ShelfLife

The blog entry this week is from Jackie Tarnow:

When I have had conversations with certain friends who do not believe that they can trust the historical depiction of Jesus, usually I learn that they have never read the Bible and very rarely have actually spent time researching any evidence for which they base their conclusions. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but most of the people I have encountered usually just take bits and pieces of what they have heard in the media or in college classes and base their assumptions on the inaccuracy of the biblical Jesus without really taking much time to explore the facts.

In chapter seven of Tim Keller’s “The Reason For God,” entitled You Can’t Take the Bible Literally, one of the issues that he addresses is the historical accuracy of the Bible. He provides three reasons that people can trust the Bible historically, which are as follows: 1) The timing is far too early for the gospels to be legends; 2) The content is far too counterproductive for the gospels to be legends; and 3) The literary form of the gospels is too detailed to be legend.

In the beginning of this chapter, Keller discusses how Ann Rice, the well-known author of vampire stories, “returned to Christianity after doing extensive research about the historical Jesus, by reading the work of Jesus scholars at the most respected academic institutions.” She realized that there was little actual data to support the scholars’ conclusions of a non-divine Jesus – they simply did not make their case. On the other hand, Keller just begins to scratch the surface with respect to the evidence that exists demonstrating that the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life are historically accurate.

I know facts alone do not cause a person to believe the Gospel. Only God can open someone’s eyes and make them alive to spiritual truths, but it’s encouraging to me to know that there is evidence to support the historical accuracy of the bible if someone takes the time to research the facts. As Lee Strobel quoted from Dr. Craig Bloomberg in “A Case For Christ”, “But I’ll tell you this, there are plenty of stories of scholars in the New Testament field who have not been Christians, yet through their study of these very issues have come to faith in Christ. And there have been countless more scholars, already believers, whose faith has been made stronger, more solid, more grounded, because of the evidence….”