Scripture’s Self Attesting Authority

When any historical text is read, thought needs to be granted to the context in which the author penned his piece. The original intentions of the author, especially if what is written places itself in an attested historical literary category, need to honored. Truthfulness in reading does no damage to an author’s intent and allows the life and scope of the literature to breath in its own organic way. To force owns own life experience and context into literature that never asks the reader to do so is an all too common literary tragedy, especially when it comes to scripture.
The organic breath of biblical literature comes to us in two primary contexts: The Old & New Testaments we’re penned with Ancient Near East & Greco Roman cultural witnesses. The testimony of the written word was addressed to the people of their time, in a way they spoke and would understand. It came in many literary forms such as historical narrative, poetry, lament, or apocalyptic in nature; it did so with the intent to span generations which required apologetic usefulness. Any sound apologetic communicates truthfully to a person in the language they know most amidst the cultural challenges of their day so that reason may have its way and truthful convictions may result. The Ancient Near East religions were known to Moses as well as the Greek philosophers to Paul; the controversial apologetic was the same in both their voices: absolute monotheism. No God but Yahweh. No salvation but through Christ. Scripture holds this conviction consistently, with knowledge of the other world-views, it is not ignorant of them.
The biblical text reveals the Maker of heaven and earth who is an author and he used real historical people in real historical cultures to reveal Himself to us in literary form. The amazing thing one finds in that same literature are eye-witness accounts of an alien Author who is sovereign over the affairs of mankind. This alien Author literally created a historical nation out of a group of slaves demonstrating His divine power in ways that mankind couldn’t forget. He made promises to these people of a coming suffering servant centuries before he came. He then brought the good news of His kingdom by His Son: all are slaves to sin, not just Israelites but gentiles too, and through faith in Christ are men set free from sin and death. He literally became flesh and walked among us, ate with us, died like us. But we will be lead to marvel and worship as we learn that He is not like us because He was before us and because death couldn’t keep Him: He is risen! His death purchased salvation, a full and eternal pardon for rebel sinners who come to believe in Him. His resurrection is man’s true hope for the new body to come in the next age.
The authority of scripture is self attesting. Any claim to ultimate authority must rely upon its own self-attestation otherwise another authority would be required to validate it. So when reading the Bible it is important to resist reading anachronistically into it. As has been historically observed, when allowing the text to speak for itself, a most holy Author is revealed in scripture that no other text has ever, or ever can equal.