Is the Bible Reliable?
There are many who make the claim that the bible is a very reliable source of history, and that archaeology confirms the truth of the bible. Another claim that is made is that the bible has not changed throughout history, and that the earliest manuscripts are the same as the ones we have now. I have written some about this throughout my many writings (and in my review of The Evidence Bible) but in this paper, I wish to tackle the bible in a more in-depth way.

I will try to show that all of these claims are false.

First off, I want to point out that there are some historical accuracies within the bible. I don't mean to imply that nothing in the bible can be taken as accurate, however, it is a fact that there are many problems, such as true events told of in the bible taking place at a different time in history, then what the bible says. Or details about one era which apply to another. For example, camels are mentioned in Genesis 24:10, yet they were not widely used until after 1000 B.C.E.

But the fact is that the bible will not conform to history because that was not the intent of the writers. The intent was the writing of gospels (the "good news") and mainly focused on the ways one should live, stories, and about the return of the savior (and they are still waiting!), etc.

When copies of a manuscript were to be copied, they obviously didn't have copy machines or a printing press at that time, in order to make perfect copies. They used scribes, and as Bart Ehrman shows, only until after the third century did professional scribes begin to make copies of the text, however they were still using the error ridden copies of the texts from the past. Before then, there are many scribes who either intentionally, or unintentionally, made changes to the text. For example, in dictating to a scribe what one wanted written, one would say word for word what one wanted put down, while other times one would just spell out the basic points and let the scribe fill in the rest. Both methods were commonly used, which makes you wonder if the scribe did 'fill in' parts of ones dictation, did the scribe get across what the author wanted, or did the scribe accidently change the whole meaning of the text? We cannot know.

Another aspect to this whole debate is that there were different sects of christianity who each had differing beliefs. For example, Paul wrote that one would only gain salvation though faith in jesus' death and resurrection, while others (who argued fiercely with him) claimed that by following the deeds in Jewish Law one would have salvation.


All these different groups fought fiercely with one another, each claiming to have the truth.


Another group, called the Ebionites, held differing beliefs such as, they believed that jesus was the jewish messiah sent from the jewish god in order to fulfill the scriptures. They believed that in order to belong to the people of god, one needed to be jewish, and so they observed sabbath, kept kosher, and circumcised all males. Though they also had different beliefs about jesus. They did not believe that jesus was born of a virgin, and that he was nothing but a flesh and blood person, and that he was simply adopted by god, in order to be his son.

Another major group, called the Marcionites, believed that a person gained salvation through faith in christ, not in following the jewish law, as did the Ebionites. This group also believed that there were two gods. Marcion, the founder of this group, thought that there could be no way that god could be both vengeful, and merciful, so there must be two distinct gods. He believed that the god of the old testament was the one who created this world (the vengeful one), while jesus (the merciful one) was never involved with the world, and only came into when jesus came from heaven. He also believed that jesus was not really ever born, nor was really a man at all. He only appeared to have an earthly, human body.

Yet another group called gnostics held that it was jesus' teachings alone that held the key to salvation, by receiving the correct knowledge of who they really were. After all, the word gnostic means "knowledge." When I was reading about this, it reminded me about buddhism's idea of salvation of a sorts. Until you gain enlightenment ("knowledge") you will continue to be reborn. At least from my readings about buddhism, I'm pretty sure that's correct. But anyhow, the point I'm trying to make is that I feel as if some of these teachings (or maybe these ideas came from tibet, or china) came from buddhism and they incorporated these ideas, since there are some parallels between the teachings of buddha and jesus.

The point I'm trying to make here is that all these different groups of christians were battling one another for the right to be the one truth. Anyone who didn't share their views were deemed to be heretics. These battles caused scribes to change texts in order to counter a claim by an opponent. Scripture was added to, and things changed around. For example, Mark 16:1-8 is the earliest version of the resurrection story, where women discover the empty tomb, and an angel tells them that the disappearance of the body means that jesus has risen. In the earliest and best manuscripts the gospel ends there, then later on a scribe adds Mark 16:9-20, which speaks of his disciples seeing jesus after he has risen. For whatever reason the scribe changed the story; perhaps to "prove" this event really happened to people who doubted the resurrection, or other theological reasons. This is one example that scripture was, in fact, changed for whatever the reasons.

What if the gnostics' scripture was the one which won the scripture wars? Christianity would be very different. Only learning of jesus' teachings will get you salvation. But the whole point is, what's the more accurate teaching? It's clear that all of these groups had scriptures to back up their beliefs, but which one was the correct one? We will never know, because we don't have the original scriptures. All we have are the altered, and sometimes badly copied texts that have been handed down. In fact, the King James Bible is one of the least authoritative writings because it's been shown to have been made with badly translated texts.

From Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus:

"The King James was not given by god but was a translation by a group of scholars in the early 17th century who based their rendition on a faulty Greek text. Later translators based their translations on Greek texts that were better, but not perfect. Even the translation you hold in your hands is affected by these textual problems...whether you are a reader of the New International Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New Revised Standard Version, The New American Standard Version, the New King James, the Jerusalem Bible, the Good News Bible, or something else. They are all based on texts that have been changed in places (page 209)."

Even in the modern bible, this is apparent. In Mark 16:1-8, in the earliest version of the easter story, it includes the discovery of the empty tomb and the interpretive words of a young man, maybe an angel. He announces that the absence of the body means that jesus has risen. His words anticipate an appearance of jesus, but nothing further happens. In the oldest and best manuscripts, Mark's gospel ends right there. Later on, some scribe added Mark 16:9-20, which talks about jesus appearing to his disciples.

As far as archaeology confirming the bible, that is false (aside from what I mentioned at the beginning). There is no evidence that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were as powerful as is claimed in the bible. They may not have even existed in the first place. The exodus, a major event, does not appear in any Egyptian records. Further more, there are no traces in the Sinai from 40 years of a half million people wandering in the desert. Other archaeological evidence contradicts this anyway, showing that the Hebrews were a native people. Luke 2:4 talks about Nazareth as being Joseph's home but the archaeological evidence shows that the town did not exist at the time.

From http://salon.com/books/feature/2001/02/07/solomon/index.html and http://freethought.mbdojo.com/archeology.html :


The following are verbatim excerpts from news articles, which are linked below. This material is readily available to all for verification.

http://salon.com/books/feature/2001/02/07/solomon/index.html



Exodus never happened and the walls of Jericho did not come a-tumbling down. How archaeologists are shaking Israel to its biblical foundations.

Israel Finkelstein, chairman of the Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv University, with archaeology historian Neil Asher Silberman, has just published a book called "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Text."

"The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land [of Canaan] in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the twelve tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united kingdom of David and Solomon, described in the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom."

Jerusalem was essentially a cow town, not the glorious capital of an empire. These findings have been accepted by the majority of biblical scholars and archaeologists for years and even decades.

The tales of the patriarchs -- Abraham, Isaac and Joseph among others -- were the first to go when biblical scholars found those passages rife with anachronisms and other inconsistencies. The story of Exodus, one of the most powerful epics of enslavement, courage and liberation in human history, also slipped from history to legend when archaeologists could no longer ignore the lack of corroborating contemporary Egyptian accounts and the absence of evidence of large encampments in the Sinai Peninsula ("the wilderness" where Moses brought the Israelites after leading them through the parted Red Sea).

Finkelstein is an iconoclast. He established his reputation in part by developing a theory about the settlement patterns of the nomadic shepherd tribes who would eventually become the Israelites, bolstering the growing consensus that they were originally indistinguishable from the rest of their neighbors, the Canaanites. This overturns a key element in the Bible: The Old Testament depicts the Israelites as superior outsiders -- descended from Abraham, a Mesopotamian immigrant -- entitled by divine order to invade Canaan and exterminate its unworthy, idolatrous inhabitants.

The famous battle of Jericho, with which the Israelites supposedly launched this campaign of conquest after wandering for decades in the desert, has been likewise debunked: The city of Jericho didn't exist at that time and had no walls to come tumbling down. These assertions are all pretty much accepted by mainstream archaeologists.

"Research is research, and strong societies can easily endure discoveries like this." By comparison with today's skeptical turmoil, the early years of the modern Israeli state were a honeymoon period for archaeology and the Bible, in which the science seemed to validate the historical passages of the Old Testament left and right. As Finkelstein and Silberman relate, midcentury archaeologists usually "took the historical narratives of the Bible at face value"; Israel's first archaeologists were often said to approach a dig with a spade in one hand and the Bible in the other. The Old Testament frequently served as the standard against which all other data were measured: If someone found majestic ruins, they dated them to Solomon's time; signs of a battle were quickly attributed to the conquest of Canaan. Eventually, though, as archaeological methods improved and biblical scholars analyzed the text itself for inconsistencies and anachronisms, the amount of the Bible regarded as historically verifiable eroded. The honeymoon was over.

Marcus says that Finkelstein is "difficult to dismiss because he's so much an insider in terms of his credentials and background. He's an archaeologist, not a theologian, and he is an Israeli. It's hard to say that someone who was born in Israel and intends to live the rest of his life there is anti-Israeli."


From http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH01xv0 :


The biblical account of the capture of the city is the only one we have, and in the opinion of most modern scholars, the Bible is not an entirely reliable historical document.

The Bible is not - and was never intended to be - a historical document. A work of theology, law, ethics and literature, it does contain historical information; but if we want to evaluate this information we should consider when, how and why the Bible was compiled.

Until comparatively recently, the Bible was accepted as the word of God by most Jews and Christians, and therefore scholarly works dealing with it concentrated on its interpretation. In the 19th century CE, the "Age of Reason," scholars began subjecting the biblical texts to linguistic, textual, and literary analysis, noting inconsistencies and interrupted rhythms, comparing styles, and placing the text within the archaeological, historical and geographical background.

There are still many differing opinions regarding the origin of the Bible, when it was written, and under what conditions; but it is fair to say that, outside fundamentalist circles, modern consensus suggests that the assembling and editing of the documents that were to constitute the Bible began in the seventh century BCE, some three centuries after David's time. (The earliest actual material in our possession, part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, dates to the second century BCE at the earliest).

In particular, the account of Joshua's conquest of Canaan is inconsistent with the archaeological evidence. Cities supposedly conquered by Joshua in the 14th century bce were destroyed long before he came on the scene. Some, such as Ai and Arad, had been ruins for a 1000 years.

The Book of Judges, which directly contradicts Joshua, and shows the Israelites settling the land over a prolonged period, is nearer historical reality; but even it cannot be taken at face value. The archaeological surveys conducted over the past two decades indicate that the origin and development of the Israelite entity was somewhat different from either of the rival accounts in the Bible. The survey was conducted by more than a dozen archaeologists, most of them from Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology.

Around 1200 bce, semi-nomads from the desert fringes to the east and the south, possibly including Egypt, began to settle in the hill country of Canaan. A large proportion - probably a majority of this population - were refugees from the Canaanite city states, destroyed by the Egyptians in one of their periodic invasions. The conclusion is somewhat startling to Bible readers who know the Canaanites portrayed in the Bible as immoral idolaters: most of the Israelites were in fact formerly Canaanites. The story of Abraham's journey from Ur of the Chaldees, the Patriarchs, the Exodus, Sinai, and the conquest of Canaan, all these were apparently based on legends that the various elements brought with them from their countries of origin. The consolidation of the Israelites into a nation was not the result of wanderings in the desert and divine revelation, but came from the need to defend themselves against the Philistines, who settled in the Canaanite coastal plain more or less at the same time the Israelites were establishing themselves in the hills.

Thus the founders of Israel were not Abraham and Moses; but Saul and David. It was apparently Saul who consolidated the hill farmers under his rule and created fighting units capable of confronting the Philistines. It was David who defeated the Philistines and united the hill farmers with the people of the Canaanite plains, thus establishing the Kingdom of Israel and its capital city.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are often said to be important in claiming that the writings of christianity have not changed, but I don't see how that can be true at all. The Dead Sea Scrolls do not even mention jesus, or any of his followers in the new testament. But what it did show was that "these scrolls indicated that beliefs and practices of what we call early Christianity [the one supposedly founded by Jesus] had in fact existed long before him. What emerged from the scrolls was the picture of an early Christianity that was responsible for the original church of Jerusalem but that was an extremist Jewish movement violently opposed to the influence and dominance of the Graeco-Roman world ( http://www.burningcross.net/crusades/jesus-dead-sea-scrolls.html)."




I think I've shown that there are many problems with the bible being a reliable record of the past, let alone it being reliable period. I think this post should do well to refute manys' claims that the bible is the infallible word of god (it was written by men, and altered throughout history by men) or a reliable historical record.


Sources: Jesus is Dead, by Robert M, Price, American Atheist Press, 2007; The Counter-Creationism Handbook, by Mark Isaak, Greenwood Press, 2005; Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, by Bart D. Ehrman, Oxford University Press, 2003; Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman, HarperCollins Publishers, 2005; The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation, translated by Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook, HarperCollins Publishing, 2005