In the days when I played for the Milwaukee Brewers, Bob Eucker was in his last year as a player. His batting average was .200, and in my first season I nearly beat him - .198.
Anyone who knew me back then would doubt I’d eventually improve that average to a rather impressive .281. Of course, that one season I played with Eucker I never played in the MLB at all. And everyone who knows me already knows all of those claims about me and baseball are false.
Kinda like the original writings of the Bible - if they were false, the people mentioned in them would have spoken out. People who wrote those new testament books mostly went to their deaths claiming they were true.
The Gospel of Luke names names. The reason for that is so anyone reading his writings at the time could go check for themselves. For instance, there is a passage about Jesus heading for his crucifixion. Luke mentions a man named Simon of Cyrene. When Luke’s writings were being spread far and wide, think about the folks in Cyrene hearing about some guy name Simon who helped carry the cross of Jesus.
No doubt the story of that was widely known in Cyrene. Simon, who carried that cross for Jesus, probably spoke of the terror at having been picked out by the Romans. “They yanked me out of the crowd and put a sword to my throat, man. They said, ‘Carry this or we’re cutting your throat!’ I was so scared I almost wet myself.”
Then, when stories about Jesus’ resurrection circulated, Simon would have been famous. Everybody in Cyrene would know about him and what he’d done.
The flip side is, if what Luke wrote never happened, the folks from Cyrene would say, “There’s nobody here named Simon.” Or, since it’s likely there WAS someone named Simon (it’s a common name), folks would look for “that” Simon. “Sorry. Can’t find him. That story is bunk.”
There are a lot of examples through the Gospels where someone is named. It would have been easy for folks to go check. “Hey, is it true you had your ear whacked off by one of those apostles?”
If those stories were written fifty years later it might be a different circumstance. Most experts agree, however, the writings of the new testament were written within a decade or two, maybe three. Paul’s letters were set down and circulated within twenty years of the crucifixion. If they were lies, they’d have been debunked and ignored.
What, in reality, happened was by and large the apostles all went to their deaths maintaining the truth of Jesus as Savior. “Repent or die!” With the exception of John (who died a natural death), they all died rather than reject the truth. Thousands died with them - either outright slaughtered when discovered, or thrown to the lions, or covered in tar and set on fire.
Is it possible to embellish a story if everyone in that story is long gone? Yes. That’s why, when putting together the Bible, it was important to select writings that were already accepted as scripture.
Skeptics say, “What about the Gospel of Thomas?” There’s any number of writings they want included, but the earliest dates attributed to those writings are at least a hundred years later.
Is it possible there are errors in the copies of the Gospels? Yes. However, the agreement rate across existing copies is quite remarkable, and in no way changes the message of the Gospels. For more, check out my post about what it takes to determine the original writings, and some of the difficulties associated with determining what’s in our Bibles.
So if I claim to have played for the Milwaukee Brewers when Bob Eucker played, even people who don’t really know me can contact my friends on FB and ask. “Hey, did Mark really play with Bob Eucker?” They’ll say, “Mark? BASEBALL? I watched him play in high school and he was terrible. He’d never have played professionally, much less with the Brewers. Besides, he’d have been only a couple of years old when Eucker retired from play.”
Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man of Jerusalem. Folks who lived in the area (tens of thousands of them) would have been able to ask, “Was Jesus really buried in your tomb?”
When someone says the Bible is a lie, or an embellishment, doesn’t really think things through. They’re more comfortable believing a thin veneer rather than the deeper truth.
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