Scientific Facts In The Bible 5 by Rev. Christie Bature: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Archaeology and history attest to the Bible. No other ancient book is questioned or maligned the way the Bible is. There are far fewer critics of the Quran or of Sanskrit writings than there are of the Bible.

Manuscript Evidence

Critics allege that a long span existed between the events of the New Testament and when they were recorded, and that a further gap exists between the earliest copies and the original autographs. In reality, those alleged gaps exist mostly in the minds of the critics.

• Aristotle's Poetics was written between 384 and 322 BC. The earliest surviving copy dates to AD 1100, a gap of 1,400 years, and only 49 manuscripts exist.
• Plato's Tetralogies were written 427 to 347 BC. The earliest copy dates to AD 900, a gap of over 1,200 years, and only seven manuscripts exist.
• The New Testament was written between AD 48 and AD 95, with the oldest manuscripts dating to the last quarter of the first century and AD 125. That is a gap of only 35 to 40 years from the original writings, backed by 5,300 Greek manuscripts and, including Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic texts, a total of 24,633 ancient manuscripts.

Nobody questions the writings of Aristotle or Plato despite gaps of over a thousand years, yet the New Testament, with a gap of only decades and by far the greatest manuscript support of any ancient document, is the one most frequently challenged.

Corroborating Ancient Writings

Critics also claim there are no ancient writings about Jesus outside the New Testament. Writings confirming his birth, ministry, death, and resurrection include Flavius Josephus (AD 93), the Babylonian Talmud (AD 70-200), Pliny the Younger's letter to Emperor Trajan (approximately AD 100), the Annals of Tacitus (AD 115-117), Mara Bar-Serapion (after AD 73), and Suetonius's Life of Claudius and Life of Nero (AD 120).

One of these accounts, from a first-century historian, described a wise man who won over many Jews and many Greeks, was condemned to crucifixion under Pilate, and appeared to his followers restored to life on the third day, with the tribe of Christians named after him still in existence to this day.

Some critics have also implied that Old and New Testament books were added or removed at the ecumenical councils of AD 336, 382, 397, and 419. In fact, those gatherings only confirmed that the books already accepted as scripture were divinely inspired; nothing was added or taken away. The 39 Old Testament books were already accepted by that point, and New Testament documents were received as authoritative as each was written in the first century, then passed to the next generation of believers. The claim that Emperor Constantine dropped books from the Bible is uneducated rumor, not history.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at Qumran in 1949, hidden in clay pots in cliff-top caves by a monastic community. They include one complete Old Testament book, Isaiah, and thousands of fragments covering every Old Testament book except Esther.

• Carbon-14 dating placed the material at roughly 1,917 years old, with a ten percent margin.
• Paleography and orthography indicated some manuscripts were inscribed before 100 BC; the complete Isaiah scroll was dated to around 100 BC.
• Pottery accompanying the manuscripts was late Hellenistic to early Roman in style, and coins found in the same ruins were minted between 135 BC and AD 135.

Before this discovery, the earliest known Old Testament manuscript was the Masoretic text, dated to around AD 900-1000, the source behind translations such as the King James Version. The Dead Sea Scrolls pushed that window back a thousand years and confirmed the reliability of the Hebrew text, the Masoretic tradition, and the Greek Septuagint, which the New Testament often quotes from directly.

Archaeological Discoveries

Archaeologist Dr. Joseph Free stated plainly, "We do not know of any cases where the Bible has been proved wrong." No archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference; instead, careful evaluation of biblical descriptions has repeatedly led to major discoveries.

• In 1993, a stone inscribed "House of David" and "King of Israel" was found in Israel, dated to the ninth century BC, roughly a century after David's reign. Time magazine noted this made the skeptical claim that David never existed hard to defend.
• In 1968, the skeletal remains of a crucified man were found in a burial cave in northern Jerusalem, with an iron nail still lodged in the heel bone and the shin bones appearing broken, details that corroborate the Gospel of John's account of crucifixion.
• The scriptures mention the Hittite Empire more than 40 times, yet no archaeological trace of the Hittites existed until 1906, when Hugo Winckler uncovered a library of 10,000 clay tablets documenting the lost empire, which at its height rivaled Egypt and Assyria.
• In 1990, a burial chamber two miles from the Temple Mount yielded bones inscribed "Yehosef bar Caiapha", Joseph, son of Caiaphas, believed to be the high priest who handed Jesus over to Pilate.
• Excavations at Caesarea Maritima uncovered a stone inscription naming Pontius Pilate as prefect of Judea, confirming the governing authority the Gospels ascribe to him.

The Bible's Historical Accuracy

Luke, who wrote a large portion of the New Testament, has been established as a scrupulously accurate historian even in the smallest detail. One archaeologist examined Luke's references to 32 countries, 54 cities, and nine islands and found not a single mistake.

Jesus said of the temple, Matthew 24:2 Luke 21:6, that not one stone would be left upon another. The historian Josephus later recorded that in the Roman destruction of the temple in AD 70, every stone was carried away in the search for melted gold, and the ground was plowed and sown with salt.

The Bible's Internal Harmony

The scriptures were written by more than 40 authors, from different walks of life, places, times, and moods, across three languages, over 1,600 years and 60 generations, on hundreds of controversial subjects. Brought together, they form one unfolding story from Genesis to Revelation, the redemption of mankind through the Messiah, paradise lost in Genesis and paradise regained in Revelation. There is no other book in history that compares to the uniqueness of that continuity. Revelation cannot be properly understood without understanding Genesis.