Customer Reviews

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels

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Craig Blomberg has given an excellent argument for treating the four gospels as reliable sources of historical information pertaining to the life of Jesus. This is a welcome contrast to so many of the trendy "Jesus Seminar"-ish books being hyped by much of the mainstream media today.

Blomberg covers some of the current methods of studying the gospels; such as form criticism and redaction criticism. He doesn't entirely reject their use, but he does point out their limitations so often forgotten by many NT scholars today. In the next section, he briefly addresses the issue of miracles and the fact that it is impossible to prove their non-existence.

I found the next two sections to be the most interesting. First, Blomberg covers some of the approaches to addressing apparent contradictions in the gospels and gives some possible solutions. Next, he covers the gospel of John and some of the difficulties encountered when comparing it to the synoptic gospels. The final section covers information on Jesus found outside the gospels in the rest of the New Testament, along with Jewish and Roman sources.

Overall, this book is best suited for someone with at least a background in New Testament historical study. If you are just beginning in this area, then you may want to try a book such as F.F. Bruce's "New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?" which gives a good introduction to this field. After you've had an introduction, Blomberg's book is perfect for taking the next step in your study of the New Testament.

I had just previously finished a book by John Dominic Crossan, which threw me for a loop. Not only did my mouth drop about a foot, I had this empty feeling about all the things I have believed all these years. He and Marcus Borg seem to take a real liberal approach to interpretation of biblical history, to the point of invalidation.

This book was a refreshing alternative to that previous one. It was well written and captivated my interest. I could not believe how much I used my yellow highlighter. This author has a good writing style and I have since purchased a couple of other books by him (on their way, Amazon!)

He took a thorough approach (used for his doctoral thesis, I believe) and has cited numerous other sources, which gives the reader other options for purchasing books with similar or alternate views. He effectively invalidated what numerous Nay Sayers have posited about the validity of the historical gospels, or lack thereof.

He addresses concerns over the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) and how they interrelate, as well as how they relate to the gospel of John. The author addresses miracles and many other issues.

I came away from reading the book, with a new feeling of faith. I could see how the historical gospels could in fact, be truthful and still are applicable in today's age. I feel that I better understand the methods used by those Nay Sayers, who have drawn their own interpretations and precisely why their conclusions are not accurate.

Blomberg distills the findings of the six volumes of "Gospel Perspectives," a work of conservative scholars. Most of those on the left wing of Biblical scholarship would argue that "conservative Bible scholar" is an oxymoron, but Blomberg proves them wrong. He gives a masterful study of the Synoptic Problem, arriving at the two (or four) document hypothesis as the most satsifactory solution. Next he engages in a cogent critique of modern methods of Biblical criticism, pointing out the worth of such methods as well as their preconceptions and limitations.

He then undertakes a study of the historicity of the Gospel stories, and turns in the most compelling scholarly argument I have ever read for the historical reliability of the resurrection narratives. So far, so good. Five stars up to this point.

Unfortunately, it is in his assessment of Gospel historicity that he goes astray. Blomberg argues repeatedly for the "camcorder exactness" of the Gospel stories. If the Gospels say it, that's exactly the way it happened, and any discrepancies from one story to the next are merely "apparent" discrepancies, which can be ironed out with enough imagination. As one who has made a career of evaluating and presenting testimony, I find that discrepancies in testimony don't equate to falsehood, and that it is neither necessary nor wise to pretend that there are no discrepancies in testimony.

Blomberg appears to begin with the conclusion of historical accuracy and to sift the evidence for arguments supporting his conclusion. That's not the way you do it. You work the evidence to form conclusions; you don't form the evidence to fit conclusions. You begin with no firmly fixed preconceptions. You collect your evidence, form a hypothesis that explains the evidence, collect more evidence, modify your hypothesis, collect more evidence, modify your hypothesis, and keep doing that until your are satisfied that your conclusions are valid. Only after you have arrived at your conclusions in an unbiased fashion, do you then argue for your conclusions. When you argue for your conclusions, you don't defend the indefensible. Trying to defend too much weakens your argument as a whole. Blomberg tries to defend too much. Example: Blomberg acknowledges that even the majority of conservative scholars find it unlikely that John wrote the Gospel of John. After making the concession, he then argues vehemently for John's authorship of the Gospel. The Gospel never claims it was written by John, and authorship by John is not necessary to a finding of historical accuracy. Why, then, defend John's authorship so staunchly? Blomberg's zeal in defending questionable conclusions casts doubt on the sound conclusions he presents.

This book will probably not make a Christian of you, but it is certainly a good introduction to Gospel study. The primary focus is obvious in the title, and Blomberg makes an excellent case for it in this summation of the "Gospel Perspectives" series. All in all, I would recommend this book. It is hard going at times, but gave me a much better view of what is going on out there in terms of NT scholarship.

The book is an excellent examination of why evangelicals can intelligently understand what it means to view the Gospels as both theological AND historical works. Dr. Blomberg includes discussions on the use of Midrash, form and redaction criticism, and a chapter discussing miracles. I suggest one take notes while reading the book in order to fully comprehend the solutions that Dr. Blomberg offers to many questions that occur in Gospels research. It is not a soft-brained devotional but a toughminded examination for those who are interested.

Dr. Craig Blomberg, currently a professor at Denver Seminary, does an excellent job in this book in defending the reliability of the four Gospels contained in the New Testament. He deals responsibly with form criticism, redaction criticism, the Gospels as midrash, and other recent hermeneutical developments. There are compelling sections on miracles, the Synoptic problem, and apparent contradictions between the Gospels. He even deals with the Jesus tradition outside the Gospels. This is a thorough treatment of the topic, yielding a conservative position that is an excellent counterpoint to the silliness of the Jesus Seminar. If you like Blomberg's book, I'd also suggest you check out his section of another outstanding work, "The Case for Christ," by Lee Strobel, also available from Amazon.com.

This won't get the media hype that the Jesus Seminar gets. But there is more information, background, briefings on the key thinkers, and reveals the insights and theories from very hard-to-find sources that show the accuracy and historical reliability of the NT. Packed with easy to understand summaries culled from many volumes of sophisticated "conservative" research. Should be required reading... especially for anyone who's read Crossan, Jesus Seminar, Funk, Burton Mack, etc.

Chapter one is a general survey of how the Gospels have been traditionally approached by the Church throughout the ages. Of course, the earliest Christians dated the books much earlier than do modern day scholars. They also accepted traditional `tags' that came along with each book, and by `tags' I mean traditions that were linked to them; they accept that Mark's Gospel was the personal testimony of Peter and that, at least to Papias, Matthew was written originally in a Hebrew dialect. Many of these traditions are now, for the most part, reject by scholars. This chapter also deals with the Synoptic problem and the widely accept hypothesis of "Q", a hypothetical document that both Matthew and Luke used as a source to write their Gospels. (see pp 37-47)

Chapter two deals with new critical methods that scholars have used to understand the literary composition of the Gospels. Personally I feel this chapter is sort of a dry read, but tremendously informative. Blomberg analyses the strengths and weaknesses of form, redaction, literary, and midrash criticism. Blomberg goes on to make a great piont/argument that I wish to highlight here. Granting that Mark's Gospel was the first one written in about 70 C.E., how can we know during the 40 year period between Jesus' death and the first Gospel composition that the oral Jesus tradition wasn't corrupted, and, consequently, infected with corrupted tradition of Jesus sayings, stories and deeds?

Forty years isn't that long, comparatively speaking.
"Eyewitnesses of Jesus' ministry, including hostile ones, could easily have refuted and discredited the Christian claims during this period if they were in any way mistaken" (p 53)
Eyewitness testimony of Jesus' life and ministry could produce accurate information, witnesses are not limited to apostles since every single character (person) in the Gospels in a potential eyewitness to the life of Jesus.
If "Q" dating to about the 50's was a real document, that gets us even close to the person of Jesus than does a literary work 40 years removed from the event.
Just as the students of ancient Jewish rabbis would take and carry notes of their master's teachings, so would have the disciples of Jesus when passing on oral tradition by means of preaching from door to door and from house to house.
In conjunction with point 5, while the disciples passed along oral tradition, they could have also corrected any phony stories that were circulating at the time. This applies not only for the 40 period of no literary tradition, but all the way up to the end of the first century culminating in John's death. That's a period of 70 years, which, for the large part, had eyewitnesses supporting the Jesus tradition.
The last point which I wish to highlight (though there are many more) is the study of A. B. Lord on oral tradition. Lord studied a Yugoslavian folk singer who would recite `epic stories' of 100,000 words in length, but, amazingly, he would recite the whole story with anywhere between 90 to 60% accuracy. And when the singer would get a part of the story wrong, those familiar with the epic would correct the singer. In a similar manner, those reciting the Jesus tradition were be very able to produce accurate accounts of Jesus' sayings and deeds.
Next chapter (3) deals with the issue of miracles. It's probably one of the more interesting sections in the book. He deals with the other "miracles" in the apocryphal books as well as the ones in other Greek and Roman sources. He shows why the miracles that are sometimes erroneously said to be "parallels" to the synoptics truly aren't and gives good reasons to reject their actually taking place. He uses and cites many of the arguments for miracles by William Lane Craig and other fairly well known apologists. So, if you're familiar with those arguments you may find this chapter redundant; but for those who haven't read or seen those arguments, it'd be a welcoming chapter. Of course, out of all the miracles the big miracle of them all is the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. He defends the resurrection adequately in my opinion, often times drawing heavily from N.T. Wright while defending the physical, fleshly resurrection of Jesus.

Chapter 4 focuses on the so called contradictions of the Synoptics. This chapter is specifically why I recommend that before anyone reads this book, they read the Gospels thoroughly, preferably more than once if possible. If you don't, you'll be lost in this chapter for sure [or, at least in large part]. He touches on the claims that the Synoptics have conflicting theologies, chronological problems, omissions, composite speeches, differences in names and numbers, and on much more issues. He concludes that the reason why so many people believe the Synoptics are contradictory is because they "have never seriously interacted with the types of solutions proposed" in his book and in other writings." (195) The last point is very true. Many critics of the Bible, but specifically of the Gospels, simply dismiss the possibility of harmonization as "special pleading", which is unfair because it robs the Evangelists of their integrity.

The problems in the Gospel of John is what Chapter 5 interacts with. John is usually viewed separately and distinct from the Synoptics because it's simply just different from them not only in style, but in content as well. However, as Blomberg rightfully points out, critics usually don't point out the similarities between John and the Synoptics even though they are "much more complementary than is normally admitted." (203) In this chapter, Blomberg deals with the discrepancies between the Synoptics and John as it pertains to Jesus' death, theologies, passover, chronological issues, and other problems that are often pointed out. In the end, he concludes that many scholars are just too fast to simply castigate the Gospel of John than give in to the better solutions out there for harmonization of the Gospels. Again, he points out there sometimes scholars don't spend that much time looking into the issues as they probably ought to.

Chapter 6 and the Jesus-Tradition outside the Gospels. In this chapter Blomberg surveys Graeco-Roman sources (that is, historians such as Julius Africanus, Pliny the Younger, etc), Jewish sources including Rabbinic traditions, which not coincidentally had much to say about Jesus, Josephus, and extra-biblical Christian traditions (Epistle of Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas). Blomberg also briefly surveys the Apostolic Fathers, specifically Ignatius, 1 Clement and Polycarp. He also covers the Apocryphon of James, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of truth and other less known, but relevant gospels. Finally, he surveys the rest of the New Testament for what can be said of the Jesus Tradition. Blomberg concludes by saying that "the external evidence for the Gospel traditions reinforces the confidence in their historical reliability, which the internal evidence has been building in previous chapters." (295)

All in all, it's a great book. This work is highly documented as Blomberg cites over 100 sources that can be found in his bibliography. The amount of citations are not just there for show. These citations demonstrate how strong a case can be made for the historical reliability of the Gospels, as even some critics are forced to admit. The volume also includes an authors index and a Scriptures index for easy referencing.

Originally published in 1987 The Historical Reliability of the Gospel examines the question of whether the New Testament (NT) Gospels are reliable sources of historic information. Craig Blomberg is a well known and widely published conservative protestant New Testament scholar.

Blomberg is a gifted and erudite writer capable of formulating clear positions and supporting argumentation. From my perspective The Historical Reliability of the Gospel is a true tour de force with regard to historic NT studies - helpful to both the expert and non-expert reader. The issues discussed include:

- Overview of approaches to historic literary criticisms and their relevance to the Gospels
- Miracles
- Discrepancies amongst the synoptic Gospels
- The Gospel of John
- Jesus tradition outside of gospels

Although I thought Blomberg's arguments were generally balanced and well stated, his handling of the so-called synoptic problem was particularly well handled. Often liberal NT scholars will attempt to dismiss the reliability of the Gospels by claiming that there are irreconcilable differences between them. Anyone who has been involved in NT study will likely recognize that differences indeed do exist. This said, however, I share the author's view that the challenge they pose is overstated and appears to offer little difficulty to any but the most ardent literalist. It is clear that the Gospel writers (and other writers of the period) approached history differently than we do today. Capturing the message in a predominantly oral society was as important then as it is today, use of the exact words in relaying this content was emphasized less so. As Blomberg notes the Gospel authors felt free to paraphrase and edit Jesus' words within limits as long as the message remained. The author does a nice job of examining and reconciling some the most often cited discrepancies. As an aside I find it interesting that while many protestant scholars recognize the oral nature of ancient society they are unwilling to see any role for church tradition in maintaining Jesus' teaching along with scripture.

Overall, this is the best one-volume overview/introduction to historical Gospel studies that I have come across. I highly recommend it to all readers. For dissenting views a look at works by the Ehrman, Crossan and Mack may be worthwhile.

This book is almost 20 years-old, but it is still relevant. Blomberg presents the best case for the Historicity of the Gospels and the falicies of "Historical Criticism," which is at the heart of the popular, and contentious, Jesus Seminar. Blomberg provides the necessary pause for Christians who are on the brink of conceding defeat to Anti-Religionists, by shedding reasonable doubt on "Higher Criticism" and providing validity to the Gospels.

Consequently, people have to understand that the writing process is not the same as the Scientific Method. When writing a book, one first formulates a Thesis. In this case: Higher Criticism is wrong, the Gospels are Historically accurate. After forming a Thesis, then one must prove his Thesis with supporting evidence Finally, one brings it all together in his conclusion. This is different than the Baconian method of Scientific Inquiry. People must understand that the Humanities and Sciences are seperate disciplines which demand seperate methods. Scienticians, individuals who view science as the be all to end all, are misguided in their demands to conform everything to their way of doing things. For those individuals I recommend the book A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED by E.F. Schumacher.

Both the Writing Process and Scientific Method are valid ways attaining and transmitting facts. Proof comes under scutiny, i.e. do the Gospels stand under fire from Higher Critics. Blomberg says yes, and provides the evidence. Further, one should understand that this book is indeed an apologetic book. It has been written for the expressed purpose of criticizing Higher Critics and defending the Gospels' authenticity. If people don't like such an idea, then the problem is with them and not this text.

All in all, this is an important work that can change they way one views the Bible. Since this book is specific to the Gospels it is best used as a follow up to THE NEW TEASTAMENT DOCUMENTS: ARE THEY RELIABLE? by F.F. Bruce which lays the foundation of New Testament reliability. Both books along with ON THE RELIABILITY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT by K.A. Kitchen should be required reading for all serious Bible Students.