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Similarly, E. M. Blaiklock, professor of classics at Auckland University, argued: "I claim to be an historian. My approach to the Classics is historical. And I tell you that the evidence for the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ is better authenticated than most of the facts of ancient history."
If the Gospels were legends, could they have been compiled so quickly after the death of Jesus?
According to available evidence, the Gospels were written between the years 41 and 98 C.E. Jesus died in the year 33 C.E. This means that the accounts of his life were put together in a comparatively short time after his ministry ended. This poses a tremendous obstacle to the argument that the Gospel narratives are mere legends. Time is needed for legends to develop. Take, for example, the Iliad and the Odyssey by the ancient Greek poet Homer. Some hold that the text of those two epic legends developed and became stabilized over hundreds of years. What about the Gospels?
In his book Caesar and Christ, historian Will Durant writes: "That a few simple men should . . . have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man."
Were the Gospels later edited to fit the needs of the early Christian community?
Some critics argue that the politics of the early Christian community caused the Gospel writers to edit the story of Jesus or add to it. However, a close study of the Gospels shows that no such doctoring took place. If Gospel accounts concerning Jesus were altered as a result of first-century Christian intrigue, why do negative remarks about both Jews and Gentiles still appear in the text?
A case in point is found at Matthew 6:5-7, where Jesus is quoted as saying: "When you pray, you must not be as the hypocrites; because they like to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the broad ways to be visible to men. Truly I say to you, They are having their reward in full." Clearly, this was a condemnation of Jewish religious leaders. Jesus further said: "When praying, do not say the same things over and over again, just as the people of the nations [the Gentiles] do, for they imagine they will get a hearing for their use of many words." By quoting Jesus in this way, the Gospel writers were not trying to win converts. They were simply recording statements actually made by Jesus Christ.
Consider also the Gospel accounts regarding the women who visited Jesus' tomb and saw that it was empty. (Mark 16:1-8) According to Gregg Easterbrook, "in the sociology of the ancient Middle East, testimony by women was considered inherently unreliable: for instance, two male witnesses were sufficient to convict a woman of adultery, while no woman's testimony could convict a man." Indeed, Jesus' own disciples did not believe the women! (Luke 24:11) It is thus most unlikely that such a story would have been deliberately invented.
The absence of parables in the epistles and in the book of Acts is a strong argument that those in the Gospels were not inserted by early Christians but were spoken by Jesus himself. Additionally, a careful comparison of the Gospels with the epistles reveals that neither Paul's words nor those of other writers of the Greek Scriptures were artfully reworded and ascribed to Jesus. If the early Christian community had done such a thing, we should expect to find at least some of the material from the epistles in the Gospel accounts. Since we do not, we can surely conclude that the Gospel material is original and authentic.
"The evidence for the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ is better authenticated than most of the facts of ancient history."—PROFESSOR E. M. BLAIKLOCK
What about seeming contradictions in the Gospels?
Critics have long claimed that the Gospels are full of contradictions. Historian Durant sought to examine the Gospel accounts from a purely objective standpoint—as historical documents. Though he says that there are seeming contradictions in them, he concludes: "The contradictions are of minutiae [trivial details], not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ."
Seeming contradictions in Gospel accounts are often easily resolved. To illustrate: Matthew 8:5 says that "an army officer came to [Jesus], entreating him" to cure a manservant. At Luke 7:3, we read that the officer "sent forth older men of the Jews to [Jesus] to ask him to come and bring [the] slave safely through." The officer sent the elders as his representatives. Matthew says that the army officer himself entreated Jesus because the man made his request through the elders, who served as his mouthpiece. This is just one example showing that alleged discrepancies in the Gospels can be resolved.
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