The “chain of custody” will help me determine if the evidence was altered over time. In a similar way, there is a New Testament “chain of custody” related to the transmission of the Gospels and letters of Paul. The Gospel of John, for example, can be traced from John to his three personal students (Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias) to their personal student (Irenaeus) to his personal student (Hippolytus). These men in the chain of custody wrote their own letters and documents describing what they had been taught by their predecessors. These letters survive to this day and allow us to evaluate whether or not the New Testament narratives have been changed over the years. The evidence is clear, the foundational claims related to Jesus have not changed at all from the first record to the last.

When I first examined the New Testament Gospels as an atheist, I was completely uninterested in their claims related to the Deity of Jesus. As a philosophical naturalist, I rejected the supernatural claims of these narratives. I was merely interested in mining the wisdom of Jesus as an ancient sage, in much the same way someone might read the words of Aristotle, Buddha or Bahá’u’lláh. But as I read the accounts as a detective, I became intrigued with features reminiscent of eyewitness accounts I’d investigated. Could these ancient narratives be true eyewitness statements, and if so, could I evaluate them as I had evaluated hundreds of witness statements in the past? This became an obsession and it eventually led to my becoming a Christian and writing the book, Cold-Case Christianity.

There are four criteria by which I typically assess eyewitness reliability. The Gospels “pass the test” in these important areas. For this reason, I believe there are four good reasons to accept them as reliable accounts:

They Were Written Early

A significant case can be built to establish the early dating of the Gospels. It starts by establishing the authorship date for the Book of Acts. There are several missing historical events in Acts, including the destruction of the Temple (c. 70AD), the siege of Jerusalem (c. 68-70AD) and the deaths of Paul (64-67AD), Peter (64-67AD) and James (61AD). The absence of these events is reasonable if the Book of Acts was written no later than 60AD. Luke wrote two New Testament books; he wrote his Gospel prior to the Book of Acts. The only question is, how much earlier did he write the Gospel? I think there is good evidence support a dating in the early 50’s based on internal evidence in Paul’s letters. Paul appears to have quoted Luke’s Gospel twice; in 1 Timothy 5:18 (written in 63-64AD) he quoted Luke 10:6-7, and in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 (written between 53-57AD) he quoted Luke 22:19-20. This means Paul would’ve had access to Luke’s Gospel as early as 53AD. Luke (in the first chapter of the Gospel), told Theophilus: “Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you…” This term, “orderly” seems to be extraneous, unless Luke was responding to common first century knowledge about a “disorderly” Gospel. Papias, a first century bishop, famously claimed Mark’s Gospel (written based on the preaching of Peter in Rome) was accurate, if not orderly. Luke appears to have referenced this common knowledge in the opening lines of his Gospel, and Luke quoted Mark’s Gospel more than any other source. But this means the information in Mark’s Gospel is even earlier than Luke’s, placing Mark in the late 40’s or early 50’s. These early dates for both Luke and Mark make it highly unlikely they could have been written without vetting from those who were there and saw the truth about Jesus.

They Are Corroborated

My investigative and trial experience taught me one important truth: all corroborative evidence is “touch-point” evidence. It’s tempting to think the only kind of acceptable corroborative evidence would be video showing the entire event in minute detail. Few events (either historical or criminal) are documented this well, however. Instead, eyewitness claims are typically corroborated by limited pieces of evidence verifying only a portion of the larger account.

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