The Love of a Father

Neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39

One big question is:  Why does God love us so much, especially when so many people reject, ridicule, and criticize Him?  I don’t know.  The closest I can come to understanding is to think of my children.  I love them unconditionally despite every frustration, rejection, and angry word.  I love them enough that I would sacrifice my own life to ensure that I saved theirs.   God tells us in His letters that He loves us like that.  Like any good parent, God wants to give us a guide for life.  More or less, He has written a “How to Succeed in All Your Lives” guide.  He tells us all of the truly important things to know for this life and for eternal life.   

There are 66 books in the Bible that are written by the hands of men who scribed the words of God Himself.  As Christ Followers,  we believe through faith that the Bible is divine, inerrant, and immutable.  Those who are seeking and have not yet accepted those statements as true , however, may need a little more information. 

There are several truly extraordinary things about the Bible.  When you consider that it is comprised of 66 books and 31,102 verses that were written over an almost 1,500 year time span by 40 different people, and those people didn’t have all of the previously written manuscripts to review, the Bible is a seamless document.  It has one theme — God and His relationship with and love for all mankind.  Despite claims to the contrary, the Bible does not contradict itself but tells one perfect story.  I know, I know.  There are skeptics and naysayers out there who claim loudly that the bible has innumerable errors in it.  And they are right…kind of.  Remembering that the Bible is a series of books that was copied by hand by scribes over almost 1,500 years it would be ridiculous to say that there were no errors at all.  People make errors.  The more important consideration is, what kind of errors are there?  Not surprisingly there is a whole field of study about the topic known as  textural criticism, which identifies manuscript evidence .  What unbiased scholars who have studied the Bible have found is that there are errors but they are primarily based on form, not on content.  

The earliest copies of the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament and to Jews as the Tanakh, were written over 3,000 years ago.  The text from the manuscripts of the Tanakh were copied by men known as “Scribes”  or “Sofers” in ancient Israel.  The role of a Scribe in Hebrew society was not what we may imagine today — something like an editor or a secretary.  Instead, the Scribe was a man of great influence and stature.  His role was more like a lawyer, judge, or government official.  These were very important men who were required by Jewish Law to abide by strict guidelines when copying the sacred writings of the Tanakh.  The Scribe was required to make a perfect copy of the Tanakh, and had very specific rules to ensure they did so.  There were many rules, but I will explain  four that have bearing on the discussion of reliability in the modern bible.  

1.  Each word of the manuscript must be read aloud as it was copied.
2. The letters, words, and paragraphs had to be counted.    The middle word, letter, and paragraph must match the original or the manuscript would be discarded.  It is important to note here that the Tanakh is a sacred document and cannot be thrown away, so flawed manuscripts would be buried in a place called a “genizah”  or “hiding place” that resembled a tomb and would be found in a sacred place such as a synagogue or cemetery.  
3. The entire document became invalid if only two letters touched one another!
4. Every manuscript was reviewed within 30 days of completion, and if there were errors that would be equivalent to 3 pages, the entire manuscript must be buried and redone. 

There was no tolerance for error!  Later, in the Christian Era, Christian monks became scribes.  They, too, followed strict guidelines in the scriptoria of monasteries.  Over centuries, monks did make errors — mostly spelling and grammar — which are known as variants.   

In 1947 in the arid desert near Qumran in the West Bank of Israel, a young Arab boy happened upon a cave containing dozens of large clay pots filled with scrolls.  Now known as The Dead Sea Scrolls, this discovery is considered the most significant archaeological discovery of the 20th century.  Why?  The jars contained 972 ancient manuscripts and fragments of every book of the Hebrew Tanakh, with the exception of Esther. The scrolls were written between 300 BC and 100 AD,  1000 years earlier than any previously known copies.  Archaeologists were stunned when they studied the ancient documents and learned that they were 95% identical to modern copies of the Tanakh.  The remaining 5% were errors in form — not content — of the modern Tanakh.  In common terms, the errors were spelling and grammar but was still clearly understandable with regard to the content of the document.  What would that look like for us?  If I were to write “Are flag is red white and blue” instead of “Our flag is red, white, and blue.”  Do you see the difference?  You still understand the meaning of the phrase because the content didn’t change.  The error was in the form.