4. The Gospels about Jesus have solid history

We cannot simply dismiss the gospel accounts of Jesus as fictional writing or stories from human imagination. They contain the marks of solid history and have been verified at numerous points.

The following are some rock solid points of agreement about Jesus by a diversity of scholars as listed by very widely respected non-evangelical scholar, E.P Sanders.

1. Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist.
2. Jesus was a Galilean who preached and healed.
3. Jesus called disciples and spoke of their being twelve.
4. Jesus confined his activity to Israel.
5. Jesus engaged in a controversy about the temple.
6. Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem by the Roman authorities.
7. After Jesus' death his followers continued as an identifiable movement.
8. The content of Jesus' teaching was focused on the Kingdom of God (his rule).

Craig Evans adds:
8. The institution of the Lord's Supper.
9. Jesus eating with and associating with tax collectors and people called 'sinners'.

These historical facts can are determined by normal historical methods such as the following criteria:
(1) Historical Coherence. (2) Mutiple Attestation. (3) Embarrassment. (4) Dissimilarity. (5) Semitisms and Palestinian background. (6) Coherence (or Consistency).

 

Dr Peter Williams of Tyndale house in Cambridge is a Biblical scholar. He cites numerous examples that show the robustness of the history in the gospels. If you want to hear the talk then press here.

For example WIlliams follows Richard Baukham's  book The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. The names used in the gospels match the frequency of names for the region at that time. If the gospels were made up later in another place (after the destruction of Jerusalem) it would be virtually impossible to make up the names to fit. Personal names easily drop out of stories over time because the action and events are more important. The earliest gospel. Mark, has more names than the other gospels and this helps confirm its integrity as an early source.

Other insignificant details in the gospels confirm that they were not fabricated in a later time in another place. The Pool of Bethesda was assumed to be a fictional creation by whoever made up the gospel of John late in the 1st Century. However, excavations uncovered the pool revealing it to be just as John's gospel describes with the 5 colonnades (John 5:2).

The nature of storms on the Sea of Galilee are just as described in the gospels. Even the type of grass (Matthew 14:19, Mark 6:39) for the time approaching Passover (John 6:4) has been be confirmed by piecing together the incidental details in different gospels.

 

Why can we trust the gospels?

1. The literature of the New Testament was written close in time to the events they describe.
• Shown by the internal evidence of the writings
• We have copies of the literature dated close to the time of their writing (early second century).
• Almost every part of the New Testament is quoted by writers in the late first and early second century.

2. The text of these documents has come down to us intact from the era in which they were written.
• There is in existence today about 13 000 early manuscripts of the New Testament. This enables the almost perfect scientific reconstruction of the text of the New Testament as they were originally written.

3. The Bible does not have the character of book that was made up.
• The wisdom and accurate perception of the world by the Bible is supernatural.
• Many writers are eyewitnesses of the events. Eg 1 John 1:1 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched-this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
• The writers are careful to obtain the facts. Eg Luke 1:1-4 “I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning ... so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”
• The Bible has a historical character. For example including incidental details that don’t aid the story but would be expected by a history writer.
• The authors themselves, the heroes and the founders of the Church are portrayed as blundering idiots.
• Differences in gospel accounts make collusion unlikely - though not undermining the value of the gospels because many ways of reconciling them are conceivable.
• God coming to earth to die for humanity’s guilt is not something that Jews would make up nor would it be easy to convince other Jews about this.
• God being three persons in one is not something anyone would make up let alone monotheistic Jews.

4. The truth of Christianity could easily have been verified, as it began, because the events it describes were so public (Acts 26:26). Jesus miracles were witnessed by thousands and even his resurrection was witnessed by over 500 hundred who were still living (1 Cor 15:6) during the first thirty years.

Source 1 • The Roman Historian, Tacitus, writes about the fire in Rome in 64 A.D.
To dispel the rumour that he was to blame “Nero fastened the guilt [of the fire] and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a deadly superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but also in the City [Rome], ... an arrest was made of all who confessed; then upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of arson, as of hatred of the human race. Besides being put to death they were made to serve as objects of amusement; they were clad in the hides of beasts and torn to pieces by dogs; others were crucified, others set on fire to serve to illuminate the night when daylight had failed.”

Source 2 • The Roman Governor of Bithynia, Pliny, writes to the Emperor in ~112 A.D.
Pliny writes to the governor seeking advice about a troublesome group known as “Christians”, some of whom he had in prison at the time. Pliny said “many of all ages and every rank and also of both sexes” are involved. They had spread into “not the cities only, but also the villages and country”. Because of this movement the temples had become unpopular and people who sold animals for sacrifices had gone out of business.
“I ask them if they are Christians. If they admit it I repeat the question a second and third time, threatening capital punishment. If they persist I sentence them to death, for their inflexible obstinacy should certainly be punished”
“They [Christians] maintained, however, that the amount of their fault or error had been this, that it was their habit on a fixed day to assemble before daylight and recite by turns a form of words to Christ as a god; and that they bound themselves with an oath, not for any crime, but not to commit theft or robbery or adultery, not to break their word, and not to deny a deposit when demanded. After this was done, their custom was to depart, and to meet again to take food, but ordinary and harmless food. To find out the truth concerning them I applied torture to two maidservants ”

Source 3 • Roman writer Suetonius: writing about Rome c. 49 AD
“Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation  of Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome” • How does this fit with Acts 18:2 ?

Source 4 • Archaeological Sources and inscriptions
• Christian inscriptions were found in the buried city of Pompeii in Italy (See the Map). The city was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. and only in modern times has it been unearthed.
• Many subterranean cemeteries called catacombs have been discovered Europe, North Africa, Syria and the most extensive ones in Rome. These contain many Christian inscriptions including the Greek word for fish - ‘ICHTHUS’ which also stood for Iesus (Jesus) CHrist (Christ) THeou (of God) Uios (Son) Soter (Saviour). The catacombs were constructed from the end of the 1st century to the 5th century A.D.
• Thousands of other archaeological finds have verified the cities, regions, distances to towns, specific people, culture, lifestyle, trade and major events that are described throughout the Bible.

Source 5 • Jewish Historian, Josephus, born in 37 A.D.
In ~93 A.D. Josephus writes about James (the brother of Christ) and others being put to death.
“ ... convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned”
He also wrote the following. Although certain parts of this are contested by some, most agree about its basis -
“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people who accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was [called] the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day [they reported that] he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God have prophesied these and countless other marvellous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.” (doubted sections italicised and possible omissions bracketed)
Josephus also describes the circumstances of Herod’s death to be very similar to Acts 12:21-24
“Clad in a garment woven completely of silver ... the silver, illuminated by the touch of the first rays of the sun inspired awe ... his flatterers addressed him as a God ...the king did not rebuke them ...  felt a stab of pain in his heart ... after five days of suffering with a pain in the belly ... he departed this life.”

Source 6 • Jewish Rabbi, Elizer, in  ~95 A.D.
Elizer wrote a bitter letter to warn people against following Jesus and becoming a Christian.
[speaking as though it was predicted by a prophet] “... saw that there was a man, born of a woman, who would rise up and seek to make himself God, and cause the whole world to go astray ... Give heed that you go not astray after that man; for it is written, God is not a man that he should lie. And if he says that he is God he is a liar, and he will deceive and say that he departeth and cometh again at the end. He saith and he shall not perform.”

 

Other Information:

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Baukham.

Craig Evans (Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels & In debate with Bart Ehrman)

Peter Williams of Tyndale House in Cambridge has helpful evidence:

MP3 Reliability of the Gospels - Interview HERE

MP3 Evidence that the Gospels were based on Eyewitness accounts HERE