How Can We Trust the Historical Reliability of

the New Testament?

SKEPTICS

Our very first reference to Jesus’ tomb being empty is in the Gospelof Mark, written 40 yearslater by someone living in a different country whohad heard that it was empty. How would he know?

- Bart Ehrman

Can historians prove that Jesus was raised from the dead? (I always argue that no, no one can prove it.) Are the Gospel accounts of Jesus reliable? (No, not completely.)

In order to draw material from the Jewish Antiquities, as he appears to have done, Luke could not have written before 94 A.D - Richard Carrier

“No work … of any kind has ever been discovered, … which may be looked upon as furnishing additional evidence of the existence of those gospels, and which was executed earlier than the latter part of the second century”

- Charles Burlingame Waite

According to these scholarsand authors The New

Testament is NOTHistorically Reliable

Early

Corroborated

Unchanged

Unbiased

Point 1Written Early

Destruction of the JewishTemple in Jerusalem

Therefore…

USS Arizona Pearl Harbor

Conclusion – Written Prior to 70 A.D.

Point 2Corroborated

Antiquities of the Jews

Thallus Mara Bar-Serapion

Phlegon

Pliny the YoungerSuetonius

Lucian of Samosata

Celsus

Jewish Talmud

The Toledot Yeshu

The Early Church Fathers

Non-Christian Story Line about Jesus

1.Jesus lived during time of Tiberius Caesar2.He lived a virtuous life3.He was a wonder-worker4.He had a brother named James

Non-Christian Story Line about Jesus5.He was acclaimed to be the Messiah6.He was crucified under Pontius Pilate7.He was crucified on the eve of the Jewish

Passover8.Darkness and an earthquake occurred

when he died

Non-Christian Story Line about Jesus

9.His disciples believed he rose from the dead

10.His disciples were willing to die for their belief

11.Christianity spread rapidly as far as Rome

12.His disciples denied the Roman gods and worshiped Jesus as God

Conclusion – New Testament is Corroborated

Point 3Unchanged

Conclusion – the New TestamentMessage was

Unchanged

Point 4Unbiased

4 Point Recap

•Early•Corroborated

•Unchanged•Unbiased

Acknowledgments