I think it’s pretty interesting, and important, to understand that the way that we (individually) got our Bibles is not the way that the world got the Bible.
The way that the world got the Bible started with an event, and some eyewitnesses wrote separate and individual documents that documented the life of Jesus, and those written documents were collected and copied, and the Hebrew Scriptures were adopted by the early Christian Church because they realized that it pointed to Jesus. And sequentially it all got put together. But when we were maybe 6 years old somebody handed us the whole thing chaptered, versed, mapped and wrapped and said “here’s the Bible, the word of God.”
But nobody ever explained the sequence. And I think the sequence is pretty important, and interesting.
I absolutely believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead…but not because it says so in ‘the Bible’. It’s way better than that…!
I do not take the above mentioned documents seriously because they are in ‘the Bible’. Those separate and individual documents aren’t valuable because they’re in ‘the Bible’. These extraordinary documents that were written in the first century were included in the Bible because early Christians understood their value in and of themselves. They were valuable and considered valuable long before there was ever ‘the Bible’.
I don’t take Matthew seriously because it’s in the Bible. It’s in the Bible because it’s so valuable. I don’t take John seriously because it’s in the Bible. It got put in this incredible collection of documents that became the Bible because the early church recognized that it was so valuable.
Way back then, when everyone involved with Jesus thought it was ‘game over’ as He died, the founding event of Christianity happened a few days later and it sparked a confidential faith in Jesus, and it started a movement that eventually brought us the Bible.
These documents were written in the first century. They were copied and collected. They were distributed by the third century. And then in the early fourth century, under the Emperor Diocletian (when state-sanctioned persecution of Christians was taking place), they banned and confiscated all of the Christian literature that they could and burned it.
And people risked their lives for these documents, not for the Bible (because there was still no ‘the Bible’), but for a copy of Matthew or a fragment of John. They risked their lives because they had maybe two or three of Paul’s writings (not even knowing that he’d written anything else). They risked their lives for these documents because they considered them so valuable.
And they were so valuable because of who wrote them, what they contained, and when they were written.
Skeptics wanna cross-examine ‘the Bible’. But they don’t cross-examine Matthew all by itself, and then afterwards take on Mark all by itself (who got his information from Peter who was an eyewitness). And then afterwards cross-examine Luke all by itself (who says he thoroughly investigated all of these things so there’d be an orderly account of what happened). And then afterwards take on John, who was an eyewitness, all by itself. And then afterwards go on to Peter, who was an eyewitness who wrote two letters and clearly believed in the resurrection. And then afterwards go on to James all by itself, who clearly came to believe that his own brother was the Son of God…! Then afterwards on to Paul, who stepped onto the pages of history as someone who despises Christians (and committed himself to single-handedly putting this Jesus movement out of business).
And that same Paul became the advocate and the missionary to the Gentiles, and he made it crystal clear that this whole thing rises and falls on the resurrection of Jesus.
The faith of the earliest Christians was tethered to the event that sparked the movement that brought us ‘the Bible’.
