How Do We Know the Bible Is True?
Question 1067
Claiming that the Bible is God’s Word is one thing; demonstrating that it speaks truth is another. In an age of scepticism, many ask: “How can you trust a book written thousands of years ago? How do you know it hasn’t been corrupted? What evidence supports its claims?” These are fair questions, and the Bible can withstand scrutiny. Let’s examine the grounds for trusting Scripture’s truthfulness.
Historical Reliability
The Bible makes countless historical claims—about people, places, events, and customs. If these claims were routinely false, we would have good reason to doubt the rest. But again and again, archaeology and historical research have confirmed the Bible’s accuracy.
For decades, critics dismissed the Hittites mentioned in Scripture as a biblical myth since no evidence of their existence had been found. Then, in 1906, archaeologists discovered the Hittite capital at Boğazkale in modern Turkey, revealing a vast empire that matched the biblical descriptions. The British Museum today houses numerous Hittite artefacts, including cuneiform tablets and carved reliefs (BM 125907, among others), confirming what Scripture had said all along.
Similarly, critics once claimed that King David was legendary—a fictional hero invented centuries later. Then in 1993, archaeologists at Tel Dan in northern Israel discovered an inscription referring to the “House of David” (בית דוד, beit David), dating to the ninth century BC, within 150 years of David’s reign. The Bible’s historical framework has been vindicated repeatedly.
Luke, who wrote both the Gospel bearing his name and the book of Acts, has been subjected to intense historical scrutiny. Sir William Ramsay, a nineteenth-century archaeologist who initially set out to disprove Luke’s reliability, became convinced through his research that Luke was a historian of the first rank. Ramsay found that Luke accurately named governmental officials, correctly described geographical details, and precisely noted cultural customs throughout his writings.
Manuscript Evidence
Some wonder whether the Bible we have today is what was originally written. After all, we don’t have the original manuscripts (called autographs)—we have copies of copies. How can we trust that the text hasn’t been corrupted over the centuries?
The answer lies in the sheer abundance of manuscript evidence. For the New Testament alone, we possess over 5,800 Greek manuscripts, more than 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and thousands more in other ancient languages. Compare this to other ancient works: we have only 7 manuscripts of Plato’s writings, 49 of Aristotle’s, and 10 of Caesar’s Gallic Wars. Yet no one questions whether we have Plato’s or Caesar’s actual words.
Not only do we have many manuscripts, but they are remarkably consistent. When scholars compare them, they find that over 99% of the New Testament text is stable across all manuscripts. The variations that do exist are overwhelmingly minor—spelling differences, word order changes, and similar scribal variations that affect no doctrine. As F.F. Bruce noted, “The variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the New Testament affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice.”
The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947, dramatically confirmed the reliability of Old Testament transmission. The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaª), now housed in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, dates to around 125 BC—a thousand years older than any previously known Isaiah manuscript. When compared to the Masoretic text that forms the basis of our modern Old Testament, the agreement was remarkable. The text had been faithfully preserved across a millennium.
Internal Consistency
Despite being written by diverse authors over fifteen centuries, the Bible maintains a remarkable internal consistency. This doesn’t mean there are no difficulties—there are passages that challenge interpreters and apparent tensions that require careful study. But the overarching narrative coherence is extraordinary.
The Bible’s central message—that humanity is sinful, that God has provided redemption through a promised Saviour, and that salvation comes by grace through faith—runs consistently from Genesis to Revelation. The themes of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration weave through the entire collection. This consistency amid diversity is precisely what we would expect if a single divine Author stood behind the human writers.
When apparent contradictions are investigated carefully, they typically dissolve upon closer examination. What seems at first to be a conflict often turns out to be complementary accounts, different perspectives on the same event, or a misunderstanding on the reader’s part. The Bible rewards careful study rather than superficial dismissal.
Scientific Accuracy
The Bible is not a science textbook, but where it touches on matters of science, it has proven remarkably accurate—often anticipating discoveries made centuries later. Job 26:7 declares that God “hangs the earth on nothing”—a statement made when ancient cultures believed the earth rested on elephants, turtles, or the god Atlas. Isaiah 40:22 speaks of God sitting “above the circle of the earth,” using language consistent with a spherical planet long before such knowledge was common.
Leviticus 17:11 states that “the life of the flesh is in the blood”—a truth not fully understood medically until centuries later. The sanitary laws given to Israel in the Pentateuch, including quarantine practices, washing with running water, and waste disposal outside the camp, anticipated germ theory by thousands of years. These practical instructions protected the nation from diseases that plagued their neighbours.
This is not to claim that the Bible teaches modern science or that every passage should be read as a scientific statement. But the biblical writers avoided the scientific errors common to their contemporaries, suggesting they were guided by a knowledge beyond their own.
The Testimony of Jesus
For the Christian, the strongest evidence for the Bible’s truthfulness is the testimony of Jesus. Jesus consistently treated the Old Testament as historically accurate and divinely authoritative. He spoke of Adam and Eve (Matthew 19:4-5), Noah and the flood (Matthew 24:37-39), Jonah and the great fish (Matthew 12:40), and Daniel’s prophecies (Matthew 24:15) as real people and real events.
If Jesus was mistaken about Scripture, then He was not the omniscient Son of God He claimed to be, and Christianity collapses at its foundation. But if Jesus truly was and is the Son of God—as His resurrection powerfully demonstrated—then His endorsement of Scripture carries ultimate weight. We trust the Bible because we trust Jesus, and we trust Jesus because the evidence for His resurrection is compelling.
Conclusion
How do we know the Bible is true? We know it through multiple converging lines of evidence: its historical reliability confirmed by archaeology, its manuscript transmission far superior to any other ancient document, its internal consistency across diverse authors and centuries, its scientific accuracy ahead of its time, and supremely, the endorsement of Jesus Himself.
None of these evidences compels faith—you can always find ways to resist if you’re determined to do so. But together they provide a powerful cumulative case for trusting Scripture. The Bible has withstood every attack levelled against it for two thousand years. Empires have fallen, philosophies have come and gone, but the Word of God stands.
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Matthew 24:35
Bibliography
- Bruce, F.F. The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? 6th ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981.
- Geisler, Norman L. and Frank Turek. I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Wheaton: Crossway, 2004.
- Kitchen, Kenneth A. On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
- McDowell, Josh. Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2017.
- Ramsay, Sir William M. The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915.
