Why the Bible is the way it is?

 

The Bible (" the Library " or "the books" from Greek) consists of 66 canonical books. These are the accepted by most of the universal Church without lasting dispute throughout history books as inspired by God. In this short article we would look at why the whole compendium is considered by the Church as the book that comes from God. The questions we would look into are:

• What were the criteria, which made these books be put together as one and exclude others?

• What does inspiration mean? Does it mean that all in it is from God or perhaps there is a human element in it too?

Also, an important question is:

• "What is the main message of the Bible?".

The Christian Bible generally comprises two sets of books: Old Testament (OT) and New Testament (NT). The OT is largely the Jewish Bible and the NT refers to the books, which the ancient Church affirmed as inspired by God and therefore beneficial in great measure to humans. The OT was generally established hundreds of years before the Church was founded by Jesus. The Jewish religious community, by the time of Jesus had a set of books, which were accepted as given by God. They divided them into three parts:

-  Torah "Teaching") - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy;

-  Neviim ("Prophets") - Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi;

- Ketuvim (“Writings”) - Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles

There is no unequivocally proven, official, representative of all Jews, debating event or council that was held to establish the canonicity of all books in the Hebrew Bible, but there is a possibility for a Council of Jabna (c90 AD) to have really occurred, where these books were confirmed as inspired by God. The books listed above were, by then, largely well into use and venerated  by the major  Jewish groups.  By comparing the qualities of these texts we can discern certain criteria, which most probably guided the Jewish sages, when resolving which book is holy (“defiling hands”) and which is not.

One very important thing is that they expected all books that are worthwhile to be written in Hebrew and only partially (if at all) in Aramaic, which had become the vernacular language of most Jews due to their sojourn in Babylon and this language's prevalence in Palestine and the region.

Another criterion was that these books had to contain certain important notions, which, together, made them distinct from all others: the participation of God in human history, the election of Israel for a special purpose (whatever it is) and the covenant between God and man.

A third characteristic of a canonical book was that a writing had to be completed by the time of Ezra (c 5 century BC), who was regarded as the last really eminent person, led by God in a special way and allowed to add to the canon of the Bible.

The last possible criterion was that they wanted to make sure that all major Jewish groups already recognise and benefit from each book by regularly utilising it in religious services.

Only 39 books stood to these requirements and the Jews accepted them as inspired by God.

With the advent of Jesus on earth the Church was established. Less than 300 years after Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascendance, 27 books, which will comprise the New Testament were largely crystallising as those, which are worthy for teaching from and following. The criteria, which (in retrospect) most probably guided the collective consciousness of the Church, were:  

1. Every book had to be traced back to an apostle from the first generation, when Jesus was walking on  the earth. The apostles or their close co-workers could be trusted as authentic teachers of the words of Jesus.

2. The inspired books had to be accepted universally by the vast majority of the Church.

3. They had to bear a consistent message. There could not be a book in the NT canon, which disagrees on anything of theological value with the other books.

4. All books had to pass the “test of universal usefulness”. They had to be used in liturgy across most of the Church.

Regarding the OT, the ancient Christians readily accepted the Tanakh as God’s word because Jesus and all His first apostles did too.

We can see that all these criteria of canonicity used by Jews and Christians leave no real room for any other known to us  book  to qualify as authentically inspired by God for teaching men His will. There were numerous other books, which different, self professing, Christian groups accepted as originating from God, but none could stand to the criteria outlined above. At stake was the salvation of man. The heavy plight of the world seemed to have no end. Those who lived  more than 40-50 years were considered lucky if one could call “luck” the plagues of disease, helplessness in  older and more frail age at a  stage of life  when the burden of having numerous children would leave no time for the elderly to be cared for by their own kids. Also, it  is estimated that every third birth was ending in fatality! The wars and perennial  attacks from all sides made life even more unpredictable. The power that the violent men had over the weak was unchecked and the consequences of the corrupted with sin human heart  could be seen all over the place. Solomon would say “its better for a person to have never been born at all and never see the evil that is going on in the world” (Ecc. 4:3). Mankind needed (and still does) salvation, which can come by changing certain aspects of their very nature of thinking and value system. The inclination of humans to sin against each other and their Creator could be really solved only by Divine intervention. The Bible is a record of the most fundamental historical part of that intervention, which theologians call “the history of salvation”. Its main message is that God would not leave evil unchallenged and He wants humans to join Him in eradicating it. The separation between the perfect and holy God and the fallen humanity is bridged by God becoming a man and thus identifying with the human race forever. This guarantees that humanity would win its battle against sin, evil and their ultimate consequences: suffering and death. The Bible is unfolding a story that is “breathed out by God and is  good for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). The Word of God which is contained in the Bible is the medicine for the well known disease of weakness before evil and sin to which humans are subjected.

But what of it is inspired and how much of it is truth? The Bible says about itself that it is “breathed out” by God. Therefore it’s very origin starts with the Divine touch. Does this mean that all that is in it is truthful: scientifically, historically and theologically? We should start answering this question by saying that theologically and philosophically the Bible is absolutely true. If it says that man is corrupted by sin - that is true. If it says that man cannot rescue himself - that is true. If it says that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, lest no one perish, but has eternal life” - that is true. But also when God creates or “breathes out” something into humans, like “His image” and “His likeness” then this means He bestows the level of freedom, which is characteristic for those created after His likeness. This freedom could deviate from the standard that God set. It would not be real freedom if it could not. Therefore, man made a serious mistake by rebelling against God in Eden. Similarly, when God wants to convey His Word He is seeking people, who would speak truthfully what they heard. They do not make mistake on theological issues as they are carefully selected by God (hence the incredible theological consistency of the Bible), but it is not guaranteed that they would not err on secondary in importance questions of science and history, which do not affect in any way that matters the theological truths. God is perfect, but no human vessel is ideal. Therefore, we should expect some mistakes in the text, but never such which concern the salvation and perfection of man. Surprisingly or not surprisingly (depends on the point of view), there are very few real errors in the Bible of any non technical nature and there is not even one “mistake”, which has not been explained well enough by the Christian or Jewish apologists. Given the ancient authorship, redactions and transmissions, it is incredibly consistent and corresponding  to most of the truth that we find through the means of science or history.

So the best thing we can do is trust the Bible as the Word of God because it came through us via rigorous process of selection and also we can be confident that God would make sure that all that we need to know about Him would be preserved intact for our benefit.

Give an answer to all who ask

"But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect"

1 Peter 3:15

When we think about evangelism it all starts with great reverence towards Christ in our hearts. But what is there in Him that we should revere? 

Another apostle,  Paul,  talks elsewhere about the "Spirit of Christ"  and that He was in the image of God but decided to take on Himself marred by the consequences of sin human nature in order to rejuvenate the humanity by laying the seed of faith inside the hearts. God endured contradiction against His nature of almighty and holy by allowing to become temporary subjected to what God does not usually experience. In His presence is "fullness of joy and always gladness".  He suffered as a man, but He also conquered the evil as a God. On Jesus' eternal work on our behalf depends if we would be accepted in the presence of the holy and perfect morally and in any way God. If one has Jesus as an advocate he can trust securely that Jesus would make it work out well for him. If one doesn't have Jesus as defender and Saviour then there is no chance whatsoever to fare well before the high standard of righteousness and holiness required by God.

Therefore we "revere" or from Greek "sanctify" which means "to set apart" or "give special place" to Jesus in our hearts because we don't have and cannot reasonably have any other as real and meaningful hope for this life and eternity.

Our hope is not without a reason. We must have good reasons to believe what we do else it's completely arbitrary. If those reasons work for us then chances are they may work for other people too. How do we know whom they would work for? One obvious possibility is if somebody shows interest in our faith and "asks " us about why we hold it. They could be being nudged by the Spirit of God to seek the truth and we should be able to offer it to them. This perhaps happened to many of us once: we were seeking, we asked and were given to know the truth by somebody whom God used to bless us. Therefore we shouldn't hesitate to allow God to use us to, in turn, bless others too. 

Our sharing of eternal hope should be with meekness, respect and reverence. 

Yet we need to  ask a legitimate question: "If we have faith and want to share it but we are not asked about it should we go ahead and do it anyway?". Here, often, many Christians stumble in two diametrically opposing each other blocks of prejudice.

One group are the so called "Bible thumping" believers who want to talk about their faith to anyone regardless whether this is wanted by the other side or not. The problem with this approach is that if the person opposite does not want to listen and clearly says so we go beyond the realm of respect for the person, meekness in the heart  and reverence towards Jesus if we keep on pushing our case. That's also mostly counterproductive.

On another hand we should realise that there are many people who would want to hear our reasons but may never ask us first. Then we have the responsibility to broach the topic, to draw their attention to the larger than life question of their standing before God and then if they show lack of interest we should  stop but if they ASK for more we should be able to give it to them.

We cannot assume that the initiative is always on the other side. They should display interest, but we might be used by God to awake it in them in the first place.  Scripture shows that it goes both ways. Paul was asked but also was setting up the stage himself in order to get asked about the Gospel. 

Setting the stage and being able to answer afterwards are sometime the two sides of the same evangelistic coin and we should be prepared to polish those sides well and be able to use them at any time.

One last thing is the obvious for some but controversial for others question of "Why sharing the Gospel and why conversion is God's goal?"

The second  group of  people think  that others don't need to believe the Gospel but would nonetheless get saved so talking to someone with the purpose to help them come to God is superfluous. The first half of this sentence is true but it is about people, who never had the opportunity to hear a Spirit-filled, evangelistic, loving  message of hope and salvation, and the Holy Spirit never put them before the clear choice for or against   Jesus. Then and only then  in their ignorance they will be judged by the conscience they have and how much they obeyed the measure of light already revealed to them.

Yet this does not mean that we shouldn't share the Gospel at all and not aim to show the "advantages" of the One who called us from " the darkness into His marvellous light". Throughout the New Testament we see the witness of Jesus and His apostles that all people everywhere need to hear the Good news that they can have fulfilled life with and through God in it and all have to repent and turn to Jesus if they are to be saved from the eternal separation from their Creator - the Author of all good things. That is the principle and the cases of ignorance and conscience-based judgement do not rule out the need of Jesus (they still get saved by Him in a misterious way) and more relevantly to our topic: these cases do not rule out the need to preach the Gospel to all who have interest to hear the Word of Life. 

God wants to have ever more people who do know Him now and live lives of glorious worship towards Him and full victory over evil now.

Those who get saved through Jesus in a mysterious way without ever hearing the Good News about Him are people who, should they had the choice, they would have wanted to know and follow the truth. The prophets in OT were looking eagerly to see the glory of God in Jesus and couldn't see it in its fullness in their time but they desired to. 

The Macedonian who asked Paul in the dream to come and help them could have been in theory saved by following his conscience but he was so exacerbated (representing all who do or would love God but never heard of Him) that he fervently asked for help. If we love those people we would tell everyone who asks or would want to ask. 

Also, there is a clear warning that some people would be judged because they were told to say the truth to the perishing sinner but they didn't. Ezekiel was warned about this. When a man is violating his conscience as a constant practice then there is nothing left that could be done for him to save his soul but the Word of life preached and proclaimed in the hope that he would be turned and would want to hear it. The salvation through conscience without knowledge  is a mystery and not the wide, straight path. Being a mystery it should be treated with caution. It could be regarded as last resort, a safety net for those deemed sincere by God but in no way this risk (it is a risk) should be taken to its extremity. The mysterious is best dealt with if acted upon as per the revealed Word. As we said,  often people do not heed to their conscience and If we do not tell them and let the Word wrestle them out from the paws of the evil they may end up an eternal failure. And this could be our fault. Even if this is only theoretically possible, even if this is, say, only about being a spiritual failure in this  life, we should be careful to obey God and see this world saved from its own inequity. 

Dear God,

Thank you for saving the world and willing to use us, former sinners and unworthy before your high standard of holiness and purity, to help others know you better and thus be blessed. 

Please, give us ability to share our faith effectively with love and reverence, and cleverness to be able to set the stage upon which the flame and fire  of desire to know more about God would be stoked up.

Thank You for being with us.

In Jesus' Name!

Amen