The Bible:
A Relic or Reliable Revelation?
(This is the third part of The Bible: A Relic or Reliable Revelation? I've broken the whole talk up into smaller sections, the rest of which can be found through the links on the Bible Section page. For online reading I recommend reading the shorter sections successively. To view the document with the whole talk in it Click Here. To view the rest of the parts of the talk Click Here. It does not contain numbered endnotes but you can find a list of references used at the end.)
The Written Tradition is a reliable record
All of this shows the Oral Tradition was very reliable. Now we can move on to the next step in the transmission of God's revelation to us. We must now examine the accuracy of what was written down in the original manuscripts. The original manuscripts are called the Written Tradition. Again, for sake of time I'll limit our examination to the Greek manuscripts of the Gospels. We want to find out if the events were accurately reported by the authors. Who were the authors of the Gospels anyway? You already know them: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They were each either eyewitnesses or were reporting other people's eyewitness accounts. They would all be able to testify reliably and credibly as to what really happened. And if their testimonies agreed substantially it would make a strong case for their historical accuracy wouldn't it?
Matthew and John were disciples who lived with Jesus everyday, all day long every day for about 4 years. Believe me; they knew a lot about Jesus. So they were reliable and credible eyewitnesses and biographers. Mark was not one of the 12 disciples but he was Peter's assistant in his traveling evangelistic ministry. Mark carefully recorded Peter's eyewitness accounts of Jesus. Finally, there was Luke. Luke was a physician with a cool analytical mind that dealt with the detailed facts. As a first rate investigative reporter he was only interested in the facts ("Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts?). He took great care in getting his facts straight before he wrote his report. Scholars regard him as an excellent historian. He wrote at the beginning of his gospel,
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
In case you are wondering, this Theophilus dude was a high ranking, educated Roman official who wanted to know if what Jesus' followers were saying was true. Luke answered with a 5,400 word investigative report! Let's zoom in on some of the other eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead.
First, there were the women who discovered the empty tomb and saw the resurrected Jesus. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome came to anoint Jesus' body with perfume to counteract the stench of decaying flesh. Now this is very important. According to Jewish law the eyewitness account of a woman was worthless. I know, they were sexist pigs, but that's the way it was. Now, if Jesus' resurrection was just a legend made up by people many years later, then using the women's report would be self-defeating wouldn't it? They would suffer a credibility problem. Instead, they would attribute the report to men. So this is another point in favor of the Gospels being accurate testimony. There were other followers of Jesus who reported seeing Jesus after he rose from the dead, too. He appeared to Peter, then to the disciples on several occasions. He even appeared to a group of over 500 people on a mountainside in Galilee. My point here is that Jesus was seen by a large number of credible eyewitnesses who could agree or disagree on what they witnessed. The fourth and final body of eyewitness testimony was those who were hostile to Jesus and his followers. His enemies wanted nothing more than to be able to prove that Jesus didn't rise from the dead. So all they would have to do is produce the body and say, "See, he's still dead you fools!" But they couldn't. And their silence speaks louder than words.
Now, I've been assuming these were credible eyewitnesses, but how can we know for sure? There are four tests that historians use to determine if eyewitnesses are credible and if their reports are accurate and reliable sources of information about a past event. These tests are the Credibility Test, the Internal Consistency Test, the External Corroboration Test and the Bibliographic Test. We'll go through these one at a time. First we need to prove that the eyewitness testimony is credible. Is it an accurate, reliable picture of what really happened? We'll use the Credibility Test to find out.
The Credibility Test
If you witnessed a crime against a friend or loved one you would probably want the opportunity to give your eyewitness testimony in a court of law. Now do you think the defense attorney would want you to testify? No. It might undermine his defense of the client. So what will he or she try to do? He or she will attempt to prove that your testimony is not credible. What criteria, then, would you need to meet in order to prove that your eyewitness testimony is credible? First, you would have to show that you are of trustworthy character, willing to tell the truth. Second, you would have to be able to tell the truth. In other words, you would be able to tell the truth because you are of sound mind and witnessed the crime. A careful study of the people who witnessed and recorded Jesus' life, death and post-resurrection appearances shows they met those criteria of credibility. They had every reason to want to and to be able to tell accurately and truthfully what they experienced.
The Internal Consistency Test
There are a couple more criteria to prove that your testimony would be accurate. These get into the Internal Consistency Test. First, your testimony would have to be consistent. If you were inconsistent in how you reported the event you would undermine your own credibility. It would sound like you are making it up as you testify or were too unsure of what you witnessed to be reliable. Second, your testimony would also have to coincide with the other facts and circumstances involved. Applying this to documents the Internal Consistency Test shows us how credible, acceptable and accurate a document is whether it is ancient or modern. This test deals with the apparent conflicts or inconsistencies within the document or set of documents. Many people say, "Oh, I can't accept the Bible with all of its contradictions." There certainly are some apparent contradictions. For instance, there are inconsistencies among the accounts of the empty tomb. One account says there were two angels at the tomb to tell the women Jesus had risen while another account said it was one. One says they were two men, another says it was one man. Well, which were they? Were they angels or men and how many? Can they be reconciled? If so, how?
Let's return to your eyewitness testimony. Let's suppose that the crime you witnessed was in another country. You would have some additional barriers to relating your testimony in a credible way. But it's not because you didn't accurately see what happened or that you want to distort the truth. The barriers to communication come from differences in things like language, cultural values, and geographical features. In a similar way, when we are reading the Bible and come across an inconsistency it may be that we are literally missing something in the translation. Most inconsistencies have been reconciled when scholars learn more about the contexts in which it was written. Some of these contexts are language, culture and geography. Every language has its own genres of literature, figures of speech and idioms. Every culture has differences in philosophical, religious and economic outlooks. Geography is important as well. What might be normal in the temperate Piedmont of NC might not be normal in a desert in the Middle East. The apparent major contradictions have been reconciled. Any minor inconsistencies that have not been reconciled are just that, minor inconsistencies that don't have a significant bearing on the meaning of the text.
That brings us to the other question we must ask about any inconsistency is, "Just how big is it?" If you told your eyewitness testimony in a court room, I will guarantee you that it will not agree in every detail with the other eyewitnesses even if you and they are earnestly attempting to recount the true story. You will disagree on things like the number of people, the clothes they were wearing, the kind of vehicle or the time of day and many other points. Does this mean the court should throw out your whole testimony as being not credible just because it differs slightly from the other? No. In fact, it would be very suspicious if all of your testimonies were identical. This would mean that you all got together and agreed beforehand on what the story was going to be. This would be collusion and it would severely undermine your testimony.
Well then, just how much do the testimonies have to agree? Well here are some standards used in courts today. First, they must be in complete agreement on major points. Second, they must be in complete agreement on significant details supporting the major points. Third, there must be acceptable variation on non-supporting details. And fourth, they must be given the benefit of the doubt. So, for example, even without attempting to reconcile the gospel accounts of the empty tomb these testimonies pass the test. They agree on the major point that Jesus' tomb was found empty and that he appeared alive to individuals, small groups and large groups.
They also agree on the significant details supporting the major points such as: the tomb was discovered empty on Sunday morning, by a small group of women who were told by at least one angel that Jesus had risen from the dead. They brought some of the disciples back to see for themselves, and so on.
There is also acceptable variation on non-supporting details such as how many angels there were at the tomb and where they were located in and around the tomb. By the way, the contradiction about whether they were angels or men is simple to clear up. First, the men are described in the original language with the same characteristics other Biblical writers typically use of angels. Something is lost in the translation. Second, Mark and Luke use the term "men" as a special figure of speech called anthropomorphism. It is just a way of saying these supernatural beings took on the appearance of humans so they could relate to humans. The number of angels is not a problem either. Let's say two or more strangers came up to you on the street asking for directions. It was probably only one of them that you had a dialog with. If you told me afterward about it, you might say quite innocently, "Two men asked me for directions. They asked me how to get to Market St." But the person with you might just as truthfully tell me, "A stranger asked us for directions today." So this, like all the contradictions you will find in the Bible is just an apparent contradiction.
Finally, in a court of law, witnesses are given the benefit of the doubt until they prove to be unreliable witnesses. Why not give the gospel writers the benefit of the doubt as well? There is no good reason not to. Oh, by the way, the Internal Consistency Test is one of the tools used to determine which books belong in the Bible. You will see new books and National Enquirer headlines about a "missing" or "secret" gospel or book of the Bible, but that is just sensational advertising. Bible scholars have known about these books since early Christianity. These books are so internally and externally inconsistent that they were left out of the Bible a long time ago, for obvious reasons.
So far we have seen that the eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life, death, burial and post-resurrection appearances were passed on accurately for only about one generation of eyewitnesses using strict standards of accuracy in the Oral Tradition. We've seen that the accounts were written down by credible eyewitnesses. The Internal Consistency Test shows that what they wrote is accurate and reliable.
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Copyright 2005. Gary C. Burger and New Media Ministries. This article may be reproduced and distributed freely as long as it is done so in its entirety. If quoted it must be properly cited as a reference.
