Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
When you open your Bible today, can you be confident that the words you are reading are, in fact, the very corresponding English words that were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James, and Jude nearly 2,000 years ago? Confident, you say? Just how confident are you? Are you confident because of what you know or what you hear?
For the conservative Evangelical Christian, one of their foundational doctrines is “The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs.”
The date and authenticity of the Acts of the Apostles is crucial to the historicity of early Christianity and, thus, to apologetics in general.
Why are there only these 66 books in the Bible? Because God is the ultimate author of the Bible, and He inspired only these 66. All Scripture is breathed out of the mouth of God (Mt 4:4; 2 Tm 3:16). What the human authors wrote did not originate with them but with God, who moved upon them (2 Sm 23:2; 1 Pt 1:20–21).
The burden of Proof: The burden of proof falls on the one making the claims. If the Christian is witnessing to another, he has the responsibility to prove what he says is true, if he is asked for proof. However, if the critic is challenging the Christian, the burden of disproving lies with the critic.