Why I Trust the Bible: Answers to Real Questions and Doubts People Have about the Bible

by William D. Mounce

While he was alive, Jesus was relatively unimportant. He was a Galilean from the unimportant town of Nazareth in the relatively unimportant country of Israel. He had no political power. In the decades following his life, the movement he started was viewed as a Jewish sect and not a religious movement in its own right. Ancient biographies and histories were not written about people like Jesus.

There is no hint in the New Testament that the Christian religion was based on ethical or spiritual principles. Instead, it was based on the person and work of a real human being. Ideas are not crucified, but people are.

“silly and nonsensical notion” that Christian writers cannot relate accurate history and that we should only accept evidence coming from non-Christian sources.20

Should we deny the evidence of the Holocaust that comes from modern Jewish writers? Certainly not.

Large world-changing movements do not arise out of thin air. The earliest disciples clearly believed Jesus lived and died and rose again.

An oral culture is a culture in which stories are learned and passed on primarily by word of mouth. People tend not to rely on written accounts. Because the United States and Western Europe are not oral cultures, many people in these cultures struggle to understand how facts can be reliably communicated orally. But there is ample evidence that people who do live in oral cultures are capable of seemingly near-impossible feats of memory and accuracy.

The biblical stories were relayed in communities (not one-to-one), and when the stories were shared in community, many people knew the stories and would correct mistakes relayed in the retelling. The people retelling the stories had a strong personal interest in the truthfulness of what they were saying, especially when persecution of the church increased.

It’s difficult for those from non-oral cultures to understand and accept how different that culture is. But for those versed in the study of orality, the ability of the human brain to remember accurately is an accepted fact.23