Are the books of the bible reliable, or is their reliability just someone’s opinion? Is the oral tradition of the Church reliable, or is its reliability just someone’s opinion? Those are more relevant questions than the existence of some guy named Jesus about 2000 years ago.
Without the existence of “some guy named Jesus about 2000 years ago” the Scriptures are meaningless, seeing that Christ is the singular Word of Scripture. He is Scripture’s content and substance, and without Him the Scriptures are empty.
I would agree with you, however, that the historical reliability of the Bible, as well as the reliability of the Church’s oral tradition, are important questions that need to be answered.
In terms of a bibliographical test, the textual reliability of the New Testament, for example, is by far the greatest of any book of antiquity (their accuracy is 99.7%, the remaining .3% being variant readings which have no bearing upon any doctrinal content).
In terms of internal evidence, the New Testament exhibits the following:
1) GENRE: It asserts itself to be an authentic and accurate historical narrative
**2) CONSISTENCY AND CORROBORATION: **There is no proof that the N.T. documents are untruthful. Wherever apparent contradictions have appeared, harmonizations have been found. Furthermore, we ought not to bring preconceived ideas to a text which imply the source to be false, i.e., we ought to give the text the benefit of the doubt.
**3) RING OF TRUTH: **The text does not read like a propaganda piece, but rather as a realistic and plausible portrayal of human nature. For instance, the criterion of embarrassment (Peter denying Christ three times, harsh accusations against Jesus, and harsh accusations by Jesus [to Pharisees, etc.], the resurrection being first reported by women–whose testimony was not valid in a court of law). There is also nothing politically persuasive about the New Testament, seeing that Christ continually affirms His Kingdom not to be of this earth, and yet, Pilate had no power given him to crucify Christ than was given him by the Father.
**4) AUTHORITY OF WRITERS: **They were all able to record eye-witness testimony. For example, Matthew and John were eyewitnesses, Mark and Luke carefully interviewed eyewitnesses. Moreover, if the texts were inaccurate, people were around who had witnessed the events who could discredit them (how could Christianity flourish to the extent that it did if anyone could simply go to Christ’s tomb and see His dead body?). The New Testament documents were written before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. This was predicted by Jesus (Mark 13:2; Matthew 24:2; Luke 19:44; Luke 21:6).
**5) CHARACTER AND MOTIVATION OF WRITERS: **What did the writers have to gain by lying? They had nothing to gain and everything to lose by lying. Who in their right mind–and there are no good reasons to believe that the disciples of Jesus were insane–would defend what they know to be a lie with the high probability of being tortured to death? (11 of the 12 were executed; only 1 died a natural death). Furthermore, those who were Jews would think of themselves as risking damnation by opposing salvation by the Mosaic Law (e.g. Deut. 6:4 “God is one”).
6) INTERTEXTUAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN O.T. and N.T.: If the New Testament is reliable on independent grounds and quotes the Old Testament, there is reason to think that it is reliable. If O.T. makes predictions which are confirmed in the N.T., reason to think the O.T. is reliable. Jesus fulfilled a large number of specific prophecies, many of which he could not arrange, e.g. His place of birth, manner of death, etc.
In terms of external evidence, we have confirmations from Christian and non-Christian sources, fulfilled prophecy, and archaeology.
In other words, there are no good reasons to disbelieve in the reliability of the New Testament documents. This is not a matter of subjective opinion, but of
objective fact.
FCCopleston
that you would consider that statement as having a solid foundation in truth.