Can You Prove It?

2.3.v Why So Much Scepticism?

We might want to ask why an attitude of extreme suspicion is applied to a document as well-attested as the New Testament? Could it be that those applying such suspicions have a vested interest in reaching a particular conclusion?

'It is sometimes claimed that historians simply as historians regard Old and New Testament history as unreliable on some independent historical grounds. But… many events which are regarded as firmly established historically have far less documentary evidence than many Biblical events, and the documents on which historians rely for much secular history are written much longer after the event than many records of Biblical events. Furthermore, we have many more copies of biblical narratives than of secular histories; and the surviving copies are much earlier than those which our evidence for secular history is based.' 4

People doubt the New Testament records not because the documents are unreliable, but because the New Testament records include miracles, in which they are unwilling to believe. The argument for documentary unreliability may be nothing more than a convenient way of attacking the records. So people come to these records with the presupposition that they could not be true. They are not unbiased or objective.