Are the Gospels Reliable? Did Jesus Exist?

What were the names of Christopher Columbus’ three ships in the journey of 1492? Anyone who learned about Columbus in school could probably tell you: Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria. This was barely over five hundred years ago and fifty years after the beginning of the Renaissance. This is not the ancient period. And yet, these are not the names of the ships!

La Niña was a nickname for a ship called the Santa Clara. No one today knows the actual name of the Pinta. And the Santa Maria may have been called that but it was also called La Gallega. Do these facts matter? Not really.

Do you remember hearing about Orson Welles reading an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds on radio and causing mass mysteria because folks thought it was real? Well, only about 100 people were tuning in that night and none of them thought it was anything but fiction.

You know how Napoleon was super short?!? Well, he was an inch taller than the average Frenchman of the time.

The Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain. No one was burned at the stake in Salem during the Witch Trials. Wall Street brokers did not jump from tall buildings to their death after the market crash of 1929.

Remarkably, the event of Julius Caesar committing his troops to civil war by crossing the Rubicon River in January 49 B.C. is not in dispute by historians. This is in spite of the fact that there are ZERO firsthand testimonies of this event, nor does Caesar mention the famous event in his own memoirs.

Yet, those same historians would say that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are not historically reliable and are merely myth. To the contrary, the Gospels are more historically reliable than any extant text we have from antiquity.

The Roman Historian Tacitus could be called the gold-standard of Ancient historical writing and yet only two manuscripts of his annals are still extant. And these texts only survived because of Christians (both copies were protected in Christian abbeys), even though Tacitus wrote very unfavorably of Jews and Christians. Why is that? Well, the entire Christian religion hinges on the historical reality of the Incarnation, life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If God did not become man in the Person of Jesus Christ, then Christianity is false and is from the pits of Hell. If Jesus was not truly the God-man, then Christianity is evil. If Jesus did not truly rise from the dead, then it is a deception of the highest caliber. So, the historicity of the life of Jesus, especially in the Gospels, is of the highest importance. The Apostles and the disciples of Jesus in the earliest days of the Church understood this. And, so, when they recorded what they saw themselves and what they heard secondarily from those who saw firsthand, they were incredibly preoccupied with faithfully recording true events and persons. God Himself entered into real history.

No one of any note holds that Jesus was not a real human being. This phase of shoddy history is thankfully over. Even the agnostic biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, says that no serious historian can deny that Jesus existed. But the question is deeper. Is Jesus who He said He was? Do the Gospels accurately convey actual events and truths? Are they historically reliable?

The short answer is: YES! Emphatically, yes.

The writers of the Gospels explicitly state the historical nature of their endeavor as well. Just saying that we are writing history does not make it historical or reliable, but it does show intention. St. Luke writes in the beginning of his Gospel account:

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. (Luke 1:1-4)”

And at the end of his Gospel, St. John says:

“This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things which Jesus did: were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (John 21:24-25)”

We must also take care to realize that the Gospel writers are not merely recording history like a newspaper. They are writing “theological biographies” or interpreted history. So, we should not read them in a scientific or legalistic sense. But we can trust that what is recorded is faithful to reality. We must also keep in mind that the events and words recorded are 1) inspired by the Holy Spirit (God is the primary author of Scripture) and 2) are recorded from a specific point of view, with a specific intended audience, and with particular theological preoccupations.

For example, the Gospel of St. Matthew was written primarily to the Jewish people. The Gospel of St. Mark was written as a record of St. Peter’s testimony to the Church in Rome. The Gospel of St. Luke was written to the Gentiles. And the Gospel of St. John was largely a theological and supernatural exploration Jesus as the Son of God, the Logos, the great High Priest, and a few other theological themes. These different emphases are not in competition. Rather, it shows us that God knows that humanity is diverse and we need four Gospels to approach understanding our Lord Jesus. And as the passage from St. John a couple paragraphs ago reminds us: there was SO MUCH that Jesus said and did, it would be impossible to write it all down in sufficient depth.

We do not have the space here to investigate the mountain of convincing evidence. A good place to start is this great article by Carl Olson. But I would like to highly recommend this excellent book for your consideration: “The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ” by Dr. Brant Pitre.