Is God Dead?

The scrolls Jesus read

In the winter of 1947, a young shepherd discovered a cave containing clay jars filled with ancient scrolled manuscripts. It turns out that what he had found was one of eleven caves used as an ancient library by the Jewish sect known as the Essenes. These caves were located in an isolated desert community known as Khirbet Qumran. Over the next several years, more than a thousand scrolls were discovered in the network of caves, and they were collectively designated The Dead Sea Scrolls. No less than two hundred of the scrolls were copies of works canonized in the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament. Manuscripts were found for every Old Testament book except Ruth. All told, the discovery at Qumran is perhaps the greatest biblical manuscript discovery in history. And yet, it turns out that the Old Testament scrolls found at Qumran were older than any existing records of the Old Testament texts. Until this discovery, the earliest known Old Testament manuscript was of Codex Leningradensis, which dates to 1008 AD. On the other hand, the Dead Sea Scrolls date back to between 250 BC and 50 AD.

The dating of these scrolls is highly significant because this is the text Jesus would have been familiar with. This is also the text that was being read in the synagogues when Jesus was growing up and during His ministry. This is the text that Jesus was reading in the synagogues as attested in the Gospel account (cf Luke 4:1721). In other words, the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us exactly what Jesus affirmed as Scripture. What is more, it also tells us just how accurate our present-day Old Testament today really is. Bible scholar Timothy Paul Jones writes, “When the Dead Sea Scrolls were rediscovered in the twentieth century, it became clear that the Old Testament had remained remarkably stable over the centuries. . . . To be certain, a scroll of Isaiah found . . . was copied more than a hundred years before Jesus was born; yet, the wording of this scroll of Isaiah agreed almost completely with the Masoretic texts that were copied a thousand years later!” The Old Testament that we now have in our Bible is incredibly accurate; it has been handed down with extreme care, and we can say that the Old Testament text we have today is authoritative precisely because the resurrected Jesus, the Son of God, affirmed it.

At this point, before we move forward, it is beneficial to go back because looking back often makes it easier to see where things are going. Several weeks ago, we said that the Israelites claimed that God had communicated with them through the prophets who lived among them. That God had indeed communicated that He did create the universe, and that He did create mankind, and that He did impart to them a Moral Law, and that He did love them, and cared for them, and wanted to save them from their hopelessness. More importantly, the ancient Israelites said that YHWH would send a Redeemer who would propitiate the sins of all of those who would believe. Furthermore, we have just finished our historical investigation of the resurrection and determined that the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus is “very certain.” Cumulatively, then, we have learned from all of this that the story of the New Testament actually began long before Jesus was born, back “in the beginning” of redemptive history. Christian apologist Johnathan Morrow notes there are three good reasons to believe the New Testament canon was a natural aspect of the unfolding of redemptive history in Jesus Christ. First, the Old Testament story needed to be finished. The second reason we can believe that the New Testament was the natural continuation of God’s redemptive plan in Christ Jesus was that the earliest Christians understood the covenants in the ancient world to be written documents and believed Jesus the Messiah had inaugurated the New Covenant. The third reason we can believe is that “the earliest Christians believed the apostles were uniquely authorized by Jesus to communicate the message of the New Covenant to the world.” These three reasons point decisively to an expectation of a continuation of the biblical narrative that began long ago, in The Garden of Eden, when God promised a Reeder who would “crush” the head of Satan (Gen 3:15 NIV).

Join us next week as we continue to look at Morrow’s three reasons to believe that the New Testament is the natural expectation of a contiguous story that began in the Old Testament, follows through with the history of Jesus’s earthly ministry recorded in the Gospels, and finds its natural conclusion and fulfillment in the New Testament. Until then, study the evidence and answer the question: is God dead?

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife, Vicki, are members of the Waurika church of Christ, and live in Ardmore, OK. You can contact him at dr.kerley@ isGoddead.com.