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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 4

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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 it was written soon after the events doesn’t mean that the writers didn’t make it all up.

Maybe the followers of Jesus fabricated this story about him dying and rising from the dead right after Jesus died, so that Jesus couldn’t correct them.  How can we trust them?  After all, don’t people start religions to gain power and wealth?  We certainly see many modern-day religious figures becoming quite wealthy.

One newspaper story from several years ago featured a man in Miami, Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, who claimed to be the reincarnated Jesus himself!  He owns armored Lexus’ and BMW’s as well as several diamond-encrusted Rolex watches; he wields tremendous influence over his thousands of followers – everything a charlatan could dream of.  Maybe the disciples, the writers of the NT, were just like de Jesus Miranda.  Let’s find out.

We are going to ask questions of the NT writers that any court of law would ask of witness testimony.  It’s interesting to note that many famous attorneys who have studied the evidence of the NT became Christians because they understood how compelling the evidence is.  So let’s pose some of the questions that would be asked of a witness.

Question 1: Do the witnesses claim to be eyewitnesses or claim to have received their information directly from eyewitnesses?  This question is obvious since eyewitness testimony will always be more accurate.  With respect to the NT writers, all of them implicitly claim to be eyewitnesses of the events surrounding Jesus’ life.  They write as if they were there and they heard Jesus’ words themselves.

However, we have several instances in the NT where the writers explicitly claim to have eyewitness testimony.  They go out of their way to prove this point.  For example, Luke claims to have “carefully investigated” the accounts “handed down . . . [by] eyewitnesses” (Luke 1:1-4).  In 1 John 1:1-3, the apostle John makes it clear that he is writing about what he himself heard, saw, and touched.

In fact, in the span of three verses, he claims eyewitness credentials 8 times!  Here is a person that wants you to know he was there.  Not to be outdone by John or Luke, Peter reminds his readers in 2 Pet. 1:16-18 that “we were eyewitnesses of [Jesus’] majesty.”  Time and again, the writers of the NT claim to be presenting eyewitness testimony, so question 1 is answered with a resounding “yes.”

We will continue with additional questions in the next post.

New Testament Reliability

Did the New Testament Writers Record Fact or Fiction? Part 3

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the previous post, we started arguing for early dates for several NT books, but we didn’t finish the discussion.  So this post picks up where we left off!

It is generally agreed upon by scholars that the gospel of Luke was written before the book of Acts.  Dr. Luke wrote both of them and most historians believe that Acts was the sequel to Luke’s gospel (read the beginnings of Luke and Acts to see this).  If this is true, then the gospel of Luke was written before A.D. 62, just as Acts was, but probably a couple years earlier.

Many scholars believe that the gospel of Mark was written before the gospel of Luke because Luke seems to use the gospel of Mark as a source.  This fact would then place Mark even earlier, say, in the mid-50’s.  Keep in mind that both of these gospels record the miraculous life, and more importantly, the resurrection of Jesus.  These events are recorded as facts.

There’s more!  Not a single book in the NT mentions the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.  If, indeed, many of the books of the NT were written after A.D. 70 (as some liberal scholars claim), that would mean that nobody thought the destruction of the temple was important!  How could this be?  The temple was the single most important place in all Judaism.

When Jerusalem was sacked and the temple demolished, the Jews lost the geographical center of their religion.  Tens of thousands of Jews died in the war.  The books of the NT often refer to the temple and the on-going worship of God there (e.g., Heb. 5:1-3, Rev. 11:1-2), so it seems incredible that nobody would mention its demise, yet not one person does.

Can you imagine someone writing about the people of New York City and never mentioning the airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001?  Ridiculous, right?  The best explanation for the events of A.D. 70 never being mentioned in the NT is that most, if not all, of the NT was written prior to A.D. 70.

We now have evidence arguing powerfully for early dates for Mark, Luke, and Acts (before A.D. 62) and early dates for most, if not all the NT (before A.D. 70).  Remember the time it takes for legendary development: it takes more than 2 generations.  We aren’t even one generation removed from the events, so the possibility of legend creeping in is virtually zero.

Hang on, though.  There are parts of the NT that we can date even earlier.  One of the most interesting passages in the NT is 1 Cor. 15:3-7.  First, we should note that the First Corinthians letter is dated by most scholars to A.D. 55 or 56.  Now, in the verses mentioned above, scholars have noted some peculiarities that indicate Paul is repeating an oral creed about the resurrection of Jesus that had existed for some time.

In fact, many believe that Paul received the information in this creed from James and Peter in Jerusalem around A.D. 36-38 (Gal. 1:18-19).  This would mean that we have information about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus within just a few years of the events themselves.  Even scholars who are unfriendly to Christianity admit this could be true.  If so, there is no chance that this creed could be legendary.

Let’s sum all of these facts up.  Early dates are important to establishing the historical truth of a document.  If we can establish that the documents were written before 2 generations had passed, there is very little chance of legend or myth sneaking in.  The historical books contained in the NT more than meet this criterion.

We have good reason to believe that Mark, Luke, and Acts were written prior to A.D. 62, well within one generation; we have good reason to believe that First Corinthians contains an oral creed that dates to a few years after Jesus’ death; and we have good reason to believe that most, if not all, the NT was written prior to A.D. 70.

Even if we grant that some of the books of the NT were not written until the late 1st century, it is still too early for legend to corrupt the core facts.  Now that we know the documents of the NT are early, we need to ask whether the writers of the documents are trustworthy and reliable.  We will deal with that in the next post.

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.