Is the New Testament reliable?

As Messianics, we sit perched between the religions of Judaism and Christianity.

We love Judaism because we know it to be the religion of Israel, God’s people, which produced the patriarchs, the Torah, the prophets, the apostles, and Messiah himself. Israel has been used by God to bring light to the world. In a sentence, Israel = God’s vehicle for all things righteous. If it weren’t for Israel, the gentile world’s religion would be little more than foolhardy men bowing to sexually-exaggerated figurines. I love Judaism, even with the painful acts of a few who shame it.

At the same time, we love Christianity. Yes, even with all its warts. It embraced Messiah when the leadership of Judaism has largely rejected him. That counts for something. Even with its ugly parts, its misrepresentation of Messiah, its past persecution of Jews, and all the violence and wars it has produced in the name of Christ, the Church has nonetheless produced men of God that led otherwise-lost gentiles to Messiah and the God of Israel. People that love God and love Israel and live righteous lives. That doesn’t get talked about much in anti-Christian circles.

Sitting between Christianity and Judaism produces for us much anguish. We are constantly pulled in either direction to be authentic: either real Jews, whom we are told cannot hold Yeshua as Messiah, or real Christians, throwing off that Jewish nonsense, after all, we are not under the law, and are free in Christ Jesus.

Christian draw

I was sitting around a table playing cards with some Christian friends awhile back. I was asked, “You don’t really believe in that Jewish stuff, right? Messy-uhnic you call it?”

I’ve been told “you’re preaching another Jesus!” and “Jesus fulfilled the law. Jesus freed us from that. Why are you living under it?” Or my favorite, “You believe in Jesus and you still follow those traditions?” (cue sad trombone)

The allure of Christianity is strong. Even more so around the holidays of Christmas and Easter. Can’t we be part of the larger Church? Can’t we fit in for once? With a family of mixed Christians and Messianics, Jews and gentiles, this draw is even stronger still.

Judaism’s draw

The flip side is the draw towards Judaism.

The pull is strong: I can be more authentic, more real, as a Jew if I follow standard Judaism. Maybe I’ll just keep my hope in Messiah to myself, and I’ll fit in better with greater Judaism.

It doesn’t help that some Messianic groups have an inferiority complex, one that doesn’t see this Messianic movement as legitimate until the greater Jewish world gives us the A-OK. (Hint: barring extraordinary supernatural events, it’ll never happen.)

And when one inundates himself in the rabbis of Judaism, in the Talmud, the siddur, in the Zohar, in the people and Scriptures of Israel, and he lives a righteous life as Judaism would see it, he might sympathize with the arguments of Judaism against Christianity. After all, Christianity has historically misrepresented Messiah.

And with the arguments against Christianity comes arguments against Christ, whom we know in more authentic view as Yeshua the Messiah of Israel.

A critical view of the New Testament

One such argument against Messiah-faith is that the New Testament is not reliable, and is merely the result of hundreds of redactions built atop the exaggerated imaginations of Jesus’ followers centuries later.

It’s hard to believe, but some Messianics sympathize with this view, or at least part of it.

For example, a few years ago, a prominent Messianic teacher claimed the New Testament book of Hebrews contained factual errors regarding the Tabernacle, and thus was not inspired by God, and ought not be considered part of the canon.

And before that, there was talk among several Messianic leaders regarding Paul’s letters to the gentiles, which comprise a significant slice of the New Testament. Maybe they’re not Scripture, they said, since they seemingly contain rants against God’s Law. Maybe they’re not inspired by God. Maybe they’re just the ramblings of an ex-Jew who hated his former religion. Maybe they shouldn’t be in the canon, some argued.

I’ve even heard some question the gospels and Acts, as they contain different retellings of the stories of Messiah:

• In Acts, Yehuda of Kerioth (“Judas Iscariot”) is killed by falling headlong in a field, but in Matthew, Judas hangs himself.
  
  
• In another instance, Paul describes himself as escaping the commander of the army of Aretas in Damascus, but Acts records Paul escaping a mob of angry Jews.
  
  
• And more famously, the genealogy of Messiah as recorded in in Matthew 1 is different than the genealogy of Messiah as recorded in Luke 3.

These points, and others, are regularly raised by counter-missionaries in an effort to discredit the New Testament and disprove the messiahship of Yeshua.

Some Jewish followers of Messiah sympathize: maybe the original Hebrew texts of the New Testament don’t contain these corruptions. Maybe some of the early Church Fathers, many of whom were anti-Semitic, edited the New Testament to be damning to the Jews, they say. Maybe the New Testament should be viewed more as we view the Talmud: extra-biblical writings that contain some truth, but are not Scripture like the Tenakh (that is, what Christians call the Old Testament).

Setting the record straight

It should first be noted that many difficulties in the New Testament can be harmonized with explanation.

For example, it is possible to be hanged from a cliff and still fall headlong into a field through botched hanging. And the commander in Damascus may have tried to capture Paul because the angry mob demanded it. And some of the inconsistencies between genealogies can be explained through telescoping, a practice that the Tenakh itself uses.

However, rather than harmonizing through speculative explanation, I want to highlight empirical faults in the arguments against the New Testament, and from that, you can draw your own conclusions.

Interpretation double standards

When counter-missionaries bring up inconsistencies in the New Testament, invariably they are confounded when I show them that the same textual difficulties exist in the Tenakh. For example,

• In one book of the prophets, a genealogy of priests is given which differs from genealogies given earlier in the Tenakh, paralleling the Luke/Matthew genealogical difference.
  
  
• In another instance, Samuel records Satan tempting David, while Chronicles records it was God who tempted David.
  
  
• And in another humorous instance, one of apparent scribal exaggeration, the Masoretic text (MT), upon which modern Jewish bibles are based, records the Philistine warrior Goliath at about 6 cubits (9 feet) tall – a giant by any measure! But the Septuagint puts Goliath at 5 cubits, about 7.5 feet tall. Yet more surprisingly, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which predate the MT by several centuries, put Goliath at a mere 4 cubits – a mere 6.5 feet tall – not such a giant after all! And even the first century Jewish historian Josephus attests to Goliath not being much of a (ahem) goliath.
  
  
• The stories of Noah and Job are suspiciously similar to ancient Mesopotamian tales that predate the Torah.

These are just a few from a sea of many inconsistencies and difficulties in the Tenakh. For every difficulty in the New Testament, I can give 10 in the Tenakh.

One may argue, “But Judah, these inconsistencies can be explained…” and I will respond, “Yes, and the same for the New Testament!”

Church father double standards

Some Messianics raise concerns that anti-Jewish Church fathers edited and compiled the canon, inserting their own theologies into the text.

However, these same people will often quote early Church Fathers to support their critical view of the New Testament. For example, they might say, “The early Church Father Eusebius records that the early Nazarenes used only the Tenakh and the original Hebrew text of Matthew as their Scripture.”

Notice the double-standard: “I believe the Church Fathers when they say X. And I have a critical view of the New Testament because the Church Fathers likely edited it.”

Quick to believe Church Fathers when it proves my point, quick to dismiss the Church Fathers when it disproves my point. That’s a double standard.

Yes, it is likely the Nazarenes had a canon different than other believers in Messiah, but this argument fails in two areas: it doesn’t account for the varying beliefs in the Nazarene, Ebionite, and other early “Christian” movements; these groups disagreed with other groups and even within themselves as to what was considered canon. And secondly, it most certainly does not mean that Nazarenes rejected Acts, Luke, Paul’s epistles, or other apostolic writings. It is possible, even probable, they were unaware of some of these writings.

After all, information did not flow freely then as it does now, this was in the very early days of God picking for himself a people from the nations.

Self-defeating arguments

Counter-missionaries, and indeed some of Messiah’s followers who sympathize with them, use arguments like this one:

“The New Testament records Jesus doing X. And yet Christians don’t do this today – big problem! Now I’ll go on to discredit the New Testament...”

2 concrete examples that come to mind are:

• “Jesus told his disciples to keep the Law and the Prophets, which is what Jews are doing. But you Christians have turned him into a god, and invented your own anti-Jewish bible.”
  
  
• “Jesus said that, to be saved, you have to keep the commandments. That’s what Jews are already doing. But you Christians have this nonsense about believing in Jesus to be saved, coming from your Greek-translated, highly-redacted New Testament!”

Notice the self-defeating arguments here: “Jesus said X [as recorded in the New Testament], and Christians aren’t doing this because they have a corrupted/inauthentic/redacted New Testament.”

To all of Messiah’s followers, I will say this: if the New Testament is not a basic, reliable text of Messiah’s words and deeds, then how is it that you belong to Messiah? You found Messiah through these texts, and now you seek to discredit this text? How soon before you forget about those missing original Hebrew texts, and just discard the New Testament altogether?

This is the road to abandoning hope in Messiah. Counter-missionaries know this, and is why they are repeating this lie that the New Testament is an inauthentic and unreliable document.

Dispelling Myths

Here are some faulty assertions made by those with a critical view of the New Testament:

• It was composed centuries after the actual events.
  
• No one who witnessed the events actually wrote a New Testament book.
  
• It was highly redacted by Church Fathers.
  
• Paul was an agent of Rome, and corrupter of the original teachings of the rabbi Jesus.
  
• The New Testament was originally written in Hebrew, and all we have today is corrupted Greek and Syriac manuscripts.

I will to address these concerns below.

Composition

While what became the modern canon formed later on, many of the books of the New Testament were actually written in the first century, immediately following the Messianic events that transpired.

For example, some Biblical scholars put the gospel of Luke at around 40 AD, only 4-8 years after Messiah’s death. One bit of evidence in support of this view is how Luke’s gospel is addressed to “Most Excellent Theophilus”:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

-Luke 1

Some scholars suggest the “most excellent Theophilus” mentioned here may refer to Theophilus ben Ananus, the High Priest of Israel between 37 and 41 AD. Even among scholars who hold a later dating of Luke put his gospel well within the 1st century.

The other gospels are also 1st century material: Matthew around the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, Mark between 70-90 AD, and John between 90-100 AD. Mark has the unique trait of being found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, with a fragment of Mark 6 having been found at the Qumran caves.

As for Paul’s writings in the New Testament, scholars believe he lived between 5-67 AD, making him a contemporary of and witness to Yeshua as Messiah and all the events recorded in Acts and the gospels.

Edits?

Are there redactions to the New Testament? Yes, certainly.

For example, the famous Lord’s Prayer reads differently in earlier manuscripts, with the additional stanza,

“…for thine is the kingdom and the glory and the power, forever and ever, amein.”

… not appearing in Luke’s gospel, nor does it appear in earlier manuscripts of Matthew. (There is a way to harmonize this, such as it being included as doxology for congregational worship, but we digress…)

But while the New Testament certainly contains redactions, one must also concede that there are redactions in the Tenakh as well.

For example, while many religious Jews favor the conservative view that Moses wrote the entire Torah, this has virtually zero academic support. Even the most conservative Biblical scholars believe only in basic Mosaic authorship, allowing for later edits by Joshua, Ezra, and others. After all, do we really believe Moses would have written the self-contradicting statement, “Moses was the most humble man on earth”? And he certainly didn’t write about his own death and the events that transpired afterwards!

It should be noted that many scholars favor a very liberal, secular view of the Torah, the JEDPR (Jahwist, Elohist, Deteronomist, Priestly, Redactor/Harmonizer) view, which suggests the Torah is little more than a collection of independent fables of ancient Israel, with centuries of redactions and harmonizing edits years later, before the Torah reached its final form 400CE. (I do not hold this view! But Jews and Christians should be aware of it, lest it catch you surprised on the History Channel. )

But the Torah is only the tip of the iceberg. The modern Jewish bible contains edits, concatenations, and truncations in Daniel, Esther, several of the prophets, and even the historical books. And those are just the ones we know about.

Paul – corrupter of Christianity?

One founding father of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, once wrote,

Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.

-Thomas Jefferson

Despite this theory falling out of fashion in modern times, still many Jews today look at Paul as a corrupter of Jesus’ real teachings. Paul, they say, started a new anti-law, anti-Judaism religion, whereas Jesus was interested in being a good rabbi of Judaism and nothing more, and certainly not the messiah.

Some Messianics sympathize with this, but for different reasons. They see ugly statements about the “works of the law” coming from Paul’s letters, and some then suggest, maybe Paul wasn’t really inspired, and shouldn’t be included in the canon.

Our response to this is, where is the proof that Paul is this ugly corrupter of Messiah’s teachings? A handful of statements from Galatians that seem to contradict Messiah can be, and have, sufficiently explained through proper understanding of the gentile culture and era to which it was addressed.

Extraordinary accusations require extraordinary proof – and the only thing offered are self-defeating arguments that use the New Testament to disprove the New Testament.

Waiting for the Hebrew New Testament

Some Messianics have a critical view of the New Testament because, they say, we only have corrupted Greek manuscripts, and that the original Hebrew is lost. They discard our current manuscripts as redacted Greek, holding out hope for the sexy Hebrew/Aramaic originals to make their appearance.

These are extraordinary charges. My question is, where are the Hebrew texts? And where is evidence that there were originally Hebrew texts to begin with?

The best evidence we have is a quote from a Church father that suggests Matthew was originally written in Hebrew.

All other evidence reports are more speculation than evidence.

So while certainly Matthew and perhaps a few other books may have been Hebrew originally, there is zero academic support for the idea that all the New Testament was written in Hebrew. It is quite plausible that Luke, the epistles, and others were written in Greek. A vast majority of scholars agree.

And even for the parts that were originally Hebrew, I ask, what makes you think the Greek manuscripts are so terrible so as to discard them? I suggest that this bias against Greek texts likely stems from the “all things Greek are evil” fundamentalist mindset that some Messianics seem to have, probably borrowed from a Judaic backlash against Hellenism. We must mature out of that.

Conclusions

• If we are to believe that redactions make a text completely unreliable, then we must not only throw out the New Testament, but also the Torah and numerous books in the Tenakh. 
  
  
• Many biblical difficulties can be explained; they just aren’t black and white simplistic like we want them to be.
  
  
• There are more difficulties in the Tenakh than the New Testament.
  
  
• Counter-missionary arguments against the New Testament are often uneducated and contain a double-standard. If we apply the same critical view to the Tenakh as they apply to the New Testament, we’d all be atheists.
  
  
• You can’t have your cake & eat it too. Having a critical view of the New Testament, then quoting the New Testament to support your critical view, is self-defeating. Ditto for quoting early Church fathers.
  
  
• The New Testament is largely a first-century work by men who knew, or knew of, Yeshua, in his generation and the next.
  
  
• As far as we know, the New Testament was written largely in Greek.
  
  
• Theologically, Paul and Yeshua were buddies.

A final word

Some years ago, I personally struggled with the idea that anti-Jewish Church fathers compiled what became the New Testament. It really shook my faith to the point I actually considered agnosticism: the belief that we cannot really know whether there is a God.

Perhaps to stop me in my tracks, God gave me peace in this area. Through prayer I heard, “What is here today is by My hand.”

At first, I wanted to ask what that means, exactly. “Even the edits, oh Lord?” would have been a near-comical reply, but it’s what I wanted to ask.

But a peace settled in. Through all the redactions, the compilers of the canon, even with some of them having less-than-good intentions, the harmonizers… it doesn’t matter. God totally used them, like tools. And what we have today is here by His hand.

I know that’s not scientific proof. And I know it’s not intellectually stimulating. But it’s enough for me.