THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS – ARE THEY RELIABLE?
Professor FF Bruce wrote the book, The New Testament Documents – Are they
Reliable?
This book has been widely distributed and is influential. The edition I am
working with is the 1982 revised edition published by the Intervarsity Press.
Page 7, We should be more concerned with God’s revealing himself in the gospel’s
Jesus than in checking the gospels to be history but at the same time the two
issues are related.
Bruce is admitting that he is biased so let that be a warning to us. Besides a
God who tells us to hate sins but to love those who commit them is not an honest
God. When we hate wrongdoing what we hate is the evil CHARACTER of the person
doing the wrong. It is not really the wrong itself that we hate but what it says
about the person. To hate sin is to hate the sinner. Some revelation! And
besides there are countless books of Christian scripture though these are not
accepted by the majority. What about the Book of Mormon? What about the Book of
Abraham? What about the Third and Last Testament of Jesus Christ by John Reeve?
What about the Word of the Lord? Why should we give the gospels a bias? Why
should we have the prejudice and bigotry to do that?
Page 12, Bruce says it matters if the documents are reliable or not because
Christianity is more than just a code of ethics but claims that God became man
to save mankind by dying and rising again.
This is saying that ethics is less important than dogma. Again it’s another
typical Christian bias. It contradicts page 7. Page 7 says that it is more
important to think about the picture of God given by Jesus in the gospels than
in checking the gospels for truthfulness. Then we read here that we need to
historically test the gospels to be sure that they are being truthful that God
became man to die and rise again to save us.
Page 17, Bruce holds that Mark and Luke were written before the destruction of
Jerusalem and its temple in 70 AD and Matthew shortly after that because of the
way they speak about the disaster.
Such arguments are worthless.
Cleverly, Bruce does not tell us exactly what he means or how he comes to this
conclusion. It is thought by many scholars that since Mark and Luke link the
disaster to the end of the world and the final world war that this error shows
that they were written before 70AD for the prediction failed. But they could
have written after the disaster and still have seen the disaster as the start of
a conflagration that would destroy the world. We know they were wrong to link
the destruction of Jerusalem with the end of the world for we are still here.
Bruce knows nobody can expect us to believe in Jesus when what Mark and Luke
wrote was put into Jesus' mouth meaning Jesus far from being God or saviour was
a prophet who misled people.
Matthew still could have believed the same thing as Mark and Luke but didn’t
write it down properly so why assume Matthew came after them just because of the
way he spoke of the disaster?
We know the gospels say that Jesus predicted the disaster and it could have been
lucky guesswork and there was such trouble after 70AD both for the Jews and the
Church that the prophecies could still have been written after the event and
still expected the end of the world.
On page 48 he states that Papias wrote in the second century that everybody
tried to translate the logia of Matthew as best he could from the Aramaic.
This does not help those who want to hold that Matthew was written by then
because it shows nobody was taking control over the translations and letting
anything suffice. You don’t want people doing their best for translating. It's
not good enough.
Page 20, agrees with the approach of many that because the New Testament makes
extreme and astonishing claims about Jesus that it is only right to demand very
good evidence for its authenticity.
Outlandish claims do require very high quality evidence. Bruce says the evidence
for the authenticity of the New Testament is better than that for many other
works of the time but that is no help. The evidence is not extraordinary and
nobody agrees on how to interpret the evidence. The fact remains it is not as
good as the evidence for say writings from the 19th century and Bruce knows
that. He knows he is trying to deceive us.
It has been observed that the New Testament gets harsher examination and more
sceptical and critical attention than it would if it were merely secular. It is
treated as to be automatically suspicious just because of the religious content
and claims. Is that fair? It seems not! But all we are doing is respecting
the rule that magic style claims that you cannot expect the world at large to
agree with unlike the existence of Christopher Columbus just need not suspicion
but more attention. That by default means more criticism but also more
acceptance where appropriate.
Page 32, Bruce rejects the scholarly consensus that the heretic Marcion who just
had a version like Luke’s gospel for a gospel and some of the epistles of Paul
in his list of scriptural books was the first to create a canon of scripture for
the Church had a list in those days.
The Church might have tended to focus on certain books in or before that period
but that does not make its selection a canon. It might have just been a model
that was useful for working within until an official and proper canon was
decided on and disputed books like James and the Shepherd of Hermas were either
accepted or eliminated. Many did consider books canonical that have been
rejected from the decisive New Testament canon.
Page 48, the poetic nature of the teaching of Jesus in the gospels with its
rhyming seems to indicate that the gospel writers memorised his teaching from
him and wrote it down.
Maybe it was written that way for future generations to learn it better? Jesus
making his disciples memorise when they could and would have used notebooks for
they were busy men is a foolish suggestion. The gospel of Thomas has heretical
sayings of Jesus in an easy to remember format and no Christian Church says that
means there is something to this gospel.
Page 57, the writer of the fourth gospel, that of John, says, “This is the
disciple that bears witness to these things and we know his testimony is true.”
Bruce approves of this quotation but it is dishonest for any author to write
like this. He is using the “we” to support what he says and the truth is they
can’t help at all for we don’t know who they are. Why are they hiding? The
quotation shows that the fourth gospel was written by a liar.
Page 58, the John gospel does not call John the Baptist anything but John unlike
the rest. This means that John the apostle wrote the gospel. Anybody else would
have stated what John he meant be it the Baptist or the apostle. He would do it
to prevent confusion. If a well-known John, another John, who must have been the
apostle, wrote the gospel this confusion wouldn’t happen.
First the gospel is anonymous. If it was that clear that John the apostle wrote
the gospel then why didn't he write down his name? Why be anonymous?
Second, John the Baptist was well known so if anybody was in the habit of just
calling him John then why wouldn’t they do so in the gospel? Not everybody would
have called him John the Baptist just like not everybody called Jesus, Jesus the
Christ.
Happily page 59 tells us that the John gospel is the only one that says it was a
direct report from an eyewitness.
The other gospels then would say if they were direct reports so they are not.
They have no right to be believed because you need direct reports for something
so serious. Though John claiming to be an eyewitness report does not mean it is,
it is better for it to claim to be one. The book that does not claim it has no
hope.
Page 78-79, the resurrection of Jesus was a real event because to suggest that
Jesus didn’t really die but left the tomb alive and went to see his disciples
does not explain the rising of the Church. Some suggest the disciples
hallucinated his appearing. The Jewish authorities failed to debunk the
resurrection so the best explanation of the data we have got is that Jesus did
rise and appear.
One possibility is that an earthquake moved the stone and somebody else removed
the body or Jesus got out when nobody was looking and when the women at the tomb
turned their backs. Perhaps Jesus never met his disciples again but an impostor
pretended to be him raised from the dead. There are countless ways to explain
the data without accusing the New Testament of lying so it is dishonest of
Christianity to go on as if there were not and as if a resurrection was the only
explanation.
The view that the authorities couldn’t disprove the resurrection and they should
have been able to find the body of Jesus alive or dead had it been stolen so he
must have risen (page 80) is nonsense. We don’t know the circumstances. The
gospel accounts are very short and brief. Christians tell lies all the time to
verify the resurrection because they know that when Satan is able to appear to
people he might have faked the resurrection appearances. They know that
apparitions are common enough and no explanation has been found and that
apparitions contradict one another. People nearly dying see a being of light in
near death experiences that tells them not to judge themselves as sinners but
treats their wrong doing as a learning experience rather than as doing evil or
committing sin. Because of such considerations, Christians need to believe in a
body that miraculously vanished from a tomb in the act of being raised from the
dead.
Bruce does not have the decency to be honest for he says that the apostles
waited until fifty days had passed before they mentioned the resurrection to
outsiders (page 79) meaning the body would have been unrecognisable or even
dumped in Syria by then. The gospel of Luke says the resurrection was not
proclaimed until Jesus was raised fifty days. Nothing in the New Testament
contradicts this. It is too much to believe that the resurrection rumour could
have been contained and nobody let it slip. It is too perfect. There are lies in
the New Testament.
Bruce says, in unison with the Matthew gospel, that to prevent the disciples
saying Jesus rose when his body went missing, the Jewish leaders decided to
pretend that the disciples stole the body and they bribed soldiers to spread the
rumour. Now that tactic would force the disciples to say that Jesus rose. The
Jews would have been asking for trouble. The Jews would have told the soldiers
to wait to hear what the disciples would say first. This wasn't done. Had it
been done the bribe wouldn't have been given until the disciples started saying
Jesus rose. But it was given to the soldiers that very Sunday morning. If the
Jews and soldiers fabricated testimony that the disciples stole then why didn’t
they silence the disciples by arresting them for grave robbing? They would have
had to in order to make their story ring true.
Page 82, Jesus really could do miracles for even his critics said he did
miracles but by sorcery, Celsus was one person that said that. Celsus is another
fine proof that Christians depend on the ancient scholars who wrote what they
want to hear rather than the more intelligent scholars who disagreed with the
Christian ones. They do that for history and truth must be sacrificed for the
sustenance of their bigoted faith.
It was easier to say that about the miracles than try to debunk them. People
were eager to believe in miracles and sorcery. Then as today sceptics or those
who know the real truth about the alleged miracles and how they are frauds don't
get much of a hearing. Naturally, Jesus’ critics might have preferred to look
for theological or philosophical disproofs that Jesus' miracles came from God
and blamed magic and the Devil. It does not mean they thought the miracles
really were genuine. Perhaps they thought Satan was helping Jesus with his
tricks and influencing people to believe in them as miracles. Satan could use
natural forces to make people make mistakes or misremember things so that when
their testimony is heard it might be thought they really have seen something
miraculous. To a conjurer, Jesus' miracles might be just tricks. But to a
believing Jew they were just tricks but Satan was using his invisible influence
to make believers fail to see that and recognise them as miracles.
It does not mean they knew what they were talking about when they accepted the
miracles for everybody was gullible in that respect.
Christians always say that the New Testament gospels have all the marks of
reliable historical documents. Yet if any other work of history, alleged or
real, speaks of miracles that are not accepted by Christians they refuse to
believe. They say the works are unreliable. They dispute the miracles mentioned
by Josephus and they claim that his alleged mention of the resurrection of Jesus
was authentically written by him and true. Their claim that the New Testament is
credible despite having so many miracle stories about Jesus in it speaks of the
Christian preference for what they want to believe rather than what can be
believed. The Christians cannot come up with any documents that claim to be
historical and which have loads of miracles in them as well and which are known
to be authentic and accurate. They have nothing to compare the gospels with.
Without that comparison they are only saying the gospels are true for they want
to believe in them. They don't have the right to claim that the gospels are
historically plausible on emotional grounds. Honest people don't act like that
with historical documents and don't treat their feelings that something is true
as evidence that it is true.
Page 83, Jesus did not like the kind of faith that believed in him because of
his miracles as indicated in John 2:23-25 and John 6:26.
So he expected to be honoured as Messiah, Son of God and mouthpiece of God just
because he said he was these things? Would God really do miracles through a
prophet when they are not meant to be the signs that justify belief? John let it
slip that he made Jesus’ miracles up for it leaves him accusing Jesus of
encouraging the wrong kind of faith.
So is the New Testament reliable?
Bruce’s argument for it fails at every major point so there is no reason to
trust the New Testament. His evidences are not evidences but speculation.
The New Testament Documents – are they Reliable? FF Bruce, Intervarsity Press,
Leicester, 2000
Jesus and Early Christianity in the Gospels, Daniel J Grolin, George Ronald,
Oxford, 2002
