What evidence do we have that the Bible is reliable or is the Word of God as some people claim? orrrrr sham?

Answer 1

None. It doesn't even get all it's predictions right: in Ezekiel, it says Nebuchadnezzar would destroy Tyre. It never happened.

Answer 2

The evidence is in his word...read it and you will see. Read it everyday til you have read it all...that is evidence and truth. It is reliable b/c so many people fail just b/c they seek the way of the world and not God's way....true they can be successful for a while but they will never have joy, peace and love. these are things that many people lack even with all the money in the world, R & R or whatever each desires. If you still dont believe this isn't evidence then why dont you actually pick up the bible and read it...each and every page. God bless you.

Answer 3

We should apply the same standards to heathen evidence as to biblical. Is it based on a primary source? Is it biased, ambiguous or simply wrong? Relevant evidence is extremely scarce; what, if anything, does silence imply? In the early parts of the Bible's story, biblical persons have yet to be identified correctly in any external sources. There have been many attempts, and some confident claims, but as yet there is no good reason to identify Moses or Joseph with any known person or period in ancient Egyptian records. Moreover, many biblical stories have been proven to be myths, for instance Joshua's stopping of the sun; the tower of Babel; the serpent and Eve, the flood of Noah etc are stories credited by only bigotry and not history.

Answer 4

well...
which version of *the bible* are we talking about?
there has always been debate about which books *deserve* to be included, which books are *really* divinely inspired... the jews were arguing about what we call the old testament until well after jesus' time... it wasn't until 1600 years after jesus lived that the protestant church decided which writings about him were true! and the catholics don't necessarily agree...

the problem with this kind of question is that *faith* and *evidence* are mutually incompatible.

those who see the bible as the word of god do so by *faith* - which means that, by definition, they don't need any evidence to do so. faith = trust without evidence.

so they will argue that if you are looking for evidence that the bible is *true*, it's merely because you don;t have the faith see what can only be revealed to you through *faith*.
ie the very act of looking for the evidence of it's truth actively prevents you from seeing it's truth.

if christians do venture into the world of *evidence*, they use circular arguments like 'you know the bible is the word of god because the bible says it's the word of god...' 'you can believe it's the word of god because of all these people who have believed it's the word of god...'
or they interpret historical and present day events as fulfilling prophecies in the bible and therefore *proving* it to be the word of god - forgetting that people have been saying for a couple of thousand years that their current wars and famines are the ones prophesied as harbingers of the end of the world... and that they were all wrong!!!!
or they pick and choose which parts of it are to be taken *literally* and which are metaphorical, which of it's rules are culture-bound, and which are to be followed to the letter...

i'm not sure that i would go so far as to call it a *sham* though.
it's a collection of (some of) the attempts of various peoples to make sense of their existence. as someone pointed out, many of the stories in the bible are reinterpretations of earlier stories.
in my opinion, it's not *true* and it's not *the word of god*. but it does have some remarkable insights into what it means to be a human being.

Answer 5

For those who believe the Bible is a sham, no amount of evidence would ever be good enough. They will argue every single chapter and verse.

For those who believe it is the word of God, evidence is interesting, but irrelevant. It is faith alone that saves, not works or evidence.

There's just no meeting of the minds and never will be even on what constitutes evidence.

Answer 6

Have you considered the reliability of the bible? Ignore for the moment the whole notion of God and just think about the book's content.

Investigation by even the most skeptical will also reveal that there exists NO SINGLE SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY that has been shown to prove error, factually or doctrinally, in the Bible. There is lots of speculation and hypotheses, but not a single verifiable fact. If you or anyone should discover one, you will become quite famous. Yet, since recorded history, no one has offered it up and entered their names into the history books. Instead what we have is pseudo-science pandering to the masses, as in the recent John Cameron tomb of Christ debacle.

As a simple experiment, try turning your objective intellect towards the argument that no book, comprising 66 “mini-books”, written over a period of 1500 years by 40 vastly different authors, having an outstanding literary internal consistency and coherency, could be written by mankind alone. Add to that the survival of the book’s ancient manuscripts, numbering in the tens of thousands, over thousands of years and yet these manuscripts remain over 98% textually pure. How this possible, when compared to all the other ancient writings are so few in number? For instance, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain all books of the Old Testament, except Esther, and have been dated to before the time of Christ. Now consider Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars. Only ten copies written about 1,000 years after the event are in existence. In comparison, there are over 24,000+ New Testament manuscripts, the earliest one dating to within 24 years after Christ. How can we objectively and rationally explain this book, the Bible, especially in light of the claims I have made above?

Thus, when I examine the evidence on both sides, I can only rationally conclude that given the bible's accuracy on so many issues, and that I have been given no reason to doubt its validity on all issues it contains, especially when it speaks to God's divine revelations.

For an analysis of the various translations of the bible see:
http://faith.propadeutic.com/questions.html

For accurate translations of the bible at the literal level I recommend you use the NASB or ESV translations.

If you run across what you think is a biblical contradiction, please study the two sites' content below for a comprehensive list of so-called biblical contradictions.

http://kingdavid8.com/Contradictions/Home.html
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/bible.htm#INDEX

Accuracy of bible:
http://www.carm.org/questions/trustbible.htm
http://www.carm.org/demo2/bible/reliable.htm

Answer 7

There is plenty of proof out there that the Bible is not the infallible word of god, it just depends on if you really want to hear it or close your mind and say it is not true like others do.

The bible is a collection of stories, that is all. Check it out for yourself if your really interested. Many scholars agree that most religions including the Abraham based religions originated from stories first recorded (in writing), by the polytheistic Sumerians. These include the account of creation, Genesis in the bible versus the 7 tablets of creation, Noah versus the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Babylonian story of the tower of Babel (taken from an older Sumerian one), and the bible, the tale of Adam and Eve and the snake in the garden of Eden versus the tale of the Adapa and the ED.IN and the story of how the Adapa and the tree of life, (or how he lost out on the chance for eternal life).

The similarities go on and on, if you read them for yourself there can be no question that they originated from the same source and the Sumerian tablets are a few thousand years older than the oldest book of the bible, according to science.

Also, if you read the Egyptian book of the dead, (which again has been proven by science to be far older than the bible), you will see many similarities between that and the bible. the concept of hell and the lakes of fire, judgment, the second death, the valley of the shadow, the ritual of communion, the stories of Osiris and of Horus are remarkably similar to the story of Jesus.

Answer 8

Read the Divinci code, tells you everything you need to know about why the word of god is reliable.

Answer 9

The evidence is in the lives of the people who have followed God's Word in love. Not the "religious types", but followers of Christ. Most of us know one or two at least, an old granny with the smile of an angel and the life of a dedicated woman of faith ... a father figure you admire, who's life shows that love is the way to go ... someone you know at work, whom you get to see struggle daily and see how God's word helps them in their life.

There is not one single piece of evidence, but yet it is all around you, able to be seen by anyone :)

Answer 10

The bible was never meant to be the "word of God". It's is a guideline on how to live your life. It is just another set of rules to keep the human race in control. I'm a man of science so I believe in facts, and there is no proof that there is a divine being wacthing over us. So in my eyes. Its all bollocks

Answer 11

We have absolute proof that the bible is the word of God because the bible tells us that it is the word of God.

How silly can you get.

love and blessings Don