Accuracy and Impact of the Bible: GW+MW=Luv

Here is the next lesson in a historical and faithful study
beginning at 7:00 pm on Wednesday evenings.
at the church of Christ in Carthage, Missouri, south of the Ford dealership.
PLEASE JOIN US!

Art Appreciation

Analyze the painting shown here.  Check out the details.

• What do you notice?
• What do you think is happening?
• What caused the scene in the painting?
• What might happen after the scene shown?
• What does this piece make you wonder?

Interestingly, Martha Washington never missed a Christmas with her husband.  She even joined him in winter camps every year during the Revolutionary War.

​Treasures come in unexpected places.  Learn more about George's and Martha's relationship from a surprise find.

After George Washington's death, his wife, Martha, burned almost all of their correspondence with each other.  According to a Martha Washington website:

Within months of meeting,
both parties began to plan a future together.
Washington began renovating
​and improving his home at Mount Vernon.
Martha placed an order for wedding finery from London.

​​The Big Questions

Our focus for this study hinges on answering these two big questions.  The goal is to get closer to the answers each week in our class.

​​How did we we get the Bible?
Is the Bible accurate and dependable?

Introductory, Guiding Questions

• From where did it originate?
• When was it written
• Who wrote it?
• How was it written?
• ​On what was it written?
• With what was it written?

• Where was it written?
• To whom was it written?
• Why was it written?
• What is its purpose?
• In what languages was it composed?
• How has it changed through the millennia?

So how important is it to you that the Bible can be proven true?  Do you believe there is irrefutable evidence to its validity?  Is proof something that strengthens your personal faith in the existence of God?

Should faith alone be enough to drive you to drive you to your knees?  Is "blind" faith a stronger kind of faith?  If so, then why did God provide so much evidence?

Chapter 12 of our text, How We Got the Bible, focuses our attention on the Old Testament.  The author, Neil Lightfoot, provides a sampling of manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, including the following:

• The Aleppo Codex
• The Leningrad Codex
• The Cairo Codex
• The Leningrad Codex of the Pentateuch

He also provides some explanation about the emphasis on accuracy by scribes of the Old Testament.  Lightfoot calls the Massoretes "textual critics of the first rank", explaining, "They examined and appraised carefully all the textual materials available to them and, on the basis of their abnundant evidence, handed down in writing the form of the text which had been received at least several centuries before their time.  Continuing:

The Massoretes were not concerned with only such things as proper pronunciation.  They also sought ways and methods by which to eliminate scribal slips of addition or omission.  This they achieved through intricate procedures of counting.  They numbered the verses, words, and letters of each book.  They counted the number times each letter was used in each book.  They noted verses that contained all the letters of the alphabet or a certain number of them.  They calculated the middle letter, the middle word, and the middle verse of the Pentateuch; the middle verse of Psalms, the middle verse of the entire Hebrew Bible, and so forth.  In fact, they counted almost everything that could be counted.  With these safeguards, and others, when a scribe finished making a copy of a book, he could then check the accuracy of his work before using it.

Lightfoot then adds a note about the present status of our text with a very interesting detail from the Talmud (the Jewish civil and religious law):

...[T]he copyist must sit in full Jewish dress, wash his whole body, not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink, and should a king address him while writing that name he must take no notice of him...The rolls in which these regulations are not observed are condemned to be buried in the ground or burned...

Dead Sea Scrolls

The remaining section of this chapter emphasizes the incredible 1948 finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran.  Salt being a preservative, the caves of Qumran are the perfect location for the storage of ancient documents.

We still store important objects in salt mines in the United States.  Some of us have visited the Strataca salt mine in Hutchinson, Kansas.  There, we've observed many items preserved simply by residing in the salt air of the mine.  Here are some links to the last time I was there:

A Visit to Strataca Salt Mine

A Visit to Underground Vaults and Storage

Neil Lightfoot outlines some details about the Dead Sea Scrolls (much more important that the newspaper announcing the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or a Terminator​ costume), but we'll let experts in the videos below do most of the talking.  Before watching, consider this:  we have tens of thousands of manuscripts and fragments to confirm the claims of Scripture, but very few actual documents to confirm the love of George and Martha Washington.  Few people doubt the love letter at the top of these materials; why then would they doubt the Bible?

Application Question

​How important is it?

Is it important to you that the Bible comes from reliable sources, or is it just a collection of wise sayings and advice for living?  Many atheists agree that there is wisdom in the teachings of Jesus Christ, but they do not believe that Jesus is a Messiah, that He performed miracles, that He walked out of His own grave, or that He prepares a place where His faithful disciples will be rewarded for eternity.

We contend that the Bible and everything it contains is supported by:

• textual claims
• origins of the text
• extrabiblical history
• the faith of martyrs
• ​logic​

• astronomy
  
• archeology
• geography
• geology
• astronomy

• biology

• history
• chemistry
• physics
• mathematics
• and more

​Go forward with us - or in this case, back to the beginning - as we continue our study next time.