Let’s bury once and for all the idea that the disciples of Christ put words in Jesus’s mouth or invented history! Here are at least 17 reasons below that show that what Jesus said and did was accurately reported.
1.Eyewitnesses: At the time of writing there were many eyewitnesses, including hostile ones, who could have discredited any inventions. This could be true even forty years laer. Many of even the more skeptical scholars will admit this possibility. Josh McDowell quotes Laurence McGinley: “First of all, eyewitnesses of the events in question were still alive when the tradition had been completely formed; and among those eyewitnesses were bitter enemies of the new religious movement. Yet the tradition claimed to narrate a series of well-known deeds and publicly taught doctrines at a time when false statements could, and would, be challenged.”[1]
For example, would any of us more than forty years old believe a story that China was the first nation to put a man on the moon in 1969?
2. Short time interval: There was also no time for legends and myths to develop as there were in the so-called parallel examples used by these scholars. The Gospels were written down no more than thirty to forty years after the events they describe, while the critics’ examples of developing legends span centuries from the events that triggered them.[2]
3.Oral memorization practices: The Jewish rabbis’ method of teaching was to have their pupils memorize their sayings, to the point that it was as reliable as or more so than writing them down to preserve these sayings, and there is plenty of evidence that Jesus used the rabbis’ methods in instructing His disciples. He often used the rabbinical device of answering a question with a question and other styles of teaching that have parallels in the rabbinical literature.[3] There was a cultural emphasis on memorization, and Jesus’ words were often given in poetic form, a great aid to memorization. So there is evidence for a solid oral tradition in place before the writing of the Gospels.
4. The Promise of the Holy Spirit: Some scholars also seem to completely discount Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit would remind the disciples of all that Jesus taught them (John 14:26), and, in general, they discount the supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit to quicken the memory and inspire the New Testament writers. These scholars sometimes don’t (and many times don’t want to) believe the New Testament is the inspired Word of God.
Other pertinent questions:
5. If they were inventions, why didn’t the stories grow in number as time passed and new situations arose?[4]
6.And why weren’t any of the many words of Saint Paul put into Jesus’ mouth, to give them the ultimate authority? Paul was very careful to distinguish his own words from what were the Lord’s spoken words that had been passed on to him.
7. If Jesus didn’t say most of the things He was recorded to have said, what reason would they have had to execute Him?
8. And history shows that profound sayings come from individuals, not from inventing communities, so there is no parallel case for their theories.[5]
9. Is it more credible to think the people who spent time with Jesus forgot all He really said and then invented sayings of Jesus later or that they simply remembered what He said?
10. They were martyrs: Even more important, the disciples of Jesus would not have died martyrs’ deaths for the product of their imaginations. People do not die for what they know is a lie.
A fabricated New Testament would be a greater miracle than an authentic one. Consider:
We can see that the idea the New Testament was an invention of the authors is preposterous. In fact, the only “invention” seems to be the invention of the skeptics’ theories.
[1] Laurence J. McGinley, Form Criticism of the Synoptic Healing Narratives, Woodstock College Press, Woodstock, MD, 1944, 25, as quoted in McDowell, More Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 211.
[2] McDowell, ibid., 211-212.
[3] McDowell, He Walked Among Us, 238-243.
[4] McDowell, More Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 238.
[5] Ibid., 252.
[…] The accounts of the resurrection lack the kind of mythological embellishments contained in the pagan accounts. For more on why the legend theory doesn’t work, see 17 Reasons why the history of Jesus was not invented. […]