Review: Still believing the Bible!

Many books today are knocking the Bible by giving reasons for rejecting it. Many, perhaps most, are ill thought-through and lacking in scholarly substance. So it’s good to find a book in defence of the Bible’s trustworthiness, written by a competent biblical scholar with his feet on the ground. It is

Can We Still Believe The Bible?—An evangelical engagement with contemporary questions by Craig L. Blomberg (Brazos Press, 2014)

Blomberg engages with six aspects that have commonly come under attack:

1. Textual criticism (finding the Bible’s original wording)

With so many textual variants in the NT, can we be sure we know what the original version was? The author exposes the glaring weaknesses in Bart Ehrman’s influential book: Misquoting Jesus. He shows the statistics there to be presented in a misleading way, and counters them with a balanced and settling presentation. He goes on to examine the two key ‘doubtful’ NT passages: the ending of Mark’s Gospel, and part of John 8. Along the way, he addresses many other shorter textual variants.

He goes into considerable detail, too, on the more complex text of the OT. It makes fascinating reading. He concludes that, overall, we can be more certain of the text of the Bible than we can of most other ancient books. We can reconstruct it with a very high degree of probability, even if we cannot claim to have a flawless text.

2. The biblical canon (which books are in the Bible, and why)

Here, Blomberg addresses the popular opinion that political forces at the time of Constantine (4^th century AD) decided which books should be in the canon of the NT. He provides solid reasons for rejecting that position. He also examines the debates that took place over certain books and their legitimacy as candidates for inclusion in the NT canon, and what the criteria were.

  He looks at the OT canon, too, and shows how flimsy a foundation some of the critical claims are based upon, offering firmer alternatives on which to build a different view. But he is honest in admitting where our knowledge of ancient sources and developments runs out and speculation begins. He also tackles the question of the Apocrypha and how we should regard it.

There is an interesting section on the abuse of the canon of Scripture, in which Wayne Grudem’s widely-used Systematic Theology comes in for some direct criticism.

3. The problems of the proliferation of English translations

Blomberg has already, in the previous sections, debunked the notion that the Authorized (King James) Version is somehow more trustworthy than later versions of the English Bible. And there are vastly more of these than in any other language, some of them of dubious quality.

He provides a history of the translations and the three main approaches adopted by translators. He debunks the idea that the more ‘literal’ a translation is, the more we should prefer it. Interestingly, the version favoured by most English-speaking scholars worldwide is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Conversely, he shows how exaggerated are the claims made for the English Standard Version (ESV).

The author also faces up to the fraught issue of gender-inclusive language and how appropriate it is for the Bible text, especially in relation to the latest edition (2011) of the popular New International Version (NIV).

4. The ‘inerrancy’ of the Bible

It is chiefly in the USA that ‘biblical inerrancy’ is emphasised. But many Christians elsewhere have picked up on it and assumed it to be a ‘given’ of orthodox faith. It holds that the Bible is without errors. But there is debate over what constitutes an error! Definitions of inerrancy usually include a phrase like ‘Scripture properly interpreted’, which opens the door to many opinions.

Blomberg examines the ways in which, in biblical times, people reported speech or recorded history. They differed enormously from modern practices, but we should not judge the former by the latter. A difference does not constitute an error.

He comes down in favour of inerrancy, but with a view of it that is very nuanced and sensitive to the complexity of the biblical text. It is a view that many conservatives would, I suspect, dismiss as far too liberal, but which I myself find very satisfying.

5. The biblical genres (e.g. what parts are history, and in what sense?)

The Bible contains a wide variety of literary genres: history, letters, wisdom, poetry etc. A problem for many people is which parts they should receive as historical narrative, and which as illustrative stories that are not necessarily true in a literal sense.

Blomberg looks at many examples, starting with the accounts of the creation and fall in Genesis. He goes on to discuss Job and Jonah—was he really swallowed by a whale?—and then the authorship of Isaiah, before looking at Daniel and the genre known as apocalyptic literature.

The NT section examines the theory that Matthew is an example of the Jewish genre called midrash, the disputed authorship of some of the epistles and, finally, the much-disputed book of Revelation. Blomberg’s treatment of them all is sensible, balanced and persuasive. To his credit, he comes clean on where he personally stands on the main issues.

6. The question of miracles

Sceptics have argued that the Bible’s miracle stories make it a mythical book. This comes from a materialistic worldview that has no place for real miracles.

Blomberg disagrees. He points to the evidence for miracles happening today, well-documented and with lasting results. And, in addition, reminds us that miracles—especially the resurrection of Jesus—are an integral part of Christianity in a way that is not true of other religions.

After recounting some miracles that he himself has personally witnessed, he goes on to examine some of the NT miracles and ask whether they were embroidered over the years onto more mundane events, or were even based on pagan miracle stories. He looks particularly at the resurrection of Jesus, for which the evidence is overwhelming. Then he takes a similar approach with some OT miracles.

He identifies categories: types of situations where OT miracles were frequent. Then he applies the same process to NT miracles, including those in the book of Acts. He decides that the evidence for biblical miracles—and miracles today—is strong.

He concludes by coming down firmly on the side of the Bible’s trustworthiness. While cautioning against an over-liberal approach to it, he wisely warns, too, against the opposite: an unrealistic conservatism. The latter, espoused by hard-line biblicists, has done as much as the former to put off genuine seekers from engaging with the Scriptures.

Finally he cautions against exclusivist, pharisaical attitudes towards those who take a ‘lower’ view of the Bible that we do, asserting: ‘Millions of evangelicals worldwide and throughout history have not accepted the belief that every last word of Scripture is without error, yet they are living (or have lived) faith-filled, Christ-directed, God-honoring lives.’ (p221)

This is a first-class book, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to every thinking Christian.

Here’s a selection of quotations, with page numbers.

It seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that God has worked with humanity gradually over time, progressively revealing more and more of himself and his will as humans have been able to receive it, which also suggests that there are trajectories of moral enlightenment established on the pages of Scripture that we should continue to push even further today. (4)

There are…areas of scholarship where new findings, or at least much more intense study of slightly older discoveries, have actually strengthened the case for the reliability or trustworthiness of the Scriptures. (7)

Huge misunderstandings remain about the strengths and weaknesses of so-called literal translations. (10)

Many people simply can’t live with even a very slight uncertainty about the exact reading of the original text of a document they treat as inspired, authoritative, and infallible Scripture. So, however implausible their arguments have to be, they insist on defending the notion that God has inerrantly preserved his Word. (39)

We have massive amounts of support for our convictions that the sixty-six books of the canonical Scriptures accepted by all branches of Christianity have been extraordinarily well preserved. (42)

The New Testament explicitly quotes from a broad cross-section of Old Testament documents but never quotes from the Apocrypha. Jude quotes once from a pseudepigraphic work, 1 Enoch, but not in a fashion that necessarily implies that he understood the work to be part of the Hebrew canon. (49)

In John’s original context, Revelation 22:18–19 on not adding or subtracting to the words of this book referred only to the book of Revelation itself. But when the church finalized the canon, by including Revelation and ending with it, it was in essence applying John’s words to the entire collection of authoritative documents. (56)

The criterion of apostolicity [for inclusion in the canon] does not mean that every book was written by an apostle—by one of Jesus’s twelve closest followers—but rather that they were written during the apostolic age, before the last of the Twelve (most likely John) had died. (58)

The Hebrew Scriptures remained an open-ended narrative in a way the New Testament did not. Christians, in compiling their uniquely sacred Scriptures, added to the Old Testament what they believed was the divinely intended fulfilment of the story of God’s dealings with humanity. (62)

Tellingly, the only way Muslims and Mormons have been able to justify another collection of divinely inspired literature is to claim either (1) that the existing texts of the New Testament are corrupt and originally taught something quite different (the typical Muslim claim), or (2) that entire books were left out of the canon that God originally gave to his people (the typical Mormon claim). (76)

Occasionally an evangelical systematic theology is written with insufficient reference to the history of Christian thought on the topic or to the philosophical and cultural underpinnings of the major schools of thought throughout that history. The result makes it appear as if the theologian’s task is merely to group every passage from the Bible on a given topic together and see what concepts emerge.115 Wayne Grudem’s widely used Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine unfortunately too often approximates this approach. (79)

The Bible is uniquely inspired and authoritative, but that does not mean that Christians shouldn’t read widely from every perspective on every topic about which they wish to learn. Nor does it mean that we can treat the Bible like a textbook on any topic, even theology, as if immersing ourselves in Scripture alone, with no other resources, will suffice to teach us everything that God has revealed about any area of human inquiry. (81)

The options [in Bible translation] are whether to (a) prioritize accuracy, (b) prioritize fluency, or (c) optimize both by seeking as much of a and b as can be accomplished simultaneously. Of course, there can also be gradations of these priorities, but in broad generalizations, the NASB, ESV, and NRSV represent a (putting meaning ahead of clarity); the NLT, CEV, and GNB represent b (putting clarity ahead of meaning); and the NAB, NET, HCSB, CEB, and NIV represent c (aiming at the optimal amount of meaning and clarity simultaneously). (94)

The updated NIV may have attained the best combination of accuracy and clarity of all the translations. (118)

Numerous competing theological and exegetical positions over the centuries have appealed to the inerrancy or trustworthiness of Scripture for their support; in reality these were debates over hermeneutics. (124)

The reporting of people’s words is a particularly significant example of where the ancients employed noticeably less precision than we moderns do. (127)

What it means to say that the Bible is wholly true varies widely from one genre to the next, but the concept of a deeply flawed or errant Scripture is a virtual oxymoron and largely the invention of recent times. (131)

Nothing in principle should prevent the person who upholds inerrancy from adopting a view that sees ʾādām (“man” or Adam) and ḥawwâ (“life” or Eve) as symbols for every man and woman, created in the image of God but sinful by virtue of their own rebellious choices in succumbing to Satan’s lures. (152)

Outside of evangelical circles, roughly half of contemporary New Testament scholars believe that Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, James, 1 Peter, and Jude were not written by the authors to which they have traditionally been ascribed. Perhaps as many as three-fourths of New Testament scholars reject the Pauline authorship of Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles (1–2 Timothy and Titus), and an even higher percentage rejects Petrine authorship of 2 Peter. Second Peter is also the one canonical letter whose authorship claim was disputed in the ancient church as well. (169)

The form of Christianity in which these church-leavers and faith-leavers were brought up and/or nurtured did not allow for serious discussion of the hard questions of the faith in a safe environment and drew small circles around what was deemed acceptably “Christian.” (175)

Among biblical scholars there is a much greater openness to the miraculous than there was even a generation ago. (185)

The reliability of the entire exodus story has, of course, been frequently called into question because of the lack of direct archaeological evidence. The problem is compounded by the debate over its date, whether it should be placed in the thirteenth or fifteenth century BC. But we do have hieroglyphic paintings from Egypt from the fifteenth century that depict foreign slaves making mud bricks under the supervision of Egyptian overseers, and we have archaeological evidence for the sudden appearance or growth of towns in many places in Israel at about the right time, if we opt for the later date for the exodus. It is not realistic, moreover, to expect anything to remain of the shelters of impoverished people like the Israelite slaves in Egypt living in the marshy delta of the Nile, or of their temporary wilderness wanderings in the Sinai utilizing even less permanent structures. And no Pharaoh would have wanted to acknowledge the loss of a slave community due to their flight by recording or commemorating it in any way! There are, to be sure, sites in Israel where we might have expected evidence of occupation or signs of larger settlements, but it is actually amazing that so much has remained over the millennia. We should always remind ourselves that the absence of evidence is never the evidence of absence! (195)

Just as often as Christ works a sign or wonder in response to faith, he also effects a miracle to produce faith where it is too small or nonexistent. (201)

A study of the heresies that the early church had to address in its first several centuries quickly discloses that there are two ways one can distort the truth. The best known, then and throughout church history, has been to redefine central doctrines too broadly—to become too “liberal.” Less well remembered are the heresies caused by redefining central doctrines too narrowly—to become too “conservative.” (216)

We can still wholeheartedly believe the Bible in the twenty-first century, even after honestly engaging contemporary questions. (217)