Is the New Testament True?

Over the last few weeks, we’ve covered a lot of ground. As much as I’ve tried to present a solid case for Christianity, there is only so much information I can present each week. As such, I would strongly encourage those interested to read up on the topic of Christian Apologetics.

A few resources I’d strongly suggest include my own sources, prominently among them is I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek. In addition, I’ve relied upon much research from Dr. William Lane Craig, Dr. Ravi Zacharias, and Dr. John Lennox. If you’d like more information, I’d suggest you visit their websites, CrossExamined.org, ReasonableFaith.org, or rzim.org.

Last week we looked at the question, “Are miracles possible?” We defined a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature. We determined that we have scientific evidence for the creation of the universe out of nothing. Creation from nothing clearly violates the laws of nature because at the time the laws of nature didn’t exist. As such, we have empirically verifiable evidence that the greatest miracle in the Bible has already taken place. If that miracle is true, then all others are at least possible.

Does the fact that miracles are possible mean that every miracle attributed to the prophet Muhammad is true? No. Does it mean that every miracle recorded in the New Testament is true? No. In order to determine which miraculous claims are valid, we must look at the evidence for them. Did the miracles recorded in the New Testament really occur to tell us that Jesus really was God incarnate? To determine this we must look at the New Testament documents.

I will give you six lines of evidence that each start with the letter E. There are many more lines of evidence available, but these are the big six. I don’t have time to go through each one in great detail, so I’ll run through each of them and dig a little deeper into a couple. If you’re interested in the details for the rest or if you’re looking for more information in general, I’d suggest you pick up Dr. Turek’s book mentioned earlier.

1. Early Testimony
2. Eyewitness Testimony
3. Embarrassing Testimony
4. Excruciating Testimony
5. Expected Testimony
6. Extra-biblical Testimony

In the book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, there’s a chapter called, “The Top Ten Reasons We Know the New Testament Writers Told the Truth.” These are just six of the reasons. We only have time to drill into a couple, so we’ll look in-depth at the embarrassing testimony and the excruciating testimony, but I want to at least touch on these other ones.

We have early testimony. Dating ancient texts is not an easy endeavour. There are many pieces that need to be taken into consideration when dating ancient texts. However, there is very good evidence that the entirety of the New Testament was written prior to A.D. 100, many scholars will even say they were written prior to A.D. 70. Paul obviously wrote all of his letters prior to his death in A.D. 64. The eyewitness testimony, even if it wasn’t written down until later, had to come early on from the people who had seen it. In fact, the earliest testimony of the resurrection is found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. It’s an ancient creed that even atheistic scholars agree is pre A.D. 40.

There is eyewitness testimony. Just between the gospel of John and the book of Acts, there are a hundred forty details that have been verified to be details only an eyewitness could know. That’s not to mention the “we” passages that start showing up in the middle of Acts where the author switches from saying, “they did this,” to “we did this.” All of these details and many more are listed in the book.

We have expected testimony. This deals with all of the Old Testament prophecy. There are many prophecies that we could look at, but if we only had one, I’d take Isaiah 53. If you’ve never read that passage, I’d challenge you to go home and read it and ask yourself, “Who is this passage talking about?” You’ll likely come to the conclusion that it was written about Jesus. The only problem is that it was written seven hundred years before Jesus. We know this to be true, because the entire book of Isaiah was contained within the Dead Sea Scrolls which have been dated back to at least 150 B.C., so we know this was written prior to Jesus’ life on earth.

Then there’s extra-biblical testimony. Ten ancient, non-Christian sources within 150 years of Jesus’ death that briefly mention Jesus, his disciples, and the events of the New Testament. Historians such as Josephus, Suetonius, Thallus, Phlegon, and many other names I’m sure you’ve never heard before. They don’t claim to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, but they do verify the historical claims of the New Testament, Jesus’ ministry, his trial, and his disciples’ claim to his resurrection. If you add up all of these brief references about Jesus, you get a story much like that told in the New Testament historical books.

 Jumping back, let’s take a closer look at the embarrassing testimony. What is embarrassing testimony? Embarrassing testimony is a type of testimony that most scholars will say is true. Any writing that makes the authors of the text look bad, the chances are they are telling the truth. You’re not going to make up things that are going to make you or your hero look bad. The human tendency is to lie in order to make ourselves look good. It is unlikely that a person will lie to make themselves look bad.

The New Testament documents (as well as the Old Testament documents) are full of embarrassing details about the authors and heroes depicted, including Jesus. For example, the disciples routinely depict themselves as dim-witted. On numerous occasions they failed to understand what Jesus was saying (Mark 9:32; Luke 18:34; John 12:16). Although Jesus routinely told them why he had come, they didn’t understand what he was saying until after he’d already returned to heaven.

The disciples are shown as uncaring. In the Garden of Gethsemane, in Jesus’ greatest time of need, they fall asleep on him not once but twice. He said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” (Matthew 26:38), but what he come back to find? The whole bunch of them sleeping.

Even after Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples didn’t even attempt to give him a proper burial. While the disciples are hiding, Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, takes Jesus’ body and buries it. Why would the writers of the gospels paint a member of the Sanhedrin, the body that sentenced Jesus to die, as a good guy while they ran away and hid for fear of the Jews?

Also, why would they put Jesus in a Jewish tomb? When the Christians began claiming that Jesus had risen from the dead, the Jews could’ve simply taken his body from the tomb and shown it to the people. However, that’s not what they did. When the Christians began claiming that Jesus had risen, the Jews responded by saying that the disciples had come and stolen the body while the guards were asleep. There are a few problems with this story. First, any Roman guard that fell asleep on duty would be promptly executed. Second, if you’re a Roman guard on duty and you fall asleep on watch, how do you know what happened? Are we to expect that they woke up as the disciples were taking the body and they just let them go? Third, what motive would the disciples have had to take the body and claim a resurrection? To get excommunicated from the synagogue? To get themselves tortured and killed? Yeah, that was a great plan.

You might ask, how do we know this story is even true? Yeah, the gospels tell us this, but how do we know they’re telling the truth? We know because there was an ongoing debate in early history of Christianity. The Christians kept saying that Jesus had risen from the dead and the Jews kept saying that the Christians had stolen the body. What does this explanation admit? It admits that the body was gone and the tomb was empty. They wouldn’t have said that the disciples had stolen the body if the body was still in the tomb. You don’t need to come up with a story for why the tomb is empty if the tomb isn’t empty. By accusing the disciples of stealing the body, the Jews admitted that the tomb was empty.

Based upon this, you could potentially add a seventh E line of evidence, “Enemy Testimony.” Enemy testimony is very powerful. Why? Because if your enemy says something that helps your case, it’s probably true. Your mother may claim that you are exceptionally bright, but all mothers think that of their children. If your archenemy began telling people about your superior intellect, you better believe they aren’t just saying it to make you look good.

Also, the disciples were rebuked by Jesus. Peter is even called Satan (Mark 8:33). Do you think they made that up? It’s not only Jesus. Paul rebukes Peter for acting one way with the Jewish Christians and another with the Gentile Christians. Why would they say that if they were making all of this up? Wouldn’t it make more sense to show a unified front rather than highlighting their mistakes, especially if they were nothing more than lies? If they were making all of this up, they wouldn’t have this embarrassing type of exchange going on. The reason it’s in there is because it’s true.

Within the New Testament text, the disciples, to whom three of the four gospels are attributed, are depicted as cowards. Peter denies Christ three times. All of them run away after his arrest, and the women are the brave ones that go to his tomb. I’m sure the men that wrote this down surely wanted to lie about the women bravely going to the tomb while they hid for fear of the Jews.

Also, notice that despite being told repeatedly that Jesus would rise from the dead, even after hearing the news each of them doubts the claim (John 2:18; 3:14-18; Matt. 12:39-41; 17:9, 22-23). Thomas required physical evidence before he believed (John 20:24-25). Even after, as the crowds are gathered and Jesus is saying his farewells, there were still people who doubted his resurrection having seen him with their own eyes (Matt. 28:17). It’s a common misconception that the early church was a bunch of gullible people who wanted to believe in the resurrection. Even with proof in front of them, many people still couldn’t bring themselves to believe.

The embarrassing testimony extends beyond just the disciples. Jesus is considered to be out of his mind by his own family (Mk. 3:21, 31). He’s deserted by many of his followers after he tells them to drink his blood and eat his flesh (John 6:66). If you were making up stories about Jesus, wouldn’t you try to make him look as good as possible? This one makes him look like a cannibal. Jesus’ own brothers didn’t believe in him (John 7:5). It wasn’t until Jesus appeared to James, his brother, that he finally believed (1 Cor. 15:7).

Jesus is thought to be a deceiver (John 7:12). He turns off Jewish believers to the point that they want to stone him (John 8:30-59). He’s called a madman (John 10:20) and a drunkard (Matt. 11:19). On more than one occasion he was called demon-possessed (Mk. 3:22; John 7:20; 8:48). Do you think they just added that in there for laughs? I’m sure it doesn’t help your case if your messiah is accused of being demon-possessed.

You don’t find this in other ancient writings. You don’t find embarrassing details about the Pharaohs. If anybody ever wrote anything embarrassing about him, he’d surely have them executed. Yet we have piles of embarrassing details about not only the disciples but also their messiah, the hero of the story. And these are the writings that these men approved.

Let’s move on to excruciating testimony. This argument says that these people who were in the know about whether Jesus rose from the dead or not died excruciating deaths and brutal lives when they could have easily spared themselves by recanting the resurrection. Before we take a look at this, let’s look at the apostles’ beliefs and practices before and after the resurrection. All of the New Testament writers, except maybe a couple, were Jews. They believed they were God’s chosen people.

Before	After
Animal Sacrifice	Christ’s Sacrifice
Binding Law of Moses	Christ’s Life Fulfilled the Law
Strict Monotheism	Trinity
The Sabbath	Sunday Worship
Conquering Messiah	Sacrificial Messiah
Circumcision	Baptism & Communion

What would have caused these pious Jews who thought they were God’s chosen people to abandon everything on the left for everything on the right virtually overnight? There’s only one thing I can think of that would cause something like this and it’s what psychologists call an impact event. An impact event is an event that occurs to you that impacts you so greatly, emotionally and intellectually, that it can transform your belief system overnight. Some impact events are so impactful that you will remember what happened that day even though it happened decades ago.

Do you remember where you were September 11, 2001? For those that maybe don’t remember living through that, that was the day when terrorists crashed planes into the towers of the World Trade Center. I don’t remember all the times exactly, but I was at school that day at the local community college. We pulled up the news coverage on the classroom projector and all stood there amazed. I remember a flood of thoughts going through my head. I can still see the room and the desks in my mind as if it were only yesterday.

That event was fifteen years ago, and if I were to ask you where you were you’d be able to tell me. However, if I were to ask you where you were on October 11th of this year, only about a month ago, you’d likely have to look at your calendar to tell me what you were doing. Why is that? Because there wasn’t an impact event.

Do you think a resurrection would’ve been an impact event? Do you think that if Jesus really rose from the dead that they’d remember everything that he said and everything they were doing until the day they died? Of course! That’s the only way I can figure out how they would have abandoned everything they knew and believed virtually overnight.

Some people will say that they invented all of this. Let’s think about that for a moment. What did the disciples have to gain from fabricating this story? They didn’t get rich off of it. They didn’t gain power or influence from it.

Remember, these men were Jews. What did they get by saying that Jesus had risen from the dead? They were thrown out of the synagogues and the temple, the one place where the sacrifices for their sins could be offered. They were beaten, tortured, and killed for this claim. Last time I checked, these weren’t a list of perks. These men had every motive to say the resurrection didn’t happen and not every motive to say that it did.  

Why would these men die for a known lie? Many people will die for a lie they believe is true. The Muslims that flew planes into the two towers were willing to die for a lie they believed was true. However, nobody will die for a lie that they know is a lie, and these disciples were in a position to know whether Jesus had risen from the dead. Their claims to having seen, touched, and spoken with the resurrected Jesus is what lead to their death.

In conclusion, the accounts given in the New Testament are fact, not fiction. If it says Jesus really said it, then Jesus really said it. If it says Jesus did it, then Jesus really did it. I’m not saying it’s inerrant at this point. There’s other evidence out there for that, but you don’t need inerrancy to show that Christianity is true. If the major events of the New Testament are historical, Christianity follows.

So, does truth exist? Yes, it’s self defeating to say otherwise. Does God exist? Yes, we saw that through the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments. Are miracles possible? Yes, because God exists and the greatest miracle has already happened. We have empirically verifiable evidence to support it. When people say they don’t believe in miracles just say, “Look around. You’re living in one.” This universe is a miracle. If the first verse in the Bible is true, every other verse is at least possible. Is the New Testament reliable? We just went through the evidence for that.

There’s a lot more evidence and information out there. I would encourage you educate yourselves so that you have answers when the questions inevitably arise. Check out the book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, check out their website, CrossExamined.org, check them out on YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook, or download their app on either Android or iOS. It has much of this same information as well as videos and a quick answer guide. Also, if you have DirecTV, they have a show every Wednesday night on channel 378.