On scrutinizing the thumb print of JEHOVAH.

 Editor’s note: This is Part 2 in a series. Read Part 1 here.

Continuing my evaluation of philosopher James Croft’s challenge to the God hypothesis as presented in his debate with Stephen Meyer, I’ll pick up where I left off in Croft’s Substack summary, just after he distills Meyer’s argument in a few key points. Croft had three major problems with the argument. We’ll start with his first one.

Philosophers Clash

Croft proposes that Meyer’s abductive inference “is extremely unusual, in that it suggests that the cause of an observed effect is a designer about which we have no background information.” This is a popular challenge, one that’s been developed more formally in the philosophical literature around design. Does it have merit?

The first natural point here is that we all start out in life with the same amount of background information about all entities and minds besides our own — which is to say, none. A newborn infant has no background information about the strange creature licking his face, or the shadowy figure lifting him out of the crib. Nevertheless, through gradual data-gathering, he forms his understanding of cause and effect. I doubt Croft would claim that infants are born with innate concepts of these things. The data-gathering process must begin somewhere. Croft objects that “the phenomena to be explained (the explanandum) is supposed to be part of our evidence that God even exists.” But by the same token, the wet-washcloth sensation of puppy tongue on baby cheeks is part of the baby’s evidence that Puppy exists.

Now, it is true that for any given body of evidence, we can patch together an explanation that will deductively entail the whole. Perhaps the universe was set up from the beginning so as to make puppies, mommies, trees, etc. inevitable. The problem is that our “making-all-the-evidence-inevitable” factor has no other epistemic virtues to commend it. We may still be right. But it’s not the way to bet. The hypothesis of intelligent agency, on the other hand, may have a variety of virtues and explain a variety of phenomena.

What Did You Expect?

In the debate, Meyer uses a car break-in as an intuition pump. We reason backwards from the scene of the crime to the inference of human agency. But Croft believes this is importantly disanalogous to the God hypothesis, because we know a lot about human beings already — that they exist, that they have the power to break into cars, and that they can have a motive to do so. With all of that in the background, we can reason backwards. Not so with God.

By coincidence, someone I know did have his car broken into this summer. It was fairly anti-climactic (he had carelessly left his door unlocked), but the car’s glove box and utility space had clearly been rifled through. There was nothing of value to be pilfered, but small missing items included a clump of cheap face masks, some of which had been amusingly left in a trail like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs behind our runaway thief. This was several months before the Delta wave, but our perp apparently thought the masks might still be worth something. Two small, unremarkable pocket knives were also missing. 

Now, a priori, before the fact, there was no reason to predict that a thief would be especially interested in either a wad of face masks or a couple of cheap pocket knives. And yet, a posteriori, after the fact, burglary was the natural inference. I’m reminded of a story Fran Lebowitz tells about finding the windshield of her high school car broken, her cigarettes and an apple plucked from the dashboard. Miffed, she called over the nearest representative of the NYPD and pointed out the damage. “What did you have on the dashboard?” the officer asked. “I had an apple and a pack of cigarettes.” “Well,” he said, throwing up his hands, “what did you expect?”

This is very funny, but also very apt. What did Fran expect? What did my friend expect?

Generic Gods, Generic Men

To take another example, from a paper by philosopher Lydia McGrew in response to philosopher Thomas Crisp, McGrew recalls receiving an e-mail from an admiring reader in Croatia. Prior to getting this e-mail, she was aware of Croatians in general, but she was unaware of this Croatian in particular. Indeed, she was unaware that anyone from Croatia would be especially moved to send her a fan letter. But, upon reading said letter, she acquired new knowledge.

It is true that we don’t know a priori whether there exists an entity outside the universe with means and motive to communicate his presence to human beings. But what if there were such an entity? In that case, how could we tell? These are the questions the theist is actually interested in, because the God hypothesis is not contentless. It’s the very hypothesis he wants to test-drive. But Croft has blocked the road right out of the gate.

And indeed, if we applied this reasoning consistently, it would block the road for our discovery of any new, non-human intelligent agent, never mind God. If aliens existed, why would they want to send the team in Contact an extended message consisting of the digits of pi? Nobody knows. There’s certainly no “independent evidence” to that effect. But there it is. 

Returning to our “magic ratio” from part one, the likelihood ratio P(E|H)/P(E|~H) (where we’ll say E = evidence and H = hypothesis), McGrew makes a further technical point: To have such a ratio that favors the God hypothesis, one doesn’t necessarily need to have independent knowledge of motive, only capability. “God,” by definition, is certainly capable of design, whatever his motives. This is the key to answering the popular academic claim that our magic ratio loses its magic when H = God hypothesis, because our numerator P(E|H) is inaccessible, a number we can’t get our hands on. We can still say something about a ratio even if we lack full access to its component parts. One doesn’t need a highly specific high number for the numerator to know that it’s much higher than the denominator.

The “Woven Mat”

Croft concludes this section by saying the theist is in the “unenviable position” of “trying to use the explanans [proposed cause of phenomenon] to explain the explanandum [phenomenon to be explained].” But this just smuggles in the silent assumption that the only legitimate sort of causal hypothesis is a hypothesis for which we already have “independent evidence.” If rather, to quote Charles Sanders Peirce, everything is “a woven, felted mat of abductions,” if indeed all of our empirical knowledge is constructed by inference to the best explanation, then there is a first time for every new thing. On the other hand, if Croft is correct that IBE always requires independent evidence before we can use something as an explanans to remove our surprise at an explanandum, then the question for Croft is how we learn anything for the first time. 

This is Croft’s first problem: If he bites the bullet and says we don’t use inference to the best explanation for anything, then his argument is a universal acid. His second problem is the problem McGrew raises: Neither Meyer nor any ID proponent is bound to deliver a number for the probability of our evidence given God. That number need not be high. It need only be higher than the denominator. 

This concludes my assessment of Croft’s first objection. Next time, we’ll look at his claim that Meyer is misapplying writers like Charles Lyell and Michael Scriven.

Yet more on why the trinity dogma is poor philosophy.

  Revelation4:11NWT2013Edition:"You are worthy, JEHOVAH our God,to receive  the glory and the honor and the power,because you created all things ,and because of  your will they came into existence and were created."

Jehovah God alone is worthy of absolute worship because he alone is both necessary and sufficient as a cause and preserver of the cosmos. Obviously there cannot be anyone else who is both necessary and sufficient. To take the emotion out of the equation let us consider another trinity. Food,water and air. Let's call these three the trinity of life. Given a moderate climate an abundant supply of these three elements would be sufficient for a prolonged life. Of course no single element of these three would be sufficient to sustain a prolonged life though it would be absolutely necessary. But lets say we discovered that we could survive on just water. Then water alone would be both necessary and sufficient. The other two elements would become merely optional. What if we found that any of the three elements (i.e food/water/air) could sustain our lives by itself. Then all three would be come optional none of them would in/or of themselves be necessary. Thus we see that the three can either be all necessary or all optional but not both. The problem with Christendom's trinity is that each of the three elements are being presented as being both necessary and sufficient in and of themselves. Which of course is as we have demonstrated an absurdity. Another issue is that JEHOVAH is supreme. According to the dictionary this implies that he is peerless. A thing that cannot be stated of any of the constituents of Christendom's Trinity.

Webster's definition of supreme:

Definition of supreme

1: highest in rank or authoritythe supreme commander

2: highest in degree or qualitysupreme endurance in war and in labour

The world wide web: a brief history.

 The history of the Internet has its origin in the efforts to build and interconnect computer networks that arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.

Computer science was an emerging discipline in the late 1950s that began to consider time-sharing between computer users, and later, the possibility of achieving this over wide area networks. Independently, Paul Baran proposed a distributed network based on data in message blocks in the early 1960s and Donald Davies conceived of packet switching in 1965 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and proposed building a national commercial data network in the UK. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense awarded contracts in 1969 for the development of the ARPANET project, directed by Robert Taylor and managed by Lawrence Roberts. ARPANET adopted the packet switching technology proposed by Davies and Baran, underpinned by mathematical work in the early 1970s by Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA. The network was built by Bolt, Beranek, and Newman.

Early packet switching networks such as the NPL network, ARPANET, Merit Network, and CYCLADES researched and provided data networking in the early 1970s. ARPA projects and international working groups led to the development of protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined into a network of networks, which produced various standards. Bob Kahn, at ARPA, and Vint Cerf, at Stanford University, published research in 1974 that evolved into the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), the two protocols of the Internet protocol suite. The design included concepts from the French CYCLADES project directed by Louis Pouzin.

In the early 1980s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded national supercomputing centers at several universities in the United States, and provided interconnectivity in 1986 with the NSFNET project. Thus creating network access to these supercomputer sites for research and academic organizations in the United States. International connections to NSFNET, the emergence of architecture such as the Domain Name System, and the adoption of TCP/IP internationally on existing networks marked the beginnings of the Internet. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. Limited private connections to parts of the Internet by officially commercial entities emerged in several American cities by late 1989 and 1990. The NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic.

Research at CERN in Switzerland by British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989–90 resulted in the World Wide Web, linking hypertext documents into an information system, accessible from any node on the network. Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has had a revolutionary impact on culture, commerce, and technology, including the rise of near-instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls, video chat, and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking services, and online shopping sites. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber-optic networks operating at 1 Gbit/s, 10 Gbit/s, or more. The Internet's takeover of the global communication landscape was rapid in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007. The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information, commerce, entertainment, and social networking services. However, the future of the global network may be shaped by regional differences.

Early Coptic translation on 1st century Christology..

 

Corroborating Early Christian Christology

The Sahidic Coptic version corroborates early Christian Christology in many of its readings. This is especially true regarding the doctrine of the Trinity, since the most that can be read from Coptic John 1:1c is that "the Word was divine," not "the Word was God." Literally, what the Coptic version says is "the Word was a god."

This is consistent with what historians know about the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. As one edition of the New Encyclopedia Britannica puts it, "Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament....The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies." (Micropedia, Volume X, p. 126) It was not until the 4th Christian century that the doctrine of the Trinity was firmly established in the churches.

Likewise, the book Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, edited by Everett Ferguson, says, "Primitive Christianity, like Judaism, was distinguished from paganism by its unqualified monotheism." (page 912) This "unqualified monotheism" also distinguished the Christology of primitive Christianity from later Trinitarianism.

Since the Sahidic Coptic version pre-dates the 4th century, being dated in the late 2nd or early 3rd century, it is not surprising that it does not labor under the doctrine of the Trinity. Not only does the Coptic version refrain from identifying Jesus as God Almighty at John 1:1c. It also does not contain the Trinitarian addition at 1 John 5:7 ("these three are one"), nor speak of 'the church of God which he purchased with his own blood,' (Acts 20:28) nor does it say that 'God was manifested in the flesh.' (1 Timothy 3:16) Rather, it speaks of the "church of the Lord" and says merely "this one who" was manifested in the flesh at 1 Timothy 3:16, not "God." Nor does it contain the added words at John 3:13, "[the Son of man] who is in heaven," which incorrectly indicates that Jesus could be God in heaven and Man on earth at the same time. Instead, like the earliest extant Greek manuscript of the Gospel of John, the p66 [Papyrus Bodmer II], the Sahidic Coptic text omits that unauthorized addition.

Other renderings of the Sahidic Coptic version also corroborate the fact that early Christian Christology, while an exalted Christology, was 'unqualifiedly monotheistic,' not Trinitarian. The Coptic readings are theologically neutral and frequently very literal readings of the New Testament Greek text.

The trinity dogma vs. The dictionary.

 According to the trinity dogma a person is not a being.

According to the dictionary a person is:a being as distinguished from an animal or a thing.

an individual human being who likes or prefers something specified (used in combination):I've never been a cat person.

Sociology. an individual human being, especially with reference to his or her social relationships and behavioral patterns as conditioned by the culture.

Philosophy. a self-conscious or rational being.

the actual self or individual personality of a human being:You ought not to generalize, but to consider the person you are dealing with.  According to the trinity dogma a divine person is not a god.According to the dictionary a god is:any deified person or object.: that is right any person deemed superhuman or worthy of religious devotion is a god. Thus according to the dictionary  Trinitarianism is polytheistic  in its assertions.

The Watchtower society's commentary on the Book of books.

 

The Holy Scriptures, the inspired Word of Jehovah, acknowledged as the greatest book of all times because of its antiquity, its total circulation, the number of languages into which it has been translated, its surpassing greatness as a literary masterpiece, and its overwhelming importance to all mankind. Independent of all other books, it imitates no other. It stands on its own merits, giving credit to its unique Author. The Bible is also distinguished as having survived more violent controversy than any other book, hated as it is by many enemies.

Name. The English word “Bible” comes through the Latin from the Greek word bi·bliʹa, meaning “little books.” This, in turn, is derived from biʹblos, a word that describes the inner part of the papyrus plant out of which a primitive form of paper was made. The Phoenician city of Gebal, famous for its papyrus trade, was called by the Greeks “Byblos.” (See Jos 13:5, ftn.) In time bi·bliʹa came to describe various writings, scrolls, books, and eventually the collection of little books that make up the Bible. Jerome called this collection Bibliotheca Divina, the Divine Library.

Jesus and writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures referred to the collection of sacred writings as “the Scriptures,” or “the holy Scriptures,” “the holy writings.” (Mt 21:42; Mr 14:49; Lu 24:32; Joh 5:39; Ac 18:24; Ro 1:2; 15:4; 2Ti 3:15, 16) The collection is the written expression of a communicating God, the Word of God, and this is acknowledged in phrases such as “expression of Jehovah’s mouth” (De 8:3), “sayings of Jehovah” (Jos 24:27), “commandments of Jehovah” (Ezr 7:11), “law of Jehovah,” “reminder of Jehovah,” “orders from Jehovah” (Ps 19:7, 8), “word of Jehovah” (Isa 38:4), ‘utterance of Jehovah’ (Mt 4:4), “Jehovah’s word” (1Th 4:15). Repeatedly these writings are spoken of as “sacred pronouncements of God.”​—Ro 3:2; Ac 7:38; Heb 5:12; 1Pe 4:11.

Divisions. Sixty-six individual books from Genesis to Revelation make up the Bible canon. The choice of these particular books, and the rejection of many others, is evidence that the Divine Author not only inspired their writing but also carefully guarded their collection and preservation within the sacred catalog. (See APOCRYPHA; CANON.) Thirty-nine of the 66 books, making up three quarters of the Bible’s contents, are known as the Hebrew Scriptures, all having been initially written in that language with the exception of a few small sections written in Aramaic. (Ezr 4:8–6:18; 7:12-26; Jer 10:11; Da 2:4b–7:28) By combining some of these books, the Jews had a total of only 22 or 24 books, yet these embraced the same material. It also appears to have been their custom to subdivide the Scriptures into three parts​—‘the law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.’ (Lu 24:44; see HEBREW SCRIPTURES.) The last quarter of the Bible is known as the Christian Greek Scriptures, so designated because the 27 books comprising this section were written in Greek. The writing, collecting, and arrangement of these books within the Bible’s canon also demonstrate Jehovah’s supervision from start to finish.​—See CHRISTIAN GREEK SCRIPTURES.

Subdividing the Bible into chapters and verses (KJ has 1,189 chapters and 31,102 verses) was not done by the original writers, but it was a very useful device added centuries later. The Masoretes divided the Hebrew Scriptures into verses; then in the 13th century of our Common Era chapter divisions were added. Finally, in 1553 Robert Estienne’s edition of the French Bible was published as the first complete Bible with the present chapter and verse divisions.

The 66 Bible books all together form but a single work, a complete whole. As the chapter and verse marks are only convenient aids for Bible study and are not intended to detract from the unity of the whole, so also is the sectioning of the Bible, which is done according to the predominant language in which the manuscripts have come down to us. We, therefore, have both the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, with “Christian” added to the latter to distinguish them from the Greek Septuagint, which is the Hebrew portion of the Scriptures translated into Greek.

“Old Testament” and “New Testament.” Today it is a common practice to refer to the Scriptures written in Hebrew and Aramaic as the “Old Testament.” This is based on the reading in 2 Corinthians 3:14 in the Latin Vulgate and the King James Version. However, the rendering “old testament” in this text is incorrect. The Greek word di·a·theʹkes here means “covenant,” as it does in the other 32 places where it occurs in the Greek text. Many modern translations correctly read “old covenant.” (NE, RS, JB) The apostle Paul is not referring to the Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures in their entirety. Neither does he mean that the inspired Christian writings constitute a “new testament (or, covenant).” The apostle is speaking of the old Law covenant, which was recorded by Moses in the Pentateuch and which makes up only a part of the pre-Christian Scriptures. For this reason he says in the next verse, “whenever Moses is read.”

Hence, there is no valid basis for the Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures to be called the “Old Testament” and for the Christian Greek Scriptures to be called the “New Testament.” Jesus Christ himself referred to the collection of sacred writings as “the Scriptures.” (Mt 21:42; Mr 14:49; Joh 5:39) The apostle Paul referred to them as “the holy Scriptures,” “the Scriptures,” and “the holy writings.”​—Ro 1:2; 15:4; 2Ti 3:15.

Authorship. The accompanying table shows that about 40 human secretaries or scribes were used by the one Author to record the inspired Word of Jehovah. “All Scripture is inspired of God,” and this includes the writings in the Christian Greek Scriptures along with “the rest of the Scriptures.” (2Ti 3:16; 2Pe 3:15, 16) This expression “inspired of God” translated the Greek phrase the·oʹpneu·stos, meaning “God-breathed.” By ‘breathing’ on faithful men, God caused his spirit, or active force, to become operative upon them and directed what he wanted recorded, for, as it is written, “prophecy was at no time brought by man’s will, but men spoke from God as they were borne along by holy spirit.”​—2Pe 1:21; Joh 20:21, 22; see INSPIRATION.

This unseen holy spirit of God is his symbolic “finger.” Therefore, when men saw Moses perform supernatural feats they exclaimed: “It is the finger of God!” (Ex 8:18, 19; compare with Jesus’ words at Mt 12:22, 28; Lu 11:20.) In a similar display of divine power “God’s finger” began the writing of the Bible by carving out the Ten Commandments on stone tablets. (Ex 31:18; De 9:10) It would, therefore, be a simple matter for Jehovah to use men as his scribes even though some were “unlettered and ordinary” in scholastic training (Ac 4:13), and regardless of whether the individual was by trade a shepherd, farmer, tentmaker, fisherman, tax collector, physician, priest, prophet, or king. Jehovah’s active force put the thoughts into the writer’s mind and, in certain instances, allowed him to express the divine thought in his own words, thus permitting personality and individual traits to show through the writing, yet at the same time maintaining a superb oneness in theme and in purpose throughout. In this way the resultant Bible, reflecting as it does the mind and will of Jehovah, exceeded in wealth and in scope the writings of mere men. The Almighty God saw to it that his written Word of truth was in language easily understood and easily translated into practically any tongue.

No other book took so long to complete as the Bible. In 1513 B.C.E. Moses began Bible writing. Other sacred writings were added to the inspired Scriptures until sometime after 443 B.C.E. when Nehemiah and Malachi completed their books. Then there was a gap in Bible writing for almost 500 years, until the apostle Matthew penned his historic account. Nearly 60 years later John, the last of the apostles, contributed his Gospel and three letters to complete the Bible’s canon. So, all together, a period of some 1,610 years was involved in producing the Bible. All the cowriters were Hebrews and, hence, part of that people “entrusted with the sacred pronouncements of God.”​—Ro 3:2.

The Bible is not an unrelated assortment or collection of heterogeneous fragments from Jewish and Christian literature. Rather, it is an organizational book, highly unified and interconnected in its various segments, which indeed reflect the systematic orderliness of the Creator-Author himself. God’s dealings with Israel in giving them a comprehensive law code as well as regulations governing matters even down to small details of camp life​—things that were later mirrored in the Davidic kingdom as well as in the congregational arrangement among first-century Christians—​reflect and magnify this organizational aspect of the Bible.

Contents. In contents this Book of Books reveals the past, explains the present, and foretells the future. These are matters that only He who knows the end from the beginning could author. (Isa 46:10) Starting at the beginning by telling of the creation of heaven and earth, the Bible next gives a sweeping account of the events that prepared the earth for man’s habitation. Then the truly scientific explanation of the origin of man is revealed​—how life comes only from a Life-Giver—​facts that only the Creator now in the role of Author could explain. (Ge 1:26-28; 2:7) With the account of why men die, the overriding theme that permeates the whole Bible was introduced. This theme, the vindication of Jehovah’s sovereignty and the ultimate fulfillment of his purpose for the earth, by means of his Kingdom under Christ, the promised Seed, was wrapped up in the first prophecy concerning ‘the seed of the woman.’ (Ge 3:15) More than 2,000 years passed before this promise of a “seed” was again mentioned, God telling Abraham: “By means of your seed all nations of the earth will certainly bless themselves.” (Ge 22:18) Over 800 years later, renewed assurance was given to Abraham’s descendant King David, and with the passing of more time Jehovah’s prophets kept this flame of hope burning brightly. (2Sa 7:12, 16; Isa 9:6, 7) More than 1,000 years after David and 4,000 years after the original prophecy in Eden, the Promised Seed himself appeared, Jesus Christ, the legal heir to “the throne of David his father.” (Lu 1:31-33; Ga 3:16) Bruised in death by the earthly seed of the “serpent,” this “Son of the Most High” provided the ransom purchase price for the life rights lost to Adam’s offspring, thus providing the only means whereby mankind can get everlasting life. He was then raised on high, there to await the appointed time to hurl “the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan,” down to the earth, finally to be destroyed forever. Thus the magnificent theme announced in Genesis and developed and enlarged upon throughout the balance of the Bible is, in the closing chapters of Revelation, brought to a glorious climax as Jehovah’s grand purpose by means of his Kingdom is made apparent.​—Re 11:15; 12:1-12, 17; 19:11-16; 20:1-3, 7-10; 21:1-5; 22:3-5.

Through this Kingdom under Christ the Promised Seed, Jehovah’s sovereignty will be vindicated and his name will be sanctified. Following through on this theme, the Bible magnifies God’s personal name to a greater extent than any other book; the name occurs 6,979 times in the Hebrew Scripture portion of the New World Translation. That is in addition to the use of the shorter form “Jah” and the scores of instances where it combines to form other names like “Jehoshua,” meaning “Jehovah Is Salvation.” (See JEHOVAH [Importance of the Name].) We would not know the Creator’s name, the great issue involving his sovereignty raised by the Edenic rebellion, or God’s purpose to sanctify his name and vindicate his sovereignty before all creation if these things were not revealed in the Bible.

In this library of 66 little books the theme of the Kingdom and Jehovah’s name are closely interwoven with information on many subjects. Its reference to fields of knowledge such as agriculture, architecture, astronomy, chemistry, commerce, engineering, ethnology, government, hygiene, music, poetry, philology, and tactical warfare is only incidental to development of the theme; not as a treatise. Nevertheless, it contains a veritable treasure-house of information for the archaeologists and paleographers.

As an accurate historical work and one that penetrates the past to great depths, the Bible far surpasses all other books. However, it is of much greater value in the field of prophecy, foretelling as it does the future that only the King of Eternity can reveal with accuracy. The march of world powers down through the centuries, even to the rise and ultimate demise of present-day institutions, was prophetically related in the Bible’s long-range prophecies.

God’s Word of truth in a very practical way sets men free from ignorance, superstitions, human philosophies, and senseless traditions of men. (Joh 8:32) “The word of God is alive and exerts power.” (Heb 4:12) Without the Bible we would not know Jehovah, would not know the wonderful benefits resulting from Christ’s ransom sacrifice, and would not understand the requirements that must be met in order to get everlasting life in or under God’s righteous Kingdom.

The Bible is a most practical book in other ways too, for it gives sound counsel to Christians on how to live now, how to carry on their ministry, and how to survive this anti-God, pleasure-seeking system of things. Christians are told to “quit being fashioned after this system of things” by making their minds over from worldly thinking, and this they can do by having the same mental attitude of humility “that was also in Christ Jesus” and by stripping off the old personality and putting on the new one. (Ro 12:2; Php 2:5-8; Eph 4:23, 24; Col 3:5-10) This means displaying the fruitage of God’s spirit, “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control”​—subjects on which so much is written throughout the Bible.​—Ga 5:22, 23; Col 3:12-14.

Authenticity. The veracity of the Bible has been assailed from many quarters, but none of these efforts has undermined or weakened its position in the least.

Bible history. Sir Isaac Newton once said: “I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever.” (Two Apologies, by R. Watson, London, 1820, p. 57) Its integrity to truth proves sound on any point that might be tested. Its history is accurate and can be relied upon. For example, what it says about the fall of Babylon to the Medes and Persians cannot be successfully contradicted (Jer 51:11, 12, 28; Da 5:28), neither can what it says about people like Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar (Jer 27:20; Da 1:1); Egyptian King Shishak (1Ki 14:25; 2Ch 12:2); Assyrians Tiglath-pileser III and Sennacherib (2Ki 15:29; 16:7; 18:13); the Roman emperors Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius (Lu 2:1; 3:1; Ac 18:2); Romans such as Pilate, Felix, and Festus (Ac 4:27; 23:26; 24:27); nor what it says about the temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Areopagus at Athens (Ac 19:35; 17:19-34). What the Bible says about these or any other places, people, or events is historically accurate in every detail.​—See ARCHAEOLOGY.

Races and languages. What the Bible says about races and languages of mankind is also true. All peoples, regardless of stature, culture, color, or language, are members of one human family. The threefold division of the human family into the Japhetic, Hamitic, and Semitic races, all descending from Adam through Noah, cannot be successfully disputed. (Ge 9:18, 19; Ac 17:26) Says Sir Henry Rawlinson: “If we were to be guided by the mere intersection of linguistic paths, and independently of all reference to the Scriptural record, we should still be led to fix on the plains of Shinar, as the focus from which the various lines had radiated.”​—The Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Records, by G. Rawlinson, 1862, p. 287; Ge 11:2-9.

Practicality. The Bible’s teachings, examples, and doctrines are most practical for modern man. The righteous principles and high moral standards contained in this book set it apart as far above all other books. Not only does the Bible answer important questions but it also provides many practical suggestions which, if followed, would do much to raise the physical and mental health of earth’s population. The Bible lays down principles of right and wrong that serve as a straightedge for just business dealings (Mt 7:12; Le 19:35, 36; Pr 20:10; 22:22, 23), industriousness (Eph 4:28; Col 3:23; 1Th 4:11, 12; 2Th 3:10-12), clean moral conduct (Ga 5:19-23; 1Th 4:3-8; Ex 20:14-17; Le 20:10-16), upbuilding associations (1Co 15:33; Heb 10:24, 25; Pr 5:3-11; 13:20), good family relationships (Eph 5:21-33; 6:1-4; Col 3:18-21; De 6:4-9; Pr 13:24). As the famous educator William Lyon Phelps once said: “I believe a knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valuable than a college course without a Bible.” (The New Dictionary of Thoughts, p. 46) Regarding the Bible, John Quincy Adams wrote: “It is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men good, wise, and happy.”​—Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son, 1849, p. 9.

Scientific accuracy. When it comes to scientific accuracy the Bible is not lacking. Whether describing the progressive order of earth’s preparation for human habitation (Ge 1:1-31), speaking of the earth as being spherical and hung on “nothing” (Job 26:7; Isa 40:22), classifying the hare as a cud chewer (Le 11:6), or declaring, “the soul of the flesh is in the blood” (Le 17:11-14), the Bible is scientifically sound.

Cultures and customs. On points relating to cultures and customs, in no regard is the Bible found to be wrong. In political matters, the Bible always speaks of a ruler by the proper title that he bore at the time of the writing. For example, Herod Antipas and Lysanias are referred to as district rulers (tetrarchs), Herod Agrippa (II) as king, and Gallio as proconsul. (Lu 3:1; Ac 25:13; 18:12) Triumphal marches of victorious armies, together with their captives, were common during Roman times. (2Co 2:14) The hospitality shown to strangers, the Oriental way of life, the manner of purchasing property, legal procedures in making contracts, and the practice of circumcision among the Hebrews and other peoples are referred to in the Bible, and in all these details the Bible is accurate.​—Ge 18:1-8; 23:7-18; 17:10-14; Jer 9:25, 26.

Candor. Bible writers displayed a candor that is not found among other ancient writers. From the very outset, Moses frankly reported his own sins as well as the sins and errors of his people, a policy followed by the other Hebrew writers. (Ex 14:11, 12; 32:1-6; Nu 14:1-9; 20:9-12; 27:12-14; De 4:21) The sins of great ones such as David and Solomon were not covered over but were reported. (2Sa 11:2-27; 1Ki 11:1-13) Jonah told of his own disobedience. (Jon 1:1-3; 4:1) The other prophets likewise displayed this same straightforward, candid quality. Writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures showed the same regard for truthful reporting as that displayed in the Hebrew Scriptures. Paul tells of his former sinful course in life; Mark’s failure to stick to the missionary work; and also the apostle Peter’s errors are related. (Ac 22:19, 20; 15:37-39; Ga 2:11-14) Such frank, open reporting builds confidence in the Bible’s claim to honesty and truthfulness.

Integrity. Facts testify to the integrity of the Bible. The Bible narrative is inseparably interwoven with the history of the times. It gives straightforward, truthful instruction in the simplest manner. The guileless earnestness and fidelity of its writers, their burning zeal for truth, and their painstaking effort to attain accuracy in details are what we would expect in God’s Word of truth.​—Joh 17:17.

Prophecy. If there is a single point that alone proves the Bible to be the inspired Word of Jehovah it is the matter of prophecy. There are scores of long-range prophecies in the Bible that have been fulfilled. For a partial listing, see the book “All Scripture Is Inspired of God and Beneficial,” pp. 343-346.

Preservation. Today none of the original writings of the Holy Scriptures are known to exist. Jehovah, however, saw to it that copies were made to replace the aging originals. Also, from and after the Babylonian exile, with the growth of many Jewish communities outside Palestine, there was an increasing demand for more copies of the Scriptures. This demand was met by professional copyists who made extraordinary efforts to see that accuracy was attained in their handwritten manuscripts. Ezra was just such a man, “a skilled copyist in the law of Moses, which Jehovah the God of Israel had given.”​—Ezr 7:6.

For hundreds of years handwritten copies of the Scriptures continued to be made, during which period the Bible was expanded with the addition of the Christian Greek Scriptures. Translations or versions of these Holy Writings also appeared in other languages. Indeed, the Hebrew Scriptures are honored as the first book of note to be translated into another language. Extant today are thousands of these Bible manuscripts and versions.​—See MANUSCRIPTS OF THE BIBLE; VERSIONS.

The first printed Bible, the Gutenberg Bible, came off the press in 1456. Today distribution of the Bible (the whole or in part) has reached over four billion copies in upwards of 2,000 languages. But this has not been accomplished without great opposition from many quarters. Indeed, the Bible has had more enemies than any other book; popes and councils even prohibited the reading of the Bible under penalty of excommunication. Thousands of Bible lovers lost their lives, and thousands of copies of the Bible were committed to the flames. One of the victims in the Bible’s fight to live was translator William Tyndale, who once declared in a discussion with a cleric: “If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou doest.”​—Actes and Monuments, by John Foxe, London, 1563, p. 514.

All credit and thanksgiving for the Bible’s survival in view of such violent opposition is due Jehovah, the Preserver of his Word. This fact gives added meaning to the apostle Peter’s quotation from the prophet Isaiah: “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like a blossom of grass; the grass becomes withered, and the flower falls off, but the saying of Jehovah endures forever.” (1Pe 1:24, 25; Isa 40:6-8) We, therefore, do well to pay “attention to it as to a lamp shining in a dark place” in this 21st century. (2Pe 1:19; Ps 119:105) The man whose “delight is in the law of Jehovah, and in his law he reads in an undertone day and night” and who puts in practice the things he reads is the one who prospers and is happy. (Ps 1:1, 2; Jos 1:8) To him Jehovah’s laws, reminders, orders, commandments, and judicial decisions contained in the Bible are “sweeter than honey,” and the wisdom derived therefrom is “more to be desired than gold, yes, than much refined gold,” for it means his very life.​—Ps 19:7-10; Pr 3:13, 16-18; see CANON.

[Chart on page 309]

TABLE OF BIBLE BOOKS IN ORDER COMPLETED

(The order in which the Bible books were written and where each stands in relation to the others is approximate; some dates [and places written] are uncertain. The symbol a. means “after”; b., “before”; and c., “circa” or “about.”)

Hebrew Scriptures (B.C.E.)

Book

Writer

Date Completed

Time Covered

Place Written

Genesis

Moses

1513

“In the beginning” to 1657

Wilderness

Exodus

Moses

1512

1657-1512

Wilderness

Leviticus

Moses

1512

1 month (1512)

Wilderness

Job

Moses

c. 1473

Over 140 years between 1657 and 1473

Wilderness

Numbers

Moses

1473

1512-1473

Wilderness/Plains of Moab

Deuteronomy

Moses

1473

2 months (1473)

Plains of Moab

Joshua

Joshua

c. 1450

1473–c. 1450

Canaan

Judges

Samuel

c. 1100

c. 1450–c. 1120

Israel

Ruth

Samuel

c. 1090

11 years of Judges’ rule

Israel

1 Samuel

Samuel; Gad; Nathan

c. 1078

c. 1180-1078

Israel

2 Samuel

Gad; Nathan

c. 1040

1077–c. 1040

Israel

Song of Solomon

Solomon

c. 1020

—

Jerusalem

Ecclesiastes

Solomon

b. 1000

—

Jerusalem

Jonah

Jonah

c. 844

—

—

Joel

Joel

c. 820 (?)

—

Judah

Amos

Amos

c. 804

—

Judah

Hosea

Hosea

a. 745

b. 804–a. 745

Samaria (District)

Isaiah

Isaiah

a. 732

c. 778–a. 732

Jerusalem

Micah

Micah

b. 717

c. 777-717

Judah

Proverbs

Solomon; Agur; Lemuel

c. 717

—

Jerusalem

Zephaniah

Zephaniah

b. 648

—

Judah

Nahum

Nahum

b. 632

—

Judah

Habakkuk

Habakkuk

c. 628 (?)

—

Judah

Lamentations

Jeremiah

607

—

Nr. Jerusalem

Obadiah

Obadiah

c. 607

—

—

Ezekiel

Ezekiel

c. 591

613–c. 591

Babylon

1 and 2 Kings

Jeremiah

580

c. 1040-580

Judah/​Egypt

Jeremiah

Jeremiah

580

647-580

Judah/​Egypt

Daniel

Daniel

c. 536

618–c. 536

Babylon

Haggai

Haggai

520

112 days (520)

Jerusalem

Zechariah

Zechariah

518

520-518

Jerusalem

Esther

Mordecai

c. 475

493–c. 475

Shushan, Elam

1 and 2 Chronicles

Ezra

c. 460

After 1 Chronicles 9:44, 1077-537

Jerusalem (?)

Ezra

Ezra

c. 460

537–c. 467

Jerusalem

Psalms

David and others

c. 460

—

—

Nehemiah

Nehemiah

a. 443

456–a. 443

Jerusalem

Malachi

Malachi

a. 443

—

Jerusalem

[Chart on page 310]

Christian Greek Scriptures (C.E.)

Book

Writer

Date Completed

Time Covered

Place Written

Matthew

Matthew

c. 41

2 B.C.E.–33 C.E.

Palestine

1 Thessalonians

Paul

c. 50

—

Corinth

2 Thessalonians

Paul

c. 51

—

Corinth

Galatians

Paul

c. 50-52

—

Corinth or Syr. Antioch

1 Corinthians

Paul

c. 55

—

Ephesus

2 Corinthians

Paul

c. 55

—

Macedonia

Romans

Paul

c. 56

—

Corinth

Luke

Luke

c. 56-58

3 B.C.E.–33 C.E.

Caesarea

Ephesians

Paul

c. 60-61

—

Rome

Colossians

Paul

c. 60-61

—

Rome

Philemon

Paul

c. 60-61

—

Rome

Philippians

Paul

c. 60-61

—

Rome

Hebrews

Paul

c. 61

—

Rome

Acts

Luke

c. 61

33–c. 61 C.E.

Rome

James

James

b. 62

—

Jerusalem

Mark

Mark

c. 60-65

29-33 C.E.

Rome

1 Timothy

Paul

c. 61-64

—

Macedonia

Titus

Paul

c. 61-64

—

Macedonia (?)

1 Peter

Peter

c. 62-64

—

Babylon

2 Peter

Peter

c. 64

—

Babylon (?)

2 Timothy

Paul

c. 65

—

Rome

Jude

Jude

c. 65

—

Palestine (?)

Revelation

John

c. 96

—

Patmos

John

John

c. 98

After prologue, 29-33 C.E.

Ephesus, or near

1 John

John

c. 98

—

Ephesus, or near

2 John

John

c. 98

—

Ephesus, or near

3 John

John

c. 98

—

Ephesus, or near