Cracking the Da Vinci Code

Part Two

The Scripture: Its Nature & Composition




    1. The Nature of the Bible

      1. The Attack – The Bible is not God’s Word.

“The Bible is a product of man, my dear, not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions.”

Sir Leigh Teabing (TDC, 231)


b. The Truth – The Bible is God’s Word

“All Scripture is inspired by God

and profitable for teaching,

for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;

so that the man of God may be adequate,

equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim. 3:16)


The phrase “inspired by God” is a familiar, but not very helpful, translation of a Greek word, “θέοπνέΰστος” (theopneustos). Theopneustos is a compound word, bringing together the terms for God, theos, and breath, pneustos. So its derivation is literally, “God-breathed.” That is how the New International Version translates it, “All Scripture is God-breathed….”

The point of Paul’s statement is that all Scripture is a divine product, proceeding from the very mouth of God (c.f., Matt. 4:4). If we understand nothing else about inspiration, we must understand this! The Bible has its origin and identity in God. It is literally the Word of (from) God, spoken by Him through His prophets.


What do we know of the process by which God gave us His Word? The best biblical explanation comes through Peter, who said,

“Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:20-21)


The word for “carried along” was used by Luke in Acts 27:15 and 17 to describe a ship being driven along by the wind. Peter is describing a process whereby the human authors, while maintaining their unique personality, were carried along by the Holy Spirit to write the words that He wanted. The result is that the Scripture is the recorded words of the Holy Spirit, spoken through chosen prophets.

The Bible is God’s voice, spoken through men under the sovereign control of the Spirit of God. The result is that the Bible is the product of God, divinely-spoken through man.


2. The Composition of the Bible

a. The 1st Attack – “History has never had a definitive version of the book.” (TDC, 231)


The Truth

The 39-book Scripture of God’s people Israel is our Old Testament. (c.f., Lk. 24:44; Mt. 23:34-35)

In the third century, Origen, in his Homilies on Joshua, wrote, “So too our Lord Jesus Christ … sent His apostles as priests carrying well-wrought trumpets. First Matthew sounded the priestly trumpet in his gospel. Mark also, and Luke, and John…. Peter moreover sounds with the two trumpets of his Epistles; James also and Jude… and John gives forth the trumpet sound through his Epistles and Revelation; and Luke while describing the deeds of the apostles. Latest of all… [Paul] thundering on the fourteen trumpets of his Epistles, threw down, even to the very foundations, the walls of Jericho.”

That 27-book New Testament identified by Origen in the third century and Athanasius (Bishop of Alexandria) in his 367 A.D. festal (Easter) letter is still our New Testament.

The Bible recognized by Jerome in 385 A.D. is still my Bible. No additions. No revisions. Some have added the Apocryphal books, sometimes as canonical, sometimes as merely of historical value. But this issue is often exaggerated.


b. The 2nd Attack - “More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament and yet only relative few were chosen for inclusion: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them…. Constantine commissioned and financed a new bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made him Godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned.” (TDC, 231, 4)


The Truth

This is child’s play!

        1. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, who died in 180 A.D., wrote about our four gospels. “These [books] are the fountains of salvation, that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone the teaching of godliness is proclaimed. Let no one add to these; let nothing be taken away from them.”

        2. In 170 A.D. Tatian published his Diatessaron (dia “through” and essaron “four”), which was a harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

        3. Origen, in the third century, said, “The Church possesses four Gospels, heresy a great many.”


So our four gospels, and only those four, were accepted early – and much earlier than Constantine.

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