Chapter Seven

Is the New Testament evidence?

The role of the NT in the Church

You may have noticed that Christians sometime disagree with each other. In their better moments, Christians try to follow the principle ‘In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity’. So how do we decide which are the essentials of Christianity, and which are the non-essentials? Whatever denomination a Christian belongs to - Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Orthodox, Baptist, or none - the New Testament is not just evidence, or an inspired book, it is basis for defining what Christianity is.

Since I am an Anglican, a member of the Church of England, I’ll stick my neck out, and use a statement from the Church of England’s prayer book.

Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.

(Article 6 of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion)

This has always struck me as a sensible and practical principle to follow. Catholics might be unhappy with it because it doesn’t emphasise the importance of the traditional teachings of the Church, which are indeed important.  Some evangelical Christians might not like because its claims about the Bible are too modest, although they are not that modest! Others might point out that it offers no guidance on how the Holy Scriptures should be interpreted, although I would say that’s a good feature. Others still would object that it doesn’t emphasise the role of reason which, contrary to what some atheists claim, has always played an important role in the Christian faith. Notwithstanding all of this however, for all Christians, whatever their disagreements might be, the NT is central and the basis of the faith.

Christians consider the Bible to be inspired by God. As St Paul puts it: ‘Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that each person who belongs to God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work’ (2 Tim 3:16). Different Christians understand the word inspired - God breathed - in different ways. Some consider the Bible to be infallible and entirely without error of any kind. Others consider it to be infallible in matters of salvation, but not necessarily in matters such as science or history. Others would call it reliable rather than infallible. I will not be considering the issue of infallibility in this book, partly because I consider the distinction between reliable and infallible to be rather academic. If the Bible is infallible, then it is infallible when correctly interpreted, and our interpretation of it is certainly not infallible. Besides, for the purposes of this book, the distinction between infallible and reliable is not particularly significant. Some atheists say that if the Bible is not infallible, if contains errors of any kind, then that proves that it is false. Really? It is either infallible or worthless? This is ridiculous. If you followed that argument through to its logical conclusion, you would conclude that all books are worthless since no book is infallible. For our purposes, then, reliable will do fine.

However people understand the inspiration of the Bible, no one thinks the Bible simply descended from heaven, fully formed. It was written by particular people in a particular times and places. It has a history, it is part of history, so we can assess the NT as historical evidence, whatever else we might consider it to be, and this we shall now proceed to do.

 

Two important exceptions

There are good reasons for regarding the New Testament as reliable historical evidence. Actually, I don’t think that many would doubt that it was reliable historical evidence, were it not for two things which many people find hard to believe. The first is the appearance in the gospel stories of angels and demons. A modern reader may find their appearance jarring, intruders upon our modern sensibilities that they are; but they cannot and should not be ignored or disregarded. They are part of the story. Nevertheless, it is possible to exaggerate their importance: the demons are bit part players, film extras; the angels play only cameo roles. In the gospels the angels appear at the beginning to announce Jesus’ birth and at the end to announce his resurrection.

At the beginning:

Having come in, the angel said to her [Mary], ‘Rejoice, you highly favoured one! The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women!’ … ‘Don’t be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son, and shall name him ‘Jesus’. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High (Luke 1: 29-32).

At the end:

Entering into the tomb, they saw a young man [i.e. an angel] sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were amazed. He said to them, ‘Don’t be amazed. You seek Jesus, the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen. He is not here. Behold, the place where they laid him! But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He goes before you into Galilee. There you will see him, as he said to you.’’ (Mark 16:5-7)

The main role of the demons in the gospels is to announce who Jesus is:

Immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit [i.e. a demon], and he cried out, saying, ‘Ha! What do we have to do with you, Jesus, you Nazarene? Have you come to destroy us? I know you who you are: the Holy One of God!’ (Luke 4:33-34)

The second thing which makes the NT hard to believe, is the miraculous events that occur throughout the story of Jesus, culminating in his resurrection. These are not bit players; they are crucial. There have been attempts to create a more palatable, more acceptable Jesus by trying to retell his story sans miracles. Such attempts are futile.

On that day, when evening had come, he [Jesus] said to them, ‘Let’s go over to the other side.’  Leaving the multitude, they took him with them, even as he was, in the boat. Other small boats were also with him. A big wind storm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so much that the boat was already filled. He himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him up, and told him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care that we are dying?’

He awoke, and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you so afraid? How is it that you have no faith?’

They were greatly afraid, and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’ (Mark 4: 35-41)

It would be so much easier to believe the NT if there were no miracles, and nothing else supernatural in it; in fact, there would be no good reason to doubt it. It’s the miracles that make the NT difficult to believe; but on the other hand, they are also what make it interesting. Without them Jesus would be a sage, a teacher, a philosopher. It would definitely be worth learning about his teaching, but probably most people wouldn’t bother. You could take it, or leave it, or ignore it. But: ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’ It’s a good question. All present believed that there is one God, one Lord of nature, one who commands the wind and the waves. Mark doesn’t say it out loud, but for all of them, there is only one possible answer to the question. Now, that is interesting. I have said all I have to say about the angels and demons, but we shall return to the subject of miracles.

In all other respects in these chapters, I am assessing the value of the NT as evidence, in the same way that anyone would assess any another ancient document; the miracles are the obvious exception to this. Most of us would normally dismiss out of hand any claim that a miracle has occurred, and if we read a miracle story in an ancient document, we would automatically regard it as an invention; so why treat the NT miracles differently? It’s a fair question, which deserves a fair answer; but let’s put it to one side for the moment.

 

Believe it or not?

My aim in the next few chapters is to show that:

it is rational and reasonable, supposing that you are open to the possibility of the miraculous, to regard the NT as good historical evidence for Jesus, what he said and what he did, and for the history of the first few decades of the Christian church.

If you start from that evidence, and then take the next step; that is, to seriously consider the claim made by the NT, that Jesus is the Son of God, then that is clearly a step of faith, or leap of faith if you insist; but this is not ‘believing without evidence’. This is a faith seeking understanding; not a leap into the dark but a leap into the light. As St Johns Gospel explains:

Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name (John 20: 30-31).

It’s worth noting before we begin that, whatever you might think of the statement in bold print above, clearly the NT is evidence of some kind. The NT is a book. It’s a physical object. You can hold it your hand, see it, read it, and analyse it to your heart’s content. The books of the NT did not come from nowhere, they were written down at some point. That means there must be an explanation for how, when, where and why they were written. There are two alternative premises for an explanation. The first is that the story told in the NT is essentially true. Jesus really did the things he is said to have done, and the apostles and the NT writers genuinely tried to witness to those things. The explanation based on this premise, I maintain, is the best explanation of the evidence, set out in black and white on the pages of the NT in front of you. It is the is the explanation that is the simplest, the least contrived, the most open to being falsified, and the one with the most plausible mechanism to create it, i.e. the early apostolic church as described in the traditional view set out in the last chapter.

Any alternative explanation must claim that, on the contrary, the story of Jesus and the early church found in the NT is an invention, or as we would say if we weren’t pussy footing around, a lie. Such a theory need not go to the extreme of claiming that that the story of Jesus is entirely invented. After all, Christianity did not come from nowhere; there must be a true history behind it, and vestiges of that true history must be found in the NT, even if they are buried deep. On the other hand, the theory cannot, without losing all its potency, go the opposite extreme of claiming merely that minor or peripheral details in the story are inventions or mistakes. Such a claim invites the response: so what? An alternative explanation must maintain that the core, the essence of the story of Jesus, is made up. It is reasonable to ask in response, if the content of the New Testament is made up, then made up by who, when and how? Is there an alternative explanation for the existence of the NT and its contents with has the three Cs, that is to say which is:

• comprehensive: takes into account all known relevant data
• consistent: is free from internal contradiction
• coherent: which holds together making overall sense, or in this case makes better overall sense that the first explanation?

We also note in passing that there are some who do go to the extreme of claiming that the story of the Jesus is entirely invented. Probably the best-known attempt to present the case for this is by professor of German, G.A. Wells, in his book, ‘Did Jesus Exist?’ (Wells). No, he didn’t, says Wells, answering his own question. If you look on the internet, you will find no shortage of self-appointed experts who claim the same thing, but we all know how credence to give self-appointed experts on the internet. Almost all scholars would regard this idea as an extreme outlier. Richard Dawkins refers to the idea in his book the God Delusion, albeit rather cautiously, where he states: ‘it is even possible to mount a serious, though not widely supported, historical case that Jesus did not exist at all’ (Dawkins, 122). He has now changed his mind about that, as he states, for example, in a conversation with John Lennox (‘Atheist Richard Dawkins Finally Admits Jesus Existed’).  G.A. Wells also softened his views to some extent as he got older. When even the world’s most famous atheist thinks that, in fact, it is not possible to mount a serious historical case that Jesus did not exist at all, we know that we can probably safely lay that idea to rest and move on. As Bruce Metzger confirms, ‘today, no competent scholar denies the historicity of Jesus’ (Metzger, 95).

 

To start us off, what do contemporary non-Christian writers have to say?

There are various non-Christian ancient historians who give information about the first century Church. There aren’t very many of these references, and perhaps we might wish that there were more, but there’s a bright side to everything. That fact that there aren’t many means that I can give you, more or less, the full list! Just to clarify, when I say ancient historians, I don’t mean modern scholars of ancient history, I mean historians who lived in ancient times such as Tacitus, Suetonius and Josephus who feature prominently in this book.

In his Antiquities of the Jews (xx.9.1) the Roman historian Josephus (c. AD 37 – c. 100) gives an account of the death of James, the brother of the Lord, in AD62. That’s how we know about his death in spite of Luke not mentioning it. Ananus, Josephus says, was the Jewish high priest in Jerusalem, and ‘a bold man in his temper and very insolent’. The Roman governor, Festus, had just died, and his replacement, Albinus, was still on his way. Ananus took advantage of the temporary power vacuum to sentence James and some others to death by convening an illegal court. When the cat’s away, the mice do start killing off the people they don’t like. When Albinus arrived, Ananus was duly sacked, after being high priest for three months by the King, Agrippa II; but that was too late for James. It is interesting to compare what Josephus says with what Luke says about the trial of Paul before Festus, just before the death of Festus and the illegal trial of James (Luke 24-26). The Jewish religious authorities were trying to do the same to same to Paul as they did to James. They were thwarted, partly because Festus was still alive which rather restricted their leeway for bad behaviour, but also because Paul, as a Roman citizen, could appeal to Rome. The accounts that the two historians give of the situation at the time match up well. In fact, the historical background in Josephus tallies well with that found in the gospels and Acts generally. Josephus writes about Jesus in the Antiquities, though there is scholarly debate about exactly what he wrote. He also gives an undebated account of the death of John the Baptist at the hands of Herod Antipas, the Roman puppet ruler of Galilee. He gives an alternative view, which confirms and enhances the accounts of John’s ministry and death in the gospels (Bruce, 121-132). Josephus and Luke describe the death of Herod Agrippa I, not to be confused with Agrippa II above! Both writers interpret the death of Agrippa as a punishment for allowing himself to be worshipped as a god (Acts 12:9-23; Bruce, p123).

Tacitus (born c.AD56) tells the story of the great fire of Rome in AD64. Many considered, he tells us, that the Emperor Nero started the fire himself, but Nero blamed the Christians and punished them accordingly.

Despite the emperor's lavish gifts and the propitiations of the gods, the belief persisted that the fire was ordered. To dispel the rumours, Nero blamed the Christians, a group despised for their supposed abominations, and subjected them to severe tortures.

Tacitus, Annals, xv.44.2-8 (adapted from Stevenson, 2)

Christians were torn to death by dogs, crucified, and burned to death. It’s fair to say Tacitus did not like Christians; and yet, he says, the persecution of Nero caused people to be sympathetic towards them. Tacitus confirms various events from the gospels and Acts: that Jesus was active in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius (reigned AD 14 – 37), and was executed after being sentenced by the governor Pontius Pilate (governor AD26 – 36). He confirms that Christianity originated in Judea, and that by this time there were large numbers of Christians in Rome.

Suetonius (c. AD 69 – c. AD 122) confirms the persecution of the Christians under Nero, and he also writes:

Due to the continuous disturbances caused by the Jews at the instigation of Chrestus, he [the Emperor Claudius] expelled them from Rome.

Life of Claudius, xxv.4 (adapted from Stevenson, 1).

It is not certain that ‘Chrestus’ is a reference to Christ, but it is likely. In Acts Luke tells us that, ‘He [Paul] found a certain Jew named Aquila, a man of Pontus by race, who had recently come from Italy [to Corinth], with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome’ (Acts 18:2). Suetonius, then, provides us with a neat tie in with Luke. We can also see that the emperor Claudius unknowingly provided the Church with a major boost by bringing Priscilla, Aquilla and Paul together. The law of unintended consequences strikes again! Suetonius states that the reign of Claudius was marked by ‘constant unfruitful seasons’ (Bruce, p140). Acts 11:28 states that there was a ‘great famine in all the world’ during the reign of Claudius.

Finally, Dio Cassius (c. 165 – c. 235) tells us that in AD96, the Emperor Domitian put to death amongst many others, Flavius Clemens (his cousin) and banished Clemens’ wife Domitilla (Domitian’s kinswoman) on a charge of ‘atheism’ and ‘following Jewish customs’. The charges are likely to be a reference to Christianity, although that is not certain. Domitilla was considered to be a Christian by later tradition. Suetonius also mentions Flavius Clemens, and describes him as a man of the ‘most contemptible inertia’ who was killed ‘on the slenderest on suspicion’ (Stevenson, 6). Domitian was assassinated later the same year. According to Suetonius, the deed was carried out by Stephanus, a steward of Domitilla; so, yes, the butler did it. What a family!

 

Inverted fundamentalism

I have noticed that some people engage in a sort of inverted fundamentalism, not least people like G.A. Wells. Fundamentalists believe that if something is the in the Bible then it must be true. Some people, however, appear to take the view that if something’s in the Bible, it must be false! Most inverted fundamentalists don’t go quite that far, but still take the view that, if something’s in the Bible, this tells us nothing; or to put it another way, they believe that the New Testament is not evidence. This makes no sense. If God doesn’t exist, as they claim, then it follows that the NT is just a set of documents written in ancient times. In which case, the sensible thing to do, would be to treat it in exactly the same way as historians treat any other document written in ancient times i.e. as evidence, which is precisely what we are doing in this book, with the rather important exceptions noted above. I remember watching a documentary on TV about the Herod the Great who ruled in Judea at the time of Jesus birth. The documentary mentioned that according to Matthew, the first book in the NT, Herod ordered the killing of all boys in Bethlehem, which is in Judea, who were under the age of two. He did this after he discovered that Jesus had been born there, at some point in the previous two years, in the hope that Jesus would be one of those killed (Matt 2:16). It’s one part of the story that school nativity plays tend to miss out! The narrator in the documentary commented: ‘but there is no evidence that this occurred’. This is a revealing comment. He should have said that there is no evidence outside Matthew that it occurred, but clearly he was an inverted fundamentalist; for him Matthew simply wasn’t evidence.

Trusting the NT as a reliable source, or at least not rejecting it out of hand is not ‘believing without evidence’. Saying that it is so is just nonsense, inverted fundamentalism. By the standards of ancient history, the evidence for the life and teaching of Jesus and the early church from the New Testament and other ancient documents is strong. Some might say ‘by the standards of ancient history’ is not a very high bar, which is a fair point. Modern scholars of ancient history are obliged to work with the evidence which survives from that time, which is limited; but to say that we therefore know nothing about the ancient world with any confidence would be perverse.

It’s interesting to compare the documentary evidence for Jesus with the documentary evidence for the Roman Emperor at the time, Tiberius, then the most famous person in the world (reigned AD14-37). There are four main sources for the story of the life of Tiberius, as there are for Jesus. There is one contemporary source Velleius Paterculus; the others, Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, whom we have already met, wrote in the first half of the second century or later; but historians nevertheless consider these to be more reliable. In contrast, all four gospels were written in the first century. The earliest complete physical copies of the gospels date from the fourth century, and there are incomplete copies from the second and third. The earliest physical copies we have of the works of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, are from the ninth century. The earliest copy of Velleius Paterculus’ writings is from the sixteenth century. As well as the physical copies of the gospels being much earlier, they are also much more numerous (Williams, 39-42). Tiberius is of course mentioned in in plenty of other documents, as is Jesus, most obviously in the other books of the NT. There is archaeological evidence for Tiberius: coins, inscriptions, and monuments and so on. There is no direct archaeological evidence for Jesus, although there is for the background information in the NT books. The stories of Tiberius and Jesus do not exist in isolation; the story of Tiberius is part of the wider, ongoing story of the Roman empire; and Jesus is the origin of another wider, ongoing story, that of the Christian religion, which is itself a continuation of the story of the Jewish faith. Both of these wider stories are completely undeniable. To claim that the Emperor Tiberius did not exist, or that we have no reliable knowledge about him, would be ridiculous. It would also be ridiculous to claim the same about Jesus.

Modern scholars of ancient history do not, of course, simply take what ancient historians wrote at face value. That wouldn’t be very rational. At the same time, they also do not start out with the assumption that all ancient writers were charlatans, liars, frauds, fantasists, incompetents, or merely well meaning, but gullible. They may come to the conclusion, after examining the evidence, that the particular writer they are dealing with is some, or all, of these things; such people existed then as they do now, but to start out by assuming this, as some people are inclined to do with the New Testament writers, would be decidedly irrational.

Craig Blomberg writes this in his section on the burden of proof in the study of history:

Unless there is good reason for believing otherwise, one will assume that a given detail in the work of a particular historian is factual.  This method places the burden of proof squarely on the person who would doubt the reliability of a given portion of the text. The alternative is to presume the text unreliable unless convincing evidence can be brought forward in support of it.  While many critical scholars of the gospels adopt this latter method, it is wholly unjustified by the normal canons of historiography. Scholars who would consistently implement such a method when studying other ancient historical writings, would find the corroborative data so insufficient that the vast majority of accepted history would have to be jettisoned (Blomberg, 304)

This is no different to everyday life. If you met someone a social event and they told you their name, where they were from and so on, you would normally just believe them. We wouldn’t ask to see their birth certificate or a recent utility bill with their address on it as proof. We tend to believe things unless we have a reason for doing otherwise. Life would become very difficult if we did not!

If we accept that the NT books have a perfect right to be treated as evidence, how can we assess the quality of this evidence?

 

How can we evaluate the evidence from the NT itself?

We have seen, there are a number of refences to Christianity in the first century in the writings of ancient non-Christian historians. They aren’t many references, and we wish there were more, but the references which exist are consistent with what NT says. Within the NT, we have multiple sources for the life and teachings of Jesus; namely the four gospels, the letters of Paul and the other letters. These can be compared with one another. We have also two principal sources for the history of the early church: Acts and the letters of Paul. Paul did not set out to write a history of the early church in his letters, he just wrote letters, but the letters of Paul provide historical information which can be compared with Luke’s history in Acts. Furthermore, we have thirteen letters from Paul written over a period of fifteen years or thereabouts, so we can compare those with each other, and we can see if his views changed over that period of time. So, there two questions in particular that we can certainly ask:

• Did the NT writers write their books independently of each other?
• Do the NT books contradict each other?

If the answers were, respectively, ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ then the theory that stories in the NT are invented would already be in big trouble. It wouldn’t be ‘case closed’, but it would be moving in that direction. When two or more independent sources agree, that is strong evidence that what they are saying is true. However, I don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver as so many things in life do. Realistically, you are never going to get clear cut answers to these questions.

One the things which can be guaranteed to overpromise and underdeliver, in my experience, is a video on the internet which claims that if you watch it, you will see person A demolish the views of person B in just two minutes. What usually happens if you watch is that person A makes some points which are not necessarily unreasonable, but which fall a long way short of producing the devastation that was promised, and to which person B is then not given the chance to respond. I can’t promise that I am going to demolish anything. I am confident, though, that I can show that it is rational and reasonable to take the view that the answers to the questions are: 1) on the whole ‘yes’ and 2) on the whole ‘no.’

Here are some other questions to bear in mind as we go long. Although these are certainly the questions we need to ask, the answers, like the answers to the first two questions, will inevitably only be partial; but they will be complete enough, I believe, to show that it is rational and reasonable to treat the NT as good historical evidence for the life and teaching of Christ.

• Is there evidence that the NT writers obtained their information about the life and teaching of Jesus from reliable sources?
• Is there evidence that the original stories and teachings of Jesus were altered before the NT writers received them?
• Is there evidence that the NT writers allowed the stories and teaching of Jesus they received to be altered by others?
• Is there evidence that the NT writers themselves altered the stories and teachings of Jesus that they received?
• Is there evidence that the NT writers made up the stories and teachings of Jesus that they wrote down?
• Is there evidence that the NT writers tried to pass off their own ideas, or those of others, as teachings of Jesus?
• Is there evidence that the early church made good choices when selecting the books which today made up the canon of the NT?
• Is the background information in the NT books, including geography, layout of buildings and cities, named people, titles of officials, local religious beliefs, local languages, dates and events from secular history and specialised terminology, correct as far as it is possible to know?

 

A useful principle

In practice, historians sometimes have to err on the side of giving their sources the benefit of the doubt; if they didn’t, they would get nowhere. But, of course, not all ancient writers can be relied on. Some are well meaning but inaccurate or careless; some don’t understand their own limitations; some, if not all, are promoting an agenda; and some are just fakes. So, nothing much has changed then! Is there anything we can do about that? We listed various scientific principles at the end of the prologue, some rather superior rules of thumb, which often come into play when there are gaps in the evidence. Whilst they are not guaranteed, they rarely let you down. There is a principle we can follow which, likewise, whilst it is no guarantee, is a useful rule to follow. The principle is this: we can rely on the things that writers tell us incidentally, or by accident, more than we can rely on the things they tell us directly; unless you are dealing with a very clever faker. Better still are the things that people tell you unconsciously. Even the cleverest faker is going to give themselves away, if you look at the things that they didn’t even realise they were telling you; and a truth teller will not be conscious of the fact that they are leaving behind evidence of their trustworthiness in the things they let slip without knowing.

If I told you that this morning I walked to the shops and bought a pint of milk, I am of course telling you that, this morning, I walked the shop and bought a pint of milk; but I am also telling you, incidentally, that there is a shop near my house (I walked), and that I am not vegan or lactose intolerant. I am also telling you, perhaps unconsciously, that I am not a very organised person. Organised people do not run out of milk. Can this principle to applied to the NT writers? I’ve quoted the opening lines of Luke before, but they are worth quoting again.

Since many have undertaken to set in order a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order, most excellent Theophilus; that you might know the certainty concerning the things in which you were instructed. Luke 1:1-4.

Is Luke telling the truth – or did he just invent this to make his gospel and Acts seem more credible? Would it be right to say, as Mandy Rice-Davies once famously said of Viscount Astor, ‘Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he’. You can’t prove that he is telling the truth, but what Luke is telling us, incidentally, is that his readers expect him to use credible sources, the eyewitnesses, and also to ‘trace things accurately from the first’. So, at the very least, we can reliably deduce that Luke does not expect Theophilus, or his other readers, to believe just anything; they need evidence! But we can do better than that. As we read Luke and Acts, we can look at the things that he tells us directly, the things he tells us incidentally, and, the holy grail, the things he tells us unknowingly, to see if there are reasons for not taking him at his word. If we can’t find any, then we should believe what he says.

If you decide that you are at least going to entertain the possibility that Luke is telling the truth as far as he knows it, then there is further information on the subject of eyewitnesses. Luke tells us that he himself was an eye witness to some of the events involving Paul which he describes (Acts 16:10-17, 20:5-21:18; 27:1-28:16). He doesn’t make a fuss about it; he just switches to using the pronoun ‘we’ instead of ‘him’ or ‘they’. This must mean that Theophilus knew that Luke was a companion of Paul on some of his journeys; otherwise, Luke would have explained the switch. This would also explain why Theophilus (presumably) commissioned Luke to write the Gospel and Acts. Otherwise, the choice seems a little arbitrary. Luke is rather an obscure figure in the NT; there must be a reason why his gospel became one of the four. Some claim that the author is not the Luke of the NT, but an unknown person. If so, then I guess that makes the author even more obscure! Even if that is the case, we might as well call him Luke until someone comes up with a better name. We see that Luke had the opportunity to meet at least some of the twelve apostles, and Jesus’ family, at Jerusalem. Luke does not explicitly say it, but is that where his nativity story, which focuses on Mary, comes from (Luke 2:19)? At Antioch he tells us, explicitly, that knew Manaen, who grew up with Herod the Tetrarch, (not Herod the Great, but his son.) Is Luke telling us, incidentally, or even unknowingly, why he seems to know so much more about the Herodian dynasty that the other gospel writers? Luke tells us that at Caesarea, he stayed with Philip the Evangelist and his daughters who were prophets (Acts 21:8, 9). There are stories about Philip in Acts 6:1-6 and 8:26-40; so, from the horse’s mouth then! As we know from Eusebius, Papias knew the daughters of Philip, and perhaps met Philip himself (Stevenson, 48). It’s a small world, after all. In Acts 21:16 Luke tells us that, in Jerusalem, he stayed with Mnason of Cyprus, an early disciple, who perhaps was the source of some of his information about the church in Cyprus.

We have begun to answer the question:

• Is there evidence that the NT writers obtained their information about the life and teaching of Jesus from reliable sources?

Before we proceed any further with this, we must tackle an essential, closely related question.

Summary

The New Testament is essential and foundational to all Christians, whatever their differences might be. It is considered by all to be inspired by God, although different Christians have different ideas about what this inspiration means.

As well as being inspired, the New Testament books are also historical documents and so can, and should, be valued as historical evidence. We are not stuck with ‘either you believe it or you don’t’. The books can be assessed as historical evidence without disrespecting or denying the status of the books as holy scripture. We looked at writings from non-Christian writers contemporary with the New Testament and compared these with the New Testaments books themselves. We began to ask a set of questions which are useful for assessing the value of the NT books as historical evidence including the two most crucial questions:

• Were the NT books written independently of each other?
• Do they tell essentially the same story, or are they contradictory?

We also begin to consider the question

• Is there evidence that the NT writers obtained their information about the life and teaching of Jesus from reliable sources?

There are two prominent features in the NT books Christians treat differently: the appearance of angels and demons firstly, but much more importantly the miracles of Jesus. Christians take miracles in the NT seriously when they would almost certainly dismiss them out of hand in any other historical document. Isn’t this inconsistent? We temporarily pass over that question, but return to it in chapter twelve.

Works Cited

Blomberg, Craig. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. 2^nd ed., Apollos. 2007

Bruce, F.F. The NewTestament Documents: Are They Reliable? 6^th Ed., Inter-Varsity Press, 2000.

Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. 10^th Anniversary Ed., Transworld Publishers 2016

Metzger, Bruce M. The New Testament: Its Background, Growth and Content. 3^rd ed., Abingdon Press 2003

‘Atheist Richard Dawkins Finally Admits Jesus Existed’ YouTube, 17th December 2024 https://www.whycatholic.com/atheist-richard-dawkins-finally-admits-jesus-existed/

Wells, G.A. Did Jesus Exist? 1^st ed., Pemberton Publishing, Prometheus Books 1975

Stevenson, J. A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD337. 2^nd ed., revised by W.H.C. Frend, SPCK, 1987.

Williams, Peter J. Can we Trust the Gospels? Crossway, 2018.