1

1. "Just a Bunch of Liars!"

"Matthew, Mark, Luke and John– They're just a bunch of liars!"

Standing on a busy corner in downtown Chicago I was hardly prepared for such fervent testimony–and from one who so obviously had been seeking to drown his disappointments in the customary way.

The bloodshot eyes and bewhiskered face came even closer.

"I've read the lot, and you can't trust a one of 'em!"

I wondered what might lie behind the unsolicited advice. But before I could inquire, the pathetic figure turned and shuffled on his way.

Twenty years have passed since that experience, and in this time I've heard the same sad disillusionment from many others. And there always seems to be this touch of sadness, as when a child discovers that there is no Santa Claus. When a man has grown up trusting in the Bible, he finds it hard to do without the Book.

Just recently a physician friend confided the same disquieting doubts about the Scriptures: "Can you be an honest scholar and still trust this ancient Book?"

It is my privilege to teach religion to students of medicine and the other healing arts. A good doctor is a scientist. He rightly insists on basing his conclusions on sufficient evidence. What patient would trust a surgeon who reaches for his knife without careful examination of the facts in the case?

This same inquiring attitude carries over into the religion class. Inevitably there rises again the question, What is the basis, where is the evidence, for regarding the Bible with such trust?

It was as a college student that I began to feel the urgency of answering this question for myself. I had grown up in a believing home. As I boy I had accompanied my father to churches all over England. Often he arranged for me to read the Scripture before he preached. And the way he talked about the Bible left no doubt of where he stood.

For an admiring son no further evidence was required. If Dad believed it, so did I! But then I came to see that my father's confidence was his own, and all it told me was that somehow he was satisfied.

Thirty years ago I began to study Greek, and then the other languages and tools for tracing the history and meaning of the Bible. The more I learned the firmer basis I found for confidence in the Scriptures.

It is true that the Bible is a very ancient book. Or rather, it is an ancient collection of very ancient books. The most recent of them was written nearly two thousand years ago!

How, then, can we be sure that the Bible today is the same as when it first appeared?

Can we trust the words? How can we know that they have not been changed during all these years?

Can we trust the books? Is the collection still the same? Have some been added, others lost?

What about the versions? Phillips, Goodspeed, King James, hundreds more! Can they all be trusted?

What about the meaning? In this modern age, in a different language, and after so much time, can a man today be confident that he has found the meaning of the Book?