Jewish theology holds to a strictly monotheistic faith, that is, faith in only one God. Both Deuteronomy 6:4 and Exodus 20 — two bedrock passages of Jewish life — begin with a strong affirmation of their monotheism. However, Christians claim that Jesus is God, but also that Jesus, the “Son of God,” is distinguishable from “God the Father.”

How can God the Father and Jesus the Son be one God? 

This is a challenge for Christianity because the same Jewish text that teaches monotheism is a part of Christian Scripture. Early Christians were Jews, and they saw Jesus as their Messiah. Various solutions to this question were developed by the early Church, but only after tremendous effort and volumes of written material.

Even today, we still wrestle with this question. Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to believe that Christians simply got it wrong?

Was Monotheism Considered Under Threat?

In light of this challenge, it may seem reasonable to reject Christianity. But if it’s true that the Christians were so out of line with their Jewish predecessors, we are faced with a different issue: Of all the challenges tackled by the New Testament authors, why did they spend practically no time reassessing Jewish monotheism? 

Why don’t we have any text from Paul or Peter saying, “Hey everyone, I know that the Scriptures teach monotheism, and I know we’re getting a lot of criticism from the Jews about this, so let me help you out”? Other challenges to Jewish thought were discussed, such as the inclusion of the Gentiles (Ephesians 2–4), the Messianic fulfillment of prophecy (Acts 18:28), the switch from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant (Rom. 1–11), and why the Messiah had to suffer (Heb. 9–10). 

If the divinity of Christ threatens monotheism — the very soul of Jewish faith and practice — and if the authors who defended Christianity against their Jewish opponents affirmed the deity of Christ (Phillipians. 2:6; Colossians 2:9; Hebrews 1:3, 8), why are they virtually silent here? It’s clear enough that the New Testament authors argued that Jesus was God, but they don’t spend much time explaining how this could be.

Was the Deity of Christ a Gradual Invention?

Some scholars have proposed that the deity of Christ “snuck its way in” over a long period of time. They often look to angelic or heavenly figures in the Jewish Scriptures, suggesting that Jesus was originally given that kind of status as a “stepping stone” for the eventual recognition of His deity.

The challenge with this view is that (1) Affirmation of Christ’s full deity appears far too early for it to have evolved from demigod status, and (2) The “stepping stone” of intermediary, angelic figures is still too far of a step to full deity.

Jews have always maintained the distinction between God and high angelic creatures. Having come from the same theological convictions, the early Christian Jews would likewise have kept heavenly creatures in their place, utterly separate from the transcendent creator God who alone deserves their worship. The solution to this predicament, I think, is found in a ground-breaking work by Cambridge scholar Richard Bauckham.

In 1998, Bauckham published a small book titled God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament, which became Chapter 1 in his larger book, Jesus and the God of Israel.

His larger book proposed a new way of understanding Jewish thinking: That the deity of Christ was never a threat to monotheism to begin with. Rather, affirming the deity of Christ was already possible in the way that first-century Jews understood their own monotheism. “What has been lacking in the whole discussion of this issue,” writes Bauckham, “has been an adequate understanding of the ways in which Second Temple Judaism understood the uniqueness of God” (page 4).

If you fancy a dense theological read, I highly encourage you to pick up Jesus and the God of Israel. But if you’re looking for a simplified summary of Bauckham’s argument, I’ll break it down here.

Understanding Monotheism as Divine Identity

Bauckham shifts our focus on what the divinity of God meant for the Jewish people. Rather than seeing it as an essence or nature of God (What is divinity?), the first-century Jews viewed God’s divinity in terms of God’s identity (Who is this divine God?).

Bauckham argues that according to early Jewish thinking, God is identified as divine because of His unique, one-of-a-kind relation to the world. Two of the most salient relations are that God is the creator of all things and sovereign ruler of all things. They are features of His identity to which God alone can lay claim: Only God created the world. Only God has sovereign authority over all things. Only God is to be worshiped. 

Jewish monotheism found its place. When we view God’s divinity in terms of His unique identity and relation to this world, we can understand how any aspect of God’s identity is no threat to monotheism. Bauckham points out that the Jews understood that God’s word, wisdom, and Spirit did things that only God does, but this was no concern for them because each is part of who God is.

For example, 2 Enoch 33:4 (not Jewish scripture, but gives insight into Jewish thought) says that God had no one to advise Him in His work of creation, but that wisdom was His advisor. Similarly, Psalm 33:6 says that all things were made by the “word of God.” Was it “the word of God” rather than God Himself? No, because the “word of God” is God Himself.

Adds Bauckham, “In a variety of ways, [the wisdom of God, the word of God, etc.] express God, His mind and His will in relation to the world. They are not created beings, nor are they semi-divine entities occupying some ambiguous status between the one God and the rest of reality. They belong to the unique divine identity” (page 17, emphasis original).

The Divine Identity of Christ

So just as God’s word, wisdom, and Spirit are part of God’s identity as the sole creator and ruler of the universe, so also is God’s Son, Jesus, placed in the same status by New Testament authors as the sole creator and ruler of all things. God’s Son is God in a similar way that God’s wisdom is God: they share the same identity as God.

Bauckham notes: “The understanding of Jewish monotheism which I have proposed will function as the hermeneutical key to understanding the way in which the New Testament texts relate Jesus Christ to the one God of Jewish monotheism. It will enable us to see that the intention of New Testament Christology, throughout the texts, is to include Jesus in the unique divine identity as Jewish monotheism understood it. They do this deliberately and comprehensively by using precisely those characteristics of the divine identity on which Jewish monotheism focused in characterizing God as unique. They include Jesus in the unique divine sovereignty over all things, they include him in the unique divine creation of all things, they identify him by the divine name which names the unique divine identity, and they portray him as accorded the worship which, for Jewish monotheists, is recognition of the unique divine identity” (page 19).

Many examples of this Christian activity are given in Bauckham’s book. His point is that the New Testament authors talked about Christ in a way that acknowledged Jesus as fully divine, but did not compromise their monotheistic commitments. To be sure, what they proclaimed about Jesus was unique; Jesus was the first and only expression of the Jewish God that had taken on a fully human body. 

Rather than abstract expressions of God (such as His wisdom or word), we now have something physical. But this unique proclamation was nonetheless compatible with how the Jews understood monotheism. Rather than starting with the man Jesus, attributing divine attributes to Him, and explaining how He is “one” with God, the New Testament authors started with their one unique God and expanded their understanding of who God is by introducing Jesus. “Novel as it was,” writes Bauckham, “it did not require any repudiation of the monotheistic faith which the first Christians axiomatically shared with all Jews” (page 19).

Can God be More Than One Person?

One of the most challenging shifts required with the introduction of Jesus into the identity of God, is that God can no longer be understood as a single “person.” Rather, within God is an interpersonal relationship between Father and Son (and Holy Spirit, a subject outside the scope of this article). 

We may think that Christians are asking too much for such a radical innovation, casting doubt that they have maintained monotheism by introducing Jesus into His divine identity. Bauckham recognizes this challenge but stresses that the Jews were open to the idea:

“While human identity may be the common analogy for thinking about the divine identity, the God of Israel clearly transcends the categories of human identity. The categories are used in awareness that God transcends them. In God’s unique relationship to the rest of reality as Creator of all things and sovereign Ruler of all things, the human analogies, indispensable as they are, clearly point to a divine identity transcendently other than human personhood. Nothing in the Second Temple Jewish understanding of divine identity contradicts the possibility of interpersonal relationship within the divine identity but, on the other hand, there is little, if anything, that anticipates it” (page 56).

Our discussion does not prove that the Jewish view of God is the correct view of God, or that the early Christians were correct about the divinity of Christ. But it does show that the deity of Christ needn’t contradict a monotheistic view of God, as clearly outlined in Deuteronomy 6:4 and other Scripture.

Many modern-day religious Jews and Muslims argue that Christianity’s view of Christ is not compatible with their own Old Testament. But instead of reevaluating the deity of Christ, perhaps we need to reevaluate who God truly is in light of who Christ is — the supreme unique creator and sovereign ruler of all the universe, unlimited in power and splendor … compelled by love to come down from His throne as the suffering servant who died for our sins.

Matthew is a Christian writer and speaker with Josh McDowell Ministry. He has a passion for the church to be united, strengthened, and unleashed to spread the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world. Matthew holds an M.Div from Talbot School of Theology.

My name is Matthew. I’m a speaker and author with Josh McDowell Ministry. After you watch this video, feel free to leave a comment here or via my social channels, listed below. I’d love to hear from you and be a small part of your wrestling with these important questions about Jesus. I also invite you to subscribe to my channel.

Enemies Refute Gospels? | Are the Gospels Reliable?

Welcome, everyone, to our final video in this series on the historical reliability of the Gospels. We’ve covered a lot in the previous nine videos, but there’s one last question I want us to explore: Do the enemies of Christianity claim that the gospels contain false information? 

Obviously, those opposed to Christianity deny that Jesus rose from the dead, as claimed by the Gospel writers. No surprise there. But there are other details that these critics admit are true. Let’s look at just three examples that substantiate historical facts about Jesus.

One: The Roman historian Tacitus, born about 20 years after the death of Jesus, recorded that the Roman emperor Nero framed Christians as starting a deadly fire that was likely Nero’s own doing.

Tacitus wrote: “Therefore, to squelch the rumor, Nero created scapegoats and subjected to the most refined tortures those whom the common people called ‘Christians,’ hated for their abominable crimes. Their name comes from Christ, who, during the reign of Tiberius, had been executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Suppressed for the moment, the deadly superstition broke out again, not only in Judea, the land which originated this evil, but also in the city of Rome, where all sorts of horrendous and shameful practices from every part of the world converse and are fervently cultivated.”

It’s obvious that Tacitus was not friendly towards Christianity. But notice the details he confirms: that Jesus existed and was called Christ, that He lived during the reign of Tiberius, and that He was executed under Pilate. The Christian movement ended after Jesus was killed, but suddenly started up again and spread rapidly. 

Two: The Jewish Talmud accuses Jesus of leading the Jews astray via sorcery. This implies that the Jews believed Jesus actually did supernatural things.

Granted, the Talmud was written roughly 500 years after the time of Jesus, but its writings preserve the oral communication of the Jews passed down through history. So it likely reflects an argument that the Jews made many years earlier. The Bible books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us that the Jews accused Jesus of performing miracles from demonic power, rather than power from God. The writings of Josephus, a Jewish historian who lived in the first century, also recorded that Jesus was a doer of startling deeds. Clearly, these sources confirm that Jesus evidenced supernatural powers.

Three: The final detail I want to show you comes from Matthew 28:11-15. In this Bible passage, Jesus had just resurrected. Matthew tells us how the Roman guards responded.

“While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.”

Why do you suppose Matthew writes this? Likely because the Roman guards were spreading this lie.  Matthew’s details served to help people know the truth. Don’t miss this critical point: If the guards were claiming that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body, it meant that Rome was admitting that the tomb was empty — and they didn’t know how it happened. 

I hope by now that you recognize that there are plenty of historical facts that substantiate the trustworthiness of the four Gospels, and that we can confidently place our trust in Jesus. “Gospel,” by the way, means “good news.” The resurrection story of Jesus, the central message of Christianity, is definitely good news!

Our sin once separated us from God, but Jesus changed that! Jesus lived among us, selflessly died a horrific death on the cross as payment for our sins, and resurrected to show His supernatural power. You and I are fully reconciled to God, both now and forever, when we choose to  trust in the saving power of Jesus. Will you consider inviting Jesus to be Lord of your life today? 

Thank you for journeying through this series with me. I love sharing this information in person. Consider inviting me to speak at your church or youth event! Click on my Josh McDowell Ministry Speakers Page link below. 

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Matthew is a Christian writer and speaker with Josh McDowell Ministry. He has a passion for the church to be united, strengthened, and unleashed to spread the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world. Matthew holds an M.Div from Talbot School of Theology.

My name is Matthew. I’m a speaker and author with Josh McDowell Ministry. After you watch this video, feel free to leave a comment here or via my social channels, listed below. I’d love to hear from you and be a small part of your wrestling with these important questions about Jesus. I also invite you to subscribe to my channel.

Gospels Historically Confirmed? | Are the Gospels Reliable?

We are on video 9 in my series on the historical reliability of the Gospels. In this video, let’s ask how the Gospels compare with other, outside information. Do the gospels mention people, places, and events that can be confirmed by known history? 

Quite a lot of research has been done comparing the Gospels to other known history. For example, the first three chapters of Luke mention 11 historical leaders whose names are confirmed by sources outside the Gospels. This shouldn’t surprise us, given Luke’s track record of providing accurate details. Historian Colin Hemer has chronicled 84 confirmed details in the last 16 chapters of Acts, also written by Luke. As Matthew and Mark contain many of the same details found in Luke, we can say, by comparison, that they, too, are historically accurate.

New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg did a similar test on the book of John to see how it aligns with known history. Some confirmed details include the use of stone water jars, the location of Jacob’s well, the hostility between Jews and Samaritans, the topography of Western Galilee, the location and description of the five colonnades at the pool of Bethesda, the location of the pool of Siloam, the distance from Bethany to Jerusalem, first-century burial practices, Caiaphas as the high priest, and many others. Scholars Norman Geisler and Frank Turek found at least 30 people mentioned in the New Testament who are confirmed by archeology or ancient writings. Their search was not exhaustive. 

Some critics suggest that Pilate and Herod, two Roman leaders, are proof that the Gospel details aren’t correct.

Pilate, they say, as portrayed in the Gospels, seems to be somewhat of a pushover when the Jews pressured him to crucify Jesus. Critics point out that Pilate wasn’t particularly interested in pleasing the Jewish leadership. But the Gospels provide a good explanation for why Pilate would have been hesitant with Jesus: He found no crime deserving of punishment. We have to remember that the cross was reserved for the worst kinds of criminals. Pilate eventually gave way to the agitated crowd’s demands, worried that the Jesus situation would negatively impact his relationship with Caesar.

They also assert that the story of Herod’s massive slaughter of male children, as described in Matthew 2:16, never happened. Certainly an event of this size would be recorded in other historical sources, they say, but it’s not. The Zondervan Bible Background commentary provides this important insight: “Only 123 men returned to Bethlehem from the Babylonian deportation (Ezra 2:21), and it appears not to have grown beyond a small village of perhaps a thousand people at the birth of Jesus. Herod’s forces killed all the infant boys under the age of two years, which would calculate to between ten to thirty boys. Although this number of infant boys massacred would be a huge loss for the village of Bethlehem, it is not an incident that stands out significantly when seen in the light of other horrific events in Herod’s infamous career, and historians would have easily bypassed it.”

We must acknowledge that just because an event is not mentioned outside the Gospels, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Also consider this factor: at that time, information was primarily transferred through word of mouth. Even if people wanted to write something down, many of them were illiterate or lacked the appropriate materials. And those materials would likely have disintegrated after a few hundred years, unless the information was continually recopied onto new materials. The only reason we have any ancient historical writings today is because copies were intentionally made to preserve them. 

All in all, we have plenty to show that the Gospels corroborate well with other known historical details recorded by reliable sources outside the Gospels.

In our next (and final) video, let’s look at a very important question: What did the enemies of Christianity have to say about the Gospels? Do they admit some details were true? Do they sidestep the problems? If the Gospels contain any historical inaccuracies, you would expect the enemies of Christianity to be all over it. See you then!

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Matthew is a Christian writer and speaker with Josh McDowell Ministry. He has a passion for the church to be united, strengthened, and unleashed to spread the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world.  Matthew holds an M.Div from Talbot School of Theology.

My name is Matthew. I’m a speaker and author with Josh McDowell Ministry. After you watch this video, feel free to leave a comment here or via my social channels, listed below. I’d love to hear from you and be a small part of your wrestling with these important questions about Jesus. I also invite you to subscribe to my channel.

Gospel Contradict in Details? | Are the Gospels Reliable?

Welcome to video eight in our series of the historical reliability of the Gospels. So far I’ve spoken generally about why we can trust the Gospels. In this video let’s ask: “Are the details in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John consistent with one another?” 

From the perspective that all Bible text is true, there should be no major contradictions between the four Gospels. Skeptics assert that the four Gospels can’t be trusted, however, because when compared there are inconsistencies. Some examples they cite:

~ The family tree of Jesus differs in Matthew and Luke: Some names are missing, other names are added. 
~ Each Gospel records different people at Jesus’ empty tomb.
~ When Jesus is tempted by Satan three times, Matthew and Luke arrange the temptations in different orders.
~ When Jesus gives His famous sermon, Matthew tells us that it takes place on a mountain. But Luke records that it occurs “on a level place.”
~ Matthew writes that a Roman centurion asks Jesus to heal his paralyzed servant. But Luke notes that two elders approach Jesus to make the plea on the centurion’s behalf. 

Okay, there are some differences. But from a historical perspective, we should be willing to accept that a document can still be trustworthy, even if some inconsistencies are present. Remember: inconsistencies don’t necessarily translate to being contradictions.

Think of it this way: If four survivors were to describe their experience of being on the Titanic the night that she hit an iceberg and began to sink, we’d see inconsistencies in their personal stories. They might not get every detail right. And they’d miss some details. Each person would focus on the details they want us to know. Yet from their individual testimonies, we gain a more complete picture of all that happened. The same is true if you were in a car accident. You, the driver who hit you, and the onsite witnesses would each tell a different version of what happened. But taken together, you’d be able to piece together the full picture.

To judge the four Gospels as being untrustworthy because they don’t match, detail for detail, is not a strong argument.

Four Important Points 

As we consider these and other differences in the Gospel versions, let’s keep these points in mind:

First: Differences don’t necessarily equate to contradictions.
None of the four Gospel writers claim to be providing a complete list of who visited Jesus’ empty tomb. They simply chose to focus on different people as they share the Good News that Jesus resurrected, as He said He would.  

Second: These writers weren’t so concerned about chronology.
Each writer chose how to present the information they thought important to include. Perhaps they had theological lessons in mind as they assembled their material.

Third: Some contradictions are not hard to harmonize, if you take the time to think about them.
Matthew describes Jesus giving his sermon on a mountain. Luke says it occurred on a flat location. Perhaps because it was a flat area on a mountain. In studying the Greek wording between the books of Matthew and Luke, New Testament scholar D.A. Carson concluded that Matthew’s “mountain” probably means “hill country” and Luke’s “plain” commonly refers to a plateau in a mountainous region. There’s no contradiction here.

Fourth: As Carson shows us, sometimes contradictions are easily explained as we dig deeper into research.
Specific to whether the Roman centurion showed up in person 0r sent others to make his request, New Testament scholar Leon Morris noted, “It is better to see Matthew as abbreviating the story and leaving out details inessential to his purpose. What a man does through agents he may be said to do himself. So Matthew simply gives the gist of the centurion’s communication to Jesus, whereas Luke in greater detail gives the actual sequence of events.” We can apply this to the details shared about Jesus’ family tree, as well.

The Gospel writers were not modern day journalists. If we read the Gospels with the standard of their intent, we are able to see that the apparent inconsistencies can be reasonably resolved. Too, the differences in the Gospels serve to give each book credibility as being a unique perspective.

If all four Gospels conveyed the exact same details, we wouldn’t have four accounts. We’d have one account told four times. The Gospels are different enough to show us that they are independent sources, but similar enough to show us that the inconsistencies aren’t contradictions. We can have a high degree of trust in them.

In my next video, let’s look at the Gospels in light of what scholarly research tells us about the people, places, and events in which they are situated. See you then!

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Matthew is a Christian writer and speaker with Josh McDowell Ministry. He has a passion for the church to be united, strengthened, and unleashed to spread the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world. Matthew holds an M.Div from Talbot School of Theology.

My name is Matthew. I’m a speaker and author with Josh McDowell Ministry. After you watch this video, feel free to leave a comment here or via my social channels, listed below. I’d love to hear from you and be a small part of your wrestling with these important questions about Jesus. I also invite you to subscribe to my channel. 

Gospel Authors Lying? | Are the Gospels Reliable?

Hey everyone! Welcome back. In previous videos we focused on the Gospel stories written purposely to document history, by authors with the authority and capability of recording it accurately. But, how do we know the Gospel authors weren’t lying? How do we know they didn’t make stuff up?

Here’s one fact to consider: If you or I were writing a story in which we want our subject (Christianity) to look good, would we include details that make its early leaders look bad? No. That would be really dumb.

Yet the Gospel writers frequently make it clear that Jesus’ disciples were consistently clueless, often failing to grasp His teachings. And they argued amongst themselves as to which of them was the greatest disciple — an attitude at odds with the humility Jesus modeled daily. On many occasions, the disciples lacked faith. They were gobsmacked by Jesus’ abilities — whether

He was casting out demons, multiplying a few fish and loaves to feed crowds of thousands, walking on water, or commanding tempestuous waves to be still. Some even initially doubted when told Jesus had appeared to others in His resurrected body! Poor “Doubting Thomas,” the poster child for lack of faith: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25).

Too, the Gospel writers depicted Peter — the steady “rock” upon whom Jesus declared He would build the Church! — as both impetuous and a coward. On the night leading to Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter rashly drew his sword and cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest as the Temple guards made to arrest Jesus. Peter was a fisherman, not a master swordsman; I don’t think he was aiming for the ear! Jesus healed the man. Only hours later, Peter denied even knowing Jesus three times, to save his own skin. 

Why would the Gospel writers include embarrassing stories about the disciples? The only conceivable reason is because the authors were committed to sharing the truth. 

The writers also didn’t hold back from presenting the hard, difficult teachings of Jesus. They didn’t try to sugarcoat Christianity. They wanted readers to understand who Jesus is, what He asks from His followers — and why choosing Him is worth any cost.

One hard teaching: If someone looks at a woman lustfully, that person commits adultery in his or her heart. Another hard teaching: If someone demands your tunic, offer up your cloak, too. A third: Love your enemies, don’t seek revenge. Hard, indeed. The ego must go!

The Gospel writers also acknowledged that Jesus admitted that His followers might suffer greatly for their commitment. If they wanted to easily attract a following, would they admit the hard parts of being a Christian? No. But they did. Because their motive was to tell the truth.

Many of the early followers of Jesus were, indeed, persecuted — as many are today, in parts of the world hostile to Jesus. Beaten. Tortured. Denounced by their friends and family. Killed for proclaiming the Good News. The Gospel writers themselves personally endured persecution for refusing to be quiet. 

It doesn’t make sense that the Gospel writers stuck with Jesus, unless knowing Him had made all the difference for them.  Over the centuries, the Bible, written by men, but inspired by God, has proven its incredible staying power. 

As Hebrews 4:12 states, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

2 Timothy 3:16-17 adds, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

So were the Gospel authors lying? I hope you are starting to see that the Gospels are reliable and accurate documents. Let’s keep going! See you in the next video!

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Matthew is a Christian writer and speaker with Josh McDowell Ministry. He has a passion for the church to be united, strengthened, and unleashed to spread the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world. Matthew holds an M.Div from Talbot School of Theology.

My name is Matthew. I’m a speaker and author with Josh McDowell Ministry. After you watch this video, feel free to leave a comment here or via my social channels, listed below. I’d love to hear from you and be a small part of your wrestling with these important questions about Jesus. I also invite you to subscribe to my channel. 

Pagan Influences? | Are the Gospels Reliable?

As we continue in our series about the historical reliability of the Gospels, we have to ask whether the writers were influenced by pagan myths of dying and rising gods. The argument goes that the “myth” of Jesus is just a continuation of other myths.

Is Jesus really just a copy of other pagan gods? Since the mid-1990s, this argument has been almost completely rejected by Christian and non-Christian scholars of the New Testament, yet it’s still popular on the internet and secular media.

Just as one example, the movie Religulous puts it this way:

Written in 1280 B.C., the Egyptian Book of the Dead describes a god, Horus. Horus is the son of the god Osiris, born to a virgin mother. He was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer who was later beheaded. Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert, he healed the sick, the blind, cast out demons, and walked on water. He raised Asar from the dead. “Asar” translates to “Lazarus.” Oh, and like Jesus, he had 12 disciples. Horus also was crucified. Three days later two women announced that Horus, “the savior of humanity,” had been resurrected.

Despite the apparent similarities between Jesus and previous gods of pagan mythology, the theory that Jesus was copied from pagan mythology is problematic for many reasons. Let me show you eight solid reasons:

Pagan Copy or Original?

First: If you stop and fact-check the details of these pagan gods, you’ll find that most of them are completely made up, or so violently distorted to look like Jesus that they don’t offer compelling evidence. 

Second: A man claiming to be a savior, performing miracles, healing people, and amassing followers is not an unusual story. Even dying and rising gods are not surprising in history. People of the ancient past were deeply interested in cycles of life and death, likely because of their annual crop cycle, where plants would grow, die, and grow back again.

Likewise, their gods would die and resurrect in a similar fashion, repeating the process every year.

Third: The fact that we see parallels to Jesus in other gods might be because the real God of this universe placed in every human heart the subconscious longing for Jesus. This longing inevitably inspired imaginative stories of ancient gods, but it happened for real in the life of Jesus.  

Fourth: Comparisons to other gods/religions often ignore what is profoundly unique to the Christian message.

There’s no emphasis on doctrine. No emphasis on grace or forgiveness. The deaths of these gods was neither sacrificial nor voluntary. And there was no public declaration of a real bodily resurrection. Osiris, though “raised” by Isis, did not return in a resurrected body, but became king of the underworld. Though other ancient religions talk about salvation, they offer nothing like the Christian view of salvation.

Fifth: The argument that Jesus is a copy from previous gods also suffers from the “Genetic Fallacy” — that one event has been influenced by an earlier event. For example, can one say that the moon landing in 1969 was fake, simply because Star Trek came out first, in 1966? 

Sixth: The religious Jews were not syncretistic. In other words, they did not blend other religions with their own. They were a set-apart people.

Seventh: Many of the details about pagan gods come from writings after the time of Jesus, even if the gods originated before Jesus.

What this means is that the life of Jesus may have influenced the teachings of Horus, Osiris, or other pagan gods, not the other way around.

Eighth: As I shared in an earlier video in this series, the Gospels are grounded in historical teachings. The life of Jesus has been historically documented by Christians and non-Christians, who saw Jesus as a real person who lived, taught, and died on a cross. 

In the next video, let’s look at a very important question: Were the authors of the four gospels telling the truth, or were they self-serving liars? I’ll see you then!

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Matthew is a Christian writer and speaker with Josh McDowell Ministry. He has a passion for the church to be united, strengthened, and unleashed to spread the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world. Matthew holds an M.Div from Talbot School of Theology.

My name is Matthew. I’m a speaker and author with Josh McDowell Ministry. After you watch this video, feel free to leave a comment here or via my social channels, listed below. I’d love to hear from you and be a small part of your wrestling with these important questions about Jesus. I also invite you to subscribe to my channel. 

Accurate Accounts? | Are the Gospels Reliable?

Today we will ask if the Gospel authors capably recorded history. Were they good candidates to tell us about the life of Jesus? Should we trust their accounts? Let’s get into it!

All four of the Gospel writers were in a good position to give us an accurate account of the life of Jesus. So far in this series I’ve shown you that Matthew and John were disciples (students) of Jesus, making them excellent sources to talk about Him. They spent more time with Jesus than almost anyone else. Mark worked closely with Peter to compose his Gospel, and Peter was a disciple of Jesus. Luke’s closest connection to Jesus was Paul.

Although not one of Jesus’s twelve disciples, Paul had an experience seeing the resurrected Jesus that TRANSFORMED his life. Paul was then entrusted by the early Church to share the story of Jesus around the world. In Luke’s Gospel, and his subsequent book of Acts, his higher vocabulary and orderly style appear to be the work of a careful historian. 

We might wonder if the authors were influenced by bias. Some atheists and skeptics completely dismiss the historical value of the Gospels because the authors followed Christ. But just as bias can distort a report, it also can strengthen the report. Christian belief places emphasis on truth and honesty. As disciples of Jesus, these men strove to meet that standard. And consider this: these early followers of Jesus were persecuted for their faith. They courageously faced death, asserting that their words were true.  

A much more credible objection is that these authors wrote their books long after the events took place. It’s true that decades passed between the life of Jesus and when the Gospels were produced. How did these authors remember what happened decades ago? Let me show you four reasons for why the Gospels can be considered accurate records.

4 Reasons to Accept the Gospel Records as Accurate

First: We must acknowledge the oral culture the Gospel authors lived in. In their time and place, people transferred information primarily through spoken words. It was common practice for people to retain large amounts of information by rote memorization. Their brains adapted to this practice — and they were very good at it. Reality check: We find it difficult to memorize a single Scripture verse, much less chapters of the Bible. But back then, learned individuals memorized entire texts!

Second: Jesus spoke and taught in a way to enable easy memorization. New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg points out that up to 90 percent of Jesus’s words were written in poetic fashion. This doesn’t mean that His words rhymed. Rather, they had a distinct rhythm … meter … parallels. This significantly aided in people memorizing and retaining His teachings.

Third: It’s easy to remember information if you teach it regularly. As the disciples of Jesus were founders and leaders of the early Church, they would have been talking about Jesus frequently, which would have kept their memories fresh and accessible as they composed their Gospels. As they worked on their texts, then, they could test their certainty of important details with others who had been with Jesus or learned from others who had been. Likewise, having this built-in community ensured that if they started to exaggerate or give false information, others in-the-know would have corrected them.

Fourth: Although the four Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ ministry, there’s no reason to think that the disciples weren’t taking notes during their three years with Jesus. As they traveled with Jesus, the disciples would have recognized that Jesus was making history. That His words and actions were EXTRAORDINARY. These supernatural events would have seared into their brain. But it’s also reasonable to believe that written records were recorded to capture the highlights. And those records would have been accurate resources for the Gospel writers as they wrote their books.

All things considered, I believe we can trust that the authors of the Gospels responsibly and accurately recorded history. What’s your response to this? Are you willing to trust that the Gospel writers faithfully recorded Jesus’ life and teachings? Can you get behind the idea that God helped these men as they wrote their Gospel texts? Are you willing to let this objection go to see the truth of Jesus?

In video 6 we’ll discuss another object: Whether Jesus (and Christianity) is a copycat of older mythologies of resurrecting gods. I’ll see you then!

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Matthew is a Christian writer and speaker with Josh McDowell Ministry. He has a passion for the church to be united, strengthened, and unleashed to spread the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world. Matthew holds an M.Div from Talbot School of Theology.

My name is Matthew. I’m a speaker and author with Josh McDowell Ministry. After you watch this video, feel free to leave a comment here or via my social channels, listed below. I’d love to hear from you and be a small part of your wrestling with these important questions about Jesus. I also invite you to subscribe to my channel. 

History or Allegory? | Are the Gospels Reliable?

In this video I’m asking: Did the authors intend to record history? To be clear, I’m not asking whether or not they are lying. I’m asking if they want their readers to believe that the details they share about Jesus are real and accurate. Did they actually take place?

Nearly every scholar of the New Testament, Christian or not, would say yes. The Gospels authors expect their books to be taken as historical fact, not allegories or fiction. Luke is very explicit about this from the start:

“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”

John’s Gospel makes a similar statement near the end of his book. After writing about the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus, John writes: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Why did both assert that Jesus was the Messiah? Because they are convinced that Jesus really did all the marvelous things they recorded.

Real History, Purposeful Format

According to New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg, there’s an important piece of implicit evidence that can’t be overlooked. “Consider,”  he suggests, “the way the Gospels are written — in a sober and responsible fashion, with accurate incidental details, with obvious care and exactitude. You don’t find the outlandish flourishes and blatant mythologizing that you see in a lot of other ancient writing.” 

Open the Gospels to any page, and you’ll see what he’s talking about.

As an example, Matthew traces the lineage of Jesus back to Abraham:

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

Matthew attaches Jesus to a real family tree, and then says that Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of a virgin birth. He doesn’t linger on the interesting details, like the angel. Rather, he lays out things in a plain, matter-of-fact fashion. Matthew’s style is what we can expect of someone speaking from a historical perspective. 

We find another example in Mark 7. The text reads like a factual report of Jesus’ travel:

Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him. After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”). At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.

In the third chapter of his book, Luke also carefully details the life of Jesus in real time:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar — when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene — during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Trusting the Details

I think one reason people get tripped up on this questions about historical accuracy is because the Gospels have spiritual undertones, life lessons, and the occasional literary touch.

C.S. Lewis, a world-famous Christian writer and academic of literature, did a lot of work with allegory. In talking about the Gospel of John, Lewis notes: “I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this. Of this text, there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative.”

Yes, the Gospels have an obvious theological agenda, and were written to strengthen and encourage the early church. But they’re still historical. Even literary parallels like Jesus reliving the ministry of Old Testament characters can be affirmed without denying the historical background. Especially if we are open to the idea that God chose to orchestrate history in this remarkable way.

In video 5 we’ll discuss whether we can trust the Gospel writers’ ability to accurately recall details. See you then!

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Matthew is a Christian writer and speaker with Josh McDowell Ministry. He has a passion for the church to be united, strengthened, and unleashed to spread the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world. Matthew holds an M.Div from Talbot School of Theology.

My name is Matthew. I’m a speaker and author with Josh McDowell Ministry. After you watch this video, feel free to leave a comment here or via my social channels, listed below. I’d love to hear from you and be a small part of your wrestling with these important questions about Jesus. I also invite you to subscribe to my channel.

Are the Gospels Reliable? | When Were They Written?

Many date the Gospels after the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. One reason is because Jesus predicted the temple’s destruction, as recorded in the Gospel of Mark, which occurred 40 years after His death. As these skeptics consider predictive prophecy impossible (conveniently overlooking Jesus predicting His own death and resurrection, which He literally fulfilled), they assert that Mark must have been written after the event happened.

If the Gospels are reliable sources of Jesus, then we can trust that Jesus really was sent from God, performed miracles, and made predictions that have so far proven 100 percent accurate. We must be careful to not insert anti-supernatural bias into the Gospels in our attempt to determine whether or not they are true. If we do this, we will inevitably determine that they aren’t true before we even begin the investigation.

I would agree with those who advocate for an earlier dating of the Gospels. One important reason is that the Gospel of Luke was composed by the same author who wrote the book of Acts. Acts tells about the life of Paul, Peter, and the events happening in Jerusalem and the early Church. But Acts has an abrupt ending that doesn’t sound like a proper way to close. It ends as if the author caught up to real time. This is where it gets interesting. Curiously, Acts tells us nothing about the deaths of Peter or Paul. It doesn’t mention the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., or the siege that took place before then. Those were cataclysmic events!

Now imagine that you read a book on Abraham Lincoln, but the book said nothing about Lincoln’s assassination. It would be reasonable to assume that the book was written before 1865 when he died. If you read a book about the history of New York City, but the book didn’t mention the attack on the World Trade Center, you would reasonably assume that the book was written before September 2001, when the Twin Towers were destroyed.

The deaths of Peter, Paul, and the destruction of Jerusalem were just as significant for the early Church. It’s hard to imagine they would be left out of Acts, unless Acts was written earlier, probably in the mid-60s. We know the book of Luke was written before Acts, so that places Luke even earlier. Luke appears to have drawn from Mark, placing Mark even earlier than Luke, long before the temple’s destruction, well within the time frame of Jesus’s generation.

As for Matthew, the early church writer Irenaeus says that he wrote while Peter and Paul were preaching and founding the church in Rome. That puts him in the 60s, close to Luke. This fits. Matthew includes teachings of Jesus that would have felt more relevant to his contemporary audience while the temple was still standing. His writing includes features common at the time. And, there’s evidence that Luke quoted from Matthew, placing his writing earlier than Luke’s.

John’s dating is probably the hardest to nail down. For a while, it was thought to have been very late, near the end of the 2nd century, because the Gospel makes some of the strongest statements of Jesus’s divinity. Scholars suggested that such high views of Jesus did not develop until later, although after a manuscript of John dating to 130 A.D. was discovered, scholars realized that John must have been written earlier.

After looking at tradition, linguistic evidence, and historical context, New Testament Scholars D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo suggest that John’s most likely dating is between 80 and 85 A.D., which would have been closer to the end of John’s life. With this earlier dating, the authorship of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is entirely possible. But this doesn’t really matter if they hadn’t intended to record real events in history.

Obviously, if the Gospels were intended as allegories or inspirational bedtime stories, we wouldn’t want to treat them like actual history. We’ll discuss that next week. See you then!

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Josh McDowell Ministry:
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Matthew is a Christian writer and speaker with Josh McDowell Ministry. He has a passion for the church to be united, strengthened, and unleashed to spread the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world. Matthew holds an M.Div from Talbot School of Theology.

My name is Matthew. I’m a speaker and author with Josh McDowell Ministry. After you watch this video, feel free to leave a comment here or via my social channels, listed below. I’d love to hear from you and be a small part of your wrestling with these important questions about Jesus. I also invite you to subscribe to my channel. 

Are the Gospels Reliable? Who Wrote The Gospels?

From a historical perspective, it doesn’t quite matter who wrote the Gospels. What matters is whether the Gospels are true. However, if we know the authors, when they lived, and how closely they associated with Jesus, we will be in a better position to determine whether their writings can be trusted.

The four Gospels are named after their traditional authors: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Matthew was a tax collector and disciple of Jesus. Mark was an associate of Peter, a disciple of Jesus. Luke was a traveling companion with Paul, one of the first missionaries who claimed to have encountered Jesus. John was also a disciple of Jesus, and one of the closest to Him among the twelve. This puts all of these men in a good position to write about Jesus.

> GOOD REASONS FOR AUTHORSHIP

You may have heard people say that the four Gospels are anonymous. This, I believe, is an oversimplification of the issue.

Our earliest copies of these manuscripts include descriptions at the start which say “The Gospel according to Matthew” or “Mark” or “Luke” or “John.” From a literary perspective, scholars consider this to be unusual, and so they suggest that these words were added when the gospels started to circulate together, maybe sooner. Whatever the case, we don’t need to have names explicitly written down. There are other reasons for believing the Gospels were written by these four men.

For instance, there is no competing tradition for the authors. The only exception I’m aware of would be a small group who denied the authorship of John near the end of the 2nd century, but that didn’t last. The ancient writer Irenaeus is one important author who gave us the authors of the four Gospels. He personally knew Polycarp, who knew John. This puts him in a great position to know who wrote the four gospels, especially John. They write about the authors as if there is no doubt, probably because there was no doubt. As far as we can tell, the whole Church knew the authorship of the Gospels. It appears these writings always had a name associated with them, even if the name wasn’t written down. In that sense, they weren’t anonymous.

> SKEPTIC ARGUMENTS AGAINST AUTHORSHIP

Some modern scholars have denied one or more of the authors, although it’s usually after ignoring the early Church writings or dismissing them quickly. For instance, some would say that Matthew is not the author of the first Gospel, because Matthew was an eye-witnesses disciple of Jesus and yet he appears to have drawn from Mark. So they ask: “Why would an eyewitness need to use a source?” Well, perhaps the Gospel of Mark had so much acceptance by the early Church that Matthew knew it would be good to use it in his material, and he didn’t want to reinvent the wheel.

Others point out that the first Gospel comes from a perspective that shows a deeper relationship with the Jews than one would expect to find in Matthew. But who’s to say Matthew didn’t know how to speak to his audience? It seems to me that the modern scholars who write against the traditional authors of the Gospels are speculating a lot. I think we would be justified to push against them because of the unanimous understanding from all the writers who lived within the first few hundred years of Jesus.

These early authors would have had many more resources than we have today. They would have had more connections with other people who knew about the Gospels. They would have been in a much better position to know who wrote the Gospels than those of us living nearly two thousand years later.

Another reason skeptics reject the traditional authors is that writings exist from early Christians who falsely attributed their writings to well-known people. For example, the Gospel of Peter was not written by Peter. And the Gospel of Thomas was not written by Thomas. The early church rejected the authorship of these books. We should trust that they had good reasons.

Some deny the traditional authorship of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John because they think the books were written after the supposed authors lived. This depends on how you date the Gospels. This will be the subject of our next video. I’ll see you then!

ENGAGE WITH MATTHEW

Josh McDowell Ministry:
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Matthew is a Christian writer and speaker with Josh McDowell Ministry. He has a passion for the church to be united, strengthened, and unleashed to spread the good news of Jesus to every corner of the world. Matthew holds an M.Div from Talbot School of Theology.