In Defense of the Bible: A Comprehensive Apologetic for the Authority of Scripture

by Steven B. Cowan (Editor), Terry L. Wilder (Editor)

In Defense of the Bible gathers exceptional articles by accomplished scholars (Paul Copan, William A. Dembski, Mary Jo Sharp, Darrell L. Bock, etc.), addressing and responding to all of the major contemporary challenges to the divine inspiration and authority of Scripture.

The book begins by looking at philosophical and methodological challenges to the Bible—questions about whether or not it is logically possible for God to communicate verbally with human beings; what it means to say the Bible is true in response to postmodern concerns about the nature of truth; defending the clarity of Scripture against historical skepticism and relativism.

Contributors also explore textual and historical challenges—charges made by Muslims, Mormons, and skeptics that the Bible has been corrupted beyond repair; questions about the authorship of certain biblical books; allegations that the Bible borrows from pagan myths; the historical reliability of the Old and New Testaments.

Final chapters take on ethical, scientific, and theological challenges— demonstrating the Bible's moral integrity regarding the topics of slavery and sexism; harmonizing exegetical and theological conclusions with the findings of science; addressing accusations that the Christian canon is the result of political and theological manipulation; ultimately defending the Bible as not simply historically reliable and consistent, but in fact the Word of God.

Genres: Theology, Christianity, Biblical Studies, Nonfiction, Scripture, Religion, Christian

512 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2013

About the author

Steven B. Cowan (M.Div.; Ph.D.) is the Jim Young Professor of Religion and Associate Professor of Christian Studies at Louisiana College in Pineville, La.

Reviews

[Jimmy Reagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a needed book! Its subtitle explains its approach: “a comprehensive apologetic for the authority of Scripture”. Edited by Steven B. Cowan and Terry L. Wilder, this book gathers a fine collection of articles by competent writers. I was especially impressed that though these writers were scholars, they truly succeeded in writing in a way that was accessible to a wide array of readers.

You will find this book to be expertly designed. After a brief introduction, Part One discusses philosophical and methodological challenges in four chapters. That covers things like special revelation, the veracity of the Bible, what higher criticism says and how it’s wrong, as well as our ability to understand the Bible. Part Two explains textual and historical challenges in seven chapters. In this section, you will learn how that neither the Old nor the New Testament are hopelessly corrupted. You will also be made aware of the reliability of each Testament and how to view apparent contradictions in the Bible.

Part Three, which was my favorite, looked at ethical, scientific, and theological challenges in six chapters. It covers subjects that often bewilder Christians when the world attacks. What about the Bible’s apparent condoning of genocide? There’s a profound chapter answering the question–does the Bible condone slavery and sexism? There’s another chapter on the Bible’s conflict with science, and though I did not agree with all of it, it did give some help in understanding the subject. Considering the charges that our Bible is missing several books, the chapter on Canon was especially enlightening. All in all, every chapter was a winner.

My library contains just about every major work on the authority and inspiration of the Bible. I have all the old standbys and love them, but if I had to choose to recommend just one volume to someone wanting to really dig into this subject, I would choose this book. The main reason that it’s so valuable is that it takes a high view of Scripture just as the best books have in the past while focusing on the most turbulent issues that our non-Christian culture hurls at the Bible today. It’s fair to say this book succeeds in both defending the Bible and in offering an apologetic for our day. Every pastor could benefit from this book, but I recommended it to anyone feeling overwhelmed by the criticisms widely broadcast against the Bible in our day. This is an awesome resource!

I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is somewhat mixed. There's definitely some helpful content. It's a scholarly apologetic of the Bible from an evidentialist and philosophical perspective. I admit my bias as a presuppositionalist but I think there's a major weakness to a Christianity which defends itself with arguments which can easily be dismantled. After all, the reason skeptics do not believe is because they hate the light, not because they don't have enough evidence. There's a blinder from the devil, death in the heart and a world which lives contrary to God to keep people away from the gospel. It's going to take more than a syllogism to bring someone to faith - it's going to take humiliation and supernatural life giving by the Holy Spirit.

I've made my case, weak as it may be. If you're convinced in the evidentialist/philosophical approach you may find some things in this book helpful but I think one would be better off elsewhere.

[Lew Brill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great research and footnotes. Definitely a reference book that you will pull out again and again. Not for someone who wants a simplified or abridged study.

[Jacob-Carl Pauw · Rating 2 out of 5]

A satisfying book for fundamentalists, not for truth seeking people.

This book contains a series of essays that are written by different authors. Some chapters I find interesting, but most chapters are doubtful, very one-sided or just unbelievable.

 Here are some sub-reviews of mine on some of the essays in this book. A positive one to begin with:
1. Dan Wallace made a reasonable and even convincing argument about the reliability of the New Testament; how the analysis and reconstruction of the 5800+ Greek manuscripts brought us very close to the original text. Of course it’s not 100% water proof. A few difficulties would lie in some minor details. The question is who decides what’s relevant and what’s not. Personally I think these few difficulties don’t undermine the reliability of the delivered text. Whether the things that are written are true, is, of course, a whole different discussion.

2. Charles L. Quarles made an interesting argument about higher criticism; how the method has been developed in history and has been changed over time, especially since the enlightenment. Quarles also notes that new insights recently led to more balance in using the method of historical criticism and explains why we should finetune and not abandon this method. When applied correctly, all parties should benefit from it. What makes the situation difficult though, is the fact that we can’t reconstruct miracles that allegedly happened in history. So the question remains how to finetune this method in an overall satisfying way. I wonder if this is even possible…

3. In the chapter “Can we understand the Bible”, the author tries to explain how the Bible can be understood by everyone. That is to say, the central message of the Bible. He posits that the Bible has a self-correcting mechanism, that allows anyone to draw the same basic conclusion about the text an take it as true. I have one big objection about this view: The Bible is much more than just a central message that everybody can understand. There is a great variety of different views that relate to various theological topics that people consider fundamental to christian belief. That, I think, is a serious problem that has never gone away. Christians say that the Holy Spirit illuminates the text for them in order to understand it. But if this is true, then how is it possible that so many christians who claim to have the same Holy Spirit never seem to agree with each other about what they read? For example: Christians have very different views about eschatology and Biblical prophecy. How can we be certain about what the author meant by what he said? And what about topics like election? We all read the same things, but to this very day there are vicious debates among christians about these topics. I think this is partly because the Bible as a whole does not contain one consistent and cohesive theology. Different authors had different theologies; different views about God, life and death, the afterlife, hell, the person of Jesus, the way to be saved etc. Furthermore, there are also many contradictions. If you are a fundamentalist (like I once was) who believes in the inerrancy of the Bible and has learned to harmonise all the difficulties it contains, this is a hard pill to swallow. Another interesting example to consider is the creation story -or actually stories- in Genesis 1 & 2. Anyone thinks they can understand it. Of course, we get the basics about God who created the world and all that’s in it in 6 days. But what do we know about the historical and cultural background? Is the story mainly about material origins -where we western people tend to focus on- or is it about functional origins? Are the elements of the story like that of the garden, the serpent, the tree of life, knowledge of good and evil etcetera, all coming out of the blue? Or does Genesis 1-2 share certain symbolisms with other creation myths that are older than Genesis? If (I say if) these elements are symbolic, they are not to be taken literally*. You see, even if the text seems clear-cut and anybody can read it, it doesn’t necessarily mean we directly understand the depth of it.

4. Paul Copan goes through a lot of brain gymnastics in order to defend the indefensible: the Canaanite genocide. He does present some interesting ideas, such as how these ancient places that were conquered by the Israelites, weren’t necessarily populated cities full innocent woman and children, but more likely citadels that contained mostly soldiers. Furthermore, he argues that the Biblical author probably used some kind of metaphor when he speaks about “utterly destroying” the cities and the people therein. He compares is with a sports team that, after a glorious victory, might use the same metaphor to refer to the other team that they’ve successfully defeated. This way Copan tries to minimise the impact of these violent Biblical events. Although his points are maybe worthy to consider, it absolutely doesn’t solve the ethical problem of a God who commands the Israelites to kill men, women and children. Because it doesn’t matter how many people were there. Even if it’s a much smaller number of people than we thought before, the fact still remains that women and innocent children are being murdered here. The next thing Copan does is trying to argue that this Israelite conquest was a very exceptional event within a very specific period of time in history… Like that’s gonna help! If christians are really honest, they would have to admit that the OT God uses a double standard of morality: You shall not kill… except when killing suits Gods plan; God doesn’t want you to lie… except when you are someone like Rahab, who lied to the messengers of the king of Jericho, in order to protect the Israelite spies, and gets rewarded for it; Don’t steal… except when you conquer other peoples and take possession of their stuff. And so it goes. There is just no way to justify these terrible things at any time and place. There are a lot more problems about these topics, but for now I'll leave it at this.

5. I have mixed feelings about chapter 5, in which the author discusses the trustworthiness of the Old Testament. This has to do with the way the author ends his essay: He compares the Bible to other holy books like the Quran and the Book of Mormons and shows how these sources have failed prophecies and contradictions in them, while the Bible has been preserved for over a very long period of time. But it’s really no help to boast about your Bible when this book also contains contradictions and failed prophecies (one example: Ezekiel's prophecy about Tyre). Christians would say, “well, these so-called contradictions can be harmonised with each other. And that prophecy must have been fulfilled another way.” Okay, then also let the apologist of the Quran speak. I’m sure they also have answers to objections aimed at their holy book. That’s the thing with cognitive dissonance: it’s a mechanism that allows you to harmonise contradictions and defend the indefensible in such a way, that you can maintain your beliefs. People, including christians, may ridicule bizarre and funny stories in ancient (religious) texts, but when such a story is in the Bible, then it’s from God and all of a sudden it’s history. Think about a talking donkey for example. I recently asked a christian friend of mine if he would believe the Gospel of Peter if it would have been part of the New Testament (which I believe it almost did, but actually didn’t, because of some Docetic views about Jesus). He said he probably would believe it. This would mean he would believe a resurrection account that speaks about a Jesus who, coming out of the tomb, is higher than the clouds and about a walking, talking cross! This, of course, shows an undeniable bias towards the Bible, which is understandable in some sense.

6. The chapter “Is the story of Jesus borrowed from pagan myths” is very one sided. The author says we should look critically to the similarities between the story of Jesus and ancient myths. I agree! But let’s also look critically to the other side. That’s what I’ve been missing in this chapter. There is no nuance in the way in which these myths are being treated and the similarities are being put aside as irrelevant. I believe the similarities are relevant, because it isn’t likely that they are just coming out of the blue. The author shows how the story of Jesus is very different than these myths. Well, of course! Many myths that share similarities with each other, also have their differences and their own unique character. Take the flood myths for example. They are all different, but they have also many things in common. It’s the same with Jesus. There are many elements of the gospel that we also find in ancient (Greek) myths:
- Deification of a man after his death.
- Voluntary confrontation and battle of a god with the forces of evil.

- Being raised from the dead (bodily or spiritually).
- Victory over evil through suffering and death.
- Self sacrifice in order to gain justice in favour of humanity.
- Dominion after victory.

- Supernatural birth of a god, not always a virgin birth, but a supernatural conception/birth anyway, at which gods, angels or spirits are involved.


C.S. Lewis recognised this and describes the stories of Jesus as [“a true myth. It fulfils the deep human longing for redemption present in many cultures' death and resurrection stories”.] I think that’s the only way to deal honestly with this topic and maintain your christian beliefs, whether it’s a satisfying answer to you or not.

The overall tone of the book is this: The Bible is the inerrant word of God and can’t have contradictions in it. This is pure fundamentalism. I’ve been a fundamentalist myself for many years, so I can relate to it. But I came to realise that fundamentalism isn’t a healthy position to hold. I believe it doesn't do justice to the Biblical text. I also think that it doesn’t connect well with reality. This leads me to some final questions I have for the editors: Why this book? For whom is it written? Is it meant to satisfy critical thinking christians who already believe, or is it to convince sceptics? In either case this book in general fails the test. My next question is this: Why does the Bible have to be inerrant? It contains 66 books (not a perfect number) and is written by many fallible authors and sometimes with bad grammar, so why can’t it have contradictions or myths in it? Would the existence of myths, contradictions, mistakes and failed prophecies in the Bible disprove the resurrection of Jesus? No. Would it prove that there is no God? No! Would it mean we should throw away the Bible altogether? Ridiculous! But that’s what I hear from christians. As a fundamentalist I was scared to death about losing my faith, because I encountered so many serious challenges. Once it led to a severe crisis that affected my physical and mental health. But I believed it was the only way I could be a serious christian, so I continued to engage in fundamentalistic apologetics and would not rest until I had satisfying answers to all these “endlessly, irritating, sceptical objections”. So one can understand that I was familiar with 85% of the content in this book (and almost all the apologetic arguments), before I even read it. The remaining 15% consisted of extra details, theological terms or scientific methods that I wasn’t familiar with yet. The book was handed over to me by a church elder, after I changed my mind about the Bible, faith and life in general.

Do you want to defend the christian faith? Then focus on the practice and christian living. As for fundamentalism, that has to go, because it doesn't really help anyone!

*See Dr. John Walton’s books “The Lost World of Genesis One” and “The Lost World of Adam & Eve”.

[Aaron Sharp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find that by and large there are two books in my library, books I want to read, and books I want to have read. The first category are books that I buy and I read. The second category are books that I buy, and they sit on my bookshelf collecting dust because I like the idea of reading those books more than I like the idea of actually reading those books.*

The book that I just finished, In Defense of the Bible: A Comprehensive Apologetic for the Authority of Scripture, definitely fits in the second category. That’s not a knock on the book, if anything it is an acknowledgement of my own shortcomings as a reader. There are two reasons for this. Frist, reading narrative books are easy for me. Reading topical or conceptual books is often a struggle. I blame this on seminary, but the truth is that I just enjoy a good narrative book more than I usually do a book that is topical in nature. Second, in addition to the narrative versus topical issue this book also had one other thing working against it, apologetics. This is related to the first, but is slightly different. When it comes to theology books apologetics is not where my brain is most comfortable. I tend to gravitate towards expository works that work through a passage rather than an apologetic treatment of an issue. This book was an attempt to force myself out of my comfort zone to read a book that I knew would be a little tough sledding in places.

What I liked

The chapter, Has the New Testament Text Been Hopelessly Corrupted? by Daniel B. Wallace. I was far too chicken to take Dr. Wallace for any of my Greek classes, but he has an excellent way cutting through the fog when it comes to New Testament manuscripts. In particular I liked this quote, “if the radical skeptics applied their principles to the rest of Greco-Roman literature, they would thrust us right back into the Dark Ages, where ignorance was anything but bliss. Their arguments only sound impressive in a vacuum.” (Kindle Locations 3218-3220) I’m pretty sure this chapter had more highlights for me than any other chapter.

The chapter, Does the Bible Condone Genocide? by Matthew Flannagan and Paul Copan. I’ve read Copan on this before and really think that he makes some excellent points to consider.

The chapter, Is the Old Testament Historically Reliable? by Walter C. Kaiser Jr. This chapter was a gem. Here is one quote I liked, “Rarely is scientific knowledge based on complete evidence, so why should we make this a requirement for biblical historians when we obviously do not require the same for scientific knowledge?” (Kindle Locations 4479-4480).

What I didn’t like

The chapter Does the Bible Condone Slavery and Sexism? by James M. Hamilton. Listen, the writers of this book didn’t have to convince me of anything, I already believe what they are teaching, but to me this chapter would have been off-putting to someone with serious questions. It begins with this, “Does the Bible condone slavery and sexism? Of course not! The suggestion is ridiculous, but we live in a world where absurd conclusions seem as rational as the truth is preposterous. All sorts of wicked ideas advance on the power of subtle insinuation and grow strong by the sneaking suggestion.” (Kindle Locations 7189-7191) Overall I just felt this this chapter treated every objection, not as something to interact with, but as something to sneer at. No, I don’t think the Bible condones slavery and sexism, but I didn’t think this chapter was the best defense of that idea.

The Kindle formatting. A couple of chapters had issues where for some reason the formatting was off. So a references that would normally appear as 12:38-43 appeared as 123843. Not a huge deal once I figured out what was going on, but still a little annoying. But by far the biggest annoyance was the lack of page numbers. One of the great things about a physical book is the visual representation of your progress. You can watch the pages go by and see where your bookmark is. On a book that really sucks you in this isn’t such a big deal, but with a book that requires some endurance being able to see progress is very helpful. On ebooks without page numbers all you get is the rather ambiguous location of where you are at. For example, in this particular book there were 10,046 locations. The saving grace was that since 10,000 (ignore the other 46 for now) is a nice round number I was able to have a nice approximation of my progress. On a book with a location number of say 15,493 you can’t approximate it as well, and it is easy to find yourself drowning in a long book.






*This is a great point in favor of digital books. One of the two main reasons ebooks have become such a large part of my reading is that they economize bookshelf space. If a book is going to collect dust, it is better for it to do so figuratively when it just takes up space on Amazon’s server rather than in my house.

[Samuel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Never have I read a book that contradicted its title like this book does. Many of the chapters capitulate and bow to the culture in the way they address the question. There are 3 or 4 good chapters that truly defend Scripture and its stance on a given topic, but I came away from this book frustrated and saddened. I had hoped for far more.

[Joshua Reichard · Rating 1 out of 5]

In all honesty, Dr. Jim Hamilton’s chapter is the only one worth reading. The rest ask simple questions that yes might be hard to explain to their fullest but if you trust in the Bible their questions can be answered with yes and no questions and that’s that.

[Marcolus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not like the first 2 chapters very much AT ALL....but I'm happy I kept reading. The rest is phenomenal.

[anna kuester · Rating 3 out of 5]

bible intro required reading 💃💃💃

[Natalie Lapointe · Rating 3 out of 5]

boringgggg but maybe helpful someday

[Caleb Hines · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful in a number of issues but supremely helpful regarding historical reliability and textual criticism.

[Todd Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

All multi-author works will be uneven in quality and helpfulness. In Defense of the Bible is a long book, but most of the contributions are strong and helpful. Very solid work.

[John Kight · Rating 5 out of 5]

It would be safe to say that the world is growing increasingly hostile towards a biblical worldview. The once prominent influence of Christianity has taken a cultural backseat to the rise of a post-Christian society, and the effects therein can be seen almost everywhere. For the sake of modernity, this cultural shift has largely encouraged an undue stance of skepticism towards the Bible. It is here that In Defense of the Bible: A Comprehensive Apologetic for the Authority of Scripture edited by Steven B. Cowan and Terry L. Wilder provides the reader with a much-needed reevaluation of the current challenges facing the sacred Scriptures.

Despite the onslaught of negative opinion concerning the Bible, the contributors of this volume remain firmly persuaded with the faith of the Church in the inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture. This conviction is stated rather unashamedly in the introduction. In Defense of the Bible is divided into three major sections: (1) Philosophical and Methodological Challenges, (2) Textual and Historical Challenges, and (3) Ethical, Scientific, and Theological Challenges. Each of these sections are strategically pointed at specific challenges that have arisen against the Bible. These challenges are largely variegated in nature, but Cowan and Wilder have done justice to the subtitle in their attempt to provide a comprehensive apologetic.

Depending on the particular interest of the reader, I found that the content of the chapters amid the three major sections mentioned above can vary as much as the challenges they address. For example, if your interests are more easily perked by the philosophical and methodological issues, the opening four chapters will be a goldmine of useful information. However, if these issues are not of immediate importance or interest, regardless of the content therein, the reader is likely to find the treatment to be satisfactory but not overly helpful. I was among the latter group in the opening chapters of the book, although the chapter on higher criticism by Charles L. Quarles was easily one of the most helpful chapters in the book.

The second section of the book is where I found the most benefit. It is here that the reader is exposed to some of the most substantial challenges to the Bible. The other challenges tackled in the book are important, but largely irrelevant if the text of the Bible is unsustainable. This is also where much of the modern challenge today is being directed, and directed quite strategically. Both the Old Testament and the New are thoroughly addressed, and the contributors to this section are all qualified voices amid the larger academic dialog. The chapter by Daniel B. Wallace is worth admission alone. The same could easily be said for the chapters by Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Paul D. Wegner, and Paul W. Barnett, but Wallace’s chapter will be noteworthy for anyone familiar with the frequent challenges administered by Bart D. Ehrman and others.

The challenges that are addressed in this volume show no sign of decelerating anytime soon. It is in the best interest of Christians everywhere to be familiar with these challenges, both ready and equipped to provide a defense for the hope that is within them. Thus, In Defense of the Bible: A Comprehensive Apologetic for the Authority of Scripture edited by Steven B. Cowan and Terry L. Wilder is a book that I could not recommend more enthusiastically! It will both strengthen your confidence and encourage your faith!

I received a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

[Troy Solava · Rating 3 out of 5]

This a helpful resource but probably not a book to work through from page 1 to 460ish. There are helpful chapters regarding canonicity, oral transmission, and if there are contradictions in the Bible. Some chapters are very academic and hard to read. But this is a helpful book to have on a shelf.

[Brian Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a multi-author work defending the authority, historical reliability, and divine origin of the Bible. As with other multi-author works, it's a mixed bag. In my opinion, only one of the seventeen chapters was a real clunker. Some were excellent, including James Hamilton's chapter, which shows that the Bible is not sexist nor does it endorse slavery, and Steven Cowan's chapter that shows how Jesus affirmed the divine origin of the Bible. I also appreciated William Dembski's chapter on science and the Bible.

While the book is over 450 pages long, it is ideal for those who want to know why they should trust that the Bible is true. For readers who want to dig deeper, it might be better to skip this book and delve into monographs devoted to each chapter's topics. For example, if you want to know about the canon (why certain books are in the Bible), you could read Michael Kruger's books on the subject.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of seventeen essays providing, as the subtitle says, "a comprehensive apologetic for the authority of Scripture." The essays are distributed among three subject areas: philosophical and methodological challenges, textual and historical challenges, and ethical, theological, and scientific challenges. There's not really anything new here, but the book is useful for the seminary student, or for the pastor who may not have attended a seminary that dealt with these issues. All of the essays are clearly written, with useful bibliographical footnotes. The strongest essays were those by Douglas Blount: "What Does it Mean to Say that the Bible is True;" Daniel Wallace on the text of the New Testament; William Dembski on the Bible and science; and Stephen Cowan: "Is the Bible the Word of God."