Throughout this series we have examined the New Testament through and through and looked at it from every angle.
The evidence for its reliability is simply overwhelming.
So to wrap up this series we'll cover the left over objections.
The reason we did not get them during the series is, unlike other objections, these ones are not that good or well thought out.
But unfortunately people still bring them up, so we'll close this series my easily refuting them.
The first one is that the New Testament authors were biased, so we can't trust anything they said.
Well, then it is clear that the person who brings up this objection is biased against trusting the New Testament,
so by their own logic we can't trust any accusation they make against the New Testament.
The biggest problem with an argument like this is it is clear example of tunnel vision.
It points out the New Testament writers were biased while ignores every writer is biased, because that is part of being human.
Richard Dawkins opened his book admitting he is biased, "If this book works as intended, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down." [The God Delusion, Page 5]
Gerd Lüddeman opens his book with, "Its aim was to prove the nonhistoricity of the resurrection of Jesus and simultaneously to encourage Christians to change their faith accordingly." [The Resurrection of Christ, A Historical Inquiriy, Page 7
Are we to dismiss these authors just because they are biased?
Or every historian who has written about early Christianity, since they are all biased towards their own theories?
In reality just because someone is biased that doesn't mean we dismiss them outright
because what if they are biased towards the truth of what actually happened?
Historian Michael Grant says Caesar's "Gallic Wars is among the most potent works of propaganda ever written" [The Ancient Historians, Page 190]
But also says "…it is extremely hard to fault him on facts." [The Ancient Historians Page 188]
So being biased doesn't mean one cannot report facts.
This is a very silly argument and hardly a good response,
because we can just reply [that] we cannot trust the skeptic's argument against the New Testament because they are also biased,
and by their own criteria they must be dismissed.
What this objection is really saying, is the other person is presenting something that doesn't agree with my 'already determined view,'
so I'll just dismiss it outright, since it doesn't conform to what I already think is true.
It is cleverly disguised ad hoc dismissal, because someone is challenging their beliefs.
So moving on to another objection, this one is used often but it actually comes from a few scholars.
Here is Dr. Bart Ehrman to present it during his debate with Mike Licona:
Moreover, the followers of Jesus were Aramaic speaking peasants from Galilee.
Lower-class men who were not educated
In fact Peter and John in Acts chapter 4 verse 13 are literally said to be illiterate
They couldn't read and write
Of course not, they were fishermen, they didn't go to school
The vast majority of people in the ancient world never learned to read let alone write
and their native language it was Aramaic, these books are written in Greek
by highly educated rhetorically trained writers who are skilled in Greek composition
So Ehrman claims the New Testament writers were all poor aramaic speaking fishermen from Galilee
and they could not have written the New Testament because they were illiterate.
Well, first off, the early church did not claim the new testament was written by only illiterate fisherman and neither do Christian scholars today.
The external evidence indicates it was Matthew who wrote a Gospel, who was a tax collector and would have to have been trained in linguistics to keep track of records in Greek for Rome,
as well as understand the local language of Aramaic to speak with the taxpayers to do his work.
So he would not have been illiterate.
Mark was said to be the Greek scribe and interpreter for Peter, so He would also have to understand how to read and write in both languages.
Luke was said to be a physician, so he was also educated.
No one doubts that Paul was educated as a pharisaic Jew who studied under Gamaliel.
That leaves us Peter, James, Jude and John.
All who could have learn to write later on, once they took leadership roles in the church.
But lets just throw all that out and agree with Ehrman that, yes, they were all illiterate fisherman.
The best way to respond to this quote from a scholar is with a quote from another scholar.
So to respond to Ehrman, we'll pick... Dr. Ehrman:
Reginald Finley: Are just some theories that suggest that even maybe Paul himself had a scribe that wrote for him?
Bart Ehrman: Every person who wrote epistles in the ancient world dictated them to scribes.
So as Dr. Ehrman rightly points out for Dr. Ehrman everyone dictated to scribes in the ancient world.
So it doesn't matter if al the New Testament authors were illiterate, they simply could hire scribes to write for them.
And since just about every scholar agrees that the early church grew by attracting many gentile converts across the Empire,
it is quite easy to see they could have either received help in writing from possible new convert,
or at the very least, the gentile members could have help them funding to hire scribes to write the epistles and gospels.
And we know from Paul the Christian missionaries sought financial help from the new gentile converts to continue the work of spreading the Gospel.
So it is not hard to see other Christians were able to write the New Testament by hiring scribes, with the financial help of their growing church.
And Dr. Ehrman should know not to use arguments in debates against Christians, that he knows are untenable when he debate Christ-mythes.
One should not change their argument based on who they are talking to.
Moving on, some try to dismiss the New Testament because it mentions miracles,
and any book that mentions miracles should be dismissed outright.
However, anyone who has made this claim clearly has not read any ancient history, as Gary Habermas points out:
Well, then you go "yeah but they got miracles in them"
so do all the greco-roman historians
"oh are you kidding? No, they do.
Virtually every greco-roman writer
Now, Thucydides is an exception
He says he doesn't believe in that stuff and he doesn't do it
but I mean, Herodotus, the so-called father of history
Tacitus, although he has fewer than Suetonius,
Suetonius says a lot, pretty normal,
Just about every ancient work mentions miracles,
and just because they do that does not mean the historians throw them out.
In reality all texts are judged on a case by case basis.
If one text says an event happens and offers good evidence for it then we should at least evaluate its evidence,
not dismiss it outright from a presupposition against miracles.
And if the supposed event is found to be false in light of evidence or lack thereof, that also doesn't mean we simply dismiss everything else they report.
That would be an association fallacy, and that is not how the study of ancient history works.
So why would we apply a different special standard to the New Testament that is not applied to any other ancient works?
In reality, this objection, like the first, is an example of someone arguing with tunnel vision
and ignoring the rest of ancient history,
as well as trying to dismiss an entire book just because they don't like certain parts.
The final objection is probably the most popular, and it is, "the New Testament contains contradictions,
so it must be false, because they cannot agree on certain facts."
Well, to bring this up again, but this is also arguing with tunnel vision, and is also ignoring the real point.
First off, most of these so called contradictions can easily be resolved by looking at context or using common sense
and we've already begun to do this
Second, even if these supposed contradictions cannot be resolved
this is ignoring the fact that many different eyewitness testimonies and written accounts that report the same event almost always contradict,
yet no one thinks the event did not happen.
For example, did Nero openly send men to burn the city of Rome in 64 AD as Suetonius puts it?
or did he do it secretly as Dio Cassius says?
Or perhaps he wasn't responsible at all, as Tacitus hints to?
Did Nero watched the city burn from his palace roof tops as Dio Cassius says?
or from a tower [of Maecenas] as Suetonius reports?
Or was he miles away [in Antium] as Tacitus tells us?
By the very logic skeptics apply to the Gospels, we could use it to conclude Rome was never burned,
just because the accounts contain contradictions.
Yet you won't find one historian who claims contradictions in the accounts prove Rome was never burnt.
Differences in accounts do not prove an event did not happen.
On the contrary, many rightly point out differences in account show reliability that something did in fact take place
and that there was no latter cohesion to make sure everyone was telling the exact same constructed story.
N.T. Wright: This business of "how many women went to the tomb? at what point? and who did they meet? and where did the appearances happen?"
Now, those are not quite as difficult as has sometimes been made out
and there is some harmonizing that is possible
but I have tended to take the line, as I hinted, that many other writers have done
which is confirmed again and again by those whose the volute laws of evidence in police courts and so on
that if five people, all see the same traffic accident
and at once give an excited and breathless account to the policeman (or to different policemen)
then you will find that those accounts do not exactly match up
but that doesn't mean there wasn't a traffic accident
it just means that people are trying to describe what they saw and it's more complicated than you might have thought
indeed, one of the things which was missed out from this lecture in my determination to get it down for nearly an hour, which it wasn't when I started today
was a wonderful scene from a book called "Wittgenstein's Poker" which describes an incident which took place in a seminar in Cambridge
when [Ludwig] Wittgenstein brandished a poker from the fire appearing to threaten the philosopher Karl Popper with it
and those present, included some of the finest theological minds in the mid twentieth century world
but none of them could agree afterwards about what exactly had happened
what order the events had taken place in, and so on. There's a whole book written about that
And so, I mean, this is how real life works
but if somebody skewers me and says: well, you can't tell me whether it was two women who went or one or what
then I'll put my hand up and say: no, I probably ultimately can't tell you that, but actually I don't think it matters
and I think if anything that rather strengthens the case for the breathless eye witness theory.
Homicide detectives who interview witnesses, who have seen a murder, will often receive accounts that contain contradictions,
or mention varying facts,
or leave out certain facts altogether.
This is common in all eye witness testimony,
but that doesn't mean the testimonies are unreliable,
and this especially does not mean someone was not murdered before their eyes.
J. Warner Wallace was a Cold Case homicide detective for over a decade
and has a wealth of knowledge in working with eyewitness testimony
and says contradictions often appear between different eye witnesses.
"As a detective, I've learned to accept the variation I see between eyewitness accounts.
I've interviewed witnesses of crimes (occurring just hours earlier), only to find what appeared to be significant "contradictions" between the accounts.
It's my job, as the investigator, to determine why the eyewitnesses appear to contradict one another,
even though there is no doubt the event occurred and the witnesses were telling the truth."
This simply happens because different facts will stick out to different people,
but this in no way shows what they are telling is false.
In fact, it shows a great amount of honestly and reliability if the Gospel writers, in writing about the same events, often differ in how they report.
They preserved how the reports were and show us they didn't get to together later on to make it all up, but kept the accounts as they were told.
The differences in the accounts match how typical eyewitnesses report events,
so this actually can be used to strengthen the reliability of the New Testament, instead of dismissing it.
And with that I'll leave you with the words of J Warner Wallace,
a homicide detective and expert on eye witness testimony, who was an atheist,
then the examined the eye witness reports of the Gospels and became a Christian because of how reliable their accounts were on the resurrection.
You want to be able to assess the opportunity for collusion when any eyewitnesses come together to report an event
here's what I mean, typically when I am called out in the middle of the night, I make sure that I asked to have the witnesses separated
if you don't separate witnesses you end up with people talking to each other
and colluding, not colluding, but just getting their stories lined up
it can be very innocent but I don't want that to happen
Do you honestly think if we had four Gospels that all said the exact same thing
that they would be under any less scrutiny? under any less criticism?
of course they wouldn't be
because you would think: well gosh, these guys got together and got their story together
I want to see a certain level of variation between accounts because then I know
especially get this, there's times when I [get] late to a crime scene
and people have had the chance to talk
and if they've had the chance to talk, but then, when I separate them and I asked them all their stories
there's still some apparent variation between these stories, I feel really good about it!
because even when they had the chance to line up their stories, they didn't
they saw it slightly differently given their backgrounds and they reported it that way
Well, here's what we have in scripture, folks who had the opportunity to line up their stories
you don't think that the gospel authors couldn't have done that? or the early church couldn't have done that?
But, they didn't
And that to me gives me great confidence that this variation is the natural kind of variation I'd expected to see.
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