The Cred­ib­il­ity of the Bible

Chris­tian­ity began with the min­istry of Jesus Christ, whose life and mes­sage changed the world. Jesus, who him­self was a Jew, not only claimed to be the Mes­si­ah prom­ised in the Old Test­a­ment, the Jews’ Holy Scrip­ture, but far bey­ond that—he claimed to be the Son of God. And he calls every per­son in every age to be his follower.

We can­not exper­i­ence him today as his con­tem­por­ar­ies did, but we have the testi­mony of the first dis­ciples, who were togeth­er with him day and night. The New Test­a­ment con­tains eye­wit­ness reports and describes the life of the first Chris­ti­ans. There­fore, the cred­ib­il­ity of the Bible, espe­cially of the New Test­a­ment, is of fun­da­ment­al import­ance to Chris­tian­ity and to all people.

Although the Bible has the poten­tial to change lives, people are often motiv­ated to cri­ti­cize the Bible because it chal­lenges their own life­style. Time after time to this day, it has been wrongly inter­preted and has often been mis­used for selfish pur­poses by people and organ­iz­a­tions who called them­selves Chris­ti­ans. Nev­er­the­less, this should not keep us from study­ing it and veri­fy­ing its con­tent and credibility.

1 The New Test­a­ment Is Cred­ible Because of Its Content

1.1 The Unique­ness of Jesus’ Teaching

1.1.1 Mor­al­ity

Jesus’ teach­ing on mor­al­ity sur­passes the teach­ing of any oth­er “teach­ers of human­ity”. Let us take his teach­ing on adul­tery as an example. In the Gos­pel of Mat­thew chapter 5 verses 27–29, Jesus says:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not com­mit adul­tery.” But I say to you that every­one who looks at a woman with lust­ful intent has already com­mit­ted adul­tery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is bet­ter that you lose one of your mem­bers than that your whole body be thrown into hell. (Mat­thew 5:27–29)

Even Buddhists teach that every desire should be anni­hil­ated. But this is a very gen­er­al way of say­ing it. For Buddhists it is about the oblit­er­a­tion of man’s com­plete sens­ib­il­ity and per­son­al­ity, the aban­don­ment of all val­ues, wheth­er pos­it­ive or neg­at­ive. Their aim is to irre­voc­ably dis­solve man and his per­son­al­ity, which is to reach the state of Nir­vana. Just as in oth­er reli­gions, an attempt is made to meth­od­ic­ally bring about some improve­ment in life.

In con­trast, Jesus spe­cific­ally addresses the prob­lem of hid­den sins and even con­siders hav­ing lust­ful thoughts to be of the same sever­ity as com­mit­ting adul­tery. He shows that sin begins in our thoughts and that this is the point where regret must begin. He exposes the things that are inside a per­son and assesses them with unpar­alleled strict­ness. He calls us to change in words that could not be clear­er, even if they are to be under­stood fig­ur­at­ively in this passage.

To a cer­tain degree, doc­trines of mor­al­ity are found in every reli­gion because people are able to dis­tin­guish good and evil with their con­science. The meas­ure with which Jesus assesses deeds, words and thoughts is unique in that it exposes the hearts of people. He demands a change in one’s atti­tude and thoughts, the very things which form the base for mor­al con­duct. He emphas­izes the import­ance of being free from evil and cap­able of doing what is good.

Going bey­ond mor­al­ity and eth­ics, Jesus even calls us to love our enemies.

1.1.2 Love Your Enemies

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neigh­bour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who per­se­cute you, so that you may be sons of your Fath­er who is in heav­en. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. …You there­fore must be per­fect, as your heav­enly Fath­er is per­fect. (Mat­thew 5:43–48)

In the Old Test­a­ment, besides the pas­sages which speak of reject­ing one’s enemies, we also find pas­sages that require the Israel­ites to love strangers who wanted to reside among them and told them to be kind towards their enemies. Jesus’ com­mand­ment to love our enemies, how­ever, sur­passes everything that was known until then. Lov­ing our enemies means much more than show­ing kind­ness and for­go­ing revenge and hatred. This kind of love enables us to for­give even our greatest enemies and desire the best for them.

Note that Jesus was the first to teach this, among oth­er points. Oth­ers later tried to emu­late many things he taught in order to join him in his splendour.

Jesus is not con­tent with a list of rules aimed at pleas­ing God. He calls all people to align their stand­ards with the abso­lutely good God. The demand to be as per­fect as God may sound absurd. But we can­not just dis­miss Jesus as insane; his life and teach­ing is just too sober, real­ist­ic and practical.

”Who­ever loves fath­er or moth­er more than me is not worthy of me, and who­ever loves son or daugh­ter more than me is not worthy of me. And who­ever does not take his cross and fol­low me is not worthy of me. Who­ever finds his life will lose it, and who­ever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mat­thew 10:37–39)

Jesus’ mes­sage does not fol­low man-made stand­ards nor does it prom­ise mere earthly har­mony and hap­pi­ness. His aim was not to bring about polit­ic­al or social peace. In con­trast to oth­er teach­ers of wis­dom, he not only shows a new path of know­ledge but asserts his divin­ity by claim­ing to be the highest author­ity, call­ing us to devote ourselves uncon­di­tion­ally to himself.

1.2 The Effect of the New Test­a­ment on Human­ity as a Whole and on Individuals

Jesus’ pub­lic appear­ance caused an irre­voc­able fac­tion with­in the people of Israel and sub­sequently the whole of man­kind. Jesus claimed to be the Mes­si­ah prom­ised in the Old Test­a­ment and to be the saviour of the world. From the out­set Jesus’ fol­low­ers were per­se­cuted by the Jews. Even in later times Chris­ti­ans were driv­en out and, whenev­er pos­sible, murdered by the enemies of truth because of their faith in Jesus.

This polar­iz­a­tion test­i­fies to the influ­ence Jesus and his mes­sage has had on people from the first cen­tury up to the present day. Jesus’ teach­ing has changed the world like no oth­er reli­gious sys­tem. From the very begin­ning, Jesus’ state­ments were copied, imit­ated or even dis­tor­ted and used in a neg­at­ive way under the pre­tence of his author­ity. Pseudo-Christianity arose at a very early stage. Even if it is not Chris­tian­ity in its genu­ine form, the influ­ence of pseudo-Christianity on cul­ture, art, sci­ence and polit­ics in the Euro-Asian regions, and in many ways the whole world, shows the sig­ni­fic­ance of Jesus and his message.

The per­son of Jesus caused an unequalled fas­cin­a­tion in man. The whole of Judea was on the move, seek­ing to listen to his words and see his mir­acles. When Jesus was no longer able to ward off crush­ing crowds, he with­drew to remote places. The Jews who received his words in their heart and under­stood his mes­sage rad­ic­ally changed their lives and began to fol­low Jesus as their Lord without com­prom­ise. The same also hap­pens today. People who believe in his words will exper­i­ence the effect and power of his mes­sage in their own lives. His words are not char­ac­ter­ized by thoughts beau­ti­fully expressed, but rather pose a chal­lenge to peoples’ lives. Jesus wants to reach their hearts and calls them to go the very way he went. His sal­va­tion sets us free from a life formed by sin. And the voice of Jesus does not cease. Count­less books have been writ­ten about him since his death. Through­out his­tory, people have been try­ing to find the authen­t­ic inter­pret­a­tion of his mes­sage and to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the his­tor­ic­al Jesus.

The con­front­a­tion with his teach­ing requires people to take a stand, which those who seek the truth can­not simply thrust aside. Even this phe­nomen­on alone sup­ports the cred­ib­il­ity of his teaching.

1.3 The New Test­a­ment Is His­tor­ic­ally Reliable

From a his­tor­ic­al point of view, the New Test­a­ment reli­ably describes the middle of the first cen­tury in its four Gos­pels, the book of Acts, and its epistles. It is in agree­ment with oth­er his­tor­ic­al sources writ­ten by Jew­ish and Roman authors such as the Talmud, works of the Jew­ish his­tor­i­an Flavi­us Joseph­us and of the Roman his­tor­i­ans Tacit­us and Suetoni­us. It describes and men­tions geo­graph­ic­al, cul­tur­al and social cir­cum­stances which, aston­ish­ingly, have been con­firmed again and again by archae­olo­gic­al findings.

1.3.1 Archae­olo­gic­al Findings

The dis­cov­ery of the pool of Siloam in Jer­u­s­alem men­tioned in John’s Gos­pel (John 9:7) serves as an example. While work­ing on a new sew­er line in the Autumn of 2004, labour­ers uncovered stone steps estim­ated to be 2,400 years old and the remains of a reser­voir which was fed by water from the Gihon Spring through Hezeki­ah’s tun­nel at the time of Jesus. This 525 meter long tun­nel, which one can still walk through today, was built around 700 BC by Hezeki­ah, the king of the south­ern king­dom of Judah. Through this con­struc­tion archae­olo­gists were able to con­firm the descrip­tion giv­en in the Old Test­a­ment. The Siloam pool, which is estim­ated to be 2,500 square metres in size, served as a reser­voir for Jer­u­s­alem’s inhab­it­ants dur­ing Jesus’ time. With­in some plaster, archae­olo­gists found a coin dat­ing from the time of the Has­moneans, min­ted about 50 years before the birth of Christ. The young­est coin in the debris above the water can­al­iz­a­tion is dated to the time briefly before the destruc­tion of Jer­u­s­alem by the Romans in 70 AD.

Dur­ing an excav­a­tion of the theatre in Caesarea in 1961, an inscrip­tion with the title “Pon­ti­us Pil­at­us Prae­fect­us Judae­ae” was dis­covered. This inscrip­tion shows that the New Test­a­ment is not the sole evid­ence of the exist­ence of Pil­ate in his­tory, who was the Roman gov­ernor of the province of Judea. Apart from these, we still have the “Antiquit­ies of the Jews” writ­ten by Flavi­us Joseph­us in 93 AD and the “Annals” by Tacit­us in 116 AD.

The Gal­lio inscrip­tion found in Delphi, Greece, which was first made pub­lic in 1905, con­tains a let­ter from Emper­or Claudi­us to the town of Delphi. Its intro­duc­tion enu­mer­ates the titles of Caesar, mak­ing it pos­sible to date the let­ter to the begin­ning of 52 AD. This inscrip­tion, writ­ten in Greek, men­tions Gal­lio as the pro­con­sul of Achaia, con­firm­ing the inform­a­tion giv­en in the book of Acts chapter 18 verse 12.

1.3.2 His­tor­ic­al Data In The New Testament

The New Test­a­ment con­tains not only one, but four his­tor­ic­al reports about the life of Jesus. We may find some con­tra­dict­ory details in these Gos­pels. How­ever, this does not speak against their cred­ib­il­ity, but on the con­trary sup­ports their reli­ab­il­ity. From a his­tor­i­an’s point of view, reports that do not match word-for-word strongly indic­ate that they have not been mod­i­fied or har­mon­ized at a later time. If four people, some being eye­wit­nesses them­selves, were to write down the words and works of Jesus, and, also con­sid­er­ing that they had dif­fer­ent audi­ences in mind, it is quite nat­ur­al that their indi­vidu­al and dif­fer­ent view­points are not­ic­able in their reports. Luke espe­cially endeav­oured to fol­low all things care­fully and men­tioned many events that can be his­tor­ic­ally veri­fied. This is illus­trated in Luke’s Gos­pel chapter 3 verse 1 which con­tains many his­tor­ic­al facts:

In the fif­teenth year of the reign of Tiberi­us Caesar, Pon­ti­us Pil­ate being gov­ernor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his broth­er Philip tetrarch of the region of Itur­aea and Trachon­it­is, and Lysani­as tetrarch of Abi­lene, dur­ing the high priest­hood of Annas and Cai­a­phas, the word of God came to John…. (Luke 3:1)

Sur­pris­ingly, two high priests are men­tioned here. This is not a mis­take; Luke is merely describ­ing an inter­est­ing his­tor­ic­al situ­ation. Although the incum­bent high priest at that time was Cai­a­phas, his pre­de­cessor Annas, who had already stepped down, was still quite influ­en­tial. The book of Acts (Acts 4:6) and John’s Gos­pel con­firm this. John recounts Jesus being first brought to Annas after his arrest, and not to the offi­cial high priest (John 18:13) . The actu­al chro­no­lo­gic­al suc­ces­sion of the high priests is recor­ded in “The Jew­ish War” by Flavi­us Joseph­us, a Jew­ish his­tor­ic­al writer, and agrees with the account of the New Test­a­ment. Annas’ power bey­ond his term in office is con­firmed as a cred­ible fact by reput­able theo­lo­gians like F. F. Bruce, former Rylands Pro­fess­or of Bib­lic­al Cri­ti­cism and Exeges­is at the Uni­ver­sity of Manchester.^[1]

Many such details strengthen the cred­ib­il­ity of the New Test­a­ment, which was writ­ten down in its entirety with­in 40 years of Jesus’ death. Mark’s Gos­pel was penned about a dec­ade after Jesus’ death and resur­rec­tion. The authors of the New Test­a­ment were either eye­wit­nesses or first-generation Chris­ti­ans who knew Jesus’ dis­ciples per­son­ally. In this regard the New Test­a­ment is unique when com­pared to the scrip­tures of oth­er reli­gions (read more in sec­tion “3.2 The Writ­ten Tradition”).

1.4 The Falsi­fic­a­tion Hypotheses

The hypo­thes­is that the Bible has been fals­i­fied has been for­mu­lated in vari­ous ways. Some assert that Jesus’ dis­ciples por­trayed their Lord in an ideal­ized and glor­i­fied man­ner at a later date. In real­ity quite the oppos­ite is true: the Gos­pels are char­ac­ter­ized by a sober descrip­tion of Jesus’ min­istry. They por­tray Jesus as a man with emo­tions and fears. Just before his arrest, Jesus, in his anxi­ety and dis­may, prayed for strength that he might bear the suf­fer­ing to come (Mark 14:33–36). It may be too piteous a scene for a Mes­si­ah, but it was true-to-life and real. He was not the strong, glor­i­ous man who has everything under control.

Oth­ers pro­pose that the apostles had inven­ted the whole story so that they could take on the most import­ant pos­i­tions with­in the new move­ment, receiv­ing glory and hon­our. But how can we har­mon­ize this with the fact that the apostles were per­se­cuted from the begin­ning, who even had to pay the price of death for their belief in Jesus? Surely it is pos­sible for people to be misled into lies and false doc­trines, even to the con­vic­tion of dying for them. How­ever, hardly any­one is ready to die for his own sins, espe­cially one who is utterly arrog­ant and not will­ing to admit what he has made up and lied about. If the apostles had had such traits, they would not have writ­ten so neg­at­ively about them­selves, nor would they have allowed the Gos­pel writers to do so. In the reports of the Gos­pels the twelve apostles are those whom Jesus often rebuked for their stub­born­ness and unbe­lief. They are described along with their weak­nesses, sins and lack of understanding.

The motives of people who delude and deceive oth­ers can only be wicked­ness, which can­not remain hid­den their whole lives long. From the begin­ning of Chris­tian­ity, lying has been con­sidered a grave sin. Chris­ti­ans are required to live their lives hon­estly and openly, being always ready to be questioned—the apostles were of course not exempt.

Some claim that Jesus’ dis­ciples refused to admit their mis­take of hav­ing thought that their mas­ter, who finally had to die as an out­cast on the cross, was the Mes­si­ah and saviour, and even made up the story of his resur­rec­tion. We find no base for this claim what­so­ever. The dis­ciples were com­pleted sur­prised when Jesus unex­pec­tedly rose from the dead. Even as Jesus appeared to them, they thought they had seen a ghost instead of believ­ing that he was really present. At this point, one could only object by say­ing that all this was devised by an accom­plished fals­i­fi­er. How­ever, con­sid­er­ing the situ­ation of the Jews in the first half of the first cen­tury, when they expec­ted a polit­ic­al Mes­si­ah, pro­claim­ing that a cru­ci­fied man was the Mes­si­ah was abso­lutely unima­gin­able. Cru­ci­fix­ion was the pun­ish­ment for unsuc­cess­ful rebels or slaves who tried to run away from their mas­ters. No one could think of asso­ci­at­ing the Mes­si­ah with either. It was nev­er Jesus’ aim to be a polit­ic­al Mes­si­ah. How­ever he showed through his resur­rec­tion that he is indeed the Mes­si­ah, a spir­itu­al one though. It was dif­fi­cult for the Jews to change their con­cep­tion of the Mes­si­ah. It was no dif­fer­ent for Jesus’ disciples.

If we look at Paul’s life, the hypo­thes­is that the dis­ciples had inven­ted Jesus’ resur­rec­tion sim­il­arly turns out to be unten­able. Saul the Phar­isee (later called Paul) rejec­ted Chris­tian­ity as a Jew­ish splinter group and fer­vently per­se­cuted the Church. He prob­ably regarded the Chris­ti­ans’ reports about the appear­ances of the resur­rec­ted Jesus as pure fantasy. How­ever, he became con­vinced of the truth of this claim when Jesus appeared to him, lead­ing to his con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­ity. Now some sup­port­ers of the falsi­fic­a­tion hypo­thes­is attempt to find a way out by say­ing that Paul became a Chris­ti­an only because of his bad con­science for hav­ing per­se­cuted the Chris­ti­ans and agree­ing to ston­ing a Chris­ti­an. This thought is like­wise unten­able, even by just con­sid­er­ing it psy­cho­lo­gic­ally. As a Chris­ti­an, the apostle Paul made enorm­ous sac­ri­fices and, accord­ing to extra-biblical tra­di­tion, even died as a mar­tyr. As a com­pet­ent Phar­isee, he chose rather to bear the dis­hon­our as a Chris­ti­an (one should bear in mind the situ­ation of those days) than to have a career with bright pro­spects with­in Judaism—all this just because of his bad con­science? Besides that, he emphas­ized that he had lived his life in all good con­science (2 Timothy 1:3, Acts 23:1). While per­se­cut­ing the Chris­ti­ans, he had thought he was offer­ing ser­vice to God, but later recog­nized his spir­itu­al blindness.

The Chris­ti­ans were fiercely opposed by the Jews from the begin­ning. The belief in Jesus Christ as the Mes­si­ah could not have sur­vived in a Jew­ish envir­on­ment without being anchored in the his­tor­ic­al facts of Jesus’ life and min­istry. The hypo­theses that the New Test­a­ment was fals­i­fied do not bear up against the his­tor­ic­al facts nor are they logic­al in them­selves. No reas­on­able motive of the fals­i­fi­er can be named. The cul­prit would not have been able to go after his selfish aims such as gain­ing spe­cial priv­ileges, since he must have felt obliged to fol­low Jesus’ teach­ing of strictly renoun­cing all egot­ism, riches, hon­our and pride. He must have been aware that the fol­low­ing state­ment, where Paul declared him­self to be a ser­vant, would have to apply to him­self as well:

For what we pro­claim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your ser­vants for Jesus’ sake. (2. Cor­inthi­ans 4:5)

1.5 The Teach­ing of the Trin­ity Can­not Have Been Invented

The teach­ing of the Trin­ity is one of the new rev­el­a­tions about God’s nature pro­claimed by Jesus, even though he him­self did not use this term. It does not oppose Jew­ish mono­the­ism but speaks of one God as Fath­er, Son and Holy Spirit—one God in three persons.

Through­out their his­tory, the Jews had to defend their belief in Yah­weh as the only exist­ing God and Cre­at­or of the Uni­verse against the influ­ence of oth­er nations. This belief played and still plays a cent­ral role in their lives. They con­sidered every attempt to tamper with this belief a sacrilege.

On the sur­face it could seem that the teach­ing of the Trin­ity is an attack on this belief. The vehe­mence with which the Jew­ish reli­gious lead­ers rejec­ted Jesus makes this obvi­ous. If the occupy­ing Roman forces had per­mit­ted it, the Jews would have taken it into their own hands to carry out the death pen­alty, because he claimed to be divine and thus, in their eyes, was blas­phem­ing God. The teach­ing of the Trin­ity is not simply a fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Jew­ish faith; it presents a com­pletely new and addi­tion­al rev­el­a­tion to the Jew­ish faith.

The most renowned schol­ars through­out the cen­tur­ies have been engaged in accur­ately for­mu­lat­ing this doc­trine and under­stand­ing its depth. Obvi­ously, the abil­ity to com­pre­hend the Trin­ity is lim­ited by the capa­city of the human mind. This shows the out­stand­ing intel­lect the one who first announced this teach­ing must have had. This also shows that the opin­ion that Jesus’ dis­ciples made up the teach­ing of the Trin­ity in order to por­tray their mas­ter in a spe­cial way is simply unten­able. This teach­ing was not gen­er­ally dis­missed as com­plete non­sense either. On the con­trary, the depth of the under­stand­ing of God’s being which Jesus’ words reflect has often aroused amazement. The author­ity and per­suas­ive­ness with which Jesus taught and spoke of God is unequalled.

2 The New Test­a­ment Is Trust­worthy Because Jesus Is Trustworthy

2.1 The Life of Jesus Con­firms His Words

What a teach­er teaches is reli­able only if he lives accord­ing to his mes­sage. The eye­wit­nesses of Jesus Christ attested his fault­less life. His adversar­ies, whose influ­ence and hon­our among the Jews began to wane, were not able to accuse him of any trans­gres­sion against the law of Moses, which was bind­ing for the Jews, or of any sin. They repeatedly tried to lead him into mak­ing some false or con­tra­dict­ory claims through their cun­ning ques­tions. How­ever, they failed des­pite all their soph­ist­ic­a­tion. Rather they were chal­lenged through Jesus’ answers. He kept the whole of Israel on their toes. Even the polit­ic­al lead­ers like the Jew­ish ruler Herod Anti­pas and the Roman gov­ernor Pon­ti­us Pil­ate had to con­cern them­selves with him. There­fore we may cer­tainly expect the Jews who rejec­ted Jesus and wanted to dis­cred­it him to gladly denounce him for any of his wrong moves openly. But that did not happen.

Jesus did not merely call people to obed­i­ence; he him­self led his dis­ciples as an excel­lent example. As for liv­ing a mod­est and self-controlled life, he applied the same stand­ard to him­self as he did to oth­ers. Much to their sur­prise, Jesus washed his dis­ciples’ feet, which was con­sidered the work of a slave. He did this in order to set an example of a serving atti­tude for them. His dis­ciples were with him daily for more or less two and a half years and were often put to shame by his love. Jesus’ way of life along with his words con­victed them then, and still does the same today.

2.2 Jesus Per­formed Mir­acles and Healings

Jesus became known first of all for his mir­acles and heal­ings. Accord­ing to the Gos­pels he healed the sick, the lepers and the lame, gave the blind sight, lib­er­ated the pos­sessed, and raised the dead. This has nev­er happened before. Even the Jews who were hos­tile towards him did not deny this. This is attested by a state­ment found in the Baby­lo­ni­an Talmud:^[2]

On the eve of the Pas­sov­er Yeshu (Jesus) was hanged…because he prac­tised sor­cery and enticed Israel to apostasy.

These mir­acles can­not be denied, since some oth­er explan­a­tions would be needed for them. Did Jesus per­form magic then?

Jesus’ adversar­ies sup­posed that he used tricks and they tried to expose him as a deceiver.

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth…[Jesus] made mud with the saliva. Then he anoin­ted the man’s eyes with the mud…[the blind man] went and washed and came back see­ing. The neigh­bours and those who had seen him before as a beg­gar were say­ing, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some said, “It is he.” Oth­ers said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept say­ing, “I am the man.” …They brought to the Phar­isees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sab­bath day…. The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the par­ents of the man…His par­ents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind.” …So for the second time they called the man who had been blind…. He answered them, “I have told you already…. Why do you want to hear it again?” And they reviled him…. (John 9:1–28)

The way Jesus healed the man born blind was utterly pro­voc­at­ive because he had made mud with his saliva and soil taken from the ground. Accord­ing to the tra­di­tion of the Phar­isees and the scribes, it was for­bid­den to carry out any unne­ces­sary activ­ity on Sab­bath. Human tra­di­tions were not import­ant for Jesus, but the need of the people was. Since it involved a man blind from birth, the Phar­isees were not able to argue that his sight was prob­ably restored by chance just as it was lost. They had to resort to refut­ing Jesus by accus­ing him of using two men who looked alike. The whole situ­ation shows that the Phar­isees were relent­lessly try­ing to dis­pel the slight­est doubts in them­selves that this man was a dif­fer­ent one and not the one born blind. Although all things indic­ated a mira­cu­lous heal­ing, they refused to acknow­ledge it. If they had uncovered a decep­tion, all of Jesus’ dis­ciples would have had left him and these stor­ies would not have been passed on to us.

2.3 Jesus’ Resur­rec­tion Was Not Made Up

The mir­acle most doubted by many is the unique mir­acle of the resur­rec­tion of Jesus—nothing com­par­able is report­able about any­one else. As men­tioned above in sec­tion 1.4, a falsi­fic­a­tion by Jesus’ dis­ciples can be ruled out because their Lord’s resur­rec­tion came as a sur­prise even to them and no reas­on­able motive can be found for hav­ing inven­ted the story.

After the shame­ful death of Jesus, his dis­ciples were in des­pair. They had expec­ted an earthly mes­si­an­ic king who would lead the Jew­ish people to repent­ance and oppose the god­less Gen­tiles. In this situ­ation, there was no sign of the bold­ness and con­vic­tion with which these men who had simple pro­fes­sions (e.g. fish­er­men), later on pro­claimed the Gos­pel even to the lead­ing Jews (Acts 5:27–33). They were so afraid of the Jews that they stayed behind locked doors (John 20:19). When Mary Mag­dalene told them about Jesus’ appear­ance, they did not believe her (Mark 16:9–11) but con­sidered it a silly joke (Luke 24:11). When Jesus appeared to some of the apostles for the first time, they thought they had seen a ghost (Luke 24:37). Thomas, one of the twelve apostles, who was not present then, did not believe even his closest friends, but was con­vinced of it only after see­ing Jesus with his own eyes (John 20:24–29).

Some sup­pose that there is an intel­li­gent fals­i­fi­er behind all this, who intends to present a real­ist­ic and his­tor­ic­ally cor­rect story. Such a per­son would remove any cause for dubi­ous­ness among his read­ers. This is why it is an indic­a­tion for a his­tor­i­an that a text has been fals­i­fied if he finds any har­mon­iz­a­tion. But this is just what we do not find in the four Gos­pels. The man­ner in which the resur­rec­ted Jesus appeared is not presen­ted in an identic­al way in the Gos­pels. We even find some incon­gru­ous state­ments. Luke writes that Jesus appeared to two of his dis­ciples on their way to Emmaus which they gladly repor­ted to the apostles in Jer­u­s­alem (Luke 24:33–34). The apostles believed them. On the oth­er hand, Mark reports that they did not believe them (Mark 16:12–13). Here, Luke, who gave an account of the mat­ter in detail, was right. Mark men­tioned this event with just one sen­tence; he prob­ably did not have details about it. An accom­plished fals­i­fi­er would nev­er allow such a mis­take to slip in. This rather shows how con­scien­tiously the authors wrote down their own exper­i­ence with Jesus as well as the reports of oth­er eye­wit­nesses to the best of their knowledge.

There were still many eye­wit­nesses alive dur­ing the time when the Gos­pels were writ­ten down. For the Jews who rejec­ted Jesus and Chris­tian­ity, noth­ing would have been easi­er to do against the Chris­ti­ans than to refute Jesus’ resur­rec­tion. Should they have suc­ceeded, the belief in a resur­rec­ted Christ would nev­er have persisted.

A fals­i­fi­er wants to per­suade his read­ers, and delib­er­ately looks for ways to reach his aim. He will use clear and under­stand­able argu­ments. Now accord­ing to the Gos­pels Jesus first appeared to a woman called Mary Mag­dalene (Mark 16:9 and John 20:14). She had formerly been demon-possessed and had been healed only through Jesus, which makes her any­thing but a reli­able wit­ness for out­siders. Women were not coun­ted as wit­nesses among the Jews, only men were. Even to this day women are not accep­ted as wit­nesses in rab­bin­ic court cases in ortho­dox Juda­ism. Addi­tion­ally, the Gos­pels were writ­ten primar­ily to the Jews. To believe that a fals­i­fi­er would make up a story in which the resur­rec­ted one first appears to a woman requires a great deal of fantasy.

3 The Reli­ab­il­ity of the New Test­a­ment Transmission

3.1 The Oral Tradition

A decis­ive factor for Jesus’ words and deeds to be reli­ably passed down orally is the abil­ity of his dis­ciples to remem­ber them exactly. As chil­dren of this age, we can hardly ima­gine being able to mem­or­ize long speeches or texts. Through media such as books, TV and com­puters we have become so used to hav­ing inform­a­tion at our fin­ger­tips that we are no longer depend­ent on our memor­ies. But the human memory is cap­able of remark­able things. One example is the following:

The volume of the tra­di­tion of Irish bards today may eas­ily amount to over 100,000 words. In con­trast the Gos­pel of Mark only has about 11,000 words.^[3]

Jesus’ dis­ciples entirely changed their lives because of his min­istry. He became the centre of all their actions. This res­ul­ted in a great desire to remem­ber all his words and deeds and to accur­ately pass them on. People are able to remem­ber things espe­cially when they are inter­ested in and pay close atten­tion to them.

For about two and a half years his dis­ciples were with Jesus (whom they called teach­er, e.g. Mark 10:35) almost every day. Since they were taught by him and were always present while he was speak­ing to the people, they were able to nat­ur­ally com­mit his mes­sage to memory. They were used to repeat­ing and mem­or­iz­ing things in their homes, syn­agogues and schools. This enabled them to reli­ably pre­serve things trans­mit­ted orally. Dur­ing Jesus’ life­time they had already been sent out to pro­claim the advent of the king­dom of God (Luke 10:1–12). Even at this early stage they had to apply what they learned from their teach­er. All this helped them later on to pro­claim Jesus in a reli­able and trust­worthy manner.

3.2 The Writ­ten Tradition

All the writ­ings of the New Test­a­ment were com­posed before the destruc­tion of Jer­u­s­alem by the Romans in AD 70. With Jesus being cru­ci­fied in AD 30, the timespan for its com­pos­i­tion was only 40 years. Though it began by oral trans­mis­sion, the Chris­ti­ans soon star­ted to pass on the mes­sage in writ­ten form as well. This shows the inten­tion of the first Chris­ti­ans to pre­serve the true account of the events about Jesus for those com­ing after them.

We may assume that the people who copied the New Test­a­ment in the fol­low­ing cen­tur­ies were just as dili­gent in cor­rectly passing on the tra­di­tion with fidel­ity. The Bible, and here espe­cially the New Test­a­ment, was and still is the sole bind­ing found­a­tion of the Chris­ti­an faith.

The old­est extant manu­script was found in Egypt around 1920: Papyr­us 52 (P52), which con­tains sev­er­al verses of John’s Gos­pel and was pro­duced about AD 125. A whole array of papyri were pro­duced in the 2nd and 3rd cen­tur­ies, which already con­tain a large part of the New Test­a­ment. Papyr­us was a kind of writ­ing mater­i­al that was pro­duced from the fibres of the papyr­us plant, which grew in the Nile Delta of Egypt.

The old­est uncial manu­scripts, which were entirely writ­ten in Greek upper case let­ters, date back to the fourth cen­tury AD, and con­tain all the scrip­tures of the New Test­a­ment. They were writ­ten on parch­ment, a mater­i­al made of anim­al skin. The most fam­ous of these are Codex Vat­ic­anus, Sinait­i­c­us, Eph­ar­aemi Rescrip­tus and Alexandrinus.

Around 800 AD a new script was developed which rather used curs­ive lower case let­ters. This was called the minus­cule script. The so-called lec­tion­ar­ies are litur­gic­al books that con­tained the texts of the New Test­a­ment in the sequence in which they should be read accord­ing to the litur­gic­al calendar.

The papyri, uncials and minus­cules were not stored in one com­mon place–this would have made it easy to manip­u­late the text. On the con­trary they were copied and used in very dif­fer­ent places of the whole Medi­ter­ranean region. Sim­il­arly, the his­tor­ic­al back­ground of how import­ant manu­scripts were found shows that a delib­er­ate modi­fic­a­tion of the text with the aim of elim­in­at­ing any incon­sist­en­cies is incon­ceiv­able. For example, the Ger­man theo­lo­gian Kon­stantin von Tischen­dorf dis­covered the very old Codex Sinait­i­c­us, one of the most import­ant manu­scripts of the New Test­a­ment, in the lib­rary at Saint Cath­er­ine’s Mon­as­tery (Sinai Pen­in­sula) although the loc­al monks had not been aware of its exist­ence before­hand. This does not sup­port the hypo­thes­is of a planned manip­u­la­tion, espe­cially when con­sid­er­ing that this Codex has become one of the main sources of the New Test­a­ment text.

The fol­low­ing table^[4] gives us an over­view of the Greek manu­scripts of the New Test­a­ment. Note that more than 19,000 oth­er manu­scripts con­tain­ing trans­la­tions into oth­er lan­guages are not included here.

The sig­ni­fic­ance of these abund­ant manu­script find­ings can be best recog­nized through a com­par­is­on with oth­er ancient texts. The fol­low­ing com­pil­a­tion^[5] impress­ively con­trasts the New Test­a­ment and oth­er clas­sic­al works.

Bruce Met­zger, the chair­man of the Revised Stand­ard Ver­sion com­mit­tee and co-editor of the Nestle-Aland Novum Test­a­mentum Graece (a Greek edi­tion of the New Test­a­ment) com­pared the New Test­a­ment with Ili­ad, which is second only to the New Test­a­ment with regard to transmission:

“The quant­ity of New Test­a­ment mater­i­al is almost embar­rass­ing in com­par­is­on with oth­er works of antiquity”, he said. Next to the New Test­a­ment, the greatest amount of manu­script testi­mony is of Homer­’s Ili­ad, which was the bible of the ancient Greeks. There are few­er than 650 Greek manu­scripts of it today. Some are quite frag­ment­ary. They come down to us from the second and third cen­tury AD and fol­low­ing. When you con­sider that Homer com­posed his epic about 800 BC, you can see there’s a very lengthy gap.^[6]

We should also note here that there is no vari­ation in the manu­script text from dif­fer­ent times. After 40 years of research, Pro­fess­or Kurt Aland, one of the most reput­able New Test­a­ment tex­tu­al crit­ics and the edit­or of the Nestle/Aland Novum Test­a­mentum Graece, ascer­tained the following:

The trans­mis­sion of the New Test­a­ment text is out­stand­ing, bet­ter than that of any oth­er writ­ings of antiquity. The chance of find­ing manu­scripts that essen­tially change its text is equal to zero.^[7]

We as Chris­ti­ans are very grate­ful that we have such reli­able inform­a­tion about Jesus and the first Chris­ti­ans. The diversity of testi­mon­ies attest­ing the cred­ib­il­ity of the New Test­a­ment, both in regard to its com­pos­i­tion and to its trans­mis­sion, encour­ages us to deal with the Word of God with con­stant enthu­si­asm. We would also like to invite you to read the Bible in order to get to know Jesus.

If you would like to get to know our lives as Chris­ti­ans and to test if what we say is reli­able, feel free to con­tact us. We look for­ward to hear­ing from you.

Inform­a­tion about ancient manu­scripts and links to some photos