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Is the Bible true?

Digging up the Bible

IS THE BIBLE TRUE?
By Jeffery L. Sheler
HarperCollins. £9.99. 380 pages
ISBN 00 710424 3

The author is an American journalist rather than a scholar and he sets out to answer the question: 'What are we to make of the Bible in these modern times?

He writes for the ordinary reader who may or may not be a person of faith. Taking in a broad sweep of scholarly opinion, his conclusion falls short of a ringing affirmation of Scripture as the infallible Word of God (only the Holy Spirit can bring such a conviction), but his book does argue cogently for the basic reliability of the Bible.

Having put in some groundwork about what can and cannot be proved, and the different genres within Scripture, the book focuses for the most part on archaeological evidence. It has nothing of substance to say with regard to Genesis 1-11, but then takes us on a very illuminating tour of the way archaeology throws light on both Testaments. With the journalist's gift for interest he shows us, among other things, how the background to the Patriarchal accounts makes sense, how Kenyon's conclusion about Jericho are now being questioned, and how even what appears to be the bones of Caiaphas himself were found in a hidden burial chamber two miles south of the Temple Mount in 1990.

Perhaps the most helpful part of the book for the reviewer was the way Sheler guides through the discovery and meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He chronicles the scandalous secrecy, pride and jealousy among academics which has brought such delays in publishing results over the last 50 years, and also explodes the sensationalist theory of Baigent and Leigh (The Dead Seas Scrolls Deception, 1991), and the nonsense of the Australian professor Barbara Thiering (Jesus and the riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1992). Rather than undermining the Christian faith, he writes: 'After a half-century of study, the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown more dramatically than anyone could have anticipated how deeply Christianity was rooted in the Judaism of its time.' In particular, he shows how a number of New Testament expressions in the writings of Paul and John which previously were thought to show Hellenistic influences, are actually paralleled in the Jewish literature of Qumran.

Sheler then briefly surveys the so-called 'search for the historical Jesus' in its three phases. Here he points out that most scholars' conclusions are pre-conditioned by their own worldview rather than by the evidence. This section concludes with a fairly sturdy defence of the historicity of the resurrection of Christ.

Since Michael Drosnin's 1997 book The Bible Code caused such a stir, Sheler feels obliged to look at the pros and cons of that particular debate as he coasts towards the end of the book. He comes down pretty decisively against. 'One hardly needs the gimmickry of laptops and logarithms to prove the veracity of the Scriptures.' But it was good to catch up with the details of the argument.

This is a book which will fascinate the Bible believer, and will generally bring encouragement that we 'did not follow cleverly-invented stories' and myths in coming to Christ.

JEB
John Benton