This is Part 3 in a short series I’ve been writing on NT interpretive issues (be sure to check out Part 1 and/or Part 2 if you haven’t already). These posts are not robust, academic treatments of the issues they address; they are introductory in nature, and intended for average church-goers who are curious about these issues and perhaps wrestling through them for the first time. I think this third installment, which discusses the historical reliability of the NT, will be my last installment in this series—for now, anyway. There’s no shortage of NT interpretive topics I could go on to address (the Synoptic Problem, perspectives on Paul, etc.); but I think these three installments offer a good foundation for the time being.
Part 2: Historical Reliability
I established in my previous post that there is sufficient reason to trust the New Testament text as it appears in our Bibles today. This text was reconstructed from a mountain of manuscript evidence spanning 1400 years—and based on the data available, scholars have estimated that it’s been reconstructed within 95% of its original form (Evans, 19). More, the vast majority of textual variances are believed by text-critical scholars to be minor and inconsequential. But even if the texts are largely reliable, why should we trust that history recorded in those texts is reliable? Is the Jesus of the gospels the historical Jesus?
I happen to think so. But in the wake of modernist, critical interpretation of the Bible, the historical reliability of the gospel accounts (and Acts) has been routinely called into question. This skepticism has even begun to infiltrate popular culture with books/movies like Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, which posits that Jesus was only a mortal man, that he was married to Mary Magdalene, and that his divinity was a creative invention of the early church around the time of Constantine. Where are ideas like this coming from, and do they pose a serious threat to the reliability of the canonical gospels?
To start, let’s take a closer look at The DaVinci Code. To be fair, Dan Brown is an easy target; even the most secular and skeptical biblical scholars don’t like to claim him. But his claims serve as a convenient point of departure for our discussion. First, Brown’s thesis that Jesus’s divinity was a late theological development, though popular, has been thoroughly discredited—most recently in Brant Pitre’s landmark book Jesus and Divine Christology. This is a complex topic and could easily be a post of its own; but for now, I’ll share just one quick line of evidence often leveled against Brown’s view. Scholars generally agree that the letter to the Philippians was written no later than 20 years after the death of Christ—and already in Philippians 2:5–11, Jesus is recognized and even worshipped as deity. It would be exceedingly difficult, then, to substantiate the claim that Jesus was only recognized as divine centuries later.
Also troubling, however, is that Brown’s historical reconstruction relies heavily on the Gnostic gospels of Nag Hammadi (primarily the Gospel of Philip). These Gnostic gospels were written at least 50–150 years after the canonical gospels were written (Williams, 63), and they show little to no indication of first-century provenance. By contrast, early church fathers like Irenaeus were referencing Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as functionally canonical as early as 160 AD (Keller, 106). These four canonical gospels are widely attested in the second century, and they align theologically with the oral traditions of the apostolic church. More, they demonstrate a far greater degree of verisimilitude than do the Gnostic gospels.
What do I mean by ‘verisimilitude’? I mean that the contents of the canonical gospels “match with what we know of the place, people, and period described” within them (Evans, 20). These documents are acquainted with both “the topography and geography of the region” (e.g., villages, cities, roads) and with real, well-documented historical figures from the first century (e.g., Pontius Pilate, Herod Antipas, Caiaphas) (ibid.). In contrast, the Gnostic gospels offer virtually no significant historical, geographical, and/or sociopolitical context.
Already, then, we should be cautious about too quickly dismissing the historical witness of the biblical gospels. NT scholar Craig Evans points out that several world-class historians from varying religious backgrounds (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, etc.) have defended the historical credibility of the gospels (e.g., Ben Meyers, E.P. Sanders, Geza Vermes); and more, he claims that no competing “body of scholarly work” has been able to definitively “refute their conclusions” or “expose as baseless their working assumptions” (19). That’s a bold claim! But it’s true, and it raises an important question: what other lines of evidence are these historians seeing that gesture toward the trustworthiness of the gospels?
For one, scholars have noticed that NT authors often appeal to eyewitnesses as guarantors of their message. Luke explicitly states his reliance on eyewitness testimony in Luke 1:1-4. Mark, in his gospel, parenthetically includes that Simon of Cyrene is “the father of Alexander and Rufus” (Mark 15:21)—as if to imply Simon’s two children were still living, known by Mark’s audience, and able to vouch for the truth of Mark’s claims (Keller, 101). In a letter, Paul appeals to 500 living witnesses to the resurrected Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1–6). This appeal would be damaging to Paul’s cause if the resurrection was a lie, because 1 Corinthians was “a document designed for public reading”—so hearers could easily confirm or deny the validity of Paul’s claims by speaking to the living witnesses to whom Paul appeals (ibid., 101–02). The central idea here is that authorial appeals to eyewitness testimony can lend powerful support to the authenticity and historical reliability of NT texts. What I’ve offered above is just a brief sampling; but Richard Bauckham offers a robust, systematic treatment of this topic in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
Furthermore, scholars have long recognized that fabricated religious narratives designed to appeal to the masses would hardly benefit from resembling the gospels. Scholars sometimes refer to this as the ‘criterion of embarrassment.’ If the gospels were simply made up, why would the authors choose to portray their Messiah as abandoned and crucified? Why would they make women the first witnesses to the resurrection, “in a society where women were assigned such low status that their testimony was not admissible evidence in court” (Keller, p. 108)? Why would they not offer any relevant commentary on major conflicts affecting the early church, such as Gentile circumcision (ibid., 108–09)? The simplest explanation is that the authors were not fabricating a narrative at all, but were merely telling the truth.
Much more could be said; but the dating and verisimilitude of the texts, along with their many eyewitness appeals and embarrassing details, strongly indicate their authenticity and reliability. Nonetheless, if the canonical gospels really are historically reliable, how do we account for the discrepancies we find within them? The truth is that the vast majority of these discrepancies crop up only when we impose modern standards of historiography onto the ancient texts. Evans reminds us that “proper historiography in late antiquity allowed for and sometimes required editing and paraphrasing, always for the sake of clarification” (25).
For example, teachings in late antiquity were often presented as chreiai, or “brief anecdotes” of significance and value. Students would learn to incorporate chreiai into their own arguments—and in so doing, they were given freedom “to edit the beginnings and endings of the chreiai.” In fact, this editing process was often necessary for maintaining clarity (ibid., 23). In other words, “memorization did not prohibit a change of wording, nor did it prohibit expansion or contraction, so long as the change remained true to the original meaning and intent” (ibid., 24). The use of chreiai is clearly present in the gospel accounts, and that alone can account for many of the discrepancies. Furthermore, the gospels contain pastoral theology as well as history. We should not be surprised, then, when gospel authors rehearse history in ways that clearly reflect their unique theological understandings and agendas.
In conclusion, then, we have many reasons to trust the historical integrity of the NT (and the gospels in particular). And minor differences in detail, phraseology, and/or chronology across the four gospels do not pose a serious threat to a high view of Scripture. The gospel authors were not adhering to 21st century standards of journalism, and it would be unfair of us to expect that of them. Regardless of these minor differences, infallibility can and should still be affirmed, because Scripture remains perfect in respect to its purpose—and that purpose is to point our hearts and minds toward Jesus of Nazareth, the Word of God who became flesh and tabernacled among us (John 1:14).
Resources:
Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Cambridge: Grove Books, 2008.
Evans, Craig A. “Do the New Testament Gospels Present a Reliable Portrait of the Historical Jesus?” Criswell Theological Review 2 (Spr 2016): 17–26.
Keller, Timothy. “You Can’t Take the Bible Literally.” Chapter. Pages 100–113 in The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. New York: Penguin Books, 2018.
Pitre, Brant. Jesus and Divine Christology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024.
Williams, Peter J. Can We Trust the Gospels? Wheaton: Crossway, 2018.
For further reading, see also:
Blomberg, Craig L. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987.
Blomberg, Craig L., and Robert B. Stewart. The Historical Reliability of the New Testament: Countering the Challenges to Evangelical Christian Beliefs. Grand Rapids: B&H Academic, 2016.
Eddy, Paul Rhodes, and Gregory A. Boyd. The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.
Keener, Craig S. Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2019.
Jared Dale Greer 
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