Is using the Bible to prove the Bible just circular reasoning? No way!
Well… actually, it can be. If someone says, “I know the Bible is the word of God because the Bible says so,” and leaves it at that—yes, that’s a textbook case of circular reasoning. And that approach isn’t very helpful, especially when you’re talking to someone who doesn’t believe the Bible is inspired.
But that’s not how we’re approaching it.
Before we claim that the Bible is the word of God, we need to give it a fair trial—just like we would with any ancient text. We want to examine the documents that make up the Bible as historical writings. Were they written by real people? Did they intend to communicate real events? Can their claims be tested?
Only after doing that can we consider whether the Bible actually is the word of God.
So let’s treat the Bible like any other historical source. When we do, here is one fact we discover: the Bible describes real people, places, and events—many of which were questioned by skeptics until modern archaeology confirmed them. For example:
- For centuries, critics said King David was just a myth—until the Tel Dan Inscription was discovered in 1993, referencing the “House of David.”
- The pool of Bethesda, mentioned in John 5, was once dismissed as fictional, until archaeologists uncovered it in Jerusalem.
- Luke, the writer who penned more words than anyone else in the New Testament, was once considered unreliable, until historians realized he accurately named dozens of cities, officials, and cultural details that match what we now know from archaeology. Skeptic Sir William Ramsay once set out to try to prove Luke as a fraud. After carefully comparing his work to history, archeology, and geography, he turned completely around, saying, “In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”1
When we look at the Bible in this way, we are not trying to use faith to prove itself. We are recognizing historical claims from ancient documents that have been verified by real-world discoveries.
Another fact we find is the New Testament documents were written during the lifetime of eyewitnesses. That means they could be challenged. People living in the first century could say, “That didn’t happen,” or, “That’s not how it went down.” But what we actually see in early Christian writings—and even in early opposition—is that critics didn’t deny the events. Instead, they tried to offer alternative explanations for the miraculous.
Think about the resurrection of Jesus. No one in the first century argued that the tomb wasn’t empty. They just tried to say the disciples stole the body. But, as we have already explored on this channel, that is an unreasonable explanation for the empty tomb of Jesus.
Christian apologists often point out additional compelling reasons to take the New Testament seriously:
- The criterion of embarrassment: The gospel accounts include details that are unlikely to be made up—like the disciples being cowardly, Peter denying Jesus, or women being the first to discover the empty tomb. In that culture, women weren’t considered reliable witnesses—so if you were inventing a story, that’s not how you’d write it.
- Multiple attestation: The death and resurrection of Jesus, for example, isn’t mentioned in just one source—it’s supported across multiple independent writings, both inside and outside the New Testament.
- Early testimony: We kind of already mentioned this one. The New Testament documents were written early, within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses, making it unlikely that myth or legend could have crept in.
- Dangerous teachings: The apostles were willing to suffer and die for their claims. They had nothing to gain (like power, wealth, or sex) and everything to lose. Liars make poor martyrs, so their willingness to suffer indicates sincerity.
- Fulfillment of prophecy: There are hundreds of Old Testament prophecies that are fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—all of which were written hundreds of years before He was born. These details point forward to a Messiah and are absolutely precise in describing Jesus’ mission, suffering, and ultimate victory.
You may look at this list and say none of these is strong enough to make a case for the New Testament by itself. That may be true, but when you add them all together, the evidence is compelling!
Let me briefly expand on the last one. Is it possible that Jesus and the writers of the New Testament could have read the Old Testament, and then purposely lived in a way to make it seem they were fulfilling prophecy? In some cases, yes, it would have been possible for them to have arranged certain events and conned their audience. However, there are some details that would have been impossible for Jesus to have orchestrated as a mere human, like where He would be born (Bethlehem, which was prophesied in Micah) and the persecution He suffered before He was two years old (which was prophesied by Isaiah).
Someone may say, “Then perhaps the Old Testament Scriptures were tampered with or even completely composed after the events of Jesus’ life.” There was a time in which some believed that to be a viable explanation of the seemingly impossible precision by which Jesus fulfilled the prophecies. That was until 1947, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered near Qumran. Among them was a complete scroll of the book of Isaiah, dated to around 150 B.C., more than a century before Jesus was born. This provides rock-solid archaeological evidence that Isaiah 53—and all other Messianic prophecies in Isaiah—predate Christ.
Then, someone may say, “Well, you can’t quote the Bible to prove the Bible. That’s circular reasoning!” For example, consider a comment on one of our YouTube videos: “How can quoting from the Bible and using the Bible as the proof of itself be undeniable proof? Should I also believe that Superman was real and lived in New York because the books and comics say so?” That’s a fair question.
When we study the Bible with other Bible-believers, we can assume some facts about the Bible, like it is the word of God. However, in apologetics, we cannot approach the Bible with the assumption that it is the word of God, but rather we must see it as a collection of historical documents. The letters of the New Testament were, before anything else, real correspondence written by real people to real audiences in history. They were intended to communicate truth—about God, yes—but also about events the authors claimed had actually taken place. Some portions of the gospel accounts are explicitly aimed at persuading the reader that these events really happened.
The key difference between the Bible and something like a Superman comic comes down to intent and genre. Superman is a known work of fiction—everyone who reads it understands it’s meant for entertainment, not as a record of actual events. The authors never intended for readers to believe Superman really existed. In contrast, the books of the New Testament—particularly the gospel accounts—were written by real historical people to real audiences within living memory of the events they describe. These authors weren’t writing fiction, mythology, or superhero comics; they were making historical claims and attempting to persuade their readers that those claims were true. So when we quote from the Bible in this context, we’re not treating it as sacred Scripture to “prove itself,” but as a collection of ancient historical documents that can and should be examined like any other historical source. The goal isn’t blind belief; it’s to consider whether the claims hold up under historical scrutiny.
So no, using the Bible to examine claims about the Bible isn’t circular reasoning, if we treat it first as what it is: a historical collection of ancient documents. And when we do, the case becomes strong—very strong—that what we’re reading actually happened.
Only then can we consider the deeper claim: that these historical writings weren’t just true—but inspired. Are you ready to dive deeper into apologetics? Here are some more studies on Christian evidence.
- Ramsay, William. The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament. 1915, p.222. ↩︎