Is the Bible Historically Reliable - The Old Testament

The Old Testament

Four lines of evidence will be considered here. These four lines of evidence will demonstrate that the Old Testament is historically reliable as the New Testament evidence has demonstrated it to be historically reliable.

How We Got It

Back in the day, before the printing press was invented, Jewish scribes were responsible for copying the Old Testament manuscripts. The autographs were written on materials such as papyrus, materials that deteriorated fairly quickly. Because of this, Jewish scribes would have to copy and recopy those manuscripts often. In order to insure that the new copies were not corrupted (they knew that they were duplicating God’s Word), extreme measures were adopted to insure integrity in the transmission process. For example, after the copying of a text was complete, they would count every single line, word, syllable, and letter to insure accuracy. Story states, “As a result of their diligence, the Old Testament in our Bible today is virtually identical to the autographs. Bible scholars have demonstrated this by comparing ancient copies of the Bible with more recent copies.”^[1]

1.       The Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are copies of the Old Testament text that date back to more than a century before the birth of Jesus. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts we had dated from 900A.D. or later. Paleographers, after careful study of these newly discovered texts, have dated some of those manuscripts to around 125B.C., making them about 1000 years older than the oldest manuscripts we had up to that time.  What did textual critics discover after carefully comparing the Dead Sea Scrolls to our standard Hebrew Bible? Archer states that these texts “prove to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The 5 percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations of spelling.”^[2]

Qumran Manuscripts of Books of the Old Testament^[3]

Canonical Division (According to the Hebrew Bible)	Old Testament Book (According to Order in Hebrew Bible)	Number of Qumran Manuscripts (?=possible fragment)
Pentateuch	Genesis	18+3?
(Torah)	Exodus	18
	Leviticus	17
	Numbers	12
	Deuteronomy	31+3?
Prophets (Nevi’im)	Joshua	2
	Judges	3
Former Prophets	1-2 Samuel	4
	1-2 Kings	3
Latter Prophets	Isaiah	22
	Jeremiah	6
	Ezekiel	7
	Twelve (Minor Prophets)	10+1?
Writings	Psalms	39+2?
	Proverbs	2
	Job	4
The Five Scrolls	Song of Songs	4
	Ruth	4
	Lamentations	4
	Ecclesiastes	3
	Esther	0
	Daniel	8+1?
	Ezra-Nehemiah	1
	1-2 Chronicles	1
Total		223 (233)

2.       Archaeology

As in the case of the New Testament, archaeological discoveries have gone a long way in validating the historical accuracy of the Old Testament. Events, people, nations, etc. that had been dismissed for years by the critics of the Bible as mythical have been proven to be accurate by these discoveries, just as the Old Testament had stated.

Story writes of some of those archaeological discoveries:^[4]

·         “Jericho, and several other cities mentioned in the Old Testament, previously thought to be legendary by skeptics, have now been discovered by archaeologist.”

·         “Bible critics use to claim that the Hittite civilization mentioned in Genesis did not exist at the time of Abraham because there was no record of it apart from the Old Testament. However, archaeology has discovered that it not only existed but it lasted more than 1200 years. Now you can even get a doctorate in Hittite studies from the University of Chicago.”

3.       Predictive Prophecy

It is astonishing to see how many fulfilled prophecies the Old Testament contains. These prophecies provided details not just generalities, and when they were fulfilled, they were fulfilled down to the minutest detail. We find three kinds of prophecies in the Old Testament:^[5] (1) About Jesus the coming Messiah, (2) about people, cities, and countries, and (3) about the Jews.

Some examples of detailed prophecy fulfilled in Christ:

Prophecy	Fulfillment
Micah 5:2	Luke 2:4-7
Isaiah 53:12	Luke 23:32-33
Psalm 22:16	John 19:18
Isaiah 53:9	Matthew 27:57-60

Little states, “One cannot deny the force of fulfilled prophecy as evidence of divine guidance. Furthermore, these are prophecies that which could not possibly have been schemed and written after the events predicted.”^[6]

Without question, the Bible, unlike any other literary work of antiquity, enjoys an unparalleled amount of evidence that clearly demonstrates beyond any doubt, that the Bible we hold in our hands today is as accurate and faithful to the original autographs as we could possibly have. Any discrepancies are minimal and negligible which in no way undermine its historic reliability. How did this happen? Well, God not only authored the Bible, He preserves it as well.

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[1] Dan Story, Defending Your Faith (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1997), p. 35.

[2] Gleason L. Archer Jr., Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Chicago: Moody, 1964), p. 19.

[3] Josh McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict (Nashville: Nelson, 1999), p. 80.

[4] Story, p. 36.

[5] Paul E. Little, Know Why You Believe, rev, ed., (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), pp. 68-69.

[6] Ibid., p. 70.