Should we assume that the Gospels are reliable unless they are proven to be unreliable, or should
we assume that the Gospels are unreliable until they are proven to be reliable on some point?
Are they innocent until proven guilty or are they guilty until proven innocent? Skeptical scholars
almost always assume that the Gospels are guilty until proven innocent, that is to say they assume
that the Gospel narratives are unreliable and less and until they can be proven to be reliable on
some particular fact, and I'm not exaggerating here. This really is the approach of skeptical
critics. I want to suggest, however five reasons why I think it would be historically unjustified
to simply assume that the gospels are unreliable until proven to be correct. Number one, there
was insufficient time for legendary influences to expunge the hard core of historical facts.
Sometimes students will say well how can you know anything that happened 2,000 years ago? What they
fail to understand is that the crucial time gap is not the gap between the evidence and today. Rather
what is important is the gap between the evidence and the events that the evidence is about. If the
gap between the events and the evidence about them is short, then it doesn't matter how much both the
events and the evidence have receded into the past. Good evidence doesn't become bad evidence
just because of the passage of time. As long as the time gap between the events and the evidence
about them is short, then it's just irrelevant how long it has been since the time of the events
until the present day, so the question here then is how close the sources for Jesus's life are to
the time he lived, and here the Gospels are in marked contrast to the sources for Greek
and Roman ancient history. The sources for Greek and Roman history are usually biased and usually
removed one or two generations or even centuries from the events that they record, and yet Greco
Roman historians reconstruct with confidence the course of Greek and Roman history. By contrast,
the gospels were all written down and circulated within the first generation after the events while
the eyewitnesses were still alive. According to Professor A.N. Sherwin-White, a professional
Greco-Roman historian, in his book "Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament" for the
Gospels to be legendary in their core, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be and
I quote "unbelievable. more generations would be needed." Secondly, the gospels are not analogous
to folk tales or contemporary urban legends. Tales like those about Paul Bunyan, or Pecos Bill,
or contemporary urban legends about the vanishing hitchhiker rarely concern actual historical
individuals and therefore are not analogous to the gospel narratives. The Gospel accounts are about
real people that actually lived and that you can read about in literature contemporaneous with the
New Testament about real events that actually took place about real places that have been
archaeologically excavated, and thus they are not analogous to folk tales or urban legends. Three,
the Jewish transmission of sacred traditions was a highly developed and reliable. In an oral
culture like that a first century Palestine, the ability to memorize and to retain large
tracts of oral tradition was a highly prized and a highly developed skill. From the earliest age,
children in the home in the elementary school and in the synagogue were taught to memorize
faithfully sacred tradition. The disciples would have exercised similar care with the teachings of
Jesus, and thus to compare the gospel narratives as some have done with the child's game of
telephone displays a complete misunderstanding of how oral tradition works in an oral culture like
first century Jewish society. Four, there were significant restraints on the embellishment of
traditions about Jesus, such as the presence of eyewitnesses and the Apostles' supervision. Since
those who had seen and heard Jesus continued to live and the tradition about Jesus remained under
the supervision of the Apostles, these factors would act as a natural check upon any tendencies
to elaborate the facts in a direction contrary to that preserved by those who had known Jesus,
and were entrusted with the tradition. And finally number five, the Gospel writers have
a proven track record of historical reliability I have time to only look at one example of this:
Luke. Luke was the author of a two-part work the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. These
are really one work and they are separated in our Bible simply because the church grouped
together the four gospels in assembling the New Testament. Luke is the gospel-writer who
writes most self-consciously as a historian. In the preface to his work he writes as follows in
dedication to Theophilus: "Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of
the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by
those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided after
investigating everything carefully from the very first to write an orderly account for you,
most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about
which you have been instructed." This preface to Luke's double work was written in classical Greek
such as was used by Greek historians. After this, Luke changes to a more common Greek,
but he's put his reader on alert that he can write should he wish to like the learn at Greek
historian. He speaks in his preface of his lengthy investigation into the story he's about to tell.
He assures us that it is based on eyewitness information and is accordingly the truth.