our design. This is why we get so angry and perturbed over people being treated poorly, people not having enough of the basic needs of life, or being persecuted for various things. We don’t think our desire for justice is a private thing, do we? If it is, then why would we think our own ideas and convictions should be foisted upon others? But we do all have this common view that certain things are really bad and other things are really good, don’t we? What creates that standard that sits outside of our own thinking?  God.

Now if God is the one who sets everything in motion and gives us common beliefs and ways of interacting with others, then we should want to know as much about this God as we can. Since God created everything we see and the people all around us, we can learn about him (I’ll use that pronoun for the sake of my speaking, even though I don’t think God has any particular sex or gender).

We can learn some vague things about God in nature and ourselves. But the clearest way to learn about God is what we can read about him in the Bible, our only source of explicit knowledge about God, who he is. This is one primary reason why we need to understand everything about the Bible. It is our primary source of information about God.