Page 4 - Bibliology - Textbook w videos short

2. How did it get its name?
3. Who wrote it?
4. Is it God’s Word as it claims?
5. How do we know all the “books” of the Bible successfully made it into the canon?
6. What does “inspiration” mean?
7. What is “plenary inspiration?”
8. What does “inerrancy” mean?
9. What languages was it written in?
10. Has the truth written in the original manuscripts been preserved for us today?
11. Are there errors in the Bible?
12. What about all the versions of the Bible? How come there are so many versions?
13. Is the King James Version of the Bible more accurate than modern versions?
14. 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.

The Bible says that God has revealed Himself to mankind in various ways.
It says that the creation speaks clearly of His existence and of His
handiwork. All mankind has to do is look at what exists to see the handy
design of an omniscient Designer. Throughout history, man can see God
moving and directing its course to accomplish the story found in the Bible.
Often in this journey, God steps in and performs miracles and visions by
prophets to move history in the proper direction. But the greatest
revelation of God is in the person of Jesus Christ who claimed to be God
himself in flesh. John best describes His entry into the world of man:

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1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the
beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that
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was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
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14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son
from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-4, 14, ESV)

The Greek word for WORD is logos, which literally means “the expression of God.” The Logos with
whom John states is a Person. Readers of the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) had long been
familiar with the term "Word of God" as equivalent to the Gospel; but the essential idea of John's Word
is Jesus Himself, His Person. He is stating that Jesus was in the beginning with God and that Jesus was

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