People have gone through periods when everyone believed what they saw in television, but now most don’t believe it all. It is a standard joke that “it must be true, I saw it on the internet”. How about books? Very few religions make historical claims like Christianity. It says that God acted in the same space and time that we live in. It tells us when and where. Christianity was really the first religion to use writing to document its ideas. Books are powerful things. They helped make sure that Christianity remained Christianity around the world. The question at hand here is how reliable are the books that make up the New Testament. There is no shortage of experts and they disagree.
In the section containing my “Doctrinal Statement”, I state that I believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. That is to say that it is trustworthy both historically and spiritually. That is not to say that should be a person’s starting point. That certainly is not to say that we should not be able to question the historical accuracy or spiritual ideals presented in the Bible. It also does not mean that I have answers to all questions related to history and the Bible. If you will read the opening post under the Jesus and the Bible: The Age of the Earth: What does the Bible tell us?: Introducing the Age of the Earth from Bible, I developed an illustration comparing in at least in a small way, God speaking to man in Genesis to General Grant explaining the U.S. Civil War to his 8 year old grandson. Grant would have spoken in very simple terms, using real people but only telling what he felt the young boy needed to know. Let’s carry that illustration a little further. Maybe our 8-year-old has grown up a bit. Now, he is a college student going to see his grandfather. General Grant would have known that the young college student would have needed much more detail and more support than the eight-year old wou,d have. General Grant might have rolled out some maps and called in some other witnesses to give their versions of the war. In the New Testament, we see that regarding the life of Christ, we have multiple eyewitness accounts often with their testimony effectively signed in blood, records from the actual period, accounts from “hostile witnesses” and large amounts of archaeological evidence supporting the general knowledge of the period.
In examining the New Testament, we can look at examples of each of these. In order to be fair, we will need to step out of some of the presuppositions that we have for or against the books. I am fully admitting bias, but it is important to examine the data as fairly as we can. The New Testament, like Genesis was written a long time ago, to a different people with different questions. We also get to set aside some of the expectations that we have. I find that the data we have is good, but there are things just don’t have. We won’t find videos or tape recordings. The records we have were not recorded immediately afterward. There are no official records, for or against.
If we don’t have everything we want, how can we make a decision? I suggest that there are two major questions and then a series of questions that help us answer the major ones. Here are the big hitters:
- If we had the original New Testament writings, would they have been trustworthy?
- Have they been transmitted and translated in time accurately enough for us to believe and use?
For the first question, here are some questions that help answer the first question:
- Who wrote the books of the New Testament, in particular the gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Acts and the letters of Paul?
- When were they written?
- Why were they written and to whom were they written?
- Where did they get their information?
- How concerned was the early church concerned about the accuracy of their understanding of Jesus?
- How was it that these books were chosen?
- How does this compare to other historical figures from such a period of time?
We will look at the data, consider options, and you can make up your own mind. We will begin with the Gospel of Luke and the sequel, the book of Acts.
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