The Bible writers all made the claim that they were inspired by God. Given that the writings began in ancient times and were completed around 2000 years ago what would we expect to find if their claims were false? Surely there would be ideas that were believed true but have since been debunked. Instead the reverse is true. When the Bible was being written, many people believed that various gods inhabited the world and that those gods, not natural laws, controlled the sun, the moon, the weather, fertility, and so on. But that was not the case with the ancient Hebrew prophets of God. John Lennox, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, England, observed that those prophets “did not have to have their universe de-deified [of mythical gods]. . . , for the simple reason that they had never believed in the gods in the first place. What had saved them from that superstition was their belief in One True God, Creator of heaven and earth.” How did that belief protect them from superstition? For one thing, the true God revealed to them that he governs the universe by precise laws, or statutes. For example, more than 3,500 years ago, Jehovah God asked his servant Job: “Have you come to know the statutes of the heavens?” (Job 38:33) In the seventh century B.C.E., the prophet Jeremiah wrote about “the statutes of heaven and earth.”—Jeremiah 33:25. Hence, all who lived in ancient times and had faith in the writings of the Bible prophets could know that the universe was governed, not by mythical, temperamental deities, but by rational laws. As a result, those God-fearing individuals neither bowed down to created entities, such as the sun, the moon, or the stars, nor did they have a superstitious attitude toward them. (Deuteronomy 4:15-19) Rather, they saw God’s works as objects of study that reveal his wisdom, power, and other qualities.—Psalm 8:3-9; Proverbs 3:19, 20. In harmony with the views of many scientists today, the ancient Hebrews also believed that the universe had a beginning. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” says Genesis 1:1. Also, some 3,500 years ago, God revealed to his servant Job that the earth ‘hangs on nothing,’ or is suspended in space. (Job 26:7) And more than 2,500 years ago, the prophet Isaiah wrote that the earth is a circle or sphere.—Isaiah 40:22.
