In this post I want to defend the four gospels. I want you to see that their evidence is
significant. But more importantly I want
to encourage you to read the gospels, and let them defend themselves.
Objection: ‘We don’t have the originals’
We refer to the original text as an autograph. It is true that we don’t have the autographs
of any of the four gospels. However we
can be confident of knowing what those autographs contained.
To start with, we have a great deal of manuscript evidence. For example, there are over five-thousand
Greek manuscripts of part or all of the New Testament, dating from the
second-century to the time of the Reformation.
Compare that to the seven manuscripts of Plato’s ‘Tetralogies’ that date
from at least 1,200 years after its composition.
Two interesting examples of New Testament evidence are the
John Ryland’s Fragment (a few verses of John’s Gospel, and dating from around
120 A.D.) and the Chester Beatty Papyri (containing major parts of the New
Testament, and dating from around 200 A.D.).
Added to the manuscript evidence for the New Testament
documents are the 32,000 citations of the New Testament in the writings of what
are known as the pre-Nicaean fathers (they were church leaders writing before
in the time period before the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.). From their writings alone we can be clear about
what was contained in the New Testament originals.
When I was a young Christian I read a book by Professor F.
F. Bruce of Manchester University entitled, ‘The New Testament Documents – Are
they reliable?’ In this he states that
‘The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the
evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no
one dreams of questioning. And if the
New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would
generally be regarded as beyond all doubt.’
Objection: The
gospels are full of errors
When I say that I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible I
mean that I believe that there were no errors in the originals. However, there are variations in the manuscripts. These variations are the results of mistakes made by
those who were copying the manuscripts.
No one is keeping this a secret.
Open any copy of a modern Bible and you will see footnotes that
inform you of variations in manuscript evidence. The vast majority of these variations are
extremely minor, and no doctrine of the church is altered by such a variant in
the text.
Writing of the Bible as a whole, one systematic theologian
writes, ‘For over 99 percent of the words of the Bible, we know what the
original manuscript said ... In the small percentage of cases where there
is uncertainty about what the original text said, the general sense of the
sentence is usually quite clear from the context’ (Grudem).
There are also some places where it can seem difficult to
reconcile various accounts of the same event.
So when I was speaking on this topic at the University of Limerick
Christian Union someone asked me about Judas’s death. The account in Matthew and that in Acts is
not an easy match. Similarly, aspects of
the resurrection account don’t fit comfortably together. However, if writers like Matthew and Luke were
aware of each other’s accounts, then clearly they do not see any contradictions, and if they are entirely independent of each other, then we have added
historical weight to what they were saying.
The fact that the accounts can be reconciled with each
other, but that they don’t always smoothly do so, is clear evidence that the
writers have not colluded in their story.
They are telling the same story from different viewpoints. Kel Richards tells of a police-officer who
looked at the evidence for the resurrection from the gospel accounts and so
was struck by how authentic they sounded that he was brought to faith.
One of the interesting things about the gospels is that if
you were making this story up you would not make it up like this. The text is full of marks of
authenticity. For example, in a Jewish court of law
the evidence of a woman was not permissible, so you would not have had women as
the first eye-witnesses of the empty tomb.
Similarly, Peter apparently is the source of Mark’s gospel, but Peter comes across as
spiritually slow on the uptake, and even denies Jesus (I would have made myself
look better). Also, in a chauvinistic society, Luke
records that the ministry of Jesus was financially dependant on a bunch of women. And, Jesus is portrayed as being too weak after his
flogging to carry the beam of his cross--he has to be helped by Simon of
Cyrene (who Mark tells is the father of Alexander and Rufus—who his readers
seem to know).
When someone points to a problem text in Scripture remember
that they are presenting you with something that Christians have been aware of
for centuries. As Wayne Grudem points
out, ‘the Bible in its entirety is over 1,900 years old, and the alleged
"problem texts" have been there all along. Yet throughout the history of the church
there has been a firm belief in the inerrancy of Scripture ... Moreover, for
these hundreds of years highly competent biblical scholars have read and
studied these problem texts and still have no difficulty in holding to
inerrancy.’
Objection: They were
only myths that weren't meant to be taken as history
But maybe the writers never meant us to take their work
seriously—maybe they were writing legend or myth.
Luke claims to have carefully investigated his gospel so that he could
give an accurate account, and John (19:35) claims to have been an
eyewitness. Remember that John was a Jew
who would have believed that inventing a hoax messiah would have been an act of
blasphemy that would have excluded him from God’s kingdom. The apostles all endured lives of hardship
for what they claimed about Jesus!
The time lag from event to legend is too short. Legends cannot be created in the time frame
of eyewitnesses to the events. Neither
do the gospel accounts read like legends.
C. S. Lewis was the writer of the Narnia books. He was also a Professor of Literature in
Oxford. He writes, ‘I have been reading
legends and myths all my life. I know
what they look like. I know they are not
like this.’
Objection: What about
other gospels?
This sort of objection has become popular since the Da Vinci
Code. However, these so-called gospels
should not worry you. It can easily be
shown that the four gospels we have were in circulation in the second-century
and recognised as having unique authority.
However, none of the alternative gospels were written in the
first-century, have a very different feel to them, and can be attributed to unorthodox
Christian off-shoots.
Listen to the description in of the resurrection in the
Gospel of Peter. The soldiers guarding
the tomb ‘saw three men come out of the tomb, two of them sustaining the other
one, and a cross following after them.
The heads of the two they saw had heads that reached up to heaven, but
the head of [Jesus] that was led up them went beyond heaven.’
One of these other gospels is the gospel of Peter, which was written in the second half of the
second-century. Unlike the four gospels
it is completely otherworldly—with moving crosses, and a Jesus who has a head
that reaches beyond heaven. It reflects
an accommodation to the Greek mind, that didn’t like the physical, and so
created an ethereal Jesus. It is
consistent with the thoughts of the Gnosticism that was an influence at that
time.
Conclusion
I could mention the evidence for Jesus and the early
Christian movement from non-biblical sources, like the Jewish historian Josephus
or the Romans Tacitus and Pliny the Younger.
J. P. Moreland writes, ‘No historian I know of denies that Christianity
started in Jerusalem just a few weeks after the death of Jesus in the presence
of friendly and hostile eye-witnesses.’
I could also point to the internal consistency of the
Bible. Many have read the books of the
Bible (written by over forty authors over 1,500 years) and been amazed that it seems
to have unifying threads.
However, I want to finish with words from the Bible
translator J. B. Phillips. He writes,
‘The New Testament, given a fair hearing, does not need me or anyone else to
defend it. It has the proper ring of
truth for anyone who has not lost the ear for truth.
By all means defend the lion, but more importantly let that
lion lose to defend itself. This book
has the fingerprints of God on it. If
you have never read one of the four gospels as an adult I can guarantee you
that you will be surprised by what’s in here.
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