Is the Bible story of Jesus reliable?
Pete Jackson
Is the New Testament's account of Jesus historically reliable? If we can't trust that the Gospels (the four books in the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, that tell Jesus' story) are historically reliable, that they really do give us an account of what Jesus really said and did, then we have no way of knowing if the Christian message is true.
Christians do believe that the gospels are historically reliable, for many reasons, and here are just three of them:
1. The Gospels were written as history
That is, they were written self-consciously to record real events in real places. Just a quick glance at the Gospels gives us that impression. We're given plenty of details about:
- Family trees
- Place names and descriptions
- Details of the time of day when events happened
- People's names and family history
- Details of the world political scene
All of these earth the events recorded in the Gospels in the real world, in history. The Gospels
are written as if they are recording real events, not fables.
And some of the details necessitate accurate eye-witness material too; all of the Gospels are
written as if the writers either were eye-witnesses themselves or had access to eye-witness accounts.
And these sort of details are verifiable and checkable. Which leads us onto our second point:
2. The Gospels fit with other historical documents
Many of the details given and the people and places mentioned in the Gospels crop up in other
histories of the same time period. Histories that mention the same Roman officials and political
figures, the same places, some of the same event even.
And Jesus himself is mentioned by other historians from that time period. One guy called Josephus
mentions a whole load of the characters we find in the Gospels, including Jesus, but also Pilate,
John the Baptist, many others. He wrote in AD70, around the same time as the New Testament was being written.
Another guy called Thallus who wrote in AD 52 records the darkness that fell over the land while
Jesus was on the cross, like it says in Mark's Gospel.
All of this gives evidence that the Gospels are not made up stories, but a recording of real history.
3. The Gospels were written a short time after the events
This is one of the major categories that historians use to evaluate the reliability of historical
documents, how close to the actual events they were written.
All of the Gospels were written at some point between AD40 and AD90, at even a loose estimate.
That's well within one generation of the events they claim to record (Jesus died some time around
AD30), which makes them some of the most reliable documents we've got from the period.
Importantly it means that loads of the people they write about and who witnessed Jesus for
themselves and lived in the places the Gospels write about were still alive when the Gospels
were written and being circulated.
So if the events were twisted or changed, or had simply been recorded inaccurately, those people
would've just had to stand up and say so, as eye-witnesses, and put a stop to the whole thing.
The eye-witnesses were still around to contradict the Gospels had they been unreliable.
The oldest surviving copies we have of the Gospels are approximately some 200 years after the
originals were made. Now, you might say that that's a long time and they could've been changed
significantly from what the originals said.
The trouble is, that actually in terms of the normal standards applied to historical documents to
test their reliability, the Gospels come out very well; 200 years gap between the original and our
oldest surviving complete copy is actually not a long time at all when compared with other
historical documents from the same time period. For example, a guy called Tacitus wrote about
roughly the same historical period as the Gospels cover. He originally wrote in AD100, but the
oldest copy we've got of what he wrote is from some time around AD800, some 700 years later.
And yet historians regard these documents as historically reliable. That sort of time gap between
originals and the oldest copies we own is typical of most ancient histories. So from a historians
point of view the Gospels come off very well.
We can be sure then that the Gospels are historically reliable accounts of Jesus' life. The events they record really happened and Jesus said the things he is recorded as saying "I" the Gospels. They are our primary source if we want to investigate who Jesus is and what his significance is.
Of course, the Bible claims to be far more than historical. It claims to be the actual word of God itself. That as we read the Bible we are reading not just a historical account of Jesus' life, but God's historical account of Jesus life, that God himself has something to say to us in the Bible's recording of Jesus' story.
That's a far bigger claim than to be just historically reliable. So I'd like to leave you with a quote from someone who read the Bible for themselves and became convinced that it is more than historically reliable:
"I'm not sure that I did believe the Bible, until I began to read it. I started at John's Gospel and as I read I became convinced of its authority and authenticity. It, or rather, God, spoke to me through its pages."