One
of the favored tactics of the Atheistic Naturalist and other assorted
Leftists is to attack the trustworthiness of the canonical Gospel
accounts. Sadly, many Christians are left without adequate answers
to the many misinformed objections to the veracity of Sacred
Scripture. In answer to their truly empty challenges we must approach
scripture like an historian. It is a common misconception that we
have to apply the Scientific Method. I have even witnessed critics of
the Christian faith demand we apply it. This is fallacious, since we
are dealing with an issue of history, not science, so we should apply
the Historical Method. The Scientific Method requires any proposition
be proven in a controlled environment, by experimentation, and be
repeatable and observable. One can hardly go back in time and prove
anything historical using such criteria. The Historical Method, by
contrast, relies on the following criteria:
- Written Records
- Oral Tradition
- Physical Evidence
While
we admit the historical evidence for the veracity of every single
event or person mentioned in the scriptures is not absolute, it is
historically sufficient to prove its reliability. This does not place
our quest at any deficit, since you cannot prove anything historical
with one hundred percent certainty. For example, can you prove with
absolute certainty that St. Patrick was in Ireland, or that Hitler
died in the Berlin Bunker? No. We accept the witness of history as
fact; the testimonies of those who were there.
As
Blaise
Pascal
wrote:
“There
is enough evidence to convince anyone who is not set against it, but
not enough to bring anyone into the kingdom who will not come.”
We
must also reject the approach that truth is relative. The statement,
“That is your truth, I have mine” is a logical fallacy.
Merely believing something does not make it true. Belief and Truth
are not synonymous. For example, if I believe that if I jump from the
tallest building in the city, I will not fall, does this make it
true? Of course not! Gravity will act on me and I'll fall like a
stone. Truth is one and absolute, and Christianity claims for itself
that one and absolute Truth.
We
also have to reject the idea that it does not matter what we believe,
as long as we have faith. Faith does not make belief true. There are
many who have faith in Krishna, or in Buddha's teachings, but that
faith in no way validates the persons, nor what they taught.
What
emerges from the Historical Method with regard to the New Testament
demands we either accept it as a valid historical document, and thus
accept the truths it proclaims since they are inextricably connected
to the events written of within its pages, or we simple ignore the
evidence of history and reject the New Testament out of hand. With
this said, we can proceed.
Any
reputable historian will start his study by going to the primary
source documents. In this case, the primary source documents are the
four Gospel accounts of the New Testament. The first question before
us is, are the primary source documents reliable? The
following are the premises we will work from:
- The New Testament is historically accurate and trustworthy.
- On the basis of this reliable and accurate historical document, we can know for a certainty who Jesus was.
- On these bases, we can conclude that Jesus was who He said He was, and did what the Gospels say He did.
Let
us first look at some of the objections to our premises.
“You
can't say the Gospels are reliable and accurate! They were written at
least 200 years after the life of Jesus. They're obviously distorted
over time.”
The
fact of the matter is, the New Testament was written within 60 years
of the life of Christ, and some within 30 years. There have been
manuscripts found that date within the 1st century A.D. For example,
the Rylands Papyri. As this is a copy of the original, the document
itself must have been written prior to 125 A.D. We must also take
into account that Church Fathers Clement and Ignatius were quoting
from the New Testament canon approximately 100A.D. Logically this
tells us that the books had to have been in circulation in the church
for some time prior. It is also very telling that the New Testament
authors make no mention of the destruction of Jerusalem and the
Temple in 70 A.D. Certainly, if it had already happened they would
have noted this, as Jesus prophesied of the coming destruction of the
Temple and they would certainly have noted this as a fulfillment of
His prophecy. Then we have Paul, who died sometime in the mid-60s
A.D. When we examine the book of Acts, written by Luke, Paul is still
alive at the time of its writing. We know that Luke wrote his gospel
account before he wrote Acts. Thus, the Gospel According to Luke had
to have been written prior to 60 A.D. when Paul died. From these
historical evidences we can conclude that there would have been
little time for mythology or egregious error to appear in the gospel
accounts, and that they were written much earlier than even 100 A.D.
If
we examine the gospels using the Bibliographical Criteria, we will
find they are reliable as well. Bibliographical Criteria evaluates
the reliability of a manuscript based on the time span between the
original and the existing documents, the number of manuscripts, and
the quality of the manuscripts. It examines how much variation exists
between the written records of each text. This allows historians to
evaluate how well a document has been preserved from error or
addition. The time span between the original classical Greek
documents and the earliest existing copies of the same is
approximately 1,000 years.
For
example, the time span for the works of Aristotle is 1,400 years. The
time span for the works of Tacitus is 1,000 years. The time span for
the works of Caesar is 950 years. This is quite a significant span of
time, yet
no one suggests the classical literature is corrupt or untrustworthy.
Thus, if there were significantly less
time between the original New Testament manuscripts and the earliest
existing copies available to us today, then the New Testament would
have an air tight claim to reliability.
The
time span between the original and earliest extant manuscripts of the
New Testament is approximately 90 years. The conclusion we can reach
as a result is that there was simply not
enough time for the gospel accounts to be corrupted.
“But
what about differences in the gospel accounts?”
The
more manuscripts we possess for comparison, the likelier we are to
find the original manuscript content. Let us look again at the number
of New Testament manuscripts and fragments extant. We have:
- 5,700 classical Greek manuscripts
- 10,000 classical Latin manuscripts
- 9,300 miscellaneous versions
This
means we have roughly 25,000 manuscripts and manuscript fragments of
the New Testament books. In addition, we have thousands upon
thousands of quotations from these books by the earliest Church
Fathers. Now let us compare this to classical Greek and Roman
literature. The number of manuscripts for both is actually very
small. Homer's The
Iliad has
the greatest number of existing manuscripts, at 643 copies. So that
is 25,000 for the New Testament and 643 for Homer. Clearly the
manuscript evidence for the New Testament is overwhelmingly superior
to that of classical Greek and Roman literature.
When
we examine closely the differences in the New Testament manuscripts
we find that only 1/60th of the manuscripts differ, and these
differences are so minor that they do not impact the history of the
books, nor their theology in any way. This does not leave room for
the argument that the differences in any way impact the reliability
of the Gospel accounts.
Does
the internal and external evidence point to the reliability of the
New Testament writings?
There
is an Aristotelian principle known as the “benefit
of the doubt”.
It basically goes as follows:
“The
benefit of the doubt is to be given to the document and not to the
critic.”
With
this dictum in mind we will proceed to examine the internal and
external evidence of the New Testament manuscripts. The Law of
Non-Contradiction states, “If
one statement absolutely contradicts another statement, without
qualification, at least one of the statements cannot be true.”
In order for one statement to absolutely contradict another, there
must be no sense in which both statements can be true. However, if
there is a logical explanation, it is not a real contradiction- only
a seeming one. For example, we have apparent contradictions between
John's account of the timing of the crucifixion and Mark's timing of
the crucifixion.
“When
Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus outside....Now it was the
day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon.”-
John
19:13,14
“It
was nine in the morning when they crucified him.”-
Mark 15:25
Mark
and John seemingly do not agree. According to Mark, Jesus was
crucified at nine o'clock in the morning and died shortly after his
so-called "cry
of dereliction" at
three o'clock in the afternoon. However, John's Gospel still has
Jesus before Pilate at noon, with no other time frame given for the
actual crucifixion. All four accounts agree that Jesus was dead by
evening of that day. Do we have a real contradiction? The answer is
no. John was simply using Roman time in his account, while Mark used
Jewish. Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified at around 6:00 a.m.
(the sixth hour of Roman time), and Jesus was crucified at 9:00 a.m.
(the third hour of Jewish time.). All of the claims of discrepancies
in the Gospel accounts fall into this same category. Keep in mind
that the authors of the New Testament had to be very careful about
presenting only the facts. There were many enemies of the Christian
community who served as vociferous critics. These critics would have
leaped upon any discrepancy in order to discredit them. The enemies
of the fledgling church would certainly have exposed any fallacies.
Also it is important to take note of the price paid by the Apostles
of Jesus for their historical and spiritual testimony. They were all
persecuted, and most murdered as a result. People will not die for
what they know to be a lie. The authors of the Gospel's willingly
gave their lives in witness to the truth of their historical accounts
of Jesus. This should leave little doubt as to their truthfulness.
What about external evidences? Externally we have the corroboration
of the early Church Fathers.
For
example, Papias, a disciple of the Apostle John, writes:
“The
Elder, the Apostle John, used to say this also: Mark, having been the
interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately all that he, Peter,
mentioned, whether sayings or doings of Christ, not, however, in
order.”
Irenaeus,
a disciple of Polycarp (himself a disciple of John), writes:
“So
firm is the ground upon which these Gospels rest, that the very
heretics themselves bear witness to them, and starting from these
documents, each one of them endeavors to establish his own particular
doctrine.”
Additionally,
if we combine the histories given us by Josephus, Tacitus, Lucian,
Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Thallus, and the Talmud, we find that
history says:
- Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate at Passover time. (Tacitus, Thallus, Josephus, Talmud)
- His disciples claimed He rose from the dead. (Josephus)
- Jewish leaders charged Jesus with sorcery and claimed He was born of adultery. (Talmud)
This
demonstrates that the history contained in the Gospel accounts is
corroborated by non-Christian, and in some cases hostile, secular
historical sources.
In
the final analysis, the criticisms of the gospel accounts by
Atheistic Naturalists arise out of profound ignorance, or deliberate
deception, and in no wise meet the criteria of historical
examination.
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