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Faith is seen as a nonrational belief—something not based on evidence. However, that is not what faith originally meant for Christians. Coming from the Latin word fides, the word faith used to mean something closer to our word trust. Trust, of course, can be based on evidence.
It is hardly surprising that Christian texts are our main source of information about the origins of Christianity. Most books on archery, baseball, or cooking are by enthusiasts of those activities. Christians were the most enthusiastic about Christianity and naturally wrote more about it. The four Gospels were, of course, written by advocates of belief in Jesus as the promised deliverer. They may therefore be said to be biased, in the sense that they are not impartial records but ones aiming to foster belief in Jesus Christ.
The rapid spread of Christianity may have relevance for investigating the reliability of the Gospels. Surely, the more widespread Christianity became, the harder it would have been for anyone to change its message and beliefs.
If they confessed it I repeated the question a second and a third time, adding the threat of capital punishment. If they still persevered, I ordered them to be led off to execution. For whatever the nature of their belief might be, I could at least feel no doubt that stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy deserved punishment.
pliny about dealing with Christians
When they are denounced and found guilty they must be punished; with the restriction, however, that when an individual denies that he is a Christian, and gives proof of it, i.e. by adoring our gods, he shall be pardoned on the ground of repentance, even though he may have formerly incurred suspicion.
So, as far as the emperor understood Christianity, he presumed that Christ was effectively the deity of the early Christians.
As we will see in a moment, the oldest and best sources we have for knowing about the life of Jesus . . . are the four Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This is not simply the view of Christian historians who have a high opinion of the New Testament and its historical worth; it is the view of all serious historians of antiquity of every kind, from committed evangelical Christians to hardcore atheists.
The Chester Beatty Library in Dublin houses a manuscript called Papyrus 45, which contains the four Gospels and the book of Acts. This manuscript was produced in southern Egypt, probably in the first half of the third century.
In his age, Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) was reputedly the world’s most learned man, and in 1516 he produced the first published and printed edition of the New Testament in Greek.
Erasmus’s editions of the Greek New Testament became the basis for other editions, and the one by the Parisian printer Robert Estienne (Stephanus) in 1551 is justly famous for introducing verse numbers.
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”2 Miracles are impossible, so the argument goes. Therefore, historical reconstructions without miracles, however improbable they may seem, must be correct.
When most self-designating skeptics accept the belief that life first arose from nonliving matter or that consciousness arose from nonconsciousness by purely material means, with no supernatural superintendence, they hold that these positions need only to reach the normal bar of evidence, not some extraordinarily high bar of evidence.
further objection to miracles is that they disrupt the orderliness of scientific explanations, but this objection fails to recognize a regular feature of biblical miracles: they are presented not as random disturbances of an otherwise orderly universe but as events that actually form an orderly pattern pointing to God’s meaningful action in the world. Reports of miracles surrounding Jesus are not disruptions of order but signs pointing to who he is.
If someone is committed to a materialist atheist position on miracles, then no amount of evidence will be able to disturb this belief.
The resurrected Jesus is recorded as appearing in Judaea8 and in Galilee,9 in town10 and countryside,11 indoors12 and outdoors,13 in the morning14 and in the evening,15 by prior appointment16 and without prior appointment,17 close18 and distant,19 on a hill20 and by a lake,21 to groups of men22 and groups of women,23 to individuals24 and groups of up to five hundred,25 sitting,26 standing,27 walking,28 eating,29 and always talking.
If the picture of Jesus in the Gospels is basically true, it logically demands that we give up possession of our lives to serve Jesus Christ, who said repeatedly in every Gospel, “Follow me.”
