How Do we Know the Gospels are Historical?
Father Dwight Longenecker
Anyone who wishes to engage in a thoughtful and intelligent exploration of the Christian faith will have to ask whether the gospels are historically reliable. Can we believe that the stories in the gospels are a true and accurate account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth?
The Gospels were written in Greek.
This piece of John's Gospel, dated to 125,
is so far the oldest copy ...
In answering this question the first thing to understand is what kind of documents the gospels are. To do this we have to first say what they are not. The gospels are not factual news reports. They are not a bald list of events and eyewitness testimony as might be compiled, say, in a police report: "Just the facts ma'am." They are not typical biography or the work of a professional historian. Neither are the gospels academic historical documents which are cross referenced with multiple documentary, archeological and anecdotal evidence. They don't pretend to be this kind of document, so it is ridiculous to blame them for not being so.
The gospels are actually totally unique documents. They are recorded accounts of personal experiences of multiple individuals from within a faith community. They are the written record of the stories told and sermons preached by the immediate followers of Jesus Christ about his life, teaching and death. They were recorded by the faith community that followed the teaching of Jesus and his disciples.
They differ in this respect, not only from every other type of historical document, but also from every other type of religious document. The Book of Mormon and the Koran purport to be dictated by an angel to the founder of the religion. Virtually every other book-based religion bases their religion on a book written by its founder. Jesus Christ never wrote a word. He didn't leave a book with his teachings. Why this is important will become clear momentarily.
In the meantime, let's go down a side route for a moment and ask first of all, whether any history can be written objectively. Is it possible for a historian to write a historical account without a bias of any kind? No. Every historian is limited by his philosophical and cultural assumptions. Every historian comes to his task with certain guiding principles that he thinks are true or valuable or helpful. These guiding principles cause him to interpret the history he records. He cannot help but make value judgements on the actions he records. Furthermore, those value judgements are in effect in every aspect of the historian's work. How does he choose which period of history to work on? How does he choose which events are momentous? How does he choose how to prioritize the events he records? How does he select the important personages and events from the past? As soon as he selects something to write about or study he is giving it prominence and therefore expressing his bias. The only way history can be "objective" is if it is a list of events in chronological order. The historian who is so naive as to imagine that he is not biased is even more compromised because his bias is invisible to him and therefore all the more influential.
Given the fact that the study of history must be biased, it is much better therefore if the pretense of objectivity is dropped. Much clearer if we know ahead of time that a historical study is written from a particular point of view. We can then make allowances for the bias and read other works from other perspectives to achieve balance. If I know that a particular historian is a Marxist or a feminist or a post-modern atheist I will understand their bias on history and the more they are open about it, while still trying to be as objective as possible, the better will the exercise be.
The gospels are actually totally unique documents. They are recorded accounts of personal experiences of multiple individuals from within a faith community. They are the written record of the stories told and sermons preached by the immediate followers of Jesus Christ about his life, teaching and death. They were recorded by the faith community that followed the teaching of Jesus and his disciples.
They differ in this respect, not only from every other type of historical document, but also from every other type of religious document. The Book of Mormon and the Koran purport to be dictated by an angel to the founder of the religion. Virtually every other book-based religion bases their religion on a book written by its founder. Jesus Christ never wrote a word. He didn't leave a book with his teachings. Why this is important will become clear momentarily.
In the meantime, let's go down a side route for a moment and ask first of all, whether any history can be written objectively. Is it possible for a historian to write a historical account without a bias of any kind? No. Every historian is limited by his philosophical and cultural assumptions. Every historian comes to his task with certain guiding principles that he thinks are true or valuable or helpful. These guiding principles cause him to interpret the history he records. He cannot help but make value judgements on the actions he records. Furthermore, those value judgements are in effect in every aspect of the historian's work. How does he choose which period of history to work on? How does he choose which events are momentous? How does he choose how to prioritize the events he records? How does he select the important personages and events from the past? As soon as he selects something to write about or study he is giving it prominence and therefore expressing his bias. The only way history can be "objective" is if it is a list of events in chronological order. The historian who is so naive as to imagine that he is not biased is even more compromised because his bias is invisible to him and therefore all the more influential.
Given the fact that the study of history must be biased, it is much better therefore if the pretense of objectivity is dropped. Much clearer if we know ahead of time that a historical study is written from a particular point of view. We can then make allowances for the bias and read other works from other perspectives to achieve balance. If I know that a particular historian is a Marxist or a feminist or a post-modern atheist I will understand their bias on history and the more they are open about it, while still trying to be as objective as possible, the better will the exercise be.
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