What makes the four Gospels so incredibly reliable? I mean, we as Christians approach them with an attitude of faith. We trust that God is accurately communicating his message to us in the gospels. We accept that they are inerrant and totally reliable.

But is this just a, "pie-in-the-sky by-and-by" faith with no basis in reality? I don't think so. As a matter of fact, I believe there is every scientific and historical reason to trust the gospel’s account of Jesus Christ.

What would happen if we lay aside faith for just a minute? What would happen if we approach the four Gospels with the same standards that we approach other ancient documents with? How would they fare? The answer is, "remarkably and extremely well." As a matter of fact, I would go as far as to say that when we judge the Gospels by  the same scientific and historical standards that we use with other ancient documents? We will find there are excellent reasons for trusting for the historicity and truthfulness of the gospel accounts.

That's a pretty strong statement. So, what evidence to we have to back it up? The answer is, "plenty!"

One of the standards used to evaluate historical documents has to do with the age of the document in question. "How soon after the events being described was  this document written?" When you apply this standard to the four Gospels the answer is, "very quickly!" While strictly speaking the four Gospels are anonymous, there was in the early church  a uniform belief that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the authors. There was just no dispute among church leaders that this was the case. So, the uniform belief of the early church was that the gospels were either written by an eyewitness, or by someone who got their information from an eyewitness (Mark, Luke). Historically speaking, that is incredibly powerful!

Then we have to ask ourselves, "how much time elapsed between the death of Jesus and the time that these men wrote their accounts?" The answer is, in historical terms, very little! How did we know this? There are at least two reasons. First is an event that happened in 70 A.D., the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. With the Jewish people this would be the equivalent of our Pearl Harbor or our World Trade Center. None of the Gospels say anything about the destruction of the Temple. It would certainly have been included if it had already occurred. It would have been too earth-shattering not to at least have been alluded to. So, we know that the Gospels were written before 70 A.D.

However, we have to date the Gospels well before that point. The book of Acts was written by Dr. Luke. Paul is the central figure of the last half of the book. The book of acts ends rather abruptly with Paul under house arrest in Rome. What happened to Paul? We don't find out from the book of acts, because the book was written before Paul was eventually put to death. That means Acts cannot be dated any later than A.D. 62. Since Acts is the second half of a two-part work, we know that the gospel of Luke had to be written earlier than A.D. 62. And since Luke incorporates small parts of the gospel of Mark into his story? That means the gospel of Mark is even earlier. If we allow even a couple of years for each of these things take place? This places the Gospels of Mark and Luke in the late 50s!

Why is this so important to the historical reliability of the Gospels? Again, there are a couple of reasons. Tune in for the next blog to find out what they are!