There is no magic formula or process one can use to dogmatically decide if a book is inspired by a deity.
To decide if a book is inspired or not, is a complex decision. There are a lot of different components to the topic, that have a wide range of interpretations, that different people will place different values on. To decide that a book is inspired is subjective to the person and will involve some level of faith to be sure that the book is inspired.
Since we are studying the Bible, we will briefly explore what contributes to people believing that this book is inspired by God. The Bible also claims to be divinely inspired, a claim that most books do not make.
“All scripture is breathed out by God..” 1 Tim 3:6
Here are some of the common contributing components that build faith in divine biblical inspiration:
- Creation
- Prophecy
- Archaeology
- Resurrection
- Witness of Israel
- Biblical consistency
- Personal experience with God (eg. Prayer)
This isn’t a comprehensive list, but they are the more common components that people use as the foundation of their faith in Bible inspiration from God. For the sake of showing how some of these contributing components ‘work’ let’s look at two of these, prophecy and resurrection.
Prophecy:
Two of the easier prophecies to see and explain are Daniel 2 and Ezekiel 37.
Daniel 2
Daniel 2 is a prophecy written in before 165 BC but describes the world powers up to Rome and into the future. The summary below provides the explanation of the image which King Nebuchadnezzar had in Daniel 2.
Daniel 2 is a simple prophecy but it is explained in more detail in Daniel 7,8 and 11. If you want to look into it more this matrix will help in making sense of the enigmas inside these chapters.
Ezekiel 37
Ezekiel 37 again is a simple prophecy but is one of the most recent prophecies to be fulfilled. It describes the nation of Israel being setup back in its original location (where it still is today). Unlike other prophecies, there is not room to mistake who it is talking about because in the last half of the chapter it goes onto explain the metaphor that has just been described. It states that slowly but surely the Jewish people will regroup and settle in the land of Israel, where they will become one nation, part of the prophecy is yet to be fulfilled, this is the Jews having one King that will rule over the whole earth.
This YouTube clip narrate the prophecy and help visualise what Ezekiel is saying.
The oppression of the Jews throughout World War II by the Hitler regime acted as a catalyst to bring back together the Jewish people, years after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the state of Israel in AD70. This was the first time there was a real drive to recreate a nation of Israel. There was a journalist named Theodor Herzl who originally had not intended on leading a political movement. but when he saw his people oppressed in France, with false convictions and mass rallies against the Jewish people, he wrote articles and plays in support of a Zionist movement. His most outright work was Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews) where he made the case that the only way that Jews could live in peace and safety was for them to have their own state a Jewish state where they could be one nation. Early thoughts for the state were places like Australia, Argentina or preferably, for Palestine, their historic homeland.
As per Ezekiel 37:22 they were to settle in “the mountains of Israel” which refers to Ezekiel 6:2 where is where they were taken away from, so they had to go back to their own land from where they had come from. Today it seems obvious this was would be the case, but prior to 1948 there are many records of people saying this is what must happen, a writer by the name of John Thomas who died in 1871 writes about this in detail in his books prior to it happening.
There was so much pressure from the world for the state of Israel not to form. So much so, that 5 days after the declaration of the state of Israel, they were attacked by Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria. A little nation that was 5 days old got attacked by 4 established countries. Remarkably, after the war finished Israel survived and captured back more land than what they had before. Again in June 1967, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq attacked Israel, however the tables turned and within 6 days the Israeli forces managed to capture Jerusalem which they previously did not occupy and the Sinai peninsula which they gave back to Egypt.
All in all, it is amazing that the Jewish people continue to hold to their strong identity and remain in their land (which a lot of the world does not want them to have). They continue to receive pressure for their existence despite their progression of their country and progression of the region. As per Ezekiel they are to remain in their land until the second coming of Jesus (Ezekiel 37:24).
Resurrection
The resurrection of Jesus is our second cause for considering the Bible’s divine inspiration. We will focus on two components of the resurrection, the empty tomb and the experience of the disciples.
The Empty Tomb
Firstly, the resurrection was first preached in Jerusalem. If someone wanted to show this was not true, all they would have to do is find the body. No one would be foolish enough to believe that Jesus rose from the dead if his body was still in the tomb for everyone to see. The hostile, anti-christian Jews would have been very quick to point this out to squash the movement.
Paul Althaus writes, the resurrection proclamation “could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned.”
Secondly, Jewish arguments against Christianity admit that the tomb was empty. Matt 28:11-15 says that the Jews spread rumours that the disciples had stolen the body. This is significant because these theories attempting to discredit the resurrection are accepting that the tomb is empty.
Even the Toledoth Jesu, a compilation of Jewish writings that ridiculed Jesus’ life admits that the tomb was empty and offers an explanation to explain the emptiness. Apparently, there is another recorded discussion between Christians and Jews where the Jews are arguing that body is stolen. (confirming the tomb was empty).
This is interesting because the Jews wanted to put a stop to Christianity. This is why their acknowledgement of the empty tomb carries so much weight. Why would they admit the emptiness of the tomb? The evidence must have been to strong to deny it. If a source admits a fact that is not in favour of their point of view, then it seems likely the fact is genuine.
Thirdly, the tomb was discovered by women. In Jewish culture a female’s word carried next to no authority. If the account of the resurrection was fabricated to convince people that Jesus had risen, then why use women as the chief witnesses of the empty tomb?
Fourthly, the accounts use specific details to describe how this took place. For example, Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus. Joseph was part of the Sanhedrin and would have been well known to the Jews of the time. To cite such a specific reference, and for the reference to be false would have been a silly idea for the recorders of the gospel. All that is needed to refute the resurrection is to disprove the surrounding facts. However, this appears not to have happened due to the spread and traction that the story of the resurrection gained.
Real Experiences
The actions of the disciples also indicate a real experience. I cannot see any reason why the disciples would be motivated to steal the body. (Perhaps grave robbers may have been motivated by $$, but this seems unlikely). However the two prominent groups at the time opposing the resurrection, the Jews and Romans would not be motivated to steal the body as this would support the disciples claims that Jesus had risen. Also, it doesn’t seem likely that the disciples would want to take the body. They are under a lot of scrutiny from the Jews and a lot of them ended up losing their lives for the cause. This seems unlikely if the story was fabricated.
So, there is no disputing that some people believed that Jesus rose from the dead. These people claiming Jesus had risen from the dead were either:
- Lying
- Hallucinating
- Telling the truth
If they were lying, they would have died (or been persecuted) for a lie that they knew was a lie. How could all the disciples stick to the lie for their whole lifetime without one of them snitching and revealing the resurrection is a lie under the immense pressure that they faced. If we compare the spread of Christianity to the Watergate scandal, is it reasonable to believe that the disciples successfully pulled of the scandal? What was driving them?
If they were hallucinating, we must ignore all the recorded appearances to the disciples. This is because when Jesus appears to them they are doing things that you can’t do while hallucinating. Such as eating, drinking, poking fingers in wounds. Also group hallucination is unlikely.
It seems unlikely that the disciples were deliberately lying or hallucinating. The most obvious option left is that they truly believed that they saw Jesus, risen from the dead.
The agreement between the conflicting groups (Jews, Romans, disciples) of the “empty tomb” and the actions of the disciples post resurrection indicate that it is likely that the event of the resurrection occurred. This is why the resurrection helps build confidence that the bible is divinely inspired as resurrection is divine and the account of the resurrection is recorded in the bible.
It is worth noting that for these to form a true and sure foundation for faith in inspiration, they must have the possibility to be proved wrong in the believers mind. If the possibility of components being wrong does not exist, the faith is blind faith. The believer may as well believe in Santa Claus. In the end, it is up to the individual to weigh up the evidence for and against a book, and to decide if the evidence provides a personally satisfactory foundation to believe that the book is inspired. The interpretation of the evidence and the amount of evidence required will vary from person to person.
