Apologetics: The Basics
Session 7 – The Bible is Historically Reliable
The Four Points – Review
- Truth is knowable
- Relativism and Pluralism are self-refuting and irrational
- God exists
- The Moral Argument
- The Cosmological Argument
- The Design Argument
- Several others
- Only need ONE
- Evidence is OVERWHELMING
- The New Testament is historically reliable
- Jesus proved he is God
** feel free to disagree**
Note 1
- Save inspiration, infallibility and inerrancy conversations for other believers, not with un-believers
- You do not want your discussions to be about defending every single possible Biblical error
Principle
- The goal of Christian Apologetics is not to win an argument but rather to bring others closer to the truth of Jesus Christ.
Note 2
- The Christian faith does NOT rise or fall on whether there is an error in today’s text.
Point Three: The New Testament is Historically Reliable
3 Questions
- Were the original documents written by eyewitnesses?
- Did those eyewitnesses tell the truth?
- Do we have an accurate copy of the original documents?
3 Questions #1
Were the original documents written by eyewitnesses?
- They claimed to be eyewitnesses
- They gave eyewitness details
- Gospels are written as books of history
- Confirmation back as early as 125 AD
- There was never any claim to different authorship
- Matthew, Mark and Luke are unlikely candidates
- Resurrection belief dated to within 2 to 5 years
- Even liberal skeptics grant first century authorship
“The best explanation is the one that best explains all the evidence.” – Josh McDowell
3 Questions #2
Did those eyewitnesses tell the truth?
The Top 3 (of 10) Reasons We Know the New Testament Writers Told the Truth
Reason #1
The New Testament story is confirmed by Non-Christian Sources
Non-Christian Sources who confirm the New Testament Account
- Josephus
- Tacitus
- Seutonius
- Thallus
- Phlegon
- Pliny the Younger
- Emperor Trajian
- Emperor Hadrian
- Jewish Talmud
- Lucian
Non-Christian sources say…
- Jesus lived during Tiberias Caesar
- He was a wonder worker
- Lived a virtuous life
- Had a brother named James
- Was proclaimed to be the Messiah
- Crucified under Pontius Pilate
- Earthquake occurred when he died
- Crucified on eve of Jewish Passover
- His disciples believed he rose from the dead
- They were willing to die for their beliefs
- This belief spread rapidly to Rome
- They worshiped Jesus as God
*** this demonstrates the silliness of those who question the Jesus of history ***
Reason #2
Historical Crosshairs
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert. – Luke 3:1-2
Historical Crosshairs
- Specific dates
- Specific people
- Specific details
- Specific events
- Specific places
- All eyewitness quality, confirmable material
Examples of Details Included
- Luke in Acts – 84 people, places, etc.
- John – 59 confirmed details
- Agrippa, Bernice, Caiaphas, Herod
- Festus, James, etc.
- Caesarea, etc.
- All confirmed by Archaeology
“In extraordinary ways modern archaeology is affirming the historical core of the Old and the New Testaments, corroborating key portions of the stories of Israel’s patriarchs, the Davidic monarchy and the life and times of Jesus.” – Jeffrey Shelheim
Reason #3
The New Testament writers abandon traditions, adopt new practices and die for what they said they saw
Traditions abandoned…
- Animal sacrifices
- Mosaical Law
- Monotheism
- Sabbath
- Conquering Messiah
- Circumcision
- Risked eternal damnation for their new beliefs
What would they gain by making up this story?
- Ostracism
- Persecution
- Torture
- Abuse
- Death
*** Why would they die for a lie??
It is reasonable to die for something you believe to be true, it is not reasonable to die for something you know to be false. ***
3 Questions #3
Do we have an accurate copy of the original documents?
** following numbers are subject to change **
Two primary factors in determining reliability…
Number of copies
Time Gaps
Manuscript Counts
- Josephus: Jewish War / 9 copies
- Tacitus: Annals of Imperial War / 1 copy
- Homer: The Iliad / 643 copies (now 1800+)
- Demosthenes / 200 copies
- Plato / 7 copies
Manuscript Counts
- New Testament
- 5,664 Greek copies
- Over 24,000 total copies
Time Gaps
- Josephus: Jewish War / 800 years
- Tacitus: Annals of Imperial War / 730 years
- Homer: The Iliad
- 900 years
- 500 years for earliest fragment
- Demosthenes / 1,400 years
- Plato / 1,200 years
Time Gaps
- New Testament
- Less than 300 years for complete copy
- 200 years for substantially all of the NT
- 150 years for substantial fragments
- 10 to 80 years for earliest fragment
“The last foundation for any doubt that the scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.”
– Sir Fredric Kenyon, former director of the British Museum
About all those ‘translations’…
About those 200,000 ‘errors’…
- Each variant is counted in each manuscript
- Errors are almost all grammatical in nature
- Textual criticism indicates we can be confident that up to 99.5 percent of the NT content is reliably preserved***
- None of the compromised .5% impacts any basic Christian doctrine
“Probability is the sole ground on which finite human beings can make rational conclusions.” – Josh McDowell
Rejecting the trustworthiness of the New Testament means rejecting all of ancient history…by any standard historical measure, the New Testament is BY FAR the best attested document in all of ancient history. NT Reliability can only be avoided by defining requirements for the it that are not required for any other document. In other words, you can only win the game by changing the rules.
Conclusion:
3 Questions
- Were the original documents written by eyewitnesses?
- Did those eyewitnesses tell the truth?
- Do we have an accurate copy of the original documents?
The EVIDENCE tells us the answers are yes, yes and yes.
THE NT IS HISTORICALLY RELIABLE
Recommended Refernces:
I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist – Geisler and Turek
The Case For Christ – Strobel
Know what you believe,
Know why you believe it