The Bible Has the Habit of Telling It Like It Is

3D. Personalities

Lewis S. Chafer, founder and former president of Dallas Theological Seminary, puts it this way: “The Bible is not such a book a man would write if he could, or could write if he would.”

The Bible deals very frankly with the sins of its characters. Read the biographies today, and see how they try to cover up, overlook or ignore the shady side of people. Take the great literary geniuses; most are painted as saints. The Bible does not do it that way. It simply tells it like it is:

The sins of the people denounced – Deuteronomy 9:24
Sins of the patriarchs – Genesis 12:11-13, 49:5-7
Evangelists paint their own faults and the faults of the apostles – Matthew 8:10-26; 26:31-56; Mark 6:52; 8:18; Luke 8:24, 25; 9:40-45; John 10:6; 16:32
Disorder of the churches – I Corinthians 1:11; 15:12; II Corinthians 2:4; etc.
Many will say, “Why did they have to put in that chapter about David and Bathsheba?” Well, the Bible has the habit of telling it like it is.

(p. 23)

from Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Josh McDowell.

Manuscript Accuracy: Shakespeare vs. the Bible

“It seems strange that the text of Shakespeare, which has been in existence less than two hundred and eight years, should be far more uncertain and corrupt than that of the New Testament, now over eighteen centuries old, during nearly fifteen of which it existed only in manuscript . . . With perhaps a dozen or twenty exceptions, the text of every verse in the New Testament may be said to be so far settled by general consent of scholars, that any dispute as to its reading must relate rather to the interpretation of the words than to any doubts respecting the words themselves. But every one of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays there are probably a hundred readings still in dispute, a large portion of which materially affects the meaning of the passages in which they occur.” (p. 20)

from Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Josh McDowell. McDowell is quoting an unnamed writer of an article found in the North American Review.