How does anyone know that the bible is real?

Question

It has been reproduced many times. How do you know that some one... anyone didn't write down a bunch of stories.. put them together and called them... Bible?

Answer 1

The central belief for those who trust the Bible is that God can speak to us, and God did thousands of years ago to dictate these books.

This is just my opinion, but I believe God can speak to us, and God didn't just talk to a few people over a distinct period of time.

God can inspire divine writings, songs, artwork, speeches, etc., to anyone today. That doesn't mean everyone who claims to be delivering the word of God is. We have to judge those claims on our own. God does not ask us to live by faith alone, but also wants us to use our hearts and minds.

The same critical judgment is needed for the Bible. I believe parts of the Bible are divinely inspired and other parts are trash.

Too many Christians have turned away from worshipping God and instead worship a book.

Answer 2

Consider this. The way you just decribed it isn't exactly right. When a translation is made today, it is made from some very old documents (the manuscripts that, in some cases, date back to just after the middle of the first millenium AD, but were copied with great care (in some cases, from earlier documents from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries). There is plenty of historical (and other types) proof that the Bible is an authority on how things were in the ancient world, both verified by archeology and other ancient histories of the time. It also has made some amazing predictions, some of which have come to pass in the past century, that it couldn't possibly have made if it weren't from God. There is also the amazing unity of the Bible, again, which would be impossible if it were not from God.

If that were not enough, consider this. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a cave in Israel back in 1947, which had sat there untouched since the first century, they agreed completely with the Bible we have today (which we got from translating earlier copies with great diligence and care). The Dead Sea Scrolls were bits and pieces (fragments) of Old Testament books, some bigger segments and some smaller segments, but they are in complete agreement with what we have today.

There was even (in the Dead Sea Scrolls) a complete copy of the book of Isaiah (which was written in the 7th century BC), and it agrees completely with what we have today (through copying and passing down).

God meant to preserve His Word perfectly, and He did. Oh, there are occasional typos, a scribe's error here, a wrong date or age (like of a king) there, but most can be caught and explained from other biblical books of the time, and/or other ancient manuscripts (copied slightly differently). . this can be done even without something like the Dead Sea Scrolls, and not ONE of these slight errors (typo's, etc.) is anything on which any Christian doctrine depends. They are mostly just extraneous information.

If you really want to see the overwhelming evidence for the view that the Bible is God's Word, and can't be anything else (and that Christianity is necessarily true), go get and read the book "The Case for Christ", by Lee Strobel (a former atheist, who stayed an atheist til he checked out the evidence for Christianity, and then bowed to the verdict of the evidence and became a Christian).

Answer 3

The reason we know the Bible is real is because we have found many manuscripts of biblical writings. God required the Israelites to bury worn-out copies of scripture, and we have found over 1000 manuscripts of the Old Testament. We have also found over 25,000 manuscripts of the New Testament. These have been authenticated and dated. God also commanded absolute accuracy in copying manuscripts. When a scribe made a new copy, he made a single sheet on papyrus, and if he made ONE error on the page, he threw it out and started over. After the sheets were completed, they were glued together along the edges to make a scroll. The fastidiousness for pinpoint accuracy of these manuscripts persists in Jewish culture today. There are three tests literary historians apply to all ancient writings. The first is the bibliographic test. According to this test, the age of the oldest manuscripts are compared to the time when the events occurred. Also, the number of manuscripts is taken into account. We consider works like Caesar's Gallic Wars and other historic writings of the time to be authentic. Yet, the oldest manuscripts we have are hundreds of years younger than the events they discuss, and we have only a few hundred copies of the ones we have the most copies of. In some cases, we have only a dozen. Compare that to the number of manuscripts for the Bible I have mentioned above. In addition, the oldest manuscripts we have for the New Testament are only a few decades younger than the events they describe, not hundreds of years. Taking all the manuscripts we have, scholars have compiled them and by comparing them, produced a text which is considered to be very close to the original. This is known as the Textus Receptus, and all of our translations are made from it. The translators are very, very careful and check and recheck their work many times. If a person has a question about a translation, he or she can go back to the original language, read it, and satisfy his or her question. Besides the bibiliographic test, we have the internal test. This test looks for information from within the document as to its authenticity. For example, the Bible says, "For these are not cunningly devised fables, but we were eyewitnesses to his majesty" (speaking of Christ). The final test is the external test. What do other writers have to say about the authenticity of the document? For the Bible, writers who lived shortly after the manuscripts were first written identified the writer of some of them, and we have their statements to authenticate the author of some of the books. The Canon was actually decided by the Jews (for the Old Testament) before Jesus was born, and forms the books from which the Septuagint was translated. The Septuagint was a translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew into Greek, and it was done by 70 scholars, hence, the name. The New Testament canon was decided under the guidance of the Apostles. The documents that were copied and circulated are the ones that were considered to have value. By the time the ecumenical council of 312 ratified the Canon, it was already decided, and all they did was formalize the list. By the way, the Apocrypha are not included in the Canon. In fact, the word "apocrypha" means "spurious". In addition to the above, many of the facts in the Bible have been verified by archaeologists, including some that for a long time were believed to be inaccurate, until they started doing some digging. Other parts of the Bible have also been verified in other ways. For more information about the authenticity of the Bible, see the book More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell. The link below is to Amazon.com, where you can purchase a copy. It is a Tiny URL, but will lead you straight to the page, where you can get a copy for 1c plus shipping. Other editions are also available.

Answer 4

the Bible was written by man and inspired by God. Both archeologist and geologist have researched the writings and put together their findings to create a time line that supports the findings, writings and teachings in the Bible. If you read the book Songs of Solomon you will see where King Solomon talks about there is nothing new under the son, in short this means history repeats. if you go on to read other books and compare things that are hapening now to the stories in the Bible you will see where this is true for example take the flood in Noah's day and the Sunami or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorah and the Gulf Coast Hurricane Katrina.

Answer 5

Here's a few thoughts for you;
If Bible has been reproduced many times,
why are the earliest copies practically identical to those produced 2000-2500, or nearly 3000 years later?

One commentator says: “In spite of all uncertainties, the great fact remains that the text as we now have it does, in the main, represent fairly the actual words of the authors who lived, some of them, nearly three thousand years ago, and we need have no serious doubt on the score of textual corruption as to the validity of the message which the Old Testament has to give us.”

Could it be just as the Bible says, that God protects his Word?

During the time the Bible was written, it was not the only religious document of its time.
At about the same time, other peoples produced "the Akkadian legend of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia, the Ras Shamra epics, written in Ugaritic, The Admonitions of Ipu-wer, The Prophecy of Nefer-rohu in the Egyptian language, hymns to different divinities in Sumerian, & prophetic works in Akkadian."
Yet, the Bible is the only survivor.
Even though it was written in a language that is just as dead as those mentioned above, it survived.

If the Bible was only the product of humans, how is that it contains knowledge that was NOT available to humanity, when it was 1st written?

Examples?
OK, Moses wrote the 1st 5 books, called the Pentateuch.
In them he recorded the laws of sanitation that God gave him.
NOBODY in the ancient world knew about germs, at least
no body HUMAN.
At the time Moses wrote God's command to dig a hole to go to the bathroom in & to cover their waste,
the ancient Egyptians used human excrement as a medicine on open wounds.
Moses was trained by the Egyptians, so where did he learn about sanitation?

If the world's poor would follow just this one godly law, the incidence of infectious disease could almost be eliminated.

From about 1657 BCE, to the time of Moses led the Hebrews
out of Egypt, about 1513 BCE, was the time of Job.
At that point in history, there were some strange ideas about
the cosmology of the Earth.
One ancient view was that the earth was supported by
elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle.
Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher & scientist of the 4th century B.C.E., taught that the heavenly bodies were each fixed to the surface of solid, transparent spheres.
Sphere lay nestled within sphere.
The earth was innermost; the outermost sphere held the stars.

What does the Bible say about this subject? Job 26:7 says:
He stretchs out the north over the empty place, and hangs the earth upon nothing.

Have you seen the pictures taken by the Apollo astronauts?
Job's description matches the modern scientific evidence.
How could a mere man, living over 3,500 years ago, have known how to describe something he could not have seen?
Maybe, God told him.

Maybe you have heard that some people used to believe
the world was flat, not round like a ball?

But the Bible book of Isaiah, at 40:22, used a Hebrew word (chugh) translated “circle,” which may also be rendered “sphere.”

Again, without the knowledge of God, how could anyone
have known these facts about the Earth?

There are many more 'proofs' that the Bible is not a book written by men.
But instead, it contains the knowledge of God, that he gave to faithful men that wrote down God's words. Just as a secretary will write what her boss says to write in a letter, so it is with the Bible.

Answer 6

Bible should not be taken literally. If studied in a historical manner it can reveal many interesting happenings or at least guide us to them. Like all religions, mythology gets added to control the masses.

You have to understand a lot of it was handed down orally. As time went on stories changed, got interesting. Listen to office rumors and gossip sometime. Language changed. Translations changed the story.

The Roman Church destroyed many aspects that it didn't consider in line with the teachings of the day.

It is the same with almost all religions. If you remove the myth the history will be revealed but then people will lose interest and won't follow it.

Answer 7

What makes " a book " holly?
If " a book " is the word of God, then it is holy.
Can any one prove that any of the present so called bibles is the word of God?

Some one may say the historical events mentioned in those bibles were fount to be true..!!!
Dose this makes " a book " holy book???
It makes it a good history book.

Someone may say, it is all about faith...
How you can have faith in a history book as equal to a holy book????

To me they only represent some sort of Biography of the life of Jesus (PBUH), and it is a poor representative of the real life of Jesus (PBUH). It has been edited and influenced by the author of that bible and the time the author has lived in.

Read it more deeply, and you will find some fairy tails here and there, at the same time it included some true chapters about the life of Jesus (PBUH)....it is a mixture of truth and falsehood and fairy tales, to make it sound as true.

It remains a sort of history book, even if it has 50 % of truth in it, but in no way it can bee considered a holy book of God.

Answer 8

To be blunt thats exactly what they did. Jesus wasnt preaching a religion about him and his relationship with god it was about jewish relashanship with god and they lost there way. The problem is any mosiah that clames our way of faith is wrong is not the mosiah. Plus he said he was a king.

If you take into concideration that all the gospels disagree with each other and that what we know as the bible today is probebly a tenth of the text recorded by his followers. Where are those books ? And with all that editing couldnt they at least make it not contradict it self. Or maybe thats the whole point. Leaves room for interpertation.

Answer 9

If we want to know whether Honey is sweet, we dont want to drink one bottle full, but taste a small drop. Likewise we get the essence of Bible by reading John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son (Jesus Christ), that whoever believes in him (Jesus) shall not perish but have eternal life."
If any body doubts the Bible, read the above verse and ask Jesus to come into his/her heart admitting the sins and sinful nature.
If Bible is a story, nothing is going to happen. But if a person obeys John 3:16, u will experience the truth in Bible through Jesus. The one who sells honey need not want to explain much on honey if he gives a drop to a prospective buyer.
After inviting Jesus to your heart and carefully study(not just reading) the Bible you will see the unity of the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation(66 chapters/books). These 66 books/chapters where written in different centuries and different contexts. If this is a collection of stories how there is going to be unity? With your mind it is impossible to comprehend the Bible or 'the Word of God' only God can reveal its beauty. So lean on the Holy Spirit of God through Jesus Christ to know the love of God the Father.

Answer 10

The bible is myths and superstitions of a bunch of ignorant goat herders, interspersed with morality tales, a (very) little bit of real history and a whole bunch of pseudo-history. Modern bible scholarship makes a very good case for the idea that Jesus was an entirely fictional character.