Come, let us reason together. Part 3

In part one and two of this post I began an argument for why I believe theism, specifically Christianity, to be the true faith. I included arguments for Gods existence. I wrote that if God exists then miracles are possible, and they can be used to confirm a message from God. This gives credibility to the claim that the Bible is the Word of God. If the Bible is the Word of God we must consider what it teaches. This post will not go into great detail, but I encourage you to read previous posts for more information, (see: http://stevepack.blogspot.com/2008/05/laying-foundation.html and http://stevepack.blogspot.com/2008/06/shibileth.html ).

The New Testament documents are historically reliable. The New Testament has more, earlier, and more accurately copied manuscripts than any other book from the ancient world.

The New Testament events are recorded accurately. There were more, earlier, and more accurate writers than for any other book from the ancient world. The New Testament has nine writers who wrote 27 books. The authors include eyewitnesses, contemporary writers of Christ, contemporary authors of the eyewitnesses, and writers who wrote within 20 years of the New Testament events. Even with the diversity displayed in the authorship of the Bible the themes beginning in the Old Testament are constant throughout the New Testament. The whole of scripture is beautifully unified.

The gospels claim 500 eyewitness to Christ's resurrection. Luke based his gospel, and the book of Acts on eyewitness accounts. Hebrews has been confirmed by the Apostles who were eyewitnesses themselves.

There is evidence that the book of Acts was written by 62 AD. If this is true then we know that the gospel of Luke was written earlier because of the prologue in Acts. Josephus recorded the death of James at 62 AD. In Acts James is still alive. Paul is still alive in Acts, his death occurred under the persecution of Nero between 64-67 AD. But in Acts there is no mention of Nero's persecutions. There is no mention of the Jewish wars that took place around 66AD. Finally there is no mention of the fall of Jerusalem which took place in 70AD. Considering the nature of the book of Acts you would expect major events like these to be mentioned if they had occurred. None of these major events are mentioned suggesting that Acts was written around 62 AD. The book of Luke would have been written before Acts and without exploring this timeline any further we already have one gospel written 60 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

According to the teachings of the Greek historian Herodotus any date in the 1st century is too early to allow mythological development on foundational truths. Many people will not accept the accuracy of the New Testament writings even though the New Testament is closer in time to the actual events than any other ancient books. Usually the earliest is considered the most accurate. There are few questions about the reliability of sources teaching on Alexander the Great even though the ancient writings we have about him are written around 300 years after his death. There are five main surviving accounts on Alexander by Arrian, Curtius, Plutarch, Diodorus, and Justin. The problem of the sources concern Alexander-historians, because each presents a different "Alexander". Will the real Alexander the Great please stand up?

The accuracy of the New Testament writings has been confirmed by noted Roman historians, legal experts, Non-Christian sources, and archaeological finds. No archaeological evidence has ever refuted the Bible, yet thousands of them support the accuracy of scripture.

Because we can trust in the accuracy of the New Testament we must trust what it says. In the New Testament Jesus claimed to be God, and his claim was miraculously confirmed. My next post will explore these claims.

(Thanks to Normal Geisler for influencing my thinking on this subject).