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.

I found the more I read about the bible and the early church, the more I was amazed that Christianity as a religion had managed to carry on.

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For me the important question isn't so much "How historically accurate is it?" as "How should we as Christians interpret and respond to it?". I am happy to accept that every event in the New Testament happened, although my faith would not be shaken if a small proportion turned out to have been exaggerated.

But unlike some Christians, I do not think that every word of it is there because God made it so, or that the messages in it are unaffected by the culture and attitudes of the human beings who wrote down what happened. So, when it comes to making choices about how I live my life, the fact that there are Bible passages which give instructions about that does not automatically mean that I think those instructions are to be followed to the letter by people whose lives and situation are very different from those when it was written.

I think that we have to look at the entire contents of the New Testament, and what it tells us overall about the nature of God, and decide on the basis of that and our relationship with God what our response and behaviour should be.

That I think is the big difference between different types of Christian.

AMumInScotland,
Your theology there is quite deeply flawed then.

Are you then saying that the Bible is lying when it claims to be the infallible Word of God? 2 Tim 3:16 says All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

If you suggest otherwise then why bother taking any of it? If there were any inaccuracies in scripture then I sure wouldn't want to follow a god who was a liar. It's either 100% truth or it's not.

Well, yes, there is that, sgrant. But then there's also that sticky old bit about when it says things which are really quite horrible. That's what I always struggle with.

Hi Kay,
Any specifics that I could help with?

You are guessing right, Justabout.

sgrant, lol, perhaps if you have a few weeks spare...

fire away then

good grief, no, not on this thread, t'would be an enormous hijack, and there's enough of my plaintive wailing on MN as it is. I've posted in this section about my ishoos in the last day or so, and my profile is currently open, so you can wander into that to see my recent threads if you want to.

Oh I'm happy to sit in the "flawed theology" corner - very happy indeed

"All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness." - the only word in that which I interpret differently is "inspired". So far as I am concerned it means the same as it does when a film starts and it comes up on screen "inspired by a true story". That does not mean that every event and character in the film will have actually been part of the true story. But the film will tell us a lot about the true story, the kinds of things that happened, the kind of people they were, their feelings and attitudes and reactions.

If I believed that God had written every word of the Bible, and I thought that parts of it were untrue, yes that would make God out to be a liar, and that's not what I'm doing.

I believe that the words in the Bible were written by humans in response to events, beliefs and feelings about humanity's relationship with God. They are therefore fallible, as humans are fallible. And their meaning is incomplete, as the understanding of humans is incomplete.

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No backtracking here. I checked carefully what you meant by accurate and you said Real and Factual. The only backtracking in evidence is where you suddenly decided to that Genesis shouldn't be read literally.

Is the New Testament accurate or not?

Difficult answer: It's unclear. Much of the archaeological and historical research in this field is supported on sponsored in some way by religious organisations, for example, US based seminaries. That's not to invalidate their research but to bear in mind that there is an inherent bias in their work. Objectively, it seems clear that many of the places, people and events recounted in the Bible were accurate to some degree but there are also many contradictions and inaccuraries, both within the document itself and vs. external sources (e.g. certain parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls and works of Tacitus and Josephus)

Simple answer: Accurate as a historical document of its time, possibly. Accurate as the basis of a world-wide faith, no.

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I always sigh when I hear a christian claim that no christians believe in the literal truth of the bible.

That's not the case even now (though it is much less common) and at one time it would have been a hanging/burning offence to suggest it.

Many on this thread do not believe in the literal truth and that is fair enough.

Bloss- Why is it so clear to you that Genesis isnt meant to be literal? When you say to take other things in the Bible to be truth.

Well, I'm not going to speak for bloss, but as an evangelical Christian, I understand Genesis to be a poetical history. I read it 'literately', which is to say, I read it as a piece of literature that has a certain intent.

I read Acts of the apostles as a different form of literature, and Galatians as yet another, and I read them all 'literally' in that sense.