Reddit reviews The Historical Reliability of the Gospels

I would recommend the work of Michael
Kruger like Canon Revisited or The Question of Canon.

Beyond that, a classic is Warfield's The Authority and Inspiration of the Bible. Maybe even Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of the Gospels.

I would second Wright's Resurrection.

For Gospels, Blomberg's Historical Reliability of the Gospels. I believe this is an expansion of his dissertation from Aberdeen (but don't quote me on this). I read this back in undergrad.

The new testament still scores pretty good compared to other ancient writings/writers.

Most of the items he listed as discrepancies between the gospels fall in the category of "an omission by one author isn't a contradiction". The timing issues have been explained by the gospel writers using different calendars and methods of measuring time, and multiple sabbaths (Therefore multiple days of preparation) during the passover week.

He touts Mark as an example of fine Greek written by a very educated man, but it's written in a Greek spoken by commoners and slaves; even approaching the ungrammatical at times.

In short, it seems that he quickly goes through a list of one-line statements that represent his side of the argument and never touches on the opposing view; when entire books have been written on many of these topics.

>The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate historical description of what actually happened.

"Most scholars believe that Mark was written around or shortly after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in year 70... Biblical scholars generally hold that Matthew was composed between the years c. 70 and 100... Some scholars date the Gospel of Luke to c. 80-90, although others argue for a date c. 60-65... Most scholars date the Gospel of John to c. 80–95." Note: I'm citing Wikipedia, shame on me, but it's quick & easy. To be fair, this aligns with what I've read in better sources, such as this book.
>If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased.

"There are passages relevant to Christianity in the works of four major non-Christian writers of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries – Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger. However, these are generally references to Early Christians... Of the four, Josephus' writings, which document John the Baptist, James the Just, and Jesus, are of the most interest to scholars dealing with the historicity of Jesus." --Also from the Wikipedia page... my books on the topic are at home, sorry all. :/

In addition, there are numerous copies of the gospels available that can be dated very close to the authorship date, and they do match each other. The parts that are disputed are clearly noted in certain translations, such as the NIV-- there will be a note saying that "the earliest manuscripts do not contain this passage," or something to that effect.

Bias is, obviously, a concern. Some scholars say that this concern is offset by the fact that the gospels include facts that are embarrassing to the disciples themselves (Peter's denial of Jesus, or the disciples overall pattern of confusion and misunderstanding, for instance). There are also details that (if the authors were making up a false story and trying to make it seem believable) would not likely have been included-- testimonies of women, for instance, since a woman was not considered a valid witness in that time period.

Of course the Gospels don't hit every mark perfectly... but I would argue that very few ancient historical texts (if any) hold up flawlessly to the standards of historical research (particularly in regards to number of sources, and the amount of time lapsed between the event and the written record).

> What'd you find on NT?

Unfortunately, almost all that I have read has been from books that I have in person but I'll link some of them:

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels - Craig L. Blomberg

The Reason for God - Timothy Keller

Making the Case for Christianity - Korey Maas, Adam Francisco

The Resurrection Fact - John Bombaro, Adam Francisco


I've also had Dr. Daniel Wallace recommended to me, although I haven't gotten to look into his work much. I know he has some videos scattered on YouTube that can be watched, here is one.

I'd also recommend anything by John Warwick Montgomery!

> Yeah, sure thing. Really, the most damning thing to me is that he only interviewed apologists; the skeptics that he mentions in the book did not have the opportunity to defend themselves there. But here are some sources that I found interesting:

Thank you!


EDIT: Formatting

> How do you know? A plausible reading of Paul's epistles point to Jesus being a celestial deity whom was crucified in the firmament.

Huh? What does this even mean? No credible historian denies that Jesus was a human being. I'd love to see the sources you have for that

> That relies on the gospels, which are rejected as historical sources by historians.

Highly false. There are a lot of Christian Historians with PhD's from Harvard, Yale, Oxford etc. that do not reject the gospels as historical sources....in fact, there are only a select few Historians in general, Christian and non-, that would say the gospels are not accurate as historical literature, one example: The Historical Reliability of the Gospels

> Unless the body was stolen, lost, or Jesus was a mythological character.

valid points, and common counters to the resurrection. But again, there are numerous studies on the resurrection from PhD scholars, e.g. The Evidence for the Resurrection by JND Anderson

Interesting article. I appreciate his points. I may have fallen into the error that he describes of quoting people when I haven't taken the time to checkout their sources (or else misquoting them).

I disagree with your first paragraph.

I disagree with his dismissal of "Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Author of Hebrews, James, Peter, and Jude." with the exception of Paul. When he starts to dismiss Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Lucian, then I think that it doesn't pass the smell test. I suspect that he will dismiss anyone, no matter what. A priori.

And then of course, there are counter references: http://www.bethinking.org/jesus/ancient-evidence-for-jesus-from-non-christian-sources

As far as I can tell, the historical reliability of the gospels is well established. There are a number of books, articles, etc, etc. that are convincing enough for me. (I've just put a random one below). If the gospels are reliable historically, then there are 4 more witnesses for Jesus' life.

https://www.amazon.ca/Historical-Reliability-Gospels-Craig-Blomberg/dp/0830828079


but I have to get back to my real job now and do some work ...

There are a ton of great books on this, but the landmark scholarly book is Blomberg's on the Gospel accounts. A really good overview of history of translation is Journey From Text to Translation. These two books are basically the best you can get in terms of thoroughness and research.

Let me know if you want smaller or cheaper alternatives and I can get them to you, a really good intro "fun" style book is TPJ's How we Got the Bible. I personally can't stand that "fluffy and fun" tone, but some people really like it and grooves well for them.

Don't be afraid to bring this up to your pastor or community group and do a study together if they don't know the answer.

There's a lot we can unfold from this one question. I want to give you a thorough answer, but that means this will get long. I hope you'll hang with me here. :-)

First, we can still establish some widely accepted facts about the beginning of Christianity (such as the facts I listed for you) even if we consider the Gospel accounts unreliable. Historians can generally tell when Herodotus is embellishing to satisfy his desire for elements of karmic justice in his histories, or when Tacitus lets his pro-Roman bias get in the way of accuracy. Even with bias (which, let's be honest, all historians have) we can still extract facts and assign degrees of historical certainty to them. I think we have good reason to believe the Gospels are reliable (at least by the standards of their genre and period), but we don't have to agree on this in order to discuss the resurrection hypothesis.

Second, the dates usually assigned to the Gospels (between 30-70 years after Jesus's death, depending on whom you ask) are not as bad as you might think when you consider written history at that time. Liberal scholars agree that Mark was certainly written prior to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, at a time when many witnesses of Jesus would have still been alive and thus around to corroborate or refute the stories. We should also consider that some of Paul's letters show up even earlier, with his first letter to the Corinthian church being dated to around AD 55. And in this same letter, Paul preserved in written form a creed that formed part of the oral tradition surrounding early Christianity. It's extremely basic, unlike creeds that developed centuries later, but it does speak of the death, burial, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. Most New Testament scholars pin this creed's origin down to AD 35 or so, within a few years of Jesus's death, which means that the Christian belief in the resurrection was already set down as oral tradition decades prior to the actual writing of the Gospel accounts.

(As an aside, I sometimes hear people raise the objection that it's hard to remember what happened last year, let alone 30 or 40 years ago. I would say that for the people who were closest to Jesus, the crucifixion and resurrection almost certainly formed flashbulb memories that remained vivid decades after the fact. I can't tell you what I had for lunch last Tuesday, but I can tell you all sorts of details about where I was and what I was doing during the events of September 11, 2001. I remember exactly where I was on the road when I heard the radio simulcast of Peter Jennings announcing that the first tower had collapsed, and I remember the shock and emotion in Jennings's voice. And that was what, 17 years ago? Major events like that have a strange way of sticking when ordinary events don't.)

Third, at this time in history the literacy rates were rather poor. Although the New Testament documents directly benefited from the universality of Koine Greek due to the conquests of Alexander the Great, the number of people who could read or write (according to an estimate I heard recently from Michael Licona) was around 10% and 3%, respectively. For this reason oral tradition was a highly developed skill, and the Jewish rabbinical oral tradition was especially advanced, with sects like the Pharisees priding themselves on being able to quote the entire Old Testament from memory. So naturally the early church, being mostly Jewish, relied on oral tradition when it started. Unlike a game of telephone, however, in which there is no error correction procedure, the oral tradition as used in Jewish and other Near/Middle Eastern cultures had constant opportunities for error correction as it was recited to audiences, and this helped to preserve the core facts accurately.

Fourth, the Gospels bear many marks of authenticity. That is to say, there are things in there you would not expect to see if they were forgeries. For example, take the traditional names of the Gospel authors. Why choose a minor disciple who was formerly a hated tax collector (Matthew), a student of Peter (Mark), and a student of Paul (Luke)? Why not go for the big names to assert your authority? (And in fact the later Gospels that we know to be forgeries, such as the Gospel of Peter, did this very thing.) Also, why include tough verses like Mark 6:5 or Mark 13:32, which make Jesus sound limited and less than omniscient? In a culture where men's testimony was valued far more than women's, why insist that the first people to discover the empty tomb were women? For that matter, why portray Jesus's closest followers as fleeing like cowards while the women remained at the cross? And of course, why leave in the contradictions that people still bring up today instead of taking the time to harmonize the accounts before publishing?

Finally, the New Testament documents are among the most (if not the most) copied documents of their time. Copying was important then for preservation—better to have as many copies as possible so that if some are destroyed you haven't lost everything. Copying is important today for error correction—thanks to the thousands of extant manuscripts, we can tell when verses or passages were added by scribes. The major modern translations either remove these sections entirely or set them off with brackets and provide a footnote indicating that the earliest and best manuscripts do not have that particular section. Despite not having any originals, the textual purity of the New Testament is established to the point that we can be certain that 99% of the words in a Greek New Testament match what was originally written, and the remaining 1% about which there is some debate do not affect any doctrinal issues. Even agnostic Bart Ehrman, who seems to get quoted a lot on this sub, agrees that essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants.

There are a few more dimensions we could add to this, but rather than take my word for it, you can get a more complete view from an actual scholar if you read Craig Blomberg's Historical Reliability of the Gospels. (I haven't personally read this book yet, but it's on my to-read list. I'm familiar with Craig's work through his contributions to other books, however.)

> The Bible is the 'claim'

This makes no sense.

The Bible is collection of 66 different book, written by many different writers, in three different languages, in many different genres, on many different topics. How is that a "claim"?

There are not claims, they are sources.

People make claims based on an examination of those sources.

>So they all have the same, identical goal of declaring God and Jesus true. They are not independent sources.

So when two cosmologists [or historians, or ...] build on each others work they are not independent sources and should be rejected?

How do you know when an someone says that the Garden of Eden, Noah's Arc, the 2 million Jews escaping Egypt didn't exist/happen are telling you something that is true? Or more likely to be true?

How do you verify those claims?

>Anyone can cite anyone else's work, but that does not verify the first work nor prove it to be true.

Do you use this same level of skepticism when you read everything else? What "independent sources" do you use to verify the WW2 or the Ferguson protests have happened? Or who won the first Super Bowl or 1968 World Series?

You can't, according to you, use one source to verify another.

>Did you read your own source ??? That number, 5800, notes the number of COPIES in different languages of SOME of the OT and NT stories. That number does not represent 5,800 individual, independent books, each unique. So your reference is extremely misleading.

You think that every copy is going to be a complete Bible???? Do you not realize that they were separate books? Do you not realize that just the environmental exposure will cause some of the manuscript to disintegrate?

>... there is no proof of any of the Bible outside the Bible stories.

This is false. One can look at K. A. Kitchens On the Reliability of the OT or Walter Kaiser's The OT Documents - Are They Reliable and Relevant? or Craig Bloomberg's The Historical Reliabilitiy of the Gospels or F.F, Bruce's The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? or Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony