Are the Gospels Trustworthy?

What follows is an essay I wrote in May 2005 for my New Testament class.  I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Are the Gospel’s trustworthy?  I have a hard time imagining my grandmother ever worrying about this question.  As a little boy growing up in the farm country of Central PA, my Sunday morning activities were predestined from my birth.  The only way I was able to miss Church and Sunday school was if I was so sick that I could not get out of bed.  In those early years of Childhood, my church family was for the most part, my paternal family.  Except for a couple of families, my extended family inhabited this little church in the country.  My Aunts and Uncles taught Sunday school classes, played the piano and made up the leadership of the church.  The choir was a family portrait of brothers and cousins of all ages and sizes.  At the head of this group was my grandmother.  I can still see her in her prayer pose, her head bowed with her finger and thumb creating a rest for the bridge of her nose.   Did my grandmother ever wonder about the trustworthiness of the Gospel?  If he had at one time in her life, she never let it show to her grandchildren. 

As I have studied the Gospels over the past several years, the variety of criticisms used to study and break down the writing and try to get the most out of the teaching and events of Jesus life.  The trustworthiness of the Gospels is probably the most important question that a serious scholar of the New Testament must define.

The four Gospels found in the New Testament canon provide the majority of all we know about the earthly life of Jesus.[i]  There are other places where the person of Jesus is mentioned in a variety of writings.  But these writings provide little more than collaborative evidence that there was a Jewish teacher named Jesus who was executed by the Romans.  These writings include historians who found little of interest in the life of Jesus and mention him only in passing.  Writings of Jewish rabbis of the period also mention Jesus and the movement of his followers.  These writings suffer from the same criticisms as the Gospels.  They were written for the purpose of debunking the teachings and actions of Jesus.  A third source of writings outside the four gospels includes the Gnostic texts that were not included in the canon of the New Testament.  The Gospel of Thomas is perhaps the most famous of these texts.  Although this text includes some of the sayings of Jesus, they are questionable at best.  The fact that the early church did not include them in the canon of the New Testament must be weighed into the believability of these writings. [ii]

In the face of the lack of data on Jesus, efforts to explain aspects of Jesus life and teachings have created problems in the minds of scholars as to the trustworthiness of what data is available.

Perhaps the biggest problem facing scholars wishing to use modern historical methodologies to the Christian tradition is the Gospels themselves.  These four books are not historical biographies or chronicles.  Their purpose is not to record a historical record of all aspects of the life of Jesus.[iii]

The authors of these books wrote them with another purpose in mind; that those who read their work might believe in Jesus and be saved.  “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” (John 20:31 KJV)

Each of the Gospels paints a portrait of Jesus with distinct characteristics of his life and teachings highlighted.  Mark emphasizes putting faith into action.[iv]  Matthew concentrates on his relationship to the Jewish faith.[v]  Luke stresses the “divine plan of the whole of history”.[vi]  John draws a distinction between Christians and Jews and speaks to the concerns of second-generation believers. [vii] 

As Howard Marshall writes in Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible.  “It is not ‘pure’ history but ‘applied’ history.[viii]

A second major concern is the timing of the writings.  The Gospels were written at least thirty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  That created a long period of time for data to be lost and for interpretations of the events to be skewed.   This provides a great source of concern for twenty-first century historians who look for eyewitness accounts as the best source of accurately recording the chronology of events so that others in the future can interpret all aspects of the event in their time.

One must understand that the society of the early church was vastly different from the society of today. Memorization of scriptures could be fast becoming a lost art.  I know of few churches and fewer families that practice the art of memorization.  The oral tradition in the first century however was a serious matter.  Great pains were taken by student to memorize the sayings of a teacher.  This is particularly true in the Jewish tradition where rabbis were extremely careful to hand down oral material accurately.  Since Christianity is rooted in the Jewish tradition, we can safely assume that this oral tradition was the same.[ix]

The authors did not invent these writings.   Luke boasts of the research technique he used to compose as accurate writing as possible.  (Luke 1:1-4)  The Gospel writers had oral sources as well as written sources that are no longer available to us today.[x]

The questions raised by the variety of criticism methodologies are valuable in building an understanding of what one believes and why one believes it.  The evidence that is available to speak to these questions may not be enough to convince the staunchest scholar in the trustworthiness of the Gospel.  It may not even be enough to convince the lay historian who is looking for the evidences that meet the standards of historical authority today. 

But for the Christian, the criterion for belief is much different from that of scholarly endeavors.   Jesus tells Thomas that those who believe without seeing are blessed. (John 20:29)  There are lots of questions that I have that I know I will not find the answers to in books, historical records, or fact sheets.   If we could prove all that was written in the Bible concerning the Christ, we could believe based on our proof standards and would still lack faith.  Faith is the ability to believe in something that has no evidence.

Yes, it would be nice to have an answer for all those nagging questions that arise from the study of scripture through our current methodologies, but it wouldn’t change a thing in respect to my grandmother and her faith.  And I hope that it would not change my faith either.

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[i] Howard Marshall, The Gospels and Jesus Christ, Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible, edited by David Alexander and Pat Alexander, Lion Publishing, 1983, Page 468.

[ii] Howard Marshall, The Gospels and Jesus Christ, Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible, edited by David Alexander and Pat Alexander, Lion Publishing, 1983,  Page 469.

[iii] Gene Latowrelle and Rino Fisichella, Editors, Gospel, Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, Page 376.

[iv] John Drake, Introducing the New Testament, First Fortress Press, 2001, Page 199.

[v] Howard Marshall, The Gospels and Jesus Christ, Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible, edited by David Alexander and Pat Alexander, Lion Publishing, 1983, Page 470.

[vi] John Drake, Introducing the New Testament, First Fortress Press, 2001, Page 202.

[vii] John Drake, Introducing the New Testament, First Fortress Press, 2001, Page 215.

[viii] Howard Marshall, The Gospels and Jesus Christ, Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible, edited by David Alexander and Pat Alexander, Lion Publishing, 1983,  Page 469.

[ix] John Drake, Introducing the New Testament, First Fortress Press, 2001, Page 220.

[x] Howard Marshall, The Gospels and Jesus Christ, Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible, edited by David Alexander and Pat Alexander, Lion Publishing, 1983,  Page 469.