Can I Trust the Bible? Defending the Bible’s Reliability, Part 2 - Darrell Bock

How does one approach defending the Bible when many people around you do not regard it as an inspired book? Defending the Bible’s reliability in part assumes someone is interested in that question. What happens if they have no regard at all for the biblical text? Apologetics today needs to give more thought to where people are coming from as we engage them about faith. This seminar not only explores the question of showing the credibility of much of what the Bible claims but also discusses how to bring someone who does not even have a category for inspiration to a place of considering its contents. There is also a short aside on how to discuss the role of miracles in the Bible.

Here we focus on their oral culture that was the first century and explain how the period between the event and the writing of the gospels worked as the accounts of Jesus were collected and passed on orally. Was it loose as some claim or was their care given to the development of the tradition orally? What kind of oral oversight took place? We also consider an array of differences in how the Gospels themselves present material on the principle of variation yet gist.

We take a close look at the central event of the New Testament, the resurrection. We look at what kind of expectation there was of physical resurrection (it was not a common belief). Then we look at the reasons why resurrection is the best explanation for the record of the event we possess.

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Darrell L. Bock is Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas, as well as Executive Director of Cultural Engagement for the Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership there. An author or editor of about fifty books, his special fields of study involve hermeneutics, the use of the Old Testament in the New, Luke-Acts, the historical Jesus, Gospel studies, and the integration of theology and culture. It is this latter area that is the focus of his work at the Hendricks Center, where he is responsible for producing a web-based, weekly podcast on issues of God and culture called The Table and author of the recent book, Cultural Intelligence: Living for God in a Diverse, Pluralistic World. He is a graduate of the University of Texas (B.A.), Dallas Theological Seminary (Th.M.), and the University of Aberdeen (Ph.D.). He has had four annual stints of post-doctoral study at the University of Tübingen, the second through fourth as an Alexander von Humboldt scholar at Tübingen University through a scholarship offered by the Federal Republic of Germany (1989-90, 1995-96, 2004-05, 2010-2011). He was editor at large for Christianity Today for several years and served as President of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) for the year 2000-2001. He currently serves on the boards of Wheaton College, Chosen People Ministries, Christians in Public Service (CIPS), and the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE). He also serves as elder emeritus at Trinity Fellowship Church in Richardson, Texas and as advisor to staff at Bent Tree Fellowship. Married to Sally for almost fifty years, he is the father of two married daughters and a married son, and is also a proud grandfather of five.

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