Jesus Christ: Expert Actor or God Himself?-Part 3

By: Dr. John Ankerberg; ©2001

Are the New Testament accounts about Jesus accurate? What does the New Testament tell us about Jesus? Dr. Ankerberg tackles those questions in this article.

Jesus Christ: Expert Actor or God Himself?-Part 3

Are the New Testament Accounts About Jesus Reliable?

Let’s assume you are a school teacher. What if we did this exercise with your students. Take Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and pass that out in printed form; spelling and punctuation are absolutely perfect. Then you tell your kids, “Copy this thing down, word for word.” So all the eager students do their thing, and they all turn it in. Then let’s say that you took the original printed copy and throw it away. Now you want to reconstruct the original, getting as close to it as you can.

First question: What would help you most in reconstructing the original: to have one student, five students, or a hundred students turning in a report? What do you think? Would you want less or more? The answer is more. Why? Because, what if the one student who copies it doesn’t know how to spell, doesn’t know where to put the punctuation, or leaves out whole sentences? Sometimes, if he doesn’t know what some of the words mean he skips over them. You’re in sad shape if you’ve only got the one copy from that “D” student. So you hope that you’ve got at least two students. You want an “A” student with a “D” student. Then you can compare the two and hopefully they both didn’t make mistakes in the same spot.

But truthfully, the more manuscripts you have, the better chance you will have to see where the mistakes are made and how to correct them. For example, not all 100 students are going to make the same spelling mistake on the same word. They are not all going to make the same punctuation mistake. Maybe ten kids will; 90 won’t. So you say, “I’ll go with the 90.” The point is that the more kids you have that turn in the assignment, the better opportunity you will have to reconstruct the original Gettysburg Address. Okay? Now, hold on to that and keep that in mind.

Let’s talk about the classics. How many copies do we have to work with to try and recon­struct the original text of Aristotle? We’ve got 49 copies in existence today. Only 49 kids in the class. How about Plato? We’ve only got seven manuscripts that have survived to compare back and forth to check out the words. But there’s no classical scholar living today that would say that we don’t have what Plato actually said. Yet we’ve only got seven copies. For Sophocles, 193 copies. For Thucydides’ History, there’s only eight copies. Writers such as Catullus who wrote poetry, we only have three copies. Lucretius, two copies.

Do you know what the second best attested book in ancient history is? It’s Homer’s The Iliad. How many copies do we have of the second best attested book in history? Six hun­dred and forty three surviving copies that we can compare to find out what Homer actually said. That is the kind of manuscript evidence that the classics have.

So, how many manuscripts do we have for the New Testament documents? Remember, the critics say our stuff is poorly attested. They say we can’t really tell what the writers of the New Testament are saying. But for the New Testament, the manuscript count is now 24,633 manuscripts that have come down to us, portions or entire manuscripts of the New Testa­ment, that allow us to go back and reconstruct the original. So, if we have more than 24,000, compared to just a few over here for the classics, how can we have bad information?

Listen to Dr. Bruce Metzger at Princeton. In his book The Text of the New Testament he says, “The works of several ancient authors are preserved to us by the thinnest possible thread of transmission. In contrast with these figures of the classics, the textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of his material.”

William F. Albright at Johns Hopkins before he died said this: “Only modern scholars who lack both historical method and perspective can spin such a web of speculation as that with which the critics have surrounded the gospel tradition.”

F. F. Bruce at Manchester University, Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Ex­egesis, said, “There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.”

Frederick Kenyon was the librarian at the British Museum. Kenyon says, “Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.”

In light of all this evidence, I would suggest to you that we have accurate information from eyewitnesses that came out early. It was tested by people on both sides, and it tells us that what they said is true.

What Does the New Testament Tell us About Jesus?

Now, what does the information in the books of the New Testament tell us about Jesus Christ? If it’s accurate information, what does the information say about Jesus Christ?

Some people on campus today say, “Jesus never claimed to be God.” Have you ever heard that one? Jesus never made any noise that He was God. Well, let’s see if He did or not. I don’t think anyone needs to know Greek or Hebrew to figure this one out.

For example, Mom and Dad, suppose that one morning as you’re sitting at the breakfast table, your son walks in and says, “Listen up, gang, I want you to know something. I am the light of the world! He that follows me, he’ll never walk in darkness.” Now, if your son said that, would that sound just a little egotistical to you? Dad would probably say, “Sit down, Jack. Eat your cereal.”

People don’t go around saying, “I’m the light of the world.” Why? Because we realize that when they say that, it’s such a fantastic claim that we ought to lock them up and put them away. Nobody would truly say that, for real, would they?

Listen to these statements that Jesus Christ made: “I am the light of the world. He that follows Me will never walk in darkness” (John 8:12); “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” In other words, he says, “I am the one that’s got the power for the resurrection. You believe in me, though you die, yet you’re going to live. I will see to it.”

Listen to the times that Jesus put the emphasis on the personal pronoun and pointed people to Himself. Buddha, Ghandi, all the religious leaders of the world never pointed people to themselves. Do you understand that? They always pointed people to somebody else. Mohammed said, “Go to Allah. I’m not the one.” Buddha didn’t tell anyone to come to him. Ghandi didn’t instruct anyone to come to him.

Only Jesus said, “Come unto Me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest.” Who do you think He was claiming to be when He was saying that? At another time He said, “I am the bread of life. He that cometh to Me shall never hunger. He that believeth on Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). “I am the way, I am the truth, I am life. No man will come to the Father but through Me.” Do you think you need to know Greek or Hebrew to understand what He’s talking about? Philip, one day said, “Listen, Jesus show us the Father.” Jesus said, “Look, Philip, haven’t you been with me such a long time, he that has seen me has seen the Father.” And Philip’s mouth dropped open because he was an orthodox Jew who believed that God was One. And if you believe that God is One and this guy is saying, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father,” what conclusion can you come to? Jesus said to know Him was to know God. To see Him was to see God. To believe in Him was to believe in God. To hate Him was to hate God. To honor Him was to honor God.

In Mark Chapter 2, Jesus looked at the man that never walked and instead of saying, “Be healed,” He said, “Your sins be forgiven.” And the Pharisees and the Saduccees that were there said, “That’s blasphemy! Only One can forgive sins and that’s God alone.” And they were right. But Jesus showed them that He had that power and that He was God. And it’s interesting this event was written up in the earliest document that came out, Mark. When Jesus said to the man, “Take up your bed and walk” and the man walked out of there, Jesus was saying, “Look, this miracle I have just done is something that you can see and understand. That is, in the physical, material world, I healed this man that didn’t walk. You can see that. On the other hand, you could not see when I forgave the man his sins. But because I did this [healed him], you know that I did this [forgave his sins]. In brief, He claimed to be God.

In John, Chapter 11, He claimed that He could give all men this thing called “eternal life.” What if a guy walked down the street and said, “I can give you eternal life.” You would probably say, Who are you? In Matthew 24 Jesus claimed His words would never pass away. We’re going to forget Byron and Shakespeare and everybody else but we’re never going to forget your words, Jesus? Right. That’s what He was saying.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “You have heard that it has been said, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’” Where did that come from? That’s one of the Ten Command­ments. In the Hebrew, when you go back into Deuteronomy you’ll find out you have a divine negative in the Hebrew, showing God said, “Don’t do this.” “You have heard that it has been said, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’” So they said, “Those are the very words of God.” But then Jesus said, “P.S., but I say unto you, if you look on a man or a woman and you lust after them in your heart, you have broken that law.” And everybody went, “Ooh!” Why? Because of the fact that He had added His words to God’s words and when you add something to what God said, all of a sudden you’re making your teaching as authoritative as what God said.

Now, according to the modern critics, Jesus should have recognized that they were thinking He was God and said, “Oh, wash my mouth out; cancel that last statement.” But what did He do? He went on to say, “You’ve heard that it has been said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but I say unto you, ‘Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.” He did it again. That’s why when you come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount you find these words. It was said about the people, “They were amazed at Jesus’ teachings because He taught as one who had authority and not as the scribes.” What kind of authority? God said this; mine is right up here next to His. It’s equal in authority.

For more information:

“If Jesus Wasn’t God, Then He Deserved an Oscar”:

https://www.jashow.org/articles/apologetics-2/proof-for-jesus/if-jesus-wasnt-god-then-he-deserved-an-oscar/