Chris­tian­i­ty began with the min­istry of Jesus Christ, whose life and mes­sage changed the world. Jesus, who him­self was a Jew, not only claimed to be the Mes­si­ah promised in the Old Tes­ta­ment, the Jews’ Holy Scrip­ture, but far beyond that—he claimed to be the Son of God. And he calls every per­son in every age to be his fol­low­er.

We can­not expe­ri­ence him today as his con­tem­po­raries did, but we have the tes­ti­mo­ny of the first dis­ci­ples, who were togeth­er with him day and night. The New Tes­ta­ment con­tains eye­wit­ness reports and describes the life of the first Chris­tians. There­fore, the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Bible, espe­cial­ly of the New Tes­ta­ment, is of fun­da­men­tal impor­tance to Chris­tian­i­ty and to all peo­ple.

Although the Bible has the poten­tial to change lives, peo­ple are often moti­vat­ed to crit­i­cize the Bible because it chal­lenges their own lifestyle. Time after time to this day, it has been wrong­ly inter­pret­ed and has often been mis­used for self­ish pur­pos­es by peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions who called them­selves Chris­tians. Nev­er­the­less, this should not keep us from study­ing it and ver­i­fy­ing its con­tent and cred­i­bil­i­ty.

1 The New Testament Is Credible Because of Its Content

1.1 The Uniqueness of Jesus’ Teaching

1.1.1 Morality

Jesus’ teach­ing on moral­i­ty sur­pass­es the teach­ing of any oth­er “teach­ers of human­i­ty”. Let us take his teach­ing on adul­tery as an exam­ple. In the Gospel of Matthew chap­ter 5 vers­es 27–29, Jesus says:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not com­mit adul­tery.” But I say to you that every­one who looks at a woman with lust­ful intent has already com­mit­ted adul­tery with her in his heart. If your right eye caus­es you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is bet­ter that you lose one of your mem­bers than that your whole body be thrown into hell. (Matthew 5:27–29)

Even Bud­dhists teach that every desire should be anni­hi­lat­ed. But this is a very gen­er­al way of say­ing it. For Bud­dhists it is about the oblit­er­a­tion of man’s com­plete sen­si­bil­i­ty and per­son­al­i­ty, the aban­don­ment of all val­ues, whether pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive. Their aim is to irrev­o­ca­bly dis­solve man and his per­son­al­i­ty, which is to reach the state of Nir­vana. Just as in oth­er reli­gions, an attempt is made to method­i­cal­ly bring about some improve­ment in life.

In con­trast, Jesus specif­i­cal­ly address­es the prob­lem of hid­den sins and even con­sid­ers hav­ing lust­ful thoughts to be of the same sever­i­ty as com­mit­ting adul­tery. He shows that sin begins in our thoughts and that this is the point where regret must begin. He expos­es the things that are inside a per­son and assess­es them with unpar­al­leled strict­ness. He calls us to change in words that could not be clear­er, even if they are to be under­stood fig­u­ra­tive­ly in this pas­sage.

To a cer­tain degree, doc­trines of moral­i­ty are found in every reli­gion because peo­ple are able to dis­tin­guish good and evil with their con­science. The mea­sure with which Jesus assess­es deeds, words and thoughts is unique in that it expos­es the hearts of peo­ple. He demands a change in one’s atti­tude and thoughts, the very things which form the base for moral con­duct. He empha­sizes the impor­tance of being free from evil and capa­ble of doing what is good.

Going beyond moral­i­ty and ethics, Jesus even calls us to love our ene­mies.

1.1.2 Love Your Enemies

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neigh­bour and hate your ene­my.” But I say to you, Love your ene­mies and pray for those who per­se­cute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heav­en. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. …You there­fore must be per­fect, as your heav­en­ly Father is per­fect. (Matthew 5:43–48)

In the Old Tes­ta­ment, besides the pas­sages which speak of reject­ing one’s ene­mies, we also find pas­sages that require the Israelites to love strangers who want­ed to reside among them and told them to be kind towards their ene­mies. Jesus’ com­mand­ment to love our ene­mies, how­ev­er, sur­pass­es every­thing that was known until then. Lov­ing our ene­mies means much more than show­ing kind­ness and for­go­ing revenge and hatred. This kind of love enables us to for­give even our great­est ene­mies and desire the best for them.

Note that Jesus was the first to teach this, among oth­er points. Oth­ers lat­er tried to emu­late many things he taught in order to join him in his splen­dour.

Jesus is not con­tent with a list of rules aimed at pleas­ing God. He calls all peo­ple to align their stan­dards with the absolute­ly good God. The demand to be as per­fect as God may sound absurd. But we can­not just dis­miss Jesus as insane; his life and teach­ing is just too sober, real­is­tic and prac­ti­cal.

”Who­ev­er loves father or moth­er more than me is not wor­thy of me, and who­ev­er loves son or daugh­ter more than me is not wor­thy of me. And who­ev­er does not take his cross and fol­low me is not wor­thy of me. Who­ev­er finds his life will lose it, and who­ev­er los­es his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:37–39)

Jesus’ mes­sage does not fol­low man-made stan­dards nor does it promise mere earth­ly har­mo­ny and hap­pi­ness. His aim was not to bring about polit­i­cal or social peace. In con­trast to oth­er teach­ers of wis­dom, he not only shows a new path of knowl­edge but asserts his divin­i­ty by claim­ing to be the high­est author­i­ty, call­ing us to devote our­selves uncon­di­tion­al­ly to him­self.

1.2 The Effect of the New Testament on Humanity as a Whole and on Individuals

Jesus’ pub­lic appear­ance caused an irrev­o­ca­ble fac­tion with­in the peo­ple of Israel and sub­se­quent­ly the whole of mankind. Jesus claimed to be the Mes­si­ah promised in the Old Tes­ta­ment and to be the sav­iour of the world. From the out­set Jesus’ fol­low­ers were per­se­cut­ed by the Jews. Even in lat­er times Chris­tians were dri­ven out and, when­ev­er pos­si­ble, mur­dered by the ene­mies of truth because of their faith in Jesus.

This polar­iza­tion tes­ti­fies to the influ­ence Jesus and his mes­sage has had on peo­ple from the first cen­tu­ry up to the present day. Jesus’ teach­ing has changed the world like no oth­er reli­gious sys­tem. From the very begin­ning, Jesus’ state­ments were copied, imi­tat­ed or even dis­tort­ed and used in a neg­a­tive way under the pre­tence of his author­i­ty. Pseu­do-Chris­tian­i­ty arose at a very ear­ly stage. Even if it is not Chris­tian­i­ty in its gen­uine form, the influ­ence of pseu­do-Chris­tian­i­ty on cul­ture, art, sci­ence and pol­i­tics in the Euro-Asian regions, and in many ways the whole world, shows the sig­nif­i­cance of Jesus and his mes­sage.

The per­son of Jesus caused an unequalled fas­ci­na­tion in man. The whole of Judea was on the move, seek­ing to lis­ten to his words and see his mir­a­cles. When Jesus was no longer able to ward off crush­ing crowds, he with­drew to remote places. The Jews who received his words in their heart and under­stood his mes­sage rad­i­cal­ly changed their lives and began to fol­low Jesus as their Lord with­out com­pro­mise. The same also hap­pens today. Peo­ple who believe in his words will expe­ri­ence the effect and pow­er of his mes­sage in their own lives. His words are not char­ac­ter­ized by thoughts beau­ti­ful­ly expressed, but rather pose a chal­lenge to peo­ples’ lives. Jesus wants to reach their hearts and calls them to go the very way he went. His sal­va­tion sets us free from a life formed by sin. And the voice of Jesus does not cease. Count­less books have been writ­ten about him since his death. Through­out his­to­ry, peo­ple have been try­ing to find the authen­tic inter­pre­ta­tion of his mes­sage and to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the his­tor­i­cal Jesus.

The con­fronta­tion with his teach­ing requires peo­ple to take a stand, which those who seek the truth can­not sim­ply thrust aside. Even this phe­nom­e­non alone sup­ports the cred­i­bil­i­ty of his teach­ing.

1.3 The New Testament Is Historically Reliable

From a his­tor­i­cal point of view, the New Tes­ta­ment reli­ably describes the mid­dle of the first cen­tu­ry in its four Gospels, the book of Acts, and its epis­tles. It is in agree­ment with oth­er his­tor­i­cal sources writ­ten by Jew­ish and Roman authors such as the Tal­mud, works of the Jew­ish his­to­ri­an Flav­ius Jose­phus and of the Roman his­to­ri­ans Tac­i­tus and Sue­to­nius. It describes and men­tions geo­graph­i­cal, cul­tur­al and social cir­cum­stances which, aston­ish­ing­ly, have been con­firmed again and again by archae­o­log­i­cal find­ings.

1.3.1 Archaeological Findings

The dis­cov­ery of the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem men­tioned in John’s Gospel (John 9:7) serves as an exam­ple. While work­ing on a new sew­er line in the Autumn of 2004, labour­ers uncov­ered stone steps esti­mat­ed to be 2,400 years old and the remains of a reser­voir which was fed by water from the Gihon Spring through Hezeki­ah’s tun­nel at the time of Jesus. This 525 meter long tun­nel, which one can still walk through today, was built around 700 BC by Hezeki­ah, the king of the south­ern king­dom of Judah. Through this con­struc­tion archae­ol­o­gists were able to con­firm the descrip­tion giv­en in the Old Tes­ta­ment. The Siloam pool, which is esti­mat­ed to be 2,500 square metres in size, served as a reser­voir for Jerusalem’s inhab­i­tants dur­ing Jesus’ time. With­in some plas­ter, archae­ol­o­gists found a coin dat­ing from the time of the Has­moneans, mint­ed about 50 years before the birth of Christ. The youngest coin in the debris above the water canal­iza­tion is dat­ed to the time briefly before the destruc­tion of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD.

Dur­ing an exca­va­tion of the the­atre in Cae­sarea in 1961, an inscrip­tion with the title “Pon­tius Pila­tus Prae­fec­tus Judaeae” was dis­cov­ered. This inscrip­tion shows that the New Tes­ta­ment is not the sole evi­dence of the exis­tence of Pilate in his­to­ry, who was the Roman gov­er­nor of the province of Judea. Apart from these, we still have the “Antiq­ui­ties of the Jews” writ­ten by Flav­ius Jose­phus in 93 AD and the “Annals” by Tac­i­tus in 116 AD.

The Gal­lio inscrip­tion found in Del­phi, Greece, which was first made pub­lic in 1905, con­tains a let­ter from Emper­or Claudius to the town of Del­phi. Its intro­duc­tion enu­mer­ates the titles of Cae­sar, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to date the let­ter to the begin­ning of 52 AD. This inscrip­tion, writ­ten in Greek, men­tions Gal­lio as the pro­con­sul of Acha­ia, con­firm­ing the infor­ma­tion giv­en in the book of Acts chap­ter 18 verse 12.

1.3.2 Historical Data In The New Testament

The New Tes­ta­ment con­tains not only one, but four his­tor­i­cal reports about the life of Jesus. We may find some con­tra­dic­to­ry details in these Gospels. How­ev­er, this does not speak against their cred­i­bil­i­ty, but on the con­trary sup­ports their reli­a­bil­i­ty. From a his­to­ri­an’s point of view, reports that do not match word-for-word strong­ly indi­cate that they have not been mod­i­fied or har­mo­nized at a lat­er time. If four peo­ple, some being eye­wit­ness­es them­selves, were to write down the words and works of Jesus, and, also con­sid­er­ing that they had dif­fer­ent audi­ences in mind, it is quite nat­ur­al that their indi­vid­ual and dif­fer­ent view­points are not­i­ca­ble in their reports. Luke espe­cial­ly endeav­oured to fol­low all things care­ful­ly and men­tioned many events that can be his­tor­i­cal­ly ver­i­fied. This is illus­trat­ed in Luke’s Gospel chap­ter 3 verse 1 which con­tains many his­tor­i­cal facts:

In the fif­teenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cae­sar, Pon­tius Pilate being gov­er­nor of Judea, and Herod being tetrar­ch of Galilee, and his broth­er Philip tetrar­ch of the region of Itu­raea and Tra­choni­tis, and Lysa­nias tetrar­ch of Abi­lene, dur­ing the high priest­hood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John.… (Luke 3:1)

Sur­pris­ing­ly, two high priests are men­tioned here. This is not a mis­take; Luke is mere­ly describ­ing an inter­est­ing his­tor­i­cal sit­u­a­tion. Although the incum­bent high priest at that time was Caiaphas, his pre­de­ces­sor Annas, who had already stepped down, was still quite influ­en­tial. The book of Acts (Acts 4:6) and John’s Gospel con­firm this. John recounts Jesus being first brought to Annas after his arrest, and not to the offi­cial high priest (John 18:13) . The actu­al chrono­log­i­cal suc­ces­sion of the high priests is record­ed in “The Jew­ish War” by Flav­ius Jose­phus, a Jew­ish his­tor­i­cal writer, and agrees with the account of the New Tes­ta­ment. Annas’ pow­er beyond his term in office is con­firmed as a cred­i­ble fact by rep­utable the­olo­gians like F. F. Bruce, for­mer Rylands Pro­fes­sor of Bib­li­cal Crit­i­cism and Exe­ge­sis at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter.¹

Many such details strength­en the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the New Tes­ta­ment, which was writ­ten down in its entire­ty with­in 40 years of Jesus’ death. Mark’s Gospel was penned about a decade after Jesus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion. The authors of the New Tes­ta­ment were either eye­wit­ness­es or first-gen­er­a­tion Chris­tians who knew Jesus’ dis­ci­ples per­son­al­ly. In this regard the New Tes­ta­ment is unique when com­pared to the scrip­tures of oth­er reli­gions (read more in sec­tion “3.2 The Writ­ten Tra­di­tion”).

1.4 The Falsification Hypotheses

The hypoth­e­sis that the Bible has been fal­si­fied has been for­mu­lat­ed in var­i­ous ways. Some assert that Jesus’ dis­ci­ples por­trayed their Lord in an ide­al­ized and glo­ri­fied man­ner at a lat­er date. In real­i­ty quite the oppo­site is true: the Gospels are char­ac­ter­ized by a sober descrip­tion of Jesus’ min­istry. They por­tray Jesus as a man with emo­tions and fears. Just before his arrest, Jesus, in his anx­i­ety and dis­may, prayed for strength that he might bear the suf­fer­ing to come (Mark 14:33–36). It may be too piteous a scene for a Mes­si­ah, but it was true-to-life and real. He was not the strong, glo­ri­ous man who has every­thing under con­trol.

Oth­ers pro­pose that the apos­tles had invent­ed the whole sto­ry so that they could take on the most impor­tant posi­tions with­in the new move­ment, receiv­ing glo­ry and hon­our. But how can we har­mo­nize this with the fact that the apos­tles were per­se­cut­ed from the begin­ning, who even had to pay the price of death for their belief in Jesus? Sure­ly it is pos­si­ble for peo­ple to be mis­led into lies and false doc­trines, even to the con­vic­tion of dying for them. How­ev­er, hard­ly any­one is ready to die for his own sins, espe­cial­ly one who is utter­ly arro­gant and not will­ing to admit what he has made up and lied about. If the apos­tles had had such traits, they would not have writ­ten so neg­a­tive­ly about them­selves, nor would they have allowed the Gospel writ­ers to do so. In the reports of the Gospels the twelve apos­tles are those whom Jesus often rebuked for their stub­born­ness and unbe­lief. They are described along with their weak­ness­es, sins and lack of under­stand­ing.

The motives of peo­ple who delude and deceive oth­ers can only be wicked­ness, which can­not remain hid­den their whole lives long. From the begin­ning of Chris­tian­i­ty, lying has been con­sid­ered a grave sin. Chris­tians are required to live their lives hon­est­ly and open­ly, being always ready to be questioned—the apos­tles were of course not exempt.

Some claim that Jesus’ dis­ci­ples refused to admit their mis­take of hav­ing thought that their mas­ter, who final­ly had to die as an out­cast on the cross, was the Mes­si­ah and sav­iour, and even made up the sto­ry of his res­ur­rec­tion. We find no base for this claim what­so­ev­er. The dis­ci­ples were com­plet­ed sur­prised when Jesus unex­pect­ed­ly rose from the dead. Even as Jesus appeared to them, they thought they had seen a ghost instead of believ­ing that he was real­ly present. At this point, one could only object by say­ing that all this was devised by an accom­plished fal­si­fi­er. How­ev­er, con­sid­er­ing the sit­u­a­tion of the Jews in the first half of the first cen­tu­ry, when they expect­ed a polit­i­cal Mes­si­ah, pro­claim­ing that a cru­ci­fied man was the Mes­si­ah was absolute­ly unimag­in­able. Cru­ci­fix­ion was the pun­ish­ment for unsuc­cess­ful rebels or slaves who tried to run away from their mas­ters. No one could think of asso­ci­at­ing the Mes­si­ah with either. It was nev­er Jesus’ aim to be a polit­i­cal Mes­si­ah. How­ev­er he showed through his res­ur­rec­tion that he is indeed the Mes­si­ah, a spir­i­tu­al one though. It was dif­fi­cult for the Jews to change their con­cep­tion of the Mes­si­ah. It was no dif­fer­ent for Jesus’ dis­ci­ples.

If we look at Paul’s life, the hypoth­e­sis that the dis­ci­ples had invent­ed Jesus’ res­ur­rec­tion sim­i­lar­ly turns out to be unten­able. Saul the Phar­isee (lat­er called Paul) reject­ed Chris­tian­i­ty as a Jew­ish splin­ter group and fer­vent­ly per­se­cut­ed the Church. He prob­a­bly regard­ed the Chris­tians’ reports about the appear­ances of the res­ur­rect­ed Jesus as pure fan­ta­sy. How­ev­er, he became con­vinced of the truth of this claim when Jesus appeared to him, lead­ing to his con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty. Now some sup­port­ers of the fal­si­fi­ca­tion hypoth­e­sis attempt to find a way out by say­ing that Paul became a Chris­t­ian only because of his bad con­science for hav­ing per­se­cut­ed the Chris­tians and agree­ing to ston­ing a Chris­t­ian. This thought is like­wise unten­able, even by just con­sid­er­ing it psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly. As a Chris­t­ian, the apos­tle Paul made enor­mous sac­ri­fices and, accord­ing to extra-bib­li­cal tra­di­tion, even died as a mar­tyr. As a com­pe­tent Phar­isee, he chose rather to bear the dis­hon­our as a Chris­t­ian (one should bear in mind the sit­u­a­tion of those days) than to have a career with bright prospects with­in Judaism—all this just because of his bad con­science? Besides that, he empha­sized that he had lived his life in all good con­science (2 Tim­o­thy 1:3, Acts 23:1). While per­se­cut­ing the Chris­tians, he had thought he was offer­ing ser­vice to God, but lat­er rec­og­nized his spir­i­tu­al blind­ness.

The Chris­tians were fierce­ly opposed by the Jews from the begin­ning. The belief in Jesus Christ as the Mes­si­ah could not have sur­vived in a Jew­ish envi­ron­ment with­out being anchored in the his­tor­i­cal facts of Jesus’ life and min­istry. The hypothe­ses that the New Tes­ta­ment was fal­si­fied do not bear up against the his­tor­i­cal facts nor are they log­i­cal in them­selves. No rea­son­able motive of the fal­si­fi­er can be named. The cul­prit would not have been able to go after his self­ish aims such as gain­ing spe­cial priv­i­leges, since he must have felt oblig­ed to fol­low Jesus’ teach­ing of strict­ly renounc­ing all ego­tism, rich­es, hon­our and pride. He must have been aware that the fol­low­ing state­ment, where Paul declared him­self to be a ser­vant, would have to apply to him­self as well:

For what we pro­claim is not our­selves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with our­selves as your ser­vants for Jesus’ sake. (2. Corinthi­ans 4:5)

1.5 The Teaching of the Trinity Cannot Have Been Invented

The teach­ing of the Trin­i­ty is one of the new rev­e­la­tions about God’s nature pro­claimed by Jesus, even though he him­self did not use this term. It does not oppose Jew­ish monothe­ism but speaks of one God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit—one God in three per­sons.

Through­out their his­to­ry, the Jews had to defend their belief in Yah­weh as the only exist­ing God and Cre­ator of the Uni­verse against the influ­ence of oth­er nations. This belief played and still plays a cen­tral role in their lives. They con­sid­ered every attempt to tam­per with this belief a sac­ri­lege.

On the sur­face it could seem that the teach­ing of the Trin­i­ty is an attack on this belief. The vehe­mence with which the Jew­ish reli­gious lead­ers reject­ed Jesus makes this obvi­ous. If the occu­py­ing Roman forces had per­mit­ted it, the Jews would have tak­en it into their own hands to car­ry out the death penal­ty, because he claimed to be divine and thus, in their eyes, was blas­phem­ing God. The teach­ing of the Trin­i­ty is not sim­ply a fur­ther devel­op­ment of the Jew­ish faith; it presents a com­plete­ly new and addi­tion­al rev­e­la­tion to the Jew­ish faith.

The most renowned schol­ars through­out the cen­turies have been engaged in accu­rate­ly for­mu­lat­ing this doc­trine and under­stand­ing its depth. Obvi­ous­ly, the abil­i­ty to com­pre­hend the Trin­i­ty is lim­it­ed by the capac­i­ty of the human mind. This shows the out­stand­ing intel­lect the one who first announced this teach­ing must have had. This also shows that the opin­ion that Jesus’ dis­ci­ples made up the teach­ing of the Trin­i­ty in order to por­tray their mas­ter in a spe­cial way is sim­ply unten­able. This teach­ing was not gen­er­al­ly dis­missed as com­plete non­sense either. On the con­trary, the depth of the under­stand­ing of God’s being which Jesus’ words reflect has often aroused amaze­ment. The author­i­ty and per­sua­sive­ness with which Jesus taught and spoke of God is unequalled.

2 The New Testament Is Trustworthy Because Jesus Is Trustworthy

2.1 The Life of Jesus Confirms His Words

What a teacher teach­es is reli­able only if he lives accord­ing to his mes­sage. The eye­wit­ness­es of Jesus Christ attest­ed his fault­less life. His adver­saries, whose influ­ence and hon­our among the Jews began to wane, were not able to accuse him of any trans­gres­sion against the law of Moses, which was bind­ing for the Jews, or of any sin. They repeat­ed­ly tried to lead him into mak­ing some false or con­tra­dic­to­ry claims through their cun­ning ques­tions. How­ev­er, they failed despite all their sophis­ti­ca­tion. Rather they were chal­lenged through Jesus’ answers. He kept the whole of Israel on their toes. Even the polit­i­cal lead­ers like the Jew­ish ruler Herod Antipas and the Roman gov­er­nor Pon­tius Pilate had to con­cern them­selves with him. There­fore we may cer­tain­ly expect the Jews who reject­ed Jesus and want­ed to dis­cred­it him to glad­ly denounce him for any of his wrong moves open­ly. But that did not hap­pen.

Jesus did not mere­ly call peo­ple to obe­di­ence; he him­self led his dis­ci­ples as an excel­lent exam­ple. As for liv­ing a mod­est and self-con­trolled life, he applied the same stan­dard to him­self as he did to oth­ers. Much to their sur­prise, Jesus washed his dis­ci­ples’ feet, which was con­sid­ered the work of a slave. He did this in order to set an exam­ple of a serv­ing atti­tude for them. His dis­ci­ples were with him dai­ly for more or less two and a half years and were often put to shame by his love. Jesus’ way of life along with his words con­vict­ed them then, and still does the same today.

2.2 Jesus Performed Miracles and Healings

Jesus became known first of all for his mir­a­cles and heal­ings. Accord­ing to the Gospels he healed the sick, the lep­ers and the lame, gave the blind sight, lib­er­at­ed the pos­sessed, and raised the dead. This has nev­er hap­pened before. Even the Jews who were hos­tile towards him did not deny this. This is attest­ed by a state­ment found in the Baby­lon­ian Tal­mud:²

On the eve of the Passover Yeshu (Jesus) was hanged…because he prac­tised sor­cery and enticed Israel to apos­ta­sy.

These mir­a­cles can­not be denied, since some oth­er expla­na­tions would be need­ed for them. Did Jesus per­form mag­ic then?

Jesus’ adver­saries sup­posed that he used tricks and they tried to expose him as a deceiv­er.

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth…[Jesus] made mud with the sali­va. Then he anoint­ed the man’s eyes with the mud…[the blind man] went and washed and came back see­ing. The neigh­bours and those who had seen him before as a beg­gar were say­ing, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some said, “It is he.” Oth­ers said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept say­ing, “I am the man.” …They brought to the Phar­isees the man who had for­mer­ly been blind. Now it was a Sab­bath day.… The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the par­ents of the man…His par­ents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind.” …So for the sec­ond time they called the man who had been blind.… He answered them, “I have told you already.… Why do you want to hear it again?” And they reviled him.… (John 9:1–28)

The way Jesus healed the man born blind was utter­ly provoca­tive because he had made mud with his sali­va and soil tak­en from the ground. Accord­ing to the tra­di­tion of the Phar­isees and the scribes, it was for­bid­den to car­ry out any unnec­es­sary activ­i­ty on Sab­bath. Human tra­di­tions were not impor­tant for Jesus, but the need of the peo­ple was. Since it involved a man blind from birth, the Phar­isees were not able to argue that his sight was prob­a­bly restored by chance just as it was lost. They had to resort to refut­ing Jesus by accus­ing him of using two men who looked alike. The whole sit­u­a­tion shows that the Phar­isees were relent­less­ly try­ing to dis­pel the slight­est doubts in them­selves that this man was a dif­fer­ent one and not the one born blind. Although all things indi­cat­ed a mirac­u­lous heal­ing, they refused to acknowl­edge it. If they had uncov­ered a decep­tion, all of Jesus’ dis­ci­ples would have had left him and these sto­ries would not have been passed on to us.

2.3 Jesus’ Resurrection Was Not Made Up

The mir­a­cle most doubt­ed by many is the unique mir­a­cle of the res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus—nothing com­pa­ra­ble is reportable about any­one else. As men­tioned above in sec­tion 1.4, a fal­si­fi­ca­tion by Jesus’ dis­ci­ples can be ruled out because their Lord’s res­ur­rec­tion came as a sur­prise even to them and no rea­son­able motive can be found for hav­ing invent­ed the sto­ry.

After the shame­ful death of Jesus, his dis­ci­ples were in despair. They had expect­ed an earth­ly mes­sian­ic king who would lead the Jew­ish peo­ple to repen­tance and oppose the god­less Gen­tiles. In this sit­u­a­tion, there was no sign of the bold­ness and con­vic­tion with which these men who had sim­ple pro­fes­sions (e.g. fish­er­men), lat­er on pro­claimed the Gospel even to the lead­ing Jews (Acts 5:27–33). They were so afraid of the Jews that they stayed behind locked doors (John 20:19). When Mary Mag­da­lene told them about Jesus’ appear­ance, they did not believe her (Mark 16:9–11) but con­sid­ered it a sil­ly joke (Luke 24:11). When Jesus appeared to some of the apos­tles for the first time, they thought they had seen a ghost (Luke 24:37). Thomas, one of the twelve apos­tles, who was not present then, did not believe even his clos­est friends, but was con­vinced of it only after see­ing Jesus with his own eyes (John 20:24–29).

Some sup­pose that there is an intel­li­gent fal­si­fi­er behind all this, who intends to present a real­is­tic and his­tor­i­cal­ly cor­rect sto­ry. Such a per­son would remove any cause for dubi­ous­ness among his read­ers. This is why it is an indi­ca­tion for a his­to­ri­an that a text has been fal­si­fied if he finds any har­mo­niza­tion. But this is just what we do not find in the four Gospels. The man­ner in which the res­ur­rect­ed Jesus appeared is not pre­sent­ed in an iden­ti­cal way in the Gospels. We even find some incon­gru­ous state­ments. Luke writes that Jesus appeared to two of his dis­ci­ples on their way to Emmaus which they glad­ly report­ed to the apos­tles in Jerusalem (Luke 24:33–34). The apos­tles believed them. On the oth­er hand, Mark reports that they did not believe them (Mark 16:12–13). Here, Luke, who gave an account of the mat­ter in detail, was right. Mark men­tioned this event with just one sen­tence; he prob­a­bly did not have details about it. An accom­plished fal­si­fi­er would nev­er allow such a mis­take to slip in. This rather shows how con­sci­en­tious­ly the authors wrote down their own expe­ri­ence with Jesus as well as the reports of oth­er eye­wit­ness­es to the best of their knowl­edge.

There were still many eye­wit­ness­es alive dur­ing the time when the Gospels were writ­ten down. For the Jews who reject­ed Jesus and Chris­tian­i­ty, noth­ing would have been eas­i­er to do against the Chris­tians than to refute Jesus’ res­ur­rec­tion. Should they have suc­ceed­ed, the belief in a res­ur­rect­ed Christ would nev­er have per­sist­ed.

A fal­si­fi­er wants to per­suade his read­ers, and delib­er­ate­ly looks for ways to reach his aim. He will use clear and under­stand­able argu­ments. Now accord­ing to the Gospels Jesus first appeared to a woman called Mary Mag­da­lene (Mark 16:9 and John 20:14). She had for­mer­ly been demon-pos­sessed and had been healed only through Jesus, which makes her any­thing but a reli­able wit­ness for out­siders. Women were not count­ed as wit­ness­es among the Jews, only men were. Even to this day women are not accept­ed as wit­ness­es in rab­binic court cas­es in ortho­dox Judaism. Addi­tion­al­ly, the Gospels were writ­ten pri­mar­i­ly to the Jews. To believe that a fal­si­fi­er would make up a sto­ry in which the res­ur­rect­ed one first appears to a woman requires a great deal of fan­ta­sy.

3 The Reliability of the New Testament Transmission

3.1 The Oral Tradition

A deci­sive fac­tor for Jesus’ words and deeds to be reli­ably passed down oral­ly is the abil­i­ty of his dis­ci­ples to remem­ber them exact­ly. As chil­dren of this age, we can hard­ly imag­ine being able to mem­o­rize long speech­es or texts. Through media such as books, TV and com­put­ers we have become so used to hav­ing infor­ma­tion at our fin­ger­tips that we are no longer depen­dent on our mem­o­ries. But the human mem­o­ry is capa­ble of remark­able things. One exam­ple is the fol­low­ing:

The vol­ume of the tra­di­tion of Irish bards today may eas­i­ly amount to over 100,000 words. In con­trast the Gospel of Mark only has about 11,000 words.³

Jesus’ dis­ci­ples entire­ly changed their lives because of his min­istry. He became the cen­tre of all their actions. This result­ed in a great desire to remem­ber all his words and deeds and to accu­rate­ly pass them on. Peo­ple are able to remem­ber things espe­cial­ly when they are inter­est­ed in and pay close atten­tion to them.

For about two and a half years his dis­ci­ples were with Jesus (whom they called teacher, e.g. Mark 10:35) almost every day. Since they were taught by him and were always present while he was speak­ing to the peo­ple, they were able to nat­u­ral­ly com­mit his mes­sage to mem­o­ry. They were used to repeat­ing and mem­o­riz­ing things in their homes, syn­a­gogues and schools. This enabled them to reli­ably pre­serve things trans­mit­ted oral­ly. Dur­ing Jesus’ life­time they had already been sent out to pro­claim the advent of the king­dom of God (Luke 10:1–12). Even at this ear­ly stage they had to apply what they learned from their teacher. All this helped them lat­er on to pro­claim Jesus in a reli­able and trust­wor­thy man­ner.

3.2 The Written Tradition

All the writ­ings of the New Tes­ta­ment were com­posed before the destruc­tion of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. With Jesus being cru­ci­fied in AD 30, the times­pan for its com­po­si­tion was only 40 years. Though it began by oral trans­mis­sion, the Chris­tians soon start­ed to pass on the mes­sage in writ­ten form as well. This shows the inten­tion of the first Chris­tians to pre­serve the true account of the events about Jesus for those com­ing after them.

We may assume that the peo­ple who copied the New Tes­ta­ment in the fol­low­ing cen­turies were just as dili­gent in cor­rect­ly pass­ing on the tra­di­tion with fideli­ty. The Bible, and here espe­cial­ly the New Tes­ta­ment, was and still is the sole bind­ing foun­da­tion of the Chris­t­ian faith.

The old­est extant man­u­script was found in Egypt around 1920: Papyrus 52 (P52), which con­tains sev­er­al vers­es of John’s Gospel and was pro­duced about AD 125. A whole array of papyri were pro­duced in the 2nd and 3rd cen­turies, which already con­tain a large part of the New Tes­ta­ment. Papyrus was a kind of writ­ing mate­r­i­al that was pro­duced from the fibres of the papyrus plant, which grew in the Nile Delta of Egypt.

The old­est uncial man­u­scripts, which were entire­ly writ­ten in Greek upper case let­ters, date back to the fourth cen­tu­ry AD, and con­tain all the scrip­tures of the New Tes­ta­ment. They were writ­ten on parch­ment, a mate­r­i­al made of ani­mal skin. The most famous of these are Codex Vat­i­canus, Sinaiti­cus, Epharae­mi Rescrip­tus and Alexan­dri­nus.

Around 800 AD a new script was devel­oped which rather used cur­sive low­er case let­ters. This was called the minus­cule script. The so-called lec­tionar­ies are litur­gi­cal books that con­tained the texts of the New Tes­ta­ment in the sequence in which they should be read accord­ing to the litur­gi­cal cal­en­dar.

The papyri, uncials and minus­cules were not stored in one com­mon place–this would have made it easy to manip­u­late the text. On the con­trary they were copied and used in very dif­fer­ent places of the whole Mediter­ranean region. Sim­i­lar­ly, the his­tor­i­cal back­ground of how impor­tant man­u­scripts were found shows that a delib­er­ate mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the text with the aim of elim­i­nat­ing any incon­sis­ten­cies is incon­ceiv­able. For exam­ple, the Ger­man the­olo­gian Kon­stan­tin von Tis­chen­dorf dis­cov­ered the very old Codex Sinaiti­cus, one of the most impor­tant man­u­scripts of the New Tes­ta­ment, in the library at Saint Cather­ine’s Monastery (Sinai Penin­su­la) although the local monks had not been aware of its exis­tence before­hand. This does not sup­port the hypoth­e­sis of a planned manip­u­la­tion, espe­cial­ly when con­sid­er­ing that this Codex has become one of the main sources of the New Tes­ta­ment text.

The fol­low­ing table⁴ gives us an overview of the Greek man­u­scripts of the New Tes­ta­ment. Note that more than 19,000 oth­er man­u­scripts con­tain­ing trans­la­tions into oth­er lan­guages are not includ­ed here.

The sig­nif­i­cance of these abun­dant man­u­script find­ings can be best rec­og­nized through a com­par­i­son with oth­er ancient texts. The fol­low­ing com­pi­la­tion⁵ impres­sive­ly con­trasts the New Tes­ta­ment and oth­er clas­si­cal works.

Bruce Met­zger, the chair­man of the Revised Stan­dard Ver­sion com­mit­tee and co-edi­tor of the Nes­tle-Aland Novum Tes­ta­men­tum Graece (a Greek edi­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment) com­pared the New Tes­ta­ment with Ili­ad, which is sec­ond only to the New Tes­ta­ment with regard to trans­mis­sion:

“The quan­ti­ty of New Tes­ta­ment mate­r­i­al is almost embar­rass­ing in com­par­i­son with oth­er works of antiq­ui­ty”, he said. Next to the New Tes­ta­ment, the great­est amount of man­u­script tes­ti­mo­ny is of Home­r’s Ili­ad, which was the bible of the ancient Greeks. There are few­er than 650 Greek man­u­scripts of it today. Some are quite frag­men­tary. They come down to us from the sec­ond and third cen­tu­ry AD and fol­low­ing. When you con­sid­er that Homer com­posed his epic about 800 BC, you can see there’s a very lengthy gap.⁶

We should also note here that there is no vari­a­tion in the man­u­script text from dif­fer­ent times. After 40 years of research, Pro­fes­sor Kurt Aland, one of the most rep­utable New Tes­ta­ment tex­tu­al crit­ics and the edi­tor of the Nestle/Aland Novum Tes­ta­men­tum Graece, ascer­tained the fol­low­ing:

The trans­mis­sion of the New Tes­ta­ment text is out­stand­ing, bet­ter than that of any oth­er writ­ings of antiq­ui­ty. The chance of find­ing man­u­scripts that essen­tial­ly change its text is equal to zero.⁷

We as Chris­tians are very grate­ful that we have such reli­able infor­ma­tion about Jesus and the first Chris­tians. The diver­si­ty of tes­ti­monies attest­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the New Tes­ta­ment, both in regard to its com­po­si­tion and to its trans­mis­sion, encour­ages us to deal with the Word of God with con­stant enthu­si­asm. We would also like to invite you to read the Bible in order to get to know Jesus.

If you would like to get to know our lives as Chris­tians and to test if what we say is reli­able, feel free to con­tact us. We look for­ward to hear­ing from you.

Infor­ma­tion about ancient man­u­scripts and links to some pho­tos

1. F. F. Bruce, New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry, 1969. ↩
2. Trac­tate San­hedrin 43a, Baby­lon­ian Tal­mud, The Son­ci­no Press, Lon­don, 1935. ↩
3. Rain­er Ries­ner, Jesus als Lehrer, 1984, p. 451, free trans­la­tion. ↩
4. Man­u­script work­space. Accessed: 8th of Decem­ber 2015. The total num­ber of the man­u­scripts can be obtained by a mouse click on the “browse” but­ton. Since the papyri P33 and P58 as well as P64 and P67 orig­i­nate from the same Codex respec­tive­ly, we con­sid­er the cor­rect num­ber to be 129 instead of 131. ↩
5. F. W. Hall, Belege für die Texte der führen­den klas­sis­chen Ver­fass­er, and Nor­man L. Geisler/William E. Nix, A Gen­er­al Intro­duc­tion to the Bible, p. 408. ↩
6. Bruce Met­zger, quot­ed in The Case for Christ: A Jour­nal­ist’s Per­son­al Inves­ti­ga­tion of the Evi­dence for Jesus, Lee Stro­bel, 1998, Zon­der­van, p. 60. ↩
7. Kurt Aland, Das Neue Tes­ta­ment zuver­läs­sig über­liefert. Die Geschichte des neutes­ta­mentlichen Textes und die Ergeb­nisse der mod­er­nen Textforschung, Rei­he: Wis­senswertes zur Bibel, Stuttgart 1986, S. 28, free trans­la­tion. ↩