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How can we trust the historical reliability of new testament with fonts
- 1. How Can We Trust the Historical Reliability of the New Testament?
- 4. SKEPTICS
- 7. Our very first reference to Jesus’ tomb being empty is in the Gospel of Mark, written 40 years later by someone living in a different country who had heard that it was empty. How would he know? - Bart Ehrman
- 8. Can historians prove that Jesus was raised from the dead? (I always argue that no, no one can prove it.) Are the Gospel accounts of Jesus reliable? (No, not completely.)
- 10. In order to draw material from the Jewish Antiquities, as he appears to have done, Luke could not have written before 94 A.D - Richard Carrier
- 11. “No work … of any kind has ever been discovered, … which may be looked upon as furnishing additional evidence of the existence of those gospels, and which was executed earlier than the latter part of the second century” - Charles Burlingame Waite
- 14. Corroborated
- 44. Celsus
Editor's Notes
- Last week, our topic was “Is the Bible Divine, rather than Simply Human in Origin”? But, today, we’ll be examining the question “How Can We Trust the Historical Reliability of the New Testament”? This is a slightly different aspect of the biblical reliability question.
- My hope and prayer is that you would walk away from today’s teaching having great confidence that the New Testament is historically reliable and that - having that confidence - you would relish opportunities to share your faith, not hesitating because of fear that someone will object that the New Testament is not reliable.
- Our task is to look at the New Testament as a historian looks at ancient documents to see whether this body of work stands up to scrutiny. It is possible for someone to view the New Testament as historically reliable without seeing it as the divinely inspired, inerrant, Word of God. However, lack of historical trustworthiness would be a stumbling block for skeptics, preventing them from even considering the message contained in the New Testament. This is what we’ll be addressing today.
- First, we’ll be taking a look at what some of the skeptical scholars are saying about the historicity of the New Testament…
- One of the most popular anti-Christian voices in recent years is the great skeptic and New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman. He is the Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- Ehrman has written widely on issues of New Testament and early Christianity at both an academic and popular level, with over (tap for next book) 27 books including three college textbooks and (tap for next book) five New York Times bestsellers. Here are a few quotes from Bart.
- He said “Why was the tomb supposedly empty? I say supposedly because, frankly, I don’t know that it was. Our very first reference to Jesus’ tomb being empty is in the Gospel of Mark, written 40 years later by someone living in a different country who had heard that it was empty. How would he know?”
- Can historians prove that Jesus was raised from the dead? (I always argue that no, no one can prove it.) Are the Gospel accounts of Jesus reliable? (No, not completely.)
- Richard Carrier is a historian, atheist activist and author who has a doctorate in ancient history from Columbia University.
- He said “in order to draw material from the Jewish Antiquities, as he appears to have done, Luke could not have written before 94 A.D.”
- Charles Waite was a lawyer and author of the book “History of the Christian Religion to the Year 200”. In that book on page 304, he wrote, (Show Quote) “No work of art of any kind has ever been discovered, no painting, or engraving, no sculpture, or other relic of antiquity, which may be looked upon as furnishing additional evidence of the existence of those gospels, and which was executed earlier than the latter part of the second century.”
- So, what are we to do? Is there an answer to these critics?
- I would contend that there is a reasonable answer to these accusations.
- We’ll make our case for the historicity of the new testament using 4 points – These 4 points will show that the New Testament was: Written Early – in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses Corroborated By External Sources Unchanged Over Time The Authors Were Not Biased
- The first point we’ll cover is the dating of the New Testament writing. With Jesus being crucified in 33AD, the events happened in the 1st century, so early dating would be considered in the 1st century. Before we get into that, let me ask you a question. Why is it important that the New Testament was written early? What does that have to do with it being historically reliable? Answer: If the New Testament was written in the second century (100 – 200 AD) or later, they were not eyewitness accounts. Cold Case Homicide detective, J. Warner Wallace says “true eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus would have lived (and written) in the 1st century. The first criterion of eyewitness reliability requires us to answer the question, ‘Were the alleged eyewitnesses present in the first place?’”
- I’m going to make the case that it is reasonable to conclude that many, if not all, of the books of the New Testament were written prior to 70 A.D., which is about 40 years after Jesus’s death. The reason for this is that there is a major historical event that is missing in the Biblical narrative…. Does anyone have a guess as to what that event is?
- The New Testament, and the Book of Acts in particular, is a collection of writings describing the history of the early church, and therefore, certainly would have recorded the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 AD if it had happened prior to being written.
- I’m going to tell you a story, which I got out the book “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”
- Imagine this. You’re a devout Jew in the first century. The center of your national, economic, and religious life is Jerusalem, and especially the temple.
- It has been that way in your nation…for a thousand years—ever since Solomon built the first temple. Most of the newest temple, constructed by King Herod, was completed when you were a child, but portions of it are still under construction and have been since 19 B.C.
- For your entire life you have attended services and brought sacrifices there to atone for the sins. Why? Because you and your countrymen consider this temple the earthly dwelling place of the God, (tap to show Yahweh) the very Deity whose name is so holy you dare not utter it.
- As a young man, you begin following a Jew named Jesus who claims to be the long-awaited Messiah.
- He performs miracles, teaches profound truths, and scolds the priests in charge of the temple. Incredibly, he predicts his own death and resurrection.
- He also predicts that the temple itself will be destroyed before your generation passes away (Mark 13:2, 30). This is scandalous!
- Jesus is convicted of blasphemy by your temple priests and
- is crucified on the eve of the Passover, one of your holiest holidays.
- He’s buried in a Jewish tomb,
- but three days later you and his other followers see Jesus alive just as he predicted. You touch him, eat with him, and he continues to perform miracles,
- the last being his ascension into heaven.
- Forty years later, your temple is destroyed just as Jesus had predicted, along with the entire city and thousands of your countrymen.
- Question: If you and the other followers of Jesus write about Jesus after the temple is destroyed, aren’t you going to at least mention that unprecedented national, and religious tragedy -- especially since Jesus had predicted it? Of course!
- Well, here’s the problem for those who say the New Testament was written after 70AD—there’s absolutely no mention of the fulfillment of this predicted tragedy anywhere in the New Testament documents. This suggests that most, if not all, of the documents must have been written prior to 70.
- But, some may object,
- They may say, “Wait a minute … that’s an ‘argument from silence’, and that doesn’t prove anything.” But in fact it is not an argument from silence, because…the New Testament documents do speak of Jerusalem and the temple, as if they were still intact at the time of the writings. But even if this were an argument from silence, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Consider these modern parallels…
- If a former sailor aboard the USS Arizona wrote a book about that ship, and the book ends with no mention of the ship being sunk and 1,177 of its sailors being killed at Pearl Harbor, do you have any doubt that the book must have been written prior to December 7, 1941?
- Or, if a former tenant of the World Trade Center wrote a book related to the history of those buildings, and the book ends with the towers still standing—there’s absolutely no mention of the towers being destroyed and nearly 3,000 people being killed—do you have any doubt that the book must have been written prior to September 11, 2001? Of course not.
- Well, the disaster in 70 A.D., in terms of lives, property, and national scope, was many magnitudes greater than Pearl Harbor and 9/11. It marked the end of such a terrible war that Josephus—who himself surrendered to the Romans in 67—called it the “greatest” war of all time. The Jews didn’t lose just one ship or a couple of prominent buildings—they lost their entire country, their capital city, and their temple, which had been the center of their religious, political, and economic life for the last thousand years.
- Since the New Testament does not mention these events anywhere and suggests that Jerusalem and the temple are still intact, we can reasonably conclude that most if not all of the New Testament documents must have been written prior to 70AD.
- The second point we’ll cover is that the New Testament is corroborated by other sources. Question – what authors mention Jesus outside the Bible?
- Josephus, who was the greatest Jewish historian of his time, was captured by the Roman General Vespasian in the year of 67AD during the siege of Jerusalem. In about 93 AD, while in Rome, he finished his now famous Antiquities of the Jews.
- In book 18, chapter 3, section 3 of that work, Josephus, who was not a Christian, wrote these words: “At this time [the time of Pilate] there was a wise man who was called Jesus. His conduct was good and (he) was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive; accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.”
- Additionally, there is Cornelius Tacitus, who was a senator and a roman historian that lived from 55AD – 117AD. In his work from 115AD titled “Annals”, writing about the Great Fire of Rome that burned much of Rome in July 64 AD, he said…
- “Consequently, to get rid of the report [that Nero had started the fire], Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular.”
- I’ve given only 2 examples of extra-biblical corroboration, but there are many more examples of this which, in some way, confirm New Testament narrative. In fact, there are at least ten known non-Christian writers who mention Jesus within 150 years of his life. By contrast, over the same 150 years, there are nine non-Christian sources who mention Tiberius Caesar, the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus. So, discounting all the Christian sources, Jesus is actually mentioned by one more source than the Roman emperor at the time. If you include the Christian sources, authors mentioning Jesus outnumber those mentioning Tiberius 43 to 10!
- So, what can we learn from these non-Christian sources? We learn that they admit certain facts about early Christianity that help us piece together a storyline that is surprisingly congruent with the New Testament. Piecing together all ten non-Christian references, we see that: Jesus lived during time of Tiberius Caesar He lived a virtuous life He was a wonder-worker He had a brother named James
- He was acclaimed to be the Messiah He was crucified under Pontius Pilate He was crucified on the eve of the Jewish Passover Darkness and an earthquake occurred when he died
- His disciples believed he rose from the dead His disciples were willing to die for their belief Christianity spread rapidly as far as Rome His disciples denied the Roman gods and worshiped Jesus as God
- In light of these non-Christian references, the theory that Jesus never existed is clearly unreasonable. How could non-Christian writers collectively reveal a storyline congruent with the New Testament if Jesus never existed? But the implications run even deeper than that. What does this say about the New Testament? On the face of it, non-Christian sources affirm the New Testament. So, considering all this evidence, we can safely conclude that the New Testament is corroborated by extra-biblical sources.
- Quite obviously don’t have the time go into more depth about all of the non-biblical references today. But I’ve provided you a handout for some further reading (pass out handout). So we’ll now move on to our 3rd point…
- Even if the New Testament was written early, how can we be sure it wasn’t altered significantly over the years? How do we know the Gospels we have today are the same as the Gospels originally written by the eyewitnesses?
- This is the third point that we can use to support the historicity of the New Testament: it is unchanged over time
- In criminal cases, potential alteration of evidence over time is evaluated by tracing what is called the “chain of custody”. From the officer who reported a particular piece of evidence, to the detectives who handled it, to those who examined it in the lab, to the detectives who delivered it into the courtroom, there is a record of what each and every one of them had to say about the evidence. They may’ve written about it or taken a picture of it. The “chain of custody” will help determine if the evidence was altered over time.
- In a similar way, there is a New Testament “chain of custody” related to the transmission of the Gospels and letters of Paul. The Gospel of John, for example, can be traced from John to his three personal students (Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias) to their personal student (Irenaeus) to his personal student (Hippolytus). These men in the chain of custody wrote their own letters and documents describing what they had been taught by their predecessors. These letters survive to this day and allow us to evaluate whether or not the New Testament narratives have been changed over the years. The same can be said of the chain of custody related to the Apostle Peter and of Paul. It is an interesting fact to note that if all the New Testament documents had been completely lost, we would still be able to re-construct the New Testament by quotations from the early church fathers. Recently, however, some NT scholars announced that 46% of the New Testament could be reconstructed from church father quotations. Even if we didn’t have a single New Testament manuscript, we could still reconstruct nearly half of the entire New Testament from sermons, catechisms, lectionaries, and other writings of the 2nd and 3rd century church fathers. We don’t have time to cover any more of this today, but I’ve provided a handout for you to take home (Passout the handout) . I would encourage you to go to coldcasechristianity.com to investigate this chain of custody in detail or you can purchase the excellent book “Cold-Case Christianity” by J. Warner Wallace.
- So, the evidence is clear, the foundational claims related to Jesus have not changed at all from the first record to the last.
- This is the fourth point that we can use to support the historicity of the New Testament: the authors were not biased.
- Could it be that the New Testament documents are not biased religious writings full of myths and fables as many in our modern world assume, but instead describe events that actually occurred about 2,000 years ago? Are they documents written soon after the events by eyewitnesses (or by those who interviewed eyewitnesses), or are they documents written much later by biased followers who simply embellished details about the life of a real historical figure?
- The great skeptic David Hume said witnesses should be unbiased if we’re going to consider them credible. So when skeptics look at the New Testament documents, they often ask, “How can you say they are reliable when they were written by Christians? These are biased accounts written by biased people.”
- Now, what’s wrong with that logic? (wait) What’s wrong with that logic is that it fails to ask the most important question: Why were they Christians? Indeed, the first and most important question is not, “What were the beliefs of the New Testament writers?” The first and most important question is, “Why did they convert to these new beliefs?” In other words, why did the New Testament writers suddenly abandon their livelihoods and treasured religious traditions for these new beliefs?
- The authors of the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament were not “Christian” believers until after they observed the life and ministry of Jesus. The Gospels are filled with examples of the disciples misunderstanding the predictions and proclamations of Jesus. There are many examples of doubt and hesitancy on the part of those who witnessed Jesus’ life.
- The skeptical disciples continually asked Jesus for clarification about His message and His methods…
- Thomas, after spending 3 years with Jesus, still wouldn’t believe His prediction of the resurrection until he saw Jesus with his own eyes and touched Jesus with his own hands. The apostles became convinced of Jesus’s deity after they observed His life and resurrection. They didn’t start off as Christians. The disciples ended up as Christians as a result of their observations. They were not prejudicially biased; they were evidentially certain.
- The New Testament writers certainly had no reason to make up a new religion. We must remember that all of them (with the possible exception of Luke) were Jews who firmly believed they already had the one true religion. And that nearly 2,000-year-old religion asserted that they, the Jews, were the chosen people of God. Why would the Jews who converted to Christianity risk persecution, death, and perhaps eternal damnation to start something that: wasn’t true elevated non-Jews into the exclusive relationship the Jews claimed to have with God? And unless the Resurrection actually happened, why would they, almost immediately, stop observing the Sabbath, circumcision, the Law of Moses, the centrality of the temple, the priestly system, and other Old Testament teachings? The New Testament writers had to have witnessed some very strong evidence to turn away from those ancient beliefs and practices that had defined who they were for nearly 2,000 years.
- Someone might protest, “But since the New Testament writers were Christians, they can’t be objective.” Nonsense. People can be objective even when they aren’t neutral. A doctor can give an objective diagnosis even if he has strong feelings for the patient. That is, he can be objective even though he isn’t neutral.
- The truth of the matter is that all books are written for a reason and most authors believe what they are writing! But that doesn’t mean what they write is wrong or has no objective element.
- The survivors of the Holocaust who wrote down their experiences certainly were not neutral bystanders. They believed passionately in recording those events so that the world would never forget the Holocaust and, hopefully, never repeat it. While passion may cause some people to exaggerate, it may drive others to be all the more meticulous and accurate so as not to lose credibility and acceptance of the message they wish to communicate.
- the New Testament documents are not “church propaganda” designed to promote some church-manufactured theology. What are they, then? They are the eyewitness testimony from 1st century people who witnessed Jesus and became convinced that He was in fact who He said He was.
- As we have seen, there are at least four good reasons to believe that the New Testament is historically reliable: It was written early enough for the authors present at the time of the events they recorded It is corroborated by other contemporary authors near the time of the events The core message of the New Testament (facts about Jesus and His teaching) can be traced through the transmission from the Apostles to their students the Early Church fathers Writers were in fact unbiased and had nothing to gain by starting a new religion
- Given all of this evidence, what is the most reasonable conclusion? The apostles lacked evil intent. They simply couldn’t benefit from lying about what they saw. In fact, they would have been far better off if they had kept their mouths shut! What could they possibly have gained from this elaborate lie? It’s clear that the writers of the New Testament appeared to be more concerned about eternal life than material gain. Could a lie about Jesus make His spiritual claims true? Does it make sense that the disciples would forsake everything for spiritual claims they knew were untrue? The evidence from history supports the conclusion that the New Testament writers accurately reported what they actually observed.
- I sincerely hope this teaching has given you greater confidence in the New Testament as a record of the real historical events concerning the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As the Apostle John says in his gospel: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
- Finally, I want to acknowledge that the content of this teaching has relied heavily on 2 excellent books that you should all read – (click) Cold-Case Christianity and (click) I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.