Classical scholar Michael Grant has observed:
if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned…. In recent years, ‘no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus’ or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.2
Defending the Integrity of the Gospels
It is not without significance that four separate Gospel accounts have been preserved in the NT. A long-held and firmly-established maxim affirms, “Upon the testimony of two or three witnesses, every word will be established” (2 Cor. 13:1b),3 a quotation from the LXX version of Deuteronomy 19:15 and reiterated repeatedly in scripture.4 The NT Gospels thus offer more evidence than was deemed necessary. The value and veracity of their combined witness cannot be ignored or easily dismissed, serving as our primary source for understanding who Jesus really is.
Historicity
The aim of the historian is to record facts, not to invent stories or produce fictitious works of creative imagination. Although the Gospels are not strictly historical narratives, they are packed with historical information and therefore demand historic inquiry. Christianity is a historical religion established on historical evidence. “Some religions can be indifferent to historical fact, and move entirely upon a plane of timeless truth. Christianity cannot. It rests upon the affirmation that a series of events happened, in which God revealed Himself in action, for the salvation of men.”5
The information provided by Gospel writers includes people, places, time periods, and events that can either be verified or falsified in the records of history. This allows a rational and objective defense. If an account were fabricated, the entire manuscript would be discredited.6 While Christianity is more than just an exercise in reason, faith has a historical dimension. Faith must be grounded in evidence. Biblically defined (see Hebrews 11:1), faith cannot be divorced from ὑπόστασις (confidence, assurance; substance, essence), the certainty of something real; and ἔλεγχος (proof, conviction), convinced by sufficient evidence of the reality “of things not seen.” Biblical faith is not a blind leap in the dark. In order for a historical narration to have credibility, it must have happened.
If the central claims of Christianity could so easily be discredited, how does one reasonably explain its explosion into existence within a hostile Jewish environment, its rapid spread throughout a resistant polytheistic world, to become such an impactful global movement? The early believers did not choose their religion because it was familiar and popular. They embraced the Christian faith as true, irrespective of cultural conditioning and without violent coercion (just the opposite!). Christianity began and flourished among real people in the first-century world who could readily test its claims.
The Bias Dilemma
Were the Gospel writers biased? Anyone who is convinced and passionate about anything is necessarily biased to some degree. If those responsible for the canonical Gospels sincerely believed the message they transmitted, does their “biased agenda” automatically render them incapable of honesty and factual reporting? John Drane has aptly observed:
But the idea that only “unbiassed” people can ever tell the truth belongs to a way of understanding reality that no longer stands up to critical scrutiny. The philosophical notion developed through the European Enlightenment, that merely by the exercise of human reason it is possible to step outside our own experience of life and judge things in some kind of “objective” way entirely detached from our own perspective, is now seen to have been just wishful thinking on the part of self-opinionated white Westerners who wished to justify their own ideas over against what they regarded as the “irrational” understandings of people of other times and places.7
None of the Gospel writers or other early followers of Jesus started off with a Christian bias. Contrary to the assumptions of many critics, “the Gospels were more spontaneous expressions of theologies that already existed within the communities out of which they arose than documents designed to shape community theology.”8 The passionate defense of a conviction does not render a work better or worse in its scholarship. That is determined by “the accuracy of the information it includes and the cogency of its argumentation.”9
The Supernatural Dilemma
People have a tendency to interpret data according to their entrenched worldview and presuppositions. Anti-supernaturalism assumes there is no God, the physical universe is a closed system that does not permit outside interference, and therefore miracles are seen as fictitious. Yet by their very definition miracles are out of the ordinary. When the universe is conceptualized through the restrictive lenses of scientific method and philosophical naturalism, viewed as a closed system operating according to inflexible laws that are totally predictable and never vary, any deviation from what is expected is regarded as impossible.
No scientist is in the position to deny that miracles occurred in the past, as these unique happenings are outside the range of scientific investigation. It is one thing to assert that supernatural manifestations are not witnessed today, but to dismiss even the possibility that they could have ever taken place is to assume one’s own conclusion and involves unprovable (unscientific) speculation. Science has its limitations. It does not encompass all reality and is not the infallible key that accounts for every conceivable anomaly.
The historical method is also somewhat restricted. The historian’s role is simply to repeat the facts of history, however artistic his depiction might be, without attempting to provide subjective explanations or embellishments. The Gospel records are a matter of historical evidence. Unlike myths, legends, and fairytales, biblical miracles are reported in the context of real historical events, in a simple, straightforward, unembellished manner, typically occurring in the presence of multiple (sometimes hundreds and even thousands of) witnesses. If biblical authors are critiqued fairly and proven to be trustworthy in other areas (e.g., geography, historical and sociocultural data, etc.), their testimony deserves serious consideration and should not be rejected outright.
When one is predisposed from the start to deny the possibility of exceptional phenomena that defy the natural world as we currently know it, the entire Bible, with its description of miraculous events, will be like the proverbial baby thrown out with the bath water. On the other hand, if one is open to the prospect that God is real and that Jesus is in fact who he professed to be, extraordinary workings are not beyond what is to be expected. Biblical miracles are not surprising at all, and certainly not impossible, in a theistic world. One’s assessment of supernaturalism in the biblical record is inextricably linked to his or her assessment of the plausibility of God. “From a Christian perspective, theism makes the miraculous possible, and the witnesses make miracles credible.”10
Conclusion
History is not like mathematics. Even the hard sciences fall short of absolute certainty, but secure knowledge is still possible as is secure historical fact. What has the greatest amount of evidence? If anyone is looking for undeniable verification, a consideration of historical evidence does not remove the critical role of faith. Knowledge of all history depends on trusting historians and the information they recount, and the information they recount ultimately goes back to reliable witness corroboration.
--Kevin L. Moore
Endnotes:
1 Josephus, Ant. 18.3.3; 20.9.1; Tacitus, Annals 15.44; Seutonius, De vita Caesarum: Claudius 25.4, Nero 16; Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 10.96.7. To deny Jesus of Nazareth ever existed as a real historical person is a radical extreme comparatively few scholars embrace, although a popular assertion among non-critical thinkers. David Fitzgerald, in his self-published Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All (2010), tries to build a case against the historicity of Jesus. The “study,” however, is noticeably one-sided, overstated, somewhat shallow, emotive, flippant, heavily prejudicial, and unscholarly. Even a secular critic like Bart Ehrman is compelled to acknowledge, “[Jesus] certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees, based on clear and certain evidence” (Forged: Writing in the Name of God 256). Robert M. Price, who debated Ehrman in 2017 on the existence of Jesus, is a rare mythicist holding high academic credentials.
2 Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels 200.
3 Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are the author’s own translation.
4 Deut. 17:6; Matt. 18:16; John 8:17; 1 Tim. 5:19; Heb. 10:28.
5 C. H. Dodd, History and the Gospel 15. Christianity “is not merely open to historical investigation, but demands it, and its piety depends on it” (E. C. Hoskyns and F. N. Davey, The Riddle of the NT 143-44).
6 D. M. Doriani, “Matthew,” in ESV Expository Commentary 8:25. Most often attacked in attempts to discredit the Gospels’ historical integrity is the alleged historical blunder of Luke 2:1-5. Upon closer scrutiny, however, these criticisms are built on scarcity of historical information and unsubstantiated presuppositions. See K. L. Moore, “Luke’s Alleged Historical Blunder: Part 1,” Moore Perspective (16 Oct. 2019), <Link>;and “Part 2” (23 Oct. 2019), <Link>.
7 Introducing the New Testament (Rev.) 221-222.
8 J. C. S. Redman, “How Accurate are Eyewitnesses?” JBL 129:1 (2010): 196. “But we have in any case to account for the kerygma itself. A true historical perspective suggests that it would be nearer the truth to say that the kerygma, or the facts and beliefs involved in it, created the community, than to say that the community created the kerygma” (C. H. Dodd, History and the Gospel 77). “Kerygma has not been historized but the other way around. History has become kerygmatized” (C. L. Blomberg, “I. H. Marshall’s View of Redaction and History in Luke-Acts,” ETS 73rd Annual Meeting, 17 Nov. 2021).
9 C. L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the NT xxviii.
10 D. M. Doriani, “Matthew,” in ESV Expository Commentary 42. See also C. S. Keener, Miracles: the Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 vols. (2011).
Related Posts: Quest for the Historical Jesus, Challenging the Gospels' Integrity: Response (Part 2), Part 3
Related articles: Jovan Payes, The Gospels: 7 Reasons to Trust Their Reliability
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