Assess the evidence

To assess the evidence for Jesus’ identity, there is no other way than to start with the four Gospels. We cannot avoid the question of the authenticity of the Gospel accounts; this can go deep and technical, and there are good books by competent scholars available for those who want such authoritative information. For example, Professor Richard Bauckham, author of a scholarly work, “Jesus and the Eye-witnesses: The Gospels as eye-witness testimony”, says the Gospels are “biographies of a contemporary person, based as such biographies were expected to be, on eye-witness testimony”. 

Two of the Gospels were penned by Matthew and John who were members of Jesus’ inner circle of 12 apostles. Mark was a young man who knew Jesus and was close to the apostle Peter. Luke was a medical doctor, and “a historian of the first rank”, according to Sir William Ramsey specialist in ancient Middle East studies who, after twenty years research in the ancient Near East, avers Luke “should be placed among the very greatest of historians”. In the opening of his Gospel, Luke (who travelled with the apostle Paul on some of his journeys) shares his scholarly method of personal research of the “things that have been accomplished among us”. He affirms that he has “carefully investigated everything from the beginning”, having received them from “eye-witnesses” in order “to write an orderly account” (see Luke 1.1-4).

Oxford don C.S. Lewis, specialist in medieval literature considers the Gospels’ genre to be “reportage… pretty much close up to the facts”, and definitely neither fable, myth or legend. 

Other scholarly works demonstrating the reliability of the Gospels are “The Historical Reliability of the New Testament” by Craig L. Blomberg and “Can we Trust the Gospels?” by Peter J. Williams, principal of Tyndale House, Cambridge, which is full of details indicative of their trust-worthiness. But I like the simple words of another professor, J.I. Packer, a biblical scholar of worldwide reputation, who has written: “There is no good reason to doubt the authenticity of what the Gospels say of [Jesus]. They were evidently written in good faith and with great care by knowledgeable persons (cf. Luke 1:1-4, John 19:35, 21.24). They were composed at a time when Jesus was still remembered, and misstatements about him could be identified. They were accepted everywhere, it seems, as soon as they were known, though the early Christians as a body were not credulous and detected spurious gospels with skill. The consensus of the centuries has been that these four portraits of Jesus have a ring of truth… It is not credible that he should have been made up. It is safe to say that not even Shakespeare, who created Lear, Hamlet and Falstaff, could have invented Jesus Christ!”

That last thought is worth a moment’s reflection. How would it ever be possible for four budding writers in the middle of the first century AD, seated round some ancient table in a tavern in Jerusalem, enjoying a time exchanging their various writing projects, to come up with the idea of inventing the gospel story? If Shakespeare couldn’t do it, how much less could four different unknown creative writers?

Someone has well said that it would take a Jesus to invent a Jesus. If Jesus did not exist, some unknown moral genius must have written the Sermon on the Mount! W. Robertson Nicholl has well said: “The Gospel has marks of truth so great, so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that the inventor of it would be more astonishing than the hero.” And Peter J. Williams would add: “It is far simpler to suppose that the founding figure of the new religion was the creative genius for these stories [the parables] than to suppose that several later creative geniuses all credited their less creative founder with their great compositions.” 

The last word to Professor J.I. Packer: “We may be confident, then, that in reading the Gospels we meet the real Jesus.”  (In Truth and Power, Eagle, 1996, p. 31-32).

Clive Every-Clayton