How Can We Trust the Gospels?
A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence
The internet is aflame with controversy again.
Over the last week, week and a half, the Epstein files were released. And all they served was an enormous distraction.
Everyone got sucked into the vortex, and while some important matters were seemingly confirmed (like how the world is ruled by Satanic, immoral, globalist elites), many pointed out that the releases still showed signs of selection. Tampering.
We are only being showed what the powers-that-be want us to see. So, how can anything be trusted?
Well, you may not trust the Epstein files, but you CAN rest confident in the reliability of the New Testament gospels. The whole Bible, in fact.
Youโve surely seen these stats before:
The Bible is 66 books written over 6000 years by 40 different authors with a coherent, intelligible, and continuous story from beginning to end.
If youโre Catholic, Orthodox, or Ethiopian, you have more than 66 books in your Bible, and those stats are even more impressive because the story still doesnโt change.
God made it
We broke it
Jesus fixed it
Thatโs the plot all the way through. A living and active plot that speaks directly to the condition and history of this world.
A fact that alone stresses its incredible authenticity.
But when one studies deeper the evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament, he finds mounds and mounds more to stamp out any doubts it is the recorded Truth of God Most High.
Confirmation Like No Other
Earlier this week, I wrote about the 6 criteria for historical authenticity for paid subscribers.
They are:
Historical coherence
Multiple attestation
Cultural background
Embarrassment
Dissimilarity
Consistency
The whole New Testament knocks every single one of these criteria out of the park, but especially the four gospels.
Substantial Manuscripts
There are 5800 Greek manuscripts available for the gospels. The earliest a fragment from John dating to the second century.
For comparison, Homerโs Illiad only has 647 manuscript copies available. And the earliest dates much, much later than a century after the writing of the original text.
Add to the 5800 for the gospels thousands more in other languages, like Syriac, Ethiopian, and so on, and text critics have been able to piece together to within 98% accuracy what the original gospels said.
Meaning the Greek your New Testament comes from is what the earliest churches read, with microscopic variances. And almost all the variances deal with spelling errors or a handful of misplaced words, none of which change substance of the gospels in any way.
The two biggest variances are noted in every Bible: (1) the second ending to Mark 16 and (2) the first passage of John 8, the famous story about the Pharisees attempting to stone the adulterous woman. While still deemed authentic stories by most scholars, itโs generally agreed that those passages are later additions, not in the original gospels.
Nevertheless, our New Testament gospels are accurate beyond comparison to any other ancient documents. And then thereโs dating.
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Early Dating
Liberal scholars who hold fast to late dating for the gospels will try to convince you theyโre the majority. But they are not.
Theyโre able to keep up the illusion because in any papers they write they just keep agreeing with each other instead of re-evaluating the evidence. If they did re-evaluate honestly and objectively, they would conclude for early dating, since the evidence is substantial.
There is overwhelming consensus that the gospels were written at least 20-60 years after the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. Mark is considered the earliest, then Matthew, then Luke (who both used the bones of Mark to construct their letters), and John was the last.
That puts them within living memory of all witnesses. Which is enough. But it gets better.
There are important reasons to considered the gospels written even earlier.
Acts is the second volume of Luke. No credible reader or scholar of the Bible denies this. And Acts can be confidently dated to 62 AD (yes, I said AD; I donโt ascribe to the BCE/CE postmodern bullcrap). Hereโs why:
Luke details the persecutions of many Christians and records the deaths of both James the brother of John and Stephen, the first martyr, but never mentions once the persecution under Nero (64 AD) or the Jewish War (66-70 AD)
Luke presents Rome is friendly toward Christianity, which was not the case after 70 AD, since Christianity was grouped in with Judaism in Roman eyes
Certain theological topics (like the issue of circumcision) addressed within Acts would have been irrelevant after 70 AD
None of the executions of Peter, Paul, or James the brother of Christ (62-67 AD) are recorded, which would surely have been mentioned had they happened
These pieces of evidence are incredible.
Both disasters were devastating events seared into the minds of all Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire. Thousands of Christians were executed and tortured under Nero (including Paul), and Jerusalem was sieged by the Romans so long in 70 AD that all resources were cut off (parents ended up cooking their own children for food) until the Romans finally breached the walls, slaughtered most survivors, and destroyed the Temple brick by brick, as Jesus predicted would happen.
Events of such significance are what historian and psychologists consider pivotal events. And would have been recorded by a historian of Lukeโs caliber, but instead, his letter leaves them out, stopping at Paulโs arrival to Rome? Implausible. The only coherent explanation is that Acts precedes Neroโs persecution and the Jewish War.
And if Acts precedes those events, that pushes back the dating for at least Mark, Matthew, and Luke to between 50-62AD. Around the same time as the epistles of Paul. Many scholars, even a few late-date proponents, place Mark earlier, in the 40s AD. Johnโs own omission of the events, failing to address them in his theological reflections, may indicate a pre-70 date for him as well.
Another important piece of evidence is that Paul appears to rely on Luke in 1 Corinthians (55AD) at several key points in his letter. The parallels are almost identical, which suggests Lukeโs gospel was already written by 55AD.
That means, we have confident early dating for at least 3 of the gospels and have accurately reconstructed what the originals said. But thereโs more.
External Corroboration
From ca. 50-175 AD, a wide number of external sources corroborate not only the existence of Christ Jesus but all the main emphases of his story in the gospels.
Said sources are a mix of friendly Christian sources and unfriendly sources. Some are vehemently against Christianity.
Nine in particular are letters from Phlegon (140 AD), Thallus (55 AD), Celsus (175 AD), Lucian of Samosata (166 AD), Mara Bar Serapion (73 AD), Pliny the Younger (112 AD), Suetonius (120 AD), Josephus (93 AD), and Tacitus (116 AD).
And they all confirm these details between their works:
Jesus claimed to be God
Jesusโs disciples worshipped him as God
Jesus was born of a virgin and raised by a carpenter
Jesus was a Rabbi whose disciples passed on his teachings
Jesus prophesied and did many miracles among the people
Jesus was known for his incredible wisdom and virtuous life
Jesusโs death was followed by an earthquake and period of prolonged darkness
Jesus was crucified in Judea by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar
Jesusโs followers claimed to have witnessed him risen from the dead and seen his wounded hands
Belief in Jesus resulted in Jews being expelled from Rome under the rule of Claudius
Judging by these results, anyone who thinks Jesus was just a myth is either downright lying or deluded. Heโs one of the best attested figures in history.
Even archaeology points to his existence and the accuracy of the gospels.
Archaeologists have discovered the site of Nazareth (long thought a fiction made up by the gospel writers); affirmed the accuracy of first century Jewish and Greco-Roman life alleged in all four gospels (agriculture, topography, economics, living conditions, and so on); confirmed the existence and brutality of crucifixion and that the Jews maintained proper burial customs for crucifixion victims, like was done with Jesus (they were not all tossed into mass graves); located a first-century fishing boat in the Sea of Galilee that corroborates the disciplesโ fishing expeditions; and discovered the Pool of Bethesda, mentioned in John (another long-though fiction in the gospels).
In fact, all the locations mentioned in the gospels, especially in John, have been located and excavated. Showing each had impeccable knowledge of the geography of ancient Israel in the Greco-Roman period.
Major characters have also been confirmed:
Pilate
Caiaphas the High Priest
James the brother of Jesus
And more. All through digs in Israel. But the evidence doesnโt stop there.
Internal Evidence
When examined together, the gospels themselves show signs of being witness statements rather than fictions.
Together, they recount the same larger story with key narratives all consistent inside their pages.
Other key identifiers are:
Undesigned coincidences
Embarrassing details
Consistent 1st-century Greco-Roman setting
The last one was already attested to in our discussion of archaeology. The gospels get the setting right in every detail. Locations, economics, customs...you name it. All precise.
Which is highly unusual in accounts of ancient fiction. Suggesting the gospels are not fiction in the slightest.
And said suggestion becomes much more credible when undesigned coincidences and embarrassing details are added into the mix.
Undesigned coincidences are when one writer/witness adds details another writer/witness left out that further explain what happened in a particular situation or correct a memory. Embarrassing details are information that is unflattering to the image of a figure or his circle of friends.
Each is incredibly rare in ancient fiction. But everywhere in the gospels.
The best example of undesigned coincidence between Matthew and Luke is the scene of Jesus being beaten right after his arrest. Matthew tells us that his assaulters tried to make him guess who hit him, which is weird if he can see them. Luke clarifies when retelling the same story that Jesus was blindfolded. Such coincidences are all over.
But the embarrassing details are even more compelling because theyโre relentless. The disciples are constantly making mistakes, Jesus is always hanging with the lowest of the low, Jesus is always confronting the elites and religious leaders and contesting their authority in public, Jesus talks openly with women in public, and women are the first to discover the empty tomb.
Anyone trying to save face and embellish with fiction would have erased all these details from the gospels because they were unsavory in Greco-Roman society. There was no incentive to include them since they were not persuasive. Unless they were the truth.
For comparison, the Gnostic Gospel of Peter recounts the resurrection quite differently.
The disciples are first to discover the tomb
The women are nowhere to be seen
Jesus emerges as a bright dancing cross
A large and loud heavenly procession ensues as they (Jesus, the disciples, and angels) leave the tomb in triumph, spreading the news to everyone nearby
The Gospel of Peterโs depiction is consistent with embellishments of elite figures in the ancient world, stressing its unreliability as an account of the resurrection and reinforcing those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
And thereโs one last piece of evidence to consider.
Style: 1st-Century Biographies
In style, structure, and organization, all four gospels match ancient Greco-Roman biographies most consistently. Which tells us several important things.
They had to be honest in order to be accepted. Biographies were typically written about the elite, paid for by the elite, and expected to be accurate, with little embellishment (minus the erasure of embarrassing details). If they did not meet these standards, there were harsh penalties for the scribes. Social exile was guaranteed, loss of wages and profession likely, and execution possible.
Any witnesses of an eliteโs story interviewed were also discarded if deemed to be untrustworthy. They could experience the same penalties as scribes if it was determined they were lying. And that remained true regardless of social status.
Every Jew and every Roman, whether they could read or not, would have been familiar with these standards and would have rejected the gospels and their writers for any serious violations.
Not to mention, since the gospels were written early enough to be within living memory of witnesses to the events recorded, the witnesses themselves would have objected to any inaccuracies and set the record straight.
This latter fact has double assurance because most of the eyewitnesses were Jews who knew the laws against bearing false witness in the Bible well. Overlooking any errors or blatant lies would have been a serious sin and violated Greco-Roman customs.
But we know with confidence the gospels were circulated amongst first century churches and used for teaching and reproof. Substantiating their acceptance and reliability.
Names and the Question of Translation
The three main objections still raised against the gospels are (1) the presence of the supernatural and miracles, (2) their anonymity, and (3) the issue of translation.
The first says more about the psychological biases of the objectors than the integrity of the gospels. Because (1) the existence of the supernatural cannot be disproven and (2) if we were to reject the gospels based on supernatural elements then we would have to reject most of history since nearly every ancient record includes stories of the supernatural. The alternative is intentional hypocrisy.
As for anonymity and translation, those two objections deserve deeper consideration.
Anonymous Gospels
The gospels were originally treated as anonymous. What that means is the earliest churches didnโt use the names of their authors as identifiers. Irenaeus in the second century was the first to use the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to describe the gospels, as far as we can tell.
Skeptics have used this as fodder to claim we donโt know where the gospels came from and cannot determine confidently their reliability. Some even suggest the early churches didnโt even know who wrote them.
But that is a weak argument from silence, bearing nowhere near the weight that the omissions in Acts do toward verifying an early date.
With Acts, Luke sets himself up as a trustworthy recorder of major events, including persecutions, but leaves out the two worst in first century (Nero and the Jewish War). Either heโs actually a terrible historian, which is implausible based on the accuracy of his works, or he wasnโt writing after those events took place.
In that case, the silence has a tangible and identifiable explanation that makes the most sense (the latter). So does the absence of names for the gospels, and it isnโt that the early churches didnโt know who wrote them.
Since the church faced hatred and persecution from itโs inception, the most likely explanation for the omission of names is that they were kept anonymous to protect the writers from harm. It makes the most sense within the surrounding historical context of their writing.
By the second century, the writers had passed away and the church had a firmer foothold within the Roman Empire, so Irenaeus could speak their names with confidence.
Are the names attributed to the gospels accurate? Who knows?
They probably are because the earliest churches likely kept internal records or a tradition of memory, which meant much more in the ancient world because they were expert memorizers. Way better than we are today.
But even if Irenaeus was wrong, the names given to the gospels do not erase the other evidence in their favor as eyewitness testimonies to the existence and events of the life of Jesus Christ, God-made-flesh.
Tag Youโre It
Youโll hear skeptics say that the writing of the gospels over time and their translation into other languages was like a game of phone tag.
A frequently used illustration is that of kids sitting in a circle in a room. One whispers something in the ear of the one next, and then the next repeats it to his neighbor. By the end, the piece of information has changed so much itโs unrecognizable from what the first kid said.
However, the writing of the gospels and their translation is much different for several reasons:
The gospels, again, were written within living memory of the witnesses to Jesus, so they would have corrected any errors. And, as noted, their memories were a whole lot better than ours. Even in the illustration, the first kid is around to correct any errors in transmission.
The translations we have today were made by expert text critics who went back to the available manuscripts, made sure they said what the original gospels said, translated them into modern language, and then thoroughly critiqued each other to ensure accuracy. With few exceptions (and those exceptions predate the 20th century).
The accurate modern translations we have verify that even prior translations (pre-1900s) were genuine and mostly accurate. And the ones with heavy inaccuracies are easily determined, pointed out, and their errors revealed.
So, writing and translating the Bible has been a serious project incomparable to a mere game of phone tag.
Conclusion: Why is this Even A Question?
Youโd be warranted to wonder why the integrity, authenticity, and accuracy of the gospels is even a question, considering all the evidence.
They are early, carefully preserved, properly recorded biographies of the lives of Christ and his followers that have been studied for centuries by the brightest of minds and transformed the world.
The only logical reason to maintain skepticism against them is a preconceived bias against God Most High and Christ Jesus our Lord. A hatred for the Truth.
Because all evidence and intelligence points to their validity and bows before their wise instruction.
Recommended Sources
Craig A. Evans. Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.
Craig S. Keener. Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2019.
Jonathan Bernier. Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence for Early Composition. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022.
J. Warner Wallace. Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels. Colorado Springs, CO: David Cook, 2023.
Richard Bauckham. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2017.
Titus Kennedy. Unearthing the Bible: 101 Archaeological Discoveries That Bring the Bible to Life. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2020.
https://biblicalfaith.online/2023/09/04/the-gospels-seven-reasons-to-trust-their-reliability/
https://evidenceunseen.com/theology/scripture/historicity-of-the-new-testament/evidence-for-an-early-dating-of-the-four-gospels
https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2022/11/18/top-ten-historical-references-to-jesus-outside-of-the-bible/
This is really well presented. Awesome job!
Regarding the anonymous authorship. In that period, roughly a 300-year span, only about 2 out of nearly 100 biographical-style authors actually named themselves. In other words, around 98% of biographical works were anonymous, so anonymity was the norm, not the exception.
Plutarch who is arguably one of the most impactful historians from that era, never mentions himself once.
Ever notice that skeptics never seem to be concerned with that until it applies to the Bible.
Anons have been winning since the old testament days.