When writing on yet another passage I wish wasn’t in the Bible I realized I had yet to discuss how those passages add strength to the case that the scriptures are trustworthy.
The popular/skeptical view of the gospels is that they may have had some core historical facts, but they grew over time as more and more stories were invented. The people who collected these stories were not there with Jesus, and people who were there weren’t involved or even around when these stories were written down. They made up the stories they needed to spin the tale they wanted because the message was more important than fidelity to history.
That view is false.
The case for the reliability of the gospels is varied. We have good reason to believe the gospels were based on eyewitness evidence and were written during the lives of some of those eyewitnesses. Undesigned coincidences further the case that all the gospel authors were drawing from a common source of real information. Their inclusion of embarrassing material shows that they were committed to the truth, even when it didn’t make them look their best.
This alleged era of creative freedom should be obviously false when we think of the most famous passages in Matthew. People who had a religious upbringing have been taught that the Sermon on the Mount is this beautiful and powerful message. They were taught to love it before they could even read it. People who didn’t have that upbringing, though, tend to hate it. It’s hard, and it’s harsh. No one wants to be held to that kind of standard.
The gospels are full of very demanding teachings. If the early church felt free to do with the gospels as they saw fit, it’s hard to believe they would include “turn the other cheek” (Matt 5:39) or “bless those who curse you and pray for those who persecute you” (Luke 6:28). The apostles balked at Jesus’ teaching on divorce (Matt 19:10) — but they included it in the gospels.
“Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away” (Matt 5:28). Would you have included that in the gospels if you felt free to add and subtract material?
The flip side of this is that they did not create stories or teachings to solve their biggest problems. When the question of whether Gentiles needed to become Jews to be saved arose, they did not invent sayings of Jesus to solve this problem. Questions about marriage didn’t find their answer in “suddenly remembered” teachings from the Lord. When people started to question the Lord’s returning “soon”, they didn’t insert language into the Olivet Discourse to smooth that out.
This “creative community” existed only in the minds of skeptics. The actual early church clearly felt bound to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And that’s why we can trust what they left to us.
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