J
josh987654321
Guest
There are many reasons to take the Gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as true. I have been reading a fantastic book atm called “Reason for Belief” by Timothy Keller, I would just like to paraphrase a small piece of it here for you.
The content is far too counterproductive for the Gospels to be Legends.
The working theory for many people today is that the Gospels were written by the leaders of the early church to promote their policies, consolidate their power, and build their movement. That theory does not fit at all with what we actually find in the Gospels.
If this view were correct, we would expect to see many places in the Gospels where Jesus takes sides in debates that were going on in the early Church. That is how (It’s reasoned) the Gospels were shaped by Christian leaders to support their party. But we don’t find this. We know, for example, that one of the great controversies in the earliest Church was that some believed that Gentile Christians should be circumcised. In light of that great conflict, it’s remarkable that nowhere in the Gospel accounts does Jesus say anything about circumcision. The most likely reason Jesus is silent about circumcision is that the early Church did not feel free to fabricate things and put words in Jesus’ mouth that he didn’t say.
Why would the leaders of the early Christian movement have made up the story of the crucifixion if it didn’t happen? Any listener of the Gospel in either Greek or Jewish culture would have automatically suspected that anyone who had been crucified was a criminal, regardless of what the speaker said to the contrary.
Why would any Christian make up the account of Jesus asking God in the garden of Gethsemane if he could get out of his mission? Or why ever make up the part on the cross when Jesus cries out that God had abandoned him? These things would have only offended or deeply confused first-century prospective converts. They would have concluded that Jesus was weak and failing his God.
Why invent women as the first witnesses of the resurrection in a society where women were assigned such low status that their testimony was not admissible evidence in court? It would have made far more sense (If you were inventing the tale) to have male pillars of the community present as witnesses when Jesus came out of the tomb. The only plausible reason that all of these incidents would have been included in these accounts is that they actually happened.
The timing is far too early for the Gospels to be Legends.
The canonical Gospels were written at the very most forty to sixty years after Jesus’ death. Paul’s letters, written just fifteen to twenty-five years after the death of Jesus, provide an outline of all the events of Jesus’ life found in the Gospels, his miracles, claims, crucifixion and resurrection.
This means that the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ life were circulating within the lifetimes of hundreds who had been present at the events of his ministry. The Gospel author Luke claims that he got his account of Jesus’ life from eyewitnesses who were still alive (Luke 1:1-4). At the time the Gospels were written there were still numerous well-known living eyewitnesses to Jesus’ teaching and life events.
They had committed them to memory and they remained active in the public life of the Churches throughout their lifetimes, serving as ongoing sources and guarantors of the truth of those accounts. The Gospel writers named their eyewitness sources within the text to assure readers of their accounts’ authenticity.
Mark, for example, says that the man who helped Jesus carry hiss cross to Calvary “was the father of Alexander and Rufus” (Mark 15:21). There is no reason for the author to include such names unless the readers know or could have access to them. Mark is saying, “Alexander and Rufus vouch for the truth I am telling you if you want to ask them.” Paul also appeals to readers to check with living eyewitnesses if they want to establish the truth of what he is saying about the events of Jesus’ life (1 Corinthians 15:1-6). Paul refers to a body of five hundred eyewitnesses who saw the risen Christ at once. You can’t write that in a document designed for public reading unless there really were surviving eyewitnesses whose testimony agreed and who could confirm what the author had said.
All this decisively refutes the idea that the gospels were anonymous, collective, evolving oral traditions. Instead they were oral histories taken down from the mouths of the living eyewitnesses who preserved the words and deeds of Jesus in great detail.
There is much more in Timothy Keller’s book “Reason for Belief” if you are interested, I have just paraphrased a very small section of it.
The Gospel writers went to great lengths to include the names of people, places and things in order to vouch for their authenticity, in nearly every teaching of Jesus there is record of a person or place. The History ties too well into the Gospel accounts for them to be legends or exaggerated/embellished events.
Even the teachings on the Eucharist, which they knew would be hard for people to accept. 59 He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. (John 6:59)
Thank you for reading
Josh
As Jesus said, “By their fruits you shall know them”.
…especially things like Chili and Spaghetti sauce. 