Word Of God

I have run into enough people who are down with Jesus to some degree, but don't accept at all that the Bible can be the Word of God, to warrant a post on the subject.

The point of the post is to present the high level arguments for why the New Testament is authentic.

[Start Rant]

1. We have early testimony from at least 10 non-Christian (including anti-Christian) sources about Jesus that indicates the following: He live during the time of Tiberius Caesar, lived a virtuous life, worked miracles, had a brother named James, was said to be the Messiah, was crucified under Pontius Pilate on the eve of the Jewish Passover, darkness and an earthquake occurred when He died, His disciples believed He rose from the dead and were willing to die for their belief, Christianity spread rapidly as far as Rome, and his disciples denied the Roman gods and worshiped Jesus as God.

These all fly with the New Testament.

So, we have early testimony about Jesus that is backed up by secular sources.

2. We have many more, and earlier, copies of New Testament documents than any other ancient document that is not in question. Comparing the New Testament to The Illiad by Homer, we have over 5000 more manuscripts (5686 versus 643) and a much shorter time gap (25 years difference for the earlier New Testament manuscripts versus 500 years). Other pieces of classical literature don't even come close to what we have for Homer.

Reconstruction of the original text is further authenticated by many (thousands) of quotations from early church fathers -- the entire text, save 11 verses, could be recreated just from the quotations of it in other early documents.

So, we have accurate copies of New Testament documents.

3. New Testament documents referenced by other writers by about 100 AD, so they had to have been written before then. In them, the temple and city are still standing at the time of their writing, so most of them had to have been written earlier than 70 AD when the temple was destroyed. Even atheist critics recognize that most of the New Testament books were penned somewhere between 40 AD and 80 AD at the latest.

So, we have early documents.

4. The New Testament writers record the same basic events with diverging details and some unique material, cite at least 30 real historical figures (confirmed by ancient non-Christian writers and discoveries), and include over 100 historically confirmed details.

So, we have real historical events at the heart of the New Testament.

5. The New Testament writers also included embarrassing details about themselves and Jesus, included difficult sayings of Jesus, included very demanding sayings of Jesus, carefully distinguished Jesus' words from their own, included events related to the resurrection that they wouldn't invent (i.e. putting a member of the Sanhedrin in favorable light, using women as the first witnesses to the resurrection, the conversion of the Jewish priests, etc), challenged readers to check out verifiable facts for themselves, and described miracles in the same simple way other events are described.

None of these make any sense if a group of guys was trying to fabricate a story, but the icing on the cake is this:

The New Testament writers abandoned their long-held sacred beliefs and practices, adopted new ones, and did not deny their testimony under persecution or threat of death. They had EVERY reason to DENY New Testament events, but they didn't.

NO ONE is willing to die for something they KNOW is a LIE!

So, we have good reason to believe the events in the New Testament were faithfully recorded.

6. What does the faithfully recorded New Testament say? It says that Jesus claimed to be God and it includes the following information to confirm it:

- His fulfillment of many prophecies about Himself.
- His sinless life and miraculous deeds.
- His prediction and accomplishment of his resurrection.

Given all this information so far, we reach the conclusion that Jesus is God.

Whatever Jesus (who is God) teaches must be true.

Jesus taught that scripture (what we now call the Old Testament) was the Word of God and promised that the Holy Spirit would lead the apostles to author what we now call the New Testament.

[End Rant]

That's the general logical argument in a tiny nutshell. Don't take my word on any of these points -- look up the evidence. For each number here, there is definitely more than one large book written about the subject. Or, for a more condensed summary in one book, check out "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist" by Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek.