Strikingly, what the New Testament writers reported was not only observed by themselves, but also by their contemporaries—some of whom were hostile to Christianity.
Consequently, since the New Testament writings were circulated within the lifetimes of those alive when Jesus lived, they could have easily denied the accuracy of the events reported. But they did not.
New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce has said, “And it was not only friendly eyewitnesses that the early preachers had to reckon with; there were others less well disposed who were also conversant with the main facts of the ministry and death of Jesus. The disciples could not afford to risk inaccuracies (not to speak of willful manipulation of the facts), which would at once be exposed by those who would be only too glad to do so. On the contrary, one of the strong points in the original apostolic preaching is the confident appeal to the knowledge of the hearers; they not only said, ‘We are witnesses of these things,’ but also, ‘As you yourselves also know’ (Acts 2:22). Had there been any tendency to depart from the fact in any material respect, the possible presence of hostile witnesses in the audience would have served as a further corrective.”
So if the New Testament writers were inaccurate concerning their accounts of Christ, such fraud or inaccuracy would have been exposed by their contemporaries. Rather, we have external evidence outside of the New Testament whereby early critics of Christianity confirmed Christ’s words and acts.
While they conceded that the miracles that Jesus performed were real and the teachings that He gave were authentic, they disagreed with His message and attributed His powers to magical arts or demonic origins. But they never denied the actual events.
Third, the way the New Testament is written reveals its historical reliability. The New Testament authors recorded their own weaknesses and failures. This strongly suggests that they did not “invent” their reports.
Their writings themselves do not read like propaganda. Common sense dictates that if a person deliberately constructed a false event, he or she surely wouldn’t want to include their own weaknesses and failures in it.
Fourth, the New Testament writers willingly died for their testimony about Jesus and His resurrection. This fact alone is unshakeable. While many people have willingly died for what they believed was the truth, few if any would die for a lie that they themselves conceived.
The fact is that all twelve apostles of Jesus willingly suffered in the cruelest ways for their testimony that Christ had risen from the dead. They were tortured, flogged, imprisoned, and beaten for their testimony that they had seen the resurrected Jesus and that He was the Son of God. According to history, eleven out of the twelve disciples became martyrs for their testimony.
This suggests that what the disciples had reported concerning Christ was indeed accurate. I have never heard of a con man that was willing to die for his con.
(For a contemporary defense of the resurrection of Jesus by a first-rate historian, see N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God.)
4. Isn’t the Bible full of contradictions and discrepancies? And doesn’t this prove that it is unreliable and untrue?
I have heard this objection a lot, but we should ask: “What constitutes a real discrepancy?” The New Testament provides us with four separate accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus, all written by different authors who told the story of Jesus from their own perspective.
It is not fair to conclude that every difference within the accounts constitutes a contradiction. In many cases, the Biblical authors narrated the same event, yet one was compelled to emphasize certain aspects of it while the other writers shoved those aspects into the background.
One of my atheist friends once argued that the Bible contradicted itself in regard to how Judas Iscariot died. According to the book of Acts, Judas fell “headlong and his body burst open.” According to the book of Matthew, Judas hung himself.
But is this really a contradiction? Matthew does not deny that after Judas hung himself he fell headlong. Neither does Acts rule out that Judas hung himself before his fall.
It seems that both are telling the same story, only a different part of it. That is, Judas suspended himself on a very steep cliff overhanging the Valley of Hinnom where the rope or the tree limb gave way. When the rope or limb broke, Judas fell to the bottom of the valley and his body became mangled.
Another cause for apparent discrepancies is when one makes the mistaken assumption that the Gospel writers are reporting the same event when they are not. For example, both Matthew and Luke list the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Yet, their genealogies differ greatly. This isn’t a contradiction.
Matthew traces Christ’s genealogy from the line of Joseph (Jesus’ legal father), while Luke follows the line of Mary (Jesus’ blood relative).
As one scholar has noted, “Every difficulty and discrepancy in the Scriptures is, and will yet be seen to be, capable of a fair and reasonable solution.”
In summary, the apparent contradictions of the Bible are often easily explained and reconciled when all of the evidence is examined in context. (See Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible which treats scores of apparent contradictions in the Bible and clears them up.)
What I’ve written in this post is merely an introduction to the subject. In my new book, Jesus: A Theography – a volume that argues that the entire Word of God (both Old and New Testaments) reveals Jesus Christ – I list a number of books that argue for the veracity of the New Testament in detail saying,
To those who would question the reliability of the New Testament and the Gospel accounts therein, we recommend The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by F. F. Bruce (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1960); The Canon of Scripture by F. F. Bruce (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988); The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1987); Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); The Historical Jesus of the Gospels by Craig Keener; Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels by James D. G. Dunn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011); Memory, Jesus, and Synoptic Gospels by Robert McIver (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011); Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition by Gregory Boyd and Paul Eddy (see n. 3); Seeking the Identity of Jesus: A Pilgrimage by Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Richard Hays; The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007) and The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998) by Lee Strobel; and Gospel Perspectives (6 volumes), eds. R. T. France, David Wenham, and Craig Blomberg (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1980-1986). See also The Art of Reading Scripture by Ellen David and Richard Hays (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today, rev. and exp. ed. by N. T. Wright (New York: HarperOne, 2011); The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006); Inspiration and Authority: Nature and Function of Christian Scripture by Paul Achtemeir (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999); and The Bible Made Impossible (see intro., n. 68).
I believe the Old Testament is equally inspired and reliable. And a similar list of books can be compiled as well.
On a somewhat related note, see my post from May 2012 called On Mysticism where I argue that a person’s personal leadings or insights should never be placed on a par with or above Scripture, something I expand upon in Revise Us Again.
Stay tuned for Part IV of the series tomorrow.
