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February 13 - March 3, 2025
I expect to see the following characteristics in their statements:
THEIR STATEMENTS WILL BE PERSPECTIVAL
Each eyewitness will describe the event from his or her spatial and emotional perspective.
THEIR STATEMENTS WILL BE PERSONAL
Each eyewitness will describe the event in his or her own language, using his or her own expressions and terms.
THEIR STATEMENTS MAY CONTAIN AREAS OF AGREEMENT
Some aspects of each eyewitness statement may be completely identical.
LATER STATEMENTS MAY FILL IN THE GAPS
I expect late witnesses who are aware of prior statements to simply fill in what has not been said previously.
It turns out my expectations of true, reliable eyewitness accounts were met (at least preliminarily and superficially) by the Gospels. All four accounts were written from different perspectives containing unique details specific to the eyewitnesses. They can, howeve...
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put yourself in the shoes of the apostles as they witnessed the miracles and resurrection of Jesus. None of these eyewitnesses had ever seen anyone like Jesus before. He did more than teach them important lessons; He astonished the eyewitnesses with unique and personally powerful miracles.
The apostles only experienced one Jesus in their lifetime; they only observed one man perform miracles and rise from the dead. The resurrection, for example, was unique, unrepeated, and powerful. The gospel eyewitnesses observed several powerful and memorable events and provided us with distinctive, idiosyncratic, personal, and reliable accounts. We simply must take the time to understand the perspective and character of each eyewitness and then determine if the accounts are trustworthy, given the four criteria we have described (more in section 2).
we must remember an eyewitness account can be reliable despite apparent contradictions.
While we might complain about two differing accounts, we would be even more suspicious if there were absolutely no peculiarities or differences.
forensic statement analysis (FSA).
word examination is more an interpretive art than a hard science, but the more we understand the importance of words, the better we become at discerning their meanings. Remember, all of us choose the words we use, and we have lots of words to choose from. Our words eventually give us away.
Papias (ca. AD 70–163), an ancient bishop of Hierapolis
Irenaeus (ca. AD 115–ca. 202), a student of Ignatius and Polycarp (two students of the apostle John) and the eventual bishop of Lugdunum (now Lyon, France),
Justin Martyr (ca. AD 103–ca. 165), the famous early-church apologist from Rome,
Clement of Alexandria (ca. AD 150–ca. 215), the historic leader of the church in North Africa,
These early-church leaders and students of the apostles (from diverse geographic regions) were “closest to the action.” They repeatedly and uniformly claimed Mark’s gospel was a record of Peter’s eyewitness observations. But could a forensic statement analysis of the gospel of Mark verify these claims?
As I began to study Mark’s gospel forensically, I observed several interesting anomalies related to Peter. These peculiarities seemed reasonable if Peter was, in fact, Mark’s source for information. Let me share some of them with you.
MARK MENTIONED PETER WITH PROMINENCE
MARK IDENTIFIED PETER WITH THE MOST FAMILIARITY
Mark is the only writer who refused to use the term “Simon Peter” when describing Peter (he used either “Simon” or “Peter”).
MARK USED PETER AS A SET OF “BOOKENDS”
MARK PAID PETER THE UTMOST RESPECT
Mark also seemed to respect Peter more than any other gospel writer did; he repeatedly painted Peter in the kindest possible way, even when Peter made a fool of himself.
MARK INCLUDED DETAILS BEST ATTRIBUTED TO PETER
Mark alone included several seemingly unimportant details pointing to Peter’s involvement in the shaping of the text.
MARK USED PETER’S ROUGH OUTLINE
Many scholars also observe Peter’s preaching style
consistently seems to omit details of Jesus’s private life. When Peter talked about Jesus, he limited his descriptions to Jesus’s public life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Mark also followed this rough outline, omitting the birth narrative and other d...
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It’s been fashionable recently to question the authenticity of the Gospels and the claims of the early-church fathers related to their authorship.
The forensic internal evidence of language can help us to verify the claims of the early church related to these texts.
While it’s been popular in the twenty-first century to try to cast doubt on what was so certain to those in the first and second centuries, thoughtful consideration of the words themselves will verify many of the claims of the early-church leaders.
read the Gospels for yourself and examine every word. Each of us has the obligation to do the heavy lifting for ourselves.
I’ve even known brothers and sisters in the faith who were hesitant to write on the pages of their Bibles
That's almost turning the Bible into an idol, the way the Muslims do.
it’s tempting for us to leave this kind of analysis to experts in the field. But you’ll be amazed at how rich and deep your faith will become after careful analysis and study. Some of us don’t think we have enough training or experience to examine the language of Scripture.
We all have enough expertise to begin to question the use of specific words and develop a richer understanding of the biblical text if only we will become interested readers of Scripture.
We can apply these principles as we examine the New Testament and evaluate questionable passages to determine if they are evidence or artifacts.
If we reject the entirety of Scripture simply because it contains artifacts of one kind or another, we had better be ready to reject the ancient writings of Plato, Herodotus, Euripides, Aristotle, and Homer as well.
The manuscripts for these texts are far less numerous, and they are far less reliable. If we apply the same standard of perfection some would demand of the Bible to other ancient histories, we would reject everything we thought we knew about the ancient past.
More importantly, it’s vital to recognize we possess a methodology to uncover the artifacts and separate them from the original text. The art of textual criticism allows us to compare manus...
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Textual criticism allows us to determine the nature of the original texts as we eliminate the textual artifacts. This should give us more confidence in what we read today, not less.
the presence of textual artifacts says nothing about the original text, and it’s this original autograph we have in view when we talk about inerrancy and infallibility in the first place.
God used humans to deliver His truth to His people. In the Old Testament, God used prophets to speak to the nation of Israel. In the New Testament, God used the apostolic eyewitnesses to testify of His Son.
Some Popular Conspiracy Theories
RULES FOR SUCCESSFUL CONSPIRACIES
Successful conspiracies share several common characteristics:
