In the last post I summarized the three reasons I still hold to Christian beliefs: the historical reliability of the New Testament documents, the cogency of the Christian worldview, and miracles. In this post, I'll dive into the first of these--historical credibility.
Granted, historical analysis has not always been the reason for my belief. As a kid, my parents told me the Christian story and I trusted them. But after years of butting up against the practical challenges imposed by these beliefs, and particularly after years of close friendship with smart non-Christians, I've had to dig. I've had to ask just how credible these stories are, sometimes half hoping I'd be disillusioned--that I'd find an out, and could embark on some new journey for truth side by side with my friends. So I picked up the shovel, and this is what I found.
The Story
Jesus’ immediate followers claimed he miraculously healed sick people, raised others from the dead, claimed to be divine, died and resurrected according to his own predictions, and then appeared repeatedly to followers after his death.
That's not an easy story to swallow.
But we know Jesus' followers preached that story for the rest of their lives--particularly the resurrection bit--and were killed because they stuck to it. According to our best historical knowledge, all 12 Apostles save for Judas and John were sentenced to death precisely because they would not reneg. The Apostles' immediate followers--people like Polycarp and Ignatius of Rome--likewise chose death rather than deny that story.
The idea that these people died--were crucified, thrown to lions, beheaded, etc.--to propagate something they didn't actually believe is, like the story itself, hard to swallow. We'd be foolish to believe them right off the bat, but at the very least their matyrdoms earn them a hearing.
The purpose of this post is simply to establish the truth of the above--to summarize how scholars know that 1) the Gospels are, on the whole, reliable eye-witness accounts of Jesus 2) those accounts paint a clear picture of Jesus' crucifixion, death, and resurrection, and 3) their authors died rather than reneg on their story.
1. The Gospels are, on the whole, reliable eye-witness accounts of Jesus
The dating of the Gospels. Agreement of scholars.
Scholars of all persuasions--Christian, anti-Christian, and everything in between--agree the 4 Gospels were written between 40 and 110 AD (ie, within a lifetime of Jesus' death).
Wikipedia has a good summary of both the consensus scholarly view, and the traditional Christian view, which are today largely in agreement.
All leading experts in the field hold these dates, including the scholarly posterchild for non-believers, Prof. Bart D. Ehrman.
So why do so many people think otherwise? In the mid-19th century, a new school of academics began studying the Bible from a purely scientific point of view, and doubted the traditional Christian dating and authorship. But they were forced to push the dating of the gospels earlier over time, as new manuscripts surfaced and further studies were conducted. Finally, as the dating was pushed back, the view on authorship also fell into alignment with tradition. While some of the texts were written by scribes of the authors rather than the witnesses themselves, the notion that these are reliable eye-witness accounts faces little opposition. One of the last holdouts is the Gospel of John. Scholars doubted that John the Apostle actually wrote it, and some still do, but in the 1930s, a fragment of that Gospel dating between 90-130 AD was discovered, making the Apostle a much more likely candidate for the real author.
This chart compares the current scholarly estimates about authorship with the tradition beliefs--again, everyone is in agreement about most of it.
But even if John and the few other New Testament documents that scholars question weren't eye-witness accounts, we'd still have most of the New Testament to rely on--most notably Matthew, Mark, Luke and the early letters of Paul and Peter. That's amazingly solid corroboration for a historian.
The bottom line is that those who say the original Gospels were written centuries after the fact by people who didn't know Jesus are in profound disagreement with the majority of scholars, Christian and otherwise. The same holds true for the rest of the New Testament (which, in addition to the 4 gospels, contains other writings of Paul, Peter, John, James, Jude...). We could go into the dating of those as well, but in the interest of time I'll refer you to this, and move on to the next question: how do we know the texts haven't been heavily distorted over time?
Integrity of the New Testament
-or-
How do the scholars know what the originals said?
The New Testament documents were copied and spread over the ancient world within a few decades of being written. We still have 50 New Testament manuscripts in Greek from the first three centuries AD, and 10-15 papyri that date from between 90 and 190 AD. That's remarkable, given that papyrus disintegrates in a few decades in most climates. The number and location of early manuscripts indicates a rapid proliferation of copies, and a wide dispersal to far-off regions like Egypt where climates were dry enough to preserve them.
The New Testament writings were far and away the most copied in the ancient world. We have more NT manuscripts (25,000) than any other Graeco-Roman work by a factor of 10. The next most common is Homer, of which we have fewer than 2,400. This allows for unequaled textual comparison, which results in an almost crystal clear picture of the originals.
So what about that "almost?"
Since these copies were hand-written, mistakes were made. Most of them are spelling errors that are easily detectable. But there were instances when a copyist took the liberty of changing something for theological or ideological reasons. We know this precisely because we have such a superabundance of copies to compare. If an error shows up in one family of texts and not in other earlier ones, it's obviously an innovation. Thanks to the superabundance of manuscripts, comparisons can easily weed out mistakes and interpolations.
But are there any passages that we're not sure about, that may or may not have been in the originals? To address this, some definitions and stats are helpful.
Scholars call the differences occuring in the various manuscripts "variants." A variant is any difference among all the texts we have--so if one manuscript has one word spelled differently from all other 25,000, that's a variant. Seventy to eighty percent of these are spelling mistakes that can't even be translated into English, so most variants are inconsequential.
However, there are some problematic ones. In particular, the last few verses of Mark and the story about the woman caught in adultery are heavily disputed. Beyond that, the significance of the variants is minor. For example, two of the most notorious are Romans 5:1, and 1 John 1:4. The former could be either "We have peace" or "Let us have peace." The John variant is either "Thus we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete," or "Thus we are writing these things so that your joy may be complete."
All told, about 0.05% of the New Testament as we have it is questionable, meaning scholars agree on 99.5%.
So while we don't have the original documents themselves, we have a near perfect picture of what they contained.
2. Those accounts paint a clear picture of Jesus' crucifixion, death and resurrection
This statement is not contested by scholars, and it's truth is patently evident if one simply reads the New Testament--the message is repeated in every single document, and is central to all of them.
I only bring this point up because friends have suggested that the Resurrection is a myth that developed over time, and Jesus' immediate followers didn't believe in it. That stance is predicated on the outdated notion that the New Testament was written hundreds of years after the fact, and it falls apart with modern textual criticism. It's clear that Jesus' immediate followers claimed he died and rose from the dead.
The Death of the eye-witnesses and their immediate followers
The persecution of Christians by the Roman emperors starting in the 60s AD under Nero and continuing almost unabated through the mid-4th century is attested to by plenty of non-Christian Roman sources. For that reason, the Christian traditions relating the deaths of the apostles are generally accepted.
Of particular interest is the death of Peter, whom tradition said was buried beneath the spot now occupied by St. Peter's basilica in Rome. In 1968 excavations were made beneath the basilica, and the bones of a male person were located. A forensic examination found them to be a male of about 61 years of age from the first century. Peter, if he had been about Jesus' age, would have been about 60 when he died under Nero. There's more to this story that is worth reading.
Conclusion
Myths take centuries to form. The story of the gospels are eyewitness accounts written within a lifetime of the actual incidents--these are no myths.
If those accounts are fiction, then they're lies, (unless you can see another alternative?), and one must account for why their authors died to propagate them. Granted, religious fanatics and suicide bombers will die for something they haven't seen with their own eyes... but that's quite different from dying for something one knows to be false.
Granted, historical analysis has not always been the reason for my belief. As a kid, my parents told me the Christian story and I trusted them. But after years of butting up against the practical challenges imposed by these beliefs, and particularly after years of close friendship with smart non-Christians, I've had to dig. I've had to ask just how credible these stories are, sometimes half hoping I'd be disillusioned--that I'd find an out, and could embark on some new journey for truth side by side with my friends. So I picked up the shovel, and this is what I found.
The Story
Jesus’ immediate followers claimed he miraculously healed sick people, raised others from the dead, claimed to be divine, died and resurrected according to his own predictions, and then appeared repeatedly to followers after his death.
That's not an easy story to swallow.
But we know Jesus' followers preached that story for the rest of their lives--particularly the resurrection bit--and were killed because they stuck to it. According to our best historical knowledge, all 12 Apostles save for Judas and John were sentenced to death precisely because they would not reneg. The Apostles' immediate followers--people like Polycarp and Ignatius of Rome--likewise chose death rather than deny that story.
The idea that these people died--were crucified, thrown to lions, beheaded, etc.--to propagate something they didn't actually believe is, like the story itself, hard to swallow. We'd be foolish to believe them right off the bat, but at the very least their matyrdoms earn them a hearing.
The purpose of this post is simply to establish the truth of the above--to summarize how scholars know that 1) the Gospels are, on the whole, reliable eye-witness accounts of Jesus 2) those accounts paint a clear picture of Jesus' crucifixion, death, and resurrection, and 3) their authors died rather than reneg on their story.
1. The Gospels are, on the whole, reliable eye-witness accounts of Jesus
The dating of the Gospels. Agreement of scholars.
Scholars of all persuasions--Christian, anti-Christian, and everything in between--agree the 4 Gospels were written between 40 and 110 AD (ie, within a lifetime of Jesus' death).
Wikipedia has a good summary of both the consensus scholarly view, and the traditional Christian view, which are today largely in agreement.
All leading experts in the field hold these dates, including the scholarly posterchild for non-believers, Prof. Bart D. Ehrman.
So why do so many people think otherwise? In the mid-19th century, a new school of academics began studying the Bible from a purely scientific point of view, and doubted the traditional Christian dating and authorship. But they were forced to push the dating of the gospels earlier over time, as new manuscripts surfaced and further studies were conducted. Finally, as the dating was pushed back, the view on authorship also fell into alignment with tradition. While some of the texts were written by scribes of the authors rather than the witnesses themselves, the notion that these are reliable eye-witness accounts faces little opposition. One of the last holdouts is the Gospel of John. Scholars doubted that John the Apostle actually wrote it, and some still do, but in the 1930s, a fragment of that Gospel dating between 90-130 AD was discovered, making the Apostle a much more likely candidate for the real author.
This chart compares the current scholarly estimates about authorship with the tradition beliefs--again, everyone is in agreement about most of it.
But even if John and the few other New Testament documents that scholars question weren't eye-witness accounts, we'd still have most of the New Testament to rely on--most notably Matthew, Mark, Luke and the early letters of Paul and Peter. That's amazingly solid corroboration for a historian.
The bottom line is that those who say the original Gospels were written centuries after the fact by people who didn't know Jesus are in profound disagreement with the majority of scholars, Christian and otherwise. The same holds true for the rest of the New Testament (which, in addition to the 4 gospels, contains other writings of Paul, Peter, John, James, Jude...). We could go into the dating of those as well, but in the interest of time I'll refer you to this, and move on to the next question: how do we know the texts haven't been heavily distorted over time?
Integrity of the New Testament
-or-
How do the scholars know what the originals said?
The New Testament documents were copied and spread over the ancient world within a few decades of being written. We still have 50 New Testament manuscripts in Greek from the first three centuries AD, and 10-15 papyri that date from between 90 and 190 AD. That's remarkable, given that papyrus disintegrates in a few decades in most climates. The number and location of early manuscripts indicates a rapid proliferation of copies, and a wide dispersal to far-off regions like Egypt where climates were dry enough to preserve them.
The New Testament writings were far and away the most copied in the ancient world. We have more NT manuscripts (25,000) than any other Graeco-Roman work by a factor of 10. The next most common is Homer, of which we have fewer than 2,400. This allows for unequaled textual comparison, which results in an almost crystal clear picture of the originals.
So what about that "almost?"
Since these copies were hand-written, mistakes were made. Most of them are spelling errors that are easily detectable. But there were instances when a copyist took the liberty of changing something for theological or ideological reasons. We know this precisely because we have such a superabundance of copies to compare. If an error shows up in one family of texts and not in other earlier ones, it's obviously an innovation. Thanks to the superabundance of manuscripts, comparisons can easily weed out mistakes and interpolations.
But are there any passages that we're not sure about, that may or may not have been in the originals? To address this, some definitions and stats are helpful.
Scholars call the differences occuring in the various manuscripts "variants." A variant is any difference among all the texts we have--so if one manuscript has one word spelled differently from all other 25,000, that's a variant. Seventy to eighty percent of these are spelling mistakes that can't even be translated into English, so most variants are inconsequential.
However, there are some problematic ones. In particular, the last few verses of Mark and the story about the woman caught in adultery are heavily disputed. Beyond that, the significance of the variants is minor. For example, two of the most notorious are Romans 5:1, and 1 John 1:4. The former could be either "We have peace" or "Let us have peace." The John variant is either "Thus we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete," or "Thus we are writing these things so that your joy may be complete."
All told, about 0.05% of the New Testament as we have it is questionable, meaning scholars agree on 99.5%.
So while we don't have the original documents themselves, we have a near perfect picture of what they contained.
2. Those accounts paint a clear picture of Jesus' crucifixion, death and resurrection
This statement is not contested by scholars, and it's truth is patently evident if one simply reads the New Testament--the message is repeated in every single document, and is central to all of them.
I only bring this point up because friends have suggested that the Resurrection is a myth that developed over time, and Jesus' immediate followers didn't believe in it. That stance is predicated on the outdated notion that the New Testament was written hundreds of years after the fact, and it falls apart with modern textual criticism. It's clear that Jesus' immediate followers claimed he died and rose from the dead.
The Death of the eye-witnesses and their immediate followers
The persecution of Christians by the Roman emperors starting in the 60s AD under Nero and continuing almost unabated through the mid-4th century is attested to by plenty of non-Christian Roman sources. For that reason, the Christian traditions relating the deaths of the apostles are generally accepted.
Of particular interest is the death of Peter, whom tradition said was buried beneath the spot now occupied by St. Peter's basilica in Rome. In 1968 excavations were made beneath the basilica, and the bones of a male person were located. A forensic examination found them to be a male of about 61 years of age from the first century. Peter, if he had been about Jesus' age, would have been about 60 when he died under Nero. There's more to this story that is worth reading.
Conclusion
Myths take centuries to form. The story of the gospels are eyewitness accounts written within a lifetime of the actual incidents--these are no myths.
If those accounts are fiction, then they're lies, (unless you can see another alternative?), and one must account for why their authors died to propagate them. Granted, religious fanatics and suicide bombers will die for something they haven't seen with their own eyes... but that's quite different from dying for something one knows to be false.
