The Case of the Four Gospels, Part IV: Details, Details

On the gospels as history

This spring, I launched a little series about the provenance and reliability of the four gospels, one of my all-time favorite topics for study and writing. As can tend to happen with my well-intentioned series plans, I got distracted by life and other topics and only cranked out a grand total of three entries this year. However, this summer Ross Douthat was kind enough to point his readers to the last entry, on unnecessary clues, which helped me pick up some new subscribers. I have no idea how many of you all are still here reading this, but if you are, here finally is more of what originally got you to visit my little corner of the Internet! It only took me about six months! There’s still more to come too. I sincerely hope I haven’t bored you by writing about other stuff in the meantime.

I’ve gained more new readers thanks to the interest in my recent piece on Jordan Peterson, so to all newcomers, welcome. If today’s topic interests you, the first entry in the series is free. I’ve been keeping other entries reserved for paid subscribers, including this one, so if you’re hooked after the free sample, consider upgrading! My end-of-year sale is ongoing, so now is the time to lock in the next year’s worth of exclusive content for a trifling $30.

Speaking of Jordan Peterson, I’ve been inspired to kick this series back into gear by the Daily Wire’s new guided panel discussion on the gospels, which follows the same freewheeling format as last year’s Exodus seminar. Inevitably, with Peterson at the helm, much time is spent chasing various symbolic rabbit trails, which will be intolerable or endearing depending on how used you are to Peterson. Jonathan Pageau drives a lot of typological discussion on parallels between Old and New Testaments, some of which is interesting, though in my judgment it can get quite strained. Based on Pageau’s other material, I’m particularly wary of how he plans to handle the resurrection accounts, and I worry that his Eastern Orthodox filter sometimes clouds more than it clarifies. But he can also be helpful, and meanwhile there are other impressive thinkers like Bishop Barron and Dr. James Orr on deck to help ensure the text is handled carefully and well as history, not just myth.

I do agree with Pageau that the gospels are best taken separately rather than smashed into a harmonization. Peterson has insisted on using the latter for the seminar, but Pageau politely takes issue with the choice, stressing the importance of each gospel writer’s unique perspective. In these posts, I’ve been looking at how numerous small details in the four accounts casually interlock with each other. This interlocking yields a very powerful cumulative case for the texts’ reliability as history. I don’t see too many contemporary scholars articulating this case at the level of detail it deserves, for complicated reasons I reflected on in Part I. But a couple of those scholars happen to be my parents, and these posts are effectively designed as samplers of their extensive research. Anyone who wants more where this stuff came from should have a look at my mother’s New Testament bibliography, starting with her recent Testimonies to the Truth. One of the highlights of my year was recommending this work to a religion scholar, a new convert who had read all the apologetic works she could find, yet had never encountered something this loaded with unique lines of argument.

In the last couple entries, I looked at some elements of the gospels’ composition that provide internal markers of their authenticity as eyewitness accounts, including undesigned coincidences, unexplained allusions, and more. Today, I want to highlight some ways they interlock with external sources on the gritty details of the story’s setting—the geography, the culture, the customs, all the sorts of things that would have been impossible to “research” for someone who wasn’t up close to it, especially since Jerusalem was destroyed in A. D. 70. People tend not to realize these are the areas to look for external confirmation, instead asking whether we have other historians who talk about Jesus’ miracles, resurrection, etc. Lots of ink has been spilled over one small fragment of Josephus that began as a rather spare summary and got embellished over time. Of course, this is a valuable record of Jesus’ existence, but not much more.

The best kind of external corroboration is a subtler kind. It’s found in the accumulation of obscure details that speak to the writer’s intimate familiarity with the place and time. This doesn’t mean the writers will never get anything wrong, but it does mean they get a lot of hard things right. Another excellent resource here is Peter Williams’ Can We Trust the Gospels? Once you start digging in, you discover there’s an embarrassment of riches here, so I’m just going to pick out some shiny coins that especially catch my eye and arrange them in a way that hopefully whets your appetite for more.