The Apologetics Advertisement for Christianity
By Nathaniel Ashcroft
The Bible is Goated
So how do we know we can trust the Bible? The historic reliability of the Bible is essential to the hope that we profess as Christians, and without it, it’s hard to trust any of our foundational beliefs. The Bible is a very unique work, composed of sixty-six books, which we as Christians profess to be entirely inspired and inerrant (without errors). We use this as our infallible rule of faith to derive our doctrine and worldview. However, many skeptics profess the gospels to contain legendary accretions (developments), the Bible to be translated and re-translated unto unreliability, and that the Bible is riddled with contradictions. Whom should we trust? What is the truth when presented with the evidence? We shall see.
To begin, the Bible is not translated and re-translated in the slightest. The translations we have today are taken directly from the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic the Biblical books were originally written in and that were spoken by the people who lived at the time period. In fact, you can search up the Greek or Hebrew behind a Biblical verse online at any time. Scholars have spent centuries studying these ancient manuscripts and learning more about the culture and time period, to give us the translation into our language with extreme accuracy. Our translations are far more accurate than you may think. Christian scholars consider the original writings of the authors to be completely without errors. Across years of copies, some small errors in measurements and such seem to have been copied incorrectly. This is easy to do, when these scribes just copy and copy and copy, they are bound to mistake numbers occasionally. They are bound to skip lines occasionally. That is why the immense wealth of manuscripts we have is so critical; where one scribe makes a mistake, dozens did not.
We have more manuscripts of books in the Bible than any other ancient book. These are copies of the originals, and the lack of change across many years of these copies of manuscripts shows us how faithfully and accurately the Bible was preserved. We can say with confidence that there are no thematic or content shifts between these thousands of manuscripts. The majority of differences are spelling and organizational discrepancies, as previously stated. Greek sentence structure is more free than ours, so often the sentences may be structured differently while still being coherent. I must say again, it’s absolutely stunning and amazing how faithfully the Bible was copied across all the years.
We do not have the original writings, penned by the authors, so how does this show that we have accurate and unchanged biblical books? Since the comparison of these thousands of manuscripts shows us such uniformity and preservation, we can be assured that the original Bible was copied with extreme care and reverence. The Bible was very faithfully copied for the masses to read and learn about the God of Israel, especially in New Testament times, when the church was extremely evangelistic. Any other ancient work of antiquity pales in comparison. From a Christian perspective, our faith assures us that God has preserved His Word for our reading and the furtherment of our faith.
Sean McDowell states in his article, What is the Most Recent Manuscript Count for the New Testament?
“How do the New Testament documents compare with other ancient books? A stack of existing manuscripts from the average classical writer would measure about four feet high. Yet the New Testament manuscripts would stack to more than one mile high. For many ancient books, there are often a few dozen existing manuscripts, and sometimes even a few hundred. Outside of the New Testament, more manuscript discoveries have been made of Homer’s Iliad than any other classical work. It is difficult to get an accurate number because there are constantly new discoveries, and many of the remains are fragmentary. Nevertheless, the total number is far less than 2,000 (the previous count was 643).”
He also states that the Greek manuscripts total is 5,856, Hebrew manuscripts total is 18,130, and the total manuscript count is 23,986. These kinds of numbers are simply unheard of among classic works of antiquity, which helps us to be confident we have the original Biblical books, that have not been changed since they were written down.
The Bible is also unique in that it is written by forty different authors, on three different continents, spanning over 1,300 years, and it tells a perfectly coherent story that does not contradict itself. It’s so easy to forget that the Bible is the composition of 66 books, not a single work by a single human author (although it is of course a single work by the Holy Spirit). Maybe the reason this is so easily forgotten is because its narrative is so incredibly coherent that it’s hard not to see the overarching authorship of the Holy Spirit. Most of the writers never met each other, much less read what the others wrote, and they all agree perfectly. This casts doubt on any skeptic’s claim that they could have invented the Biblical story. After all, how can you fabricate a story with people whom you never meet, and whose work you have never come into contact with? The character of God, the message, and the coherence are all unified across the books of the Bible, and because the authors had no contact with anything the others wrote, it would logically follow that these separate authors experienced the same God without fabricating it. It points to both a single author and a single unified God. The best way to show this continual story is through Jesus.
The entire Biblical narrative is about Jesus and points towards Him. From Genesis 3:15, often called the Protoevangelium (the first Gospel), as it speaks of a man who will crush the head of the snake and overcome him while also being bitten by this snake, promising redemption through a sacrifice for the deliverance from evil. Who could that be but Jesus, who was killed (bitten) for our sin, and by this heroic and merciful act, offers us redemption and adoption? Praise God! Abraham is told all the nations will be blessed through him, pointing to Christ’s cleansing of the Gentiles. The entire Old Testament law demands sacrifice for sin, and for the people to act with righteousness. Christ fulfills this by justifying us legally and also imputing to us His perfect righteousness so we may be seen as upright and worthy for God. The list goes on. Every single one of these 40 authors is pointing to Christ. The only way this is possible is if the same God inspired all of them; if they all knew the same God who exists in reality. Across all 66 books God reveals Himself to care about the same things: righteousness, love, mercy, humility, repentance, faith, a relationship with His people, and more. It’s truly amazing to read scripture and see the plan unfold. Notice, although the Bible is inerrant (without error due to its inspiration by the Holy Spirit) and I believe it to be so, I am not leaning upon this doctrine to convey this message about these authors’ experience. The best way for you to see what I am talking about is to simply read it for yourself. I don’t think reading one chapter of the Bible a day to learn about the most important decision of your life is too much to ask.
Think about an event such as the attack on the World Trade Center: everybody has a story about where they were when they saw the event, or who they called, or the conversations they had about the event. Now, if we were to ask 100 different witnesses of 9/11, each would have the same essential story with differences based on their own experience. This shows that the event was very likely to have happened, because the vast majority of those witnesses did not meet each other, and yet they have recalled parallel accounts of very similar events. Maybe they were at home watching the news on TV, maybe they were driving into the city, or maybe they were working in a neighboring building. They tell of the same event from different perspectives, yet they still saw the horror of the attack and recount it. This is of course because all of those people actually witnessed the event. Therefore, the best conclusion to make from our observation of the biblical narrative is that the 40 authors all followed and experienced the same God. Please, read this beautiful and wondrous narrative for yourself. I suspect you may forget that there is more than one human author.
Josh and Sean McDowell write in Evidence That Demands a Verdict,
“These works were written by peoples in areas as diverse as Rome in the West, Egypt in the South, and Mesopotamia in the East. This amazing geographical and ethnic diversity distinguishes the Bible’s origins from that of all other books,” and, “The composition of biblical writings, from the earliest book of the Bible to the last of the New Testament writings, spans a period of 1,300 to 1,500 years” (McDowell 4).
Another key point to add when talking about the Bible, is that the Old Testament predicts the New Testament long before the New Testament was ever written. Here’s a relatively unambiguous and clear example of such a thing occurring: The Old Testament predicts crucifixion and Jesus dying on a cross long before crucifixion was ever invented, and long before the crucifixion of our Lord took place. Now there are many, many places where the Messiah is prophesied about, but I’ll stick to two of the more famous examples.
Isaiah 53:5 reads,
“But [H]e was pierced for our transgressions, [H]e was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on [H]im, and by [H]is wounds we are healed” (NIV Isaiah 53:5),
predicting that Jesus would be pierced for our transgressions (fulfilled John 19:34), and that He would take on our sin so that we may have peace (fulfilled Matthew 26:26-29; Matthew 27:32- 28:20), long before crucifixion was ever used. It was first invented by the Persians between 300-400 BC, and Isaiah was written between the 740s to 680s BC. That’s at least a gap of 340 years!
Psalm 22:16-18 reads,
“Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment” (NIV Psalm 22:16-18),
which predicted that enemies of the Messiah would crucify Him (John 19:18, Luke 23:33, Mark 15:25, Matthew 27:35), mock Him (Matthew 27:39-44, Mark 15:16-20, Luke 23:35-38, John 19:1-3), and that they would cast lots for His garments (John 19:23-24, Mark 15:24, Luke 23:34, Matthew 27:35).
To the people who try to refute the prophetic fulfillment claims by saying that the gospel writers merely portrayed Jesus as fulfilling them, it’s important to note that at this time period in Jewish culture, the Messiah was not thought to do the sorts of things Jesus did. The Messiah was seen as being a military leader and a great earthly king who would eventually deliver the people from Rome. Some even thought there would be two Messiahs, one who would suffer and one who would deliver. Jesus fulfills all the prophetic writings about the Messiah, but not in the worldly sense that was prevalent among Israelites. They believed this because so many Messianic prophecies speak of the deliverance of Israel, and they took this to mean military deliverance. If the apostles were only portraying Jesus as fulfilling prophecy to gain something for themselves, they would have done it in a way that pleased the people of their day. In reality, the Christ would be a spiritual deliverer, which is a far more awesome and valuable savior. What could be a greater deliverance than a deliverance from bondage and sin?
Just to be clear, even though the Jewish people thought the Messiah would deliver them from Rome, that does not make the Biblical Jesus more far-fetched. This is shown in the success of the early church; the majority of converts were Jewish. The sheer amount of conversions among Jews, due to explanations of how Jesus was the true Messiah in the books of Acts, should show that. So to fabricate Jesus as the Messiah in this way would offer no benefit to the writers and it would not portray very accurately the Messiah that the Jewish people were anticipating. Acts 26:22-23 states,
“But God has helped me to this very day; so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen— that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to [H]is own people and to the Gentiles” (NIV Acts 26:22-23).
Paul and Peter continuously preach like this, that Jesus is the fulfillment of the scriptures and is the prophesied Messiah, throughout Acts. It would have been quite difficult to expect the Messiah to be who Jesus was while only having the Old Testament. Once Jesus humbled Himself to become man, and He conducted His ministry, it actually would have been quite difficult to miss that Jesus was the Messiah. Paul shows this well in his prison epistle to the Colossians by portraying Jesus as a mystery revealed.
“I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (NIV Colossians 1:25-27).
J. Warner Wallace speaks on the motives of the apostles in the first part of his two part episode titled, Are the New Testament Eyewitness Accounts Reliable?, by saying that, according to his experience as a cold-case homicide detective, that there are three pursuits that motivate people to commit a crime: power, greed, and lust. None of these things are to be gained by the gospel writers in making up their accounts. In fact, they only had poverty and persecution awaiting them. So even if the disciples were friends of Jesus, they had no motivation to lie about what He did and taught. They also portray themselves badly in their writing, showing many embarrassing details that would have been convenient to leave out about the leaders of the early church. A few examples are whenever Peter denies Jesus three times (Matthew 26:69-75; Mark 14:66-72; Luke 24:54-62; John 18:15-27), whenever the disciples are arguing about who is the greatest (Luke 9:46-48; Matthew 18:1-5; Mark 9:33-37; Luke 22:24), and when the 12 do not understand Jesus’s parables (Mark 4:10-13; Matthew 13:18; Luke 8:9). Also, the first witnesses of the empty tomb/risen Christ were women (Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-10; Mark 16:1-8; Mattew 28:1-10), and if the disciples were lying about the resurrection they would not have made women out to be the first witnesses because of the culture of the day. Women’s testimony was not seen as valuable in the apostles’ cultural context. The only reason to leave these details in is for the sake of authenticity. To add to that, Jewish witnesses were still alive when the gospels were being circulated, so one of them would have come out and said, “Hey! Stop trying to portray Jesus in this way, you know they didn’t cast lots for his clothes! (or insert any fulfilled prophecy here)”, thus killing the doctrine of the early church. In fact, in Jewish culture, memorization of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) was emphasized. So, it would have been extremely hard to convince any Jews of Jesus’s identity, unless it was synonymous with the scriptures.
Remember: Jesus preached to many, many people. The idea that Jesus’ ministry was both extremely well known and public is essential to my understanding of the reliability of the Bible. It wasn’t just the gospel writers that heard His teaching and saw His actions. Anyone, literally anyone, of the thousands of witnesses to Jesus’s ministry could have testified against the apostles’ teaching. During the Passover, millions of Jews would have been in Jerusalem, and would have witnessed Him entering Jerusalem on a donkey (prophesied Zechariah 9:9; fulfilled Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:29-44; John 12:12-19), clearing the temple courts (Matthew 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-18; Luke 19:45-48), teaching in the temple courts (John 2:13-17, Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-18, Luke 19:45-46), and His public crucifixion (Matthew 27:27-56; Mark 15:16-41; Luke 23:26-49; John 19:17-37). John 2:23 states,
“Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name” (NIV John 2:23),
which reveals how many people He had an impact on. This text also tells us that Jesus performed miracles in Jerusalem during the Passover. So now we also have an extremely large number of witnesses to His miracles. Luke adds to that, saying,
“Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on [H]is words” (NIV Luke 19:48),
showing that the people listening to Him held Him in high regard; He was famous. Jesus would have been a celebrity of sorts in His day (still is), and since the content contained within the pages of the gospels were common beliefs of people who were part of the early church, we can know that the Jesus that is portrayed in the Bible is the actual Jesus that lived. There are just so many eyewitnesses to Jesus’s life. And so many of those witnesses converted. Even when the gospels are being written, these people are still living. Paul’s letters are written before the gospels, and contain and maintain the same views about Jesus that the gospels do. Paul’s letters are what they say they are: letters to churches. So the theology in Paul’s writings was being taught and circulated very early after Jesus’s death among the people who witnessed Jesus’s public ministry.
Fabricating aspects of a person’s life or circulating legendary elements about it is impossible to do early after their death. If I died today, would anyone believe it if my best friend just started telling everyone I performed miracles during my lifetime, was the top goal scorer in the Premier League, and wrote a bunch of hit songs? Of course not, because I didn’t do any of that. Since there are hundreds of witnesses to my life, they can all refute these claims. If the opposite happened, and these hundreds of witnesses agreed with and believed what my friend was saying about me, what does that mean? It means I actually did those actions. The short time after death before these claims arise about Jesus is important, because if it was a few hundred years after Jesus’s death that these beliefs arose, there would then be no eyewitnesses left alive to testify and legendary elements can take hold. According to our historical gospel accounts, the time after death in which these beliefs begin to take hold about Jesus is three days. That’s the day He rose from the dead. Virtually all the eyewitnesses are still alive. I’m no expert on the dating of Biblical books, I do know Paul’s letters were written within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, and so were the gospels. After the resurrection, we see the early Christian church exploding in growth around the belief that Jesus was God incarnate who performed miracles and rose from the dead. Jesus did those things among the people who came to convert. He did these things among witnesses, and witnesses do not cast doubt on these good works, but instead many convert. So, the most logical explanation is that Jesus really did these things.
All of this to essentially say, the conversion of so many eyewitnesses in the early church, the acceptance of the teachings of Paul and the apostles about Jesus among these converts, and the lack of refutation of these teachings about Jesus while eyewitnesses to Jesus’s ministry were still alive tells me that the gospels and other writings of the apostles (Paul, Peter, and John) that are in our New Testament are true historical accounts. That means Jesus is who He says He is. That means the whole Bible is true.
Again, the Jews did not think the Messiah would be the kind of deliverer Jesus is. So why would so many switch from their ingrained cultural views unless Jesus really did what we believe He did? We have lots of writings in the early church, all corroborating the gospels as eyewitness testimony, and Christianity was spreading like wildfire. I must confess, I have not read many of them, but I have read some of the earliest; the Didache and 1 & 2 Clement. I can attest that these early writings offer corroborative evidence for the truths written about by the apostles and adamantly show that the early church believed exactly what the apostles did and held to their writings as scripture. The early church could not have gained such traction unless Jesus really did fulfill the Messianic prophecies, perform miracles, and rise from the dead. 1 Corinthians 15 contains an early church creed outlining Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances, revealing that the idea we hold of who Jesus is and what He did was not a later addition. “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that [H]e was buried, that [H]e was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that [H]e appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, [H]e appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then [H]e appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all [H]e appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born” (NIV 1 Corinthians 15:3-8). Some even date this creed to be less than 3 years after the death of Christ! This early of a source is absolutely outstanding compared to evidence for other historical figures. In a culture that stoned blasphemers, how did the early Church continue on? Where are the counterarguments? Where are the refutations? They do not exist. There isn’t any substantive counter evidence for Jesus’s life and works shown in the gospels anywhere in the early church days. Nobody had an answer for the claims of early Christians, nobody could refute the empty tomb, the miracles, the fulfillment of prophecy, nor the eyewitnesses of the resurrection. The most plausible explanation for the radical change in belief from the traditional Jewish cultural view and lifestyle to the early Christian belief that has held up under scrutiny for two thousand years is that the events recorded in the gospels really happened that way. Most of the disciples who stood by this were also persecuted and killed, so it would have been a great time for them to say, “Hey, we just made that up, sorry please don’t kill us.” Instead, they continue to proclaim the gospel message publicly. No one dies for beliefs they know to be untrue. The eyewitnesses knew the persecution that awaited them as well. Another disciple (but not an apostle), Stephen, is martyred in Acts 7, but he was not a direct eyewitness to the resurrection; the early church knew the adversity before them, if their beliefs were fake, they wouldn’t have continued to put their lives on the line for it. Again, they also had nothing to gain from lying. Paul is constantly persecuted as shown in Acts 9:10-16 and in 2 Corinthians 11:16-33. In Acts 12, Peter is directly persecuted by King Herod, and after his miraculous jailbreak, he keeps striving for God; they knew the implications of their belief, and they held to it. They preach the gospel as Truth.
Now, there are martyrs in mostly every world religion, so why is this so important? Martyrdom shows sincerity, not truth in the martyr’s belief. Their martyrdom is not important for the reliability of their words for any other reason besides showing that they sincerely believed they saw the risen Christ. That’s the key difference; they died for something they actually experienced. They didn’t just believe it, they believed they saw it with their own two eyes. In the early years after Jesus’s life, we don’t see anyone disproving the beliefs of the early church, nor the content of the gospels, instead we see intense persecution which is not founded on anything that would cast doubt on the reliability of the gospels. Jesus fits directly into the Old Testament. The entire Bible is about Jesus, foreshadowing His coming and reign, so it wouldn’t be hard for those who were truly listening and had seen what Jesus did to connect the dots about Jesus’ identity. Most refutations of things like this are not grounded in evidence, but in skepticism, which is just a ‘what if?’ claim.
Jesus is the spiritual Messiah, on which every sin was laid. Even the Gentiles. One of the ideas many (not all, of course) Jews rejected was the idea that the Gentiles could be made clean, as seen in Acts 10:28,
“He said to them: ‘you are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean’” (NIV Acts 10:28),
and Acts 11:1-3,
“The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the Word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them” (NIV Acts 11:1-3).
Ironically, in Galatians 2:11-12, Paul rebukes Peter (called Cephas in the text) for separating himself from the Gentiles because he was “afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group” (NIV Galatians 2:12), who still frowned upon the Gentiles. It’s crazy to think that, even after a vision from God and preaching the content of the vision, he still couldn’t bring himself to speak it to the circumcision group! This shows us that Peter knew that his preaching of the gospel as opposed to deeply ingrained cultural interpretation of the Old Testament would garner some hostility. Still, the content expressed in these gospels was the foundation of the early church, which grew in size and converted the Jews of the day despite how radical this idea was for their culture. Jesus often quoted scripture that speaks of the Messiah, which is the foundation of the acceptance of Jesus’s identity.
The point is: the gospels were read and accepted by a massive amount of people who also heard what Jesus taught and saw the miracles He performed. So, the fact that these gospels were accepted by people who were also eyewitnesses makes the gospels extremely credible. Jesus’s ministry was among Jews, and many Jews converted. Jesus also had many more followers than just the 12 apostles. Peter, when preaching to a crowd in Acts, shows us that there were many eyewitnesses to Jesus’s ministry,
“’Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through [H]im, as you yourselves know’” (NIV Acts 2:22).
It’s almost like having 100 times the eyewitness testimony. If it had been false, the church would not have exploded in popularity and the few who were then the founders of the movement likely would have been put to death by the people. If it was false, someone would have spoken up. This tactic Peter uses in Acts would not have been effective. We see many early church fathers quote the gospels as scripture and corroborate their authorship as eyewitness testimony. So, the church which was becoming increasingly popular in a culture which would have rejected it for the years leading up to the time Jesus lived, and the same church was full of people who were also eyewitnesses to the life of Christ. The gospels simply had to be true and accurate to produce these results so early. If the gospels are true, my friend, then what in the Bible is not?
Louis S. Lapides makes a very strong point when talking to Lee Strobel in The Case for Christ, whenever he is asked by Lee if it was possible that Jesus accidentally fulfilled the Old Testament Prophecies,
“‘Not a chance,’ came his response. ‘The odds are so astronomical that they rule that out. Someone did that math and figured out that the probability of just eight prophecies being fulfilled is one chance in one hundred million billion. That number is millions of times greater than the total number of people who’ve ever walked the planet’” (Strobel 198).
Another objection to the Bible is that the gospel accounts have contradictory passages, and therefore false testimony. Firstly, whenever examining witnesses in court, it’s actually not a good thing if events are recounted the same way, because that just shows that the witnesses spoke to each other and they concluded on one single story of how the event happened. If they do this, it’s more difficult to get what each person truly experienced and therefore harder to piece together the reality of the event in question. There is a very big separation between a difference and a contradiction. The accounts are definitely different, but they are not contradictory. A difference is a good thing, and it adds to the authenticity of the accounts.
An example of a difference in accounts is if one witness to the 9/11 attacks were to highlight what happened to the right tower but give no mention of the attacks on the left, because the right tower was most in view for them. The second witness to the attacks then talks about the destruction of both towers from how they saw it on TV. There is a difference here, but no contradiction. Just because the first witness doesn’t mention the attack on the left tower doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. A contradiction would be the first witness insisting neither tower was hit, and the second witness insisting both of them were.
Since the gospels are told differently, this shows we have four independent accounts of the events of Jesus’s life. In these differences, there is no contradiction, and they all get the same point across. All of the alleged contradictions that skeptics point to either have a viable explanation that the accuser refuses to accept, or we simply don’t have the historical records to know if it is one or not. For example, the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew and Luke are very different, which poses a problem to inerrancy at face value.
A common refutation to Christianity is the idea that there are contradictions contained within the Bible. The defense of inerrancy is an important one to make to Christians who reject the doctrine, but to skeptics it can fall on deaf ears. As Christians we derive our doctrine of inerrancy off of Jesus; He believed the scripture to be inerrant, and so will we. I’ve never heard an alleged contradiction that really held up under scrutiny. The differences between the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke is a common one. Often, when considering alleged contractions within the Bible, we are operating with a lack of information. None of us have lived at the times of these writings. None of us can speak with the writers. We also have large gaps in time between many books of the Biblical narrative, and therefore sometimes lack information that happened in between them. The Biblical writers also use rhetorical devices and figurative language, which sometimes leads to faulty allegations. So, honestly, it’s incredibly difficult for the skeptic to prove or really show a Bible contradiction that is based on evidence. I’ve never heard of an alleged Bible contradiction that didn’t fall apart. Let us consider the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke.
If you have not read the genealogies contained within Matthew and Luke, it will suffice to say they are quite different. Now, I find it hard to believe that each of the authors, who are writing historical narratives, would so horrendously mess up the genealogy of Jesus. The genealogies are similar from Abraham to David, but other than that they are different. The best explanation of the evidence seems to be that they are both the genealogy of Jesus, but in each narrative the author focuses on a different aspect of His identity. Neither of them gives the full genealogy, only the parts that emphasize what they are trying to convey. Matthew focuses on Jesus fulfilling promises of God in his narrative, so he shows Jesus as the 7th 7 through the generations. 7 symbolizes completeness and rest. This way Jesus is the sabbath rest: “Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah” (NIV Matthew 1:17). Jesus is then the beginning of the next 7 generations, and is the sabbath rest, the deliverance from the bondage of sin. Matthew starts with Abraham, which stems from his writing to a Jewish audience who would have been impacted by Jesus’s place as a literal descendant of Abraham. Luke emphasizes Jesus bringing salvation to all of humanity, so he begins with Jesus and goes all the way back to Adam. There are also 77 names contained in this genealogy, and again, the number 7 symbolizes completeness. So, Jesus is the fullness of the law and the salvation to all people, as emphasized by Luke. This makes far more sense now; both emphasize different aspects of Jesus’s ministry.
These are also not likely to be full genealogies, as in Biblical times being the son of a person didn’t always mean they were your literal father. Jesus is called the Son of David, but David was not literally Jesus’ father. This means that the authors could have left out generations to emphasize an aspect of the purpose of their writing of Jesus’s genealogy. Matthew emphasizes Jesus as the Son of David and sabbath rest, and Luke emphasizes Jesus as the salvation to all mankind and the fullness of God’s redemption as the 77th name.
The question arises: “Even though they are emphasizing different aspects of Jesus’s identity, why would they come up with different names from David to Jesus Himself?” The fact that they are emphasizing different aspects of Jesus’s identity sheds light on this apparent problem. Matthew is very likely writing to a Jewish audience, because he focuses very much on Jesus as the new Moses, as the fulfillment of messianic prophesies, and as the final and true Son of David. All of these truths are relevant to the centrality of the Old Testament, which of course the Jews knew extremely well. For them to accept Jesus as the Messiah, they must know He actually fulfills the scriptures. Matthew’s audience can identify with and understand Jesus as being the new Moses, who ultimately leads the people to salvation in a more real sense than Moses ever did. Deuteronomy 18:14-22 records the LORD promising a prophet like Moses who will have God’s words “…in his mouth” (NIV Deuteronomy 18:18a). A greater Moses. Jesus was surely a greater Moses. Jesus also must be within the line of David to be the Messiah in line with the Old Testament.
So, because of Matthew’s audience, he likely shows Jesus’s legal descent from Abraham, showing how Jesus is the descendant of Abraham that blesses all nations. Showing Jesus’s legal connection also to David matters even more, as Jesus then can be the legitimate Son of David, the King in David’s line who brings salvation to Israel.
Luke was likely writing to a Gentile audience, and because of this, giving Jesus’s blood descent all the way back to Adam would emphasize that Jesus came to save all of mankind (including, of course, the Gentiles). This way his audience better understands that Jesus also came to save them and that He is fully sufficient for their redemption.
See? No contradiction. Pointing out differences is not pointing out contradictions.
Another example is the number of witnesses of the empty tomb: in the gospel according to Luke; Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women are the women described as seeing the empty tomb. In John, only Mary Magdalene is described as seeing the empty tomb. In Matthew, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary are the only ones called out by name as seeing the empty tomb. In Mark, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome are the ones called by name who see the empty tomb. Seems irreconcilable, as all four gospels say different women saw the empty tomb. I actually didn’t originally think this was a super incriminating difference, but others clearly do. Simply put, Luke’s account says there are other women besides the ones described, which shows that a large group went. Essentially the gospel writers each highlighted different women who saw the empty tomb out of a larger group, Mary Magdalene being the constant. John does not say that Mary was alone, or the only one who witnessed the empty tomb, he merely highlights that she saw it and came and told Simon Peter and the other disciple about it. So it’s really not a contradiction at all, just recounted in different ways, which is a good thing, as stated before.
Biblical scholars have written far more about this topic. Suggestions for the seeking heart: Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh and Sean McDowell, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Frank Turek and Norman Geiser, The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, and Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace.
I know this way of showing the reliability of the Bible is rather unorthodox, but how can I best present my case for Biblical reliability than to present the reasons that cemented my own belief in it? I think the best evidence for the reliability of what the gospels record about Jesus is the publicity of Jesus’s ministry in a Jewish context, and the growth of the early church in this same Jewish context. Then, because they must have recorded this accurately, I can trust them and the gospel writers’ testimony. If I can trust their testimony, I can trust that I have historically accurate accounts of Jesus. If I have historical accurate accounts of Jesus, I have all the evidence I need to believe in Christianity and Biblical reliability. If Jesus is who He says He is then the entire Bible is reliable. End of story.
Have you heard the gospel? If not, click here.
View next week’s section to learn about evidence from the application of the Bible.
Works Cited
McDowell, Sean. “What is the Most Recent Manuscript Count for the New Testament?” Sean McDowell, 13 March 2018, accessed 10 Jan. 2026, What is the Most Recent Manuscript Count for the New… | Sean McDowell
McDowell, Josh & Sean. Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Thomas Nelson, 2017.
NIV Quest Study Bible. Zondervan, 2011.
Warner Wallace, James, host. “The Cold-Case Christianity Podcast.” Are the New Testament Eyewitness Accounts Reliable? Part 1. Spotify, 21 Oct. 2024. His website URL of the same podcast; Are the New Testament Eyewitness Accounts Reliable? Part 1 (Podcast) – Cold Case Christianity.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ. Zondervan, 2016.