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The Bible is Written Years After the Actual EventsSilly Christian! Why do you trust the sources of the New Testament? They have been written many years after the actual event!
Introduction
Good, let’s start with Luke’s words when he starts his account — I will read to you from the Good News Bible Translation, just because the language of this translation is a little easier to understand:
Luke 1
1Dear Theophilus:
Many people have done their best to write a report of the things that have taken place among us. 2They wrote what we have been told by those who saw these things from the beginning and who proclaimed the message.
3And so, your Excellency, because I have carefully studied all these matters from their beginning, I thought it would be good to write an orderly account for you.
4I do this so that you will know the full truth about everything which you have been taught.
Contrary to all the allegations, the New Testament are without doubt historical. The New Testament documents are all written during the first century AD. As such, the people, places, and events reported in the New Testament are already well-attested even if other sources never mention certain names. It is even more interesting when you realise that in that time people had very little contact in the way we have today, think about email, telephone, video calls. Still, people, places, and events are mentioned by different authors in separate documents. Also, numerous individuals mentioned in the New Testament documents are, indeed, also attested to by other ancient writers and/or on coins and stone inscriptions dug up in the ancient Roman world. The people in the New Testament are real, historical figures.
I will put some links about extra-biblical evidence in the description of this video below. And while you are looking for the link down there you might as well look at the link to my LBRY account. It would also be very helpful if you subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell. That way you’ll never miss out on new videos!
Okay, what does this mean? Well, what do you know about Julius Caesar? Maybe not much or maybe you love history and you read all there was to read about him. In any case you can know about him because of historical documents as well as archaeological and circumstantial evidence.
Call the Dogs Off
Now, before I continue, you need to realise that this question can be dismissed quit easily. It is a common fact that the New Testament was written closer to the events than any other ancient event in history. Also, more copies (24,593) of the New Testament manuscripts have survived time and decay, than any other manuscript copies in existence, and this goes for secular and religious.
So, this knowledge alone, should be enough to call the dogs off.
Again, you can go to the description of this video to see some references.
Memorisation
Anyway, we need to understand that the culture in Jesus’ time was used to memorise events. These memorisations were used to write stuff down and to educate people. You can say that memorisation is prone to error. That may be the case in our time because we are not trained in dealing with these kinds of reports. But in ancient times this was totally different. Stories could be told from generation to generation without losing the important themes. This is even more so with the New Testament. The writings of the New Testament are all written between 35 and 100AD. This period is way too narrow to allow any error since many of the eyewitnesses were still around. The documents would have had no credibility among the first Christians if they contained blunders.
Christians and especially the first writers of the New Testament literally risked their lives for this story. Many died a gruesome death for believing the Gospel. It would have been much more easy for them to say that the narratives were untrue. Come on! Would you support a made up story to the bitter end? Or would you recall it when you were threatened with a horrible death?
Honestly! I do not know why people still come up with this argument. Can it be that they are afraid the claims Jesus made? Why? Well, as soon as you accept the historical reliability of the New Testament you’ll have to take the words of Jesus serious as well… Just like the first Christians and many after them.
