Why We can trust the Bible-The Old Testament

Let me first say that in this post when I refer to the "Old Testament" I'm referring to the books of Genesis through Malachi in Bible (39 books) or the 24 books of the TNK in the Hebrew Bible, but I'm not referring to any interdepartmental books, nor am I referring to the other books of the apocrypha that claim to be missing pieces of the story.  If I mention the New Testament I'm talking about the books of Matthew through Revelation in the Bible and again am not referring to any of the the other books that may sometimes be argued to be part of the Bible.  The Bible as I'm going to talk about it is 66 books in total, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament.  I thought it important to define these terms before I get started on these blogs.

Many today take the "Old Testament" as being unreliable because it is "old" or some take this to simply mean that it is "outdated" and no longer has anything to teach us.  Neither could be farther from the truth, nor can we we say that we have something to learn from it but it's simply a lot of "Bible stories" that have moral principles to teach us, but have not basis in history or fact, as we know that Jesus himself quoted from the several passages as historical fact on many occasions.

With those precepts in mind, let's talk about the "textual criticism" that so many in higher education fall victim too today.  It sounds like a great idea, but it just doesn't hold water.  First, let's talk about why the intellectuals want to believe in textual criticism.  It denies the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring men to write and speak on the behalf of God throughout the ages to communicate His message to His people and the surrounding nations while validating their message through miracles and other signs such as prophecy that was fulfilled in their time and prophecy that was yet to be fulfilled.

So, let's first start with something important to me.  The Bible is historically accurate.  I can't expound any one of these points too much, but I encourage you to see how archeologists have used the Bible as a map to where civilizations should be and found them exactly as described where described and it even lead to discoveries such as finding oil in the Middle East (because where there is tar and pitch, there is oil-see Genesis 14:10 and Exodus 2:3 for example).  also more recent things such as the description of how the nation of Babylon fell in a single night and was taken over by the Medes and Persians.  There is so much that was once doubted and we were told that we couldn't believe the Bible because it talked about a people group that no one could prove existed...but that's not how it works.  You believe someone is telling the truth until you can prove that someone is lying to you.  I'm not aware of a single archaeological discovery that contradicts anything about the historical record given in the Old Testament.  Because of it being historically accurate in the parts we can confirm, then that only solidifies that the other historical narrative in the Bible is probably also accurate.  I can't imagine that such care would have been taken to get the facts so right hundreds of years after the supposed events happened or that someone just making up "moral stories" would care so much about getting the names and locations of civilizations so right.  If you were making something up and you knew it, you'd want it to not be falsifiable--you wouldn't add details like the 63 or so Old Testament passages that say "to this day".....and tell people to go look for the altar or monument that was built, or to look for the ruins of a destroyed city, or explain why the name of a city was changed due to a great event that happened there.  Don't all those things sound extremely verifiable?

Let's continue that theme now, but let's move away from the historicity aspect but build upon it.  Now we have to approach topics like prophecy--especially that which has already been fulfilled.  Are we willing to treat it in the same way?  Namely, are willing to put forward the assumption that the telling of the story about when and how these messages were conveyed is also just as accurate as the other historically verifiable items in the text around them?  There would be little reason for me to doubt the veracity of the authors that have already been proven right on so many other issues, also let's be clear about what the punishment was for someone who was a false prophet according to the Old Testament--the punishment was the death penalty as prescribed in Deuteronomy 13.  Certainly there was no reason for them to lie about things that would happen near-term and be found out, nor does it make sense that any such prophet would continue to be included in the Jewish Scriptures if that prophet was proven to be a false prophet who said they heard a message from the LORD and it did not come to pass (see Deuteronomy 18).  We again though can look at the number of things that have already been fulfilled and make a logical leap of faith that the other things that have not happened yet are still going to come to pass because these prophets so far have never lied to us.  We then have many passages in the New Testament that go back and point to the prophecies in the Old Testament to tell us what was fulfilled and how it was fulfilled and even why it was fulfilled in the way that it was.  It would be nearly impossible for any person or group to intentionally try to manipulate the events of history at a certain point to make sure that prophecies were fulfilled to point to a false Christ/Messiah.  Many people try to take the other track to say that means that the prophecies must have been written after their supposed fulfillment, but I'll cover that in the next section.

For years we've been told that there is no way that the Old Testament could have been written concurrently with the events of the time.  We know from certain passages already mentioned that there was a writer that either wrote the oral stories down later or annotated some of the writing later with statements such as "and to this day...."  With that said, there isn't evidence that the scribes manufactured new Scriptures during or after the time of the Exile (the period when the northern 10 tribes were captive to Assyria and all traces of them have been lost historically and when the southern two tribes were sent into captivity to Babylon, which was later taken over by the Medo-Persian empire).  In fact, quite to the contrary, every scrap of Scripture and every scroll that we find that is older than the list known copy has been as close to an exact copy as anyone could expect.  It was the job of the scribes to copy the Word of God word for word.  This was their entire life's duty.  When a scroll was getting to the point where it could no longer be read and could be misread and therefore misinterpreted, a new word-for-word copy was made and the old copy (the original) was burned as were any copies where mistakes were made in the process.  To avoid mistakes the scribes came up with a system of numbering the words and letters to make sure they didn't miss any.  This has given rise to some of the ideas of numerology where there is somehow a "hidden code" and that these numbers themselves hid a deeper meaning, but it seems that they were simply a way to check and make sure that they didn't add anything or leave anything out and got the Word of God exactly right, because they didn't want anyone to have an inferior copy of the Word of God.

Those are the best arguments that I can make for now for the historicity, the fulfilled prophecy, and the word-for-word accuracy of the Old Testament which makes up about 2/3 of the Bible.  The arguments for trusting the Old Testament are somewhat different (though sometimes similar) and will be covered separately.  For anyone who is genuinely interested in the  evidence for some of the statements that I've put forward or simply has more questions about the Bible, let me refer you to a couple of video series from a Christian apologist that I think will give you more than enough evidence.

The Bible:  Fact, Fiction or Falacy (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16ABDCF6DB496225
Is the Bible Reliable (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9B212FAE4985850
Is the Bible True (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90208F780F552C51
Is the Bible Accurate (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A9CF63233837F0B
(some videos may appear in more than one playlist)