You Asked: How Can We Trust the Gospels Accurately Recorded Jesus?
In this episode, we respond to one of your comments about why we believe that Jesus’s life and teachings are accurately recorded in the New Testament biographies and the letters authored by his apostles. While acknowledging that there is no way to adequately answer this question in a short episode, our goal is to provide some of the reasons that our faith confidently rests on the answers available from scholarly resources that have addressed this question over the long history of the church. We also contrast the ways historical narratives were written and transmitted in the first century, and we caution about relying on our own cultural biases to discredit the writings authored in another time and place. Our hope is that our discussion models a form of engagement with this topic that remains open to opposing views, while reminding that we should be prepared to do the hard work of researching this issue further if this particular question is important to the way we view the claims of Jesus.
Discussion Questions:
Have you ever considered the question of whether Jesus’s words and teachings are accurately recorded?
Have you been troubled by questions of how the Bible was put together, and have you heard others question the integrity or transmission of the Bible?
If you have heard that there are problems with the ways the New Testament was put together, have you considered the sources being cited to support those claims? Do you agree that there is a tendency in our online communities to make claims without taking the time to present the sources that might support (or undercut) those claims?
Does the discussion in this episode reframe some of the ways you have thought about what the New Testament writings represent? What is something discussed that bolsters your faith in the integrity of the scriptures, and what is something that you might want to investigate further?
How should we evaluate the sources supporting claims for or against the Christian faith? Do you have a method that you use to determine which sources you can trust?
In another episode, we distinguished faith from certainty, and we discussed how in some ways they could be seen as opposites of one another. Yet, the Christian faith is one based on historical events and evidence of God’s action in the world and in our lives (1 Corinthians 15, for example). How much evidence should we have on which to build a strong basis for our faith, and at what point do we tip over into demanding certainty before we will believe?
