What Makes the Bible Unique?

Unique in Its Continuity…

1.        written over a 1,500 year span;

2.        written over 40 generations;

3.        written by more than 40 authors, from every walk of life –including kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets, statesmen, scholars, etc;

4.        written in different places: the wilderness, a dungeon; on a hillside, in a palace, inside prison walls, while traveling, etc.;

5.        written at different times: at times of war and times of peace;

6.        written during different moods: some writing from the heights of joy and others from the depths of sorrow and despair;

7.        written in three continents: Asia, Africa and Europe;

8.        written in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek;

9.        Finally, its subject matter includes hundreds of controversial topics. Yet the biblical authors spoke with harmony and continuity from Genesis to Revelation. There is one unfolding story: “God’s redemption of man.”

 

Unique in Its Circulation…

 The Bible has been read by more people and published in more languages than any other book in history.

 

Unique in Its Translation…

The Bible was one of the first major books translated (Septuagint: Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament).

The Bible has been translated and retranslated, and paraphrased, more than any other book in existence

 

Unique in Its Survival…

1. Survival through time: Being written on material that perishes and having to be copied and recopied for hundreds of years before the invention of the printing press did not diminish the style, correctness, or existence of the Bible. Compared with other ancient writings, it has more manuscript evidence than any ten pieces of classical literature combined.

2. Survival through persecution: The Bible has withstood vicious attacks of its enemies as no other book has. Many have tried to burn it, ban it, and outlaw it, from the days of the Roman emperors to presents-day Communist-dominated countries.

3. Survival through criticism:  “A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and the committal read. But somehow the corpse never stays put. No other book has been so chopped, knifed, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified. What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or belles letters of classical or modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom and skepticism? With such thoroughness and erudition? Upon every chapter, line and tenet? And yet the Bible is still loved by millions, read by millions and studied by millions.” –Bernard Ramm.  The Bible is unique in facing its critics. There is no other book in all of literature like it.

 

Unique in Its Teaching…

1.   Prophecy: Wilbur Smith concludes that the Bible, “is the only volume ever produced by man, or a group of men, in which is to be found a large body of prophecies relating to individual nations, to Israel, to all the peoples of the earth, to certain cities, and to the coming of one who was to be the Messiah. The ancient world has many different devices for determining the future, known as divination, but not in the entire gamut of Greek and Latin literature, even though they use the words prophet and prophecy, can we find any real specific prophecy of a great historic event to come in the distant future, nor any prophecy of a Savior to arise from the human race…”

2.   History: The distinguished archaeologist, Professor Albright, begins his classic essay, The Biblical Period: “Hebrew national tradition excels all others in its clear picture of tribal and family origins. In Egypt and Babylonia, in Assyria and Phoenicia, in Greece and Rome, we look in vain for anything comparable. There is nothing like it in the tradition of the Germanic peoples. Neither India nor China can produce anything similar, since their earliest historical memories are literary deposits of distorted dynastic tradition, with no trace of the herdsman or peasant behind the demigod or king with whom their records begin. Neither in the oldest Indic historical writings nor in the earliest Greek historians is there a hint of the fact that both Indo-Aryans and Hellenes were once nomads who immigrated into their late abodes from the north. The Assyrians, to be sure, remembered vaguely that their earliest rulers, whose names they recalled without any details about their deeds, were tent dwellers, but whence they came had long been forgotten.”  -“The Table of Nations” in Genesis 10, according to Albright, “remains an astonishingly accurate document.”

3.    Personalities: The Bible deals very frankly with the sins of its characters. Read the biographies today, and see how the try to cover up, overlook or ignore the shady side of people. Take the great literary geniuses; most are painted as saints. The Bible does not do it that way. It simply tells it like it is.

 

Unique in Its Influence on Surrounding Literature…

  If every Bible in any considerable city were destroyed, the Book could be restored in all its essential parts from the quotations on the shelves of the city public library. There are works, covering almost all the great literary writers, devoted especially to showing how much the Bible has influenced them.

 

Where did our Bible come from?

 

The Canon

One thing to keep in mind is that the church did not create the canon or books included in what we call Scripture. Instead, the church recognized the books that were inspired from their inception. They were inspired by God when written

 

The Old Testament Canon

The Old Testament books were officially accepted as Holy Scripture in A.D. 70 at the time of destruction of Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

The Council of Jamnia; a rabbi obtained permission from the Romans to reconstitute the Sanhedrin on a purely spiritual basis. Thus they agreed to what books to include as Holy Scripture, today’s Jewish Holy Scriptures and Christian’s Old Testament.

Although in the Jewish mind the Old Testament was a settled matter long before the Council of Jamnia. The council just made an official statement.

Jesus Christ confirms the Old Testament Canon.

The New Testament Cannon

First century Christians saw in the words of Jesus and the writings of the apostles an authority of divine inspiration equaling that of the Old Testament Scriptures.

As time passed, an increasing circulation of books recognized as either not in accordance with the apostle’s teachings or not written by them even though an apostle’s name may have been attached to them, motivated the believers to become increasingly concerned about identifying the authentic works of the apostles or those entrusted with their teachings

 There were possibly five guiding principles used to determine whether or not a New Testament book was canonical of Scripture.

·        Is it authoritative- did it come from the hand of God? (Does this book come with a divine “thus saith the Lord”?)

·        Is it prophetic- did a man of God write it?

·        Is it authentic? [The fathers had the policy: “If in doubt, throw it out.” This enhanced the “validity of their discernment of canonical books.”]

·        Is it dynamic- did it come with the life- transforming power of God?

·        Was it received, collected, read and used- was it accepted by the people of God?

 

Is the Bible Accurate?

-          People have been attacking the Bible since it was written down.

-          They have attacked the Historical accuracy and scientific accuracy of the Bible.

-          But no matter what people try to attack the Bible with it still stands true.

-          Archeology supports the Historical accuracy of the Bible.

-          And many of the principles of modern science were recorded as facts of nature in the Bible long before scientists confirmed them experimentally.

-          No other ancient book has been copied more accurately than the Bible or more copies of the ancient text survived than from the Bible.

-          There are more eyewitness accounts of the history of Jesus, than we have for Alexander the Great or even George Washington.

-          No other book has been more read, published or translated in the whole world through out history than the Bible.

-          And no other book has had such positive effects on its readers than the Bible.