Can the Bible be Used to Prove Jesus’ Divinity?

Ru laid down the following argument at the forum. Thanks Ru.

This is a post I made today in a response to the Bible being evidence for Jesus Christ’s divinity.

[QUOTE=ElderJefferson;96462271]
If you had to pin it down to its most valid defences, I’d say:

1) Fulfilled Prophecies (the book of Daniel alone has led many souls to follow the Lord)
2a) Historical Accuracy
2b) Textual integrity (copying practices)
3) Conversions (the old “proof is in the pudding” adage)[/QUOTE]

I have separated 2a and 2b which are two separate issues but two specific areas where the Bible shows itself to be complete untrustworthy.

1) Fulfilled Prophecies
The Book of Daniel is a good example of a fabricated prophecy. The first 6 chapters were written around the time of the Jewish exile (6th century bce) but the rest of the chapters were most definitely written around 164 BCE. The 2nd author not only made the horrible mistake of referring to things which had not been invented until the 2nd century BCE but he also wrote in a form of Hebrew which was only used in the 2nd century BCE. Imagine someone claiming to have found a 16th century book by Shakespeare when it’s full of words such as “Internet” and “You got owned Dude”. The reality is that the 2nd portion of Daniel is actually littered with mid 2nd century BCE references, thus invalidating the prophecy because it was not written before the events it foretells but afterwards.

Overall Biblical prophecy is problematic because:

a) one has to wonder if an event would not have been a probability? E.g. saying that Israel would one day become a nation again is a large probability as it had already gone through a series of invasions and reconstitutions. In fact there was a decent probability of it happening again considering the fact that the Jews as a nation remained insular and intact even though they had moved to other parts of the world. It’s similar to saying that the Kurds would one day have their own homeland again. It’s a probability not a prophecy.

b) is the prophecy vague or precise?

c) how do we know that the record of the fulfilled prophecy as not fabricated, i.e. did the author of Matthew make up stories about Jesus in order to fit Messianic prophecies or was it the other way around. E.g. the story about Jesus walking into Jerusalem on a donkey was misunderstood by Matthew (Mt 21:1-7 ). When reading Zech 9:9, he thought the prophecy meant that the Messiah would have a Donkey and a Colt. Mark (Mk 11:1-7), Luke (Lk 19:29-35) and John (Jn 12:12-16) all read this to be only one donkey, not two. The author of Matthew, writing to a Jewish audience misunderstood Zechariah’s prophecy and in an attempt to make Jesus’ story fit with the prophecy added another donkey.

d) Is the prophecy actually Messianic to begin with? We have to evaluate if the Messianic prophecy which is referenced in the NT and elsewhere is indeed a prophecy about the Messiah at all. Some early Christians who had a limited understanding of the OT, assumed that the “suffering Servant” in Isaiah 53 is the supposed to be the Messiah, but if we read chapters 52 and 54 as well as the rest of the book it becomes clear that Isaiah repeatedly refers to the nation of Israel the “servant of God” and that the nation will be healed by going through a process of punishment (by his stripes we are healed). The same can be said of many other prophecies which appear to be Messianic in nature such as Psalm 22, which in essence is not about the crucifixion but rather King David and how his enemies are “like lions at his hands and feet” according to our oldest manuscripts.

Based on this Biblical prophecy fails the test for it being evidence for anything.

2a) Historical Accuracy
The Bible has lost a lot of confidence amongst historians and archaeologists in the past 100 years. In the 19th century historians used to use the Bible as a guide for doing excavations. The phrase “with a spade in one hand and the Bible in the other” became well known. However due to discoveries in the past century, it became clear that much in both the old and the new testament is historically flawed:

- No Flood.
- No mass enslavement of Jews in Egypt.
- No Exodus through the Sinai desert.
- No conquering of cities such as Jericho.
- Archaeological evidence actually shows a slow growth of tent dwelling migrants into the area around 900 BCE.
- No Davidic kingdom. By the time of David, Jerusalem was not much more than a small village dealing in local trade. Israel was also an Egyptian colony.
- No riches or kingdom of Solomon. No evidence exists for the richest man in the region yet trade agreements have been found with all neighbouring kings.
- The first real evidence for a large established kingdom comes around the time of Hezekiah. The same time when textual scholars believe that the OT was being formed.
- No slaughter of the innocents as was described in Luke. Killing the firstborn would have been recorded by both the Romans and the Jews who in particular would have still blamed the Romans for it to this day. It would also have been political suicide for Herod. It simply didn’t occur.
- Josephus disagrees with Luke over when the census occurred (see Theudas and Judas).
- They also disagree over when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

These are just a few but there are many more and for more on this I would refer to “Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts” by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman.

2b) Textual integrity (copying practices)
Textual integrity is one of the most problematic areas. Most of us have heard Christian apologists say things such as “There are 15000 old copies of NT manuscripts and there is no other book in antiquity which has so much textual integrity”.

This is actually a misrepresentation of the facts.

In reality the vast amount of these manuscripts were written after 600 AD and we only have a handful of copies that predate this. We have no complete book prior to the 2nd century AD and our earliest fragment which only contains a few words from John dates to 125 AD.

What makes this significant is that the process of copying texts was a very expensive process. Only the very rich could afford to buy copying materials and employ a copier to do this. Before the late 2nd century AD, the early church was mostly very poor. They could not afford decent paper and those making the copying didn’t have much more than a 1st grade education. In some cases the copiers couldn’t even read or write and were simply copying the symbols on the page.

During this time (30 - 200 AD) the NT was also continually added to, edited and changed by copiers who felt that the original text was either not clear enough or downright wrong. We know this because by the late 2nd century the church father Dionysus wrote a letter complaining that other churches were changing his letters and that he could not even trust the copy of Mark which he had because it had been changed so much. The early church didn’t regard the NT as scripture and thus didn’t have a problem changing the text. Justin Martyr, 1 Clement and Papias all referred to the gospels and Paul’s epistles as wise council but nothing more, reserving the term “scripture” for the Old Testament.
Thus the argument over whether the New Testament is inspired is redundant because we simply don’t know what the original copies looked like!
For information on the textual integrity of the OT I would refer to “Who wrote the Bible” by Richard E. Friedman

For information on the textual integrity of the NT I would refer to “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart Ehrman

3) Conversions
The problem with conversions is the following:

a) Religious conversion is not unique to Christianity but occurs daily in various religions.

b) Truth is not democratic. In fact the truth is hardly ever in line with what the masses want. The movie the Titanic is still today the most watched film of all time. Is anyone seriously suggesting it’s the best film of all time or is it maybe a case that it appeals to most people’s senses. Christianity started off as a very exclusive religion amongst the Jews and was opened up to the gentiles by Paul. Today the flavour of its’ message continues to change to become more acceptable to the masses. The Christian message in the West is significantly different from the message that’s preferred in South America or Africa.

The message has adapted to it’s audience and as such its’ wide acceptance does not validate the message itself.

In conclusion we can see that the Bible does not contain any prophecies which are unique and reliable, the historical aspect of it is in question, the text unreliable and the fact that the masses accept it is not validating of the message. The Bible cannot be used as evidence Jesus being the son of God.

* I on purpose gave sources from outside of the Internet due the fact that people often complain about internet based sources. These however can be provided if requested.