Reliability of the Bible

Video: 3 Bad Reasons to Doubt the Traditional Authorship of Matthew

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Skeptics like Bart Ehrman say that we don’t know who wrote Matthew’s Gospel. In Bart’s own words, “Whoever wrote Matthew did not call it “The Gospel according to Matthew.” The persons who gave it that title are telling you who, in their opinion, wrote it…” Now, the early church fathers all agree that Matthew wrote it. And all the ancient manuscripts we have attributed it to Matthew. We’ve looked at this in previous videos. So what are the main reasons Ehrman thinks that someone other than Matthew wrote it? In this video, I look at three bad reasons why many biblical critics reject the traditional authorship of Matthew and why they fail. Erik ManningErik is … Read more

Video: Money Matters in Matthew’s Gospel

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Skeptical critics like Bart Ehrman tell us that we have no idea who wrote the Gospel of Matthew. They argue that all the internal evidence tells us it had to be written by someone else. But is that really so? The Gospels tell us that Matthew was a tax collector. So if Matthew did write a Gospel, we’d expect to see an unusual degree of interest in financial matters. And as it turns out, that’s exactly what we find to be the case. Matthew is all about the Benjamins, much more so than any Gospel writer. And it isn’t even close. In this video, I look at the internal evidence of money-mentions in Matthew’s Gospel … Read more

Video: Who Wrote The Gospels? These 6 Ancient Sources Tell Us

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Skeptical New Testament scholars like Bart Ehrman argue that the Four Gospels in our New Testament are anonymous. In his bestselling book Jesus, Interrupted, Ehrman writes: “Some books, such as the Gospels…had been written anonymously, only later to be ascribed to certain authors who probably did not write them (apostles and friends of the apostles).” But wouldn’t the early church be in a better position to know who wrote the Gospels than contemporary critics? I’d certainly think so, and as it turns out, the early church fathers were unambiguous and united about who wrote the Four Gospels.  In this video, we look at the witness of 6 early church fathers and learn that the authorship … Read more

Manuscript Evidence Proves the Gospels Were Not Anonymous

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Skeptical New Testament scholars argue that the Four Gospels in our New Testament are anonymous. There was no original “Gospel According to Matthew,” and the same goes for Mark, Luke, and John. Their titles were left blank originally. Or so the theory goes.  These four gospels allegedly were distributed without titles for almost a hundred years before scribes attached them to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, well after these apostles were dead. Names got assigned to give the four gospels more prestige. Skeptics like Bart Ehrman go on to conclude that because these books were anonymous, they probably aren’t based on eyewitness testimony.  While many NT critics have latched onto this anonymous Gospel theory, I … Read more

Answering Ehrman: Did the Temple Curtain Rip Before or After Jesus Died?

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The following is a guest post by Jacob Varghese, who is the director of SAFT Apologetics. (Seeking Answers, Finding Truth). You can find his website at saftapologetics.com and also follow him on Instagram at instagram.com/saftapologetics/. Recently a friend of mine placed before me a couple of Biblical contradictions raised by Bart Ehrman, in his presentation at the 2019 Defenders Conference, for me to try and solve. One of the contradictions was concerning the tearing of the veil and its temporal placement in relation to Jesus’ death on the cross. The account is recorded in Mark 15:37-39, Matthew 27:50-51, and Luke 23: 45-46. Admittedly this alleged contradiction had me puzzling in the beginning. As I couldn’t … Read more

Are the Accounts of Jesus’s Ascension Contradictory?

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Bart Ehrman says that the author of Luke can’t seem to get the story of the Ascension of Jesus right. In his Gospel, Luke says that Jesus ascended into heaven the day of his resurrection. In The Acts of the Apostles, Jesus hung around for 40 days before leaving his disciples. Dr. Ehrman writes in his blog:  “In Luke 24 (you can read it for yourself and see) Jesus rises from the dead, on that day meets with his disciples, and then, again that day, he ascends to heaven from the town of Bethany. But when you read Acts 1, written by the same author, you find that Jesus did not ascend on that day … Read more

Does John Disagree with Mark About What Day Jesus was Crucified?

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Noted agnostic NT scholar Bart Ehrman says that the Gospels are cannot be reliable eyewitness accounts because they’re riddled with contradictions. The very center of the Gospel message is that Jesus was crucified. But according to Bart, the evangelists can’t even agree on what day exactly Jesus died. Ehrman brought this objection up in his debate with William Lane Craig.  “[When you read the Gospels] you come up with major differences. Just take the death of Jesus. What day did Jesus die…? Did he die on the day before the Passover meal was eaten, as John explicitly says, or did he die after it was eaten, as Mark explicitly says?” Is There Historical Evidence for … Read more

Jesus’ Death in Mark and Luke: Do They Disagree?

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Skeptical New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman says that Mark and Luke tell two irreconcilably different stories about Jesus’ death. In his book Jesus, Interrupted, Ehrman describes Mark’s account:  Jesus is silent the entire time, as if in shock, until his cry at the end, echoing Psalm 22…Mark is trying to say something by this portrayal. He doesn’t want his readers to take solace in the fact that God was really there providing Jesus with physical comfort. He dies in agony, unsure of the reason he must die. Jesus, Interrupted p 65-66 Ehrman says this stands in sharp contrast with Luke’s calm and collected version of Jesus:  In this account, Jesus is not at all confused about … Read more

Are Christian Apologists Guilty of Committing the Spider-Man Fallacy?

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The New Testament has archaeological and historical evidence in spades, lame pun intended. For example, we have Caiaphas’ ossuary, an inscription of Pontius Pilate, the discovery of the pool of Siloam, and a lot more. We also have external confirmations of Jesus’ existence found in Tacitus and Josephus, among others.  When Christians share this information online, untrained skeptics will snarkily accuse believers of committing the “Spider-Man” fallacy. The ever-reliable and usually offbeat Urban Dictionary defines the ‘Spider-Man fallacy’ like this:  “Often used to illustrate the flaw in the assertion by evangelical Christians that archaeologists unearthing biblical cities today “proves” that the Bible was written by a supernatural force. The Spiderman Fallacy is committed any time the … Read more

Why Everyone Should Believe That the Apostle John Wrote the Fourth Gospel

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Skeptical Biblical critics like John Shelby Spong say that it’s impossible that the Apostle John wrote the Gospel of John. Spong writes: “There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jesus. The author of this book is not a single individual, but is at least three different writers/editors, who did their layered work over 25 to 30 years.”  Spong isn’t alone in this criticism, even some conservative evangelical Christians have cast doubt on the traditional authorship of John for various reasons. But there are quite a number of reasons to think that John the Son of Zebedee really wrote John. First, let’s consider … Read more

Is Jesus Alive?