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18 - The Facts on Islam
SECTION V
The Accuracy of the New Testament Text
18. Can it be proved that the New Testament
text is historically reliable and accurate?
Christians and skeptical
non-Christians, including Muslims and members of religious cults like Mormonism,
have different views concerning the credibility of the Gospel and the rest of
the New Testament (NT). For the Christian, nothing is more vital than the very
words of Jesus Himself who promised, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my
words will never pass away" (Matthew 24:35). Jesus' promise is of no small
import. If His words were not accurately recorded in the Gospels, how can
anyone know what He really taught? The truth is, we couldn't know. Further, if
the remainder of the New Testament cannot be established to be historically
reliable, then little if anything can be known about what true Christianity
really is, teaches, or means.
Christians maintain that anyone who wishes can prove to their
own satisfaction that, on the basis of accepted bibliographic, internal,
external, and other criteria, the New Testament text can be established to be
reliable. Textually, we know we have over 99% of the autographs (the remaining
1% is found in variant readings) and there is simply no legitimate basis upon
which to doubt the credibility and accuracy of the New Testament writers. No
Christian doctrine or moral teaching rests upon a variant reading, the vast
majority of which are insignificant. Further, the methods used by the critics
that Muslims so often rely on (rationalist, higher critical methods), which
claim "assured results" proving the NT unreliable, have been weighed in the
balance of secular scholarship and found wanting. Their use in biblical
analysis is therefore unjustified. Even in a positive sense relative to the
biblical text, the fruit these methods have born is miniscule while, negatively,
they are responsible for a tremendous weight of destruction relative to people's
confusion over biblical authority and their confidence in the Bible. And even
fair-minded biblical critics would have to agree that higher criticism's
200-year failure to prove its case, by default strengthens the conservative
Christian view as to biblical inspiration and reliability.
In this sense, the critics who continue to advance
discredited theories relative to the NT conform to the warnings of Chauncey
Sanders in his Introduction to Research in English Literary History. He
warns literary critics to be certain they are also careful to examine the
evidence against their case: "He must be as careful to collect evidence
against his theory as for it. It may go against the grain to be very assiduous
in searching for ammunition to destroy one's own case; but it must be remembered
that the overlooking of a single detail may be fatal to one's whole argument.
Moreover, it is the business of the scholar to seek the truth, and the
satisfaction of having found it should be ample recompense for having to give up
a cherished but untenable theory."
In order to resolve this issue of NT reliability for the
fair-minded Muslim or skeptic, each should recognize that the following ten
facts cannot logically be denied.
Fact One
The existence of 5,300 Greek manuscripts (mss.) and portions, 10,000
Latin Vulgate and 9,300 other versions, along with the papyri mss. and early
uncial mss. dating much closer to the original than for any other ancient
literature proves the NT has not been corrupted.
Fact Two
The lack of proven fraud or error on the part of any New
Testament author generally shows the writers were trustworthy in what they
wrote.
Fact Three
The writings of reliable Christian sources outside the New Testament
also confirm its integrity.
Fact Four
The existence of a number of Jewish and secular accounts about Jesus
confirm several basic NT teachings.
Fact Five
Detailed archeological data concerning the New Testament proves the
authors wrote with care and accuracy.
Fact Six
The many powerful first-century enemies of Jesus and the apostolic
church would have proven fraud or pointed out other problems if they could,
but they never did.
Fact Seven
The presence of numerous credible living eyewitnesses to the events
recorded, especially of Jesus' death and resurrection, offers powerful
evidence as to the truth of what was recorded.
Facts Eight
There are positive appraisals by conservative and even some liberal
authorities bearing on the issue of the genuineness of traditional authorship
and the early date of the New Testament books, further confirming their
integrity.
Fact Nine
There are consistent scholarly, factual reversals of the negative
conclusions of higher criticism which undermine its own foundations and
credibility.
Fact Ten
There is powerful legal and other testimony as to New Testament
reliability.
We have discussed each of
these points and provided documentation in our Ready with an Answer
(Harvest House). These facts demonstrate the accuracy and reliability of the New
Testament beyond reasonable doubt. Unfortunately, space permits citing only one
of the previous ten points.
Fact Ten - corroboration from legal
testimony and former skeptics
We must concede the
historicity of the NT when we consider that many great minds of legal history
have, on the grounds of strict legal evidence alone, accepted the New Testament
as reliable history - not to mention that many skeptical intellects have
converted to Christianity on the basis of the historical evidence (Saul of
Tarsus, Athanagoras, Augustine, George Lyttleton and Gilbert West, C.S. Lewis,
Frank Morison, Sir William Ramsay, John Warwick Montgomery, etc.).
Lawyers, of course, are expertly trained in the matter of
evaluating evidence and are perhaps the most qualified in the task of weighing
data critically. It is coincidence that so many of them throughout history have
concluded in favor of the truth of the Christian religion? What of the "father
of international law," Hugo Grotius, who wrote The Truth of the Christian
Religion (1627)? Or the greatest authority in English and American
common-law evidence in the nineteenth century, Harvard Law School professor
Simon Greenleaf, who wrote Testimony of the Evangelists, in which he
powerfully demonstrated the reliability of the gospel? What of Edmund H. Bennett
(1824-1898), for over 20 years the dean of Boston University Law School, who
penned The Four Gospels from a Lawyer's Standpoint (1899)? What of Irwin
Linton, who in his time had represented cases before the Supreme Court and wrote
A Lawyer Examines the Bible (1943, 1977), in which he stated:
So invariable had been my observation that he
who does not accept wholeheartedly the evangelical, conservative belief in
Christ and the Scriptures has never read, has forgotten, or never been able
to weigh - and certainly is utterly unable to refute - the irresistible
force of the cumulative evidence upon which such faith rests, that there
seems ample ground for the conclusion that such ignorance is an invariable
element in such unbelief. And this is so even though the unbeliever be a
preacher, who is supposed to know this subject if he knows no other.
What of hundreds of
contemporary lawyers who, also on the grounds of strict legal evidence, accept
the NT as historically accurate? The eminent Lord Chancellor Hailsham has twice
held that highest office possible for a lawyer in England. He wrote, e.g.,
The Door Wherein I Went, in which he upholds the truth of the Christian
Religion. What of Jacques Ellul or of Sir Norman Anderson, one of the greatest
authorities on Islamic law, who is a Christian convinced of NT authority and
reliability?
Certainly such men are well-acquainted with legal reasoning
and have just as certainly concluded that the evidence for the historic
truthfulness of the Scripture is way beyond reasonable doubt. As apologist,
theologian, and lawyer John W. Montgomery observes in The Law Above the Law,
considering the "ancient documents" rule (that ancient documents constitute
competent evidence if there is no evidence of tampering and they have been
accurately transmitted), the "parol evidence" rule (Scripture must interpret
itself without foreign intervention), the "hearsay rule" (the demand for
primary-source evidence), and the "cross examination" principle (the inability
of the enemies of Christianity to disprove its central claim that Christ
resurrected bodily from the dead in spite of the motive and opportunity to do
so) - all these coalesce directly or indirectly to support the preponderance of
evidence for Christianity while the burden of proof proper (the legal burden)
for disproving it rests with the critic, who, in 2,000 years, has yet to prove
his case.
We must, then emphasize that to reject the New Testament
accounts as true history is, by definition, to reject the canons of legitimate
historical study. To reject the Gospels or the New Testament is to reject
primary historical documentation in general. If this cannot be done, the NT must
be retained as careful historical reporting. The NT has proven itself reliable
in the crucible of history. It is the NT critic who has been unable to
prove his case. Nor are the implications small. Legal scholar J.N.D. Anderson
observes in Christianity: The Witness of History:
. . . It seems to me inescapable that anyone
who chanced to read the pages of the New Testament for the first time would
come away with one overwhelming impression - that here is a faith firmly
rooted in certain allegedly historical events, a faith which would be false
and misleading if those events had not actually taken place, but which, if
they did take place, is unique in its relevance and exclusive in its demands
on our allegiance. For these events did not merely set a "process in motion
and then themselves sink back into the past. The unique historical origin of
Christianity is ascribed permanent, authoritative, absolute significance;
what happened once is said to have happened once for all and therefore to
have continuous efficacy."
In essence, the Muslim claim
that the NT has been corrupted textually is not only untrue, it can't be
substantiated due to the nature of the textual and other evidence at hand. Facts
are facts.
As for the Muslim claim that Christians have so severely
misinterpreted their own Scriptures that they teach a false view of God, Jesus,
salvation, etc., one must remember that we have had almost 2,000 years of
universally accepted Christian doctrine - doctrine that even skeptics of
Christianity freely confess the Bible teaches. This is why anyone who wishes can
determine the basic doctrine of the NT just by studying it.
In conclusion, Muslim claims relative to the NT are simply
not credible. We can only trust that, as some Muslims have done in every
generation since Islam was founded, people today will impartially investigate
the evidence for New Testament authenticity and, hopefully, respond accordingly.
John Ankerberg & John Weldon
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