accomplished in history. That the pitiful aggregation of disciples, for whom the spokesman and leader was an ignorant and impulsive fisherman like Peter, should somehow be perpetuated and multiplied despite intense and continuous opposition and persecution, seems a wild dream at best. Still more foolish would seem the notion that this persistence would be founded on Peter's belief that Jesus was the Son of the living God. Nevertheless, the dream has come true.
Jesus also predicted that these unlikely disciples would be witnesses for Him "unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8). This was, so far as known at the time, an utter physical impossibility, not to mention the intrinsic absurdity of the very thought that the disciples of such a teacher and such a message would be equal to such an assignment. And now, with radio, air travel, and other technological aids the Word is being taken to the most isolated tribes in the remotest regions, and has long since been preached as a witness in all the more accessible lands.
Many similar prophetic claims of Christ could be discussed in similar fashion. He made any number of claims and predictions which, coming from the lips of any other man who ever lived, would sound insane and impossible. But these words coming from His lips seem always right and natural and true, and in fact have always proved out to be true, whether on the stage of world history or in the realm of individual human experience.
This body of unequivocal facts, like it or not, has no rational explanation if Jesus is not actually God in human form, as the New Testament everywhere proclaims Him to be. It doesn't help any to allege, as some have done, that the writers may have misquoted Jesus and exaggerated His claims. This itself is a naive notion; the writers would rather have been shocked themselves by such claims and, if anything, would have tried to soften them and make them sound more rational. But in any case the greater fact is that, whether Christ made the claims or not, they have nevertheless been fulfilled. The writers can hardly be charged with manufacturing the fulfillments! If Christianity is false, the existence of a fallacy of such scope as this constitutes a greater miracle than if it were true.
Selected books for further study:
Bruce, F.F. 1954. The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable? Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co. 120 p.
Burgon, John W. 1990. Unholy Hands on the Bible: An Introduction to Textual Criticism. ed. Jay Green. Sovereign Grace Trust Fund. 603 p.
Deissman, Adolph. 1927. Light from the Ancient East. New York, NY: Hodder and Stoughton. 535 p.
Greenleaf, Simon. 1965. Testimony of the Evangelists. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House. 613 p.
Habermas, Gary R. 1984. Ancient Evidence for the Life of Jesus. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers. 187 p.
Kenyon, Frederick G. 1940. The Bible and Archaeology. New York, NY: Harper Brothers.
Kenyon, Frederick G. 1967. The Story of the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Linnemann, Eta. 1992. Is There A Synoptic Problem? Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House. 219 p.
Linton, Irwin H. 1943. A Lawyer Examines the Bible. Boston, MA: W. A. Wilde Co. 300 p.
Morris, Henry M. 1980. King of Creation. San Diego, CA: CLP Publishers. 239 p.
McRay, John. 1991. Archaeology and the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House. 432 p.
Ramsay, William. 1953. The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament. New York, NY: Hodder and Stoughton. 427 p.
Ramsay, William. 1962. St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.
Thiessen, Henry C. Introduction to the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co. 347 p.
Unger, Merrill F. 1962. Archaeology and the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publ. House. 350 p.
Waite, D.A. 1992. Defending the King James Bible. Collingwood, NJ: Bible for Today Press. 306 p.
Chapter IV
The Authenticity of the Old Testament
The Canon of Scripture
Our present Old Testament Scriptures consist of 39 books, and there is little doubt that these were the same books accepted by the Jews of Christ's day as their divinely inspired Scriptures. The writings of Josephus, the Jewish historian, various statements in the Talmud, and numerous references in the New Testament all agree in focusing on these books, and only these, as the recognized Scriptures of the Jews. Likewise, it was these books that were accepted and used by the first Christians.
Whether or not they were all mistaken in this belief may be a matter for further discussion, but at least this was the belief, shared equally both by the early Christians and also by their Jewish opponents. Most importantly, at least to the Christian, this was the Jewish Bible as accepted by Jesus Christ.
The Old Testament was generally divided by the Jews of that day into three parts: (1) the Law of Moses, or the Torah, the five books of the Pentateuch; (2) the books of the Prophets, including the historical books; (3) the so-called Writings, or the "other books," the poetical writings, of which the Book of Psalms was considered most notable. This threefold division was noted by Christ, when He spoke of the prophecies, "which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me" (Luke 24:44).
The exact process by which these 39 books came to be "canonized" is not known, any more than is the process by which the New Testament books were later accepted. The most realistic conclusion, in both cases, is that each book was essentially self-authenticating from the very time it was written. They were acknowledged by the people of God to constitute the Word of God by the witness of the Spirit and the divinely authoritative character of the writings, right from the start. This is the only reasonable way to account for their universal acceptance in the absence of any official political or ecclesiastical determinations of their character.
The question, then, is how the scriptural writings could have ever become so universally accepted as authentic among the Jews if, in fact, they were not authentic. If Moses did not really write the books of Moses, if Isaiah was only one of several men who wrote the Book of Isaiah, if Daniel did not write the Book of Daniel, then how did such opinions ever become established among the people who used them? There is not the slightest answer to these questions among any of the ancient Jewish writings that have come down to us.
Reliability of the Old Testament Text
Although there is little doubt that the Old Testament as we have it today contains the same books that composed the Scriptures used by Christ, the Apostles, and the Jewish scribes of the first century, we still have the question of whether the text had been transmitted to them intact as originally written. It is obvious that, if we possess no "autographs" of the New Testament, we certainly could have none of the Old Testament.
The science that attempts to determine the original text of Scripture is known as textual criticism, or sometimes, the "lower criticism." We have already given reasons for our confidence that we do possess, for all practical purposes, the complete and accurate text of the New Testament.
For the Old Testament text, we are limited mainly to the Masoretic text, the Septuagint version, the Latin Vulgate, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac version,
