Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 1124 You’re reading your Bible and you hit a passage that makes no sense. You read it twice, maybe three times, and you’re still confused. What do you do? Give up? Skip it? Pretend you understood it? This is a common experience, and it shouldn’t discourage you. The Bible is a deep book, written…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1002 When comparing different Bible translations, readers sometimes discover that verses present in one translation appear in footnotes or brackets in another—or are absent entirely. These differences can unsettle believers who wonder whether something has been “removed” from Scripture. Understanding how textual variations arise and how scholars handle them actually strengthens confidence in the…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1001 Few debates within evangelical Christianity generate as much heat as the question of Bible translations. Some believers insist that the King James Version represents the only reliable English translation, while others embrace modern versions like the ESV, NASB, or NIV. Understanding this controversy requires examining both the historical development of the KJV and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 1017 Whether an unbeliever can understand the Bible has direct implications for evangelism, for how we engage with non-Christian friends around Scripture, and for how we understand the Holy Spirit’s work. The answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no, and getting the nuance right matters both theologically and practically. What an…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 1018 The phrase “textual criticism” can sound alarming, as though it describes scholars sitting in judgement on the Bible and finding it wanting. The reality is almost the opposite. Textual criticism is the scholarly discipline by which ancient manuscripts are compared in order to establish, as closely as possible, the original wording of the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10024 Nobody alive has ever seen the original manuscripts of the Bible — the actual papyrus or parchment on which Moses wrote, or Paul dictated his letters, or John recorded his vision on Patmos. Those originals, which scholars call the autographs, no longer exist. For some people that is a troubling realisation; they assumed…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10030 Before assessing what the Bible is, it is worth listening to what it claims to be. This is not circular reasoning — it is the same approach you would take with any significant document. A witness’s self-testimony may ultimately be accepted or rejected, but it has to be heard before it can be…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10027 By almost every external measure, the Bible should not hold together as a single coherent work. Sixty-six books. More than forty human authors. Three languages. A composition period spanning roughly fifteen centuries. Multiple literary genres — poetry, history, prophecy, law, wisdom literature, biography, letters, apocalyptic vision. Yet the Bible presents itself, and has…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10028 Most Bible readers have had the experience of a passage opening up with a clarity and personal directness it had never carried before — something has changed, though not in the text itself. And most have had the opposite experience too: reading words that are technically comprehensible but which carry no weight, no…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10025 The Bible is a large, complex, ancient document. It contains poetry, prophecy, law, history, biography, letters, and apocalyptic vision. It was written across fifteen hundred years in three languages, addressed to people in vastly different cultural and historical situations. Christians claim it is the word of God for all people in all ages….