Tag Archives: J. Warner Wallace

Books of the Bible, Church History, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Why Should We Think That Mark, Luke, and Acts Were Written Before AD 62? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In part 1 we looked at three reasons that Mark, Luke, and Acts were probably written before AD 62. However, J. Warner Wallace, in his book Cold-Case Christianity, provides several more pieces of evidence.

The fourth piece of evidence is that Luke said nothing about the death of James.

Luke featured another important figure from Christian history in the book of Acts. James (the brother of Jesus) became the leader of the Jerusalem church and was described in a position of prominence in Acts 15. James was martyred in the city of Jerusalem in AD 62, but like the deaths of Paul and Peter, the execution of James is absent from the biblical account, even though Luke described the deaths of Stephen (Acts 7: 54– 60) and James the brother of John (Acts 12: 1– 2).

The fifth piece of evidence is that the Gospel of Luke predates the Book of Acts. It is clear from the introductions of these two books that Acts is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke.

The sixth point is that Paul quotes from the Gospel of Luke in his letter to Timothy.

Paul appeared to be aware of Luke’s gospel and wrote as though it was common knowledge in about AD 63– 64, when Paul penned his first letter to Timothy. Note the following passage:

“The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing,’ and ‘The laborer is worthy of his wages.’ (1 Tim. 5: 17– 18)

Paul quoted two passages as “scripture” here— one in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament. “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing” refers to Deuteronomy 25: 4, and “The laborer is worthy of his wages” refers to Luke 10: 7. It’s clear that Luke’s gospel was already common knowledge and accepted as scripture by the time this letter was written. To be fair, a number of critics (like Bart Ehrman) have argued that Paul was not actually the author of 1 Timothy and maintain that this letter was written much later in history. The majority of scholars, however, recognize the fact that the earliest leaders of the church were familiar with 1 Timothy at a very early date.

We will pick up the seventh piece of evidence in the next part of this series.

Books of the Bible, Church History, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Why Should We Think That Mark, Luke, and Acts Were Written Before AD 62? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Some New Testament critics claim that all of the Gospels (plus Acts) were written after AD 70, some 40 years after Jesus’s death. While this is possible, it seems very unlikely. There are good reasons to believe that at least Mark, Luke, and Acts were written before AD 62. J. Warner Wallace, in his book Cold-Case Christianity, provides several pieces of evidence that lead to this conclusion.

Wallace starts with the failure of the NT writers to mention

perhaps the most significant Jewish historical event of the first century, the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70. Rome dispatched an army to Jerusalem in response to the Jewish rebellion of AD 66. The Roman army (under the leadership of Titus) ultimately destroyed the temple in AD 70, just as Jesus had predicted in the Gospels (in Matt. 24: 1– 3). You might think this important detail would be included in the New Testament record, especially since this fact would corroborate Jesus’s prediction. But no gospel account records the destruction of the temple. In fact, no New Testament document mentions it at all, even though there are many occasions when a description of the temple’s destruction might have assisted in establishing a theological or historical point.

Second, Wallace points out that even before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple,

the city of Jerusalem was under assault. Titus surrounded the city with four large groups of soldiers and eventually broke through the city’s “Third Wall” with a battering ram. After lengthy battles and skirmishes, the Roman soldiers eventually set fire to the city’s walls, and the temple was destroyed as a result. No aspect of this three-year siege is described in any New Testament document, in spite of the fact that the gospel writers could certainly have pointed to the anguish that resulted from the siege as a powerful point of reference for the many passages of Scripture that extensively address the issue of suffering.

Third, Luke failed to mention the deaths of Peter or Paul in the book of Acts.

Years before the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, another pair of events occurred that were significant to the Christian community. The apostle Paul was martyred in the city of Rome in AD 64, and Peter was martyred shortly afterward in AD 65. While Luke wrote extensively about Paul and Peter in the book of Acts and featured them prominently, he said nothing about their deaths. In fact, Paul was still alive (under house arrest in Rome) at the end of the book of Acts.

We will continue with Wallace’s analysis in the next post.

New Testament Reliability

Did Jesus’s Disciples Conspire to Lie about Him? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In part 1, we started to look at J. Warner Wallace’s analysis of whether the disciples of Jesus could have successfully conspired to lie about his death and resurrection. We already saw that there were too many conspirators (disciples) for them to be successful, and the disciples were separated by great distances, unable to communicate with each other to keep their story straight.

In part 2, we will finish Wallace’s analysis by looking at whether there was a short time span, significant relational connections, and a lack of pressure. Here is Wallace, from his book Cold-Case Christianity:

The apostles would have been required to protect their conspiratorial lies for an incredibly long time. The apostle John appears to have lived the longest, surviving nearly sixty years after the resurrection. [Two criminals] couldn’t keep their conspiracy alive for thirty-six hours; the apostles allegedly kept theirs intact for many decades.

To make matters worse, many of them were complete strangers to one another prior to their time together as disciples of Jesus. Some were indeed brothers, but many were added over the course of Jesus’s early ministry and came from diverse backgrounds, communities, and families. While there were certainly pairs of family members in the group of apostolic eyewitnesses, many had no relationship to each other at all.

Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Simon the Canaanite, and Matthias had no family relationship to any of the other apostles. Whatever the relational connection between these men, the short years they spent together would quickly pale in comparison to the decades they would spend apart from one another prior to the time of their final interrogations. At some point, the bonds of friendship and community would be tested if their individual lives were placed in jeopardy.

Successful conspiracies are unpressured conspiracies. The apostles, on the other hand, were aggressively persecuted as they were scattered from Italy to India. According to the records and accounts of the local communities, each of them suffered unimaginable physical duress and died a martyr’s death. Ancient writers recorded that Peter was crucified upside down in Rome, James was killed with the sword in Jerusalem, and Thomas was murdered by a mob in Mylapore. Each story of martyrdom is more gruesome than the prior as we examine the list of apostolic deaths. This pressure was far greater than the fear of state prison faced by [modern conspirators], yet none of the Twelve recanted their claims related to the resurrection. Not one.

What is Wallace’s conclusion?

I can’t imagine a less favorable set of circumstances for a successful conspiracy than those that the twelve apostles faced. Multiply the problem by ten to account for the 120 disciples in the upper room (Acts 1: 15), or by forty to account for the five hundred eyewitnesses described by Paul (1 Cor. 15: 6), and the odds seem even more prohibitive.

None of these eyewitnesses ever recanted, none was ever trotted out by the enemies of Christianity in an effort to expose the Christian “lie.” Don’t get me wrong, successful conspiracies occur every day. But they typically involve a small number of incredibly close-knit participants who are in constant contact with one another for a very short period of time without any outside pressure. That wasn’t the case for the disciples. These men and women either were involved in the greatest conspiracy of all time or were simply eyewitnesses who were telling the truth. The more I learned about conspiracies, the more the latter seemed to be the most reasonable conclusion.

The idea that the disciples conspired to lie about Jesus is simply implausible. Only a miracle could have allowed the disciples to lie about Jesus and never be detected by their contemporaries. Unfortunately for most skeptics of Christianity, miracles aren’t an option.

New Testament Reliability

Did Jesus’s Disciples Conspire to Lie about Him? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In a previous post we laid out the requirements for successfully pulling off a conspiracy:

  1. small number of conspirators
  2. thorough and immediate communication
  3. short time span
  4. significant relational connections
  5. little or no pressure.

Former cold case detective J. Warner Wallace, after sharing these requirements, investigates whether the disciples of Jesus could have conspired to lie about his death and resurrection and never be found out. Here is Wallace, from his book Cold-Case Christianity:

The number of conspirators required to successfully accomplish the Christian conspiracy would have been staggering. The book of Acts tells us that there were as many as 120 eyewitnesses in the upper room following Jesus’s ascension (Acts 1: 15). Let’s assume for a minute that this number is a gross exaggeration; let’s work with a much smaller number to illustrate our point. Let’s limit our discussion to the twelve apostles (adding Matthias as Judas’s replacement). This number is already prohibitively large from a conspiratorial perspective, because none of the other characteristics of successful conspiracies existed for the twelve apostles.

The apostles had little or no effective way to communicate with one another in a quick or thorough manner. Following their dispersion from Jerusalem, the twelve disciples were scattered across the Roman Empire and, according to the most ancient accounts, were ultimately interrogated and martyred far from one another. Methods of communication in the first century were painfully slow . . . .

From Peter in Rome, to James in Jerusalem, to Thomas in Mylapore, the apostles appear to have been ultimately interrogated in locations that prevented them from communicating with one another in a timely manner. They had no idea if any of their co-conspirators had already “given up the lie” and saved themselves by simply confessing that Jesus was never resurrected. While skeptics sometimes claim that these recorded locations of martyrdom are unreliable because they are part of a biased Christian account, there isn’t a single non-Christian record that contradicts the claims of martyrdom offered by the local communities and historians.

We will continue with Wallace’s analysis in part 2.

New Testament Reliability

How Can a Successful Conspiracy Be Pulled Off?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Former cold case detective J. Warner Wallace investigated many criminal conspiracies during his career.  Because of this experience, he was able to summarize rules for successful conspiracies in his book Cold-Case Christianity. Here they are:

A SMALL NUMBER OF CONSPIRATORS

The smaller the number of conspirators, the more likely the conspiracy will be a success. This is easy to understand; lies are difficult to maintain, and the fewer the number of people who have to continue the lie, the better.

THOROUGH AND IMMEDIATE COMMUNICATION

This is key. When conspirators are unable to determine if their partners in crime have already given up the truth, they are far more likely to say something in an effort to save themselves from punishment. Without adequate and immediate communication, co-conspirators simply cannot separate lies from the truth; they are easily deceived by investigators who can pit one conspirator against another.

A SHORT TIME SPAN

Lies are hard enough to tell once; they are even more difficult to repeat consistently over a long period of time. For this reason, the shorter the conspiracy, the better. The ideal conspiracy would involve only two conspirators, and one of the conspirators would kill the other right after the crime. That’s a conspiracy that would be awfully hard to break!

SIGNIFICANT RELATIONAL CONNECTIONS

When all the co-conspirators are connected relationally in deep and meaningful ways, it’s much harder to convince one of them to “give up” the other. When all the conspirators are family members, for example, this task is nearly impossible. The greater the relational bond between all the conspirators, the greater the possibility of success.

LITTLE OR NO PRESSURE

Few suspects confess to the truth until they recognize the jeopardy of failing to do so. Unless pressured to confess, conspirators will continue lying. Pressure does not have to be physical in nature. When suspects fear incarceration or condemnation from their peers, they often respond in an effort to save face or save their own skin. This is multiplied as the number of co-conspirators increases. The greater the pressure on co-conspirators, the more likely the conspiracy is to fail.

What does this have to do with Christianity? Well, many skeptics claim that the disciples of Jesus simply lied about Jesus rising from the dead. They formed a conspiracy that has fooled the world for two thousand years.

Is this conspiracy theory really a plausible explanation? In our next post, we will look at whether the disciples of Jesus met the criteria for a successful conspiracy.

Books of the Bible, Church History, Historical Christ

Is Mark’s Gospel Peter’s Eyewitness Account? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1, we looked at evidence for Mark’s use of Peter’s eyewitness accounts for his Gospel. There are 6 pieces of evidence that have been assembled by J. Warner Wallace in his book Cold-Case Christianity. We will look at the final two pieces of evidence below.

Fifth, Mark included details that can be best attributed to Peter. Wallace explains:

Mark alone included a number of seemingly unimportant details that point to Peter’s involvement in the shaping of the text. Mark alone told us that “Simon and his companions” were the ones who went looking for Jesus when He was praying in a solitary place (Mark 1: 35– 37). Mark is also the only gospel to tell us that it was Peter who first drew Jesus’s attention to the withered fig tree (compare Matt. 21: 18– 19 with Mark 11: 20– 21). Mark alone seemed to be able to identify the specific disciples (including Peter) who asked Jesus about the timing of the destruction of the temple (compare Matt. 24: 1– 3 with Mark 13: 1– 4).

While Matthew told us (in Matt. 4: 13– 16) that Jesus returned to Galilee and “came and settled in Capernaum,” Mark said that Jesus entered Capernaum and that the people heard that He had “come home” (see Mark 2: 1). Mark said this in spite of the fact that Jesus wasn’t born or raised there. Why would Mark call it “home,” given that Jesus appears to have stayed there for a very short time and traveled throughout the region far more than He ever stayed in Capernaum? Mark alone told us that Capernaum was actually Peter’s hometown (Mark 1: 21, 29– 31) and that Peter’s mother lived there. Peter could most reasonably refer to Capernaum as “home.”

Sixth and finally, Mark used Peter’s outline of the events of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.

Many scholars have also noticed that Peter’s preaching style (Acts 1: 21– 22 and Acts 10: 37– 41, for example) consistently seems to omit details of Jesus’s private life. When Peter talked about Jesus, he limited his descriptions to Jesus’s public life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Mark also followed this rough outline, omitting the birth narrative and other details of Jesus’s private life that are found in Luke’s and Matthew’s gospels.

Taken altogether, the six pieces of evidence paint a good circumstantial case that Mark recorded the eyewitness accounts of Peter, the apostle of Jesus. I think we have persuasive reasons to believe that the traditional view on the Gospel of Mark stands up to scrutiny.

Books of the Bible, Church History, Historical Christ

Is Mark’s Gospel Peter’s Eyewitness Account? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

This has certainly been the traditional understanding since the beginning of Christianity. What evidence is there that Mark was recording events from Peter’s eyewitness perspective? In his book Cold-Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace gives us 6 pieces of evidence to consider.

First, Wallace notes that Mark mentions Peter frequently. As an example, Wallace observes that “Mark referred to Peter twenty-six times in his short account, compared to Matthew, who mentioned Peter only three additional times in his much longer gospel.”

Second, Mark uses familiar terms to identify Peter. Wallace states:

Mark is the only writer who refused to use the term “Simon Peter” when describing Peter (he used either “Simon” or “Peter”). This may seem trivial, but it is important. Simon was the most popular male name in Palestine at the time of Mark’s writing, yet Mark made no attempt to distinguish the apostle Simon from the hundreds of other Simons known to his readers (John, by comparison, referred to Peter more formally as “Simon Peter” seventeen times). Mark consistently used the briefest, most familiar versions of Peter’s name.

Third, Mark uses Peter as a “set of bookends.” Wallace explains why this is significant:

Unlike in other gospel accounts, Peter is the first disciple identified in the text (Mark 1: 16) and the last disciple mentioned in the text (Mark 16: 7). Scholars describe this type of “bookending” as “inclusio” and have noticed it in other ancient texts where a piece of history is attributed to a particular eyewitness. In any case, Peter is prominent in Mark’s gospel as the first and last named disciple.

Fourth, Mark paid Peter the most respect of the Gospel writers. Wallace offers several pieces of evidence to prove the point.

[Mark] repeatedly painted Peter in the kindest possible way, even when Peter made a fool of himself. Matthew’s gospel, for example, describes Jesus walking on water and Peter’s failed attempt to do the same (Matt. 14: 22– 33). In Matthew’s account, Peter began to sink into the sea; Jesus described him as a doubter and a man “of little faith.” Interestingly, Mark respectfully omitted Peter’s involvement altogether (Mark 6: 45– 52). In a similar way, Luke’s gospel includes a description of the “miraculous catch” of fish in which Peter was heard to doubt Jesus’s wisdom in trying to catch fish when Peter had been unsuccessful all day. After catching more fish than his nets could hold, Peter said, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5: 1– 11). Mark’s parallel account omits this episode completely (Mark 1: 16– 20).

While other gospels mention Peter directly as the source of some embarrassing statement or question, Mark’s gospel omits Peter’s name specifically and attributes the question or statement to “the disciples” or some other similarly unnamed member of the group. When Peter made a rash statement (like saying that Jesus’s death would never occur in Matthew 16: 21– 23), the most edited and least embarrassing version can be found in Mark’s account (Mark 8: 31– 33). Over and over again, Mark offered a version of the story that is kinder to Peter.

In part 2, we will look at the final two pieces of evidence that Wallace offers.

New Testament Reliability

Are All Memories Created Equally?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

According to former cold case detective J. Warner Wallace, there are certain kinds of events that are better remembered than others. Wallace explains in his book Cold-Case Christianity.

Much has been written in recent years about the “unreliability” of eyewitness testimony over time, especially as cases that previously hinged on eyewitness identification have been overturned by new DNA evidence. In fact, the New Jersey Supreme Court recently pointed to cases such as these and cited a “troubling lack of reliability in eyewitness identifications.” As a result, the court issued new rules to make it easier for defendants to challenge eyewitness evidence in criminal cases.

Given that DNA evidence has overturned some eyewitness identifications, Wallace asks why we should “trust eyewitness testimony about an event in the past.” Here is his explanation:

In my experience as a cold-case detective, I’ve learned that not all memories are created equally. Let me give you an example. If you asked me what I did five years ago on Valentine’s Day (February 14 here in the United States), I may or may not be able to remember many of the details. I probably took my wife out for dinner or maybe a short vacation. I could probably tax my memory and recall the day with some accuracy, but I may confuse it with other Valentine’s Day memories; after all, I’ve got thirty-three memories of Valentine’s Day with my wife to sift through . . . . This day was important to me, so it may stick out in my memory a bit more than other days in February, but if you ask me for specific chronological details, I may struggle to recall the particulars from Valentine’s Day five years ago.

But if you ask me to recall the specifics of Valentine’s Day in 1988, I can provide you with a much more accurate recollection. This was the day that Susie and I were married. It definitely sticks out in my mind. I can remember the details with much more precision because this event was unequaled in my life and experience. It’s the only time I’ve ever been married, and the excitement and importance of the event were unparalleled for me. Valentine’s Day stands out when compared to other days in February, but this Valentine’s Day was even more special.

Wallace’s explanation seems quite reasonable. We better remember events that produced a strong emotional reaction in us. I can remember quite well events like my marriage, the births of my son and daughter, and even when the Challenger space shuttle exploded when I was in the 10th grade. Wallace continues:

Not all memories are equally important or memorable. When eyewitnesses encounter an event that is similarly unique, unrepeated, and powerful, they are far more likely to remember it and recall specific details accurately. . . .

Now put yourself in the shoes of the apostles as they witnessed the miracles and resurrection of Jesus. None of these eyewitnesses had ever seen anyone like Jesus before. He did more than teach them important lessons; He astonished the eyewitnesses with miracles that were unique and personally powerful. The apostles experienced only one Jesus in their lifetime; they observed only one man rise from the dead.

The resurrection was unique, unrepeated, and powerful. The gospel eyewitnesses observed a singularly powerful and memorable event and provided us with accounts that are distinctive, idiosyncratic, personal, and reliable.

Wallace’s point is compelling. Anyone who witnessed the kinds of things that happened when Jesus walked the earth would have no problem remembering them. Jesus’s deeds were emotionally powerful, and likely burned into the memories of the eyewitnesses. If anything that happened in the ancient world could be remembered, it would have been Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.

New Testament Reliability

What Should We Expect If the New Testament Accounts are From Multiple Eyewitnesses?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

J. Warner Wallace, a former cold case detective and expert on eyewitness testimony, tells us in his book, Cold-Case Christianity, what we should expect to see if the New Testament accounts are provided by multiple eyewitnesses. Wallace’s first observation is that

THEIR STATEMENTS WILL BE PERSPECTIVAL.

Each eyewitness will describe the event from his or her spatial and emotional perspective. Not everyone will be in the same position to see the same series of events or the same details. I will have to puzzle together statements that might at first appear contradictory; each statement will be colored by the personal experiences and worldviews of the witnesses.

Wallace’s second observation is that

THEIR STATEMENTS WILL BE PERSONAL.

Each eyewitness will describe the event in his or her own language, using his or her own expressions and terms. As a result, the same event may be described with varying degrees of passion or with divergent details that are simply the result of individual tastes and interests.

Wallace’s third observation is that

THEIR STATEMENTS MAY CONTAIN AREAS OF COMPLETE AGREEMENT.

Some aspects of each eyewitness statement may be completely identical. This is particularly true when witnesses describe aspects of the crime that were dramatic or important to the sequence of events. It’s also true when later witnesses are aware of what others have offered and simply affirm the prior description by telling me, “The rest occurred just the way he said.”

Wallace’s fourth observation is that

LATER STATEMENTS MAY FILL IN THE GAPS.

Finally, as described earlier, I expect late witnesses who are aware of prior statements to simply fill in what has not been said previously.

Do the New Testament accounts contain these elements? According to Wallace, they do. With respect to the four Gospels, Wallace writes:

All four accounts are written from a different perspective and contain unique details that are specific to the eyewitnesses. There are, as a result, divergent (apparently contradictory) recollections that can be pieced together to get a complete picture of what occurred. All four accounts are highly personal, utilizing the distinctive language of each witness.

Mark is far more passionate and active in his choice of adjectives, for example. Several of the accounts (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) contain blocks of identical (or nearly identical) descriptions. This may be the result of common agreement at particularly important points in the narrative, or (more likely) the result of later eyewitnesses saying, “The rest occurred just the way he said.”

Finally, the last account (John’s gospel) clearly attempts to fill in the details that were not offered by the prior eyewitnesses. John, aware of what the earlier eyewitnesses had already written, appears to make little effort to cover the same ground. Even before examining the Gospels with the rigor we are going to apply in section 2, I recognized that they were consistent with what I would expect to see, given my experience as a detective.

Wallace, in his book, goes on to provide in-depth analysis of how well the Gospels meet these four criteria, but at first glance, the Gospels all seem to have the hallmarks of reliable eyewitness testimony.

Why should we care about Wallace’s thoughts on this subject? Because skeptics regularly accuse the Gospel accounts of being manufactured because they contain divergent details.  But Wallace points out that there are divergent details because we are dealing with multiple eyewitnesses who see things from their own perspective. If the Gospels all said exactly the same thing, in all the details, then we would have serious reason to doubt that they came from multiple eyewitness sources.

New Testament Reliability

How Can Two Witnesses See the Same Event Differently? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1, we read about J. Warner Wallace’s account of a grocery store robbery from his book Cold-Case Christianity. Two witnesses, Sylvia Ramos and Paul Meher, gave seemingly contradictory accounts of the robbery suspect. Wallace explained why Ramos saw things the way she did, but now we need to see why Meher saw things the way he did. Here is Wallace:

Paul Meher was visiting the cashier when the robbery occurred. The cashier was an old friend from high school, and Paul was standing behind the counter with his friend at the time of the crime. Paul couldn’t remember many details related to the suspect’s clothing, but believed that he was wearing a T-shirt. He was certain, however, that the robber pointed a gun at his friend, and he recognized this pistol as a Ruger P95 because his father owned one that was identical. Paul focused on the gun during most of the robbery, but he also observed that the suspect scowled and had a menacing expression on his face. The robber spoke his words slowly and deliberately in a way that Paul interpreted as threatening. Paul described the man as just slightly older than him, at approximately twenty-four to twenty-five years of age. He was certain that the suspect made no effort to purchase anything prior to the crime, and afterward, Paul had a visual angle through the glass storefront that allowed him to see that the robber walked to the end of the parking lot, then ran to a tan-colored, 1990s Nissan four-door.

Now that we know the circumstances behind Ramos’s testimony and Meher’s testimony, can they be harmonized? Can Wallace determine what actually happened during the robbery? Wallace explains just how he handled the two different eyewitness accounts:

Once I interviewed these two witnesses, I understood why they seemed to disagree on several key points. In the end, many things impact the way witnesses observe an event. A lot depends on where a witness is located in relationship to the action. We’ve also got to consider the personal experiences and interests that cause some witnesses to focus on one aspect of the event and some to focus on another.

Sylvia was older and had difficulty estimating the age of the suspect, but her design interests and experience with her husband helped her to correctly identify the kind of shirt the robber wore. Paul had personal experience with pistols and was sitting in a position that gave him an entirely different perspective as he watched the robbery unfold.

As the detective handling the case, it was my job to understand each witness well enough to take the best they had to offer and come to a conclusion about what really happened. Every case I handle is like this; witnesses seldom agree on every detail. In fact, when two people agree completely on every detail of their account, I am inclined to believe that they have either contaminated each other’s observations or are working together to pull the wool over my eyes. I expect truthful, reliable eyewitnesses to disagree along the way.

Take note of Wallace’s summary. He stated, “Every case I handle is like this; witnesses seldom agree on every detail.” He added, “I expect truthful, reliable eyewitnesses to disagree along the way.”

What is the takeaway with regard to the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection? We should expect divergences in the accounts if they are truthful. This is the complete opposite expectation of the skeptic, who expects that the accounts be practically identical if they are truthful. The skeptic, in the end, simply does not understand the nature of eyewitness testimony, and therefore demands something of the Gospel accounts that should never be there, if they are true.