According
to the Military Historian C. Sanders, there are three tests of
reliability for an
historical
document: bibliographical, internal, and external tests (47, More
than a Carpenter). In the way of explanation of these terms, “the
bibliographical test is an examination of the transmission by which
documents reach us. In other words, not having the original
documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to the
number of manuscripts and the time interval between the original and
extant copy?” We can appreciate the tremendous wealth of manuscript
authority of the New Testament by comparing it with textual material
from other notable ancient sources. Over 20, 000 copies of New
Testament manuscripts are in existence today (in comparison to about
on average 20 for other ancient works)....and the interval between
the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence
becomes so small as to be in fact negligible (often in the area of
1000 years compared to roughly 100 years in the case of the New
Testament). As New Testament Greek scholar J. Harold Greenlee states:
“Since scholars accept as generally trustworthy the writings of the
ancient classics even though the earliest MSS were written so long
after the original writings and the number of extant manuscripts is
in many instances so small, it is clear that the reliability of the
New Testament is likewise assured. The application of the
bibliographical test to the New Testament assures us that it has more
manuscript authority than any piece of literature from antiquity.
Adding to that authority the more than 100 years of intensive New
Testament textual criticism, one can conclude that an authentic New
Testament text has been established (47-49, More than a
Carpenter).”
Demonstrating
that the number of manuscripts continues to grow from the above
earlier dated source, Josh McDowell states in Evidence for
Christianity, copyright 2006, that “we have close to, if not
more than 25, 000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament
in existence today. No other document of antiquity even begins to
approach such numbers and attestation.” “F. E. Peters states that
on the basis of manuscript tradition alone, the works that made up
the Christians' New Testament were the most frequently copied and
widely circulated books of antiquity. As a result, the fidelity of
the New Testament text rests on a multitude of manuscript evidence
(60, Evidence for Christianity).” As McDowell states, in
quoting Norman Geisler, the importance of the sheer number of
manuscript copies cannot be overstated. As with other documents of
ancient literature, there are no known extant (currently existing)
original manuscripts of the Bible. Fortunately, however, the
abundance of manuscript copies makes it possible to reconstruct the
original with virtually complete accuracy.” McDowell adds in
quoting J. W. Montgomery, that “to be skeptical of the resultant
text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical
antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient
period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament
(61, Evidence for Christianity).” It
is interesting to note as well, that if the vast quantity of New
Testament manuscripts were lost, that much of the New Testament could
be reconstructed from the writings of the church fathers alone, with
one notable collection in the British Museum containing “86, 489”
quotations (75, Evidence
for Christianity).
Concerning
the question of external sources, the third test (I will come back to
the second), addresses whether other historical material confirms or
denies the contents of the documents themselves. In other words, do
other external sources
substantiate what is written in the New Testament.
Paul Barnett states the following in
drawing on non-Christian written sources:
“On the basis of this evidence from non-Christian sources it is
possible to draw the following conclusions:
1.
Jesus Christ was executed
(by crucifixion?) in Judea during the period when Tiberius was
emperor (A.D. 14-37) and Pontius Pilate was governor
(A.D. 26-36). Tacitus
2.
The movement spread from Judea
to Rome. Tacitus
3.
His followers worshipped him as
(a) god. Pliny
4.
He was called “the Christ.”
Josephus
5.
His followers were called
“Christians.” Tacitus, Pliny
6.
They were numerous in Bithynia
and Rome. Tacitus, Pliny
7. His brother was James. Josephus
Barnett concludes that “While the evidence is not extensive, it is
noteworthy that it does not in any way conflict with, but rather
confirms, the historical information in the New Testament (34, Is
the New Testament Reliable)?”
Archaeology as well, has confirmed the accuracy of the book of Luke
especially as a detailed, precise historical document. Sir William
Ramsay, though initially skeptical and thinking the book of Luke to
be a product of the second century was led to conclude from the
evidence of his findings that “Luke is a historian of the first
rank...one that should be placed along with the very greatest of
historians.” F.F. Bruce reflects that though “not every scholar
would endorse Ramsay's judgment on Luke's technical expertise as a
historian; but his detailed accuracy is something which can be
checked time and again...our respect for Luke's reliability continues
to grow as our knowledge of this field increases (92, The New
Testament Documents, Are they Reliable?).” F.F Bruce continues
in mentioning archeological finds that have supported the New
Testament record, “the middle wall of partition, between Jew and
Gentile, spoken of by Paul in Ephesians 2:14, found in a Greek
language inscription in Jerusalem in 1871. Other New Testament
incidents have been illuminated by archeological discoveries in and
around Jerusalem. The Pool of Bethesda, described in John 5:2 (95,
The New Testament Documents, Are they reliable?).”
Other issues that have arisen that have been clarified through
archeological research including confusion over the census described
in Luke, ossuaries (bone boxes) that are evidence of early
Christianity, the pavement of the court where Jesus was tried by
Pilate, the pool of Bethesda, the Gospels themselves have been
authenticated by finds such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, a slab of stone
very interestingly with a warning not to disturb graves by Emperor
Claudius known as the Nazareth Decree. We also have the remains of a
crucifixion victim which confirm the New Testament's description of
crucifixion. We have the Pilate inscription validating that Pilate
was indeed governor during the time of the life of Jesus, as the
inscription notes both his name and title. We have ancient coins,
three of which are mentioned in the New Testament, have been
identified with reasonable assurance (94-100, Evidence For
Christianity).The above is intended as a basic overview
of two of the tests that have been employed in evaluating historical
sources. However, it seems fitting to quote W.F. Albright at this
point: “The excessive scepticism shown toward the Bible by
important historical schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, certain phases of which still appear periodically, has
been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has
established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought
increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of
history.” Add to that conclusion, Nelson Glueck, the renowned
Jewish archeologist: “It may be stated categorically that no
archeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference
(91, Evidence for Christianity).”
As Josh McDowell
states on page 101 of Evidence for Christianity, “One
problem I constantly face is the desire on the part of many to apply
one standard or test to secular literature and another to the Bible.”
Indeed, we must apply consistent standards. That is something that I
have found as well, in my research even for this paper. I was left
baffled in attempting similar searches of other ancient sources to
discover that every time I typed relevant terms into search engines
in this area, Christian apologetics materials inevitably surfaced,
even for non-biblical sources, leaving me confused and perplexed. Are
there no papers out there defending or explaining other ancient
sources, I asked myself. Has anyone ever applied the bibliographical
test to Plato or Caesar's Gallic Wars? Where are
they? Where is the hyper skepticism that we see for the Bible or does
everyone just take everything but the Bible on faith? And so I began
to wonder, how do we explain such differing standards, as well as
such varying opinions concerning the validity of the Bible if the
Bible is clearly the best we have from antiquity? Are scholars not
reading the same materials; how then is it, that they come to such
dramatically different conclusions?
Here is where I will
begin to focus on the internal test for biblical or more
specifically, New Testament reliability. Is the document internally
consistent; I will come back to this question, but it is here as well
that we must begin by addressing the question of worldview, or that
lens through which people are interpreting that which they read or
study. With this question in mind, “For the past 200 years, the
dominant working paradigm for historical Jesus scholarship has been
naturalism, the view that nothing exists except for matter, energy,
and their interactions according to law and chance -nothing
supernatural (227, True Reason).” “Philosophical
naturalism is a commitment to a completely natural or material
reality...It presents for us a closed system in which everything that
can be said to be decidedly true or known must function within the
assumption that God does not exist, or at least that he does not
involve himself in the world. This presupposition is as common in
historical research as it is in scientific inquiry. Rudolf Bultman,
perhaps the most infamous and influential NT scholar of the twentieth
century, worked from this paradigm. In his view, science had shown it
was impossible to give mental assent to the worldview of the Bible.
The task set before the New Testament scholar, in his view was to dig
through and sift out all the mythology contained within the New
Testament, a task he called 'demythologizing.' Many scholars
following after Bultmann have operated under the same paradigm. For
them it is beyond question that the Jesus of history was and is very
different from the Christ of Faith and that central to this new
portrait of Jesus is the elimination of the supernatural: no
authentic dealings, no miracles, no prophecy, no resurrection
(227-228, True Reason).”
I think it is fair to point out as Hardman does that “science has
never made a case for the necessity of philosophical naturalism, nor
is it within science's competency to do so; it's a question primarily
of metaphysics, not science. We cannot say that science has disproved
God, for science can only evaluate the natural world.” As Hardman
points out (this approach), “denies a priori an open inquiry by
failing to allow the possibility that God might intervene in human
affairs. It therefore unjustifiably presumes a closed system at the
outset and then, based on this, forces the conclusion that miracles
do not occur (228, True Reason).” Though history has never
justified an atheistic or deistic starting point, this assumption
seems to have come into the work of modern historical investigation,
that miracles are so uncommon and unlikely that we should assume
another explanation, ignoring the fact that reports of miracles come
from many parts of the world and are not as uncommon as assumed by
western intellectuals. Regardless, for the mere purposes of
explaining the materialist worldview by which many come to the New
Testament, it is helpful to understand how it is that many such
scholars do just that, they come to the New Testament with what is
arguably an anti-supernatural bias, the assumption from the get-go
that such events do not happen, thus discrediting the New Testament
from the outset. As New Testament scholar David DeSilva suggests, “if
we can get past an anti-miracle bias and leave open the possibility
of such occurrences, the potential of engaging the Gospels and Acts
on their own terms increases exponentially (232, True Reason).”
As Hardman points out, a naturalistic mindset assumes that God does
not exist. If God does exist, in contrast, the possibility of God
acting in the natural world exists as well.
With this said, “In the early twentieth century, skeptical German
theologians- notably Rudolf Bultman (and others) -applied a
discipline called form criticism to the New Testament Gospels. (This
method) sought to classify the sayings and narratives of the Gospels
into (literary) forms (parables, poetry, etc)... and to give a
history of those sayings or narratives and thereby (determine) the
purest and oldest form possible. (Also with form criticism was the
idea) that tradition served the needs and purposes of the church.
That is, the narratives and sayings of the Gospels do not reflect the
history of Jesus as much as they reflect the history of the church
(233-234, True Reason).” According to Craig Blomberg, “the
results of form criticism are highly speculative because they are
based on what other ancient cultures did in settings that are not
always closely parallel to the rise of Christianity.” Furthermore,
as Richard Baukham, in his seminal work Jesus and the
Eyewitnesses, states, “Virtually every element in this
construction (form criticism) has been questioned and rejected by
some or even most scholars. Many of these criticisms are rooted in
the much better and fuller information that is now available about
the way oral traditions operate in predominantly oral societies (235,
True Reason).” As Richard Bauckham states, “The
world of the early Christian communities was not a purely oral one,
but a predominantly oral society in which written texts had a place
that was closely related to orality.” Add to this that we have
“good evidence that we do have early written traditions concerning
Jesus (237, True Reason).” As Robert Stein states, there is
“no need to think that this material was simply memorized by the
disciples (237, True Reason).”So, while “Bultmann's
model suggested that the disciples almost immediately disappeared
into the background of the first century, never to be heard from
again, we have ample evidence that suggests that eyewitnesses stood
at the forefront of the traditions. Firstly, we know from Paul's
letters of their continued presence in early Christianity. Paul
regularly interacted with the original disciples throughout his own
missionary journeys. Second, Jesus' disciples would have been
respected and sought after for their authority as sources about the
life and teaching of Jesus....In other words, the apostles were
continually active in the transmission of the Jesus tradition...the
importance of the eyewitnesses in the early Christian
movement...suggests that they may have had an important role in the
control of the traditions of the words and deeds of Jesus. This is,
of course, what the Biblical record claims and early Christian
tradition attributes to the Gospels (242, True Reason).”
And so in contrast to the form critics who assumed that the early
church did not have an interest in recording the events of the life
of Jesus with the intent of being historically accurate, “as the
twentieth century progressed, the classification of biography
increasingly seemed to fit, in a way that is now almost universally
accepted. Ancient biography did not involve a lack of reliable
historical interest....biography was firmly rooted in historical fact
rather than literary fiction...the very fact that the evangelists
chose to adapt Greco-Roman biographical conventions to tell the story
of Jesus indicates that they were centrally concerned to communicate
what they thought really happened (243, True Reason).”
It is important to note that the Gospel writers themselves claim to
be eyewitnesses. As the Gospel of Luke states in it's opening
passage, “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of
the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us
by those from the beginning were eyewitnesses...” Or, as second
Peter states, “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when
we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but
we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” As Hardmann attests,“the
view that the ancient historians utilized little to no filter for
distinguishing truth from fiction needs to be abandoned...as Lucian
wrote in the second century, “the historian’s sole task is to
tell the tale as it happened (245, True Reason).”
And so in coming back to the internal test for historical reliability
and asking the question, are the New Testament sources internally
consistent? As J. P. Moreland states, in Scaling the Secular City,
“the internal test asks whether the document itself claims to be
actual history written by eyewitnesses...Prima facie it would seem
that a strong case could be made for the fact that much of the New
Testament, including the Gospels and the sources behind them, was
written by eyewitnesses. This is mentioned explicitly in a number of
places (Luke 1: 1-4, Gal. 1, 2 Peter 1:16). Further, apostolic
position in the early church was widely known to include the
qualification of being an eyewitness (Acts 1:21-22, Heb. 2:3), a
qualification which shows that the early church valued the testimony
of eyewitnesses and believed she had eyewitnesses leading her. The
early speeches of Acts refer to the knowledge of unbelieving
audiences (e.g., Acts 2:22) and no historian I know of doubts that
Christianity started in Jerusalem just a few weeks after the death of
Jesus in the presence of friendly and hostile eye-witnesses (137,
Scaling the Secular City).”
Moreland continues in stating that “as Gottschalk reminds us, a
document should be assumed trustworthy unless, under burden of proof,
it is shown to be unreliable...it seems clear that the New Testament
writers were able and willing to tell the truth. They had very little
to gain and much to lose for their efforts. For one thing, they were
mostly Jewish theists. To change their religion (without due
grounding would be to risk damnation)...and yet they lived lives of
great hardship and (most) died martyrs deaths for their convictions.
There is no adequate motive for their labours other than a sincere
desire to proclaim what they believed to be the truth (138, Scaling
the Secular City). As Moreland continues, “the presence of
adverse eyewitnesses would have hampered the spread of Christianity.
Christianity began, and remained for some time, in the same area
where Jesus had ministered. If the portrait of him was untrue, how
could the apostles have succeeded there?” Moreland also points to
the consistency of the Christian faith, it's agreement on core
doctrines as consistent with the testimony of early witnesses that
though they may disagree on details, a solid core of testimony
remains (page 138, Scaling the Secular City).
And this is where in keeping the above conclusion of Moreland in
mind, “a solid core of testimony remains,” I will address, though
briefly, some of the current challenges I have noted from the secular
culture concerning the general reliability of scripture. What I have
observed from debates I have listened to and articles I have read,
etc., is that much of what is written as skeptical material,
challenging traditional Christianity seems to be overblown. For
example, Bart Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus, implies as the
subtitle states (The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why),
that there has been a sinister mishandling of the evidence, and
yet when pressed, Ehrman will admit that no core Christian doctrine
is in question. Surely he must know that it has been given as high as
99 percent textual accuracy and that the vast majority of variants in
the manuscripts do not affect meaning and amount to differences in
spelling and word order, etc. Similarly, in a follow-up to the
above, Bart Ehrman's Forged: Why the Bible's Authors are Not Who
We Think They Are, seems to imply deceit on the part of the early
church. And yet again, we have early and consistent support
from the church fathers to support the traditional authorship of the
Gospels and have similar support for the use of many of the books of
the New Testament from within decades of their authorship. For
example, Ignatius, c. 108 AD, quotes or refers to 24 of the 27 books
of the New Testament (Is the New Testament Reliable,
40).
I found it interesting to learn that Augustine was
answering the same challenges in the fourth century and had asked in
response to similar challenges in his time, do we ask this of other
sources? I find myself asking similarly, would the early church have
read and viewed as sacred, documents of which they did not know the
origin? Furthermore, my understanding is that there is no competing
tradition and even if the works are anonymous, they are still the
earliest references which have a long history of being authoritative,
much like the canon of English literature. Hamlet and Paradise
Lost have the reputation they do for a reason, because they have
proven themselves over and over again and have passed the test of
time, much like the canonical Gospels.
I wonder sometimes, if
similar accusations were to surface regarding Shakespeare's works, if
people would be so easily fooled, but then again, people are still
reading and being taught Shakespeare. But here, for good measure,
“John, who obviously knew all of the apostles, had a disciple named
Polycarp (A.D. 69-105), and Polycarp had a disciple named Irenaeus
(130-202). Polycarp and Irenaeus collectively quote 23 of the 27 New
Testament books as if they are authentic -and in some cases they
specifically say they are authentic. Irenaeus explicitly affirms the
authorship of all four Gospels. Furthermore, through the historian
Eusebius, we know that Papias (60-120) affirmed the authorship of
Matthew and Mark. And no one doubts the authorship of the major works
of Paul...most of the New Testament was accepted before the year A.D.
200. (I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, 368).”
In
another controversial work, Jesus Interrupted,
Ehrman points to contradictions in details of the accounts while
seemingly failing to realize that historians trained in the
historical method would not see such differences as worrisome, as
Ehrman clearly does. Again, there is a core similitude that is
consistent with cardinal Christian doctrines and asking was it one
angel or two angels at the tomb, etc., points to the possibility of
two independent witnesses (or a focusing in on one account or
individual, etc.), who both acknowledge an empty tomb. This point
again seems to be lost on Ehrman and other hyper critical scholars.
There is also, I might suggest, a failure to interpret the accounts
within the genre in which they are written, imposing what appears to
be a modernist skepticism over gaining an understanding of literary
devices or conventions that would have been accepted within the genre
of Greco-Roman biography ie., changes in order of events,
spotlighting, time-compression, etc. Authorship may be implied in
this (genre) sense as well in some instances, in noting that Peter is
spoken of in the opening and closing passages of the Gospel of Mark
as is the case in other ancient works, possibly indicating that Peter
is the work's author. It could be asked as well, if the church was
seeking to merely apply the names of well-known figures, why then
would they not have chosen Peter as the author of Mark?
Concerning
another Ehrman work “Lost Christianities,” books that have
been discovered at Nag Hammadi display a very different theology than
the theology of the New Testament and clearly show a second century
and onward Greek influence. The dates of these later works really do
tell the story, if I may suggest. They were not excluded from the
canon as is often alleged, as they were simply not present in the
first century to be excluded. These are later works, in short, which
show other cultural and theological influences, often a Greek
influence which was the dominant cultural influence of the time. In
contrast, the Jesus of the New Testament consistently describes the
Jesus of history in his first century Jewish milieu.
Finally,
yet another Ehrman book, How Jesus became God, seems to
suggest on the surface that the belief in Jesus as divine developed
over time, and yet it is apparent from the opening pages of Mark,
thought by many to be the earliest Gospel, that this is clearly not
the case. As noted in secondary sources, the supernatural is
inseparable from the historical Jesus (Josephus, for example) as well
as the belief in Jesus as God (Pliny the Younger, writing in A.D.
112). The crucifixion, one of the most attested facts we have about
Jesus, implies that there had to be a charge. Ironically, my source
on the latter fact and implication is none other than Bart Ehrman's
blog.
So, that's a quick engagement of some key challenges to the Christian
faith that are out there in the culture. In quoting Craig Blomberg on
the general reliability of the synoptic Gospels in confronting these
cultural challenges, “when one realizes that historical research
regularly seeks to harmonize apparently conflicting testimonies, it
becomes clear that it is disingenuous to disparage this method in the
way so many today do when it is applies to the Gospels. And even if a
few of the apparent contradictions were regarded as errors...the
general trustworthiness of the Gospels could easily remain
untarnished. The student who takes the time to read any three
reliable historians' accounts of other ancient figures or events will
frequently find much more variation among them than he encounters in
the Synoptics (195, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels).
And so, having considered the historicity of the works
themselves, and in so turning to the question of internal consistency
regarding personal integrity of the authors in question. Here, Geiger
and Turek list ten reasons why the New Testament writers give every
appearance of being truthful: “in including embarrassing details
about themselves, as well as numerous embarrassing details and
difficult sayings of Jesus in addition to demanding sayings of Jesus.
They carefully distinguish Jesus' words from their own. They include
events about the Resurrection that they would not have invented. They
include at least thirty historically confirmed public figures in
their writings. They include divergent details. They challenge their
readers to check out verifiable facts, even facts about miracles.
They describe miracles like other historical events: with simple,
unembellished accounts. Finally, they abandoned their own long-held
sacred beliefs and practices, adopted new ones, and did not deny
their testimony under persecution or threat of death (297, I Don't
Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist).”
Just in the way of
mentioning, I know that evidence continues to surface that indicates
that the New Testament shows every indication of indeed being
eye-witness testimony. In terms of the writers knowledge of the
landscape, vegetation, trees, and even the frequency with which names
appear in the New Testament is consistent with evidence found in
archeological excavations of grave sites of Palestine dating from the
first century (my source on the latter fact is Peter Williams).
Archaeology is still a fairly new field but what I am hearing is that
evidence continues to surface as do manuscripts of the New Testament
which continue to bring us closer to the original. That is a good
thing, said with this history of this field in mind, objective
evidence being preferred over generalized interpretation.
In summary, in the words of Gary Habermas, “the New Testament fares
exceptionally well in terms of its historical reliability, actually
exceeding what is often expected of an ancient text. We have in the
New Testament essentially what the authors originally penned, and the
texts have been confirmed time and again by various means. Tough
questions will always have to be addressed, but we have a highly
evidenced document from which to proceed (174, Why I am a
Christian).” With this conclusion in mind, what I have found
over the years is that by paying attention to dates of sources as
well as in differentiating between what skeptical writers imply
versus what we know in terms of objective facts about
Jesus has a way of separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
That's how I manage to keep a clear head, when there is so much
competing information out there on Jesus, simply by checking dates
and reading the earliest sources which despite all the controversy,
are still found in the pages of the New Testament. The orthodox
Christian church has always held to the earliest sources, which
remain closest to the historical Jesus in terms of geography and time
and his own first century Jewish surroundings. The New Testament
writers may disagree on details or points of emphasis, but they don't
disagree on cardinal doctrines.
In
conclusion, It amazes me to learn as I have,
and my source on the
following is Gary Habermas,
that the field of critical Jesus research has changed much in the
last number of decades from a heightened skepticism to a new
understanding that what we have in some
passages of the New Testament
is extremely early
testimony. Paul, though writing decades
later, is recounting events
and repeating creeds from
within a few years of the crucifixion. Given that these early creeds
or hymns would also have needed time to develop, the
critical consensus of the majority of scholars is that we are
sitting on the first
century events in question! Added
to that, is that these
are key events as relating to
the formation of Christian doctrine, including
the death, burial, empty tomb and belief in post-mortem appearances
of Jesus.
In other words, the heart and
soul of the Christian faith as grounded in the resurrection
is gaining acceptance as being consistent with
the accepted facts of the Jesus
of history. Scholars are realizing that there is simply no time for
miracle accounts or belief in Jesus' divinity to have developed into
anything other than what the early church originally
believed him to be, the divine Word of God made flesh.
As
I've heard N.T. Wright express, there has to be an explanation of how
devout monotheistic Jews, who did not
believe in a physical resurrection until the end of time (and
resurrections in first century Jewish theology were understood to be
physical), came to believe that Jesus had been bodily resurrected.
Historically speaking (again,
according to theologian
and historian N.T. Wright),
if something is new, it requires explanation. How then do we explain
the rise of the early Christian movement from within the first
century Jewish community? What
changed the disciples from fearful deniers and doubters, to bold
proclaimers? It should be
recognized, in short, that the
Resurrection has explanatory power in explaining the rise of
Christianity.
I'll close with the words of Paul, from
a letter few
would contest was written by
Paul, as he himself describes
having received the following from the early church within a few
years of the
crucifixion, what amounts to the foundation of our faith. I come back
to these central facts through my
own uncertainty and
I'm reminded, that clearly the newly formed church through much
opposition, came back to these central
facts too, what
they could never have invented, that which they did not
understand, yet
which confirmed, such extraordinary claims.
For
I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that
Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was
buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the
Scriptures. (1 Corinthians, 15: 3, 4).
Margaret
Harvey
Bibliography:
Barnett,
Paul. Is the New Testament Reliable? Downer's
Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003.
Blomberg,
Craig L. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Second
Edition), Downer's Grove:
IVP Academic, 2007.
Bruce, F.F. The New Testament
Documents: Are they Reliable? Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981.
Geisler,
Norman and Turek, Frank. I Don't have Enough Faith to be an
Atheist. Wheaton: Crossway
Books, 2004.
Gilson,
Tom and Weitnauer, Carson, editors. True Reason:
Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism. Grand
Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2012.
McDowell,
Josh, Evidence for Christianity. Nashville:
Thomas Nelson, 2006.
McDowell,
Josh. More Than a Carpenter Wheaton,
Illinois: Living Books, 1973.
Moreland,
J. P. : Scaling the Secular City: A Defence
of Christianity. Grand Rapids:
Baker Book House, 1987.
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