DaVinci Code Series #2

Answering the Code – The Trustworthiness of the Bible

So, did you run into anyone talking about the DaVinci Code book this week? As I observed last Sunday, the book despite being a novel, is having a real influence on the minds of many Americans who confuse fiction with fact. 40 million hard-cover copies have been sold. The paperback will be released this week. On May 19, the book becomes a movie that most critics guess will be a block-buster!

Dan Brown takes issue with historic and Biblical Christianity in the book. One of his issues is the origin of the New Testament. The book alleges that the New Testament came to us as part of a process controlled by the Roman Emperor, Constantine, as part of a conspiracy to re-define Christianity and to solidify support for the doctrine that Jesus was the Christ, the God-man.

∙ Have you ever wondered just how did the Bible come to us? If you don’t really know, you’re not alone. Many Believers have only the vaguest notion. Some even believe it was a ‘magical’ process.

∙ Ever wondered hy are there 66 books in the Bible, not 64 or 72? How about who selected the sacred writings?

∙ That word ‘inspired’ is an interesting one, but what does it really mean? Is every word of the Bible meant to be read literally, as some insist, or did God speak in poetry and story form, too?

∙ There is a steady bombardment of the Bible as a reliable document. So we wonder, how accurate is the Bible? Have the words remained authentic through the centuries?

It’s important for you to know that the Bible is a gift from God, a treasure for you and me, the very words of life! There are good reasons to accept the Holy Scriptures as trustworthy, as genuine, and as the Word of God. Let’s take a few moments to find out why.

PRAY

INSPIRED

Let’s start by seeing what the Bible claims for itself –

2 Timothy 3:16-18, NIV "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

2 Peter 1:19-21 (NIV) And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The Bible claims to be a holy book that originated in the mind of God, not in the intellect of human beings, and it came to us by INSPIRATION. The word means, “breathed in.” The Spirit breathed the wisdom of God into those human authors who penned the Word that we read. Peter amplifies that by telling us that these men ‘were carried along by the Holy Spirit.’

That much we accept by faith. None of us had the privilege of watching Matthew, or Luke, or Samuel, or Moses, or Paul as they received the Divine Word, and none of them offers an explanation of the process. What we can observe is that these were real human beings and that their personalities come through in the holy writing. They were not doing ‘automatic writing,’ or working in a some kind of trance. Luke’s style is quite different from Paul’s. Peter’s themes are different from John’s. The poetry of David in the Psalms is unique. They were inspired, moved by the Spirit, who used them - their intellect, their knowledge, their life situations – to reveal the wisdom and nature of God to us.

So, how did the writings of these men become Holy Scripture?

Because of time constraints, I will speak specifically of the New Testament, though the process was similar for the Old Testament. In The DaVinci Code, Brown uses his characters to make a several assertions that diminish the trustworthiness and authenticity of the Gospels that we revere as part of our Bible. Brown says that there were dozens of gospels that vied for acceptance and that the ultimate judge who decided was Constantine, the Roman Emperor, who was converted early in the 3^rd century AD. Supposedly, he chose Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John because they supported the claims Jesus made to be the Son of God, a doctrine which he found politically useful. It wasn’t nearly that simple, thank God!

The New Testament was not the product of one person work or opinion, nor did it only emerge as a compiled text only after three hundreds years!

The New Testament as we know it was largely collected and assembled, by the end of the first century, within a generation of Jesus Christ Himself.

∙ Jesus’ public earthly ministry concluded about 30 AD, give or take a year or two. The first Christian books were written within 25 years of that date!

∙ The earliest writings were those of Paul, whose earliest letters were written around 55 AD. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written between 60-75 AM, with John’s Gospel coming later, probably around 90-95 AD.

What is clear is that Christians as early as 35 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, considered some of the writings being circulated as equal to the Jewish Scriptures in terms of authority.

Peter, writing late in the first century, says - 2 Peter 3:15-16 (NLT)

And remember, the Lord is waiting so that people have time to be saved. This is just as our beloved brother Paul wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him—speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters around to mean something quite different from what he meant, just as they do the other parts of Scripture—

The leaders of the church from the late 90's and into the middle of the next century, are knowing as the ‘Church Fathers.’ These men accepted the Old Testament as the “Word of God” and they respected a tradition that had already become strong that recognized the worthiness of the primary Gospels that reported the words of Jesus as the Word of God.

During the second and third centuries, Christianity weathered some serious tests as various doctrines about who Jesus was, about how a person was made right with God, and even the Gospel itself made the rounds of the churches. Some Christians of that time believed as we do, that there was one God. Others argued that there were two gods - the God of the Old Testament and Jesus, the God of the New Testament. Some accepted the Cross, as we do, as the offering for the sins of the world. Others, called Gnostics, from the Greek word for knowledge, believed that Christianity was about having ‘secret knowledge’ that let a person into the cult. Jesus, the man, died so that Jesus, the Christ, could impart special knowledge to those He wanted to allow into His church. There were several Gnostic Gospels written in that era.

All of this doctrinal confusion made it evident to Christian leaders that a “canon,” that is an accepted authority for doctrine and truth, needed to be established. Gradually, through a process of debate and study, the New Testament that we use for our teaching, became more and more defined. What is important to know is that by the end of the 2^nd century, most of the works we still read today were agreed on as having unique authority as ‘the word of God.’ Several books remained in dispute, at that time - Jude, 2 Peter, James, Philemon, and Revelation.

While The DaVinci Code states that Constantine hand picked the Gospels in 325 AD, the truth is that the process was very much in place 150 years before his time, and the Council of Nicea, involved more than 200 bishops from the church. It is true that the Roman emperor called the council into session, but it is also true that these men most of whom had survived intense persecution, operated independently of him. The Council a pivotal event in settling some Christian doctrine about Jesus’ identity, particularly giving us clear language about the Trinity.

By the 4^th century, the Church had established nearly universal agreement about what constituted ‘sacred writings’ that were to be used as guides for the Christian life. Jerome, a monk, compiled a version of the Bible, known as the Vulgate, written in Latin, that was the standard Bible from 382 AD until the 16^th century, for over 1200 years!

Criteria for selecting New Testament content

The earliest church leaders developed tests for written sources that guided the process and still remain important to scholars today as they study the New Testament.

1. The witness of the Spirit–

Church leaders looked for the Spirit’s authority, that the writing demonstrated the power of God’s

presence.

2. Apostolic origin–

A book had to be written by one of the Apostles or by a companion of the apostles.

Paul, for example, makes a strong case for his credentials as an apostle, even though he was not one of

of the Twelve disciples, basing his claim on his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.

3. Universal appeal –

A book needed to be used by churches in the known world, not simply, by a local group of churches.

Many local church leaders circulated letters similar to those of Paul, but their letters never became texts read or studied widely.

4. Orthodoxy –

The most important evaluator was the intrinsic content. There were about 20 Gospels that circulated

during the first 100 years of Christianity, but unlike the 4 that became the accepted texts, the others

had content that was deemed to be not in keeping with the truth about the identity and mission of Jesus.

In Conclusion –

The story of our Bible is a fascinating one that causes real reverence for the men who were involved in the process and for the Spirit of God who obviously guided the emergence of the life-changing book!

2000 years ago, men walked with Jesus. Some of them were led by the Spirit to write down inspired accounts of their experiences. Through times of turbulence, those writing were preserved with a high level of accuracy.

In the last century or so, archaeological work has uncovered ever older documents, that move us back hundreds of years closer to the first texts. The most wonderful thing is that over time, there is next to no corruption of the New Testament text.

Currently we have more than 5000 Greek manuscripts, some very ancient and thousands of texts in other languages including Latin, Syriac, and Coptic. Comparing them all, we find less than 3% textual variation, with none being important to any church doctrine. Most of the variations have to do with very minor things like punctuation and verb tenses.

What does this mean for us?

Those writing come to us today to tell us about God’s nature, His character, and His love for us. If we believe the testimony of the Scripture about Jesus, and put our faith in Him, we are CHANGED!

If a person refuses to accept the New Testament’s authenticity or authority, he does so because he wants to. It does not require a ‘blind leap of faith’ to read and accept these writings.

So let me close with Paul’s encouragement to a young preacher named Timothy....

2 Timothy 2:14-16 (NIV) Keep reminding them of these things. Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly.

Amen.

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