Argument from the Indestructibility of the Bible
·
Theissen: When we recall that only a very small
percentage of books survive more than a quarter of a century; that a much
smaller percentage lasts for a century; and that only a very small number live
a thousand years; we at once realize that the Bible is a unique book.
·
Pink: When we bear in mind the fact that the
Bible has been the special object of never-ending persecution the wonder of the Bible's survival is
changed into a miracle...effort has
been made to undermine faith in the inspiration and authority of the Bible and
innumerable enterprises have been undertaken to consign it to oblivion.
·
From Theissen, a few of those efforts...
o Royal
edict from Diocletian in 303 AD, demanded that every copy of the Bible be
destroyed by fire.
o From
1073 to 1294, when the Papacy had full sway in Western Europe, the schoolmen
put the creed above the Bible.
"...the reading of the Bible by laymen was subject to so many
restraints, especially after the rise of the Waldenses, that, if not absolutely
forbidden, it was regarded with grave suspicion."
o During
the Reformation the Roman Catholic Church put severe restrictions on the
reading of the Bible on the ground that they were incapable of interpreting it.
o Persistent
effort was made by the Romanizers to suppress the English Bible. In 1543 an act was passed forbidding
absolutely the use of Tyndale's version...
When he finally published his NT at Worms, he had to smuggle it to
England. It was then bought up by
ecclesiastical authorities in quantities and burned in London, Oxford and
Antwerp. Of the estimated 18,000 copies
printed between 1525-1528 only 2 fragments are known to remain.
o Voltaire,
who died in 1778, predicted that in 100 years Christianity would be
extinct. Instead the British &
Foreign Bible Society was founded, and the very presses that printed Voltaire's
infidel literature have since been used to print the Bible.
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