Read Genesis 15:12-21, The Authority of the Bible (6)

We are considering the Bible’s authority and doing it in contrast to the Book of Mormon.  We believe the Bible can be compared to any holy book and be found to be incomparable.  We have considered authority in terms of internal consistency.  A book claiming to be the Word of God must not be contradictory to itself.  The critical areas are the book’s description of God, explanation of how one can be saved (right with God), and its ability to speak truth with respect to the future (that is essential if the book is to provide confident expectation particularly after death).  All these subjects are huge and we have attempted to lay out basic principles and limited examples to support our conviction that the Bible speaks with the authority of God.

Let us not move to the matter of external consistency.  We will again speak of topics that are too much for our limited space.  But we do want to present a basic approach to each and to give some illustrations that will again demonstrate the authority of the Bible and the significant flaws in the Book of Mormon.

b)    External consistency.

i)      Consistent with archaeology.

This particular topic excites me when I think of the Bible because we have been privileged by the Lord to spend a significant part of our lives in Israel, commonly called the Land of the Bible.  So here is a common experience.  Let’s say we are sitting on a mound (tel) between Hebron and the Mediterranean Sea.  The mound has been demonstrated to be an important city in Israel in Bible times, the city of Lachish.  We are very near Kyriat Gat (the location of the Philistine city of Gath) and Beit Guvrin National Park (location of the Biblical city of Marashah).  In this paragraph I have already mentioned several Biblical sites that archaeology has confirmed were in this area.  On the other hand, you would think we could see Marasheh Gath (the hometown of the prophet Micah) but we don’t know.  Archaeology has not located that town that should be between Gath and Marashah.  It’s location is uncertain.

What should we say?  Should we say the Bible is suspect because we have not found some of the cities in this district?  Or should we say the Bible is amazingly accurate because we have confirmed its geographical statements in many situations.  Common sense says the latter.  The Bible has been shown to be accurate in so many situations that we are happy to wait for more confirmations in the future.  That’s the way Israeli archaeologists handle this.  They trust the Bible’s geography and the result is that they are regularly discovering some of those heretofore hidden sites.  In our next post we will note something about the Bible that tells us why geography is important.  And we will note something about the Book of Mormon as well.