Defense Laboratory / Why should someone trust the New Testament?
1. The objection
“The New Testament was written by Christians, for Christians, to make more Christians. The Gospels are anonymous, and the names attached to them came later. They were written decades after Jesus, in Greek, by people who did not speak his language and did not see him. The letters of Paul are one side of a conversation. Nobody outside the movement wrote about these events at the time. Why should anyone treat a set of promotional documents from a religious group as reliable history?”
2. Investigation
Assumptions
- That a source written by believers cannot be reliable, which would also rule out most ancient histories written by people with a view.
- That a gap of decades between an event and a written account makes the account unreliable, without asking how memory and oral tradition worked in that world.
- That anonymous means unknown or unreliable, rather than simply not signed.
- That the lack of independent sources in the first century is unusual for a minor provincial figure of that period.
- That the New Testament is a single source, rather than a collection of different authors writing in different places and for different reasons.
Evidence and historical claims
- When were the Gospels and the letters of Paul written, according to the main scholarly views, and what are the reasons for the dates? Which are widely agreed and which are debated?
- What do Luke 1:1-4 and John 21:24 say about the writers’ sources and aims?
- What does the earliest church say about who wrote the Gospels (for example Papias, quoted by Eusebius, and Irenaeus), and how do scholars assess that testimony?
- How reliable is the manuscript tradition of the New Testament, compared with other ancient works? What are the oldest surviving fragments?
- What do non-Christian writers such as Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger say, and what do they add to the picture?
Philosophical and theological claims
- What makes any ancient source trustworthy: the writer’s motives, closeness to the events, agreement with other sources, or its fit with what else is known?
- Is the claim to be written to persuade a reason to doubt a source, or a reason to read it carefully? Can a writer be both committed and accurate?
- How should a historian treat testimony in cases where the claims, if true, would be extraordinary?
Logical structure
- Premise 1: Sources written long after the events, by committed believers, are not reliable.
- Premise 2: The New Testament was written long after the events, by committed believers.
- Conclusion: Therefore the New Testament is not a reliable source.
- Check each premise separately. Premise 1 is stated as a rule, but historians treat bias and distance as reasons to read carefully, not as reasons to throw a source out.
3. Christian responses
Response A: The New Testament rests on eyewitness and early testimony (many evangelical and conservative scholars)
Defenders hold that the Gospels were written within the lifetime of eyewitnesses, that they are closely tied to apostolic testimony, and that early church writers accurately named their authors. Richard Bauckham, in his book on the Gospels as eyewitness testimony, argued that the names and details in the Gospels point to sources known to the first readers. Others point to the letters of Paul, which are dated to the 50s, as very early evidence of what Christians believed.
They add that the manuscript evidence is far larger and earlier than for any other work of ancient literature, and that the Gospel accounts show the marks of real memory, including awkward details that a writer inventing a story would be likely to leave out.
Response B: The New Testament is the church’s own book, trusted as the church’s witness (Catholic and Orthodox views)
The Catholic Church teaches that the four Gospels faithfully hand on what Jesus did and taught, and that they were written from the apostolic preaching, with the writers selecting, arranging and shaping what they received (Dei Verbum, 19). The Orthodox church likewise treats the New Testament as the written form of the apostolic tradition, which lived in the community before it was written down.
On this view, the trust that the church has in the New Testament is not separate from its trust in the community that produced and preserved it. Catholic and Orthodox scholars also use historical methods and accept that the details of authorship and dating are open to study, while holding that the books are reliable witnesses to Christ.
Response C: Critical scholarship (mainstream historical-critical and secular views)
Most critical scholars hold that Mark was written around 70, Matthew and Luke some years later, and John last, and that most of the writers were not eyewitnesses. They think the Gospels draw on earlier sources, some written and some oral, which were shaped by the beliefs and needs of the communities that passed them on. Seven of the letters attributed to Paul are widely accepted as his, while the authorship of others, such as the Pastoral Epistles, is debated.
Scholars of this kind often hold that the New Testament contains valuable history, for example the crucifixion of Jesus under Pontius Pilate, but that each saying and event has to be tested. Many believe that this approach is compatible with Christian faith, and many do not.
Response D: The skeptical and minimalist views
Some scholars, including those who doubt that Jesus can be known with confidence, treat the Gospels as theological narratives more than as history, and hold that very little can be said with certainty. A small minority has argued that Jesus did not exist, a view that almost all historians, whatever their beliefs, reject.
Others note that stories about holy men were commonly shaped in the ancient world to fit a pattern, and that the Gospels may reflect that tendency. Defenders of the Gospels reply that the comparison has limits, since the Gospels are written much closer to the events than most such stories.
4. The strongest counterargument
The strongest reply to Response A is that the arguments for early dating and eyewitness authorship are contested, and that the evidence for the names attached to the Gospels is later than the writing and may reflect the church’s own interest. Critics ask why, if eyewitnesses were behind the stories, the accounts differ so much on details, and why none of the writers claims to be an eyewitness in so many words. They also point out that a large number of manuscripts shows that the text was widely copied, not that its contents are true.
The strongest reply to Responses C and D is that a historian who rejects a source because it came from believers must reject nearly all ancient history, since most ancient writers had loyalties. Defenders point out that the existence of the Gospels needs an explanation, and that many parts of them, such as the crucifixion of the leader, would have been embarrassing to invent. Critics answer that embarrassment can also be turned into a theological story, and that being likely to be true is not the same as being proved.
5. Your independent defense
- Write the objection in one sentence in your own words.
- List the premises hidden in it, using the logic outline above, and mark which one you think is weakest.
- Read the opening of Luke (1:1-4) and write in your own words what the writer says about his sources and his purpose. Then say whether this makes you trust him more, less or differently.
- Make a short list of the main arguments about the dates and authors of the Gospels, using two reliable reference works, one conservative and one critical. Note where they agree.
- Choose one non-Christian source (Tacitus, Josephus or Pliny) and write a paragraph on what it says, when it was written, and what it can and cannot establish.
- Choose your own position and write 300 to 500 words defending it. State which parts of the New Testament you find most reliable, and why, and what you think a fair historian would say.
- Write the strongest objection to your own position. Make it as strong as you can, then answer it.
- Finally write one sentence on what would change your mind.
- Keep this in your own notebook or document. Do not send it anywhere.