I was unsure whether or not to continue this blog as one's search for truth is essentially a private matter. I've decided to journal on my own, but share the essence of what I am or have researched here as having people's input will certainly help my journey.
The trouble is that I've researched a great many things but never logged my thoughts about them. Hence a lot of it has become fuzzy. So there's some back tracking to be done to clarify what I have learnt thus far and what issues I still have concerns about.
I believe in objectivity, so have been examining both pro-theistic and atheistic view points.
My 'freshest' research has been viewing Josh McDowell's documentary "The Bible is True! - The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict." It can be found here on youTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRemWMIy2IY
In this documentary I rediscovered some of the points Lee Strobel had brought up in his "The Case For Christ" book that I had read snippets from in the past as well as a few new points. It reminded me that as a Christian I had always been fairly confident of the historicity of the New Testament. After this documentary, I still feel that way.
A summary of the main points made in this documentary:
- The NT is allegedly the most authoritative manuscript in antiquity - meaning that it holds up better than other ancient history documents when it comes tests used by historians. Relatively speaking it has a shorter time frame between the original (autographa ) and the first copies and there are sufficient copies to reliably recreate the original.
That's a positive point for the NT. McDowell does however throw me off a little when he says that he's yet to find a teacher or professor who knows this. It puts into question his source which I would have hoped were some Ancient History and/or Theology professors. Being such a massive claim, this is something I will need to follow up on. I have a friend who is studying Ancient History which is one great resource to utilise.
- The NT claims to be written by eye witnesses or record eye witness accounts. Interesting point about the cultural trend of employing scribes to record one's thoughts which helps place gospels such as Mark one step closer to being an eye witness account as he was allegedly Peter's scribe.
- McDowell asserts that the community (people present in the NT accounts and people reading/hearing the NT documents who were alive during the events described) would have corrected any falsehoods within the NT. That Jesus' and the disciples' opponents don't refute their claims about certain points such as events that they refer to within the accounts and also that there are no records of people who lived during the recorded events refuting the NT when is was written and taught.
It is fair to suggest that a) not every single word exchanged at the time was recorded so maybe some refutations of Jesus' + his disciples' opponents may have been missed; b) because documents of the day were written or perishable materials any such non-widely distributed documents of people within living memory of the event refuting any claims in the NT may very well have perished; and c) a lot of people of the day were less educated and hence more likely to believe things without research, which, in turn, slightly lowers the corrective power that McDowell is attributing to the community.
However, I think McDowell's bigger point is that if the NT was complete nonsense, then the Christian movement would never have gotten off the ground. The very fact that the documents survived as did the movement is evidence in and of itself that it mattered to a lot of people and to matter to a lot of people it must have had some credible origin.
- Master illusionist Andre Kole can only explain away a few of the miracles, but most can't be explained away as illusionist's usually need the controlled environment of interiors but most miracles occurred outdoors. Most importantly, he can't explain away the resurrection - meaning that it couldn't have been an illusion.
- 10-11/12 disciples died a martyrs death. McDowell's point is that because the resurrection could not have been an illusion the disciples would known if it had been a lie and hence would have died for a lie. He makes reference to military warfare and suggests that people would admit a lie once subjected to torture as some of the disciples were. He draws the conclusion that because none of them denied Jesus' resurrection they must have whole-heartedly believed that it was true.
- Finally, he gives us some context of the day to help us understand why the Jew and disciples had difficulty in understanding Jesus' teachings. A) The Romans had taken Israel captive and B) The Old Testament talks about 2 types of messiahs - a suffering and political one. McDowell claims that Israel viewed themselves as the suffering messiah and hence expected a political messiah to free them from captivity and such.
I am not aware of any other sources that make reference to the resurrection. As discussed above, any such documents that weren't considered important and hence copied over and over may very well have perished due to the material they were written on. So that possibly leaves just the NT as our source about the resurrection. It's a lot of pressure for so few documents to have to bear.
McDowell's context points helps us understand why Jews past and present may reject Jesus. That's another perspective that I would like to follow up on in future.
So to conclude, McDowell is essentially saying that a) the NT are reliable historical documents - you can trust that what was written down originally is what we have today; and b) that he thinks the NT is true because it's closely connected to eye witnesses; has no significant refutations to important claims either inside or outside the text - aside from the Jews who refuted the suffering messiah because they were expecting a political messiah; records a bunch of miracles that can't be explained away by a master illusionist; and the disciples died for their beliefs and would have revealed if they were lying under torture.
So yes, from the Christian apologetics point of view, the NT has a pretty strong case behind it. I would of course like to explore multiple points of view and critiques of these points of view to flesh out as full a picture as possible. That's all I have time for this round.
