More Than a Carpenter (8 page)

Can we prove that Jesus is the Son of God? Only the legal-historical method will work to prove such a question. Then the primary question becomes this: can we trust the reliability of the testimonies and evidences (i.e., the New Testament)?

One thing about the Christian faith that has especially appealed to me (Josh) is that it is not a blind, ignorant belief but rather one based on solid intelligence. Every time we read that a Bible character was asked to exercise faith, we see that it’s an intelligent faith. Jesus said, “You will know the truth” (John 8:32), not ignore it. Christ was asked, “Which is the most important commandment?” Jesus replied, “You must love the L
ORD
your God with all your heart, all your soul, and
all your mind
” (Matthew 22:36-37, emphasis mine). The problem with many people is that they seem to love God only with their hearts. The truth about Christ never gets to their minds. We’ve been given minds enabled by the Holy Spirit to know God, as well as hearts to love him and wills to choose him. We need to function in all three areas to have a full relationship with God and to glorify him. I don’t know how it is with you, but my heart can’t rejoice in what my mind has rejected. My heart and mind were created to work in harmony together. Never has anyone been called on to commit intellectual suicide by trusting Christ as Savior and Lord.

What Do You Think?

Is the idea of an intelligent faith new to you? If faith is “not a blind, ignorant belief but rather one based on solid intelligence,” then what would be a fitting definition of faith?

In the next four chapters we will take a look at the evidence for the reliability of the written documents and for the credibility of the oral testimony and eyewitness accounts of Jesus.

Chapter 6: Are the Bible Records Reliable?

The New Testament provides the primary historical source for information about Jesus. Because of this, in the past two centuries many critics have attacked the reliability of the biblical documents. There seems to be a constant barrage of charges that have no historical foundation or that have been proved invalid by archaeological discoveries and research.

While I (Josh) was lecturing at Arizona State University, a professor who had brought his literature class approached me after an outdoor “free speech” lecture. He said, “Mr. McDowell, you are basing all your claims about Christ on a second-century document that is obsolete. I showed in class today that the New Testament was written so long after Christ lived that it could not be accurate in what it recorded.”

I replied, “Sir, I understand your view, and I know the writings on which you base it. But the fact is, those writings have been proven wrong by more recently discovered documents that clearly show the New Testament to have been written within a generation of the time of Christ.”

The source of that professor’s opinions about the records concerning Jesus was the writings of the German critic Ferdinand Christian Baur. F. C. Baur assumed that most of the New Testament Scriptures were not written until late in the second century
AD
from myths and legends that had developed during the lengthy interval between the lifetime of Jesus and the time these accounts were set down in writing.

By the twentieth century, however, archaeological discoveries had confirmed the accuracy of the New Testament manuscripts. Early papyri manuscripts (the John Rylands manuscript,
AD
130; the Chester Beatty Papyri,
AD
155; and the Bodmer Papyri II,
AD
200) bridged the gap between the time of Christ and existing manuscripts from later dates.

Millar Burrows, for many years professor of biblical theology at Yale Divinity School, says:

Another result of comparing New Testament Greek with the language of the papyri [discoveries] is an increase of confidence in the accurate transmission of the text of the New Testament itself.
¹

Such findings as these have increased scholarly confidence in the Bible.

William F. Albright, who was the world’s foremost biblical archaeologist, writes,

We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about
AD
80, two full generations before the date between 130 and 150 given by the more radical New Testament critics of today.
²

He reiterates this view in an interview for
Christianity Today.

In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew between the forties and the eighties of the first century
AD
(very probably sometime between about
AD
50 and 75).
³

Sir William Ramsay, one of the greatest archaeologists ever to have lived, was a student of the German historical school, which taught that the book of Acts was a product of the mid-second century
AD
and not of the first century as it purports to be. After reading modern criticism about the book of Acts, Ramsay became convinced that it was not a trustworthy account of the facts of its time (
AD
50) and therefore was unworthy of consideration by a historian. So in his research on the history of Asia Minor, Ramsay paid little attention to the New Testament. His investigation, however, eventually compelled him to consider the writings of Luke, the author of the book of Acts. The archaeologist observed the meticulous accuracy of the historical details, and gradually his attitude toward the book of Acts began to change. He was forced to conclude that

Luke is a historian of the first rank. . . . This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.
⁴

Because of the book’s accuracy even on the minutest details, Ramsay finally conceded that Acts could not be a second-century document but belonged rather to the mid-first century.

What Do You Think?

Have there been any biblical archaeological discoveries in recent years that grabbed your attention? Why do these discoveries always get worldwide headlines?

Many liberal scholars are being forced to consider earlier dates for the New Testament. The late Anglican bishop John A. T. Robinson’s conclusions in his book
Redating the New Testament
are startlingly radical. His research led to his conviction that the whole of the New Testament was written before the fall of Jerusalem in
AD
70.
⁵

Today the form critics, scholars who analyze the ancient literary forms and oral traditions behind the biblical writings, say that the material was passed by word of mouth until it was written down in the form of the Gospels. Even though they now admit the period of transmission to be much shorter than previously believed, they still conclude that the Gospel accounts took on the forms of folk literature (legends, tales, myths, and parables).

One of the major charges against the form critics’ concept of oral tradition development is that the period between the New Testament events and the recording of them is not long enough to have allowed the alterations from fact to legend that these critics allege. Speaking of the brevity of this interval, Simon Kistemaker, professor of New Testament emeritus at Reformed Theological Seminary, writes:

Normally, the accumulation of folklore among people of primitive culture takes many generations; it is a gradual process spread over centuries of time. But in conformity with the thinking of the form critic, we must conclude that the Gospel stories were produced and collected within little more than one generation. In terms of the form-critical approach, the formation of the individual Gospel units must be understood as a telescoped project with accelerated course of action.
⁶

A. H. McNeile, former Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Dublin, challenges form criticism’s concept of oral tradition. He points out that form critics do not deal with the tradition of Jesus’ words as closely as they should. In the Jewish culture it was important that a teacher’s actual words were carefully preserved and passed down. For example, 1 Corinthians 7:10, 12, and 25 show the existence of a genuine tradition and the careful preservation of it. It was customary for a Jewish student to memorize a rabbi’s teaching. A good pupil was like “a plastered cistern that loses not a drop” (Mishna, Aboth, ii, 8). If we rely on Anglican Bible scholar C. F. Burney’s theory in
The Poetry of Our Lord,
we can assume that much of the Lord’s teaching is in Aramaic poetical form, making it easy to memorize.
⁷
It is impossible that in such a culture a tradition of legends that did not conform to actual facts could have developed in such a short time.

Other scholars concur. Paul L. Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, writes: “Arguments that Christianity hatched its Easter myth over a lengthy period of time or that the sources were written many years after the event are simply not factual.”
⁸
Analyzing form criticism, Albright writes: “Only modern scholars who lack both historical method and perspective can spin such a web of speculation as that with which form critics have surrounded the Gospel tradition.” Albright’s own conclusion was that “a period of twenty to fifty years is too slight to permit any appreciable corruption of the essential content and even of the specific wording of the sayings of Jesus.”
⁹
Jeffery L. Sheler, religion writer for
US News & World Report,
writes, “The Bible and its sources remain firmly grounded in history.”
¹⁰

Four Gospels or Twenty Gospels?

In his wildly successful thriller
The Da Vinci Code,
author Dan Brown makes the audacious claim that “More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them.”
¹¹
In the 1990s, the Jesus Seminar published a book entitled
The Complete Gospels
that claims to be the first release of twenty known gospels from the early Christian era. The most notable of these are the gospels of Thomas, Judas, Philip, Peter, and Mary. The implication is clear: these ancient texts reveal a different view of Jesus just as valid as the time-honored tradition of the church. Is there any truth to these claims? Have the four Gospels lost their privileged status as unique purveyors of the life and ministry of Jesus? Are these recently uncovered gospels transforming our understanding of Christianity?

As extraordinary and dramatic as such claims may seem, they simply fall apart under the weight of historical analysis. In
Hidden Gospels,
historian Philip Jenkins concludes that the “idea that the various noncanonical gospels are equally valid witnesses to Christian antiquity is deeply flawed.”
¹²
The most serious challenge to the status of these other gospels is their late dating. While the four Gospels were all written within the first century, all evidence points to these other gospels being composed between
AD
120 and 250, at least three generations removed from the life of Christ.

What Do You Think?

Do you give any credence to books, articles, or TV documentaries with extrabiblical information about the credibility and historicity of Jesus? How would you compare the historical evidence for Jesus with that for other well-known persons?

Because these texts are written so much later than the four traditional Gospels, it is unlikely that they reveal any novel information about the historical Jesus. Thus, New Testament professor Craig A. Evans concludes, “The scholarly track record with respect to the use of these extracanonical Gospels is, frankly, embarrassing. . . . We have found that these extracanonical Gospels do not offer early, reliable tradition, independent of what we possess in the New Testament Gospels.”
¹³

Often non-Christians tell me that we can’t trust what the Bible says. “Why, it was written more than two thousand years ago. It’s full of errors and discrepancies,” they say. I reply that I believe I can trust the Scriptures. Then I describe an incident that took place during a lecture in a history class. I stated that I believed there was more evidence for the reliability of the New Testament than for almost any other ten pieces of classical literature put together.

The professor sat over in the corner snickering, as if to say, “Oh, come on now, you can’t believe that.” I asked him what he was snickering about. He replied, “I can’t believe you have the audacity to claim in a history class that the New Testament is reliable. That’s ridiculous!”

Wanting to find common ground for a gentlemanly discussion, I asked him this question: “Tell me, sir, as a historian, what are the tests that you apply to any piece of historical writing to determine its accuracy and reliability?” I was amazed that he did not have any such tests. In fact, I have yet to get a positive answer to this question. “I have some tests,” I answered. I told him that I strongly believe we should test the historical reliability of the Scripture by the same rigorous criteria that we apply to all historical documents. Military historian Chauncey Sanders lists and explains the three basic principles of historiography: the
bibliographical
test, the
internal evidence
test, and the
external evidence
test.
¹⁴
Let’s examine each one.