Page 10 - Bible Study Methods-Textbook_Neat

Zech.7:12 – “The words which the Lord of Hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former
prophets.”
Acts 4:24,25 – “God…who by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father David…did say.”

God used several methods of inspiration in writing the Scriptures. The first is called direct dictation
found in Deut. 9:10. Secondly, God superintended human research (Luke 1:1-4). Third, God spoke
directly to the writer (Gal.1:12).

Verbal inspiration means that the very words are inspired. (1 Cor.2:12, 13; Gal.3:16; Matt.22:31-32).
God superintended that every word choice, though the words of the authors, were exactly the words He
wanted published in the Scriptures.

How do we know the Bible is completely true?

Inerrancy means that Scripture is without error. It tells the truth. And we believe that the very words of
the original autographs were written without error. However, we do not have any of the original
autographs today. So we have a problem.

Inerrancy is an issue because some religious “scholars” have repeatedly redefined such terms as
“infallible” to mean the Bible could still have factual historical errors. When inerrancy is not held, one
by one certain Bible doctrines (deity of Christ, etc.), historical facts (such as the literal creation), and
other Biblical views (on issues such as homosexuality or women’s roles) are denied.

The science of Textual Criticism is to review the various copies or manuscripts of
the Bible that we have found to see if we can detect any variants in copies from
the original autographs. The New Testament has been preserved in more
manuscripts than any other ancient work, having over 5,800 complete or
fragmented Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and 9,300
manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic,
Ethiopic, Coptic, and Armenian.

98.33 % of all the manuscripts agree 100%. That means that the copyists were careful not to change the
text throughout the ages of time. Also, there are really only 400 variants that affect the sense of the
passage, and only 50 of these have doctrinal significance. We have over 5,300 copies of ancient
manuscripts, some back to the 2 Century. By comparing the various manuscripts, we can pretty much
nd
see when a variant was introduced and why.

Can I Trust the Bible?

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