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"Can We Trust What is Written in the Gospels?"
Pastor Mike Anderson
Sunday, August 12, 2007 - GSLC-North
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Today's sermon is a nice segue from last Sunday's topic regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls gave ample evidence that the Old Testament text, which we read today in our Christian bible, has been faithfully transmitted over the past 20 centuries. In summary the Dead Sea Scrolls, which contained ancient manuscripts from every Old Testament book except Esther, validated the 10th century Masoretic text, which for many centuries was the authoritative manuscript used for these texts. Can I just say I have had a blast learning about this stuff!!! Wow!
Today our question moves to the New Testament reliability and specifically the question, "How Can We Trust What is Written in the Gospels". With the recent popularity of books/movies like the "Da Vinci Code" and a revived interest in other gospels often called "Gnostic Gospels", this topic has become relevant again.
Basically the thrust of this book and movie, though the author uses a supposed fiction format to represent his views, is that there were many gospels in circulation and the Catholic church in an effort to suppress ideas narrowed the number of gospels down to four. The reason given was that these gospels were convenient for the ruling authorities, at a time in the 4th century when Christianity was the official religion of the ruling empire.
According to Pastor Mark Roberts our neighboring pastor at Irvine Pres, who by the way has written an outstanding book, "Can We Trust the Gospels: Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John" which is getting critical acclaim from a wide array of folks in the Christian world. I've read parts of it and it is excellent!
Pastor Mark answers the question, "Do the gospels bear any resemblance to what the original writers actually penned almost 2,000 years ago?" by saying, "It is common for people these days to answer "no" to this question. Critics of Christianity often allege that the Gospels as we know them don't resemble the originals. This criticism appears for example on the lips of Sir Leigh Teabing, a fictional character in the Da Vinci code. Teabing reveals the true nature of the bible in this way..
"The bible is a product of man…. Not of God! The bible did not magically fall from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book." (Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, p. 231)
Pastor Roberts acknowledges that yes the bible did not magically fall into our hands from God. It is written by human authors, but yet inspired by God. As yes these authors lived in a specific historic time and these writings pertained to this context, and yet the primary purpose of this book, called "the Bible", is to communicate God's deep love for human beings through the sending of His Son. So although the bible writes from a historical time period and acknowledges historical events, its primary purpose is to help people to see God's unfailing love for them.
Let's get back to our point at hand. Probably the most convincing evidence for the Gospels' trustworthiness and reliability are the sheer number of manuscripts that have been found supporting the original texts within a 99% agreement.
Given 20 centuries of copying and scribing, that, in and of itself, is seemingly an act of God. According to another article I read by Jim Hernst,
"You might be surprised to know that there are more than 5,300 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. If we add over 10,000 manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate and at least 9,300 other early versions, then we have more than 24,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament. No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers and attestation. In comparison, Homer's Iliad comes second, with only 643 surviving manuscripts. Even then, the first complete preserved text of Homer dates from the 13th century AD.
Why is the number of manuscripts so important? Well with more evidence that is saying the same thing it is hard to think that this is something of fiction or the stuff of legend. Consider this analogy given by Hans Winjsgaards in 1985
"Imagine that a wealthy banker in Singapore wrote a last will describing how his property should be divided after fifty years. Imagine that he had five children, each of whom made a copy of this will and had it with him while migrating to different parts of the world - London, Cape Town, Los Angeles, Sydney and Rio de Janeiro. Each of these children again had five children who all made copies of the document possessed by their parents. Again, they too had five children each, who in turn made copies of the document. Now even supposing that the original will of their great-grandfather in Singapore was lost by a comparison of the many copies that had been made in so many different places the original text could with certainty be established. If any of the children or grandchildren had tried to change the text his deception would immediately be exposed by its deviation from what the other copies showed. In the same way, any attempt at falsifying the Gospel text would immediately show up in its discrepancy from the many thousands of manuscripts that retain independent copies."
This analogy is referring to the four major parts of the world our NT manuscripts come from. As small variants came into the text as they were copied over and over, it became clear that there were four major streams called the Alexandrian, Caesarian, Western and Antiochan. These represented four major incipient areas of the Christian community and known world at that time being, Egypt, Caesarea, Rome and Syria.
The bottom line is that the sheer number of translations we have that are with 99% similarity give evidence that our current translations reflect the original writings. Suffice it to say with all of this evidence if a substantial change were made in a text it would easily and quickly be made manifest in comparison to the other texts.
The other most compelling argument for the authenticity, reliability and trustworthiness of our Gospel is that the fact that they were written so closely to the events as they happened. Although dating is hotly debated most would agree that Mark (the shortest gospel) is the earliest gospel, written somewhere between 60-70 AD. Matthew and Luke, which share a lot of common material, are most likely written between 70-80 A.D. These three together form what they call the "synoptic gospels", because "synoptic" infers, seen with the same eye. Basically this is the same story told with different nuances for different audiences.
Clearly Luke states his purpose in the beginning of his gospel when he states, "Many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word , and after investigating everything carefully from the very first" has decided likewise to compose an orderly account for Theophilus.")
Clearly Luke was not trying to preserve a sentimental story, but he was writing a historical firsthand eyewitness account for possibly a high ranking Roman official named Theophilus. Matthew's account starts with a genealogy of Jesus, which displays his desire to show his Jewish audience that indeed Jesus is the Messiah they had been looking for based on the Old Testament prophecies.
The final gospel of John many believe is written toward the end of 1st century. John's gospel is the mostly made up of stories of Jesus and the signs he produced to show He was the Word made flesh. John's gospel is the most theological and evangelical of the four and the one many pastors recommend to a person start reading the bible.
So these original manuscripts were written within 30 to 50 years after the events took place. Why is that so important? Well if someone were alive that knew these events were not true these writings would have never survived, let alone get copied over 20,000 times over the next 20 centuries.
We also know that there were manuscripts that back up these original texts that date as early as 125 AD, specifically in the book of John. By the end 2nd century, states Pastor Roberts in his book, there are significant parts of all four gospels. That may seem like a long gap but there are no other documents in history with such close extant manuscript back up to the autographs.
Also remember that these early texts were written on papyrus, which were cheap to obtain, but didn't have a long shelf life, hence the need to continue to make copies as these manuscripts wore out. Later copiers were able to use animal skins to create parchment, which could create long scrolls where longer amounts of text could be held for longer periods of time. Thus, as we move into the third century and beyond, we find the Cdex Sinaiticus, which was found in the fourth century and contained the entire New Testament and most of the Greek Old Testament.
If you compare these findings related to the Gospels with other ancient writings of Roman and Jewish historians, most of these are not attested to until the 10th and century and beyond. Thus on the antiquity scale the bible receives a top score.
So when one uses all the methods to measure from a scientific and textual critical standpoint if we can trust the Gospel, the bible is unrivaled in evidence that what we now read today is the exact same story that people have heard for the past 2,000 years.
When you consider all the evidence you can see God's hand on the process ensuring that the message about the greatest person who ever lived would be passed on to every person in every generation. As Christians we never have to be ashamed to say that what we believe in is based on something that really happened in history and we have plenty of evidence to back that up. We have more evidence backing up the bible's story of God reconciling Himself to all humankind than any other historical claim.
And most importantly we have eyewitnesses who lived alongside Jesus, heard his teachings, saw his miracles and were the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection. It is this central historical fact of the bible that these books testify to. So my friends there are reasons to believe. But probably the best proof is for you to experience the truth of the gospel in your own life. For even if you have all the evidence in the world, it does not replace the need for faith. As you step out in faith you will experience and say with the thousands of witnesses that have gone before you…"He is Risen, He is Risen Indeed!!!"
Amen.