How accurate is the New Testament?

[Pinkfluffyslippers]

I have this problem with the New Testament - so much of it was written ages after the events they describe how accurate is it and how can we believe it? For instance the Gospels differ and don't all mention the same events. (This is before we even start discussing the differences between the translations of the Bible)
Who decided which Gospels to include? I know some were excluded>
Who was the editor ? Was it Paul?
Forgive me for sounding slightly blasphemous but if God wanted to get his message across don't you think he would have sorted this out and given his message to one person. (EG: As with Islam - Allah speaking to Muhammed). I often wonder if the New Testament isn't susceptible to the problems of Chinese whispers.

I do hope someone could answer these questions.

If God exists, and Jesus is the son of God, then presumably he would ensure that any Chinese Whispers were accurately transmitted and the "finished Product" what he wanted it to be?

Free Will means it never was going to be a Fax, I'm afraid!

Beta Dad says the Gospels were written about 60 years after the death of Christ, and then says:

"I guess its a bit like us today writing a history book or a biography based on research done by talking to old people about stories they heard from their parents who themselves may not have actually winessed the events at the time."

The earliest Gospel (probably Mark) was probably written in the early 70s, shortly after the destruction of the Temple. It was probably drawing on other sources, such as the hypothetical "Q" materials. These were probably collected prior to AD 70. Given the crucifixion c. AD30, we are only 40 years out.

This is the equivalent of writing now about something in 1969. There would be plenty of people around to verify or query what you had written, and anyone aged 50+ still around in the community would be able to recollect events.

Why wait 30/40 years before writing things down? There is usually this delay in historical accounts. Just after something big happens people get on with their lives in the light of that event. It's only when the firsthand witnesses start to die off that their children's generation wants to make a permanent record. This is why there were few films/books/etc. about the Holocaust in the 40's and 50's, but a resurgence in interest from the 80s onwards.

Cheers,

PV

Think I go with AMum here ! Bloke called Jesus (or Jesus Christus, or similar) lived, had followers, was crucified, and his followers would not renounce their beliefs after his death. There's stuff about him in other historians like Tacitus and Josephus.

The rest of it - well, you can debate it endlessly, bearing in mind that those telling the story are not exactly impartial observers.

My guess is that the water-into-wine thing and the loaves'n'fishes shouldn't be taken too literally. Unless JC was some kind of 1st-century Palestine cross between Jamie Oliver and Paul Daniels. "You'll like this, it's pukka grub. Not a lot, but you'll like it."

I'm a Christian but do believe the Bible is not necessarily infallible. This doesn't affect my faith because of a major difference between Christianity and other major world religions - according to the NT itself, "the Word of God" is NOT the Bible, but Jesus. This point is often missed by branches of the Christian church itself; so often have I had quoted at me "Well its in the Word, so I believe it" (often in reference to a contentious verse about homosexuality or women as leaders). I do not scour biblical passages to decide whether issues are sinful or holy, I think about the way Jesus lived and died (and rose again, imo!) with love and acceptance of those around Him, of what He loved (such as friendship, time with God, parties!) and what he hated (such as hypocritical attitudes and people being marginalised/excluded). Obviously, we can learn about the character and mission of Jesus from the Bible, but that is not the same thing as defending it, chapter and verse, as "the Word of God". A conversation about this recently with a really close friend who is a Muslim was very interesting; that difference in our faiths explained a lot about why my Bible is battered, marked with spaghetti sauce, and sometimes lost around my house , whilst her Qur'an is a beautiful item which occupies pride of place on a top shelf and would never be placed on the floor or left open next to a toddler who is feeding themself...

The canon of the NT was selected because it was all written by people who were there, and they were written by different people (hence the differing perspectives).

The canon of the bible was put together in one of the great ecumenical councils within a few centuries of Jesus' death and resurrection.

I can't recall which one, but easily found on Wikipedia.

When the books were written by their authors, many copies were then made by scribes, and it is possible that a few typo errors slipped in. But this is a topic of much academic research - I don't think we have a lot to worry about.

I suppose it depends whether you are a Christian or not. If you are, then it's accurate, and depicts the actual life and work of Jesus.

If you're not,it's a collection of legends and moral tales based round the life of a shadowy historic figure.

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Thanks Bloss

this is lifted by an address from the theologian john hick in tehran 2005:

From a modern Christian point of view the situation is more complex than this. First, it is often said by Christian theologians that our revelation is contained, not in a book, but in the person of Jesus (peace be upon him). However we only know about Jesus through the New Testament, particularly the four gospels. For many centuries, until within about the last hundred and fifty years, it was almost universally assumed by Christians that these are contemporary and historically reliable accounts of Jesus' life and teachings. But the modern historical study of the New Testament has led to the generally agreed conclusion that the earliest gospel, that of Mark, was written around 70 CE, about forty years after the time of Jesus; that Mathew and Luke were written in the 80's, using Mark as a their main source together with a possible, but disputed, second common source called Q, and other separate sources of their own; and that the gospel of John was written around the end of the century, some seventy or more years after Jesus' time. None of them was written by an eye witness to Jesus' life, but they relay stories and sayings handed down, and inevitably elaborated in the retelling, within the early Christian community, the different writers moulding their material in distinctively different ways according to their own interests and points of view. The result is that there is today endlessly inconclusive discussion and disagreement about whether this or that saying and action attributed to Jesus in the gospels is or is not historically authentic.

So from the point of view of modern Christian scholarship the New Testament does indeed contain doubtful sayings attributed to Jesus and doubtful stories about him, not however because the original text was infallible and later became corrupted, but because of the nature of the gospels as having been written two or three generations after the event by different writers over a period of about thirty years, and in an age when the modern concept of biographical accuracy was unknown.

and more:

There is no reason why you should be familiar with the names of contemporary Christian biblical scholars, but let me very briefly quote just a few. The ones I shall quote are all personally firm believers in the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation; but nevertheless they do not believe that Jesus himself taught it. Referring to the fourth gospel sayings which I have just cited, the doyen of conservative New Testament scholars in Britain, Professor Charles Moule of Cambridge University, wrote, 'Any case for a 'high' Christology [that is, one affirming Jesus' divinity] that depended on the authenticity of the alleged claims of Jesus about himself, especially in the Fourth Gospel, would indeed be precarious' (The Origin of Christology, 1977, 136). Then a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, who was also a distinguished New Testament scholar, wrote quite bluntly, 'Jesus did not claim deity for himself' (Jesus and the Living Past, 1980, 39). And one of the leading generally conservative British New Testament scholars today, Professor James Dunn of Durham University, says that 'there was no real evidence in the earliest Jesus tradition of what could fairly be called a consciousness of divinity' (Christology in the Making, 1980, 60). Indeed in the earliest gospel, that of Mark, Jesus is reported as saying, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone' (Mark 10: 18).

I come now to the term 'Son of God'. Again, modern historical scholarship has thrown important light. We now know that the term 'son of God' was a familiar metaphor within Judaism. Israel as a whole was called God's son, Adam was called God's son, the angels were called sons of God, the ancient Hebrew kings were enthroned as son of God and we have in the Old Testament the enthronement formula : 'Thou art my son. This day I have begotten you' (Psalm 2: 7); and indeed any outstandingly pious Jew could be called a son of God, meaning someone who was close to God, doing Gods' will, perhaps with a special mission from God. But within Judaism this was quite obviously a metaphor. Jesus himself used it in this way when he said that we are to forgive our enemies 'so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven' (Matthew 5: 45). Again, in the prayer that he taught we address God as 'Our Father who is in heaven', for in this metaphorical sense we can all speak of God as our Father. But what happened in the period between Jesus' lifetime and the full development of the Trinitarian doctrine, is that the metaphorical son of God was transformed in Christian thinking into the metaphysical God the Son, second person of a divine trinity. It is this development that is questioned by a number of Christian thinkers today.

here is his website and a good article:

food for thought

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Bloss makes the claim that , "the quality of the historical evidence for Jesus is higher than for any other ancient figure. We have WAY more access to a variety of sources about his life than we do for, say, Julius Caesar"

This myth has been peddled about in evangelical sources for years, originally on
the claim that we have more evidence for rhe resurrection than Caesar crossed the Rubicon,

Here is the refutation:
First of all, we have Caesar's own word on the subject. Indeed, The Civil War has been a Latin classic for two thousand years. On the other hand, not only do we not have anything written by Jesus, but we don't even have anything written by anyone who actually knew him--unless we accept the questionable authenticity of some of the non-Pauline epistles, but they don't describe the resurrection and thus present no direct evidence of that event anyway.

Second, we have many of Caesar's enemies, including Cicero, reporting the event, whereas we have no hostile or even neutral records of the resurrection until long after the Christian's own claims had been written down and widely spread across the whole Empire.

Third, we have coins and inscriptions produced in the very same years of the Republican Civil War, and shortly after, which serve to corroborate the event. But we have absolutely no physical evidence of any kind in the case of the resurrection.

Fourth, we have the story of the Rubicon crossing from several historians of the period, including the most prominent scholars of the age: Tacitus, Suetonius, Appian, Cassius Dio, and Plutarch. Moreover, these scholars have at least some measure of proven reliability, since a great many of their reports on other matters have been confirmed in material evidence and in other sources. In addition, they all quote and name many different sources, showing a wide reading of the witnesses and documents, and they show a regular desire to critically examine claims for which there is any dispute. If that wasn't enough, all of them cite or quote sources which were written by witnesses, hostile and friendly, of the Rubicon crossing and its repercussions. Compare this with the resurrection: we have not even a single prominent historian mentioning the event, and of those few people who do bother to mention it, none of them show any wide reading, never cite any other sources, show no sign of a skilled or critical examination of conflicting claims, have no other literature or scholarship to their credit (which could in turn be tested for accuracy by comparison with other evidence), and have an overtly declared bias towards persuasion and conversion.

Fifth, the history of Rome could not have proceeded as it did had Caesar not physically moved an army into Italy. Even if Caesar could have somehow cultivated the mere belief that he had done this, he could not have captured Rome or conscripted Italian men against Pompey's forces in Greece. On the other hand, all that is needed to explain the rise of Christianity is a belief that the resurrection happened. There is nothing that an actual resurrection would have caused that could not have been caused by a mere belief in that resurrection. Thus, an actual resurrection is not necessary to explain all subsequent history, unlike Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon.

Evangelicals would do better if they realized
their cause is not helped by making absurd claims.
Caesar was Emperor of the most powerful force
in the ancient world, it is obvious there is
more interest in him and more written about him than an unknown itinerant preacher in the far flung reaches of the Empire,

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Bloss has misrepresented Islam; It's not just a series of proclamations with no context in events. The point of the Koran is that everything in it was revealed with reference to specific events in the life of the Prophet exactly at that time. This is why scholarly interpretation is so important in Islam, why fundamentalism or literalist interpretations of the Koranic text are so wrong.

Also, the Koran wasn't written down by one person; the Prophet Mohamed himself was probably illiterate. Koran means recitation: it was an orally recited religion for a long time. Some time after his revelations his followers started to write down the verses. The possibility of mis-transcription of the original verses was recognised early on and this is partly why there are different traditions of how to recite the Koran from the written text.

I write all that as a flaming atheist, btw, all religious texts are equal mythology to me.

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bloss from a purely historical source perspective the evidence for jesus is nowhere near as good as for julius caesar vis intereggnum's post!

I've noticed too that christians claim that historical proof exists about jesus. I used to believe it must be true when I was young.(all those adults wouldn't lie to a child would they!), but when I started asking questions it was always "well... there was Josephus... and I'm sure there were others too!"

Josephus never met jesus so all he can support is that someone once told him they'd heard of some group etc etc.

Aside from that you have one or two people (and no one seems entirely sure who they were) who wrote the gospels. And one of the things that apparently makes the gospels more believable is that they don't match up.

So all that about there being more proof than for Julius Caesar is just not true is it.

Btw I loved "Christianity is not meant to be a rules-based religion"

Sins are rules are they not?

What about - Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not allow other people to watch a Jerry Springer Opera.

Even Josephus is not a reliable source,as to any information abou Jesus. Onager

from WIKI:Jesus is mentioned in two passages of the work The Antiquities of the Jews by the Jewish historian Josephus, written in the late first century AD. One passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, discusses the career of Jesus. The authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum has been disputed since the 17th century, and by the mid 18th century the consensus view was that it was at a minimum embellishment by early Christian scribes, if not a forgery. The other passage simply mentions Jesus as the brother of James, also known as James the Just. Most scholars consider this passage genuine,[1] but its authenticity has been disputed by Emil Schürer as well by several recent popular writers.

Josephus' other major work, The Jewish War, makes no mention of Jesus.

Onagar - Christians would probably argue that the 10 commandments rules you are referring to come from the Old Testament rather than the New Testament, which is the Christian part. I am not a Christian, though, so feel free to shoot me down on this one!

While on this subject, I always find that the commandment "thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife" puts it all into perspective. Pretty obvious it's not speaking to me as a woman (you're not allowed to be homosexual, so this is obviously talking to heterosexual men). I'm not likely to covet his wife! Her husband might be another matter, though!

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interregnum, I can just imagine later Christian scholors 'adding' a few bits in to support their position. Even if that didn't happen it's still pretty thin, but human nature being what it is I wouldn't be surprised by it.

Bloss, I take your point about 'rules based' as AMIS may well have meant it that way. I took it the other way because when I was young the commandments were a central part of christianity. Even if you had asked someone in the street "what do you know about being christian" they'd likely have said "well... there's the 10 commandments.."

Alexpolismum, You're right that Christians would argue that the 10 commandments were an Old Testament thing. I've had people say in these threads that much of what I call christianity is only the old testament and doesn't count. For their benefit I should mention that I was quoting jesus himself in Mat 19:18. (except for the bit about the Jerry Springer Opera which I happen to know he liked )

Well... that is I was quoting someone who we think was referring to something he'd once heard regarding something Matthew had allegedly heard Jesus say many years before.