You’re in a conversation and someone says, “The Gospels are not reliable accounts of what Jesus said and did.”
What would you say?
The four New Testament Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—are the best sources available about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Skeptics, however, have long claimed otherwise and cast doubt on their reliability. So, today many people just assume that the biblical accounts about Jesus were, to some degree, fabricated and that alternative sources about Jesus have been suppressed.
Are the Gospels reliable, historical accounts of Jesus?
Yes. And here are three reasons why.
First, the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony.
Most of what we know about history is based on written accounts.
History is most often written long after the events that are described and by people who research what they never personally witnessed. Not the four Gospels. They contain first-hand, eyewitness accounts about Jesus, written by authors who either were His Disciples (like Matthew and John) or were close associates of His disciples (Luke and Mark). They also contain little details about Middle Eastern life that only make sense if that’s where they were written.
As the authors of the Gospels often point out, there were still people around who saw the events and could dispute their accounts. This makes them very different from the “Gospels” of Thomas, Peter, Philip, and Judas, which appeared much later, and were written by authors who never knew Jesus or likely the Apostles.
In other words, the Gospels are not only accounts of actual historical events, they are first-hand eye-witness accounts of historical events.
Second, the Gospels have been carefully preserved.
Some skeptics claim that the real Jesus is lost to history, and the Gospel writers and others made a simple man, Jesus, whose message was just about loving your neighbor, to claim to be the Messiah and Son of God.
But that just isn’t true. There are complete manuscripts of the Gospels which go back to the fourth century, and fragments that go back even earlier. One fragment of the Gospel of John dates to the middle of the second century. This matters, because John is the last Gospel written and the one in which Jesus makes the most claims to divinity. Even more, we have an incredible amount of documents from Church Fathers, such as Polycarp, who firmly believed Jesus to be God and quoted the Gospels as affirming the same thing.
Perhaps the most powerful evidence that the Gospels preserve the original message of Jesus are the New Testament passages that are even older than the Gospels. Paul’s letters, which even secular scholars admit come from just after the life of Christ, describe Jesus as divine.
In 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, Apostle Paul affirms that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,” “was buried,” and “was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…” In Philippians, another epistle from just a few years later, Paul affirms that Jesus is “in very nature God.” Paul describes this as the message he received, meaning it was a well-known claim early on.
Third, the Gospels are clearly not propaganda.
Some skeptics claim that the Disciples and early Christian leaders were trying to gain power, get rich, or start a religion for their own glory. So, they embellished the Jesus stories.
However, if that was the case, they did a terrible job.
The Gospels were clearly written by people committed to Jesus of Nazareth and who wanted others to know Him. But, they were not written to make themselves look good. C.S. Lewis observed that “The evangelists have the first great characteristic of honest witnesses: they mention facts which are, at first sight, damaging to their main contention.”
For example, the Gospel repeatedly described how the twelve Disciples seem unable to grasp Jesus’ message and mission. They are frequently squabbling among themselves, and several times, Jesus often rebukes them for their lack of faith. In one famous passage, Jesus rebukes Simon Peter and calls him “Satan!”
According to the Gospels, most of the Apostles abandoned Jesus and even denied Him in His darkest hour. When the resurrection occurs, the Gospels report that the Disciples don’t believe it, and that women, who were considered unreliable witnesses in the ancient world, were the first to the empty tomb.
These are not the kinds of details included by propagandists seeking power. The only reason to include them is if they really happened, by authors committed to elevating Jesus, rather than themselves. Which means we’ve no reason to doubt their testimony.
So, the next time someone says, “The Gospels are not reliable accounts of what Jesus said and did,” remember these three things:
First, the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony.
Second, the Gospels have been carefully preserved.
Third, the Gospels are clearly not propaganda.
Colson Center
