Hundreds of millions of copies of the Bible have been printed, far more than any other book. The whole Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages and sections of it into over a thousand. Over 25 million copies are sold every year?
The Bible may appear to be one book but it is actually a collection of 66 individual books. They were written by 40 authors over more than 1500 years. The books written before the time of Jesus are placed in what is called the Old Testament and those written since the time of Jesus are called the New Testament.
Serious historians are compelled to take the Bible as serious history. Most of the commonly heard accusations made against it come out of uninformed biased assumptions. The historical reliability of the Bible is vastly superior than any other ancient document. In ancient times the New Testament was the most copied and circulated book. Before printing was begun in Germany around 1450 AD books were handwritten. Over 25,000 handwritten whole books or fragments of the Bible exist. The next most popular historical work is Homers Iliad of which 643 manuscripts remain. Bible manuscripts vary considerably less than for the Iliad. Most historians however are quite happy to trust in a single document if they like what they read.
Most of the Bible is not religious dogma but simply history. Archaeological evidence confirms the things spoken of and does not contradict anything in the Bible. There are many other historical documents that confirm much of the detail in the Bible. If you feel compelled to consider the Bible as unreliable history then to be consistent you have to discard all the documents of antiquity as untrustworthy.
In many places the Bible quite clearly claims that the words recorded were either directly spoken or inspired by God. For example:
Then God said ... [10 times in Gen 1]
God called to him from the midst of the bush and said ... [Exo 3:4]
... the word of the lord came to me saying ... [Eze 3:16]
... for prophecy never came by the will of man but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. [2 Pet 1:21]
All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. [2 Tim 3:16]
The Old Testament section of the Bible has the same content as the Jewish Scriptures. Some unbelieving historians have tried to discredit the New Testament by claiming it was written hundreds of years after the event and therefore likely to contain lots of fanciful embellishments. However the core of the New Testament has been shown to have been written within a few decades of the death of Christ. If it was not accurate it would not have been accepted as the truth by those eyewitnesses of the events recorded who were still alive.
Unlike any other religious document the Bible has made hundreds of incredible predictions. Many of them have already come to pass while there are several still to be fulfilled.
So what about the resurrection? For some is just too hard to accept. As trained Roman executioners did not see the results of their trade come back to life it is understandable that most people find it hard to accept the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. The Old Testament scriptures as well as Jesus himself not only predicted the details of his death but his resurrection too. As far as historical evidence is concerned it has been said that there is more real historical evidence for the fact Jesus rose from the dead than Julius Caesar actually lived, and nobody doubts that do they?
For the wholehearted follower of Christ however the above reasons are of minor significance compared to the fact that while reading and meditating on the Bible God often very powerfully awakens our inner awareness to something He wants to communicate to us. This is very personnel and very real. The amazing thing is that very different people can find God teaching them exactly the same things.
Note
Bible quotations on this site are taken from the King James Authorised Version. Where the KJV translated the name of God (YHWH) as "the LORD" it has been replaced here with Yehovah. Obsolete word spellings have also been modernised and old obscure words have been clarified by comments in brackets.
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