One question I have heard many people say is that the Bible is not reliable. The logic goes that since the bible is over two thousand years old it could not be properly maintained in its true condition that it held at the beginning. What people who question this bring into question the "infallibility" of the Bible. Big word, I know. What infallible means is perfect. It means that it is untainted. To many, the idea of the Bible being infallible is crazy.
The main reason most people reject the Bible as a reliable document is that they do not believe that a book, that was written and canonized long after its original happenings sometimes even a decade after, can be right. There is a common belief that since it was not written down right away, that the Bible is automatically void of reliability I remember on one of the first days of a intro to the bible class that a guy (who is a christian mind you) said that they cannot be correct. Clearly this is even an issue of belief for those who do the hold the bible as sacred.
What is the first problem with this thought process? We are thinking from the minds of a literal society. Even high school dropouts in the United States have some degree of literacy. This was not what it was like in the time of the Roman Empire. Most people were day laborers or farmers in this era, so reading books was low on their priorities. They had no real need for being ultra-literate, so instead the were an oral society. In fact many people in the Jewish faith memorized the Torah as their "education", rather than our standard education reading, writing and arithmetic (along with many other things that have been thrown in). For them telling stories about their forefathers, like Moses and David, were just normal for them. So when a person (Jew and non jew alike) converted to Christianity they would also be likely to memorize the teachings that they had been passed on from other generations, including those who had seen Jesus in person. This wasn't something that they saw as an inconvenience, but as a necessity to understand their faith.
A good illustration to use for this is how when many people grow up they hear the same stories told many times by their parents. Your parents will tell it over and over and over and over and over until you knew the story inside and out. Much to your ire though, your parents keep telling it. The same idea is of what happened with the early church. Much of these teachings were taught frequently so they remembered it quite well, so like the child who remembers the story about their parent going to Yellowstone national park in 1974 and having a bear attack their truck (just a hypothetical story, unless this really happened to your parents), they remembered the stories of Jesus' life, death, and Resurrection.
Another thing that makes people bring into question the authenticity of the Bible is the amount of heretics that there were at the beginning of the church. For many skeptics it is hard to believe what is true and what is false. This makes the validity of the bible that was canonized by the original church to come into question because they may see it as just political positions winning out. However, it was not so. The many councils, like the Council of Nicea and the Council of Ephesus, were done to make sure they were making the proper theological decisions in turning away heretics. They did this as a way to maintain the structure of a newly formed religion that could have been susceptible to internal attacks. To bring this into our context this is like how George Washington fought his own people in the little known Whiskey Rebellion of the late 18th century. His intent was not to cause problems in his own country, but to maintain the delicate balance that was present in the country. The rejection of Heretics has helped to maintain the integrity of the infallibility of the Bible over time and keep it as useful for readers today.
The main reason most people reject the Bible as a reliable document is that they do not believe that a book, that was written and canonized long after its original happenings sometimes even a decade after, can be right. There is a common belief that since it was not written down right away, that the Bible is automatically void of reliability I remember on one of the first days of a intro to the bible class that a guy (who is a christian mind you) said that they cannot be correct. Clearly this is even an issue of belief for those who do the hold the bible as sacred.
What is the first problem with this thought process? We are thinking from the minds of a literal society. Even high school dropouts in the United States have some degree of literacy. This was not what it was like in the time of the Roman Empire. Most people were day laborers or farmers in this era, so reading books was low on their priorities. They had no real need for being ultra-literate, so instead the were an oral society. In fact many people in the Jewish faith memorized the Torah as their "education", rather than our standard education reading, writing and arithmetic (along with many other things that have been thrown in). For them telling stories about their forefathers, like Moses and David, were just normal for them. So when a person (Jew and non jew alike) converted to Christianity they would also be likely to memorize the teachings that they had been passed on from other generations, including those who had seen Jesus in person. This wasn't something that they saw as an inconvenience, but as a necessity to understand their faith.
A good illustration to use for this is how when many people grow up they hear the same stories told many times by their parents. Your parents will tell it over and over and over and over and over until you knew the story inside and out. Much to your ire though, your parents keep telling it. The same idea is of what happened with the early church. Much of these teachings were taught frequently so they remembered it quite well, so like the child who remembers the story about their parent going to Yellowstone national park in 1974 and having a bear attack their truck (just a hypothetical story, unless this really happened to your parents), they remembered the stories of Jesus' life, death, and Resurrection.
Another thing that makes people bring into question the authenticity of the Bible is the amount of heretics that there were at the beginning of the church. For many skeptics it is hard to believe what is true and what is false. This makes the validity of the bible that was canonized by the original church to come into question because they may see it as just political positions winning out. However, it was not so. The many councils, like the Council of Nicea and the Council of Ephesus, were done to make sure they were making the proper theological decisions in turning away heretics. They did this as a way to maintain the structure of a newly formed religion that could have been susceptible to internal attacks. To bring this into our context this is like how George Washington fought his own people in the little known Whiskey Rebellion of the late 18th century. His intent was not to cause problems in his own country, but to maintain the delicate balance that was present in the country. The rejection of Heretics has helped to maintain the integrity of the infallibility of the Bible over time and keep it as useful for readers today.
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