Can a thoughtful person today seriously believe that God wrote a book? There are an unprecedented number of sophisticated attacks on the origin, credibility, and reliability of the Bible. It can be difficult to know what to say when skepticism and secularism take over so many conversations. Additionally, confusion and doubt about the Bible being God’s Word are becoming as common inside the church as they are in the broader culture. The purpose of this book is to respond to these challenges, sound bites, and slogans…and give people confidence that the Bible can be trusted and that it matters for our lives because God really has spoken.

Table of Contents

• Foreword, 9
• Introduction: What You May Not Have Learned in Church about the Bible, 11
• 1. Is the Bible Anti-intellectual?, 17
• 2. What Can We Really Know about Jesus?, 31
• 3. How Do We Know What the Earliest Christians Believed?, 45
• 4. Why Were Some Gospels Banned from the Bible?, 57
• 5. Did the Biblical Writers Lie about Their Identity?, 77
• 6. Has the Biblical Text Been Corrupted over the Centuries?, 93
• 7. Are the Gospels Full of Contradictions?, 107
• 8. Is the Bible Unscientific?, 123
• 9. Is the Bible Sexist, Racist, Homophobic, and Genocidal?, 139
• 10. What Do Christians Believe about the Bible?, 159
• 11. Which Interpretation of the Bible Is Correct?, 173
• Conclusion: What If a New Generation Took the Bible Seriously?, 189
• Notes, 193
• Acknowledgments, 213
• Appendix 1: A Noncircular Argument for the Bible as God’s Word, 215
• Appendix 2: Archaeology and the Historical Reliability of the Bible, 225
• Appendix 3: Why a New Generation Doesn’t Take the Bible Seriously, 229