Can we trust the Gospels?

01The question

Old books, big claims

Totally fair question. These are old books making huge claims. Why should you take them seriously?

The Church doesn’t dodge it. She says the four Gospels, “whose historicity she unhesitatingly affirms,” faithfully hand on what Jesus really did and taught.¹

So who wrote them, and how close were they to Jesus? Around AD 180, a bishop in what’s now France just tells us.

02The evidence

A bishop names the four

St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, wrote around AD 180: “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church.”⁸

“Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter.” “Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him.”⁸

And John, “the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.”⁸

Notice how boring the details are, in a good way. Who wrote. Whose preaching they recorded. Where they lived. It reads less like a legend and more like a family tree.

Okay, but how did it get from Jesus to the page? Three stages.

03The process

From a life, to preaching, to the page

First, the life: what Jesus really did and taught, until the day He was taken up to heaven.¹

Then, the preaching: after the Ascension, the apostles told everyone what he’d said and done, and now they actually got it.¹

Finally, the writing: the Gospel writers chose some of the many things handed on, summarized or explained others, always telling “the honest truth about Jesus.”¹

Which explains something that trips up a lot of first-time readers. The four Gospels don’t tell every story the same way.

04The objection

Four voices, one Jesus

Each writer picked, trimmed and explained with his own audience in mind, like any good storyteller.¹

So to read them well, ask what each author was actually trying to say.⁹ Notice what kind of writing it is, and how people told stories back then.¹⁰

Ask four friends to describe the same wedding and you’ll get four different toasts. That doesn’t mean nobody got married.

And the Gospels aren’t the only witnesses: other historical sources shed light on how Jesus died, too.¹¹

And the writers admit one more thing. They didn’t tell us everything.

05The ending

Why they were written

“Therefore Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

We get almost nothing about his years in Nazareth, and plenty of his public life is skipped. What made the cut is there for one reason: so that you may believe, and have life in his name.¹³

These were written by some of the very first believers, who couldn’t keep it to themselves.¹⁴

John told you exactly why he wrote. The only fair test is to read one yourself.