JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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Some critics have argued that the Bible cannot be trusted at all since there are variants.
But difficulties should not constitute objections. Unsolved problems are not necessarily errors.
While difficulties are to be grappled with and problems are to be addressed, until such a time as
we have total and final light on any issue, we are in no position to affirm that here is a proven
error or unquestionable objection which thereby brings into question the infallibility and trustworthiness
of the Bible. It is common knowledge that countless "objections" or apparent
contradictions have been fully resolved since the first of this century.
According to Albright:
"The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, certain phases of which still appear
periodically, has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has
established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased
recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history."25
An example of further textual evidence throwing light on the accuracy of the biblical text
would be a copy of the text of Isaiah found in the middle of the twentieth century among the
Dead Sea Scrolls. This copy is estimated to have been written about a thousand years earlier than
the oldest text of Isaiah available at the time of the discovery. When the two manuscripts were
compared they showed an amazing degree of harmony thus showing the miraculous degree of
preservation of the text during this gap of almost a millennium. The Scrolls are made up of some
40,000 inscribed fragments from which more than 500 books have been reconstructed.
The ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were judged and destroyed by God according
to the book of Genesis. Liberal scholars claimed that this story should be viewed merely as
teaching a moral lesson rather than an historical account since these cities had not been found or
identified. Yet in recent times with the excavations at Ebla, a city in northern Syria (dating from
300 to 200 B.C.), these cities have been uncovered. Over 20,000 tablets were found with
inscriptions which refer to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah as trading partners with Ebla.
The Hittites, for centuries unknown except for references in the Hebrew Scriptures, were
considered fictitious or erroneously named.
Archeologists in this twentieth century have confirmed that such a people in fact did exist
and once lived in the area of what we now call Turkey.
Millar Burrows of Yale claims that
". . . archeological work has unquestionably strengthened confidence in the reliability
of the Scriptural record. More than one archeologist has found his respect for the
Bible increased by the experience of excavation in Palestine."26