The Gospels Are Reliable, Even with Many Redactions

During my plenary session at the Apologetics Canada Conference I made a case for the reliability of the Gospels in spite of the presence of scribal variants throughout the text. Remember that criminal courts do not require eyewitnesses to be inerrant to be considered reliable. In order to illustrate the trustworthiness of the text, I offered the following hypothetical. First, allow the skeptic to identify all the textual variants in the Gospels based on a comparison of all available manuscripts. Next, to make the point more dramatically, allow the skeptic to remove not only the variant word or phrase, but the entire verse in which the variant appears. This would require the removal of hundreds of verses, resulting in a manuscript that is much smaller than the text we have today. Finally, for the sake of argument, allow the skeptic to randomly remove additional verses until 50% of the text we have today have been redacted. Skeptics often claim that the presence of minor variants that account for approximately ½% of the text justify their skepticism in much more of the text. To dramatize the ineffectiveness of this claim, I am willing to allow them to remove 50% of the text to illustrate an important point: Even with this much of the text removed (far more than even the most liberal scholar would likely eliminate), the Gospels are reliable and still communicate the essential truths about Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection:

The Remaining Text Supports the Truth
Even with 50% of the text removed, the remaining text would still be sufficient to understand what each gospel writer claimed about Jesus. To be sure, there would be many confusing and incomplete passages, but with 50% of the text still intact, there would be more than enough to understand the rough outline of Jesus’ life and ministry.

The Remaining Gospels Buttress the Claims
In addition to the surviving text, the repetition of events reiterated in the other Gospels would still assist us in understanding the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. If we arbitrarily redact 50% of any particular Gospel, we will most certainly find a parallel account in another Gospel covering much of the same material, and the secondary account will very likely include the material missing from the first account. Many variant passages (Bart Ehrman is fond of citing Luke 22:20, Luke 24:12 and Luke 24:51) would likely still remain in other gospels (just as the information from Luke is found in uncontested passages in Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, John 20:3-7, and Acts 1:9-11).

The Remaining Students Answer the Doubts
But more importantly, we can test the content of the Gospels by simply examining the writings of the students of the Gospel authors. The students of John and Paul (Ignatius, Polycarp and Clement) for example, either quote or allude to many New Testament documents, including all four Gospels, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians,  Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 1 Peter, and 1 John. They clearly and succinctly reiterate the teaching of the Gospel authors. Related to the life of Jesus, Ignatius, Polycarp and Clement describe Jesus in the following way:

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit
He was born of the virgin Mary
A star announced His birth
He was baptized by John the Baptist
He taught and had a “ministry” on earth
He was humble and unassuming
He was sinless and spoke the words of God
He taught the Sermon on the Mount
Ointment was poured on Jesus’ head
He was unjustly treated and condemned by men
He was whipped, suffered and was crucified
He died on the cross
This all took place under the government of Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch was king

Concerning the resurrection of Jesus, Ignatius, Polycarp and Clement confirm the following details:

Jesus was resurrected
He had a physical resurrection body
He appeared to Peter and the others after the resurrection
He encouraged the disciples to touch Him after the resurrection
He ate with the disciples after the resurrection
The disciples were convinced by the resurrection appearances
The disciples were fearless after seeing the risen Christ

And concerning the deity of Jesus, Ignatius, Polycarp and Clement corroborate the following claims:

Jesus returned to God the Father
He is our only Master and the Son of God
All things are subject to Jesus and all creation belongs to Him
He is the “Door,” the “Bread of Life,” and the “Eternal Word”
Jesus is our “Savior”, “Lord” and “God”
Faith in Christ’s work on the cross saves us
This salvation and forgiveness are gifts of grace from God
Jesus will judge the living and the dead

Even after redacting 50% of the text, the remaining manuscripts (supported by the parallel accounts in the other gospels and confirmed by the writings of the students of the New Testament authors) leave us with a clear picture of Jesus as a miracle worker who claimed to be God, died on the cross for our sins and demonstrated his Deity by rising from the dead. That’s’ the version of Jesus that most skeptics want to deny, but it’s the steady, dependable, indestructible version that emerges from the reliable eyewitness accounts.

Comments

[John M]

Love you posts, Jim. Always a good read.

[John M]

Your*

[Byron D]

This was an excellent post Jim. Thank you.

[Nick F.]

Wouldn't you expect any text to become more reliable if you redact the contradictions? If you have to witness statements:

"The getaway car went south on Main Street. It was red."

"The getaway car went south on Main Street. It was blue."

Suppose I "redact" 50% of the alleged factual content; now both statements read:

"The getaway car went south on Main Street."

Which is likely reliable.

It seems as though if you redact the apparent conflicts, it's obvious that the statements are likely more true. This is so obvious that it makes me think I'm just missing the point. Then again, I hold that scriptures are more than reliable, so maybe I'm not your intended audience.

[WisdomLover]

Nick-

I think the point is not that the text would become more reliable. That's a given for precisely the sorts of reason you mention. The point is that even with all that content removed, the major claims of Christianity are still supported by the reduced text.

I'm also an inerrantist, so I think all the alleged contradictions and errors fall flat. For all I know, JWW is an inerrantist too. What I think he's up to here is to grant critics of the text all they want and more. And then to show that it still isn't enough for them to take away the message of Christianity.

[Louis Kuhelj]

The wall I seem to come up against is folks complaining that if you find mistakes in the bible, it taints the credibility of all the accounts. The argument goes along the lines that these are the inaccuracies we've discovered, but what about all the ones we haven't? With folks who argue like that, you will find that they assume there must be problems that we don't know about on the basis of the discovered ones. Thus, the conclusion they make is that it can't possibly be reliable and there had to have been tampering somewhere along the line of transmission.

[Carolyn]

Usually, I find that a response to them along the lines of, "What other inconsistencies or inaccuracies have you come across that have troubled you?" will reveal that they have a predetermined mindset not to believe. If pressed further, they almost invariably have not read the Bible through and really have no idea of discrepancies, but they're banking their money on the skeptics. At least that has been what I've encountered...

[WisdomLover]

I tend to put a little bit more weight on inerrancy than most people I've run across.

I am at least troubled by the hasty assurance that apologists sometimes make that an errant text can still be reliable. While I'm sure that is true, the challenges that have been raised thus far are so weak (they're actually downright lame for the most part) that I hardly think such haste to give up ground and retrench elsewhere is warranted.

And the stakes of giving up seem pretty high.

This is because the argument for inerrancy is valid. Which means that if the conclusion is false, one of the premises must be. But the premises all seem pretty important to me, including propositions like "God exists", "God is no deceiver" and "The Bible is inspired".

[Louis Kuhelj]

The argument from our side is that the minor discrepancies that we find within the text do not impact the central doctrines in any significant way. Of course that is true enough, but from the view of an outsider the central doctrines may not matter as much as the reliability of every jot and every tittle. If that is brought into question, they don't care if the bible is inerrant in the things it affirms as even that suddenly becomes a question of scribal errors creeping in or infusion of foreign text. As soon as there is even a sliver of doubt about the integrity of the text, everything becomes suspect. It seems to be a reaction of betrayal of trust. It is like if I told you a lie and you discover I did, then you don't trust anything I say anymore. But I find it kind of strange that these folks will trust their local paper even if in the following week it prints a retraction about some small detail they got wrong in a previous publication. Of course the usual refrain for that is that with the source being God, the bible must be held to a higher standard and the expectation is that it meet that standard.

I think the missing element here might be more along the line that we are not left just with the text to fend for ourselves, but have the Holy Spirit to guide us in all truth. Of course that often does not translate too well for those who are not Christians. Perhaps this is the limitation of apologetic and why Greg has often stated that his goals are modest...that of placing a stone in the shoe even when the person really needs a boulder dropped on the toe to get their attention. But I guess we should leave the boulder dropping to God.

[Peter Northcott]

Isn't it the case that texts, even if redacted, aren't the problem, but the manifold interpretations of those texts?