Category Archives: New Testament Reliability

New Testament Reliability, Skeptics

Do Discrepancies in Eyewitness Testimony Render It Unreliable?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If there is one thing I have heard dozens of times from skeptics, it is that eyewitness testimony cannot be trusted. Skeptics constantly point this out to me. Why? Because this is the the best way, in their estimation, to discredit the eyewitness accounts of Jesus’s life recorded in the New Testament.

My response has always been, from common sense, that some eyewitness testimony is better than other eyewitness testimony. One cannot sweep aside all of it, as we rely on this kind of testimony every day of our lives. We literally could not function if we did not believe anything that other people told us about what they witnessed.

Many skeptics, however, don’t go so far as to impugn all eyewitness testimony from ancient history. Their problem with the NT accounts of Jesus’s life is the apparent inconsistencies and divergences among the sources. One Gospel says that two angels were at Jesus’s tomb and another Gospel says that one angel was at Jesus’s tomb. Based on these kinds of discrepancies, skeptics claim that all, or nearly all, of the testimony in the NT should be thrown out.

Is this position reasonable? Do discrepancies rule out the reliability of testimony? Recently I ran across some actual legal language about eyewitness testimony which applies to court proceedings in the state of California. This language was cited by J. Warner Wallace in his book Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels. Here it is:

Do not automatically reject testimony just because of inconsistencies or conflicts. Consider whether the differences are important or not. People sometimes honestly forget things or make mistakes about what they remember. Also, two people may witness the same event yet see or hear it differently. (Section 105, Judicial Council of California Criminal Jury Instructions, 2006).

According to Wallace, “Jurors are instructed to be cautious not to automatically disqualify a witness just because some part of his or her statement may disagree with an additional piece of evidence or testimony.”

Skeptics, then, are being unreasonable when they demand that there be no apparent inconsistencies within the Gospel accounts. This standard is not ever applied in California law courts (and I suspect courts in other states), where matters of life and death are decided. What a reasonable person should do, when reading the Gospels, is set aside the apparent discrepancies and look at the areas where the witnesses agree.

Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Did the New Testament Writers Merely Copy Pagan Myths?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

If it could be conclusively shown that the gospel accounts of Jesus were literally cribbed from pre-existing pagan sources, it would be quite damaging to the credibility of the gospels. As I was re-reading Geisler and Turek’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist the other day, I was impressed by their succinct treatment of this issue, so I will share it with you.

First they summarize the skeptic’s charge:

This theory asserts that the New Testament is not historical because New Testament writers merely copied pagan resurrection myths. Skeptics are quick to cite supposed resurrections of mythical characters like Marduk, Adonis, and Osiris. Is the New Testament just another myth? Could this theory be true?

They answer this question in the negative and start to present several reasons why this skeptical theory fails:

First, as we have seen, the New Testament is anything but mythological. Unlike pagan myths, the New Testament is loaded with eyewitness evidence and real historical figures, and it is corroborated by several outside sources. . . .

Second, the pagan-myth theory can’t explain the empty tomb, the martyrdom of the eyewitnesses, or the testimony of the non-Christian writings. . . .

Third, ancient non-Christian sources knew that the New Testament writers were not offering mythical accounts. As Craig Blomberg observes, “The earliest Jewish and pagan critics of the resurrection understood the Gospel writers to be making historical claims, not writing myth or legend. They merely disputed the plausibility of those claims.”

Fourth, no Greek or Roman myth spoke of the literal incarnation of a monotheistic God into human form (cf. John 1:1-3, 14), by way of a literal virgin birth (Matt. 1:18-25), followed by his death and physical resurrection. The Greeks were polytheists, not monotheists as New Testament Christians were. Moreover, the Greeks believed in reincarnation into a different mortal body; New Testament Christians believed in resurrection into the same physical body made immortal (cf. Luke 24:37; John 9:2; Heb. 9:27).

Fifth, the first real parallel of a dying and rising god does not appear until A.D. 150, more than 100 years after the origin of Christianity. So if there was any influence of one on the other, it was the influence of the historical event of the New Testament on mythology, not the reverse.

Were there any accounts of a god surviving death that existed before Jesus lived? According to Geisler and Turek,

the only known account of a god surviving death that predates Christianity is the Egyptian cult god Osiris. In this myth, Osiris is cut into fourteen pieces, scattered around Egypt, then reassembled and brought back to life by the goddess Isis. However, Osiris does not actually come back to physical life but becomes a member of a shadowy underworld. As Habermas and Licona observe, “This is far different than Jesus’ resurrection account where he was the gloriously risen Prince of life who was seen by others on earth before his ascension into heaven.”

But what if there were myths about dying and rising gods that existed before Jesus lived? What follows from that?

Finally, even if there are myths about dying and rising gods prior to Christianity, that doesn’t mean the New Testament writers copied from them. The fictional TV show Star Trek preceded the U.S. Space Shuttle program, but that doesn’t mean that newspaper reports of space shuttle missions are influenced by Star Trek episodes!

One has to look at the evidence of each account to see whether it is historical or mythical. There’s no eyewitness or corroborating evidence for the historicity of Osiris’s resurrection or for that of any other pagan god. No one believes they are true historical figures. But, as we have seen, there is strong eyewitness and corroborating evidence to support the historicity of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This final point is important. Numerous skeptics have come on my blog and pointed to mythical stories from antiquity and made the following argument: “We know that ancient people wrote mythical stories, so the stories about Jesus must also be mythical.” But how does that follow?

Numerous people today make up stories, and numerous people have made up stories throughout human history! But, on the other hand, the opposite is also true. Numerous people today give accurate accounts, and numerous people have given accurate accounts throughout human history. The only way to distinguish an accurate account from a fictional account is to look at the evidence for each account.

When we look at the New Testament accounts of Jesus’s life, we find more than enough evidence that they were attempting to accurately record real historical events. The evidence that the New Testament accounts are purely fictional just isn’t there.

Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

Why Should We Not Believe Those Who Claim Jesus Never Existed?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Bart Ehrman, the agnostic New Testament scholar, who is no friend to Christianity, is back again with a new book called Did Jesus Exist?  I have not read the book yet, but I came across an article written by Ehrman a couple months ago in the Huffington Post that is worth quoting at length.

Ehrman starts out the article by acknowledging that there is a small, but vocal group of skeptics who deny that Jesus ever existed.

That is the claim made by a small but growing cadre of (published ) writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists.  This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early Christians who modeled their savior along the lines of pagan divine men who, it is alleged, were also born of a virgin on Dec. 25, who also did miracles, who also died as an atonement for sin and were then raised from the dead.

There are several mythicists who have written comments on my blog in the past, so I am quite familiar with them.  So what credence should we give the mythicists?  Here is Ehrman’s take:

Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine.  There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds — thousands? — of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. 

But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world.  And it is no wonder why.  These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.

Ehrman, who certainly doesn’t accept everything in the New Testament as historical, nevertheless argues that historical kernels about Jesus are there:

With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) — sources that originated in Jesus’ native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves).  Historical sources like that are pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind.  Moreover, we have relatively extensive writings from one first-century author, Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of Jesus’ life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus’ closest disciple Peter and his own brother James.  If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it.

Ehrman adds:

Moreover, the claim that Jesus was simply made up falters on every ground. The alleged parallels between Jesus and the “pagan” savior-gods in most instances reside in the modern imagination: We do not have accounts of others who were born to virgin mothers and who died as an atonement for sin and then were raised from the dead (despite what the sensationalists claim ad nauseum in their propagandized versions).

Why bother quoting Ehrman about Jesus?  Because, when you have someone who is clearly not a Christian, who has written several books attacking the reliability of the New Testament, standing up and agreeing with Christians about something, we should pay attention.  I don’t agree with much that Ehrman writes, but I can at least agree with him on this: Jesus really existed and we can know about him from the New Testament documents.

New Testament Reliability, Top Ten Posts of 2010

Who Wrote the Gospel of Matthew? – #5 Post of 2010

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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 scholars doubt the authorship of Matthew, there are good reasons to believe that he was, indeed, the author of the first gospel.

There are at least two lines of evidence that can be rallied to the defense of Matthew: (1) the superscription of the ancient manuscripts and (2) the patristic witness.

A superscription is text added to an ancient manuscript by a scribe for purposes of identification; it acts as a title.  According to NT scholar D. Edmond Hiebert, the first gospel’s “identifying superscription, ‘The Gospel According to Matthew,’ is the oldest known witness concerning its authorship.”   Scholars believe the superscription was added as early as A.D. 125 and the “superscription is found on all known manuscripts of this gospel.”   This fact is a powerful testimony to the uniformity of evidence with regard to the authorship of Matthew.

The second line of evidence is the patristic witness.  The early church fathers were unanimous in crediting the gospel to Matthew.  Hiebert claims, “The earliest is the testimony of Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, dating to the first half of the second century.”

Following Papias is Irenaeus “who wrote his famous Against Heresies around A.D. 185.”

The next church father to attribute authorship to Matthew is Origen, who wrote in the early third century.  He is quoted by Eusebius, who wrote in the early fourth century.

Finally, Eusebius himself, in the early fourth century, documents that Matthew wrote the first gospel.

There is an unbroken witness to Matthew as the author of the first gospel going back to at least the middle of the second century, and there is no contradictory witness found in any of the church fathers.

Due to the fragmentary nature of documentary evidence in the ancient world, our ability to trace back authorship to within 100 years of the original writing of the first Gospel is exceptional.  Surely this presents a persuasive case for Matthean authorship.

Atheism, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability, Skeptics

Did Jesus Really Exist? Bart Ehrman Thinks So

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some of the atheists that have commented on the blog have expressed skepticism at the existence of Jesus, claiming that there is very little or even no good evidence for him being a real historical figure.  My response has been to point out that Jesus is the most well attested historical figure of ancient history and that no reputable historian doubts his existence.  Uninterested in what historians have to say, these skeptics continue to hold their position.

What is especially ironic is that many of the skeptics who doubt the historical scholars are also the same people who chide me for doubting Darwin’s historical account of the origins of species over the past 4.5 billion years of earth’s history.  I guess it’s OK to doubt professional historians, but not professional paleontologists.

In any case, this week I came across a fascinating radio interview that bears on this issue of the existence of Jesus.  The interviewer is an atheist named Infidel Guy and he is questioning New Testament (NT) scholar and agnostic Bart Ehrman.  Ehrman has written several books pointing out discrepancies and errors that exist in the Greek NT manuscripts.  He is not a Christian and he believes that some of the things recorded about Jesus in the NT are legendary.

What is fascinating about this interview is that Ehrman finds himself arguing with the Infidel Guy that Jesus actually exists!  Ehrman, as a scholar, knows that the idea that Jesus never existed is ridiculous and that no serious scholar holds this position.  For 16 minutes he tries to convince the Infidel Guy, but to no avail.

Maybe the fact that Bart Ehrman, hero for skeptics of Christianity, has attempted to put this silly notion to rest will influence some atheists who continue to cling to this idea.  We’ll see!  In the mean time, please take a listen to the interview below which is broken into 2 parts.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRx0N4GF0AY&feature=related

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SIhX4BWCPU&feature=related

Difficult Bible Passages, Essential Beliefs, General Apologetics, Inerrancy, New Testament Reliability, Textual Criticism

How Brittle Are Your Christian Beliefs?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman wrote in his book, Misquoting Jesus, that his Christian beliefs began to fall apart when he realized that there was a mistake, an error, in the Gospel of Mark.  Now, I think that the alleged mistake is not a mistake, but let’s assume for a minute that we just don’t know for sure – maybe Mark made a mistake, and maybe he didn’t.

Is this any reason to jettison your belief in Christianity?  That has not been my reaction when I’ve been faced with many of the same kinds of difficulties in the Bible.  Why does Ehrman feel that he has to give up the whole show when he finds one error?

There are a few Christians who have been upset with me when I’ve talked about the fact that the 5,800 Greek manuscript copies of the New Testament differ from each other so that we are unsure of about 1% of the text in the New Testament.  These verses have nothing to do with any major Christian doctrine, but nonetheless they believe it is unacceptable to have any uncertainty at all.  Their faith is threatened by the science of textual criticism, even when textual criticism is practiced by conservative Christians.

Other Christians claim only the King James Version of the Bible is correct, that all the others are full of significant mistakes.  They feel their faith threatened by the other versions.

What do these people all have in common?  New Testament scholar Darrell Bock referred to these kinds of Christians as brittle fundamentalists.  They are brittle because when one of their cherished beliefs are challenged, their faith either falls apart, like Ehrman, or they retreat deep into isolation so as not to deal with anyone who disagrees with them.

I have a deep concern for the brothers and sisters who hold these beliefs.  They are majoring on the minors of Christianity.  They are making secondary things primary things.  There are certain teachings of the church that have always been recognized as the essentials, the things that form the core of our faith.

Holding on to the essentials, we need to make room for the findings of history, science, and philosophy that help us better understand our faith.  We need to be willing to learn about our faith, and maybe even change some of our secondary beliefs.  If your understanding of a Bible passage has never changed, if your understanding of a secondary doctrine has never changed, you are not growing and your Christianity may be brittle.

I have been studying the tough issues that face Christians for 7 years now, and I have had to modify several of my secondary and non-essential ideas about Christianity.  It can be uncomfortable sometimes, but what has happened to me is that the core beliefs I hold have become stronger and stronger, the more I learn.

I hope the same will happen for you.  We have nothing to fear.  We really don’t.

General Apologetics, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability, Skeptics

A Law Professor’s Analysis of the Gospels – Part 2

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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 of the Gospels should be much higher than what Greenleaf has proposed.  It is to this question we now turn.

Greenleaf makes a strong case for the kind of evidence that skeptics should be requesting, with regard to the Gospel narratives.  Here I provide his detailed thoughts:

It should be observed that the subject of inquiry is a matter of fact, and not of abstract mathematical truth.  The latter alone is susceptible of that high degree of proof, usually termed demonstration, which excludes the possibility of error, and which therefore may reasonably be required in support of every mathematical deduction. . . . In the ordinary affairs of life we do not require nor expect demonstrative evidence, because it is inconsistent with the nature of matters of fact, and to insist on its production would be unreasonable and absurd. . . . The error of the skeptic consists in . . . demanding demonstrative evidence concerning things which are not susceptible of any other than moral evidence alone, and of which the utmost that can be said is that there is no reasonable doubt about their truth.

In the case of the Gospel narratives, “A proposition of fact is proved, when its truth is established by competent and satisfactory evidence.”  What is competent and satisfactory evidence?

By competent evidence is meant such as the nature of the thing to be proved it requires; and by satisfactory evidence is meant that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind, beyond any reasonable doubt.  The circumstances which will amount to this degree of proof can never be previously defined; the only legal test to which they can be subjected is their sufficiency to satisfy the mind and conscience of a man of common prudence and discretion, and so to convince him, that he could venture to act upon that conviction in matters of the highest concern and importance to his own interests. . . . When we have this degree of evidence, it is unreasonable to require more.  A juror would violate his oath, if he should refuse to acquit or condemn a person charged with an offense, where this measure of proof was adduced.

Greenleaf rejects the call for apodictic proof in the case of the Gospel testimonies because nobody ever requires this kind of evidence when it comes to the affairs of human history.  We only require enough evidence to show that the events were probable.  Even in courts of law, where the jury must determine whether a defendant is to die for his alleged crimes, the bar for conviction is no reasonable doubt.

When the accounts of Jesus’ life are subjected to the rigors of legal analysis, they fare quite well.  Greenleaf urges his readers to set aside their prejudices and take a look at the evidence.  If they do so, they will be left with no reasonable doubt.

General Apologetics, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability

A Law Professor’s Analysis of the Gospels – Part 1

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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 standard textbook for the latter half of the nineteenth century in American law schools.

The Testimony of the Evangelists is Greenleaf’s analysis of the four Gospels using the principles of legal evidence, an area in which he was an undisputed expert.  Put simply, Greenleaf treated the Gospel writers’ testimonies as if they were being presented in a courtroom.  How would they stand up?

In Greenleaf’s own words, “His business is that of a lawyer examining the testimony of witnesses by the rules of his profession, in order to ascertain whether, if they had thus testified on oath, in a court of justice, they would be entitled to credit and whether their narratives, as we now have them, would be received as ancient documents, coming from the proper custody.”

Greenleaf systematically applied the rules of evidence to the Gospel writers and found them to be entirely credible.  How did he do so?  He first argued that the documents themselves, as originally composed 2,000 years ago and reproduced from that time down to the present day, met the legal standards of admission in a court of law.  He then explained the kind of evidence needed to show that the authors of the documents were trustworthy in their testimony.

It is universally admitted that the credit to be given to witnesses depends chiefly on their ability to discern and comprehend what was before them, their opportunities for observation, the degree of accuracy with which they are accustomed to mark passing events and their integrity in relating them.

After careful historical analysis, Greenleaf finds that each Gospel writer meets these criteria, and thus their testimony about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus should be judged true, based on the canons of legal evidence.

Some skeptics have charged that the standards for judging the truthfulness of the Gospel accounts should be much higher than the canons of legal evidence.  We will examine Greenleaf’s response to this challenge in part 2 of this post.

Archaeology, New Testament Reliability

When Was the Gospel of Thomas Written?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

For the last several years, a lot of hay has been made concerning the Gospel of Thomas, an alleged fifth Gospel only discovered in 1945.  A few New Testament scholars have tried to make the case that the views espoused in Thomas represent a competing strain of Christianity that was suppressed by the early church hierarchy.

These scholars, in order to make their case, must show that Thomas was written in the first century along with the other four Gospels and the rest of the New Testament writings.  Unfortunately for them, the evidence seems to place the Gospel of Thomas in the late second century, at the earliest.

Lee Strobel and John Ankerberg (see video below) explain that Thomas was completed more than a century  after Jesus lived, and that this Gospel actually draws upon the other books of the New Testament, thus removing it from contention as an early version of Christianity.  The truth is that it came along far after Christianity was well underway as a religious movement.

General Apologetics, Historical Christ, New Testament Reliability, Religion, Skeptics

Are Religious People Unable to Get History Right?

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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 history to fit your agenda.

This may surprise some of you, but I can see where this viewpoint comes from.  I run into various religious groups who do monkey around with history and fail to get the facts right.  In fact, the very reason I could never be a Mormon is because Joseph Smith manufactured an entire history of the Americas that has absolutely no external evidence to support it.

But, just because some religious groups manufacture history does not mean that all religious groups manufacture history.  As I’ve written before on this blog, the writers of the Bible get their history right whenever archaeology can confirm it (see Did the New Testament Writers Record Fact or Fiction? Part 7).

At the very least, a skeptic should acknowledge this truth about Christianity and not lump it in with religions who do not accurately portray history.  The Bible deserves the benefit of the doubt as it has proven itself many times to be historically accurate.

The well-known scholar N. T. Wright explains that the New Testament writers were clearly trying to record accurate history alongside their theological teachings.  It is only modern man who struggles with the juxtaposition of the two.  Watch this brief video clip below posted by The John Ankerberg Show.