Tag Archives: apostles

Islam, New Testament Reliability

Did the New Testament Writers Record Fact or Fiction? Part 8

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In this series of posts, we have shown that the NT writers claimed to be eyewitnesses or associates of eyewitnesses; we have shown that we have multiple witnesses, and we have shown that the eyewitnesses were trustworthy.  How?  They included embarrassing details about themselves  and difficult details about their subject of worship, Jesus; their accounts contain divergent details, just as we would expect from independent witnesses; and they wrote about historical facts that have been thoroughly corroborated by ancient non-Christian writers and modern archaeology.

There is one final piece of evidence that you should consider, though.  I think it is one of the strongest historical evidences we have.

Here it is.  The apostles, some of whom wrote portions of the NT, were all killed for their beliefs, except John.  According to Christian tradition, Paul was beheaded and Peter was crucified upside down – both of them killed in Rome.  James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church, was thrown off the top of the Jerusalem temple and stoned to death.  The other apostles met similar fates.    Before they died, they were beaten, stoned, imprisoned, mocked, and persecuted, mostly because of their professed beliefs in Christ.

I was having lunch with a couple of bright engineers a few years back, and we started discussing religions, Christianity in particular.  They challenged my belief in the NT documents by saying that many people have created religions in order to gain fame, fortune, and power.  They thought it was quite possible that the NT writers were merely doing the same.  I asked them if they knew what happened to the apostles after Jesus died, and they did not know.  When I shared the facts above, they became silent.  Fame, fortune, and power eluded all of these men while they were alive.  Their lives would have been far easier if they had just kept quiet.

Maybe the apostles weren’t in it for the money, so to speak.  Maybe they had been lied to or deceived.  Maybe they just died for their false religious beliefs like so many other fanatics do.   Many people die for their religious beliefs, don’t they?  The Muslim fanatics on 9/11 certainly died for their beliefs.  Aren’t the apostles just the same?

No, they aren’t.  There’s a fundamental difference between the disciples and the 9/11 extremists.  The 9/11 fanatics died for contemporary beliefs that reflected someone’s modern-day interpretation of the Qur’an, a book which was written 1,400 years ago.  They had no way of knowing if the source of that book, Muhammad, was telling the truth or not.  They weren’t there to see it.  They believed based on what they had been taught by their contemporary religious teachers.

Not so with the disciples.  They all went to their deaths claiming that they saw Jesus risen from the dead.  But they knew this, not based on information delivered 1,400 years after the fact, but based on their own two eyes!!  If Jesus did not rise from the dead and the NT is a pack of lies, then the disciples knew it.  They were there.

But if they knew Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then we must explain why they willingly went to their deaths.  Many people die for a false belief, but nobody dies for a false belief they know is false, especially not 12 different people!  The martyrdom of the apostles is strong evidence for the truth of the historical resurrection of Jesus.  There exists no other theory which can adequately explain their behavior.

I conclude this series with an extended quote from Chuck Colson, who is often asked about why he believes that Jesus rose from the dead, which is the central event and miracle of the NT.  Here is Colson:

Watergate involved a conspiracy to cover up, perpetuated by the closest aides to the President of the United States, the most powerful men in America, who were intensely loyal to their President.  But one of them, John Dean, turned state’s evidence, that is, testified against Nixon, as he put it, “to save his own skin,” and he did so only two weeks after informing the president about what was really going on – two weeks!  The real cover-up, the lie, could only be held together for two weeks, and then everybody else jumped ship in order to save themselves. Now, the fact is that all that those around the President were facing was embarrassment, maybe prison. Nobody’s life was at stake.

But what about the disciples?  Twelve powerless men, peasants really, were facing not just embarrassment or political disgrace, but beatings, stonings, execution.  Every single one of the disciples insisted, to their dying breaths, that they had physically seen Jesus bodily raised from the dead.

Don’t you think that one of those apostles would have cracked before being beheaded or stoned?  That one of them would have made a deal with the authorities?  None did.

You see, men will give their lives for something they believe to be true – they will never give their lives for something they know to be false.

The Watergate cover-up reveals the true nature of humanity.  Even political zealots at the pinnacle of power will, in the crunch, save their own necks, even at the expense of the ones they profess to serve so loyally. But the apostles could not deny Jesus because they had seen Him face to face, and they knew He had risen from the dead.

No, you can take it from an expert in cover-ups – I’ve lived through Watergate – that nothing less than a resurrected Christ could have caused those men to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and is Lord.  Two thousand years later, nothing less than the power of the risen Christ could inspire Christians around the world to remain faithful – despite prison, torture, and death.

Jesus is Lord: That’s the thrilling message of Easter.  And it’s an historic fact, one convincingly established by the evidence – and one you can bet your life upon.  Go ahead researchers – dig up all the old graves you want.  You won’t change a thing.  He has risen.

New Testament Reliability

Did the New Testament Writers Record Fact or Fiction? Part 6

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

From part 5, we are still examining whether the eyewitnesses who wrote the books of the NT are trustworthy.  Previously we noted that the eyewitnesses recorded embarrassing details about Jesus’ disciples.  We concluded that embarrassing details would not be included in a fictional work meant to emphasize the greatness of the first followers of Jesus.  But there are additional points to consider.

A second point to examine is that the NT writers included hard-to-explain details and sayings of their Lord and Messiah, Jesus Christ.  Again, if you were creating a new religion for selfish reasons, you would not include some of the following details about Jesus because they don’t portray a simple, straightforward version of Jesus, but a more complex version.

For example, Jesus’ family thought he was out of his mind (Mark 3:21).

Jesus was deserted by many of his followers (John 6:66).

Jesus was almost stoned to death several times because of what he said.

Jesus was accused of being a drunk in Matt. 11:19.

In John 6:53 Jesus encouraged his followers to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood.  This was difficult for many non-Christians to understand during the early years of the church (Jesus was speaking symbolically, not literally); some accused Christians of being cannibals!

To cap it all off, Jesus’ moral teachings were incredibly challenging.  He told his disciples to love their enemies (Matt 5:44-45) and he said that if a man just thinks seriously about adultery, then he is guilty of it.  Just our thoughts are enough to break the moral law.

Why include these facts about Jesus if you’re making up a new religion to gain power and wealth?

A third point about the NT writers is that they include divergent details about the life of Jesus.  Imagine that 5 teenagers attended a church retreat at a camp one weekend.  After the weekend was over, I asked each of them to write a one-page essay about what they did over the weekend.  All five gave me their essays and they were all virtually word-for-word identical.  Each teen wrote about the same events, included the same details about those events, commented on the same people they saw at the events, and even mentioned the color of the shirt worn by one of the counselors.

What should I conclude?  Obviously, the five teens all got together and agreed on the story before writing their essays (they colluded).  Probably one of them wrote down the events and the rest copied her.

Likewise, when a judge listens to several witnesses talk about one event, he is watching for collusion.  Witnesses that do this cannot be trusted, can they?  They don’t seem to be interested in telling the truth, but in getting their stories straight, in conspiring.

In fact, one way we know witnesses can be trusted is if their stories don’t match on all the details.  If the five teens mentioned the same general events of the weekend camp, but gave differing perspectives of those events and wrote about different details, then it is more likely they can be trusted to be telling the truth, and thus we have more confidence in the events they’re describing.

This is exactly the case we have with the NT writers.  They all talk about things like Jesus’ birth, his miracles, his crucifixion, and his resurrection, but they tell about all these events in different ways and they include different details.

For example, Matthew’s account of Jesus’ early years include his parents traveling to Egypt to escape King Herod.  Luke, in his gospel, does not mention the trip to Egypt.  Why?  Is it because Jesus never went to Egypt and Matthew made it up?  No, it’s probably because Luke was not so interested in the trip to Egypt while Matthew was.  Matthew was writing his gospel to Jews and he realized that the family’s move to Egypt fulfilled an Old Testament prophecy that would convince the Jews of Jesus being the Messiah.  Luke was not likely writing to a Jewish audience, but to a Gentile audience, so he left it out because it wouldn’t mean as much to them.

There are many other examples of divergent details in the gospel accounts, but they can be explained along these lines.  These different details actually serve to prove the integrity of the writers, not the other way around.

In the next post, we look at even more lines of evidence that bolster the trustworthiness of the NT writers.

New Testament Reliability

Did the New Testament Writers Record Fact or Fiction? Part 5

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from part 4, we will now ask further questions of the writers of the New Testament (NT ) documents.

Question 2:  Do we have multiple witnesses or just one?  The more witnesses, the better, because one person could make a mistake, but if several people are saying the same thing, it’s more convincing.

In the NT, we have 27 books written by 9 eyewitnesses or contemporaries of eyewitnesses.  Five of these books contain eyewitness accounts of the resurrected Jesus: Matthew, Mark, John, 1 Corinthians (written by Paul), and 1 Peter.  Additionally, Luke based his writings (Gospel of Luke and Acts) on eyewitness testimony.

So, we have at least 6 individuals all telling the same story about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  As Dr. Norman Geisler and Dr. Frank Turek state in their book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, “Six sane, sober eyewitnesses, who refuse to recant their testimony even under threat of death, would convict anyone of anything in a court of law. . . . Such eyewitness testimony yields a verdict that is beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Question 3: Are the eyewitnesses trustworthy?  Can we believe what they are reporting?  There are several ways to check this out.  First, did the witnesses include embarrassing details about themselves in their accounts?

If I was making a story up about myself and my friends, I certainly wouldn’t include embarrassing details about us.  Remember, the alleged goal of the apostles was to gain power and wealth by starting a new religion.  Making themselves look bad in their written documents would not have been an effective way to get this done, but that is exactly what happened.

The apostles provide plenty of embarrassment.  They often seem dimwitted  or ignorant (Mark 9:32, Luke 18:34, John 12:16).

They are uncaring when they fall asleep while Jesus is praying in the garden of Gethsemane.

Peter is rebuked by Jesus and even called “Satan” in Mark 8:33.

They are cowards who hide during Jesus’ crucifixion; Peter even denies him three times right after saying he wouldn’t!

They are doubters who, after being taught many times that Jesus would be resurrected, still didn’t believe it when it occurred.

They allowed Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin (the very group that sent Jesus to his death), to bury him instead of burying him themselves.  This list could go on and on.  Needless to say, the writers of the NT pass this test with flying colors.  There are several more points on which we can test the trustworthiness of the NT writers.  We will discuss those next!

New Testament Reliability

Did the New Testament Writers Record Fact or Fiction? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from part 1, let’s examine the evidence for dating the books of the NT, especially the books of the NT which contain substantial historical facts about Jesus and his followers.  First we should note that three leaders of the early church – Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp – quoted passages from 25 of the 27 books of the NT right around A.D. 100.  They could not have quoted from the books if they hadn’t been written, so the latest the books of the NT could have been written is A.D. 100.  But there’s strong evidence that many of them were written much earlier.

Several well-attested historical events occurred between A.D. 60 and 70.  First, the Jewish temple, the temple where Jesus and his disciples worshipped along with the rest of the Jewish people, was completely and utterly destroyed in A.D. 70 by the Roman army.  The Romans were extinguishing a significant Jewish rebellion and when they finally entered Jerusalem, they left no stones standing from the temple because they wanted the gold used in the contruction of the temple.

Second, both the apostles Paul and Peter were executed in Rome by the emperor Nero between A.D. 66 and 68.  Their deaths are recorded by church historians – Clement of Rome, in particular, who was alive when their executions occurred.  Their tombs are major historical landmarks in Rome to this day.  Third, James, the brother of Jesus, was executed in Jerusalem by the Sanhedrin (Jewish High Council) in A.D. 62.  This event was first recorded by a Jewish historian named Flavius Josephus in the first century.

Why are these three events important?  They help prove that the books of Acts, Luke, and Mark were written before A.D. 62.  Follow the logic.  Acts was written by the historian and medical doctor, Luke.  Luke was a companion of Paul and recorded many of the events of Paul’s life.

One odd thing about Acts is that it ends abruptly with Paul imprisoned in Rome; Paul is still alive at the end of Acts.  Luke also frequently mentions James, the brother of Jesus, and Peter, the apostle, in the book of Acts.  At the end of Acts, Peter and James are also alive (there is no mention of their deaths).

Now, if I were writing a biography of an individual, it seems like one of the most important events that would take place in the biography would be the death of the person.  It’s especially important because it ends the biography!  Luke mentions the martyrdom of Stephen, so he clearly has no trouble writing about the deaths of Christians, but we are left with the fact that Luke never records the deaths of three of the major characters in Acts.

There is only one good explanation for this fact:  they were all alive when Acts was written.  If they were all alive, then Acts must have been written before A.D. 62!  That means Acts was written within 30 years of Jesus’ death and not even a single generation had passed.

In part 3, we will continue to argue for an early dating of several NT books.

New Testament Reliability

Did the New Testament Writers Record Fact or Fiction? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In two previous posts, Darrell argued that the Greek New Testament (NT) that we have today is almost identical to the twenty-seven books that were originally written.  These two posts can be found here and here.  In this post and following posts, I want to establish an answer to the obvious next question.  If the NT we have today is almost identical to the one originally written, that’s nice, but how do we know that what was written originally wasn’t a bunch of lies?

In other words, did the NT authors record fact or fiction?  Were they trying to record real history or were they making up a story to convince people to follow them?  Maybe what was written was so far removed from the real events that myth and legend overtook the truth.  In order to get an answer to this question, we will use some of the same criteria that historians employ to determine whether a document is reliable – whether the authors can be trusted.

The first thing we want to know about a historical document is how close to the events it was written.  The NT authors were primarily writing about the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, who died around the year A.D. 33 (this fact is well-attested by ancient non-Christian historians).  If we are to trust the accounts written about his life, then the closer the documents are to A.D. 33, the better we can trust them.

So dating the original NT books is extremely important.  Note that we are talking about dating the original writings, not the manuscript copies that exist today.  Even though we don’t have the originals, we can still use historical analysis to deduce roughly when they were written.

One additional reason that dating the books is important is due to the nature of legendary development.  We’re all probably familiar with the way legends can develop about an event, given enough time.  In fact, history is full of strange and outrageous stories of Jesus or the apostles doing bizarre things (e.g., Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene and having a child).  The one thing these legends have in common is that they developed many generations and often hundreds of years removed from the time Jesus and the apostles lived.

For clarification, we are not talking about the development of lies or fabrications about an historical event, but the development of legend, which is defined as the outgrowth of a period of oral transmission of a tradition until the original facts have been lost.

In fact, historians have shown that it takes a minimum of three generations for legend to substantially corrupt core historical facts about an event.  Usually, more than 3 generations are required, but there are no examples of legend significantly crowding out truth in 1 or 2 generations.

Why is this?  As long as the eyewitnesses of an event are still alive, or their children, they will correct any legend that taints the true story.  When the eyewitnesses and their children start to die, there are fewer people left to correct falsehood, so legend can creep in.  This fact about history will prove useful in assessing the NT.

Next post, we will continue looking at this important question.