thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
Vale Maurice Casey New Testament historian, Maurice Casey, Emeritus Professor of New Testament Languages and Literature in the University of Nottingham, died late last week after a long period of illness. Casey was the author of several books and a recognised expert in Aramaic and the Aramaic sources in the gospels. I have found his […]
Last post I looked at one aspect of the historical evidence for the life of Jesus – Were the gospels written a long time after the event? Another question often asked, or a claim often made, relates to how much evidence there is for the events and teachings outlined in the gospels, and how much […]
I was asked recently, in the comments section of another blog, about how long the gospels were written after the time of Jesus’ death. I said it wasn’t long by ancient standards, so I thought it might be worth outlining the facts on this matter.
A lot of things are written about Jesus, by believers, sceptics and everyone in between. But what do the experts (historians at leading universities) say? Ken, a reader of this blog, asked a question about this recently in comments on another topic, so I thought a separate post might help clarify.
Nate generated some discussion on miracles on his Finding Truth blog. Some of his blog, and the subsequent discussion, suggested that miracles in the Bible and the ministry of Jesus were meant to provide proof of Jesus’ divinity. And therefore if God wants us to believe in him today, he should keep on providing convincing […]
I have recently read two very different books about Jesus and history. One was long, one short; one was by a retired academic, the other by a rising star; one was a detailed analysis of all the things we can objectively know about Jesus’ life, the other a postmodern explanation of why our knowledge is […]
I have been doing a little reading on DNA, evolution and human history, and the implications of the latest science for christian belief (see DNA, genes and human history). The questions of what do we class as “human”, when the first humans appeared, and how many there were, pose some interesting challenges.
You don’t have to read the gospels for long to find things that don’t seem to fit together. Sceptics argue that these prove that the gospel stories can’t be trusted, and probably aren’t true. Is this a reasonable conclusion? Is it the only reasonable conclusion? How do historians deal with these apparent discrepancies?
A couple of weeks back I posted some information on the surviving documentation for a number of ancient texts including the New Testament (Revised dates for ancient documents). Now, in the comments to that post, I have been asked some more questions about the New Testament documents. So here’s the answers to those questions, as […]
A common theme in the discussion of the reliability of the New Testament documents is the number of copies we have and the dates of these copies, compared to other ancient writings. And of course, the details change as new discoveries are made. Here is an update.