This is the brochure that is sold with the T-Shirt. It is designed to equip the wearer of the T-shirt with some basic knowledge required to explain and defend what is on the shirt.
Q. Are the New Testament documents historically reliable?
A. The NT is textually trustworthy and has been corroborated by archaeological finds such as the Pilate Inscription.
Contents:
A. Quick overview
B. Evidences
C. Suggested Arguments to use
D. Suggested Arguments not to use
A. Quick Overview
You’ll note that the question explicitly mentions the historicity of the New Testament. Because Christians think so highly of the NT, many people expect different (read: “better”) evidence for it than other documents. But the Christian church has historically allowed itself to be tested to the same standards as anything else. It is in fact the skeptical and doubtful who try to use different standards for testing the NT. Two examples of religions with ‘better’ evidence are Islam and Mormonism, where the documents were essentially dictated (allegedly) by an angel to men. We don’t see skeptics running over to these faiths! In Luke 1:1-4 we see how Christianity is different. Luke asserts that he himself made a careful investigation. He makes claims that in principle can be verified or falsified using methods of inquiry that one might use anywhere else. The heart of the Christian challenge is simply this: If the NT is at least as well documented as other historical documents, all we ask is that if you reject the NT, reject those documents, too.
B. Evidences
1. The Pilate Inscription. For centuries, the NT was ridiculed because the only other corroboration of the existence of Pilate was the Jewish historian Josephus, whose documents were simply assumed to have been tampered with by Christians. Open mouth, insert foot: In 1961, a stone was discovered in Palestine which clearly states: “Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea.”
2. The Pool of Bethesda. Again, mockers dismissed the pool, described in John 5:1-15 as invented. Alas, in 1888, and confirmed in 1956, the pool was found.
3. Caiaphas’s Tomb. Apart from Josephus, there is little verifying the existence of Caiaphas. In 1990, however, the tomb of his son was discovered. The Ossuary, in good condition, reads: Joseph son of Caiaphas. (Regardless of the numerous archaeological finds, skeptics continue to challenge the historicity of the New Testament.)
4. Obscure Persons. Sure, okay, the big names are validated, but who would dare make them up? But what about Erastus, mentioned in Acts 19:22 and Romans 16:23? An inscription found in 1928 in Corinth thanks Erastus for his service to the city.
The Answer to our Question also speaks to the trustworthiness of the texts themselves. So, our answer does not merely cover the question of historical corroboration for the NT but the question of ‘how do we even know the texts haven’t changed over time?’ Most people assume: very old = corrupted beyond recognition. Not so. Consider just three points.
1. Almost the entire NT can be reconstructed from second generation Christian writings (70-120 AD) alone.
2. The John Rylands fragment of the Gospel of John, found in Egypt in 1920, has been dated to between 125 AD and 150 AD. The fragment, which is a copy of John, demonstrates that John wrote from Ephesus as early as 90 AD.
3. Papias, writing about 115 AD recounts that Mark recorded Peter’s Gospel and Matthew wrote Matthew. Tatian was able to compose his Diatessaron- or harmony of the four Gospels- c. 160 AD. This is clear evidence that the four gospels we have today were written by exactly the people attributed to them and that these four, and just these four, were accepted very early on by the Christian church- or else Papias wouldn’t have mentioned them and Tatian wouldn’t have selected them. When contrasted with the scant corroborations of many other documents it is definitely reasonable to conclude that the NT is historically reliable.
C. Suggested Arguments to Use
In light of these observations, point out that you have at least as much right to trust the NT as reliable history as they trust Tacitus, Plutarch, etc. You will likely find that some will object something to the effect of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Such comments usually mask the true objection to the NT: it contains recounts of supernatural events. In other words, they are biased against anything that hints of the supernatural. This is very common.In response, you may say, “Well what kind of evidence would convince you?” This will provide you with an opportunity to explain that if God revealed himself miraculously to everyone wanting a miracle, you would not be able to tell the difference between a miracle and a natural law - or a delusion. Sometimes it is added that one would expect that if the Bible is really true and ‘from God’ it would have better sourcing then just writings from men. In most cases pointing out that Mormonism and Islam claims exactly that but the speaker is not himself a Mormon or a Muslim should show the inconsistency of that position. But you can always say that it is perfectly reasonable to trust what is seen by a great multitude of witnesses (i.e., the many reports of seeing Jesus’ alive) over a person’s claim to have direct revelation or even one’s own experience of direct revelation (if that’s what they want) because you could always suspect yourself of being deluded or insane. But it’s harder to believe that when there are more people involved, especially if they up and die for their testimony, like many of the first Christians did.Besides, you can add, you can’t use the fact that there are miracles in the NT as proof that the NT is unreliable, because that would assume that you already know it is impossible for miracles to happen. But how could you know that unless you’ve checked it out? And how else could you check it out without investigating claims and sorting out the strongest among them first? Otherwise, it’s circular reasoning.
D. Suggested Arguments not to use.
It would also be circular reasoning if you said, “The NT is true because God wrote it.” Besides the fact that it’s more accurate to say that God inspired it (2 Tim 3:16), the only way you could know ‘God wrote it’ is by checking out the evidence for that claim. This would lead you back to examining the evidence for the resurrection, which in turn means examining the NT as historical documents.Now, if you say “I have faith that the NT is reliable because I think it very likely that Jesus rose from the dead- even if I can’t corroborate everything in it.” that would be fine.
Copyright Apologia315.com 2007