Some reflections on the trustworthiness of the Bible

SolitaryRoad.com

Website owner:  James Miller

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Info ] [ Mail ]

I grew up as a child attending a very conservative, fundamentalist Baptist church that held that the Bible was the inspired word of God and could be depended on as true in every detail. I myself do believe in the trustworthiness and dependability of the Bible and do trust it for absolute spiritual Truth. However, it is important to be always honest and there are some facts that can’t be ignored. The book of Genesis in chapters 1 and 2 deals with the creation of the world and creation of all of the creatures of the world including the first people, Adam and Eve. Chapter 5 contains a genealogy that allows one to compute the time from Adam and Eve to the birth of Noah. Chapter 11 contains another genealogy that allows one to compute the time from Noah to the time of Abraham. At other places are genealogies that allow one to compute the time from Abraham to the birth of Christ. Thus one can compute the time from Adam to the birth of Christ and it comes to around 4300 years. However, modern archeologists have used radiocarbon dating to date ancient stone tools to as far back as 3.3 million years (archaeological Lomekwi 3 site in Kenya). All kinds of archeological evidence has been found that dates man to much further back than 4300 BC. In addition the earth contains all kinds of fossil remains (such as dinosaur skeletons) that indicate the great age of the earth. Radiocarbon techniques date dinosaur fossils to over 200 million years ago and some other fossils to even billions of years ago. Thus if one assumes that the radiocarbon technique is valid (approximately accurate), one must have doubts about the trustworthiness of the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis covering the period from creation to the time of Abraham. I personally trust the Biblical account after the time of Abraham but must doubt the account of the time preceding him. I think certain questions naturally present themselves. Where did all this information in the first eleven chapters come from? Who first wrote it down? Was it initially passed orally from person to person? What is the origin of this written record? With what we now know I must believe that some things, such as the flood, were probably based on myth and other things, such as the genealogies, are simple concoctions created out of thin air. If so, it must be admitted that it was a highly dishonest and devious action to present it with all of its minute detail as historical truth. Who might have been guilty of this clever action is an interesting question. It is part of the Jewish holy book. I would say that most of the Old Testament is probably simply a written record kept by the Hebrew people and can be trusted. All of this doesn’t cause me to doubt the validity of the rest of the Old Testament or the New Testament. I still trust the Bible. It’s primary message is a spiritual one and I believe it all culminates in the story of Jesus and who he was, what he taught, and why he came. It is of vital spiritual consequence for mankind. I have no reason to question the validity of Christianity. When Charles Darwin came out with his theory of evolution in 1859 it shook up the Christian world and caused many people to lose their faith in the Bible and lose their faith in God. Christianity split creating the two divisions: the Modernists and the Fundamentalists. I personally have come to the opinion that Darwin’s theory of evolution is probably correct. I have my doubts that man descended from a monkey but, other than that, I don’t have a problem with the theory of evolution.

I believe implicitly in a God. If I had never heard of the Bible I would still believe in a God. I look at the great universe about me and cannot doubt that there is a God. I think that the vast majority of people of all ages have felt the same as I. It is just intuitively obvious. This great universe with all the stars above and all the wonders of nature is just too marvelous. It couldn’t have all just happened. That is just not possible. There must be a great divine intelligence and power behind it. Morever there is more to everything than just this physical world we live in. There is another dimension, a fourth dimension. The realm of the spirits. Good spirits and evil spirits. It is that spiritual realm from which we came when we were born and the realm to which we return to when we die. The soul never dies. The Hindus believe in reincarnation. I think there is some truth in their beliefs. Jesus confirmed the general idea of reincarnation in a way. He confirmed that a person may return to earth from the dead as another person when he stated that John the Baptist was Elias returned from the dead. See the following:

Matt 17:10 And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” 11 Jesus answered and said to them, “Indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things. 12 But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished. Likewise the Son of Man is also about to suffer at their hands.” 13 Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them of John the Baptist.

Jesus talked much about heaven and hell and certainly confirmed their existence. There is much more to things than just our short lives on this earth. All of life on this earth, its shortness, its brevity, is a great mystery. In cultures all over the world one finds people in shamanistic religions communicating with entities in the spirit world. They have their spiritual intermediaries (shamans) that communicate with spiritual entities (good or evil spirits) which give them various types of information or help. Typically practitioners enter a trance state through some means (as a ritual involving ingesting some hallucinogenic drug) and are possessed by some good or evil spirit. It is closely related to the occult, magic, sorcery, and witchcraft and the Christian is commanded to stay strictly away from it. I would be afraid of it but believe in its reality and power.

Although I may doubt the trustworthiness of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, it is the fundamental spiritual insights that the Bible provides on the heart and nature of man, his proneness toward sin, the power and pervasiveness of evil in this world, the power and pervasive influence of Satan in this world, and the message of salvation through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, his power to save us through his sacrifice on the cross, that makes the Bible such an important book that everyone should read.

15 Sept 2022