Starting Monday March 17, various scholars will be commenting on Craig Blomberg’s new book from Brazos, Can We Still Believe the Bible? An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions. Blomberg offers answers for six common challenges to the Bible in a modern context including the reliability of the original manuscripts, the canon, Bible translations, inerrancy, historical reliability of narrative events, and the problem of miracles. Blomberg is well-known for his contributions to the study of the Gospels and has written numerous books on these sorts of issues. I have had a copy for a couple of weeks and think it will be a valuable resource for pastors and laymen who are looking to answer misinformation that commonly circulates about the trustworthiness of the Bible.
One thing that makes this book valuable is that Blomberg wants to answer the critics who make the Bible less reliable by questioning manuscript evidence, canon or translation methods, but also Christians who claim too much about the Bible on these issues. In addition to what might be called apologetic issues, Blomberg includes a chapter on miracles. This is more philosophical since the miraculous is usually ruled out a priori when critics approach the Bible. This chapter also deals with the idea of myth and how that may (or may not) relate to the stories we read in the Bible.
Brazos Press has set up a website for the book with and overview of the contents as well as a number of videos from Blomberg talking about some of the issues he covers in the book. The schedule for the Blog Tour includes contributions from Daniel Wallace, Ken Schenck, Joel Watts, Lee Martin McDonald, Darrell Bock, Michael Bird, Nijay Gupta, Matthew Montonini, David Capes, and Craig Keener. I was assigned chapter 3, on the reliability of English translations of the Bible. My comments on the chapter will appear here on Thursday, March 20.
As a promotion for the book, Brazos is giving away five copies of the book and a Grand Prize of four books from Baker Academic in addition to a copy of Can We Still Believe? You can enter the giveaway starting March 17, so visit the website and check it out.
This definitely sounds like a book that I would enjoy, I love seeing that there are people out there willing to discuss scripture and the major problems that so many people today ignore. Many Christians today stay away from the hard questions especially when talking to non believers, but this guy is facing it head on. It also sounds fascinating that he is going to talk about original scriptures and their historical accuracy, this has been a huge subject of discussion among non believers and even atheists. The only way to fix this problem and reveal the truth is to face it head on, I hope more people start stepping up like Craig Blomberg.
Would you believe in the historicity of Alexander the Great’s invasion of India if the only documents which tell this story are disputed as to their historical reliability? That is the case with the Gospels! A very significant percentage of experts believe that the Gospels are NOT eyewitness accounts, and therefore of questionable historical reliability. Is it wise to believe ancient stories of virgin births, water walking, and corpse reanimations based on questionably reliable sources??
https://lutherwasnotbornagaincom.wordpress.com/2021/12/24/if-you-discovered-that-the-gospels-are-not-eyewitness-accounts-would-you-still-believe/