New Testament as Historical Reporting...

It is of note that in the Gospels we see that the apostles responded like any group of modern people—some believed their eyes and some didn’t. All the apostles ended up as great leaders in the church, but initially, some had difficulty believing.  In Matthew 28:17 we are told the apostles met the risen Jesus on a mountainside in Galilee. “When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.”  Clearly the apostles were not any more or less gullible than moderns.

In conclusion, here are at least three solid justifications for taking the New Testament as “gospel.”  Three sound rationale to consider these writings as legitimately documenting the life of Christ, his teachings, and establishment of the church he founded.

One, the New Testament is founded on appeals to eyewitness accounts.

Two, the style is factual, not fictional and based on sound oral tradition.

And three, the content itself argues against being simply made up.

Here is a final, crucial point. Recall the concept from science of critical rationality, where you evaluate various theories and determine which of them best describes what we know. Which is the more reasonable conclusion?  That the apostles fabricated, endorsed and spread what they knew to be an elaborate hoax that they were each willing to die for?  Or that they knew first hand that Christ was who he said he was and that was well worth dying for?

Bizarre if Fiction.

If the Gospels were fiction it makes no sense to show Peter, the leading apostle, denying his master not just once, but three times and at the end even cursing him to save his skin. Why would anyone in the early church want to play up the terrible failures of their most prominent leader?  Bauckham reasons that no one would have dared to relate this event unless Peter himself was the source and had authorized its preservation and propagation.

Now consider Jesus, himself. Why would any Gospel writer make up the account of Jesus asking God in the garden of Gethsemane if he could get out of his mission?  

And if it didn’t happen, why would the leaders of the early Christian movement have made up the story of the crucifixion? Any listener to the gospel in either Greek or Jewish culture would have automatically suspected that anyone who had been crucified was a criminal, whatever the speaker said to the contrary.

Or why would anyone ever make up a story where the hero cries out that God had abandoned him?

Furthermore, in a society where women were assigned such low status their testimony was not evidence in court why invent women as the first witnesses of the resurrection?

Why constantly depict the apostles - the eventual leaders of the early Church - as petty and jealous, almost impossibly slow-witted, and in the end as cowards who either actively or passively failed their master?

If the authors had indeed concocted the Gospels, prudence and their cultural context would have prevented including, let alone crafting, these contrary elements.

On Style and Content

C. S. Lewis, besides being a renowned author, was a world-class literary critic. When reading the gospels, he noted: “I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, and myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know none of them are like this. Of this [gospel] text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage… or else, some unknown [ancient] writer…without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern novelistic, realistic narrative… “

Lewis is saying the reasonable conclusion based on style is that the gospels are an accurate report of the life of Christ.  To believe otherwise requires an explanation of how the authors came up with the remarkably unique style of writing – those so far suggested are far less rational.

Now consider the very nature of the content; if the Gospel narratives were indeed fabricated there are stories missing that should have been included.  If it was correct that the Christian leadership made certain that the Jesus in their stories supported the policies and beliefs of their communities, you would expect to see many places in the gospels where Jesus takes sides in debates that were going on in the early church.  However, we do not find this.

For example, one of the great controversies in the earliest church was that some believed Gentile Christians should be required to be circumcised. In light of that great conflict, it is remarkable that nowhere in the gospel accounts does Jesus say anything about circumcision.  The most likely reason that Jesus is silent about circumcision is that the early church did not feel free to fabricate things and put words in Jesus’s mouth that he didn’t utter.