Topic 2 of 33 - Your Place in the Learning Journey
Why Should I Trust It?
The question of why to trust the Bible is worth asking carefully, because the answer depends on what kind of trust you mean and what you are trusting the Bible to do. If you mean: is the Bible a reliable guide to the religious experience, theological reflection, and moral struggle of the communities that produced it? The answer is clearly yes. If you mean: is every historical claim it makes verifiable and every scientific statement it contains consistent with modern knowledge? The answer is no. Clarifying what you are trusting the Bible for is the first step toward a defensible answer.
The manuscript evidence for the Bible is stronger than for virtually any other ancient text. There are more than 5,700 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament alone - far more than exist for the works of Plato, Aristotle, or Julius Caesar. The oldest surviving New Testament manuscripts date to within a century or two of the original writings. Textual scholars have been able to reconstruct the original text with a high degree of confidence, and the variations that exist between manuscripts are, in the vast majority of cases, minor. On this front, the Bible stands on very firm ground.
The historical reliability of specific biblical accounts is more varied. Some are confirmed by archaeology and external sources - the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, the existence of Pontius Pilate, the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Others are difficult to verify or are challenged by the evidence - the scale of the Exodus, the extent of Solomon's kingdom, the census described in Luke 2. Honest readers accept both the confirmed and the complicated without forcing either into the service of a predetermined conclusion.
The deepest reason most believers trust the Bible is not ultimately historical or archaeological. It is experiential and communal. The Bible has proven, across centuries and across cultures, to be a text that speaks to the human condition with unusual depth and accuracy. It has sustained communities through exile, slavery, persecution, and loss. It has produced extraordinary moral seriousness and artistic beauty. And for those within communities of faith, it has functioned as a living address - a text that reads the reader as much as the reader reads it. That kind of trust is not irrational. It is the trust that comes from long acquaintance.