Ryan Bassett

Christ and the Bible

2/24/2011
Essay #1

Historical reliability of the Gospels:

Can we trust a book that is over 2000 years old?
 Outline

I. Introduction

II. Reason 1 – Too early to be legends

II. Reason 2 – Hundreds of prophecies fulfilled
A. Story of agnostic man challenged by OT prophecies.
B. Over 300 prophecies are fulfilled by Jesus
C. Calculation of probability of earth in a universe
III. Reason 3 – Number of copies of the NT/OT and date of MSS
A. VS other documents
1. Caesar's Galactic Wars
2. Homer's Iliad
B. Patristic quotations reform entire Gospels
C. Gospels written within 30 years
IV. Reason 4 – Primary source value of the NT
A. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John were written too early
B. Scriptures contain evidence that enemies even witnessed Jesus' death
V. Reason 5 – Christ event declared real by Non-christian sources
A. Flavius Josephus
B. Cornelius Tacitus
C. Pliny the Younger
D. Suetonius
VI. Reason 6 – Archaeological evidences prove accurate\
A. OT Archeology
B. NT Archeology

VII. Conclusion
 Ryan Bassett
Christ and the Bible
2/24/2011
Essay #1

The Word of God is reliable because the Gospels are historically reliable.

The Bible is the Word of God. Jesus Christ was and is the Son of God and came down to earth,

sent by his Father, to die a horrible death on the cross in order to save mankind from sin. The Holy

Spirit has been given to us and lives within us, and guides us in an intricate communication within. And

we are going to be judged one day, one glorious day when Jesus returns, to destroy heaven and earth

and rebuild His kingdom, wiping away all things and making all things new. For Christians, all these

things are true. But how do we know that they are true? Listen to an excerpt from “The Reason for

God” by Timothy Keller, when he says “The Christian faith requires belief in the Bible. This is a big

stumbling block for many. I meet many New Yorkers for the first time after they have been invited to

one of Redeemer's services. … Most would say that there are many great stories in the Bible, but today

“you can't take it literally.” What they mean is that the Bible is not entirely trustworthy because some

parts—maybe many or most parts—are scientifically impossible, historically unreliable, and culturally

regressive.” How can we look at this Book, thousands of years old, and base our life on it and the

teachings of it? In this essay I am going to focus on the credibility of the Gospels, building an argument

for why we can trust this old Book.

The first reason that the Gospel narratives are reliable is because the Gospels were written too

early for them to be legends. It takes a long time for legends to form because there needs to be a big

enough gap in years between the event and the story that the first-hand witnesses and near generations

after them to forget the precise details of the story. In this way the story can be generalized or made into

a legend and there won't be reproofing of it because the first-hand witnesses had died out. The

canonical gospels, however, “were written at the very most forty to sixty years after Jesus's death.
Paul's letters, written just fifteen to twenty-five years after the death of Jesus, provide an outline of all

the events of Jesus's life found in the gospels—his miracles, claims, crucifixion, and resurrection.”

(Keller 104). The eyewitnesses were still around and could claim the stories to be true. Furthermore,

“the gospel writers named their eyewitness sources within the text to assure readers of their accounts'

authenticity.” (Keller 105).

Another reason for the Bible is reliable is that there are hundreds of fulfilled prophecies in the

Bible that have come true with accuracy and precision. In the book “The Apologetics Study Bible: Real

Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith”, there is a story about a writer who is well-educated and

articulate, but had no belief whatsoever in the Scriptures of the divine revelation from God. The man

said the “Bible was simply a book written by men, just like any other book.” (Cabal XXVIII) The author

challenged him, quoting many Old Testament prophetic passages about the coming Messiah. “They

Pierced my hands and feet.” (Ps. 22:16, ESV1) “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps

22:1) “Everyone who sees me mocks me; they sneer and shake their heads: ‘He relies on the LORD; let

Him rescue him; let the LORD deliver him, since He takes pleasure in him'” (Ps 22:7-8). The author then

asked the man, “Who were these verses written about?” The man replied promptly, “Well, you

obviously read of the life and ministry and suffering and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.”

The author retorts with: “Well then, I would want you to understand that all of the Scriptures I just read

to you are taken from the Old Testament, which was completed some four hundred years before Jesus

was born. No critic, no atheist, no agnostic has ever once claimed that any one of those writings was

written after His birth. In fact, they were translated from Hebrew into Greek in Alexandria some 150

years before He was born. If this is merely a book written by men, would you please explain to me how

these words were written?” The man again replies, “I have no idea...” That's is the power of the Bible's

prophecies. There are hundreds that have been fulfilled and they give the Bible credibility.

In fact, Jesus' birth, life, and death fulfilled over 300 prophecies of the Bible. An example is

1 All quotations from this essay are from the ESV version, taken from Esvonline.org.
Daniel 9:24-27. “Daniel the prophet predicted that the Messiah that Israel was waiting for would come

as Savior 483 years after the Persian emperor gave the Jews authority to rebuild Jerusalem. This was

fulfilled when Jesus' ministry started exactly that time after prediction.”2 It is quite amazing how

accurate some predictions are. In fact, there is a website where an astrophysicist calculated the

probabilities of some Bible prophecies to become true. One prophecy by Moses, predicting how the

Jewish nation would be conquered twice and that people would be carried off as slaves each time, first

by the Babylonians (for a period of 70 years), and then by a fourth world kingdom (which is known as

Rome), followed by more details about how the conquerors would treat the people they conquered. The

chances of that prophecy being fulfilled was 1 in 120. That is 1 with twenty zeros after it--the number

is too high to even contemplate—there is no way that so many prophecies with these probabilities

could have occurred together. The accumulation of all such prophecies occurring would be an

impossible probability, one about the same proportion of creating a earth in a universe. To explain this

parallel, lets look at a math problem a Dr. Ross did where he calculated the probability of an entire

universe producing one earth. The “results of his calculation — of finding all 123 of his parameters on

a single earth are: “less than one chance in 10 to the 139th power (ten thousand trillion trillion trillion

trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion) exists that even one such planet would

occur anywhere in the universe”3. There must be some God-explanation for the creation of our earth

with this kind of number results (that is, it didn't happen by chance), and similarly there must be some

God-explanation for the existence, life, and death of Jesus Christ.

Another reason the Bible is reliable is that no other writing compares to the Gospels in the

amount of manuscript copies or the date of the manuscripts. If you take take another ancient text, for

example Caesar's Gallic Wars, you would find ten copies of the manuscript, with the earliest copy of

that script found 950 years after it was originally written. If you instead took Homer's Iliad, you would

2 http://rapturewatch.cephasministry.com/143%20483%20Years%20+%207.html * Note: These websites do not replace

the requirement of 4 books, but are merely supplemental material.
3 http://www.believers.org/hughross.htm
find 643 copies and the earliest of those found only 250 years after it was originally written (the only

full copy of the Iliad was found 900 years after it was written). The Gospels, on the other hand, are

different--there are over 5500 Greek documents of the New Testament and “more than 24,000 partial

and complete copies of the New Testament are in existence today.” (Story 38). That is more than forty-

five times more copies than the Iliad. And, unlike these other texts, the gospels were written very

shortly after the event. “There is strong evidence that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were

written within thirty years of Jesus’ death” (Story 39). Interestingly enough, even without the original

manuscripts, we can rebuild the entire Gospels from the writings of the early church fathers:

“In addition to New Testament manuscripts, there are over 86,000 early patristic (church

fathers’) quotations from the New Testament and several thousand Lectionaries (early church-

service books containing selected Scripture readings) dating to the early centuries of the church.

In fact, there are enough quotations from the early church fathers that even if we did not have a

single copy of the Bible, scholars could still reconstruct all but 11 verses of the entire New

Testament from material written within 150 to 200 years from the time of Christ.” (Story 38)

These facts have astonished many people--many believers came to faith because they were

drawn into the study of the historical data of the document and came to a conclusion that they could not

deny the man Jesus Christ. There is no way that such a lie could be fabricated and yet cause such a

huge influence on the world as it did. Jesus' death and the claims of Christianity were and still are like

no other event or movement in history.

The Bible also is reliable because there is a very high level of primary source value in the New

Testament. The Gospels were written “either by eyewitnesses to the events in Christ’s life (Matthew

and John) or by men who knew and interviewed eyewitnesses (Mark and Luke).” (Story 43). The

authors of the New Testament noted this first-hand testimony in order to verify the authenticity of their
claims. The writers of the New Testament also mentioned with Gospels others who had actually

witnessed Jesus Christ first-hand, even those who were hostile to Christ and Christians. Examples of

this are found in the book of Acts. In Acts 2:22, Peter addresses the crowd at the sermon of Pentecost:

“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works

and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. (Emphasis

mine).” Another example is in Acts 26:24-28: “And as he was saying these things in his defense, Festus

said with a loud voice, “Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your

mind.” But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and

rational words. For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak boldly. For I am persuaded

that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner. (Emphasis

mine).” The individuals in the text who were enemies of the Christians, had even witnessed the events

of Jesus Christ. This gives the Gospels credibility because enemies of Christ were mentioned to have

known him. This, along with the next claim I will present, add up to a strong point to argue.

Another reason for the reliability of the Bible is that there are non-Christian sources that

proclaim Jesus was a man who died on the cross. Non-christian sources, especially sources that were

hostile to Christianity, add credibility to Christ and Christianity because they are evidence of their

existence from an unbiased perspective. When a non-Christian says “they crucified this man”, that

gives strong evidence to the events of the passion. A Jewish Historian named Flavius Josephus “wrote

about John the Baptist and mentioned Jesus by referring to James “the [half] brother of Jesus, the so-

called Christ.” (Story 45). In another, although controversial passage, “it appears that Josephus may

even have referred to Jesus as “a wise man” condemned to die on the cross by Pilate.” (Story 45)

Another man, Suetonius, in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars: Vita Claudius, “mentions that the Jews

were expelled from Rome because of disturbances over “Chrestus” (Christ).” (Story 45). Again, a

Pliny the Younger “wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan about AD 112 asking his advice on how to deal

with “the troublesome sect of Christians.” It seems that Pliny, as governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor,
had been killing innumerable Christians, but their numbers were still “embarrassingly” high. He didn’t

know whether to continue killing as many as he found or to be more selective!” (Story 45).

A final reason for the reliability of the Gospels is the Archaeological evidence of sites, events,

customs, geographic features, and nations described in the Bible. These facts proven by archeology

were once “thought to be legendary because there was no record of them anywhere other than in the

Bible.” (Story 47). We see the same kind of validation for the New Testament. For example,

“Archaeology has verified the existence of the city of Nazareth, where Jesus was raised, as well as

most of the ancient cities mentioned in Acts” (Story 47). When one can go and retrace Paul's

missionary journey in real life, and see that the miles he proclaimed to have traveled between islands

are exact, one might believe more in the reliability of books like Acts. This gives readers a reason to

believe that the books of the Bible are not fiction but written as historical and true stories. Why would

a story, like Jonah, which sounds like a fable, be written in a historical-narrative way, with places and

names and writing style of a true story. There's no “once upon a time” in the Bible. Archeology adds to

the credibility of the Bible.

The Bible has too many things going for it to be proven false or discredited. A better question is,

how could you not believe in the Bible's credibility after all the facts have been laid out? People love to

talk about ideas and spreads things quickly without doing the dirty work of research to back up their

claims. But with the Bible, because of it's popularity (It's been the #1 best seller since best-seller lists

have existed), those claims have been tried and tried again by hundreds and thousands of people, some

of the most talented and gifted scholars of all time even, and the claims of the Gospel and Jesus Christ

as Son of God have yet to be discredited. I will bank my life on the Bible. There is no other book that

has so much power, has survived so much persecution, shows the truth in depth of humanity, and has

changed the lives of many, than the Bible.

 Works Cited

Cabal, Ted, Chad Brand, Paul Copan, and James Porter Moreland. The Apologetics Study Bible:

Understand Why You Believe. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Pub., 2007. Print.

ESV Study Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008. Print.

Keller, Timothy J. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Dutton, 2008. Print.

Radmacher, Earl D., Ronald Barclay. Allen, and H. Wayne. House. NKJV Study Bible: New King

James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007. Print.

Story, Dan. Defending Your Faith. Nashville: T. Nelson, 1992. Print.