Are the Gospels Reliable History?: Introduction

-Everything about Christianity depends on the history of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

-That history is found in our four historical documents. We know them as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

-Here's the question: 

Can those documents be relied upon to give us a true picture of the important details of Jesus's life? 

Is the history accurate? 

Has the record changed over time ?

-Over the next five classes we're going to answer those questions and we're going to make the case for the historical and textural reliability of those four documents . You can trust the gospels as recorded history. You can trust the gospels have not been changed. At the end of our time together you'll have a better understanding of why you can trust the historical records. You'll be able to answer some common objections in the process 

-Atheists try to attack the Bible more than anything else. They feel if they can undermine the source of Christian information, everything else would crumble. And they love to watch Christian's squirm. 

-To quote our instructor 

‘As I dismantled the Bible one objection at a time, I remember talking to my wife one night before we were married. “Are you telling me you actually believe what the Bible says?”, “You actually believe that Jesus rose from the dead?" Is what I would ask her. When she said she did, I would go in for the kill. ‘Do you know how many words there are in the New Testament?’ I would ask her. ‘It's about 136,000. Do you know how many variants, changes, or errors there are in the New Testament? 300,000 to 400,000.’ This is the objection I would bring to her, I would say ‘Don't you think God would do better than that?’ It's the same approach I used a dozen times before. I'd say ‘The Bible is nothing special. It's just a book like any other book….written by men. And guess what…Men make mistakes.’ I'd say ‘The Bible is just a matter of personal interpretation.  You can make it say whatever you want.’

-Here's my question to you- How would you answer someone like me?  What's going to happen when you leave the comfort of your Christian Church? or your circles? or your spheres of influence and you meet a tough critic? What's going to happen when you go away to college? Did you know there's two to three times as many atheists and agnostics in the university than there are in the General Public? And trust me they're gunning for you and your kids….Saying ‘The Bible says so’ simply doesn't cut it. People don't trust the Bible. Why should they listen to you when you quote it? 

The Bible is just a bunch of myths. 

How do you know you can trust it?

There's no good evidence for Jesus.

-Those are fair challenges too. But We have really good answers. This study is going to show you exactly why we can trust the record of Jesus's life recorded in the gospels.

-Our instructor spent much of his adult life in the legal world. He’s worked as a paralegal at some of the world's best law firms. He’s worked for incredibly famous clients. He’s even worked on cases that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Every time they prepared for a trial, they asked three fundamental questions about the evidence:

-Can we trust the witnesses? Is what they're saying reliable? Is the witness telling us the truth or are they making it all up?

-Has their testimony changed? Has the testimony or story changed over time? If so, how much has it changed?

-Is there any corroborating evidence? Are there any other sources saying the same things as the witness? Does any other evidence back up their story?

-But before we can examine the evidence, We need to know what evidence we have. So here's our EXHIBIT LIST. First we have those four separate historical accounts of the life of Jesus.

-Matthew 

-Mark 

-Luke and 

-John 

(Historians call them the primary source of historical documents of the life of Jesus) 

-Second piece of evidence, we have other records from those who are close to Jesus like:

-the letters from Paul 

-the letters from Peter 

-the letters from John 

-Third on our exhibit list we have historical sources that are outside the Christian Community:

-Josephus 

-Tacitus 

-Lucian 

-Fourth on the list is we have Archaeological Discoveries

-So this is our exhibit list and we're going to use each piece of evidence to build our case. It's also important to understand what we don't have.  We don't have the original historical documents.  We only have copies.  But we don't have any original historical documents from any ancient world.  We don't even have the original documents from Shakespeare. So now that we have our evidence on our exhibit list, the next step is to ask our first question: Can the witnesses be trusted? And that's what we'll do next time