Bill Pratt | December 27, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt Although the author did not record his name within the text itself (a common practice in the ancient world), the first book found in the New Testament (NT) has historically been attributed to the writing of Matthew, a tax collector and one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. Although some NT [...]
Bill Pratt | January 6, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 of this post, we discussed Simon Greenleaf’s conclusion that the Gospel writers’ testimony about Jesus Christ should be considered true, based on the canons of legal evidence, an area in which he was an undisputed expert. Some skeptics, however, have argued that the standards for judging the credibility [...]
Bill Pratt | January 4, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt I recently read a short book entitled The Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf. Greenleaf was one of the most respected American jurists of the nineteenth century. He taught law at Harvard University and wrote a judicial classic, Treatise on the Law of Evidence. This work was used as a [...]
Bill Pratt | November 11, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt In my frequent conversations with non-Christians, I hear the following kinds of statements: “I can’t believe what the Bible authors wrote because they were religiously motivated.” The idea seems to be that if you are religious, you will not be able to tell the truth about historical events. You will twist [...]
Bill Pratt | August 3, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt I have been having an interesting discussion with a gentleman on the issue of the empty tomb. We’ve touched on some of the evidence, but I decided to present a brief synopsis of William Lane Craig’s arguments for the empty tomb (from Jesus Under Fire). Here goes! The historical credibility of [...]
Bill Pratt | April 3, 2009
Last night, Darrell and I attended the debate between Bart Ehrman and Mike Licona at SES in Charlotte. They debated whether historians can prove Jesus rose from the dead. Here is my summary of the arguments that each of them presented. Licona opened the debate with a historical argument that goes like this. First, he [...]
Bill Pratt | February 27, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt Continuing from part 6, we will examine more evidence for the trustworthiness of the NT writers. A fourth question about the NT writers’ integrity: are any of the historical facts they mention corroborated by other sources? Here the NT writers really shine. During the first and second centuries, there were many historians [...]
Bill Pratt | February 21, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt Based on the previous post, we know that the NT documents were written soon enough after the events of Jesus’ life to prevent anyone claiming that they are largely tainted by myth or legend. This fact was very important to establish, but we are still left with a nagging question. Just because [...]
Darrell | December 9, 2008
As a continuation to Post 1, I would like to discuss another principle that is used in the Bibliographical Test. This principle involves looking at the time span between the original manuscript in question and the oldest surviving copy. The principle behind this is, obviously, the shorter the time span, the more reliable the copy is [...]
Darrell | December 6, 2008
The 8th Article of Faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints states “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God”. Notice the caveat for the Bible of “so far as [...]
