Are the Gospels Valid?

A few of us have been researching and working on our responses to this crucial apologetical question, and I want to get the ball rolling on the blog, so I'm going to go ahead and post my essay on the topic:

The Bible is the most popular book in the history of the world. You find it in every hotel room. You see witnesses swear on it before giving their testimonies in United States courts. More than one billion people in the world today say they own at least one copy of it. (Many of those people give up two hours of their Sunday to hear teachings on it.) Hundreds of movies and thousands of plays have been made about it. Michael Vick and Paris Hilton, among countless other celebrities, have held press conferences to announce they found the main character in it. Also, it is the most quoted source of all-time – more than Talladega Nights and Napoleon Dynamite combined. It would certainly be #1 on the New York Times’ all-time best-seller list.

What’s perhaps most astounding, however, is that it’s not treated by its most dedicated fans as an interesting piece of literature but rather a testimony of actual history where its climax is the four chapters placed two-thirds of the way through. In those four chapters, which are actually four different books (or accounts) by four different authors, we are told the story of a virgin-born Jew with a Hispanic name who spends the first thirty years of his life helping out with his step-dad’s carpentry business before taking only three years to completely change the course of history by healing the crippled beggars in the ghetto, gathering crowds of thousands around him, and boldly claiming to be God incarnate who can forgive sin, thoroughly pissing off his fellow Jews and Romans alike. Each of the four books then ends with an incredible, yet complex series of events where Jesus is betrayed by one of his closest confidants with a kiss and dies tortured on a cross, according to him for our sins, before rising from the dead three days later. So-called experts are still debating the meaning of the texts, and literally billions have dedicated their lives because of its significance in their lives – of course all of it centered around this man called Jesus and much of it based on these four books.

So the question begs to be asked – “How can we trust these books to be historically accurate in the first place?” Certainly, popularity doesn’t indicate reliability.

Well, the first step is to look at the authors’ intention, and each does, in fact, appear to be intended as historical documents, rather than literature. For instance, we are told at the beginning of Luke’s account of Jesus’ life that he checked and re-checked with eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life, “having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account…that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.” Luke knew that people wouldn’t believe oral traditions, so he put the accounts into writing to convince readers of the legitimacy that the events did occur. And, not only are we told by the authors themselves that the books are historical accounts, but both Christian and secular literary critics who are familiar with ancient fiction, say the books, because of their attention to detail, are nothing like the literature from the time. C.S. Lewis, a world-class literary critic, noted, “I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, and myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know none of them are like this. Of this (gospel) text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage…or else, some unknown (ancient) writer…without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern novelistic, realistic narrative.” What Lewis meant was that, while, modern fiction is realistic in the sense that it contains details and dialogue like an eyewitness account, this genre of fiction is new (within the last three hundred years). In ancient times, romances, epics, and legends were high and remote. In other words, details were spotty. In the gospel accounts, however, we are given details such as where Jesus would sleep in his disciples’ fishing boat and the exact distance Jesus would be from another character. These are two of many details that aren’t relevant to the plot- something you just wouldn’t find in ancient literature. The texts, instead, appear to have been written for historical purposes.

Once the intentions of the texts are established, it’s important to examine the dates and authenticity of the texts, as well. First, the dates, which testify to the original authenticity. It can be confidently asserted that all four accounts were written in the first century A.D. A majority of modern scholars agree that Mark’s account came first in A.D. 65, roughly thirty years after Jesus’ death, and Matthew and Luke followed in that century’s 70’s before John finished his gospel around 90 A.D. Scholars have determined these approximate dates for two primary reasons. For one, manuscripts were circulating in various countries hundreds of miles from their origination in the early second century, indicating that the original texts must have been written decades earlier, and, second, the four gospels were both alluded to and quoted by numerous other sources in both the late first and early second centuries. Now, the significance of this early authorship centers around the fact that the early manuscripts were public documents that were quickly duplicated over and over again and spoken to crowds of people in public forums almost immediately. Since we know that the gospels were complete at most forty to sixty years after Jesus’ death, many of the eyewitnesses of the events of Jesus’ life were still alive to object to the details if there were contradictions. And there were thousands of people who witnessed his miracles, thousands who witnessed his trial, many who witnessed his death, and hundreds who witnessed him upon resurrection, yet there are no records of any disputes on the accuracy of the texts. And it was not only Jesus’ supporters who were still alive. Still alive were many bystanders, officials, and opponents who had also heard him teach, seen his actions, and watched him die. Had they objected, Christianity never would have taken off the way it did. The gospels instead seem to have been written and made public too early to have been inaccurate.

Now, the current versions must also be authentic. In other words, the original texts must have been passed down accurately to be still be considered reliable. This can be verified simply through sheer ‘numerosity’ of manuscripts. With any ancient texts there can be many variations in wording as they were all copied by hand and subject to human error, but these errors tend to be self-correcting if there are enough manuscript with which to compare. Basically, any errors can be easily corrected by comparing those copies to others. To date, we have over 5,300 Greek New Testament manuscripts (most of which are of the four gospels) that have survived until today and some of these are dated just decades after the original texts. By contrast, we have about 10 manuscripts of Caesar’s Gallic Wars (composed between 58 and 50 B.C.), and the oldest was written 900 years after the event. Additionally, we have only two manuscripts of the Histories and the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus (composed around 100 A.D, one from the ninth and one from the eleventh century, and only eight manuscripts of the History of Thucydides (460-400 B.C.), the earliest belonging to 900 A.D. The same general picture is true of Herodotus (480-425 A.D.). As F.F. Bruce says, “No Classical scholar would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest manuscripts of their works which are of any use to use are over 1,300 years later than the originals.” While it’s reasonable to expect more evidence from books that claim to bear eyewitness accounts of God incarnate, no other ancient books come close to the kind of wealth of diverse preservation of the gospels.

While there is further evidence regarding the life of Jesus, such as Paul’s confirmation fifteen years after Jesus’ death of his miracles, claims, crucifixion, and resurrection, the evidence already seems to lean towards the gospels being valid, reliable historical accounts of the life of Jesus Christ. And if these events are, in fact, true and Jesus performed dozens miracles in front of thousands of people and appeared to hundreds in resurrected form, then his seemingly outrageous claims to be the Son of God and the forgiver of sin suddenly become more valid. Of course, we must admit that if the gospel accounts aren’t valid and if Jesus isn’t who he says he is, then we should just dismiss him and move on with our lives. But if the gospel accounts are valid and if Jesus is, in fact, who he says he is, then that should dramatically alter our perspective and priorities.

Note #1: There are certainly other issues worthy of discussion, such as the canon (or selection) of Scripture, that weren’t mentioned, simply because they’re beyond the aim of this essay.

Note #2: Some good books for researching this topic further include New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by F. F. Bruce, The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, Defending Your Faith by R.C. Sproul, Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem, and The Reason for God by Tim Keller.