#STRask - What’s the Best Evidence for the Reliability of the Old Testament?

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Questions about the best evidence for the reliability of the Old Testament, whether Greg subscribes to the idea of four independent Gospel accounts or two-source theory, and why the apostle Paul wrote so much of the New Testament. What’s the best evidence for the historical reliability of the Old Testament? How do we know that what the Old Testament writers wrote back then is what we have today? Does Greg subscribe to the idea of four independent Gospel accounts or something more like the two-source theory? Why do you think the apostle Paul was commissioned to write so much of the New Testament explaining Christian theology when he wasn’t present for Jesus’ teachings during his earthly ministry?

This is Stand to Reason's Hashtag SDR Ask podcast featuring Greg Kokel. Yes, and Amos. And Amos. Amos Hall. Amy Hall. Let's start with a question from Trent Blake. What is the best evidence for the historical reliability of the Old Testament? Most apologetic material I've encountered focuses on New Testament reliability, but what about Old Testament reliability? How do we know what the Old Testament writers wrote back then is what we have today?

Well, those are two different questions. The first one is the reliability. That is that the documents recorded actual history. The second issue is whether those documents have survived over time without being changed. Okay, those are two separate questions. One is the historicity of the originals, and the second one is the survival of the originals, at least the content of the originals over time through copying. With regards to the second, I mean, you're always going to have variations over time, okay? But one of the things that we discovered, the Old Testament text, the oldest that we had up until the beginning

of the 20th century, was what's called the Masoretic Text, okay? And the oldest copies we had went roughly to the end of the first millennium A.D. or Common Era, all right, after Jesus. So before that, we didn't have any copies. We had Masoretic texts before that. But then there was the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the late 1940s, and these scrolls contained lots and lots and lots of Old Testament texts. And what they were able to do is compare these texts that were written before Jesus to the Masoretic text, which were copies that we possess from over a thousand years later. And what they were able to discover was the incredible similarity, closeness between those texts, okay? So, it turns out, based on the evidence we have, there has not been a massive amount of change in these texts as much as we're able to assess them.

Now, in the New Testament, it's easier because you only have 2,000 years from then until now, from then until now, and a greater proliferation of texts that can be cross-matched to reproduce the original reliably, and that can be done. When it comes to the Old Testament, you don't have as many. But even so, with the texts that we have, they demonstrate the textual integrity of those manuscripts over time insofar as we're able to measure them. So we don't have any good reason to believe that what we have now in terms of the Hebrew Scriptures is significantly different than what was originally written. Now again, our ability to test is more limited, but we have to go with the evidence that we have. Okay, so that's the first thing. That's the textual question. It's also called lower criticism. Have the manuscripts survived

intact in the recopying over time? The other question, and by the way, keep in mind, there are always going to be difficulties. Sometimes there are contradictions in ancient texts, what we have, and sometimes the numbers seem wrong. And there are anomalies in the way they recorded numbers, and sometimes the numbers are exaggerated for the sake of effect. You have military hyperbole and stuff like that, and that's all part of the way they wrote their histories. The standards for history in the past were different from the standards of history in the present. You have to keep those in mind when you're trying to assess what actually took place and what the writers are trying to communicate.

trying to assess what actually took place and what the writers were trying to communicate. Now, as far as the reliability of these texts to tell us the truth about what happened, now, the further you go into the past, the harder it is. I mean, in the Pentateuch, you have the earliest chapters that record information that is regarding things that happened before any other information was being recorded, until you get to the time of Abraham, who is an historical individual who lived around 2000 BC. And we do have writings from those times, and actually a lot of the writings were on clay tablets. And what's interesting, and the way you verify the history of a particular record is, well, there's a couple of things in mind. First of all, historians characteristically take these

records on face value, and they trust them unless they have really good reason not to. For example, if there's other evidence that comes in that contradicts it, then you have to weigh which one do you think is more accurate, and they have ways of doing this based on the way the reporting is and archaeological evidence, etc. based on the way the reporting is and archaeological evidence, etc. But it's more difficult the deeper in time that you go back. But a lot of the methods are the same as the New Testament documents. You look for corroboration. Corroboration could be other written texts that say the same thing.

So in the Hebrew Scriptures, you have 1 and 2 Kings, and you have 1 and 2 Chronicles. Now, these are different reports. They're included in the corpus of Hebrew Scripture, but they are different accounts, and the accounts dovetail with each other, all right? And so, you have two witnesses there, not just one witness. You also have references to locations, to people, to events that took place that could be, in principle, corroborated by other accounts, Sumerian accounts, for example, Marian accounts, for example, or Middle Eastern accounts that have survived that we have record of now, or steles, these big monolithic things that have writings on them, or clay tablets like Enabla they found, or is it Elba? This was a long time ago when I learned about this. But these were thousands of clay tablets that were records of things that had taken place. And what you can do is you get a sense of the cultures of that time by these writings of that time and see how the cultures match what is described in the Hebrew Scriptures for that time.

And so that's a corroboration, and sometimes there are names that match and individuals that are recorded. And this kind of stuff is coming up with some frequency regarding Old Testament Scripture. I mean, if you go to the Holy Land, you cannot walk around without crunching on artifacts. Under your foot are pieces of pottery. You walk anywhere around there, you know, where, I mean, it's not actually pavement, you're going to see pieces of pottery sitting around that's all built in there because all the civilizations that have gone back and forth and back and forth and destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed and rebuilt. And of course, you have these tells, these mounds that are actually quite high. It could be hundreds of feet high,

where it started as a town on the plain, and then that town got destroyed, and then they built on top of it, and that got destroyed. They built on top of that, and pretty soon you got this whole hill that can be excavated down various levels to see the different details of history. Well, these often will produce artifacts that bear on the history being recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. So that's the dance, those kinds of things. And what happens, more and more, you see as archaeology is done, characteristically, there are some differences of opinion on some of this, but characteristically, you get this massive cooperation from archaeology of Old Testament events. And there is a school of thought, just so people are aware of, that is called the minimalist school. And according to the minimalist school,

the biblical record, the Hebrew texts from antiquity, count as nothing. It's the simplest way to put it, unless they're corroborated by something else. And then the corroboration lends credibility, at least to that small portion that is corroborated. Now, that's not the way they deal with other things. They don't find a manuscript or a stone or a stele or whatever that has a record on it and say, well, we're not going to believe anything here unless we have additional corroboration. They don't treat those in a minimalist way. They only treat the Scriptures in a minimalist way. So there's an inconsistency there, because most of the things we read in Scripture are not going to find corroboration in something else, other ancient writings or in archaeological evidence.

But so many things archaeologically have affirmed details of the ancient record of the Hebrews. And I know in the past, some archaeologists have denied, I remember one of them was the existence of Hittites, and they assumed that that was made up until they found evidence of them. And they recently found an inscription saying the house of David. So you're right, Greg, there is this tendency to not believe it until they find corroboration. But what's happening is the corroboration is coming. And so there's no reason to deny what it says until you get find corroboration. But what's happening is the corroboration is coming. And so there's no reason to deny what it says until you get that corroboration.

It is an odd inconsistency, though, because they don't characteristically do that with other records, just the Hebrew scriptures. There is a ministry in England, I think it's called Day One. At one point, they had a book that they created where they would take you through the British Museum and show you all the artifacts that had to do with the ways that it corroborated the Old Testament. It was amazing. So you can get things like that if you're interested in seeing what is out there, you can go see the decree by Cyrus that's featured in the Old Testament. Yeah, 444 BC to initiate the return to the land, right. There's all sorts of things there. So I recommend looking into the archaeology there. Next, here's a question from Chris Brooks. Does Greg subscribe to the idea of four independent gospel accounts or something more like the two-source theory?

Well, I'm not entirely sure what he's referring to with the two-source theory. Even Bart Ehrman, I think, understands that with Matthew, Mark, and Luke, those are called the synoptic gospels because sin, same, optic, look. They have the same look. They have a lot of overlapping material, and some of it's exactly the same. And it does appear that Luke and Matthew seem to depend for some things on Mark, but they have a lot of their own individual information, and that unique to Luke and Matthew that is not in Mark is sometimes presumed to have come from a different source. Now, the German word for source is quell, starts with a Q, and so they sometimes just refer to that as Q, but nobody's ever found Q.

It could be oral tradition, it could be something written, whatever, but they attribute a common source to the similar information or the overlapping information between Luke and Matthew that's not in Mark. Clearly, and it's totally fair, I think, to acknowledge that there's a literary relationship between these three Gospels and some other sources. I don't see how that compromises our understanding of inspiration at all. compromises our understanding of inspiration at all. If you look in the book of Proverbs, you're going to find Proverbs that came from that almost word for word out of the wisdom literature of the Amenemope. So the writer of Proverbs learned something smart from somebody else and included it in the inspired text. It doesn't mean it's less inspired because he was able to transfer it over. I mean, if he read Benjamin Franklin, he might write, a stitch in time saves nine.

I mean, it's still just as wise. It was God's superintendent of those documents that allowed those things to be organized in a very particular way wherever they got the information. There is no requirement of inspiration that people have to kind of think up everything on their own under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. None whatsoever. It is the total result that we see in these individual Gospels, however they were interrelated, that is the result God intended for us as His Scripture, okay? And so I don't see any problem there. I haven't really worked out my own theory. I think what I just described to you is completely justifiable, probably is the case. It fits the assessment of most scholars who look at these literary relationships, but it doesn't in any way, in my view, undermine their authority.

I'm not sure if I missed anything in the question, but... No, I think you got it there. And even if they were using a source, you could still see their own contributions to each one. There are still different people involved in putting it together. Yeah, they may be using the same event, even the same words, in the life of Jesus, but place it organizationally in a different way in their piece to underscore a different aspect of the point. You can take a passage of Scripture, 1 Corinthians 15, Paul talks about the gospel that he received, he's given to the Corinthians, and do a sermon on that, and someone else can do a sermon and have a completely different focus.

All in the text, all accurate and sound, but a completely different focus. All in the text, all accurate and sound, but a completely different focus. And so, sometimes the gospel writers will group events not in terms of their actual chronology, but group them thematically to make a point, okay? So, Jesus says, I am the light of the world, and then next he heals a man who is blind from birth, okay? Now, probably in another gospel, that point would have not been made that way, and the person who's healed of his blindness might show up in a different place in the gospel. That's because they have a different standard for organizing and writing than we do nowadays. It's just very, very different. We have to understand how that works to know. I don't—I'm not concerned. Clearly, I think there's a literary relationship.

This is called the synoptic problem. By the way, lots of people have worked out solutions to this that are completely reasonable and are consistent with a high view of Scripture. Let's take a question from Jordan S. Why do you think the Apostle Paul was commissioned to write so much of the New Testament, explaining so much Christian theology, when he wasn't present for Jesus' teachings during his earthly ministry. I realize this is a why would God question, but I'm curious to see if you have any thoughts on this. Yeah, I do. You know, Nabil Qureshi, who we knew many years ago, well, he died in, I think, 2017, wrote some amazing books like Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.

But I remember a paper he gave at ETS. It was actually the last week that I saw him. And he was making the observation that, you know, you can't find the gospel in the gospels, at least not the way it's characterized in detail in later writings. But his point was that, as I recall, that the gospels were meant to talk about the person of Jesus, the things he taught about the kingdom of God, and then his death and resurrection. It wasn't meant to work out all the details of theology, okay? That came later. Now, the details of theology, okay? That came later. Now, the people who Jesus trained actually had lots more teaching than what is recorded in the Gospels. You know, in the Gospel of John, one-third of it is one event. That is the Upper Room Discourse, John 13 to 17.

And that was on Passion Night. the rest of it is Passion and the Resurrection. So, from John 13 all the way to John, what, 22, it's all talking about something that happens within 36 hours, all right? But Jesus had been teaching them for three and a half years and working all kinds of miracles, okay? So so there were lots and lots and lots of stuff that they learned that Jesus promised the Holy Spirit, which would be given, would bring to their remembrance, and that was all truth. Now, by the way, this is a passage that many Christians misunderstand, because this one in the Upper Room Discourse, say John 15 or 16, they cite as the Holy Spirit will teach them all truth. Well, obviously, if that's what Jesus meant,

then the Holy Spirit has failed, because we have a variety of different views about what the truth is coming from Scripture. Jesus wasn't speaking to the apostles, their disciples, as Christians, but as apostles, as one speaking authoritatively for him because he had spent all these years training. And the Holy Spirit was going to help them recall all the things that he taught to them so that they'd be able to distribute that and communicate it to others. You get one kind of slice, so to speak, theologically in the gospel accounts, and this is Jesus. Then you get theology from John later, from Peter later, and from Paul. Now, Paul wasn't a witness, but Paul was somebody chosen by God to do incredible things. And this comes out in, what, Acts 8 or 9, right in there,

where you have Paul's conversion. And then he is told by Ananias, who God spoke to, that God was going to use him for great purpose, and also he would suffer. I'm going to do these great things to you. The irony is that he was the persecutor of the church that then became the one who was the chief spokesperson theologically and ultimately suffered a martyr's death. Now, what's kind of interesting about this is that the response of the early church to the Pauline epistles was that if they knew Paul wrote it, there was no question in their mind that it was canon Scripture. It belonged in the Scripture. The same thing was true with John and Peter as well, but they didn't write as much,

and James, who was the brother of Jesus. But half-brother, I should say. So there was a need for a period of time where a bunch of the theology of the cross needed to be worked out and explained from the history of the life of Jesus and the cross. Those are two different things. The history of Jesus, which did contain theology, but it was a certain focus. And then the theology regarding Jesus and the cross came out later from those people Jesus personally trained to follow after him. Peter, John, and Paul. Paul wasn't a witness to the ministry of Christ, but he was a witness to the risen Christ. And according to Galatians, he was instructed by Jesus in Arabia for two years and took that message, interestingly enough, to

the pillars in Jerusalem to make sure he had not been running in vain. What's interesting, and I had not thought about this, So Paul has this powerful experience with Jesus, but he still checks the details out with the living apostles who had been living with Jesus, the pillars. And it says they added nothing to his gospel. Right. You know, obviously, we don't know exactly why. Clearly, Paul was trained in the Old Testament, so he was able to see the connections of the theology, why Jesus died. Just he was able to understand how this theology worked out. Galatians, for example, and Romans, how he tied in all that Old Testament stuff to the gospel.

And he was a very logical thinker. Now, when God inspired books of the Bible, he does it through human beings. So every word they write is what God wants them to write, but he doesn't override their personalities. So you can see their gifts, their personalities, their interests in their work. And Paul was someone who was so, such a clear thinker and such a logical thinker that he was able to explain it in a way that we can understand today. But I think there might be something else going on here, and that is, and you touched on this, Greg, his dramatic conversion. Because here's somebody who was

persecuting the church and locking people up for following Jesus. Suddenly, now he is a Christian and he's writing scripture. I mean, that is very dramatic. That in his very person, he's not just explaining the gospel, he's demonstrating the gospel. He's demonstrating the power of God to raise from the dead and call into being that which does not exist. to raise from the dead and call into being that which does not exist. And he talks about this in 1 Timothy 1, where he says, you know, God saved him so that he could, you know, as the worst of sinners, basically, so that we would know everyone has hope, really. Anyone can be saved. So he embodied that. He didn't just talk about it. He was a living proof of what God can do and the power of Jesus. So I think there could be something to that, too. But of course, this is all speculation. Thank you, Jordan, and thank you, Trent and Chris.

We appreciate hearing from you. Send us your question on X with the hashtag STRASK or go to our website at str.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.