Page 4 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible Student Textbook

The Bible claims to be a Word from God or God’s revelation to mankind. The questions we can ask are,
“How do we know that the Bible’s claim is true? How do we know the Bible is REALLY God’s word to
man? And how do we know that the copy we have today is what was originally written?

Other faiths make similar claims. Islam claims that the Quran is God’s final revelation through the
prophet Mohammad. They also claim that the Bible was polluted by copyists and that Islam brought
back the truth lost in the contamination of the Bible. The Pali Canon, which means “the word of
Buddha,” is considered the word of god to Buddhist. Buddhists also claim the Sanskrit Canon, Mahayana
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scriptures, Tantric Scriptures and the Tibetan and Mongolian Canons all are god’s word to us. Hindus
worship millions of gods and claim that the Vedas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Puranas
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are revelations from their gods. Even the cults write their own translations of “God’s Word” to fit their
errant doctrines. The New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Clear Word of the
Adventist movement all are claimed to be accurate presentations of God’s Word to their people.

Then other questions about the Bible must be considered:

Is the Bible really God’s Word as it claims?
Is there any proof that the Bible is trustworthy?
How do we know all the “books” of the Bible successfully made it into the canon?
What does “inspiration” mean?
What is “plenary inspiration?”
What does “inerrancy” mean?
What languages was it written in?
Has the truth written in the original manuscripts been preserved for us today?
Is the doctrine of preservation explicitly taught in the Scriptures?
Do we have the complete Bible? Were some books left out of the canon?
Are there errors in the Bible?
What about all the versions of the Bible? How come there are so many versions?
Is the King James Version of the Bible more accurate than modern versions?
Are there versions that are accurate to the original manuscripts and others that are NOT accurate?
Which version should I use? How can I know that a version is true to the original texts?

These and a multitude of other questions will be answered in this course. So we set out on a quest to
find out if the Bible we have in our hands is really the Bible God wrote thousands of years ago. Let’s
start with the claims of the Bible itself.

The Witness of the Bible

The Bible’s witness to itself is that it is God’s Word, and thus, the
authority in our lives for what we believe to be true and how we live
our lives. Our understanding of man’s nature, of man’s beginning, of
who God is, how sin entered the world, and how salvation came to
man is very much dependent on how much we believe about the Bible.
And according to the Bible, our future throughout all eternity is based
on how we respond to what the Bible declares as truth.

1 https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-the-pali-canon/
2 https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/essays/hindu-scriptures
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