Overview OF tHE BIBLE
God Spoke and Revealed Himself
Some may accept the idea of a Deity, but only one Who is uninvolved with us and/or doesn’t hold us accountable for our actions. But God the Father went further to gain our praise and worship and gave us the Bible to explain Himself. It presents Him not as distant or silent, but as One Who chose to reveal His nature, His actions and His will to mankind.
While we do not possess any of the original documents (the autographs), we do possess many copies of the original manuscripts. In fact, the number of copies of both the Old and New Testaments far outweigh copies of any other ancient document. While many ancient secular writings were not compiled until many decades or even centuries after the subject person died, the NT books were written by the original authors within just a few years of Jesus living with us.
Sir William Ramsay, 19th century archaeologist, atheist and Biblical skeptic, eventually became a Christian after research throughout today’s Turkey confirmed many names and locations mentioned by Luke, the NT author. He had been on a mission to refute statements from the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts but, in fact, concluded that Luke was a historian of the highest order.
Dr. William F. Albright, the highly-respected American archaeologist, Biblical scholar and ceramics expert said in an interview with Christianity Today in 1963, “In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew between the forties and eighties of the first century AD (very probably sometime between about 50 and 75 AD).”
What the Bible Contains
The Protestant Bible consists of 39 books of the Old Testament (OT/Hebrew Bible) and 27 books of the New Testament (NT). The books of the Apocrypha are not included as they were mostly written during the time between the OT and NT and not deemed accurate enough or inspired by God. The Council of Nicea was convened in 325 to clear the air regarding the heresies of Gnosticism and Arianism. This eventually led to the Council of Hippo in 393 AD and again at the Council of Carthage in 397 AD, where the recognized books of Scripture were affirmed based upon their consistency, authenticity and agreement with manuscripts accepted by early Church Fathers. The bogus claim that Constantine told men to create the Bible out of thin air is just simply ludicrous.
The Roman Church included the Apocrypha in Jerome’s Bible, the Vulgate, and it was confirmed at the Council of Trent which met in response to the Protestant Reformation.
Preservation of Scripture
The Bible was preserved despite early distortions such as Origen and Eusebius altering original texts by using the errant Greek Septuagint and Origen’s “corrected” NT which underemphasized Jesus’ resurrection and increased praise of Mary.
In the late 1400s, Desiderius Erasmus gathered and translated Greek NT texts into the Textus Receptus after the Muslims conquered Constantinople and eastern believers escaped to western Europe with copies of the original manuscripts. The King James or Authorized Version was the first printed English Bible to include the Hebrew OT and Erasmus’ NT. It was heavily impacted by the work of William Tyndale. For this website, Bible verses are taken from the New King James Version.
God and jesus promised the "word" would be preserved
Exodus 24:3–4
Isaiah 40:8
Matthew 24:35
2 Timothy 3:14–15
“… you know that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures (the OT). All Scripture is inspired by God …”
causes and text of the bible
God the Father guided obedient men and then preserved His Word for our use and instruction
The Holy Spirit reminded men of God’s words and guided them as the Scriptures were written
Obedient men were used by God with guidance of the Holy Spirit to record what God has done and wants us to know
The OT explains Creation, the Flood, Israel and that salvation comes by faith. It contains many prophecies about Jesus and was completed by 400 BC. The Ebla tablet discovery reveals a library of over 18,000 clay tablets dating back to 2200 BC which confirms written languages long before Moses was born.
The NT covers the birth and life of Jesus and the birth and growth of the Christian Church. It also refers to the “end-times” – especially in the book of Revelation.
The Ebla Tablets
