Eric's Bible Belief Page

Eric's Bible Belief Page

Here you see a frank, objective discussion of issues that often generate strong emotions. If you do not agree with my views, feel free to express your views to me and the logic behind them. If you have nothing constructive to say, however, please keep your opinions to yourself.

Myth: Everything in the Gospels is 100% accurate

Reality: There are several reasons why it is virtually impossible for any of the Gospels to be 100% accurate.

Temporal Distortion
For reasons unknown to me, biblical scholars have long believed that the gospels were written at least 40 years after Jesus' death. The question, then, is this: what effect does the passage of 40 years have on the accuracy of recorded events? In order to answer that question, I'd like to ask some further questions: How well could you describe, in detail, something that you observed five minutes ago? Probably pretty well. You might get it 95% right, for example. How about describing something that happened a day ago? Maybe you get it 90% right. Now try to describe something that happened a month ago. If it was really extraordinary, you might get it 70% right. What if you tried to describe something that occurred a year ago, or ten years ago? Clearly, if anybody tried to record something that they had witnessed 40 years ago or even longer, it is for all intents and purposes impossible for there not to be significant distortion of fact due only to the passage of time.
Dilution of fact (verbal distortion)
We've discussed above how the passage of time before the events were recorded in the Gospels distorted stories probably originally based on fact. Anybody who has ever played the children's game "Post Office" knows that when even simple messages pass from one person to another, even basic parts of the message become quickly corrupted. This is due to man's inability to remember events accurately, his inability to accurately communicate what he does remember, and inability to accurately communicate what has been told to them. All these effects conspire to preclude the gospels from being very correct. Why? Some people claim that the Gospels are accurate because the writers witnessed the events they describe first hand. Well, that just isn't so. Consider Luke 1:1-4

Seeing that many others have undertaken to draw up accounts of the events that have taken place among us, exactly as these were handed down to us by those who from the outset were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, I in my turn, after carefully going over the whole story from the beginning, have decided to write an orderly account for you, Theophilus, so that your Excellency may learn how well founded the teaching is that you have received.

This makes it clear that Luke did research! He doesn't claim to have firsthand knowledge of anything that he records. Luke, wanting to do a good job recording the facts of Jesus' life, probably interviewed everybody he could find who may have claimed first hand or second hand knowledge. Some of those that claimed first hand knowledge may not, in fact have had such knowledge (indeed, people tend to lie to get attention, etc.). This means that the very best information he got was second hand. Some of it may be third hand, fourth hand, or worse.
Errors of written transcription
After the gospels were written, they were manually copied. Given the drudgery of this task, it is not inconceivable to imagine errors being introduced due to the transcription (e.g., entire sentences or paragraphs that are mistakenly left out).
Errors of translation
As well as being transcribed, the gospels have been translated into hundreds, perhaps thousands of languages. Each translation introduces errors. For example, let's say that the original, which has since been lost to history, was written in Aramaic. When translated, say, to Greek, it may have lost 5% of its accuracy. When subsequently translated, say, to Hebrew, another 5% of its accuracy may have been lost. Even if you assume that it was originally 100% accurate, after only two translations, you have already lost 10% of its accuracy due to errors of translation. This is why, for example, Muslims are strongly encouraged to study the Koran in the original Arabic, to eliminate any such errors of translation. Biblical scholars try desperately hard to avoid such errors, studying the earliest available versions before publishing a new translation of the bible. Unfortunately, however, those earliest available versions are almost certainly not the originals, so they have already had the translation errors indelibly introduced.
Internal Inconsistencies
There certainly are inconsistencies among the gospels. Among them are the identity of the apostles. For example, John names Nathanael, while the other three do not; Luke names Judas, son of James (Luke 6:16), but the other three do not; Matthew and Mark name Thadaeus (Matt 10:3 and Mark 3:18) while the others do not. Indeed, there are even internal inconsistencies within a single Gospel. As an example, in at least four occasions, Jesus is asked what the most important commandment is (Matt 7:12, Matt 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-31, Luke 10:25-28). The last three such occurrences cited agree with each other, but conflicts with the first (Matt 7:12). If Matt 7:12 can directly conflict with Matt 22:34-40, what are we to conclude? If you accept the premise that Jesus would be consistent, that means that either Matthew made a mistake, or that for whatever reason, it was subsequently corrupted. The important result of this realization is that, if it is true that one such error has occurred (which we have shown), there are likely other errors. Note that it is not possible to identify which items are errors and which are not. Therefore, you can't count on anything in the Gospels being necessarily correct.

Myth: Parallelism amongst the several Gospels proves their validity

Reality: At first glance, it might appear that the existence of the same event descriptions in the several Gospels proves their validity. After all, one might argue, we have four independent confirmations of events! The problem is that you can't assume the Gospels to be independent of each other. For example, as we've already discussed, the gospels do not necessarily contain first-hand information. Indeed, if you were to write a book about Jesus' life, wouldn't you do some research to increase your knowledge, that what you write might be as accurate as possible? Well, if each of the writers of the Gospels did their research, one wouldn't be surprised if they consulted common sources, which would result in parallelism. Indeed, writers of the later Gospels may very well have consulted the earlier Gospels as sources! Clearly, there is no reason to believe that the Gospels are independent.

Myth: The gospels are accurate because they were divinely inspired

Reality: Many people presume that the writers of the Gospels were divinely inspired and therefore were not subject to making errors that mortals normally are capable of. However, there is absolutely no reason to believe that this is the case! Indeed, if I were to write a Gospel, the Gospel according to Eric, would it be divinely inspired? I'm sure I could do a fine job. I would do a great deal of research, studying the widely accepted Gospels, as well as the more recently found Gospel of Thomas. My effort may even be more accurate than some of the others. But should anybody assume that my effort was divinely inspired? Certainly not. Why assume that Matthew, Mark, Luke or John were divinely inspired? We have no reason to do so other than religious tradition (and as we've discussed elsewhere, religious traditions are developed by human beings, who are subject to error).

Myth: People have believed that the Gospels were 100% accurate for many, many centuries -- so many people can't possibly be wrong for so long

Reality: The fact is that many people can be wrong for a long time. For example, for many centuries, it was widely accepted among learned people of the world that the world was flat and that the Sun revolved about it. Of course, we now know that the Earth is spherical and that the Earth, in fact, revolves around the sun. However, this is an example of how the overwhelming majority of people believed beyond a shadow of a doubt in something that just plain turned out to be false! Galileo was excommunicated and sentenced to life imprisonment for suggesting that the Earth rotated about the Sun! Certainly, it is not wise to simply accept as fact anything that we are told just because we are told it (or it is written somewhere).

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This page last updated 01/03/02