Chapter 8 - The Detail Question Test#5

When historians study the validity of ancient documents, a question they ask is does the document include incidental details or casual information. They are looking for details that are not directly related to the ideology of the writer, items he included just because he personally experienced them. Scholars have found that details that come from personal experience are distinctly different than details that come from ones imagination. The details included in the Gospels are of the latter type which lends weight to the conclusion that the author was recording history not fiction.

Another interesting type of detail to consider is that of personal names. Researchers have noted that while later non-biblical writings about Jesus invented names for people the Gospel books left anonymous. The Gospels are different, the later Gospels eliminated names in the earlier ones. A possible explanation is that names were included in the Gospels when the person was an eyewitness of what was being written about and that person helped make sure the account was maintained accurately. After that person died there was no need to include their name in the account so the name does not appear in gospels written after their death.

 These two examples, the inclusion of details about personal experience and the handling of details like peoples names in the New Testament Gospels accounts of Jesus  further reinforce the idea that they were authentic writing that came from eyewitnesses.

Chapter 7 - The Bias Question- Test #4

When we evaluate something we hear or read, we tend to consider the matter of bias. For example, is the news reporter a liberal? We wonder how much their bias affects the reliability of what they are saying. If we asked this question about the Gospels, we would know that the writers were biased since they were passionate followers of Jesus. Critics of the Gospels say this emotional involvement means the Gospels are totally unreliabable. Let's consider whether this is a reasonable position. First, this logic would mean that we ought to reject every report that comes from a person who feels strongly about what he is saying. For example the world should have rejected the reports of those talking about what was going on in Nazi concentration camps because they fervently believed in what they were saying. How could these people not be fervent considering the magnitude of what they were reporting? A better question for the critics, considering the magnitude of the story of Jesus, is how could one explain the Gospel writers' passion if the facts are not true?

Secondly, we need to remember the difference in cultures between now and then. Writers in our culture are prasied for new ideas and creative reshaping of stories. But the oral culture of the Gospel writers was very different. The goals of oral or written communication was a faithful retelling of the well-known narratvies. The community took an active role in monitoring the accuracy of the message being transmitted. So rather than discounting the work of a passionate or biased writer, we should recognize that the authors of the gospels worked in an environement that would encourage them to accurately transmit the information of the life of Jesus.

Chapter 7 - The Author's Position- Test #3

If someone relates information to you and you know that they had been in a position to have been an eyewitness, that gives you more confidence in what they say. The same is true with history. It is important to ask how close the author was to the events that were recorded. Were they an eyewitness or or did they talk to eyewitnesses? Before we consider the authors of the gospels, it is helpful to note that historians often trust authors who wrote about events much later than the gospel writers did. For example, much Jewish history comes from Josephus who wrote 100 years after the events he recorded. Much of what is known about the Persian Wars comes from Herodotus who wrote 70 years after the events. Our knowledge of Alexander the Great comes from one source, Arrian, who wrote 400 years later.

Let's see how these works compare to the Gospels. Historians have found ancient records that say Mark wrote his gospel based on  notes he took from Peter who was one Jesus's disciples. Evidence indicates that the gospel of Mathew was written by the Matthew who was one of the twelve disciples and an eyewitness of what he wrote. The gospel of Luke was written by Luke who was a doctor and traveled with the apostle Paul. John was one of the twelve disciples and ancient writings attribute the fourth gospel to him. There is no record of anyone in the second or third centuries questioning the authorship of the gospels. Those kind of questions are more recent. If we accept the authorship of these books as valid, we see that they were written by eyewitness or by people who were in very close contact with eyewitnesses. Keep that in mind next time you read one of them. There is a strong basis to believe that you are reading an accurate description of events that really happened.

Chapter 6 - The Author's Intentions - Test #2

The second test applied to ancient documents is to find out if the author was intending to report history accurately. Some people today say that gospel authors intended to write fiction. We will look at two such theories. One theory that is popular among scholars is that the Gospel of Mark was modeled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and was written to be an inspiring myth. Proponents of this theory point out similarities between the two writings but fail to explain why a Jewish author would think stories based on Greek pagan writings would be inspirational to a Jewish audience. They also fail to consider that Mark's book came out when Christians were being tortured and executed by the Roman Empire. Who is willing to die for a fictional character?

A second theory about the intention of the gospel authors is that the gospels are a form of Jewish midrash. A midrash was a technique used to make the Old Testament scripture more relevant by retelling a Biblical story in as if it was a current event. This theory says that the authors fabricated Jesus based on what they found in the Old Testament. There are many problems with this theory such that early Christians viewed Jesus as a recent figure whose mother, brother, and original disciples were still living. Also even though midrash was used to related Scripture to current events, there are no examples of it being used to create events to fulfill Scriptures. Lastly, if they were going to make up a midrashic Jesus why did they make up one that was so offensive to Jewish expectations?

After looking at these two theories, it seems more reasonable to say that the gospels pass the second test of being written as actual history.

Chapter 6 - Following the Paper Trail - Test #1

When you read one of the gospel accounts of Jesus in the Bible, you are looking at words that were supposedly written close to 2000 years ago. It would be reasonable to ask, how to do I know these words are the same ones that were in the original document? That is the one of the tests historians apply to ancient documents. Since there were no printing presses back then, texts were copied by hand which could lead to errors. To answer the question of accuracy, scholars called "textual critics" collect and compare the oldest fragments of ancient documents and try to reconstruct the original text. There are over 5000 ancient partial or complete Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, making it one of the best supported ancient documents. The next closest is Homer's Iliads for which there are less than 700 manuscripts. The next consideration is how old are the manuscripts? There is one fragment of one of the Gospels from the second century. There are over 20 from the third and fourth century. By comparison the oldest fragment from the Iliad is 900 years after the original and most copies of ancient works are 1000 years after the original. A third consideration is the geographic distribution of the ancient manuscripts. When they are widely distributed there are more independent families of texts to compare. The New Testament has a much greater geographical distribution that any other ancient text. The author of the book we are reviewing makes this statement in concluding his remarks about this test. "Clearly, if anyone is going to doubt that the copies of the Gospels we possess today are reasonably close to the originals, they would have to reject outright the textual reliability of virtually every other ancient text."

This link will take you to a picture of the fragment of the gospel of John that dates back to the second century
John Rylands Papyrus

Here is a link to a book you can read at Google Books on the study of  textual criticism of the New Testament
The Text of the New Testament

Part 2 - Ten Tests of the Historical Reliability of the Gospels - Introduction

Imagine that you are interested in the pyramids in Egypt and you find a book in the library that claims to be an ancient text written by a man who was in charge of building one of the pyramids. How would you determine if this text could be relied on as true? What would you want to know about it? This is a challenge that historians have all the time and they have come up with some good tests to apply to ancient writings. The gospel accounts of Jesus claim to be historical. Before we consider them valid, we are going to apply the same tests that are commonly used by historians. These test are explained in the book we are working our way through. Here is an overview of the ten tests we will look at.

1. Are there copies of the text that are close to the original one?
2. Did the author intend to write an accurate historical account?
3. Was the author in a position to accurately record  information?
4. Did the author have a bias that distorted his report?
5. Does the account include the kind of detail that would come from eyewitness testimony?
6. Is there negative information that a biased author would have omitted?
7. Is the work consistent with others on the same topic?
8. Is it basically believable?
9. Is there are literary evidence that supports the work in question?
10. Are there references to Jesus in other works in the same time period?

In addition to considering these questions, we will consider whether archaeological findings support the gospels. This will take some time, but the gospels exist and we need to determine whether they deserve our attention and belief.

-Part I – Jesus, History, and Legend-Making Review

There is no debate that we have written accounts about Jesus. These accounts tell us that Jesus was born to a virgin, healed the sick, raised the dead, was killed by the Romans, came back to life, and returned to heaven.  The challenging question for us is whether these accounts are fictional or true. This blog gives summaries of a book from a historian's point of view that considers whether the accounts given in the Gospels about Jesus are an accurate record or the result of the imagination of the writers. We have completed the first part of the book which considers the major arguments given by those who believe the accounts are just legends. Before we start part two of the book, let's review what we have considered.

1. Some say since the accounts describe Jesus doing miracles the accounts can't possibly be true, yet they don't even consider the evidence of supernatural events in our world. 
2. Others say Jews made up the stories of Jesus, even though there is no cultural context that supports that possibility.
3. Some say Paul, whose writings in the Bible preceded the Gospels, wrote about an ancient miracle-working man which was later attributed by the Gospel writers to person named Jesus. However, reading his writings shows he was writing about a man who lived in his lifetime.
4. People say the stories of Jesus are just like other legends that existed at that time. We looked at two examples they give and found that they were clearly legends and lacked the historical support that stands behind the story of Jesus.
5. Lastly, critics say that the oral transmission of information about Jesus was very unreliable. However we found that although the culture at that time used oral means to transmit information, they were also literate and able to collect written records to help keep oral traditions from being altered. We also learned that people who study oral cultures have learned that these cultures are able to accurately pass on long stories and are very committed to the accuracy of the information.

Since the arguments against the reliability of the accounts of Jesus are not convincing, we need to see if the Gospel accounts can stand up to ten tests that historians typically apply to ancient documents to see if they are accurate. We will start that process next time. Until then, you might ask yourself, if you were an historian what questions would you ask about an ancient document?