era n.s.

13/2 (Spring 2016) 17-26

Do the New Testament Gospels

Present a Reliable Portrait of the
Historical Jesus?

Craig A. Evans
Houston Baptist University, Houston, TX

I. INTRODUCTION

Do the New Testament tospels present a reliable portait ofthe historical

Jesus? Yes, they do. In fact, many scholars think so. In the last centuty
hundreds of learned books have appeared, authored by scholars who serve
or served on the faculties of the finest universities in North America
(Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Duke, Notre Dame, and others), the United
Kingdom (Orford, Cambridge, Durham, Kinburgh), Continental Europe,
and elsewhere, in which they egress or presuppose the view that a
portrait of the historical Jesus can be derived from the four New
Testament Aspels when they are studied critically and in fill historical
context.

. THE NEW TESTAMENT OTSPELS

MAINSTREAM SCHOLARSHIP

In irore recent years one thinks of the late Ben Meyers The Aims of
Jesus, in which he concludes that the four New Testanrent (tospels
provide US with a coherent, plausible portrait of the historical Jesus.!1

1B F Meyer, The Aims ojJesus (London ^MPress, 1979) The title of Meyers
book deliterately alludes to the title of Hermann Samuel Reimarus posthumous
publication, Von dem Zweck Jesu undsemer Junger (1778), On the Ai ofJesus and his
18 Criswell Theological Review

Professor Meyer taught for many years at McMaster University, which in

the 1970s and 1980s was Canadas powerhouse in biblical and Jewish
studies. One of his colleagues was E. p. Sanders. Sanders taught at
McMaster from 1966 to 1984, and from 1984 to 1990 he was Dean
Irelands Professor of Holy Scripture at Otford University. Sanders
moved to Duke University in 1990, where he retired in 2005. In the
Introduction to his critically acclairad Jesus and Judaism Sanders
remarks: The dominant view today seems to be that we can ow pretty
well what Jesus was out to acco^lish, that we can know a lot about what
he said, and that those two things make sense within the world of first-
centuty Judais^2 Note what Sanders said: the dominant view today.
Not the view of soire, or the view of a few naive fimdamentalists, but
the dominant view of major scholars.
Is this optimistic view of the tospels that from them we can know
pretty well what Jesus was out to accomplish, that we can know a lot
about what he said still the dominant view? I must askthis question,
because, after all, Sanders penned those words thirty years ago. Judging
by the ongoing flood of publications by content, trained, credentialed
scholars in the finest academic institutions around the world, it still seems
to be the dominant view. One thinks of John Meiers multi-volume work
entitled A Marginal Jew. The first volume appeared in 1^1, in which
Meier, Professor of New Testaient at Notre Dame University, e^ressed
his conviction that a reasonably complete biographical portrait of the
historical Jesus can be had through a carefirl eramination of the
tospel material in the light of the criteria of historicity.3 Three more
hefty voluras have since appeared, bringing the page count of Meiers
work thus far to just under 3,000 pages. We await the fifth and (we
assure) final volume.
I should also irention James Dunns 1000-page tome Jesus
Remembered.2 4 3Dunn, longtinre Professor of New Testament at the
University of Durham, believes that the teachings and activities of the

Disciples "In partMeyerntedtounderscorethe progress in Jesus research in the two

centuries since the aparanceof Reimams highly t^dentious essay
2E P Sanders, JesusandJudaism (London ^MPress, Philadelphia FortressPress,
1985), 2 In his later,more paular account, Inders acknowledgeshowdifficult the subjetf
IS, yet still stat th& we knowalot atout Jesus If the NewT estament ( sp els were
unreliable this couldnotto said SeeE p Sanders, The Historical Figure ofJesus (London
Penguin, 1993), XIV
3j p Meier, A Marginal Jew Rethinking the Historical Jesus Volume One The
Roots of the Problem and the Person (ABRE, NewYork Doubleday, 1991), idem , A
Marginal Jew Rethinking the Historical Jesus lull Mentor) Message, and
Miracles (ABRL,NewYork Doubleday, 1994), idem ,A Marginal Jew Rethinking the
Historical Jesus Volume Three Companions and Competitors (ABRL, NewYork
Doubleday, 2001), idem )A Marginal Jew Rethiingthe Historical Jesus Volume Four
LawandLove (ABRL, NewHaven YaleUniversityPress, 2W9) Firsttwo brief quotations
fromvol , 24, the third, longerquotationfrom vol 2, 5
D G Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Christianity m the Makmg 1 (Grand Rapids
Eerdm ans, 2003)
 Craig A. Evans: Do the New Testament tospels Present a 19
Reliable Portrait of the Historical Jesus?
historical Jesus were imbedded in the collective memory of the early
Christian community and eventually committed to writing in the Gospels.
One thinks too of Richard Bauckhams learned Jesus and the
Eyewitnesses.5 Bauckham not only supports the general reliability of the
Gospels, he ^unts a formidable case for concluding that early, reliable
eyewitness testirany underlies much of the tospel materials. I might
also mention Armand Puig i Trrechs recent Jesus: A Biography. Puig i
Trrech is Dean and Professor of New Testament on the Faculty of
Theology of the University of Catalonia in Barcelona. He has also served
as president of the Society of New Testament Studies, an elite
international society of New Testarant scholars, whose rambership is
by vetting and invitation only. Trrech has the highest regard for the
historical accuracy ofthe Gospels.7
Are all of these scholars wrong? Have they wasted their tira? Is there
a body of scholarly work by equally content university professors that
has refated their conclusions, e^osed as baseless their working
assumions? No. I have mentioned a number of scholars who cora from
different perspectives. John Meier is a raderate Roran Catholic. So also
was the late Ben Meyer. Ed Sanders is a liberal Protestant. Jaras Dunn is
a moderate Protestant. If I had the time, I could name a number of Jewish
scholars, like Geza Verras who for many years was Professor of Judaism
at Otford University,8 who believed the New Testament tospels provide
historians with reliable information about Jesus of Nazareth. Why do
these scholars think this way? These scholars believe that the New
Testament Gospels are reliable for at least two portant reasons.
First, the ^eek text of the four Ctospels (indeed, the tetf of all
twenty-seven writings that make up the New Testarant) is stable and in
all probability is quite close to the original text. No one claims that we
have recovered the autographic text (that is, the original tert, word for
word), but most New Testarant scholars and textual critics think that,
through co^arison and carefiil study, we have reconstructed the tert
within 95 percent of its original form. The vast majority of textual
variants and uncertainties are quite minor. Textual critics, moreover, have
also concludedthatno in^ortant New Testament teaching is in d0ubt.9

5R Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony

(GandRapids Eerdmans, 2006)
A Puig 1 Tarrech,A Biography (Waco, TX Baylor UniversityPress, 2011)
But this high regard1sellmform^andfidly critical Trhremiksthatthe New
T estament Gospels have tobe Mghed andmterpreted This ensures that both sterile
skepticism andnaive a10get1cs can be avoided Tk,Jesus, 58
8See G Vermes, Jesus the Jew A Historian ,sRengofthe Gospels (1973), the first
of several booksonJesus
Larry Hurtado, a respectedtextual critic, speaks of a stable NewT estament text See
L Hurtado, VftatDo theEarhest ChnstianManuscnpts Tell Us atout Their Readers'? in
The World of Jesus and the Early Church Identity and Interpretation m the Early
Communities ofFaith, ed, c A Evans (Peabody MA Hendrickson Publisher, 2011) 179-
92, esp 189. In a recent study Sanley Porterreaches a similar position, statingthat the
textual evidence con firms the existenceof astable text See SE Porta, How WeGotthe
20 Criswell Theological Review

We have the complete text of the four New Testament tospels

preserved in docurants about 270-280 years reraved from the
autographs, we have substantial portions of the text of the tospels
preserved in documents about 130-200 years reeved from the
autographs, and we have tiny portions of the tetf in perhaps as many as
one don docurants about 70-120 years removed from the autographs.
All in all, not a bad record. Co^ared to many of the classical writings
and histories, where in most cases there are gaps of 800 to a thousand
years or rare between the tira of the author and our oldest surviving
copy of his manuscript, it is an excellent record indeed.10
Second, New Testarant scholars, historians, and archaeologists view
the tospels as essentially reliable because they e^ibit verisimilitude.
That is, the contents of these writings match with what we know of the
place, people, and period described in the docurant. Their contents
cohere with what is known through other written sources and through
archaeological finds.11 Their contents give evidence of acquaintance with
the topography and geography of the region that forms the backdrop to
the story. The authors of these docurants e^fibit toowledge of the
culture and customs of the people they describe. Ancient narratives that
possessthesecharacteristics are used by historians and archaeologists.
The New Testarant Gospels and Acts e^ibit a great deal of
verisimilitude. They speak of real people (e.g., Pontius Pilate, Herod
Antipas, Annas, Caiaphas, Herod Agrippa I and , Felix, Festus) and real
events (e.g., death of John the Baptist, death of Agrippa I). They speak of
real places (e.g., villages, cities, roads, lakes, mountains), which are
clarified and corroborated by other historical sources and by archaeology.
They speak of real customs (e.g., Passover, purity. Sabbath, divorce law),
institutions (e.g., synagogue, tele), offices/officers (e.g., priests, tax
collectors, Roman governors, Roman centurions), and religious and
philosophical beliefs (e.g., the beliefs of Pharisees and Sadducees
inte^retation of Scripture).
In contrast to the verisimilitude of the New Testament Aspels and
Acts stand the tospels and fospel-like writings of the second centuty,
such as the Bostic Gspels and Syrias Gospel of Thomas. These
writings do not e^ribit verisimilitude, at least not verisimilitude with
early first-centuty Jewish Palestine. On the basis of Thomas alone would
we know that Jesus was Jewish? Would we have any sense of his
message? Any sense of his travels, of his itineraty? Would we know

New Testament Text, Transmisison, Translation, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology
(GrandRapids Baker Academic, 2013), 24
*0nthe latest evidence fortheantiqmtyandstabilityofthetetf of the Greek New
Testament, including evidence for the surpnsinglongeviy ofits autographs andfirst cop.
seeC A Evans, HowLongWere Late Antique Booksm Use? Possible Implications for
New Testament Criticism, Bulletin oiblxcdResearchlS (2015),23-37
"Rightly notedandimderscoredin Tarrech, Jesus, 62^ Trrech points out that
archaeological versimilitude has ledto much more positive assessments of t he historical
valueoftheGispelofJohn
 Craig A. Evans: Do the New Testament tospels Present a 21
Reliable Portrait of the Historical Jesus?
anything of Jesusdeath? Would we have any senseof life in first centuty
Jewish Palestine?
The verisimilitude of the New Testament fospels and Acts is such
that historians and archaeologists regularly make use of them The NT
tospels and Acts assist archaeologists in decisions concerning where to
dig and in understanding what they find. None of this can be said with
respect to the Gospel of Thomas and the other extra-canonical tospels.
I can illustrate this claim by directing readers to a recently published
book entitled Jesus and Archaeology}2 a book that grew out of a
conference in Israel, which included the usual learned papers but also
included onsite visits and eraminations of archaeological ercavations.
The volura includes 31 essays. One third of the contributors are Jewish
and about one third are trained archaeologists. The remainder are
historians and biblical scholars. If you turn to the indexin the back ofthe
book you will find rare than one thousand references to the New
Testairent tospels and Acts. In stark contrast there are very few
references to the second-centuty etfracanonical writings and not one of
these references has anything to do with historical verisimilitude. If the
etfracanonical tospels and tospellike writings were on par with the
New Testament Aspels, how are we to e^lain this?
If the New Testament Ctospels and Acts were little better than the
secondcentuty ertracanonical writings, then their extensive usage by
historians and archaeologists would indeed be difficult to e^lain. One
would wonder why a book on the subject of Jesus and archaeology could
even be produced. The book edited by Charlesworth is not alone. Many
other books on archaeology that are concerned with Israel in the
appro^mate time of Jesus make extensive use of the New Testament
tospels and Acts. Sonre of these recent contributions are by Eric Meyers
of Duke University 13 and Shimon Gibson of the University of North
Carolina at Charlotte. Both of these archaeologists are Jewish. Gibsons
book focuses on the final days of Jesus.14 He cites the New Testament
tospels hundreds of tils either presupposing or demonstrating again
and again the coherence between them and the archaeological record. Jodi
Magness, another Jewish archaeologist and ramber of the faculty at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recently published an essay
on the topic of the tomb of Jesus. Throughout her essay she con^ared

2 H Charlesirth, Q&, Jesus andArchaeology (Qthv Eerdm ans, 2006)

\ MMqeted,GalileethnghtheCentwies ConjluenceofCulturesM&
Judaic aud1esl(WmonaLake, IN Eisenfrauns, 19^) Tliere aremorethan300citations
from theNewT estament Aspels andActs and another 150 citrtions from the writ ings 0 f
Josephus, but not one citation from one ofthesecondcentury Gospels Theessays in this
book, ich are conrnedwthhistoryandarchaeolo,reference the New T estament
tospelsandotheriwitmgs, tecausetheyaidreseardi Theyaidresearchtecause of their
verisimilitude See also the book thrtMeyers co-author^with archaeologist James Grange,
Archaeology the Rabbis andEarly Christianity (London Press, 1981)
icm. The Fmal Days of Jesus The Archaeological Evidence
22 Criswell Theological Review

what the New Testament tospels say and what archaeologists and
historians have learned. Along the way she challenges and contradicts
skeptics. At the end of her study she remarks: "I believe that the Gospel
accounts of Jesus burial are largely consistent with the archaeological
evidence.15 It is difficult to imagine how sonrething like this could be
said ofthe Gospels if they were unreliable and fictive.
Historians and archaeologists rightly regard the New Testarant
Aspels as early and generally reliable. I am not saying that these
scholars necessarily view the New Testarant writings as inerrant or
inspired, but many of these scholars do see them as valuable sources,
without which historical and archaeological work concerned with first-
centuty Jewish Palestine would be much jrore difficult. No archaeologist
or historian would say this with regard to the Gospel ofPeter, the Gospel
of Thoms, the Secret Gospel of Mark, or nrost of the other second-
centuty writings, which sora New Testament scholars and popular
writers have in recent years lionid in their efforts to portray Jesus in
new and unusual ways.
If it is acknowledged that the New Testaient tospels contain usefiri
historical data, it must also be acknowledged that they also contain a
number of disagreerants and discrepancies when we contare them to
one another. Why do they? Do discrepancies discredit the Gospels? Do
these discrepancies indicate that the New Testairent Gspels are in fact
not reliable? If the Aspels are reliable, as has been argued above, how
are these discrepancies to be understood? To these questions we now
turn.

HI. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE SPELS

DIFFERENCES AOT) DISCREPANCIES?

Any carefiri, fair reading of the tospels, side by side, will reveal a
number of differences and discrepancies. Sora of these discrepancies are
^re apparent than real, but rany of them are indeed real. We observe
differences in the wording of Jesus teaching. Sayings clustered together
in one Gospel (in a Matthean discourse, for eran^le) are scattered over
several chapters in another tospel (as, for exan^le, in Lukes Central
Section). The order and sequence of a number of episodes soiretinres
vaty from one tospel to another. Details in parallel stories sometins
vaty; and on it goes.
Most scholars are not troubled by such discrepancies, recognizing a
number of factors involved, such as the diversity ofthe material and the
selecting and editing work of the respective evangelists. What many

Magness, Jesus Tomb What did It look like'?" m Ire Christianity Was
B0m,Qi,H aanks(WashingonDC B1bl1calArchaeolof&cety,2008),213-226
 Craig A. Evans: Do the New Testament tospels Present a 23
Reliable Portrait of the Historical Jesus?
readers of the tospels may not know is that the discrepancies in the
tospels began with Jesus himself
Jesus teaching was not static and unchanging. It was adaptable, it was
situational, it was applied to a variety of settings, and it was altered as the
occasion required. He taught his disciples accordingly. Yes, they were to
learn his teaching, to memoria his words, but they were ejected to
apply them according to the needs of evangelism and teaching. These
disciples, or learners () could hardly claim to be genuine
disciples if their learning never progressed beyond rote memoty and mere
repetition.
How do we know this? We know it because this was the
understanding of education and pedagogy in late antiquity in both
Jewish and ^eco-Roman society. Jewish and ^eco-Roman pedagogies
were not separate and isolated from one another. Most of the rabbinic
rules of eregesis were learned from the ^eeks. ^eek and Jewish
memory techniques and practice overlapped. Indeed, the Greek
gymnasium was present on Jewish soil, even in the vicinity of Jerusalem
itself as early as the second centuty BC.16
Young ^eeks began their education by rararizing chreiai brief
anecdotes in which a well-known figure says or does southing
significant and of value.17 As the student progresses, he learns to insert a
chreia into his argunrent orto string together several chreiai and in doing
so, he is free to edit the beginnings and endings of the chreiai. The
student is not only permitted to edit these pithy anecdotes, he is required
to do so, for the sake of darity.18 This point needs to be underscored:
Recitation of these anecdotes presupposed memoration but

!6On Jewish pedago^ in late antiquity and Its indebt.ess toHellemstic pedago gy,
see sLieterman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine Studies in the Literary Transmission,
Beliefs, and Manners ofPdestme m the I Century BCE IVCentury E l">AUc
2ed (NewYork Je^shThlo^cal&m1nary0fAmalea, 1962),M s Jaffee, Torahin
the Month Writing andOralTraditionm PalestimanJudaism, 200 BCE - 400CE (Oxford
andNew York Oxford UniversityPress, 2001) See also the older but still useful studies of
D Daube, RabbmicMethodsoflnterpretatiandHellemsticRhetor: Hebrew Union
C0UegeAmual22{\9A9) 239-264,Daute,"AlexandnanMeflirsofIntopretation and
\Y,mEssaysm Greco-RomanandRelatedTalmudicLiterature,
(NewYork Ktav,1977), 165-182
!?For a convenient selection of texts in which the chreia IS discussed, see G A
11 Progymnasmata GreekTextbooks ofProse Composition andRhetoric
fromthefreco-RomanWorldlO(Atlaita^cietyofBiblicalLiterature, 2003), 15-23
(Theon ofAlexandria), 7^77, (HemogenesofTareus), 97-^, (Aphthomusof Antioch),
139-142, (Nicolaus of Myra), 193-196, (John of Sardis) For additional texts and
commenoy, seeRF HockandE N ONeil, TheChreia in Ament Rhetoric Volume I
TheProgymnasm,SBLS27 Gec0-R0manRel1g10n&r1es9 (Atlanta &h01arsP1.
1986)
18See Theon, Progymnasmata 101 (.engel, vol 2) Chreiai are practiced by
restatement, gramm&ical inflection, comment, and inversion, and we expandandcompress
xk chreia Practicelty restatemaitis self-evident, forw try toexpress the assigned
chreia, as best we can, Wflth the same werds (as in the vereiongiven us) or with 0tho*s in the
clearest Wfty See Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 19
24 Criswell Theological Review

ramoion did not prohibit a change of wording, nor did it prohibit

e^ansion or contraction, so long as the change remained true to the
original raaning and intent. The overarching concern was clarity.19
New Testarant scholars have discovered the chreia form in the
tospels. This has been much discussed in the literature of the last thirty
years or so. As in the case of the chreia, so in the tospels we obsede
relatively stabilid units of tradition introduced and contertualid in
various ways. This editing, adapting, clustering, and contextualizing quite
naturally created differences and discrepancies. This always happens
when we have overlapping, parallel accounts whose pu^oses and styles
vary. The ancients knew this so did early Christians who gathered the
parallel-yet-discrepant tospels side by side in second- and third-centuty
books, or codices. Indeed, Papias himself, in describing Marks
co^osition of the tradition he received fromthe Apostle Peter, described
the Petrine tradition as chreiai.20
The stories and teachings of Jesus have been edited and contextualid
in ways that lead to clarity. The teaching ofJesus has been applied in new
ways and new insights have been discovered as his followers encounter
fresh challenges. All of this reflects the way Jesus taught his disciples. It
reflects the pedagogy of the time. The disciples were not tape-recorders,
rare reciters of the Jesus tradition. They were disciples, learners, trained
to understand the teaching of Jesus, not singly to repeat it word for word.
They were trained to apply it as they gave leadership to the followers of
Jesus, a following that in time became toown as the Church.
It is to this training, this ability to apply Jesus teaching in new and
creative ways, that the saying of Jesus in Matthew alludes: Therefore
every scribe who has been discipled [] for the kingdom of
heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new
and what is old (Matt 13:52). Jesus did not say, Evety scribe who has
been discipled for the kingdom of heaven must repeat my words
verbatim In reference to this verse two major NT scholars rightly
co-nt that the ability to teach things new and old rests upon the
ability to understand Jesusteaching.21 Precisely.

19On this point, see SByrskog, TheTransmissionofthe JesusTradition Old and

New Insights, EarlyChristiamty 1 (2010) 441468, here 459, as well as idem , The
T ransmission ofthe Jesus T , m ikHaookfor Study ofthe Historical Jesus,
eds , SE PorterandT H01mn,4v01s (Leiden Brill, 2011), 2 1465-1494, here 1492
29Mark, havmgteomePetaS1ntaprrter,wotedoM1 accurately everything he
rememtered, thou^ notinoi,ofthe things eithersaidor done by Christ For heneither
heardtheLornor f0110vdh1m,but afterd, as I said, follo^dPeter, who adapted his
teachmgs as chreiai [] but hadno intention of
giving an ordered account of the Lords sayings, (frag 3 15, according to Eusebius,
Historia Ecclesiastical \
2iD c Allison Jr andW D Davies, A CriticalandExegeticalCommentary on the
Gospelaccordingto SntMatthew,Woke II, International Critical Commaitary Series
(Edinburgh & Clark, 1^1),448
 Craig A. Evans: Do the New Testament tospels Present a 25
Reliable Portrait of the Historical Jesus?
I believe that rast Christians do not understand the genre and nature
of biblical literature. When it comes to writings that are ostensibly
historical, broadly speaking, there is a tendency to impose upon thema
dem understanding ofwhat constitutes properhistoty. When someone
is quoted, we e^ect the quotation to be verbatim and to be set off with
quotation marks. We expect strict chronology and sequence. If sources
are cited, we e^ect footnotes. If the tospels or other writings from late
antiquity appear to violate these modem canons, we speak of
contradictions,mistakes, and errors.
The tospels reflect a world quite different from our own. Proper
historiography in late antiquity allowed for and sonretimes required
editing and paraphrasing, always for the sake of clarification. This is what
we see in the tospels. We find in the New Testament fospels a plausible
portrait of the historical Jesus, a portrait that is tme to what we know of
the time in which Jesus and his disciples lived. This is why so many well
educated, capable scholars make use of the New Testanrent tospels as
their primaiy source for studying the life and teaching of Jesus of
Nazareth.
People who take the tospels seriously and desire to understand better
the Jesus of histoty have nothing to fear from rigorous, critical
scholarship. The problem, as I see it, is that far too many do not know
what the Gspels are and do not know how to intef ret them Many
dems whether naWe Christians or na'We non-Christians read the
tospels with a modem understanding of what historical writings are
supposed to be. This problem is confounded by fimdarantalism and
what is also called biblicism, in which the New Testament tospels and
indeed all Stings that are found in the Bible are integrated in rigid and
uncritical ways. The type of histoty conveyed by the tospels is sinf ly
not understood. The discrepancies are forcibly harmonirad (or ignored)
and tertual variants are seen as embarrassments. It is believed that all of
thesethingsmust be done away with.

IV. Tfffi PEDAGICAL CHALLENGE

I conclude by calling attention to the recently published book entitled

The Bible Made Impossible: ? Biblicism is not a Truly Evangelical
Reading of Scripture.22 The author, Christian Smith, who is on the faculty
of Notre Danre University, rightly warns of the danger of defining the
Aspels and the Bible as a whole in a way that is out of touch with the
data and therefore is co^letely indefensible. A naWe biblicist
understanding of the tospels will soratimes collapse, Smith says,
when antagonistic nonbiblicists point out and press honre real problems

22c Smith, The Bible Madelmpossible ly Biblicism IS Not a Truly Evangelical

ReadmgofScnpture (GrandRapids Brazos, 2011)
26 Criswell Theological Review

with biblicist theoty." Smith quotes Fuller Seminatys Professor of Old

Testament John Goldingay, who makes the same point, stating that an
unrealistic understanding of narratives in the Bible sets up misleading
e^ectations regarding the precision of narratives and then requires such
far-fetched defenses . . . that it presses people toward rejecting it."23 To
this Smith adds: Biblicism often paints snrart, committed youth into a
comer that is forrealreasons impossible to occupy for many ofthose who
actually confrontits problems."24
Believing Christians and those who inquire into the meaning of
Christian belief have nothing to fear with regard to the evidence, but will
they make the intellectual commitment to becoire acquainted with this
evidence and put it to good use? I hope they do. If they do not, they will
continue to be easy prey for the skeptics who often hold to very dubious
and uncritical theories themselves.
It is incumbent on those of US who teach the Bible to teach it carefiilly
and fitly in step with its various genres and sub-genres and in the
historical and social settings in which these materials were written and
read. A proper theology of Scripture grows out of what Scripture shows
itself to be. Critically understood, the fospels are found to be reliable and
able to give US a fair and intelligible portrait of Jesus, a portrait that is
fiilly sufficient for Christian theo!ogy.25

23Quoted by Smith, The Bible Made Impossible, 88 The flotation IS from

Goldmgay, Models for Scripture (tond Rapids Eerdmans, 1994), 278 Peter Enns,
distinguished professorof OldTest ament at Eastern mvas1ty, warns of play ing make -
tel1eve,"1nsteadofdealmgreal1st1callyandhonestly^ththephenoma 1aofthe biblical
\ex\ fee? 1 Inspiration andlnciation Evangelicals and the Problem ofthe Old
Testament (GrandRapids Baker Academic, 2W5), 172
"Smith, The Bible Ma Impossible, 89
25T he present par IS a slightly revis^ presentation given in a debate with Profesor
Bart Ehrman ofthe Univereity North Carolina at Chapel Hill Thedebate tookplace in 2012
on the campus of Samt Matys University in Hahfax,Nova &0t1a, Canada
 ATLV

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published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association
(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.

The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the American
Theological Library Association.