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The Validity of the 4 Gospels - A Defense

"Some people will accept that Jesus really existed, but claim that we cannot know anything for sure about him, because we cannot trust the Gospel records. But, again, there is no historical basis for discounting the historic records we have. The documentary evidence for their accurate transmission and preservation is overwhelming. And the suggestion that the four Gospels are works of fiction is so far-fetched that it would need a major essay just to summarise the problems it throws up! But, just for starters:

• Fiction had not been invented at the time.
• Inventing five stories (the four Gospels and Acts) that work together the way they do, would be an act of genius unrivalled in the history of art.
• No author of fiction has ever been able to solve the problem of representing goodness in a believable (non-vomit-inducing!) way - except the writers of the four Gospels.
• If it is fiction, the writer (or writers?) of the Gospels produced the four greatest novels of all time, plus a convincing sequel in Acts, yet remained totally unknown, and never wrote anything else.
• Our writer or writers of fiction somehow convinced people living at the time when they composed these works that these imaginary stories were true, that this person really had lived, and that they should suffer horrible deaths for the sake of this imaginary person."

Posted 2010-10-02T01:05:16