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First lets settle on what is not the Bible. The Bible is not a book of fables. Ancient history supports the Bible's accuracy as a historical record. The Gospels provide multiple reliable accounts of Jesus' life. Archaelogy backs up the Biblical account. Textual scholarship confirms that the books of the Bible have not changed since they were first written. Even the dead sea scrolls talk about Jesus Christ. The description is incredible but true to form. How can these people that lived alone in the deserted place without contact from the populace of Israel predicted that Jesus would be coming. Not by name but by description. These people wrote about Him several hundred years before Christ was born.
If the Bible is God's message to us, we should hope its version of history is accurate. It is. Bible prophecies about future events, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, his ministry of healing and miracles and his death on the hands of the Romans. His resurrection on the third day has come true.
Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 55-120), an historian of first-century Rome, is considered one of the most accurate historians of the ancient world.1 An excerpt from Tacitus tells us that the Roman emperor Nero "inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class...called Christians. ...Christus [Christ], from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus...."2
Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian (A.D. 38-100+), wrote about Jesus in his Jewish Antiquities. From Josephus, "we learn that Jesus was a wise man who did surprising feats, taught many, won over followers from among Jews and Greeks, was believed to be the Messiah, was accused by the Jewish leaders, was condemned to be crucified by Pilate, and was considered to be resurrected."3
Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and Thallus also wrote about Christian worship and persecution that is consistent with New Testament accounts.
Even the Jewish Talmud, certainly not biased toward Jesus, concurs about the major events of his life. From the Talmud, "we learn that Jesus was conceived out of wedlock, gathered disciples, made blasphemous claims about himself, and worked miracles, but these miracles are attributed to sorcery and not to God."4
This is remarkable information considering that most ancient historians focused on political and military leaders, not on obscure rabbis from distant provinces of the Roman Empire. Yet ancient historians (Jews, Greeks and Romans) confirm the major events that are presented in the New Testament, even though they were not believers themselves.
Four Gospels tell about Jesus of Nazareth:
Matthew Mark Luke John
Jesus was born of a virgin 1:18-25 - 1:27, 34 -
He was born in Bethlehem 2:1 - 2:4 -
He lived in Nazareth 2:23 1:9, 24 2:51, 4:16 1:45, 46
Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist 3:1-15 1:4-9 3:1-22 -
He performed miracles of healing 4:24, etc. 1:34, etc. 4:40, etc. 9:7
He walked on water 14:25 6:48 - 6:19
He fed five thousand people with
five loaves and two fish 14:7 6:38 9:13 6:9
Jesus taught the common people 5:1 4:25, 7:28 9:11 18:20
He spent time with social outcasts 9:10, 21:31 2:15, 16 5:29, 7:29 8:3
He argued with the religious elite 15:7 7:6 12:56 8:1-58
The religious elite plotted to kill him 12:14 3:6 19:47 11:45-57
They handed Jesus over to the Romans 27:1, 2 15:1 23:1 18:28
Jesus was flogged 27:26 15:15 - 19:1
He was crucified 27:26-50 15:22-37 23:33-46 19:16-30
He was buried in a tomb 27:57-61 15:43-47 23:50-55 19:38-42
Jesus rose from the dead and
appeared to his followers 28:1-20 16:1-20 24:1-53 20:1-31
Two of the gospels were written by the apostles Matthew and John, men who knew Jesus personally and traveled with him for over three years. The other two books were written by Mark and Luke, close associates of the apostles. These writers had direct access to the facts they were recording. The early church accepted the four gospels because they agreed with what was already common knowledge about Jesus' life.
The New Testament is humanity's most reliable ancient document. The Old Testament has also been remarkably well preserved. Our modern translations are confirmed by a huge number of ancient manuscripts in both Hebrew and Greek, including the mid-20th century discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These scrolls hold the oldest existing fragments of almost all of the Old Testament books, dating from 150 B.C. The similarity of the Dead Sea manuscripts to hand copies made even 1,000 years later is proof of the care the ancient Hebrew scribes took in copying their scriptures.
Does archaeology support the Bible?
Archaeology cannot prove that the Bible is God's written word to us. However, archaeology can (and does) substantiate the Bible's historical accuracy. Archaeologists have consistently discovered the names of government officials, kings, cities, and festivals mentioned in the Bible -- sometimes when historians didn't think such people or places existed. For example, the Gospel of John tells of Jesus healing a cripple next to the Pool of Bethesda. The text even describes the five porticoes (walkways) leading to the pool. Scholars didn't think the pool existed, until archaeologists found it forty feet below ground, complete with the five porticoes.7
The Bible has a tremendous amount of historical detail, so not everything mentioned in it has yet been found through archaeology. However, not one archaeological find has conflicted with what the Bible records.8
Many of the ancient locations mentioned by Luke, in the Book of Acts in the New Testament, have been identified through archaeology. "In all, Luke names thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities and nine islands without an error."10
Another major archaeological find confirmed an early alphabet in the discovery of the Ebla Tablets in northern Syria in 1974. These 14,000 clay tablets are thought to be from about 2300 B.C., hundreds of years before Abraham.12 The tablets describe the local culture in ways similar to what is recorded in Genesis chapters 12-50.
Archaeology consistently confirms the historical accuracy of the Bible.
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Posted by airsjc on 2008-03-31 08:55:00 | Rating: | Views: 48
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