current issues bible study · web viewthe gospels of the nag hammadi library present a view of...

LEADER’S GUIDE FOR STUDY 1Are the Words of the Bible Really the Words of God?

Why you can still set your life by it.

In the Good Question column in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, reader Carol Stanley asks a question that all Christians face: “How can I be sure that the words in the Bible are really the words of God?” Theologian and one of CT’s executive editors J. I. Packer cites the witness of scribes, textual scholars, and God himself to ease Carol’s doubts. This study will draw from the Bible and church history to fill out Packer’s answer, helping group members to defend the Bible from critics and deepen their own understanding of Christianity’s sacred text.

Lesson #1

Scripture:Deuteronomy 6:4–9; Matthew 6:9–13; Mark 1:14; Romans 1:1; Galatians 1:1–11; 2 Timothy 3:14–17

Based on:“Text Criticism and Inerrancy.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY. October 7, 2002. Vol. 46, No. 11, 02.

LEADER’S GUIDEAre the Words of the Bible Really the Words of God?

PART 1Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to this class, provide for each student the article “Text Criticism and Inerrancy” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY magazine.

It is not unusual to have questions about the Bible’s reliability. Not only do non-Christians doubt it; sometimes we Christians do as well.

Common doubts about the biblical text include:

It’s so old—it must have changed over time.

Original copies of the manuscripts don’t even exist anymore. Anyone could have made it up.

If we knew what the original texts really said, we wouldn’t need so many different translations.

The Bible invites these kinds of arguments because it makes such outrageous claims—that it contains the words of Almighty God, that it is absolutely true and trustworthy, and that it is the foundation for all Christian beliefs. Fortunately for us, the Bible also has some incredibly powerful defenders: generations of faithful scribes, an army of textual scholars, and God himself.

Discussion Starters:

[Q] Have you ever had to try to answer an unbeliever’s skepticism about the Bible’s trustworthiness? What happened?

[Q] Have you struggled with doubt about the Scriptures, either before you became a Christian or during a rough stretch in your Christian life?

PART 2Discover the Eternal PrinciplesTeaching point one: Biblical scribes have taken reverent care with the texts.

As Packer reminds us, Bible manuscripts were hand-copied from ancient times through the Middle Ages. This might sound like the textual equivalent of the party game “Telephone,” but these copyists, called scribes, were professionals, and they took their job extremely seriously.

Jewish scribes, who kept up the Old Testament scrolls for centuries, had a nearly foolproof system for making perfect copies. First, a scribe would count the number of letters on the page to be copied. When he had finished his copy, he

© 2007 • CHRIST IANIT Y TOD AY INTE RNA TI ONAL

Visit SmallGroups.com and ChristianBibleStudies.com


would count the number of letters on the new page and make sure it matched the original. Two or three other scribes would then check the copied page.

Christian scribes also took great pains in creating and proofing their pages. The gorgeous lettering and elaborate artwork in many medieval Bibles attest to hours of intense effort.

Most scholars are amazed at how well the scribes’ system worked. With the momentous discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s and ‘50s, some people looked forward to exposing discrepancies between the ancient Dead Sea manuscripts and the more familiar later texts. In fact, while the Dead Sea Scrolls have prompted a few shifts in biblical scholarship, they mainly served to affirm that Christians already had excellent texts.

Why did the scribes take such good care of these texts? Because God told them to. Deuteronomy 6:4, the foundational statement of Jewish belief (called the Shema), is followed by instructions for the treatment of God’s Word (through verse 9). Religious Jews still wear leather pouches with scrolls inside on their arms and foreheads (see verse 8) when they pray. You don’t make mistakes with something that valuable.

Read Deuteronomy 6:1–9.

[Q] What specifically does God instruct his people to do in this passage? How have we benefited from those instructions?

[Q] How can we value God’s Word in the same way today?

Teaching point two: The Bible was compiled with great discernment.At its best, textual scholarship refines written works by comparing different versions to determine the most reliable manuscripts, giving special weight to older versions and versions of which more copies exist. At its worst, textual scholarship undermines written works by attacking them with radical skepticism and biased agendas. Sadly, some people have used such bad scholarship to suggest that the Bible is totally unreliable or that obscure texts, particularly those that support unorthodox beliefs, are better than standard texts.

The average Christian will never know enough about textual scholarship to sort all of this out. That’s okay, though, because specialists have been on the job for centuries—and it hasn’t been easy.

Read 2 Timothy 3:14–17. This is a classic text on the soundness of the Bible. It’s important to note, though, that at the time Paul wrote these words to Timothy, “all Scripture” (verse 16) only included the Old Testament. Paul probably had no idea that his letters would someday be called Scripture. Most of the rest of the New Testament, including the Gospels, hadn’t even been written yet.

[Q] According to verse 16, why could Timothy trust the Holy Scriptures?

[Q] According to verse 16 and 17, what purpose do the Scriptures have for us?




Within decades of Paul’s letter, dozens if not hundreds of Christian and pseudo-Christian manuscripts were circulating throughout the Near East. Disagreements over which manuscripts were the best prompted church leaders to begin ranking them, prizing those written closest to the time of Jesus, those written by people with direct connections to Jesus, and those that stayed truest to the teachings of Jesus. In 367 Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria wrote an official letter listing the 27 books that he and other church authorities believed should become the Christian Scriptures. Those 27 books became the New Testament we still use today.

The next big moment in Bible text history came a few years later with the efforts of a grumpy but brilliant scholar named Jerome. Lots of Latin translations of Scripture were floating around in his day, not all of them good. Jerome was asked to create a standard version so all Christian churches could, literally, get on the same page. He nailed down the New Testament, working from well-known Greek manuscripts, then took the extra step of learning Hebrew to do the Old Testament. (Latin scholars before him usually worked from Greek translations of the Hebrew, meaning they got all of their texts secondhand.)

Jerome’s translation, the Vulgate (meaning “common”), remained the standard for more than 1,000 years. Great as it was, though, it wasn’t perfect. During the Renaissance, when many ancient manuscripts were rediscovered in the West, scholars like Erasmus (c. 1469–1536) went back to the originals and improved on Jerome’s work.

A flurry of Bibles in common European languages followed. Some, like the King James Version, were based mostly on Jerome’s work. Others, like William Tyndale’s Bible, were based on fresh reading of the original texts. Debates over the different versions grew bitter, but there is no question that all of this work brought Christians closer to understanding what the biblical writers actually wrote, and what they meant by it.

Teaching point three: God’s hand remains on the Bible as well.If the Bible were any other text, the testimony of the faithful scribes and textual scholars would be enough to prove its authenticity. But the stakes are immeasurably high for the Bible, because Christians set their life by it. People may still wonder, Athanasius sounds like a great guy, but how can we be sure he picked the right books for the New Testament? What if there are other books, or older manuscripts, or passages that translators are totally wrong about?

Let’s remember that Athanasius didn’t make an arbitrary decision. The books he listed were already commonly used throughout the church, not in the order he listed them, and not consistently, but there already was broad consensus on which books were inspired by God for the church’s use. Athanasius merely solidified a movement that had been developing for 300 years. The church recognized the books and letters that the Holy Spirit was using to change lives for Christ.

Ultimately, of course, the responsibility for the Bible lies with God. Only he knows his message perfectly and can make perfectly sure that his people receive it. Christians take this on faith.




The Westminster Confession of Faith, used by Presbyterians and quoted by Packer, puts it this way:

“The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as, in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them.” (I.viii)

“The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration,” published in CHRISTIANITY TODAY on June 14, 1999, and endorsed by Packer and many other evangelical leaders, says this:

“We affirm that the Gospel entrusted to the church is, in the first instance, God’s Gospel (Mark 1:14; Rom. 1:1). God is its author, and he reveals it to us in and by his Word. Its authority and truth rest on him alone. We deny that the truth or authority of the Gospel derives from any human insight or invention (Gal. 1:1–11). We also deny that the truth or authority of the Gospel rests on the authority of any particular church or human institution.”

PART 3Apply Your Findings

Take a look at the Lord’s Prayer, found in Matthew 6:9–13. Chances are good that the version that group members know by heart is not the version printed in their Bibles. The familiar final line (“for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever”) is one of those phrases that are not in the most reliable manuscripts. If group members have several different translations, or if you collect them ahead of Bible study time, you’ll find other small discrepancies as well.

Rather than focusing on questions about “trespasses” versus “debts” or the relative merits of different translations, though, remember that the most important part of this passage isn’t the end of verse 13 or the word choice in verse 12, but the fact that it’s Jesus talking to us about talking to God. The Bible is amazing not because it was copied almost perfectly for hundreds of years but because it contains God’s communication with his people. Questions about the text are important only because the text’s message is so absolutely vital.

You may wish to close with the Lord’s Prayer—prayed, not studied.

— Study prepared by Elesha Coffman,former managing editor of CHRISTIAN HISTORY magazine.

Recommended Resources ChristianBibleStudies.com



http://www.christianbiblestudies.com/


Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell (Nelson Reference, 1999; ISBN 0785243038)

How Our Bible Came to Us by H.G.G. Herklots (A Galexy Book, 1957; ASIN B000JUSHKQ)

So Many Versions? Twentieth-Century English Versions of the Bible by Sakae Kubo and Walter Sprecht (Zondervan, 1983; ISBN 0310456916)



ARTICLE

Text Criticism and InerrancyHow can I reconcile my belief in the inerrancy of Scripture with comments in Bible translations that state that a particular verse is not “in better manuscripts”?Carol Stanley, Manchester, New Hampshire

By J. I. Packer, for the study, “Are the Words of the Bible Really the Words of God?”

The answer to this question parallels that of Charles Spurgeon who, when asked to reconcile human freedom with divine predestination, said, “I never reconcile friends.” He maintained that the two realities fit together. So here.

Manuscripts first. The New Testament books first circulated in hand-copied form, and hand-copying by monks went on till Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century. Anyone who has copied by hand knows how easily letters, words, and even whole lines get dropped out or repeated. The New Testament manuscript tradition was not exempt from this.

Also, it is clear that some copyists facing what they thought were miscopyings made what they thought were corrections. Some of these copyists added in the margin, amplifying words and sentences that the next copyist put into the text itself, thinking that was where they belonged. Because the copying was done reverently and with professional care, manuscripts vary little overall, except for the occasional slippages of this kind. Manuscript comparison reveals many passages that clearly need correcting at this level of detail.

The King James Version New Testament was translated from the “received text”—the dominant manuscript tradition at the time—and published in 1516. New manuscript discoveries have led to minor adjustments to that text, and where uncertainty remains about exact wording or authenticity, the margins of honest modern versions will tell us



ARTICLEText Criticism and Inerrancy

Page 2

so. The New King James, for instance, while still following the received text, notes these things conscientiously as it goes along.

Other things being equal, manuscripts are “better” when they are nearer to the original—that is, earlier in date.

In the New Testament only one word per 1,000 is in any way doubtful, and no point of doctrine is lost when verses not “in better manuscripts” are omitted. (As examples, see Matt. 6:13b, 17:21, 18:11; Mark 9:44, 46, 49, 16:9–20; Luke 23:17; John 5:4; and Acts 8:37.) Such has been God’s “singular care and providence” in preserving his written Word for us (Westminster Confession I.viii).

So how does all this bear on the Christian’s very proper faith in biblical inerrancy—that is, the total truth and trustworthiness of the true text and all it teaches?

Holy Scripture is, according to the view of Jesus and his apostles, God preaching, instructing, showing, and telling us things, and testifying to himself through the human witness of prophets, poets, theological narrators of history, and philosophical observers of life. The Bible’s inerrancy is not the inerrancy of any one published text or version, nor of anyone’s interpretation, nor of any scribal slips or pious inauthentic additions acquired during transmission.

Rather, scriptural inerrancy relates to the human writer’s expressed meaning in each book, and to the Bible’s whole body of revealed truth and wisdom.

Belief in inerrancy involves an advance commitment to receive as from God all that the Bible, interpreting itself to us through the Holy Spirit in a natural and coherent way, teaches. Thus it shapes our understanding of biblical authority.

So inerrantists should welcome the work of textual scholars, who are forever trying to eliminate the inauthentic and give us exactly what the biblical writers wrote, neither more nor less. The way into God’s mind is through his penmen’s minds, precisely as expressed, under his guidance, in their own words as they wrote them.

Text criticism serves inerrancy; they are friends. Inerrancy treasures the meaning of each writer’s words, while text criticism checks that we have each writer’s words pure and intact. Both these wisdoms are needed if we are to benefit fully from the written Word of God.



ARTICLEText Criticism and Inerrancy

Page 3

— J. I. Packer is an executive editor of CT and a professor of theology at Regent College in Vancouver.

“Text Criticism and Inerrancy.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY . October 7, 2002. Vol. 46, No. 11, Page 102.



LEADER’S GUIDE FOR STUDY 2Are the Gnostic Gospels Reliable?

Many Christians are uncritically embracing Gnosticism.

Christians of the early church saw Gnosticism, a religious movement that took root in the second century A.D., as a threat to the historic Old Testament and Jesus’ teaching. Gnosticism is making a comeback in our day through the so-called Gospel of Judas and The Da Vinci Code, which draws on extra-biblical documents as the base for its story line. What makes Gnosticism so dangerous is that it puts man at the center of the universe instead of God, a trend already popular among those who want a convenient and customized faith.

This study asks: Why did the early church reject the gnostic gospels, and what are the major doctrinal differences between the gnostic gospels and the biblical canon? Why aren’t the gnostic gospels relevant for today? Why are we so susceptible to gnostic ideas?

Lesson #2

Scripture:Genesis 1:31; Luke 1:1–4; John 1:1–7; Romans 3:10–23; 1 Corinthians 15:1–8, 14–19

Based on:“A Faith Tailored Just for You,” by the editors, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 2006

LEADER’S GUIDEAre the Gnostic Gospels Reliable?

Page 2


Note to leader: Prior to the class, provide for each person the article “A Faith Tailored Just for You” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY magazine (included at the end of this study).

The reemergence of gnostic teaching in modern life can be traced to the recent discovery of gnostic manuscripts once thought to be the “lost books of the Bible.” In December 1945, an Arab peasant found a red earthenware jar near Nag Hammadi, a city in Upper Egypt. Inside the jar were 13 leather-bound papyrus books, dating from approximately A.D. 350. According to some scholars, these manuscripts were penned mostly by Jesus’ disciples and hence carry their names, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Judas. The complete collection was not made available in a popular format in English until 1977. They were released as a collection under the name The Nag Hammadi Library, and a revised edition was published in 1988.

The Gospel of Judas is particularly interesting because it states that Judas was not the traitor that orthodox Christians have assumed all these years. Rather, he was Jesus’ most trusted disciple, because it was through his betrayal that Jesus was able to go to the cross. According to the story, Jesus actually gave Judas the task of betraying him so that, through death, he could be freed from his physical body (Gnostics believe that matter, including the physical body, is evil). So Judas was actually a hero.

One influential scholar, Elaine Pagels, who won the National Book Critics Award for her best-selling book The Gnostic Gospels, believes that Gnosticism should be considered at least as legitimate as orthodox Christianity. But should these documents be on par with orthodox Christian doctrine? At its core, the debate calls into question whether the gnostic gospels are in fact historically accurate and compatible with the biblical canon as we know it.

Discussion starters:

[Q] What difference does it make whether the gnostic gospels are authentic or not? Does the fact that they are ancient manuscripts give them value even if Jesus’ disciples did not write them? Explain your answer.

[Q] Assume for the moment that the Gospel of Judas is accurate in its portrayal of Judas as a hero who helped Jesus on his path to the cross. Does this dramatic reversal of motives on Judas’ part change the biblical account of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross? Why or why not?

[Q] How would you assess the modern-day church in terms of how concerned it is about issues like the validity of the gnostic gospels? Would you say these issues are adequately addressed or need more attention? Why?




Page 3

PART 2Discover the Eternal PrinciplesTeaching point one: The early church rejected the gnostic gospels for good reason.

There is ample evidence from early Christian documents that there existed a single orthodox Christian faith from the very beginning. When Paul wrote 1 Corinthians around A.D. 55, he spoke of a gospel message he “received” and “passed on” to others. That message included the account of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Read 1 Corinthians 15:1–8. It’s worth noting that Gnostics do not believe in a bodily resurrection.

In numerous places in the New Testament there are warnings to the early church to reject false teaching and hold to sound doctrine. On one hand, this clearly indicates that the early church teachers were very concerned about fighting against ideas that were not compatible with their doctrine. But it also shows that there was a discernable Christian orthodoxy in the early, first-century church, long before Gnosticism took hold or the gnostic gospels were written.

The other important point is that Christianity is based upon historical fact. Its claims are rooted in actual events, not just ideas; in people who lived in time and space, not just principles; in revelation, not speculation; in incarnation, not abstraction. Historical accuracy was of prime importance to Luke, who wrote the gospel known by his name. Read Luke 1:1–4. The text affirms that Luke was after nothing less than historical certainty, presented in an orderly fashion and based on firsthand testimony.

[Q] What difference does it make historically if the early Christians had a well-established faith and doctrine that they passed on to one another?

[Q] What significance do you find in the fact that early Christians had an established orthodoxy before the gnostic gospels were written? What implications does this have for our faith today?

[Q] Why doesn’t the discovery of the gnostic gospels tell us anything more about the historic Jesus, as mentioned in the article by the editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY?

[Q] What do you think it means when we say Christianity is based upon actual events and not simply ideas? What place do ideas have in Christian doctrine?

[Q] What is the significance of Luke’s account of Jesus’ life? What difference does it make that he took great care to record the events in an orderly fashion and base it on firsthand testimony?

Teaching point two: Gnostic writings contradict biblical doctrine. The gospels of the Nag Hammadi library present a view of the world at extreme odds with the one found in the Old and New Testaments. For starters, an all-good or powerful God did not create the universe. According to the Gospel of Philip, the




Page 4

world as we know it is really a mistake. The creator of the universe supposedly bungled the act of creation, and as a result, the material cosmos is filled with pain, decay, and death. The record of God’s creation from Genesis 1:31 stands in stark contrast to this botched view of creation. God pronounces his work of creation as “very good.” It was man’s choice to turn away from God that has caused the pain, decay, and death we know in this world. Read Romans 3:10–23.

Another crucial difference between Gnosticism and Christianity concerns the identity and purpose of Jesus’ life. According to gnostic teaching, Jesus was neither God nor man, and his main purpose was not to save us from sin but to come as a guide to open access to spiritual understanding. But Jesus’ deity is clearly seen in numerous passages in the New Testament. Read John 1:1–7. Plus, the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:14–19 that the resurrection is the pivot point of our faith. If Christ was not raised from the dead to save us from our sins, then we are to be pitied for believing in a story that is false.

The gnostic gospels, as the editorial states, “were rejected precisely because they had rejected the Christian continuity with historic Jewish faith.”

[Q] Why does it matter whether God’s creation is good? Do we have responsibilities as children of God to care for the world he has created? If so, what might they be?

[Q] How would your faith in God be different if you served a god who was flawed, imperfect, or finite?

[Q] Why do you think it is popular in contemporary culture to reduce Jesus to the status of a human prophet or teacher but deny his divinity? What are the implications for those who separate these two integral parts of his nature?

Optional Activity: No doubt at least one person in the group has read the book or seen the movie The Da Vinci Code. Ask those who have first-hand exposure to the book or movie to offer examples of how the story draws on gnostic ideas. Have those people clearly explain the tie-in between the story and gnostic worldview. After several examples have been offered, ask the group to identify other ways Gnosticism seems to be present in contemporary culture. If group members are unsure of where to begin, ask them to reflect on films like The Matrix, The Truman Show, and Groundhog Day as starting points.

Teaching point three: We are special, not because of our knowledge of self, but because we are created by God.

Gnosticism claims that some people are special because they have the potential to understand spiritual secrets others cannot. And the greatest spiritual insight is not knowledge of God, as Christianity would profess, but rather knowing oneself at a deep level. In other words, self-knowledge is knowledge of god; the self and the divine are identical. This helps us to understand how Gnosticism got its name. The Greek word gnosis means knowledge.

A knowledge and awareness of our thoughts, emotions, and behavior can be beneficial in our daily lives. But it is not an end in itself as proclaimed through the gnostic writings. We don’t have this capacity for self-knowledge because we are




Page 5

one of the enlightened ones, as Gnosticism would claim. We have been given some degree of self-knowledge because we are created in God’s image. We are special because God has called us so. Self-knowledge, in its proper function, is to recognize our status as created beings and our need to bow before our Creator. Gnosticism believes that humans need to be liberated from their human limitations. Christianity calls us to embrace our humanity and live faithfully in submission to God and his plan for our lives.

[Q] What do you think is meant in the editorial when it states that “Gnosticism’s attention to the little-G god in the human self feeds on the egoism of the American temperament”? What is the state of the American temperament as it pertains to God?

[Q] In what ways do you see self-knowledge and self-awareness as positive attributes through which Christians can benefit? Give examples. How can the search for self-knowledge become an end in itself? Provide examples. What can happen to one’s faith when self-betterment becomes the primary goal?

[Q] The Gnostics consider matter to be evil, including the body. What role does your body have in your spiritual worship of God? Is the body just a shell to be tolerated or does God value our bodies? What is the parallel between our bodies and the incarnation of Jesus? Explain.


What is truly at stake in the debate over the gnostic gospels is whether they meet the test of being reliable and therefore trustworthy. F. F. Bruce, in his classic work The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), asks that fundamental question in the opening line of his preface. He later amplifies what the answer implies by saying:

The historical “once-for-all-ness” of Christianity, which distinguishes it from those religions and philosophical systems which are not specifically related to any particular time, makes the reliability of the writings, which purport to record this revelation, a question of first-rate importance.

If Christianity is judged by its historical accuracy, then a competing viewpoint, like the gospels of Nag Hammadi, must be judged by the same standard if it is to be taken seriously. And based upon the historical facts, they don’t measure up.

[Q] The editorial states, “Americans have made a religion out of diversity.” Do you agree or disagree? If you agree, in what ways do you see diversity being elevated to the level of religion? If you disagree, explain why you believe diversity gets the proper attention it deserves in our culture.

[Q] In what ways has gnostic thought crept into your thinking? Where do you think these ideas have come from?




Page 6

[Q] What cultural sources do you see as being the greatest influence for gnostic ideas in this era? How might we as Christians think more critically about these ideas as they are presented in popular culture?

[Q] How would you assess your knowledge of how the canon of the Bible was formed? Do you think it is important for Christians to know why certain ancient manuscripts were considered worthy of being included in the canon and others rejected? Why or why not?




Page 7

—Study prepared by Gary A. Gilles, adjunct instructor at Trinity International University, editor of Chicago Caregiver magazine and

freelance writer.

Additional Resources ChristianBibleStudies.com

-Fresh Ways to Connect with the Gospel-The Da Vinci Code and Other Heresies-Debunking The Da Vinci Code-What’s the Truth About The Da Vinci Code

Early Christian Doctrine, J. N. D. Kelly (Harper, 1978; ISBN 006064334X)

Jesus in an Age of Controversy, Douglas Groothuis (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2002; ISBN 1579108695)

The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? F. F. Bruce (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003; ISBN 0802822193)

Stolen Identity: The Conspiracy to Reinvent Jesus, Peter Jones (Victor, 2006; ISBN 0781442079)

A Short History of the Early Church, Harry R. Boer (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1976; ISBN 0802813399)

The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus, Lee Strobel (Zondervan Publishing House, 1998; ISBN 0913367044)

Cracking Da Vinci’s Code, James L. Garlow, Peter Jones (Cook Communications, 2004; ISBN 078144165X)



http://www.christianbiblestudies.com/

ARTICLE

A Faith Tailored Just for YouThe hoopla over the Gospel of Judas is both absurd and revealing.

A CHRISTIANITY TODAY editorial, for the study, “Are the Gnostic Gospels Reliable?”

When the Gospel of Judas was unveiled in April, much of the American press and public were bowled over by this “lost” Gospel’s claims that Judas was Jesus’ favorite, that he was the only disciple who understood Jesus’ mission, and that Jesus told Judas to hand him over to the authorities, so that Judas would “sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

Little was reported of what the 13-sheet Coptic manuscript had to say about the heavenly kingdom of Barbelo, the 72 heavens, the 360 firmaments, and the confusing array of demigods who inhabit them.

Fortunately, some members of the press saw how ridiculous it all was. Newsweek’s David Gates took aim at the hoopla manufactured by National Geographic and others who had a financial stake in the Judas Gospel: “Can the lipstick tie-in be far behind?”

More importantly, the best liberal scholars admitted up front that this find “tells us nothing about the historical Jesus, nothing about the historical Judas.” Those are the words of James M. Robinson, lead scholar of the team that investigated the last great find of gnostic gospels, the Nag Hammadi library. Or as Adam Gopnik told New Yorker readers, “The finding of the new Gospel … no more challenges the basis of the church’s faith than the discovery of a document from the nineteenth century written in Ohio and defending King George would be a challenge to the basis of American democracy.”

The latest gnostic gospel may tell us little about Jesus or Judas, but the credulous public fascination with it tells us something about the spiritual



ARTICLEA Faith Tailored Just for You

Page 2

state of America. Our nation continues to be enamored with a version of religion—Gnosticism—that is little more than a reflection of the self.

You’re okay—I’m specialGnosticism taught that some people were special, with the potential to

understand spiritual secrets that common folk lacked.

Once you were let in on the secrets, it became clear that you were among the special ones. Before an evil demiurge (fancy lingo for “second-rate god”) created the material world, a select few were endowed with a unique spark of divinity. This spark could now be fanned into a flame that could be liberated from the flesh and rejoined with all the other sparks to reconstitute the true God.

Gnosticism’s attention to the little-G god in the human self feeds the egoism of the American temperament. This sort of thing has long been growing on our soil. Blame Ralph Waldo Emerson for watering the seed. Now, Dan Brown and those who hype the gnostic gospels are packaging it for people who haven’t read Emerson. This popularized neo-Gnosticism, says New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, “declares that the only real moral imperative is that you should then be true to what you find when you engage in that deep inward search.” The message appeals “to the pride that says, ‘I’m really quite an exciting person, deep down, whatever I may look like outwardly.’” This endless exploration of the self, says Wright, is in stark contrast to the very Jewish message of Jesus, which focused on God’s kingdom.

Gnostics considered the material world evil and blamed its creation on the God of the Hebrew Scriptures. Jewish faith, by contrast, celebrated creation. It is a religion of both body and spirit. Gnosticism, on the other hand, attempted to liberate the spirit from the body and from the material creation.

The leaders of the early church struggled to articulate both the continuities and the discontinuities between their movement and the Jewish faith. As they worked it out, they claimed the Hebrew Scriptures as their own and declared that Jesus fulfilled them. They also refused to denigrate the creator God. Instead, they identified Jesus as the divine Word “without whom not anything was made that was made.” And their teaching about the Incarnation and the resurrection of the body was an endorsement of material creation.

The reason that lost Gospels like Judas disappeared is not, as some are now claiming, that “orthodoxy” is simply a record of the winners writing



ARTICLEA Faith Tailored Just for You

Page 3

history. Rather, these gnostic texts were rejected precisely because they had rejected the Christian continuity with historic Jewish faith. Orthodoxy was a serious attempt to be faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob rather than to seek the little-G god within.

Finally, the Gospel of Judas appeals to our American neighbors because we have made a religion out of diversity.

Americans have a phobia about making commitments to truth. (Witness all the ranting in the mainstream media after 9/11 against fundamentalisms in particular and religion in general. Merely believing that you know the truth, it was claimed, is tantamount to breeding terrorism.) An ancient document that propagates an upside-down reading of the Judas-Jesus relationship reinforces this prejudice. The tendency to grasp at excuses for not making a commitment to live out a particular truth was illustrated by National Public Radio commentator Peter Manseau. He compared the Gospel of Judas to Jesus Christ Superstar and concluded: “Whether it is the Gospel according to Judas, Thomas, Mary Magdalene, or even Andrew Lloyd Webber, each one reminds us, with the shock of an electric guitar in the desert, that both faith and history are more complicated than we imagine.”

That kind of hazy thinking, like Superstar itself, belongs to the early ‘70s. Can we please grow up?

“A Faith Tailored Just for You,” by the editors, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 2006



LEADER’S GUIDE FOR STUDY 3Can I Trust My Bible?

Discussing inerrancy and truth in Scripture.

In the 1988 film Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman’s character is based on a real-life autistic man named Kim Peek. Peek has total recall of more than 9,000 books. When he attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, he stood up near the end and loudly ordered, “You’ve got to stop it, stop it, stop it!” The actor had skipped the second to the last verse of the play. Caught in his mistake, the actor apologized, saying, “The verses are so much alike, I didn’t think it would matter.”

Peek responded, “It mattered to William Shakespeare, and it should matter to you.” Craig A. Evans suggests the same is true about the Bible—the words of Scripture mattered to Jesus, so they should matter to us.

Lesson #3

Scripture:Deuteronomy 4:1–14; John 8:12–26; 2 Timothy 3:14–17

Based on:“What Bible Version Did Jesus Read?” by Craig A. Evans, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 1999

LEADER’S GUIDECan I Trust My Bible?

Page 2


Note to leader: Prior to the class, provide for each person the article “What Bible Version Did Jesus Read?” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY (included at the end of this study).

Let’s face it right up front: there have been notorious mistakes in the Bible. For example, in 1611 the so-called “Judas Bible” declared that Judas came with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, even though the previous chapter reported that Judas had already hanged himself.

Or consider what some call the “Basketball Bible” because its account of Exodus says that “hoopes” were used instead of “hookes” (the old way of writing “hooks”) in the construction of the Tabernacle. Soon after, a 1716 edition had Jesus say in John 5:14 “sin on more” instead of “sin no more.” In the following year, the famous “Vinegar Bible” earned this sour name because the chapter title for Luke 20 was printed as “The Parable of the Vinegar” instead of the “Parable of the Vineyard.” A few years later, in a 1792 printing, it was Philip rather than Peter who denied his Lord three times in Luke 22:34.

Three years later the so-called “Murderer’s Bible” declared, “Let the children first be killed” instead of “Let the children first be filled.” Shortly after that misprint, an 1807 Oxford edition of the Bible had Hebrews 9:14 say, “Purge your conscience from good works” instead of “Purge your conscience from dead works.”

Not all Bible publishing errors happened in the distant past, either. A printing of the KJV as late as 1964 said that women were to “adorn themselves in modern apparel” instead of “modest apparel” in 1 Timothy 2:9. Still, the greatest mistakes in the English Bible are those contained in the infamous “Evil Bibles” of 1631 and 1653. Each of these printings of the King James Version left out the word “not” at critical junctures. The 1653 edition—known commonly as the “Unrighteous Bible”—said “the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God” in 1 Corinthians 6:9. But the big booboo prize goes to the 1631 edition, the infamous “Wicked Bible,” which rewrote the seventh of the Ten Commandments as “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

Until the advent of modern printing, errors in the text of the Bible (or any other book, for that matter) were rather commonplace. In some instances, the scribe would even acknowledge blunders, whether they were omissions or variant spellings, with humorous annotations.

In one manuscript, for instance, a scribe left out two or three sentences. Realizing his error, and unable to insert the sentences once the page was completed, the copyist wrote the omitted sentences at the bottom of the page. He then drew a box around the sentences, added handles on the box and sketched two small elves pulling ropes attached to the handles, complete with blocks and pulleys,




Page 3

attempting to lift the box up the page. In the margin where the sentences were missing, a squirrel pointed his finger in the direction of the absent text.

Today’s Bible publishers, with their million page runs, work very hard to ensure accuracy of the text according to the translators’ specific wordings. One of the most widely used services to accomplish this goal is the Peachtree Editorial and Proofreading Service, which specializes in Bibles. Catching errors before printing is always important, but more is at stake when dealing with Scripture.

June Gunden, who along with her husband, Doug, founded Peachtree, says, “Bible readers are less forgiving of errors because they expect perfection in the Bible text.”

Proofreaders often spend up to two years scouring the pages of a new Bible printing for errors. They take extreme care to ensure that no word was misplaced, misspelled, or left out.

Discussion starters:

[Q] Suppose the publisher got every word right from the translators’ texts—how would you know that the translators got it right?

[Q] Can the meaning of words in one language be conveyed with absolute accuracy in the words of another language? Why or why not? Can you point to examples from your knowledge of different cultures or languages?

[Q] What ideas are easier to translate with accuracy and which are more difficult? Why? What does this tell you about Bible translation?

[Q] Suppose you were going to translate the Bible for a nomadic tribe that lived on the edges of the Gobi desert of Asia, nowhere near any ocean or lake—how would you seek to convey biblical ideas like Jesus walking on the waters of the Sea of Galilee? What other translation problems might you encounter? How would you deal with them?

PART 2Discover the Eternal PrinciplesTeaching point one: God wishes to communicate with us in our language.

Read Deuteronomy 4:1–14. It is clear that God took great effort to connect with this special community. Rather than uttering indecipherable noises or symbols, God chose to create words that were part of everyday communication, even inscribing these instructions into a permanent record, as in the Ten Commandments.

This helps us to appreciate the manner in which God chose to form the first parts of what would become the Bible. In the world of ancient Israel, the Hittites had standardized and widely distributed a written contract form that became normative between kings and their subject nations. Today this document template




Page 4

is known as the Hittite “Suzerain-Vassal covenant.” Usually it consisted of six parts:

1. A preamble which declared the identity of the royal authority initiating this covenant

2. A historical prologue that described the reasons for this covenant

3. Stipulations that sorted out the demands of the covenant on both parties

4. Curses and blessings that told the consequences of breaking or keeping this covenant

5. A list of witnesses who confirmed the enactment of this treaty

6. A document clause which told of the ratification, copies, and renewal ceremonies of the covenant

The text of Exodus 20–24 is formed exactly in the character of a Hittite Suzerain-Vassal covenant document. It has (1) a preamble (20:1–2); (2) a historical prologue (20:2); (3) stipulations (20:3–23:19); (4) curses and blessings (23:20–33); (5) a list of witnesses (24:1–3, 9–18); and (6) a document clause (24:4–8). In other words, when we try to understand what kind of literature the Bible is, and how it was formed among the written documents that litter human history, we find that the Bible itself originated as a covenant that shaped a unique relationship between God and Israel. The rest of its writings were added to that original covenant document.

The important point, as Moses says in Deuteronomy 4, is that God initiated the covenant, and therefore sought from the beginning to communicate in a truthful and authoritative manner to the people he had chosen. The Bible is not an arbitrary collection of cute, nice, or even wise writings that simply amassed themselves together in some dusty corner of a Jewish rabbi’s personal library; it is a set of literary creations built on the foundation of God speaking words of covenant relationship to Israel through Moses.

[Q] Have you ever thought about how the Bible got its start?

[Q] How does the idea of a covenant document created at Mount Sinai connect with your understanding of the Bible and its purposes?

[Q] How would you communicate the origins of the Bible to a non-Christian neighbor who asked you about your faith?

[Q] What did God want to communicate when he chose to enter into a relationship with ancient Israel by way of the familiar Suzerain-Vassal covenant? What implications does this have for the rest of Scripture? How does this affirm the God-initiated character of the Bible?

Teaching point two: God is truthful.Read John 8:12–26. When Jesus was challenged by those around him to declare more fully his identity, he simply said that he was from God and that God was




Page 5

faithful. In the lengthy dialogue of John 8, Jesus asserted that our human tendency is to twist facts, fudge on truth, and even tell outright lies. But God, Jesus reminded us, is always truthful, reliable, and “light” over the darkness of deception. In fact, truth derives its character from God.

Jesus also tied God directly to Old Testament Scripture in this passage. It is the reliable truthfulness of God which spoke through the “Law and the Prophets,” and thus provided the background and testimony as to who Jesus is. This helps us draw out the long line of continuity in Scripture. If the Old Testament was begun as covenant documents in Exodus 20–24 and accumulated related writings, which further fleshed out the meaning and impact of this covenant, Jesus comes now in New Testament times as the fulfillment of the Old Covenant promises and expectations.

This is a primary element of biblical faith. God is truthful, and the Bible is an extension of that divine reliability. Furthermore, Jesus both witnesses to that truth and embodies it. He is, as he claimed to his disciples at the Last Supper, the expression of the New Covenant, which fulfills and augments the Old Covenant that shaped Israel’s existence from the time of Mount Sinai forward.

[Q] What does it mean that someone is trustworthy? How is this seen, known, proved, or established?

[Q] What was Jesus trying to communicate to those who dialogued with him in John 8?

[Q] Why does Jesus make such a strong contrast between the truth and the lie? How does this inform us about the truthfulness of the Bible?

Teaching point three: The Bible is a uniquely authoritative book.We do not have access to the original documents penned by Moses, David, Isaiah, John, Paul, Luke, and so on. All of these have been destroyed, probably to prevent us from worshiping or esteeming them too highly as magical religious artifacts (see Numbers 21:4–9 and 2 Kings 18:1–4). What we have are handwritten copies of handwritten copies several generations removed from the original documents. This means that there are variations and some small mistakes in the differing manuscript traditions.

These discrepancies may well be behind some of the conundrums we continue to live with in biblical interpretation. For instance, was the potter’s field purchased by Judas before his death (Acts 1:15–19) or by the priests after his death (Matthew 27:3–10)? Or again, was Sisera killed while he was sleeping on the ground (Judges 4:21) or did he fall to the ground and die when he was struck with a hammer (Judges 5:26–27)?

Textual problems like these do not detract from the clear message of salvation in the Bible, but they remind us that we do not have access to the original writings that were divinely inspired. Yet, this ought not to diminish our confidence in Scripture and its divine authority, for the God who first communicated truth through deeds and words in the languages of ancient societies is the same God




Page 6

who supports and sustains the development of human history in a way that breathes with transcendent veracity.

Read 2 Timothy 3:14–17. When Paul, as an elder statesman of the Christian church, wrote these letters of encouragement and instruction to young pastor Timothy, he reaffirmed the reliability of Scripture and its central importance in understanding God and the things of faith. God is trustworthy, and so, too, is all that emerges from God in the documents of the community of faith.

But the manuscripts have to be translated so that we can read the truth of God in our own multicultural settings. In this way there is again a small margin of variation between different versions of the Bible. Each set of translators seeks to be faithful to the text, but no exact equivalency can be made between the words of one language and those of another.

Yet the minor differences among the various Bibles in any language actually give more credence to their trustworthiness than undermine it. No other collection of literature, produced over such a long period of time, copied so extensively, and translated so prolifically has the amazing clarity of text and message no matter which copy is read.

This is why many Bible scholars prefer to talk about reliability and authority more than inerrancy. If one looks only for possible mistakes in either the text or its transmission, the debate is never ending. But when one sees the great consistency of message and theology in the Bible, its authority and inspiration become evident.

[Q] Discuss the meaning of the words inerrant, reliable, authoritative, and trustworthy when it comes to reading Scripture—are some words more helpful than others? Why or why not?

[Q] How would you explain the trustworthiness of Scripture to a non-Christian? How would you communicate it to a new Christian?


Action Point: Read Psalm 119:9–16. As a group pray through the words of this psalm, reaffirming your confidence and dependence upon God’s Word.

—Study prepared by Wayne Brouwer, who teaches in the Religion Department at Hope College in Holland Michigan. Wayne is author of

numerous books and many studies in this series.

Additional Resources ChristianBibleStudies.com

- We Really Do Need Another Bible Translation



http://www.ChristianBibleStudies.com/


Page 7

Biblical Inspiration, I. Howard Marshall (Regent College Publishing, 2004; ISBN 157383310X)

C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation and the Question of Errancy, Michael J. Christiansen (Abingdon, 2002; ISBN 0687045592)

Holy Scripture, G. C. Berkouwer (Eerdmans, 1975; ISBN 0802848214)

Inerrancy, Norman L. Geisler (Zondervan, 1980; ISBN 0310392810)

Models of Revelation, Avery Dulles (Orbis, 1992; ISBN 0883448424)



ARTICLE

What Bible Version Did Jesus Read?In what language was the Bible Jesus read?

By Craig A. Evans, for the study, “Can I Trust My Bible?”

If, as most scholars today believe, Jesus spoke primarily in Aramaic, though he sometimes might have also used Greek and perhaps even Hebrew, what Bible was he likely to have read and heard read in the synagogue? The answer is that he likely heard Scripture read in Hebrew and occasionally in Greek, and then paraphrased and interpreted in Aramaic. How much of this paraphrase was actually written down in Jesus’ day is difficult to tell. It is probably safer to assume that most of this Aramaic tradition circulated orally and only generations later was committed to writing.

The Dead Sea Scrolls—a collection of biblical and other texts from around the first century—have shown that our Old Testament existed in several forms at the time of Jesus. There could have been as many as four Hebrew-language versions: one that lies behind the Hebrew text of the Bible that Christians and Jews use today (the Masoretic Text); a second that lies behind the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is called the Septuagint, or LXX (and is the Old Testament of the Orthodox churches today); a third distinctive Hebrew version of the Pentateuch (the first five books of our Old Testament) used by the Samaritans; and a fourth version scholars did not know existed until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls 50 years ago.

In addition, the discovery of Greek manuscripts and inscriptions have also led scholars to believe not only that Greek translations of the Old Testament, such as the LXX, were available, but that Greek was widely spoken in Palestine, even among Jews. The one time we are told that Jesus himself read Scripture in the synagogue, the text he read followed the LXX (see Luke 4:16–19). To make matters more complicated, Aramaic paraphrases of Scripture (called Targums) have also been found. Because



ARTICLEWhat Bible Version Did Jesus Read?

Page 2

of these and other literary texts from late antiquity, scholars believe Aramaic was also widely spoken in Palestine. Aramaic words in Jesus’ sayings, such as boanerges, ephphatha, talitha qumi, and eloi eloi lama sabachthani, have survived in the Greek Gospels.

Further evidence for this can be seen in the fact that when Jesus alludes to Scriptures in the Gospels, he usually does so in a manner that agrees with the Aramaic Targum, not the Greek or Hebrew versions. Some examples: In Mark 9:42–50, Jesus warns of judgment by speaking of Gehenna and alluding to Isaiah 66:24, “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” The word Gehenna does not appear in the Hebrew or Greek, but only in the Aramaic. In Matthew 26:52, Jesus commands his disciple to put away his sword, “for all those who take the sword, by the sword they will perish.” These words, which aren’t in our Hebrew-based Isaiah, probably allude to the Aramaic paraphrase of Isaiah 50:11: “all you who take a sword—go fall on the sword which you have taken!” Jesus’ well-known saying “Be merciful as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36) reflects the Aramaic expansion of Leviticus 22:28: “My people, children of Israel, as our Father is merciful in heaven, so shall you be merciful on earth.” And Jesus’ very proclamation of the gospel, namely, that the kingdom of God has come (Mark 1:14–15), probably reflects the Aramaic paraphrasing of passages such as Isaiah 40:9 and 52:7. In these Aramaic paraphrases we find the distinctive words “The kingdom of your God is revealed!”

Understanding the usage of Aramaic in Jesus’ time explains another often puzzling passage. In the parable of the wicked vineyard tenants (Mark 12:1–12), Jesus alludes to Isaiah 5:1–7. In the Hebrew version of Isaiah (on which our English translations are based), the people of Judah as a whole (and not their leaders) are condemned as guilty of bloodshed. But when Jesus told the parable, the ruling priests understood that Jesus had told the parable “against them.” This is because Jesus applies the passage in his parable in a way that reflects the Aramaic Targum’s interpretation of it, in which God’s judgment is directed primarily against the temple establishment. (The tower of Isaiah’s parable is understood as the temple, and the wine vat is understood as the altar.)

What does the knowledge that Jesus used different versions of Scripture mean for us today? For one, it can be taken as an endorsement of Bible translations—we do not all have to learn Hebrew or Greek to read the Bible. It also points to a dynamic quality in God’s revealed Word that allows it to invade every culture and tongue with the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. And what is just as important, it reminds us that we cannot truly hope to understand the New Testament without reading the



ARTICLEWhat Bible Version Did Jesus Read?

Page 3

same Scriptures Jesus did, and with the same expectation of encountering God in them.

—Craig A. Evans, professor of biblical studies at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, Canada.

“What Bible Version Did Jesus Read?” by Craig A. Evans, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 1999

