Well-Founded Doubts?

But can we really have confidence in the Gospels’ version of Jesus? Do they portray the real Jesus? The late Frederick F. Bruce, professor of Biblical criticism and exegesis at the University of Manchester, England, stated: “It is not usually possible to demonstrate by historical arguments the truth of every detail in an ancient writing, whether inside or outside the Bible. It is sufficient to have reasonable confidence in a writer’s general trustworthiness; if that is established, there is an a priori likelihood that his details are true. . . . The New Testament is not less likely to be historically reliable because Christians receive it as ‘sacred’ literature.”

After examining doubts about Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels, James R. Edwards, professor of religion at Jamestown College, North Dakota, U.S.A., wrote: “We may affirm with confidence that the Gospels preserve a diverse and significant body of evidence of the actual truth about Jesus. . . . The most reasonable answer to the question why the Gospels present Jesus as they do is because that is essentially who Jesus was. The Gospels faithfully preserve the memory that he left on his followers, that he was divinely legitimated and empowered to be God’s Son and Servant.”a

“A character so original, so complete, so uniformly consistent, so perfect, so human and yet so high above all human greatness, can be neither a fraud nor a fiction. . . . It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus.”​—Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church.

“That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.”​—Will Durant, Caesar and Christ.

“It may seem incomprehensible that a globe-spanning religious movement could have been triggered by a nonexistent person dreamed up as the ancient equivalent of a marketing device, given the ranks of incontestably real people who have tried and failed to found faiths.”​—Gregg Easterbrook, Beside Still Waters.

‘As a literary historian I am perfectly convinced that whatever the Gospels are, they are not legends. They are not artistic enough to be legends. Most of the life of Jesus is unknown to us, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so.’​—C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock.