Many Books in One
Dr. Reagan: Back in the "Dark Ages" when I was a kid during the late 1930's and 1940's, I grew up in a nation where the majority of people were professing Christians. We read the Bible in school, we used it in fact in English classes, and we prayed in school. Most people went to church. But, things have drastically changed since then. We now live in a secular nation that seems to have little familiarity with the Word of God.
Eric Barger: Let's begin by shattering a common misconception, one that the secularist would use in trying to argue with us that the Bible is just merely one book. The Bible is in actuality 66 different books neatly put together into one binding that we conveniently have as one book today. This compilation of these books into the Bible was written by forty different authors over about a 1,500 year period in its production.
We can see the supernatural handprint of God on it as it harmonizes so perfectly together. So, when I quote Isaiah to prove Jesus, or when I quote Jesus to talk about Moses, I am not quoting the same source as secularists would immediately claim in saying that we are using the fallacy of circular reasoning. It's not circular reasoning.
The Bible is unique and it is the only book in the world of its sort. In fact, as I said, it is 66 unique different books written in three different languages over 1,500 years: Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew. And yet, it all fits together to create one theme. This unity shows the handprint of God as He came upon men to write His thoughts down in His desire for us to understand.
The Bible deals with all different kinds of words. It's got the words of angels, the words of demons, the words of Jesus, and even the words of Lucifer. As God's Word it gives us the account of the Jews in the Old Testament as well as it gives us a basis for the Church in the New Testament. Without the Old the New falls apart, and without the New the Old falls apart.
Jesus validated the Old Testament by quoting 24 different books from the Old Testament. The egghead theologians out there try to tear apart the Bible by saying it has errors all throughout it, or that it's just not that reliable, or that it's a nice idea but it's not really the Word of God. Now, if Jesus was the perfect God-man and was God incarnate and He came here and He quoted something from the Old Testament, you would have thought He would have brought correction to it instead of corroboration if He thought it was recorded incorrectly.
Deciding Which Books Comprise the Bible
Dr. Reagan: Who put the Bible together? The 66 books that were put together into what we now have as the Bible came about in some way.
Eric Barger: The Early Church just didn't one day decide to go to Starbucks to get a coffee, choose whatever books, and declare in that one day, "Well, I think we've got it now." Actually, the Old Testament had already been put together by the Jews, so that part was already done.
Now, for the New Testament, during the First Century of Christianity there wasn't a standardized set of teachings that the Church taught from. Pastor A over here may of only had a couple of Paul's letters that he trusted. And, Pastor B, he maybe had the books of Acts and Matthew. Pastor C had something else. But, they didn't have a standardized set of teachings. It wasn't really until about 140 AD due to a cult leader named Marcion that the Church felt really compelled to collect all the New Testament teachings because there were so many thousands of people who had gotten confused and were following Marcion's cultic ideas. Marcion believed the God of the Old Testament was different than the God of the New, and so they needed a standardized set of teachings that would refute not only Marcion but many of the cultic, Gnostic ideas that were out in those days. That's what really catapulted them into putting together the first Canon.
Their criterion for selection was interesting. Now understand, there were 12 Gospels and over 50 different letters or epistles out there, but very few of them made it into the New Testament as we know it. Only four gospels and a handful of letters qualified.
The number one criteria that the Church used in those days was this question: Did the teaching in these letters match the oral teaching of the Apostles? Did it match what the Apostles taught their disciples and their disciples taught their disciples? In those early days they heard and they learned what the Church believed orally. They heard a teaching, and if a letter didn't match like for example the Gospel of Thomas, then it didn't make the cut.
Dr. Reagan: I am sure you are aware of the fact that one of the major attacks on the Bible today is the attack that all these deciding councils were political and the people who just happened to have the political power selected the books. Detractors say there were other books that should have been selected like the Gospel of Thomas. They'll claim they were certainly canonical and should have been added in. It's just who was on the winning political side to them.
Eric Barger: Sure, there was the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Jude, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and so many others, but they didn't match the teaching of the apostles like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John did so well.
Dr. Reagan: In fact, when you read those you sense immediately they don't match up.
Nathan Jones: Mary's Gospel even tells you that you have to tithe to get into Heaven.
Eric Barger: Yes. These other gospels and other epistles also didn't make it into the Bible because they held things that were not true historically, but in particular they weren't true in harmonizing with the oral teaching of the apostles.
Nathan Jones: Wasn't the Gospel of Thomas actually written 200 and some years after Thomas? Even the book of Enoch showed up as late as the 1700's.
Eric Barger: Yes, the Apostle Thomas could not have written the Gospel of Thomas. It was a common practice by some unethical people to attach the name of somebody from Christian history to gain notoriety for their false teachings. The criteria of authorship is exactly why the book of Hebrews was one of the last books added to the New Testament, because no one was quite sure who wrote it. I personally believe that Paul wrote it, but I won't break fellowship with somebody who disagrees with me on that. We may not know who wrote it for sure, but it matches theologically with the teachings the apostles taught orally along with the first person accounts of the four Gospels.
Eric Barger: Well, the Dead Sea Scrolls helped us, because the Dead Sea Scrolls mention every book of the Old Testament except for the book of Esther.
Dr. Reagan: Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest manuscripts we had of the Old Testament were only a 1,000 years old, so the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls catapulted us back another 1,000 years. When comparing the manuscripts, it was discovered that there were not any major differences from the ancient versions to what we have today.
Eric Barger: Exactly! That is the stunning thing about being able to compare our manuscripts from those of nearly 2,000 years ago. When they were examined side-by-side, it was obvious that we have the inerrant Word of God today. God has supernaturally protected His own Word.
Nathan Jones: Some people seem to treat the Bible as if God can't write a book. Sure, He can make the universe, but He just can't keep a book about Himself together. That attitude shows a lack of trust in God.
Wouldn't you say that most of the major criticism of the Bible comes from people who are too scared to trust the Bible as God's Word?
Eric Barger: It also lifts up the idea that man knows better than God. I've said so often that no teaching on the earth either scientific or historical is ever placed at the mercy of the Scriptures. And yet, a lot of people out there want to test the Bible by all that man knows. Instead, I think we ought to test everything that man brings up by the Bible.
The Bible is the most important book that I will ever learn from. Contained within are the very things I need to know more than anything else. It is what my children and grandchildren and, well, just everyone needs to know more than anything else. When it comes to all of my secular education, the second I breathe my last breath it is finished being of use. But, the Bible — the very Word of God — will last for eternity!
So, indeed, what the Bible teaches is the most important thing I will ever know.
Eric Barger: God has shown Himself to us in it. There's no doubt about that. The Bible gives us the account of the God-man Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself validates so many of the Old Testament passages. The New Testament quotes 34 Old Testament books, and Jesus himself quotes 24 of the Old Testament books.
Maybe the best proof the Bible is the Word of God is fulfilled prophecy. Fulfilled prophecy shows us that the Word of God has stood the test of time. There is no other book in the world that contains fulfilled prophecy.
Dr. Reagan: How could anyone get around that fact? Some try. That is the reason why liberals for example hate Bible prophecy so much. They hate it with a passion. They hate the book of Daniel because it is so specifically fulfilled in history.
Eric Barger: Yes, and the book of Daniel is one of the most attacked books by the liberals.
Nathan Jones: They will move the date up so that all the prophecies would become past tense to the original author.
Eric Barger: Exactly, it makes it look like Daniel was writing from his pre-cognitive knowledge, or that someone wrote in Daniel's name.
Dr. Reagan: Daniel wrote history in advance better than most people have written it afterwards.
Eric Barger: True, but the liberals want to tell you that Daniel was written in the Maccabean period. That would be 350 years after Daniel died. They want to say that it was written later by somebody else who already knew the events, but we can quickly see in Daniel 9 if you harmonize it with Ezra 7, you will see that God's Word was fulfilled. God fulfilled this almost to the day when Jesus Christ arrived on the scene exactly 483 years later, just as Daniel predicted it ahead of time.
Dr. Reagan: I was speaking at a church one time and asked the congregation to turn over to the book of Daniel. The pastor stood up right in the front row and said, "We don't allow the book of Daniel to be read in this church!" He went on, "You obviously are not a seminary graduate or you would know that book is fallacious. It just pretends to be prophecy." Right in front of the whole congregation I asked, "What do you mean?" He replied, "All educated people know it was written in the time of Christ." I countered, "How then do you explain the fact that it was in the Septuagint, 228 years or more before Christ? It was included in the Septuagint translation." He just shrugged it off and said, "I don't want to discuss it."
Eric Barger: I think the most telling fact that supports the veracity of Daniel is that Jesus quoted Daniel. Jesus by doing that validated Daniel's authorship. If there was something wrong with anything in the Old Testament, instead of quoting it, Jesus would have corrected it, but He didn't.
Eric Barger: I preach from the King James Version. I use it in my writings. But, I read other versions and say that no matter what version you are reading, if there is something there that you don't understand and there is something that doesn't make sense to you, everybody use a Strong's Concordance. You can get one on your iPhone or your computer, or the paper book, and everybody should have access to one. It's not rocket science since everybody should be able to access it. With Strong's Concordance we all ought to be able to look at the original words that the English Bible translations are taken from. You can't literally translate from every Greek word into English. Sometimes it takes a sentence to make one Greek word make sense and vice versa with the two languages. So, rather than argue about which version Paul preached from, and I've heard that one before, remember which version Jesus had to preach from.
Again, I use the King James and I love the King James. I love the poetry of it and so on. But, if I ever run into a problem or something I don't quite understand, I think it's healthy to always look at the original words. You are going to learn more that way when you dig into it. I go back to the Greek and Hebrew and look at them because they are the original language that the Bible was written in. If you really want to argue what the best Bible is, it's the Greek and Hebrew versions.
Nathan Jones: Did you then recommend any modern translation, because there a lot of camps who say that King James is the only version that we can use. Then there are others who will say it's okay to use the NIV or the NAS. And then, of course, we've got all the people who don't even speak English. What about them?
Eric Barger: Sure, and there is no Japanese King James Version, for example. There is no King James Version in a lot of these other languages in the world. I don't necessarily recommend or not recommend any of those. I'm not trying to be a fence sitter, mind you. I personally will use the King James Bible, but I will read the others and I have them and I am glad that they are there so that I can find out from more modern English just what some of these ideas mean or what some of the sentences are saying. But, I'll always take it back to the Greek and Hebrew as I think they are the key.
Dr. Reagan: I personally have a great admiration for the King James Version. It's had a great impact upon Western society. I enjoy the beauty of its language. Many, many of the terms that we use in English today come from its pages. It's as beautiful as anything that Shakespeare ever wrote, and so I really have a lot of respect for it.
What most people don't realize is that the King James is only 400 years old, and prior to that for over a 1,000 years the only Bible that the Western world really had was the Latin Vulgate that Jerome put together. It served the Western world a lot longer than the King James has.
When I run into people who call themselves "King James Version Only" claiming that version is the only one you can use or otherwise you are apostate, I wonder what did they think was going on for 1,200 years when people didn't have their favorite version? And yet, they came to know the Lord and they gave their lives to Him.
When I was growing up as a kid the only version we had was King James, and I found it very difficult to read. To me it was like reading Shakespeare and I really had difficulty with it, so therefore I didn't read the Bible very much. When I became a freshman in college my mother and dad sent me a Christmas present. I opened it up and it was the J.B. Phillips paraphrase of the New Testament. I had never heard of a paraphrase and didn't know what a paraphrase was, but I opened it and started reading it and I literally could not put it down. I read it day and night through again and again, and it got me interested in reading the Bible.
Later, I went to a more literal translation and began to use them. I now use the New American Standard in my preaching today. I think there are some really good modern translations, even including the New King James.
What people also don't realize about the King James often is that it has been revised many times over the years. The King James Version we have today is not the King James produced in 1611. It has been revised many times to correct errors and punctuation. Also, thousands of new Greek manuscripts were discovered that don't even have to do with the Bible, but by reading those Greek manuscripts we come to a better understanding of Greek words that have an impact on how we translate.
Eric Barger: There are people who will go to the wall over the King James Version. They break fellowship and they even don't want to talk to you.
I don't want to shake the confidence that anybody might have in me, but when I got saved I was reading the Living Bible. It's a paraphrase. It was the same for me, a kind of a night and day reading bing. I went from reading the Living Bible to the King James with no time in between.
Dr. Reagan: I counsel new believers all the time who tell me they are having great difficulty understanding the Old Testament to get a paraphrase and start reading it. It will help them better understand the Bible's message. But, always remember, you need to get back to a really good translation that is more literal in nature.
Eric Barger: Use study helps. You don't have to be a seminarian to use good study helps like a Bible dictionary or Strong's Concordance.
Literal Interpretation
Eric Barger: Look for the harmonization of Scriptures. Look at the times in the text where God is validating His Word as the truth. We see this played out so many times throughout Bible prophecy. I read once there are 324 prophecies about the Messiah in the Bible and we see so many of those have already come to pass.
To me, the validation of God's Word when reading and understanding it comes from a literal interpretation. That's the most important key. Never be like those people who today spiritualize the text resulting in unintended meanings.
Dr. Reagan: I emphasize interpreting literally over and over again. People get all upset and their noses bent out of shape over the word "literally." They'll say to me, "Don't you realize there is poetry? Don't you realize there is allegory?" I reply, "Look for the plain sense meaning even when there is an allegory or there is a symbol. Look for the plains sense meaning, but don't play with it." Of course, spiritualizers are those who take it and say it never means what it says. Spirtualization is the greatest abuse of the Scriptures because then you make yourself God so that you can make the Bible say anything that you want it to say.
Eric Barger: Yes, exactly. I read a quote by a fellow who has been taken up on apostasy or heresy charges by his denomination. This is the fourth time they have done it. He was a Bishop in his denomination and he finally declared that he didn't believe the Bible meant anything literal that we think it means.
Dr. Reagan: God knows how to communicate. God wants to communicate. You don't have to have a degree in hermeneutics or a degree in imagination to understand God's Word. What you do have to have is a childlike faith, a belief that God really wants to communicate, and you have to have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to really understand it in depth.
Eric Barger: God will use versions like the Living Bible, for example. He will use different things to communicate to us. All of us are still trying to make our way along in this life-long journey of Christianity. We are all still learning and all still trying to refine who we are and what we believe. That's the great thing about the Bible — we can be reading the same passages again and again, but the Bible speaks in different ways to us at different points in our lives.
Starting Point
Dr. Reagan: Okay, assume I'm a new convert who grew up in a non-Christian family and have just been handed my first Bible. Where do I start?
Eric Barger: The book of John.
Dr. Reagan: Why would you recommend starting there rather then starting with Genesis?
Eric Barger: I believe the way the book of John teaches us about the life of Jesus really is the thing we need today. We don't start back at Genesis, though it's great to read from Genesis 1:1 and find out about God creating the world, the Fall of mankind, and the beginnings of the trials of Israel.
We first will want to learn about the Messiah, the One who has saved us, though. Once we become a Christian, the very first thing we'll want to do is find out more about Jesus. The book of John I believe clearly teaches the life of Jesus in a way that virtually everybody can understand.
The second book I would take people to, and I know there is disagreement about this one, is the book of Romans. Its Paul's great theological book where people can begin to learn what they believe. And, yes, it's going to take them awhile.
Dr. Reagan: So, you want them to jump into the deep water there? You would need to tell them that even Peter said that there were some things Paul wrote that were difficult to understand.
How about you, Nathan, where would you tell people to go?
Nathan Jones: Well, definitely John. John is the place to first go. I wouldn't start them in Genesis, because for instance my son who is of elementary age has started to get into Numbers since he's been working his way from the beginning. He kind of stole my Archaeology Study Bible and he is now getting bogged down in Numbers. That's when people start giving up on reading their way through the Bible. But, with John, you've got the Gospel. Later, as they go back and start reading the Old Testament, they'll see it all tie together.
For children, and especially because I do a lot with children who are at a young age, there is a wonderful new Bible out now called the Action Bible. It's an entire comic book or also called a graphic novel Bible. It's only $25 and it takes the pictures and the stories and the theology and brings them all to life with characters they can see and heroes they can follow. My kids are eating it up! They absolutely love it, and so I would definitely especially for kids start with something that visually makes the Bible come alive for them. Children certainly can read the Bible just as well as adults can as long as it's from a version that's in modern English. When they are ready for old King James English, I will give them a King James Bible, but right now the NIV I believe is easier to read.
Eric Barger: We need to teach them to respect the longevity of the King James. It's a version we can still all enjoy and appreciate and I'm grateful for it. But again, like I said, I read them all and look through them if there's a verse that I really want to get more depth out of. I will read the passage in three or four different versions and even go to the Greek and look at it via tools like Strong's Concordance.
Dr. Reagan: Good point! Everytime a new version comes out, I go and take a look at it because I will usually discover something I haven't discovered before from my favorite version. Just by the little bit of different wording I will get a point that I hadn't gotten before. So, I recommend folks take a look at all of them. In fact, I'm hungry for them when they come out.
Eric Barger: Me, too, but above all, I think this discussion over which version to use should not bring division between Christians. The Bible no matter the version will inspire in us a hunger for the Word of God. If there's any single thing the Church needs today, it's to reignite our hunger for the Word of God.
