Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1086. Numerical patterns in Scripture fascinate people, and I understand why they do. Some claim to have discovered elaborate numerical patterns hidden in the biblical text, patterns they say prove divine authorship beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever. Others dismiss all such claims outright as misguided numerology dressed up in scholarly-sounding language. What are we…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1085. Biblical numbers appear throughout Scripture: forty days of flood, seven churches, twelve tribes, 144,000 sealed servants, 666 as the number of the beast. Are these figures meant literally, symbolically, or sometimes both at once? Understanding how biblical numbers function in Hebrew and Greek literature helps us interpret Scripture accurately, avoiding both wooden literalism…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1084. Biblical genealogies can seem tedious to modern readers, long lists of unpronounceable names we are tempted to skip on our way to the next narrative section. Yet these genealogies serve real theological and legal purposes in Scripture, and they have been the subject of long-running debate regarding their completeness and their historical accuracy….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1083. Scientific errors are what critics claim to find scattered through the Bible, arguing that Scripture reflects the primitive cosmology of ancient peoples and cannot be trusted as God’s Word on anything else either. They point to passages about the sun standing still, a solid dome over the earth, or the earth resting on…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1082. Biblical archaeology has quietly become one of the most persuasive answers I can give a sceptical friend, because it deals in something they cannot simply wave away: dirt, pottery, inscriptions, and dated strata pulled directly out of the ground. For centuries critics dismissed much of the Bible as myth and legend, claiming that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1081. Prophecy fulfilment is, in my judgement, one of the strongest evidences we have for the divine origin of Scripture, and I do not say that lightly after years of studying the alternatives on offer. No other sacred text in human history contains anything remotely comparable to the Bible’s record of specific predictions made…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1080. Have we lost books of the Bible? I get asked this more often than you might expect, usually by someone who has just read a footnote mentioning the Book of Jashar, or heard a documentary claim that whole gospels were suppressed by a jealous church hierarchy centuries ago. It is a fair question,…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1079. People ask me what the best Bible translation and the honest answer is that it depends rather a lot on what you are trying to do with it that week. For preaching, teaching, and serious study, I have a clear answer, and I will give it to you directly. For reading through a…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1077. Manuscript transmission is the unglamorous term for a question that genuinely keeps some people awake at night: how do we know the Bible we hold today says what was originally written, given that the ink on the original pages dried out and turned to dust many centuries ago? It is a fair question,…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1076. The Gnostic gospels turn up every few years in a documentary or a bestselling novel, usually with the claim that the church suppressed a truer, more mystical version of Jesus that these texts supposedly preserve. It is a compelling story, and I understand why it sells books. It is also, on the actual…