: Mark D. Roberts
: Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
: Crossway
: 9781433519789
: 1
: CHF 8.10
:
: Christentum
: English
: 216
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Attacks on the historical reliability of the Gospels-especially their portrayal of Jesus Christ-are nothing new. But are these attacks legitimate? Is there reason to doubt the accuracy of the Gospels? By examining and refuting some of the most common criticisms of the Gospels, author Mark D. Roberts explains why we can indeed trust the Gospels, nearly two millennia after they were written. Lay readers and scholars alike will benefit from this accessible book, and will walk away confident in the reliability of the Gospels.

Mark D. Roberts (PhD, Harvard University) is a pastor, author, retreat leader, speaker, and blogger. He is the senior advisor and theologian in residence of Foundations for Laity Renewal, a multifaceted ministry in the Hill Country of Texas. He was previously the senior pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, California. Mark also serves on the editorial board of Worship Leader magazine, where he publishes articles and reviews, including his regular column Lyrical Poetry. Mark and his wife, Linda, have two children.

C h a p t e r 2

Can We Know What the Original Gospel Manuscripts Really Said?

If you open a Bible and look for the Gospels, you’ll find them in English translation, neatly collected at the beginning of the New Testament. You’ll see book names, chapter and verse numbers, punctuation, and paragraphs. None of these items were present in the original manuscripts of the writings we call Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Most manuscripts didn’t even have spaces between the words! Aren’tyougladthingshave changed? What you read in your Bible is the result of centuries of preservation, translation, and publication. Thus you might sensibly wonder,Do the Gospels bear any resemblance to whatthe original writers actually penned almost 2,000 years ago?

It is common these days for people to answer no to this question. Critics of Christianity often allege that the Gospels as we know them don’t resemble the originals. This criticism appears, for example, on the lips of Sir Leigh Teabing, a fic- tional historian in Dan Brown’s wildly popular novelThe DaVinci Code. Teabing “reveals” the true nature of the Bible in this way:

“The Bible is a product ofman. . . . Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.”1

There is a measure of truth here. The Bible is indeed a human product, though this in no way requires that it could not also be “of God.” For centuries, Christians have affirmed that the Bible was written by human authors who were inspired by God.

It’s true that the Bible “did not fall magically from the clouds.” It was in fact written by human beings who lived in “tumultuous times.” Yet the biblical documents were not createdprimarily as a “historical record” of these times. Though there is plenty of history in Scripture, the biblical writers weren’t telling merely a human story. Rather, they focused primarily on the actions of God in history, especially on the story of God’s salvation of the world.

Teabing exaggerates in saying that the Bible has “evolved through countless translations.” It has indeed been translated into more languages than any other book, by far. At last count, the New Testament has been translated into 1,541 languages.2 But the Bible has not “evolved through countless translations,” as if our English versions stand at the end of a long chain of multilingual transformations. Every modern translation of Scripture is based on manuscripts written in the same languages as those used by the original writers. The Old Testament in English comes directly from Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts. Our New Testament is translated from Greek manuscripts.

The Relationship between Existing Manuscripts
and the Original Compositions

The documents we know as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written sometime in the second half of the first century A.D. (I’ll say more about the dating of the Gosp