“Paul was not trying to retell the story of Jesus in narrative form. He was writing personal letters to communities of people he could assume already knew those stories through the oral traditions that later became the gospel. Further, Paul DOES mention several of the events in the life of Jesus, most importantly, the very one modern scholarship wants to discredit: The Resurrection of Jesus, which by all historical-critical evaluative measures did happen.”

Certainly, the Bible and the stories it records are more complex than “literal” history, in a fundamentalist Christian sense of “literal.” And certainly, understanding the historical and literary traditions within the Bible is a complex matter.

But it’s posts like this, citing half-baked theories and unsupported upchuck from an obviously biased position that merely retrenches the general public in a religious impasse, deadlocking us in theories that even many modern scholars – of all varieties – consider nonsense or outdated.

But understanding that these issues are more complex than many Christians realize is not the same thing as agreeing with the scholars in this article, who are neither saying anything remotely threatening to the existence of Jesus, nor are they saying anything new in the realm of NT scholarship.

It’s not new news that Paul’s letters preceded the writings of the gospels. That’s taught in NT Intro classes all over this nation – both in secular universities and in conservative Christian liberal arts colleges. And the early dates of Paul’s letters are not in the least a problem for the historical existence of Jesus or the church that was built on his life, death, resurrection, and teachings. In fact, they show us that the Christian communities, from quite an early date, understood things like death and resurrection of Jesus to be central to the Christian proclamation.

Continuing with Paul, it’s not new news that Paul doesn’t mention many of the life events of Jesus – one simply has to read his letters to observe this. But Paul was not trying to retell the story of Jesus in narrative form. He was writing personal letters to communities of people he could assume already knew those stories through the oral traditions that later became the gospel. Further, Paul DOES mention several of the events in the life of Jesus, most importantly, the very one modern scholarship wants to discredit: The Resurrection of Jesus, which by all historical-critical evaluative measures did happen. The only reason to assume it didn’t is if you have a prior a-theologizing philosophical assumption that assumes miracles are not possible. Read real scholars like NT Wright (instead of Crossan and his ilk) and get back with me when you’re ready to actually discuss the subject in a meaningful way.

Further, it’s not new information that the gospels were written down decades after the life of Jesus. It’s only even noteworthy to us because we are a writing culture. The first century was largely oral. These stories didn’t just get invented or come into existence 40 years after Jesus. No, they existed as oral traditions (and oral cultures know how to preserve oral traditions better than writing cultures do, in some cases) long before they were written down or combined into a single unit.

Additionally, the claim that the witnesses of the gospels are invalidated because they “contradict” each other runs rife with ignorance. People who say this clearly do not understand the nature of how historical research is done. If they did, they would be grateful for the so-called contradictions. Yes, that’s right. I’m not claiming the gospels present a unified synopsis of the life of Jesus lacking varying details. No, I’m not a fundamentalist. But that doesn’t mean their testimonies are invalidated. See, if Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all agreed with each other at every single point, then we would assume they’d collaborated together and their testimony would be relatively invalidated (by historical scholarship measurements) because it would only be one testimony, not four.

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