On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision

by William Lane Craig

5. The gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability.

No modern scholar thinks of the gospels as bald-faced lies, the result of a massive conspiracy.

Rather ever since the nineteenth century, skeptical scholars have explained away the gospels as legends.

the time gap between Jesus’ death and the writing of the gospels is just too short for this to have happened.

the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after Alexander’s death, and yet classical historians still consider them to be trustworthy.

According to Sherwin-White, the writings of Herodotus enable us to determine the rate at which legend accumulates, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts.

All historians agree that the gospels were written down and circulated during the first generation after the events, while the eyewitnesses were still alive.

In fact, adding a time gap of two generations to Jesus’ death in AD 30 lands you in the second century, when the apocryphal gospels first begin to appear.

This point becomes even more devastating for skepticism when we realize that the gospels themselves use sources that go back even closer to events of Jesus’ life.

Rudolf Pesch, a German expert on Mark, says the passion source must go back to at least AD 37. That’s just seven years after Jesus’ death.

Paul’s letters were written even before the gospels, and some of his information, for example, what he passes on in his first letter to the Corinthian church about Jesus’ resurrection appearances, has been dated to within five years after Jesus’ death.

Luke is the gospel author who writes most self-consciously as a historian. In the preface to his work he writes: Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. (Luke 1:1–4 RSV) This preface is written in classical Greek such as the great Greek historians used; after this Luke switches to a more common Greek. But he has put his reader on alert that he can write, if he wants to, like the learned historian.

There’s no avoiding the conclusion that Luke-Acts was written by a traveling companion of Paul who had the opportunity to interview eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life while in Jerusalem. So who were some of these eyewitnesses? Perhaps we can get some clue by subtracting from the Gospel of Luke everything found in the other gospels and seeing what is unique to Luke. When you do this, what you discover is that many of Luke’s unique narratives are connected to women who followed Jesus: people like Joanna and Susanna, and, significantly, Mary, Jesus’ mother.

Professor Sherwin-White, “The confirmation of historicity in Acts is overwhelming. Any attempt to reject its historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd.”[5]

The judgment of Sir William Ramsey, a world-famous archaeologist, still stands: “Luke is a historian of the first rank.… This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”[6]

On the basis of the five reasons I listed, I personally think that we should assume the historical reliability of what the gospels say about Jesus unless they are proven to be wrong. But in any case, at the very least, we cannot assume they are wrong until proven right. We should at least adopt a position of neutrality.

Now if we do adopt a position of neutrality when approaching the gospels, how do we move beyond neutrality to the affirmation that some event is actually historical? Scholars have developed a number of so-called “criteria of authenticity” to enable us to do that.

What are some of these signs of historical authenticity? Here’s a list of some of the most important: 1. Historical fit: The incident fits in with known historical facts of the time and place. 2. Independent, early sources: The incident is related in multiple sources, which are near to the time when the incident is said to have occurred and which don’t rely on each other or on a common source. 3. Embarrassment: The incident is awkward or counterproductive for the early Christian church. 4. Dissimilarity: The incident is unlike earlier Jewish ideas and/or unlike later Christian ideas. 5. Semitisms: Traces of Hebrew or Aramaic language (spoken by Jesus’ countrymen) appear in the story. 6. Coherence: The incident fits in with facts already established about Jesus.

Notice a couple of things about these “criteria.” First, they’re all positive signs of historical credibility. Therefore, they can only be used to establish the historicity of some incident, not to deny it. If a story is not embarrassing or dissimilar or found in independent early sources, that obviously doesn’t mean that the incident isn’t historical.

If we adopt a position of neutrality in approaching the gospels, then the failure to prove an incident is historical just leaves you in a position of neutrality. You just don’t know whether it’s historical or not.

Second, the criteria don’t presuppose the general reliability of the gospels. The criteria apply to specific incidents, not to a whole book.

in order to defend the historical credibility of some event in the life of Jesus, say, His burial, you don’t need to defend the historical credibility of other events like His birth in Bethlehem, His feeding the five thousand, His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and so on.

We know from Paul’s letters that within twenty years of Jesus’ death Jesus was regarded and worshipped by his contemporaries as God incarnate (Phil. 2:5–7). It’s inexplicable how monotheistic Jews could have attributed divinity to a man they had accompanied during his lifetime if he never claimed any such things himself.

Independent sources testify that the plaque nailed to the cross over Jesus’ head recording the charge against Him read, “The King of the Jews” (Mark 15:26; John 19:19). The criterion of dissimilarity also supports the authenticity of the charge, for “the King of the Jews” was never a title used for Jesus by the early church. Historical scholars see this charge against Jesus as so firmly established that it is historical bedrock.

(Mark 12:1–9) Even skeptical scholars recognize the authenticity of this parable, since it’s also found in one of their favorite sources, the Gospel of Thomas (65), and so is by their reckoning independently confirmed. Moreover, the parable not only reflects the actual experience of absentee landowners in the ancient world but also employs typical images and themes found in Jewish parables: Israel as a vineyard, God as the owner, unworthy rebellious tenants, the figure of a son, and so on, so that it fits well within a Jewish context. The parable also contains interpretative nuances rooted in the Aramaic paraphrases of Isaiah 5, which were in use in Jesus’ day. There are, furthermore, aspects of the parable that make it unlikely that the parable originated later in the Christian church. For example, the concern in the parable over who should possess the vineyard after it’s taken away from the present tenants was a nonissue for the early Christians, since Rome destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70. And the absence of the resurrection of the slain son in the parable doesn’t fit well with the early Christians’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection.

although Gentile readers of the gospels would be apt to interpret the expression “Son of God” in terms of divine status, in a Jewish context this wasn’t the customary sense of the title. Jewish kings were referred to as God’s sons, and in Jewish literature a righteous man could be characterized as God’s child, having God as his father. Still, given the uniqueness and exclusivity of Jesus’ claim, such generic usage is really irrelevant. We’ve seen that Jesus thought of Himself as God’s Son in a singular sense that set Him apart from even the prophets who had gone before.

It’s very likely that Jesus claimed to be the Son of Man. This was Jesus’ favorite self-description and is the title found most frequently in the gospels (over eighty times). Yet remarkably, this title is found only once outside the gospels in the rest of the New Testament (Acts 7:56). That shows that the designation of Jesus as “the Son of Man” was not a title that arose in later Christianity and was then written back into the traditions about Jesus. On the basis of the criteria of independent sources and of dissimilarity, we can say with confidence that Jesus called Himself “the Son of Man.”

(Mark 14:60–64) Here in one fell swoop Jesus affirms that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, and the coming Son of Man. He compounds His crime by adding that He is to be seated at God’s right hand, a claim that is truly blasphemous in Jewish ears. The trial scene beautifully illustrates how in Jesus’ self-understanding all the diverse claims blend together, thereby taking on connotations that outstrip any single title taken out of context.

A Jewish rabbi’s typical style of teaching was to quote extensively from other learned teachers, who provided the basis of authority for his own teaching. But Jesus did exactly the opposite. He began, “You have heard that it was said to the men of old …” and quoted the law of Moses. Then he continued, “But I say to you …” and gave His own teaching. Jesus thus equated His own authority with that of the divinely given law. It’s no wonder that Matthew comments, “When Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:28–29 RSV).