WHAT IF IT’S TRUE?

THE DaVINCI CODE 2:

How Do We Know the Bible is True?

By Rev. Jerry Schmoyer © 2006 Jerry@Schmoyer.Net

Almost 200 years ago a French atheist named Voltaire declared that there would not be a copy of the Bible on earth in a hundred years. Voltaire is dead, and one may barely recall the date of his death. The Geneva Bible Society is using the very printing press on which his infidel prophecy was issued. The French Bible Society stores extra Bible in his home.

Today four hundred million copies of the sacred Scriptures, in fully three hundred tongues, are in circulation. Still the Bible is attacked. Overtly it is confiscated and burnt in many places. In other places, like our country, the attacks are more subtle but just as dangerous. God and the Bible are rejected.

G. K. Chesterton famously said something to this effect: When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing-they believe in anything. This phenomenon partly explains the remarkable success of The Da Vinci Code. It's about a heretofore hidden knowledge that promises to let us in on the "true" history of Christianity.

Author Dan Brown gives us a Jesus who neither died on the cross nor rose from the dead. Instead, He married Mary Magdalene and had children by her. This "sacred blood line" is the treasure safeguarded by the Catholic Church, in a desperate attempt to cover up this secret and murders those who threaten to expose it.

People flock to stories like The Da Vinci Code in part because all humans are searching for the secret knowledge that answers the mysteries of life. And when The Da Vinci Code debuts in May, millions more Americans will get a condensed tour de distortion.

The good news is that The Da Vinci Code readers and viewers are seeking answers to the central questions of life. The challenge is for us to supply the true answers.

Here we look at more of the ‘claims’ in the DaVinci Code – especially about the BIBLE.

DID CONSTANTINE EMBELLISH OUR FOUR GOSPELS?

In one section of The Da Vinci Code, Brown’s character Teabing repeats a number of false statements about the influence of the emperor Constantine that have been circulating for a long time on the conspiracy fringe, and that have long since been refuted by credible scholarship. Let’s have a look at them.

On pages 231-32 of The Da Vinci Code we read: “… Teabing burst in with enthusiasm. ‘The fundamental irony of Christianity! The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great.’ ‘I thought Constantine was a Christian,’ Sophie said. ‘Hardly,’ Teabing scoffed. ‘He was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest. In Constantine’s day Rome’s official religion was sun worship—the cult of Sol Invictus, or the Invincible Sun—and Constantine was its head priest….’”

Then on the next page we read that Constantine switched worship from the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday in order to worship the sun god! These things are just not true!

Constantine’s Christianity was genuine. It is true that he continued to feature Sol Invictus (the sun god) on coins after his conversion in 312, but he did gradually remove it over the next 10 years. His changed life and support of Christian causes helped support the genuineness of his conversion.

Constantine’s baptism was voluntary. It is true that he was baptized on his deathbed, but he had been waiting to travel to the Jordan River to be baptized. Besides, it was common practice then to put off baptism as long as possible because it was felt that baptism removed sin so the more that were covered the better.

Sunday worship was long established when Constantine made it the official worship day of the Roman Empire in March of 321. Christians had been doing so from the time of Jesus and he adopted their practice. The book of Acts and the Epistles state they worshipped on Sunday, as do the writings of many early church leaders.

The gospels were authentic and not, as the DaVinci Code states on page 234, “"Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike.” While he ordered 50 copies made, he did not change anything written in them. It would have been impossible to get faithful Christians to accept such accounts. Millions had died to uphold the truth of their faith. In addition, we have copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that are from 100 years or more before the time of Constantine and no changes have been made.

CAN WE TRUST THE BIBLE?

What is the danger in these statements about the Bible? What difference would it have made if Constantine had changed the gospels to make Jesus God? The answer is obvious – the Bible couldn’t be trusted as God’s Word. If the Bible isn’t true, then what is the authority in your life? What’s going to be the basis for your beliefs and behavior? What’s going to be the guidebook you rely on?

FALSE: WE CAN’T TRUST THE BIBLE

So is the Bible a trustworthy and reliable source of information about God and Jesus? The DaVinci Code says “Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false.” (page 235) Teabing, the ‘hero’ of the story, also states: “…The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven…The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.” (page 231)

This implies there is some great confusion over the translation and passing on of the Bible but that is totally untrue as we will soon see.

Teabing goes on with more specific claims: “Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic and inspirational leader the world has ever seen….Understandably, His life was recorded by thousands of followers across the land….More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John among them…The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great.”

The truth is that were not 80 gospels but just a handful. Most were obvious fakes.

The Nag Hammadi Gospels would be included with these fakes. While the book says they are “unaltered gospels” and “the earliest Christian records” (page 245) this is clearly not the case. Scholars agree that the New Testament books were all written 100 to 200 years before these books. That means the Nag Hammadi gospels are 3 to 5 generations removed from the events they claim to portray.

The Nag Hammadi texts are Gnostic scriptures. The Gnostics taught that salvation came by a secret knowledge gained only by a few enlightened ones. They placed no value on the death and resurrection of Jesus other than to say He had ‘found’ this knowledge of theirs. Since the New Testament books clearly opposed what they taught they had to come up with their own texts so they wrote these false gospels. The Gospel of Judas is an example.

The Gospel of Judas was unimportant to most Christians when it was written hundreds of years ago and it is unimportant today. The text, like the gospels of Mary Magdalene and Philip, does not merit the name 'Gospel'. A 'Gospel' is a literary genre focusing on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. While including events supposedly related to the life of Jesus, the Gospel of Judas and the others really are texts "attempting to bolster the importance" of the personalities they are named after, not of Jesus. They are not summaries of the good news, but rather come from the Gnostic tradition of the second, third and fourth centuries. Writing about the year 180, Irenaeus, a major Christian figure among the early church fathers, identified this text known as The Gospel of Judas as heretical and Gnostic. Gnosticism was one of Satan’s earliest counterfeits to the true Gospel. It really isn’t very much different from what we call ‘New Age’ today – we are really all gods but we just need to realize that. There’s no need for a Savior for we really don’t sin. Colossians and I John were written, in part, to refute this heresy. Since the Bible condemned their beliefs, they had to come up with their own ‘scriptures’ so they counterfeited numerous books. The particular Gnostic sect thought to be associated with the origin of The Gospel of Judas was known as the Cainites. The peculiar teachings of this sect included the rehabilitation of many characters presented negatively in the Bible -- starting with Cain. In essence, the Cainites attempted to take the negative figures of the Bible and present them in a heroic light. In order to do this, of course, they had to create alternative texts and an alternative rendering of the story of Jesus. Thus the ‘Gospel of Judas’ is nothing new. It is no more than the discovery of an ancient manuscript written by those who denied the deity and redemptive work of Jesus. It will not change anything in Christianity, nor should it.

TRUE: WE CAN TRUST THE BIBLE

Has anyone ever challenged you about how you know the Bible is true? What do you say when they state that anyone could write a book and in it claim inspiration? No one doubts that the Bible claims to be inspired by God, but so do other 'holy' books. How do we know the Bible is the one true book from God to man? This is the way I explain it:

Starting with the acceptance that there is a God (article 1 in this series), then it is reasonable that God would reveal Himself to man. If he didn't man could never know anything about Him. God has revealed some things about Himself in creation, but that is just a rough sketch. For man to really know God it is necessary for God to reveal Himself to man, for man could never find God without God making the first move. If God has truth to reveal, if man is accountable, and if God wants a relationship with man that must start from God's side. Not only is this necessary, it is also possible for God to reveal Himself to man. Were He really God it would be totally within His possibility to communicate truth to us and keep it accurate down to our day. That would not be too hard for Him at all. Thus we accept that a revelation from God to man is both possible and necessary. But is the Bible that revelation? I say it is.

18 REASONS FROM OUTSIDE THE BIBLE PROVING IT IS GOD'S WORD

1. The Bible is theocentric (God-centered), not anthropocentric (man-centered). If man wrote the Bible, he would be the leading character. In the Bible God is sovereign and absolute authority (I Chronicles 29:11; Isaiah 43:7). Man's highest good is submission to His will. The purpose of all we do is for His glory (Revelation 4:11). All other 'holy' books focus on man and build up man, not God.

2. The Bible is monotheistic (one God), not polytheistic (more than one god). 'Scholars' say that man started with many gods and eventually evolved to having just one. The Bible, at the beginning of man, says there was just one. If man were writing the Bible he would have one God evolve out of many. Even the fact that the Jews were worshipping the golden calf and other gods at the time the first commandment was written (saying God was the only god, Exodus 20:1-6) show that even they believed there was more than one God.

3. The fact of the Trinity helps prove man didn't write the Bible. Would natural man write about something that he could not understand something with no parallel or analogy in nature? No finite mind has ever comprehended how 3 separate persons could form one essence/substance. If man wrote the Bible he would NOT write about a Triune God.

4. If man wrote the Bible, would he say that the world was created from nothing (Hebrews 11:3)? Nothing is a state man has never known. He would come up with some rational explanation, as evolution tries to do today.

5. If man wrote the Bible would he say his basic nature is evil and sinful (Romans 3:23)? Would man say there was nothing he could do but accept God's cure for sin (Ephesians 2:8-9). Every religion man has developed or 'holy' book man has written has something man must do to earn/deserve removal of sin, but not the Bible.

6. The extent of revelation in the Bible shows it is beyond what man could or would write. How could man write of things beyond his own senses and experiences? Yet the Bible speaks authoritatively about heaven, hell and eternity without hesitation (I Corinthians 2:9-12; II Corinthians 5:8; Luke 16:19; Revelation 19:20-21).

7. If man wrote the Bible, its ethics would be based on individual, relative decisions (Judges 17:6) rather than absolutes. Because man is a child of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) by nature his ethics would be corrupt (as they are today apart from the Bible) and would end in chaos. One example: the Bible tells us to use things (I Corinthians 7:31) and love people (Romans 12:10). Man's ethics are the opposite.

8. It is humanly impossible for 44 authors over a period of 1500 years unknown to each other and from vastly different backgrounds and cultures to arrive at 66 books so internally systematic and consistent as the Bible. It would be like 44 men each tossing a stone on a pile over 1500 years and the finished product being a modern hospital. There must have been one Author behind it all.

9. The fantastic number of fulfilled prophecies in the Bible show that it is no book authored by mere man. Experts in probability mathematics have come up with these statistics concerning the following prophecies:

7 prophecies against Tyre in Ezekiel 26:3-4, 7-8, 12, 14, 21 coming true: 1 in 7.5 x 107

5 prophecies against Samaria in Hosea 13:16 & Micah 1:6 come true: 1 in 4 x 104

5 prophecies against Gaza & Ashkelon in Amos 1:8, Jer 47:5, Zeph 2:4-7: 1 in 1.2 x 104

3 prophecies against Moab & Ammon in Ezek 25:3-4, Jer 48:47; 49:6: 1 in 103

9 prophecies against Edom in Isa 34:6-15, Jer 49:17-18; Ezek 25:13-14; 35:5-7: 1 in 104

8 prophecies against Babylon in Isa 13:19-22; 14:23; Jer 51:26,43: 1 in 5 x 109

9 prophecies about Jerusalem in Jeremiah 31:38-40: 1 in 8 x 1010

7 prophecies about Palestine in Lev 26:31-33; Ezek 36:33-35: 1 in 2 x 105

9 prophecies about Petra & Edom in Isa 34:6-18; Ezek 25:13-14; 35:5-7:1 in 2 x 105

4 prophecies about Thebes & Memphis in Ezek 30:13-15: 1 in 103

4 prophecies about Nineveh in Nahum 1:8,10; 2:6; 3:10,13,19: 1 in 102

The probability of these 11 prophecies coming true is 1 in 5.76 x 1059! This is almost impossible to visualize. Suppose this number were silver dollars. There would be enough to fill 1028 suns! Or think of it like this. In the universe there are about 2 trillion galaxies, each containing about 100 million stars. From our 5 x 1059 we could make all of the stars in all of the galaxies 2 x 105 times! Only one silver dollar in all of these stands for the chance a writer could have guessed all these prophecies correctly! Even more astounding is the fact that these are only 11 prophecies. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of others which have already come true. (For more information about this see "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell).

10. The exceptional literary value of the Bible cannot be attributed to the natural ability of human writers. How could such unlearned men write such a surpassing piece of literary genius beyond their own ability? The Bible far exceeds the intellectual and moral qualifications of other books being written in its time such as the Talmud (Jewish), Apocrypha (Christian) and Koran (Islamic). The living quality of the words, reaching to all ages and social positions of people for century after century show its uniqueness. The Bible is deep enough for the most gifted scholar to spend a lifetime in one small part of it and never get out all there is, but also simple enough for a young child to read and understand. One of the greatest truths expressed is just 7 monosyllables, each 3 letters or less: "You in me and me in you" (John 14:20). The Bible stories are never hurried or cramped, neither are they drawn out and boring. The Bible does not gloss over the sins of its heroes, neither does it overemphasize them. The values and opinions of the individual writers are not the focus, just the story they are telling.

11. Another proof for the Bible not being written by man is its enduring freshness. Voltaire said 150 years ago: "Within 100 years the Bible will be obsolete." It has not happened; in fact his home now houses a Bible society! The Bible never grows old. No other book in the world not only invites but sustains a ceaseless re-reading. Other books come and go, but the Bible has remained for thousands of years. It remains a fresh, up-to-date book, not an old book.

12. If man wrote the Bible would he say to further spiritual ends by love & reliance on divine power or by political force? The Inquisition and Crusades in Christianity as well as the history of Islam, Shintoism, Nazism, etc., all show man used political force to spread their beliefs. The Bible commands to do it in a way that is not natural for man, the opposite way.

13. No human scientist has been able to avoid being obsolete in a later time. Science is always changing but the Bible is scientifically infallible in all ages. The Bible spoke accurately of scientific truth thousands of years before man 'discovered' them, while the very writers often believed the opposite of what they were writing. For example, the Bible says the life of the flesh is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11) yet until recent times doctors bled people to cure them. The Bible says the physical world is basically non-physical in its ultimate essence (Hebrews 11:3; Colossians 1:16-17), something no human writer could or would have guessed at. The Bible has always said the earth was round (Isaiah 40:22), rotates (Job 38:12, 14), has gravity (Job 26:7), and the whole solar system orbits in the universe (Psalm 19:16). Man believed the moon was greater than the earth for many centuries but the Bible says opposite (Genesis 1:16). Even atomic energy and its results are found in II Peter 3:10-12 (the Greek word means to "loose" or "set free" as what happens when atoms are released). The laws of thermodynamics are there, too: #1 (Genesis 2:1-2; Hebrews 4:3, 10) and # 2 (Psalm 102:25-27; Hebrews 1:10-12; Romans 8:20-22). There are hundreds of other examples, too.

14. The number and accuracy of the ancient manuscripts of the Bible that have come down to us today show God's work in giving and keeping the Bible for us. Of Caesar's "Gallic Wars" we have only 9 manuscripts, the oldest 900 years after the original. Of the "History of Thucydides" and "History of Herodotus" we have only 8 manuscripts each, from 1300 years after they happened. Yet of the Old Testament we have 1,700 manuscripts, the oldest 100 years after the original. The variation percentage between them is one minor difference every 2,000 words! Evidence for the New Testament is even greater: 13,000 manuscripts with the oldest portion 10 years after the original and the variation percentage being only one minor difference every 200,000 words! Manuscripts have come down in many different languages and large portions come to us quoted in the works of hundreds of authors. The recent discover of the Dead Sea Scrolls pushed back the date of the earliest Old Testament manuscripts 1,000 years, yet there was no difference between them and what we had before they were discovered!

The book The DaVinci Code makes many statements that undermine the authenticity of the Bible today. It implies we can’t know what the original manuscripts contained. That is not true. A short summary of how the Bible came to us can be helpful to understand how we got the Bible.

The Old Testament is written in a very poetic language – Hebrews. The Jews were very, very careful when they copied their Scriptures. Words and letters were counted in rows and columns. Any page not totally accurate was burnt. In addition, the Old Testament was translated into various languages like Latin and Greek (The Septuagint). These were copied and passed on as well. This provided a system of checks and balances where one copy could be compared with another to make sure no errors had occurred.

Ezra is credited with compiling the Old Testament books into the form we have today. He took what the nation had understood to be God’s revelation to them and organized it so it could be passed on from generation to generation.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 revealed manuscripts 1,000 years older than the previous oldest ones. When they were compared there were no discrepancies or errors discovered!

The New Testament was written in Greek which is a very scientific and technical language and perfect for conveying the details of theology revealed through Paul and others. As letters and gospels were written to various churches they kept copies of those which God used to teach them. They passed copies of their favorites on to other churches and before very long churches everywhere were using virtually the same books. Leaders from all the churches got together and officially put their stamp of approval on these 27 books which still comprise our New Testament.

These, too, were translated into dozens of languages. Many church leaders wrote books in which they quoted large portions of the Bible in various languages. These all passed from generation to generation independent of each other. Now they can be compared to one another and therefore determine they came from the same original source since they still continue to say the same thing.

During the middle Ages the Bible was carefully copied by hand by Monks. The invention of the printing press made it possible to mass produce Bibles so each one could have a copy. Today the Bible is translated into 2300 languages worldwide.

15. The study of archaeology continues to prove there are no historical inaccuracies in the Bible. William F. Albright, one of the greatest archaeologists ever, said, "The Bible's incredible historical memory has been many times validated by the process of discovery. No archaeological discovery has contradicted a Biblical reference." For many years scholars thought the Bible in error about the Hittites for no trace of that vast and great civilization had ever been found. In recent years, though, much has been found about them, again validating the truth of the Bible.

16. The preservation and regathering of the nation Israel after 2,000 years is proof of the greatness of the Bible. It has never happened, nor was it ever thought possible to happen, for a group of people to survive 2,000 without a homeland yet stay a separate cultural unity. That has happened with the Jews. Where are the Ammonites? Philistines? Hittites? Not only that, but the Jews are now back in their homeland, truly a sociological miracle!

17. The inner testimony of the Holy Spirit inside His people gives us assurance that the Bible is true. He gives us peace and assurance within that the Bible indeed is God's book.

18. The life and resurrection of Jesus also give validity to the Bible. If everything about Him, His deity and His resurrection is true, then the Bible is true. If it is not true the Bible cannot be from God. This will be considered in the next article about the deity of Jesus.

If there is this great body of evidence, why do so many deny the Bible as being God's Word? Let me answer that with a story. Many years ago, while on a visit to England, a wealthy man was fascinated by a powerful microscope. Looking through its lens to study crystals and the and the petals of flowers, he was amazed at their beauty and detail. He bought one and took it home. He thoroughly enjoyed using it until one day he examined some food he was planning to eat for dinner. He discovered tiny living creatures were crawling in it. He was especially fond of this food and didn't know what to do. Finally he concluded there was only one way out of this dilemma: he smashed the microscope to pieces. That is what man tries to do to the Bible when it shows up his sin. Like bugs under a rock run from the light when the rock is turned over, so man in sin runs from the light of God's truth about him.

So WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE that we have an accurate revelation from God in the form of our Bible? It means that everything the Bible says about heaven and hell, sin and salvation, grace and God’s love and mercy as well as Jesus and God is true! We have an absolute standard to go by in a world full of instability and change. We have insight into the very mind and thoughts of God. His world view is revealed to us! We have comfort and promises written down which are true and won’t be broken. We know Jesus will one day return in victory over sin and the world to establish His kingdom here and it will be soon!

Brown is not the first to propose that Christianity is a vast conspiracy by the Vatican and/or others to hoodwink the world about the true Jesus. He will not be the last. What is surprising is not that he would boldly label “FACT” what has been so totally refuted by the evidence. What is surprising is that our culture is so ill-equipped so as not to be able to discern fact from fiction, misinformed about Christianity, woefully ignorant of history, and clueless about the Bible – its origin, composition, preservation, and translation. This novel is based on such flimsy fabrication that if it used any other setting – an ethnic neighborhood, a police investigation, an environmental conservation movement, for example – no one would be able to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy the story. That millions of people are not turned off by the lack of authenticity in The DaVinci Code is more than surprising—it is sad. That critics and even news media are so gullible is more than revealing about the state of our culture—it reveals the tragic truth that our culture is in need of rediscovering Truth.

Several years ago, Time magazine had an important article entitled "How True Is the Bible?" wherein they discussed the condition of the Bible after two hundred years of attacks by critics. They stated: “The breadth, sophistication and diversity of all this biblical investigation are impressive, but it begs a question: Has it made the Bible more credible or less? After more than two centuries of facing the heaviest scientific guns that could be brought to bear, the Bible has survived and is, perhaps, better for the siege. Even on the critics' own terms, in historical fact the Scriptures seem more acceptable now than they did when the rationalists began the attack.”

Max Lucado says, “The Bible has been banned, burned, scoffed, and ridiculed. Scholars have mocked it as foolish. Kings have branded it as illegal. A thousand times over, the grave has been dug and the dirge has begun, but somehow the Bible never stays in the grave. Not only has it survived, it has thrived. It’s the single most popular book in all of history. It has been the best-selling book in the world for years.”

The Bible is an even better seller than the DaVinci Code and will continue to be long after DaVinci Code gone and forgotten!