7. The Biblical View Of Truth

Here lies the basic difference between atheism and theism. To the atheist the universe is not a revelation of anything. It is simply a brute fact with nothing to tell us about anything outside itself. . . . The Bible, by contrast, asserts that the universe is the vehicle of God's self-revelation of his power and divine nature; and that to regard the universe itself as the Ultimate Reality, and the matter and forces of nature as the Ultimate Powers, is The Fundamental Falsehood . . .[p 198] [p 199] A preliminary word study The semantic range of the ancient languages in which the Bible was written allow for a great breadth of meaning. It will be useful, therefore, to examine those original words and how they are used in the biblical context. The Old Testament was for the most part written in Hebrew, and a few chapters in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek. In Hebrew the main word for truth, '^e^met, is polysemic, that is, in some contexts it is used to express one meaning, in other contexts another. This is, of course, a common characteristic of words in many languages. '^e^met in some contexts means 'truth' as distinct from 'falsehood' or 'lies'. '^e^met in other contex...