Why Trust the Gospel Accounts

The Bible is full of mistakes. I’m sorry, but indeed, it is. The first mistake was when man rejected God, and the Scriptures show man and woman making the same tragic mistake again and again.

We must be ready to defend the faith we must be equipped to demonstrate that the Bible is divine rather than human in origin. When we can successfully accomplish this, we can answer a host of other objections by appealing to Scripture.

The New Testament provides the primary historical source for information about Jesus. Because of this, many critics have attacked the reliability of the biblical documents. There seems to be a constant barrage of accusations that have no historical foundation or that have now been outdated by archaeological discoveries and research.

I’m not asking you to accept on “blind faith” that the gospels are God’s Word. Forget about that altogether for right now. I’m simply saying let’s look at them as you would any ancient document. Apply to them the same criteria historians apply to other ancient documents when they research history, and I believe they fare very well and can be trusted to tell us a good deal about the person of Jesus Christ, enough in fact, to know that God was present in Him and working through Him in a most significant way.

So what are the criteria which historians apply to ancient documents in order to ascertain their historical value? They can be divided into three groups: bibliographical, internal and external tests. The bibliographical test is an examination of the textual transmission by which documents reach us. In other words, not having the original documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to the number of manuscripts and the time interval between the original and still existing copy? Internal criteria are criteria that apply inside the document under consideration (Content and Composition) and external of course is covering criteria outside the document (Archeology, Art, History and Literature). You’ll see the difference between these two as we proceed. These criteria are best expressed by a series of questions which historians typically ask of ancient documents. But I better stop for now...more news later!