By Joshua Stevens, Faith Contributor, Valley Ag Voice
For nearly two millennia, Christians have looked to the gospels to read the words and acts of Christ and His ministry here on Earth. From these written works, Christians rest dogmatic views such as the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth of the Messiah, the death, resurrection, and great commission. However, skeptics have posed the legitimate question of how we know the gospels we have today are genuine, accurate, and true.
This is not an argument for the infallibility of scripture; it is just that what we have today is the same as what the early Christians had, and it accurately depicts what happened. To determine reliability, one must first set a bar for what is and isn’t reliable.
A common example posited to show this would be if your friend tells you that a concert is going to be in town and, as it turns out, there is no concert in town. He would be wrong in that instance, but that does not then mean he is unreliable. A greater sample size would need to be shown to substantiate that claim. As for the gospels, as noted by apologist and author Jimmy Aiken, there are over 50 examples from the gospel where skeptics such as Bart Ehrman agree that the gospels are probably or very probably right.1 These examples include that Jesus was born as a real person who lived in first-century Palestine as a Jew and a teacher and was crucified under Pontious Pilate. These are not small claims but integral claims to the faith we hold.
Erhman’s greatest critique of the scriptures seems to be a couple of things as Joel Edmund Anderson writes, ”What Ehrman essentially argues throughout many of his books on Jesus is this: (1) we don’t have the original manuscripts of the four gospels, (2) the thousands of copies that we do have all have differences (these are called ‘textual variants’), and therefore (3) you can’t really trust anything you read in the New Testament because it is not reliable. That’s basically the core thesis of most of his books.” 2
Taking these critiques individually, why should we believe the gospels if we don’t have the original manuscripts? The first thing to consider is when looking at the reliability of the gospels, we should judge it based on the standards of the time, where most copies that survived to us today are hundreds of years after the original; for the gospels, we are looking at the span of less than one hundred years. P52, a fragment of John’s gospel, was dated as early as 125 AD, and Clements’s letter to Rome was dated as early as 95 AD and contains quotes from 10 New Testament books.3 We have early copies and more of them than any historical event in antiquity.
When looking at how Ehrman defines differences, his argument will be regarding differences in the story between the gospel narratives–from John’s changing the day Christ was crucified to apparent contradictions with the birth of Christ. One way to view these differences is to remember that each gospel has a slightly different way of approaching the story and different audiences. They also employ different narrative devices to tell a particular story. Most apparent contradictions can be explained by several commonly used devices such as paraphrasing, interpretation, abbreviation, omission, reordering of events or sayings, and/or reporting similar events and sayings. The final thing to note regarding differences is that they aren’t always contradictions, for example:
“Consider these two sentences:
- There’s a window in my office
- There’s no window in my office
This is a true contradiction because for one of these sentences to be true, the other must be false. These are not the kinds of contradictions usually attributed to the gospels. Instead, the discussions tend to center around apparent discrepancies and contrary accounts, but when we look closely at them, we find that they’re typically cleared up pretty easily.”4
Reliability is judged subjectively. Some skeptics believe the apparent contradiction between the synoptic gospels and the gospel of John, such as the day and time of Christ’s crucifixion, to be a nail in the coffin. Others can see why John changed the day and time to highlight a theological point or can harmonize the passages.
At the end of the day, the gospels are more right than wrong, and the margin is not small. Moreover, they are more right about the core issues at hand, being Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection. Proof abounds surrounding the gospels’ historical facts, including the characters’ names and places, which are real and accurate for the time, and there are no anachronisms. The amount of manuscript evidence and the short period it took to write copies can and should give us faith that what we read today is what the earliest Christians read.
Will you pray with me?
Dear Lord, thank you for the care You have taken in preserving the scriptures we have today, for allowing us to read and learn from those who have come before us so we may run our race without falling into the same mistakes. As we set about this month, let us be emboldened to speak confidently about what you have given and shown to us. Amen.
Works Cited
- Akin, J. (2022, March 19). Where Bart and I agree. Retrieved from Jimmyakin.com.
- Anderson, J. E. (2016, February 4). Bart Ehrman and the historical reliability of the gospels (part 1). Retrieved from Joeledmundanderson.com.
- The College Church. (n.d.) Ancient Manuscript Comparison Chart. Retrieved from The College Church.
- ZA Blog. (2017, September 19). Bible Contradictions Explained: 4 Reasons the Gospels “Disagree.” Retrieved from Zondervan Academic.
