David Wood on the Historical Reliability of the

Gospels
By
Bassam Zawadi

This is a response to some of the comments that David Wood made over here.

David Wood said:

Like or not, we know who wrote the Gospels. But let's assume that we didn't. We know,
for a fact, that the early Christian community, in association with Jesus' apostles, held the
Gospels we have to be reliable records. That's evidence we have to deal with.
David's Hypothesis: The early Christian community treated the Gospels as reliable
because they knew they were reliable.
Bassam's Hypothesis: Even though the early Christian community treated the Gospels as
reliable, they didn't really know if they were reliable.

My Response:
We need to define what we mean by "early Christian community." Which precise time period is
being spoken about?
If Wood has the first century in mind, then we do not know much about Christian awareness of
the gospels in this period. It is, however, unlikely that all Christians everywhere in this period
were aware, let alone familiar, with the canonical gospels. A more realistic scenario would be as
follows: initially some would have known one or some gospels (this would include noncanonical material as well) and as time went by people in different places became aware about
the presence of more gospels, some of which they began to cherish and frequently use. Thus, one
may have known, say, the gospel of Mark, but known nothing about the rest. Others may have
known one or more of the canonical gospels as well as non-canonical gospel narratives but not
the rest. As tine went by, however, people in different places increasingly became aware about
the presence of additional gospel narratives.

But from the first century itself, we cannot say much about which Christians probably knew
some, one, or all of the gospels. Clement of Rome, for example, writing in 96 A.D. is widely
believed not to betray the use of any of the canonical gospels. A little earlier, Matthew and Luke,
on the other hand, are believed to have used and adapted the gospel of Mark in various ways to
compose their own gospel narratives. If Marcan priority is accepted, then that would suggest that
while Mark was deemed important enough to be heavily utilised, Matthew and Luke did not
regard it to be so authoritative or reliable so as to be borrowed without changes. On the contrary,
they made all sorts of changes to Mark. Luke, from his opening words, reveals his dissatisfaction
with earlier gospel narratives. We read:

Luke 1:1-4
1

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among
us, 2just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses
and servants of the word. 3Therefore, 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, 4so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been
taught.
Thus, here we may well have a criticism levelled at the gospel of Mark (and other gospel
narratives).
Conservative Evangelical New Testament scholar Donald Guthrie writes:
Luke's preface is illuminating in regard to his own approach to his task. He claims
to have made a comprehensive and accurate survey over a considerable period,
which throws a good deal of light on his seriousness of purpose. Moreover, Luke
admits that others had previously attempted the same task, but his words imply that
he found them unsatisfactory . . . (Donald Guthrie, B.D., M. Th., New Testament
Introduction. The Gospels and Acts, 1966, Inter-Varsity Press, p. 87)
Christian scholar David Laird Dungan agrees and writes:
<9> "... in order that you might know the truth..." ends the preface with an implied
criticism of the rival narratives - another characteristic of Hellenistic prefaces. The
author must explain, in view of the existence of other possibly well-known
narratives, why his should be bothered with. "Mine is more accurate" and "mine is
both complete and entertaining" were typical justifications. (David Laird
Dungan, A History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition,
and the Interpretation of the Gospels (The Anchor Bible Reference Library), 1999,
Doubleday, p. 15)

Furthermore:
The general argument consists of two parallels, with the author at the receiving end of
each one:
(a) "Many" have tried to create narratives so I will do the same. This is especially
appropriate since they weren't as qualified, while I ...
(b) like the authoritative cadre of eyewitnesses who personally saw everything from the
beginning and who maintained the accuracy of the tradition they handed on "to us," so
also I, who have for a long time accurately studied all these things, in contrast to
"many," will write a narrative having the correct order, which you, Theophilus, can be
certain is the truth. [Ibid., p. 14]
If the "early Christian" community treated the gospels as reliable, then Wood needs to present
evidence showing this. And, likewise, if the "early" Christian community "knew" the gospels
were reliable, then Wood needs to name some and cite some from the first century (assuming if
by "early" he means the first century).
Secondly, to treat something as reliable does not follow that it is reliable. Likewise, treating it as
unreliable does not mean it is unreliable. We can mistakenly accept something as reliable or
unreliable. The contents of the writings need to be examined by ourselves in order to determine
the worth of any given document.
Third, Wood constructs a straw man: I never said that the earliest Christians deemed the gospels
as reliable.

First, it is not a fact that we know who wrote the Gospels. The majority of modern Biblical
scholarship today rejects the traditional authorship view. Many also accept the traditional claims
partially. For example, they may accept the claim that the apostle John in some capacity was
responsible for the gospel of John, but would doubt the traditional authorship claim for the
gospel of Matthew and Mark. They may be open to Lucan authorship of the gospel of Luke and
Acts, but be sceptical regarding the traditional authorship claims for the remaining canonical
gospels. Many conservative scholars partially accept the traditional authorship claims for the
gospels, however they are sceptical about some of the claims and accept as "probably accurate"
some other authorship claims.

Thus, to say that "we know" who wrote the gospels is nothing more than a distortion of the
scholarly stance on the subject.

When Wood says that "we know" who wrote the gospels, he means inerranists - such as himself "know" who wrote the gospels - even though Wood does not say it in so many words.
We now present a number of citations to back-up the above discussion.
John Barton [Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford] states:
The author of John's gospel is, as we have noted already, unlikely to have been an
immediate disciple of Jesus, if only because so much of the material in the synoptic
gospels is missing from John. The likelihood is therefore that all the historical books of
the New Testament are not eyewitness accounts of the events described. They are all
written by people some time after the events, a fact that must affect one's assessment of
the books concerned. The authorship of the letters is also disputed. Several are written
in the name of the apostle Paul. However, it seems clear that not all the letters attributed
to Paul are by Paul himself. Significant differences of style, language and at times
important ideas make this extremely likely. ...The authorship of other letters in the
New Testament is also disputed. The letter to the Hebrews (traditionally ascribed to
Paul) is anonymous. ... The letters ascribed to Peter may also be pseudonymous. ... All in
all, large parts of the New Testament are not written by people directly connected
with Jesus or the very earliest period of the Christian Church. (This could apply even
to Paul: Paul was 'converted' after the death of Jesus). Rather, many New Testament
books stem from second- or third-generation Christians, writing a little time after the
foundational events of the Christian church and reflecting on them. Some of the authors
would clearly like to be seen as earlier authoritative figures in that they write in the name
of such figures. But the fact remains that large parts of the New Testament were
written by Christians after the initial period (John Barton, "The Biblical World"
(Routledge 2002) pp. 30-31).

Bart Ehrman, summing up the stance of critical scholars, writes:

Proto-orthodox Christians of the second century, some decades after most of the New
Testament books had been written, claimed that their favorite Gospels had been penned
by two of Jesus' disciples - Matthew, the tax collector, and John, the beloved disciple and by two friends of the apostles - Mark, the secretary of Peter, and Luke, the travelling
companion of Paul. Scholars today, however, find it difficult to accept this tradition
for several reasons. ... none of these Gospels makes any such claim about itself. All
four authors chose to keep their identities anonymous (Bart D. Ehrman, The New
Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 2000, Second
Edition, Oxford University Press, p. 52).

Lee Martin McDonald and Stanley Porter accept traditional Lucan authorship but not
wholeheartedly. They write (p. 295):
"We are inclined to accept Lucan authorship, but not without some reservation" (Lee
Martin McDonald,Stanley E. Porter, Early Christianity And Its Sacred Literature,
2000, Hendrickson Publishers).
For a more critical assessment, see Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, who dismiss the traditional
authorship claims about the gospels in their The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, 1998,
SCM Press Ltd.
We also highly recommend that one reads pages 5 to 24 from EP Sanders and his wife Margaret
Davies's bookStudying the Synoptic Gospels, which could be found here. These pages easily put
David's assertions and claims to rest.
To know the details of the arguments against the traditional authorship view we recommend our
readers to refer tothese set of articles.
David Wood speaks falsehood when he says:
We know, for a fact, that the early Christian community, in association with Jesus'
apostles, held the Gospels we have to be reliable records.
This is a "fact" which not many are willing to gobble, including many conservative scholars.
Who are these "apostles" with whose "association" the early Christians held the gospels as
allegedly reliable records? Understandably, Wood is silent.
Briefly, there is no trace of the canonical gospels from the era of the apostles. We know of no
apostle - someone who witnessed the earthly Jesus' ministry - who knew about our canonical
(and non-canonical) gospels. Hence the question of their view on the worth of written gospels
does not arise. They may well have not known about the canonical gospels. We are not
suggesting as a matter of fact that they did not know about canonical and/or non-canonical
gospel narratives; it is just that we do not know due to a lack of evidence.
In the writings of the apostolic fathers, most scholars believe that mostly the gospel of Matthew
was probably known to many of the fathers such as Ignatius, the Didachist, Polycarp and others.
Most do not find a trace of the gospel of Mark and Luke in the apostolic fathers and the
awareness of the gospel of John remains disputed. The nature of the evidence is such that we
cannot say that these fathers held the "gospels" as "reliable records." In fact, often we do not
know how many documents they used or if they were even knew a single canonical gospel
document (Clement of Rome, for example)!

Secondly, from the evidence furnished by Papias, it appears that the gospel documents were not
being treated as inerrant sources, let alone as the sole reliable sources. Papias said:
If anyone ever came who had followed the presbyters, I inquired about the words of the
presbyters, what Andrew or Peter or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew, or
any other of the Lord's disciples, had said, and what Ariston and the presbyter John, the
Lord's disciples, were saying. For I did not suppose that information from books
would help me so much as the word of a living and surviving voice. (Papias (H.E.
3.39.4) cited in Harry Y. Gamble, The New Testament Canon. Its Making and
Meaning, 1985, Wipf and Stock Publishers, p. 26)
Clearly, Papias did not consider the written gospels inviolable, inerrant, the final authority, full or
complete. The purpose of the writings was to record the message. Papias preferred firsthand
information. At this stage, Christians did not consider themselves limited or obliged to follow
specific written texts. This is also clear from the writings of Clement, Barnabas, Ignatius,
Hermas etc. Any tradition could be written down; there was no obligation to follow a particular
writing in a mechanical fashion since it was merely a written echo of the preaching, inadequate
by its very nature. This is simply the attitude of most Christian writers of the 2 nd century. So
while Papias considered the written records useful, he felt no obligation to limit himself to them
but gave preference to oral traditions. No canonical gospel writing was "final authority" for the
earliest Christians.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the apostles held the Gospels as we have them today to be
authoritative documents. We challenge David to provide evidence for this. David is only
assuming that the traditional authorship view is correct, but cannot actually prove it.
Thirdly, when David says "the early Christian community" he is only speaking about those
Christians that actually held the Gospels to be reliable. If there happened to be a group of people
who rejected the Gospels, he wouldn't consider them to be part of the "Christian community". It
is like me saying "We challenge David to show us a Muslim who rejects the five pillars of Islam"
while he obviously cannot do so since one cannot be a Muslim unless he accepts the five pillars.
David cannot actually prove that there was a consensus amongst all Christians in the first century
regarding the reliability of the Gospels. To say that there was a consensus requires evidence and
David has provided none.Regarding specifically the first century, we learn nothing about the
status and use of the canonical gospels from this period. We know of no writer who refers to
them, quotes them, or talks about their reliability and authorship. There is silence. Period.
However, if we accept Marcan priority, then we may say that the authors of Matthew and Luke
used Mark and made various changes to it to suit their needs and agenda. While they deemed
Mark important enough to be heavily utilized, they appear not to have deemed it authoritative
enough to respect its text.

Furthermore, if there truly were a consensus then why did Christians in the second century
dispute the authorship of the Gospels?:
Furthermore there is no evidence of any tradition attributing the authorship of the gospel
to John the apostle before Ireneaus' assertion. Even some of Ireneaus' contemporaries
do not share his opinion. The Roman presbyter, Cauis, writing a few years after
Ireneaus, attributed the book to the Gnostic Cerinthus. We have evidence that this gospel
was not universally accepted in Rome during the end of the second or beginning of the
third century because the presbyter Hippolytus (c170-c236) had to defend the Johanine
authorship.(Davidson & Leaney, Biblical Criticism, p. 268)

Furthermore, even if we were to grant that the early Christians did hold the gospels to be reliable,
David erroneously assumes that just because the early Christians claimed that the Gospels were
reliable then that means that they actually are.
EP Sanders and Margaret Davies said on page 13 of their book Studying the Synoptic Gospels:
The early Christians seem genuinely not to have cared who wrote the gospels , and it
is difficult to combine a theory of carefully maintained tradition with the fact of literary
silence.

How interesting! We are supposed to trust the judgment of the early Christians who did not care
about who wrote the Gospels? For all we know, a bunch of lying hypocrites could have written
the gospels without us having any idea. How can we trust the testimony of witnesses IF WE
DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO THE WITNESSES ARE?!

David Wood said:

Once again, your hypothesis immediately gives rise to all sorts of problems. First, you have
absolutely no evidence to support it.

My Response:
The burden of proof is not on me, but on David. I am not here to prove a negative.

David Wood said:

Second, how in the name of common sense can you say that people in the first century wouldn't
have been able to determine which records were true, when they could easily contact the apostles

or the disciples of the apostles, who often travelled from city to city, making sure people knew
the truth about Jesus?

My Response:
David presumes too much here. He presumes that Christians in the first century could distinguish
true and false gospel narratives and they could easily contact apostles and disciples. You cannot
go far with the "could have" approach. Let's consider the data. We do not know if Jesus' very
disciples were even aware about the canonical gospels. Nor do we know of early Christians
approaching them to ascertain the worth of written canonical gospel narratives. This may have
happened, but we just do not know if it did as there is no evidence to say whether it did or not.
Secondly, while the early Christians could have approached the very disciples of Jesus and while
they could haveattempted to determine the truth of written gospel narratives, we can be
reasonably sure that their efforts did not render the canonical gospels fully trustworthy, let alone
to the level of inerrancy. That is because when we compare the same stories in the canonical
gospels, we notice many differences between them, both minor and major. Therefore, while the
earliest Christians could have approached Jesus' disciples and could have determined which
written narratives were true, it remains that, somehow, the canonical gospels contain both
reliable and unreliable details and we can be very sure, by comparing their contents, that stories
were changed and adapted in various ways. That is why New Testament scholars have had to
construct criteria to make sense of its data and determine, as best they can, the reliable and
historically unreliable details therein. To cite Prof. Christopher M. Tuckett:

Nevertheless the nature of the Gospel tradition means that we cannot simply take
everything recorded in all the Gospels as unquestionably genuine reports about
what Jesus said or did in a pre-Easter situation. (Christopher
M. Tuckett, Christology and the New Testament: Jesus and His Earliest
Followers, 2001, Westminster John Knox Press, p. 203.)

We cannot rest any argument on what we think the people in the first century would have done.
Rather, we must examine the evidence for what they actually did. And we have no evidence that
any Christian in the first hundred years did any serious kind of investigation regarding the
authorship of the Gospels and checked the facts and still accepted the traditional authorship
claims. It could very well be that the people who did do any sort of serious investigation actually
ended up rejecting the Gospels.
Secondly, as EP Sanders noted there is no evidence of any attribution of the Gospels to any
respective authors in the first century. Thus, why would people want to confirm whether the

Gospels have been written by the disciples if the claim that the disciples wrote them wasn't even
there?
Richard Carrier comments on the difficulty of conducting any serious kind of investigation back
in the first century:
How would potential converts "check" Christianity's claims, even if they adopted a
skeptical research paradigm available at the time?

First, travel was too expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous for most
people. No one would bother with it who was not already convinced the trip was worth it.
Yet skeptics wouldn't have the motive to engage such risk and expense (and we have no
evidence any did), while believers would have little reason to "check" what they no
longer doubted (and, again, we have no evidence of anyone in the first century making
such a trip in order to "check" evidence, even after converting, much less before).

Second, as there was no post office, mail was very impractical--nearly

impossible, in fact, unless you knew someone who both knew the person you wanted
to correspond with and was traveling there and thus could carry your letter. And
even then, few were in the habit of writing back to strangers, and even when they might
have, the whole exchange could take several months, given the inordinate length of time
required to make the journey and to await the convenience of someone making the trip.
Officials would be much easier to reach, but even less likely to respond to someone
outside their jurisdiction or on a matter not relevant to their very busy jobs, and the great
length of time remained. Accordingly, we have no evidence of any investigative letters
being sent by anyone, before or after converting to Christianity, in its first hundred
years--much less thousands of such letters, as Holding's argument requires,
since numerous converts are supposed to have done this.

Third, access to libraries was greatly limited, and not very useful to a
potential Christian anyway. Libraries were rare, hardly comprehensive, and useful only
to the highly literate. Government archives would have been off limits to all but permitted
officials (see Note 4 again), and would be unlikely to contain any information that would
confirm any evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. And libraries open to the public
would in turn contain even less along those lines, since Christian books would not appear
in them for at least another century, and we have no evidence any other literature
mentioned any facts suggesting Jesus really rose from the dead.
That leaves only one other option: asking neighbors and visitors. Which probably
meant asking those who had already converted to Christianity, since few others would
know any relevant information, much less believe it. Thus, all a doubter probably had to
go on was his or her perception of another convert's sincerity.Such sincerity could be
feigned, but even more importantly, testimony could be sincere but based on

insufficient evidence, a problem difficult for a doubter to evaluate. The best a skilled
doubter could do was engage in a carefully crafted interrogation to explore the actual
details known to the reporter, which would not be very welcome (it usually indicated a
despised scale of hostility--just as modern-day New Agers respond to such questioning
with near-violent indignation) and somewhat limited in what it could accomplish. And
even then, such skills of interrogation were not widely learned, nor is there any evidence
of any Christian convert in the first century employing such skills before converting, or
after. (Richard Carrier, Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? (2006), Chapter
7: Was Christianity Highly Vulnerable to Inspection and Disproof?, Source)

Richard Carrier goes on further to demonstrate that the early Christians were not the type of
people who practiced or encouraged critical inquiry:

Read the Epistles and see. Paul and his audience do not seem very impressed by rational,
historical, scientific, or dialectical evidence (check out 1 Corinthians 2), so these get no
significant mention in his letters. Instead, Paul always 'proves' the truth by appealing
to the efficacy of apostolic miracle-working, to subjective revelation, to scripture,
and to his upstanding behavior or 'suffering' as proof of his sincerity.[2] That's pretty
much it. After all, Paul and his flock believed 'truth' had to be grasped spiritually, on faith
(1 Corinthians 2:15-16), not through skeptical investigation. Consider the argument of
Galatians:
I am amazed that you are so quickly abandoning the one who called you in the
grace of Christ, for a different gospel, which isn't really another gospel, except
there are some people who trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any gospel other
than what we preached to you, let him be anathema! As we have said before, so
say I now again, if any man preaches to you any gospel other than that which you
received, let him be anathema. (Galatians 1:7-17, emphasis mine)
Here we have a serious situation: Christians are abandoning the faith for some alien
gospel. Surely here, of all places, Paul would pull out all the stops in emphasizing the
proper empirical methods for checking the truth of what Jesus really said and did,
and hence what the true gospel really was. Yet what do we get? A question-begging
criterion of blind dogmatism: anything you hear that contradicts what we told you
is false. Period. No fact-checking required. Even a vision from heaven won't cut it!
Paul is so adamant about this criterion that he repeats it twice. This is
clearly the criterion of truth he and his congregation should and do employ. Yet it is
exactly the opposite of the empirical standards Holding wants to pretend Paul advocated.
Paul continues (emphasis mine):

For I make known to you, brethren, regarding the gospel which was preached by
me, that it is notaccording to a man, neither did I receive it from a man, nor was I
taught it. Rather, it came to me through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have
heard of my manner of life in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond
measure I persecuted the church of God, and made havoc of it: and I advanced in
the Jews' religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being
more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it was the
good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and
called me through his grace, to reveal his Son inside me, that I might preach him
among the Gentiles, right away I did not consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go
over to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.
Think about this argument for a minute. Paul is surely using the best argument he knows
will persuade his audience, and get them back into the fold--so we can say his audience
must have found this line of reasoning more persuasive than anything else he could think
to say. But his line of reasoning is the exact flip-side of empirical standards: whereas a
good critical thinker would only trust a man who immediately went and checked all the
facts before believing, Paul not only explicitly declares he did not do that at all, but
the fact that he didn't is actually his very argument! In other words, he expects his
audience to beimpressed by the fact that he didn't fact-check! So important is this
point that he actually goes out of his way to insist, "I'm not lying!" (Galatians 2:20).
Thus, Galatians 2 expresses values exactly the opposite of what Holding wants. Paul and
his audience are thoroughly uninterested in Holding's idea of "fact-checking." To the
contrary, the testimony of men, indeed even of angels, is inherently suspect--so suspect,
in fact, that they can dogmatically reject it a priori. What is persuasive is simply and only
this: that God spoke to Paul in a private revelation. That is the only kind of evidence his
audience will accept--indeed, even so much as a hint that Paul checked the facts before
believing the vision would destroy Paul's credibility entirely. For if he showed any doubt
at all that the vision was true, if the vision was so insufficient that he had to seek
reinforcement or additional instruction from mortal men, then this would cast doubt on
the vision being an authentic communication from God. After all, his audience were the
sort of people who thought God punished Zacharias (by striking him mute) for
merelyasking for evidence (Luke 1:18-20). That's how hostile the Christian mind was to
Holding's dream of "fact-checking." The Christian moral was that Zacharias, and hence
all of us, should simply trust a vision--no questions asked, and no facts checked. The
same twisted logic also makes sense of Paul's tactic of pointing out how he did a total 180
from enemy to friend, as proof that his vision must really have been from God. The
fallacious logic here would impress many people back then. But we have no good reason
to buy it today.

17.3. Survey of Passages Relating to Method

Paul's bizarre anti-empirical assumptions reflect the fact that Christian epistemology was
fundamentally centered on faith over evidence. For "the righteous shall live by faith"
(Romans 1:17, quoting Habakkuk 2:4) and so "we walk by faith and not by sight" (2
Corinthians 5:7). This is an attitude that offers little encouragement to "checking the facts
first." To the contrary, when questions arise, far from being encouraged to fact-check, the
Christian is told to "ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the
surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind," and "such a man cannot expect to receive
anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways" (James
1:6-8). Ask in faith. Askwithout doubting. The man who doubts is aimless, unstable, and
worthy of no help from God. This is exactly the opposite of encouraging critical inquiry.
It quite clearly discourages it.
Far from being told to check things out, the Christian is told "you have no need for
anyone to teach you" because Christ "teaches you about all things and is true and is not a
lie, and just as this has taught you, you abide in him" (1 John 2:27). In fact, don't even
pay attention to what anyone else says, just what we tell you, for "we are of God, and he
who knows God understands us, while he who is not of God doesn't understand." That is
our criterion of truth; "by this we know the spirit of truth" and can distinguish it from "the
spirit of error" (1 John 4:6). This is dogmatism, not empiricism. Fact-checking is
portrayed here as all but ungodly. Instead, believe what we say. End of story. That's
indeed the only criterion implied in 1 Corinthians 15:11: after reciting the claims
grounding the faith, Paul does not mention any facts having been checked or needing to
be checked; all he says is "so we preach, and so you believed." That's considered enough.
At the same time, the principles of philosophy, science, logic, and forensics are lambasted
as foolish. People who rely on them "become futile in their speculations," and though
"professing to be wise," they are really just "fools" (Romans 1:21-22). Christians are
openly discouraged from learning, developing, and employing skills of interrogation,
investigation, and examination. Anyone who attempts to do that merely "deceives
himself," for all those things are "foolishness before God." In fact, "it is written" that "the
reasoning of the wise" is "useless," that God "will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and
[that God will] bring the discernment of the discerning to nothing"--making fools of "the
wise man," "the scribe," and "the skilled questioner" (1 Corinthians 1:18-20 & 3:18-20).
This isn't exactly an encouragement to follow in the footsteps of philosophers, scholars,
and skilled inquirers.
Indeed, Christians are specifically told to reject logical analysis, since "wrangling over
words" is "useless" and brings only ruin (2 Timothy 2:14), and it's all "fruitless
discussion" anyway. Whoever entangle themselves in it "neither understand what they are
saying nor grasp the matters about which they make confident assertions" (1 Timothy
1:6-7). Examining alternative accounts and claims is discouraged, too:

If anyone advocates a different doctrine, and does not agree with the sound words of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and
understands nothing, having a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes
about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and
constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose
that godliness is a means of gain. (1 Timothy 6:3-4)
Thus, the very sort of person who asks questions, seeks precision in description and
terminology, or even suggests the truth is other than what the Christian leaders say it is, is
just plain evil. How can you check any facts, when any fact contrary to dogma is
automatically a lie, born only of evil, arrogance, ignorance, and greed?
So fact-checking is practically ruled out a priori. Anything contrary to the "knowledge of
God" and "obedience to Christ" must be destroyed (2 Corinthians 10:3-6). Not checked.
Not looked into. Just destroyed. All mundane knowledge is suspect: "if anyone supposes
that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know" (1 Corinthians 8:2).
And the cure is not employing some critical method to gain reliable knowledge, but to
simply reject everything contrary to dogma. The Christian is simply told to "make sure no
one makes a captive of you through philosophy and senseless deception according to the
tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the natural world, and not according
to Christ" (Colossians 2:8).
In fact, the earliest Christians conveniently constructed an epistemology whereby any
evidence or testimony that contradicts their dogmatic beliefs could be rejected out of
hand. Anyone who says anything contrary to the claims of the apostles is surely deluded,
"for God has sent upon them a deluding influence so they would believe what is false" (2
Thessalonians 2:11), and they are all hypocrites, liars, victims of deluding spirits, and the
puppets of demons (1 Timothy 4:1). Christians are even told, point blank: don't debate
(Galatians 5:20-26), even though debate is the lifeblood of critical inquiry. Likewise,
instead of checking out the facts and developing well-researched refutations, "false
teachers" are simply to be "shunned" (2 Timothy 3:5), and so anything contrary to dogma
won't even be heard--much less looked into. As Timothy is instructed, "guard what has
been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of
what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and thus gone astray from
the faith" (1 Timothy 6:20-21). In other words, trust what you were told. Don't even listen
to anyone else. Rather than being told to investigate them, Christians are instructed to
simply reject what stories they may hear (1 Timothy 4:7).
One can certainly try to sugarcoat all this, spin it to one's liking, make excuses, and
ultimately argue that these declarations only apply to certain contexts, or whatever. It still
won't change the fact that these are theonly encouragements regarding method to be
found in the Epistles. And not a one encourages anyone to "check the facts." Instead,

when we catch glimpses of the actual methods that Christians respected, we find
mysticism trumping empiricism every time. Consider Paul's moving appeal:
When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom
when I proclaimed to you the testimony of God.... My message and my preaching were
not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in a demonstration of the spirit and of power, that
your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. (1 Corinthians
2:1-5)
Thus, Paul openly disavows the established rhetorical principles of evidence and
argument, and says instead that the miracles of the Holy Spirit are all he came with, and
all that God wants Christians to trust as evidence. Miracles and revelations and the
apostle's word were always sufficient. No research was necessary, for "the Lord will give
you understanding in everything" (2 Timothy 2:7; e.g. Mark 13:11; Luke 12:11-12,
21:13-15). Like modern New Agers (see Chapter 13), Christians are exhorted to ignore
the evidence of their senses, and trust instead in the invisible certainties of their heart (2
Corinthians 4:18), since that is where God speaks to you. Indeed, Paul gives away the
game when he says "what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of
revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching?" (1 Corinthians 14:6) Funny
how "evidence" and "logic" don't make the list. Paul is saying outright that if a claim
doesn't come by revelation, prophecy, inspiration (gnsis), or tradition, it is profitless and
not even worth mentioning. So much for fact-checking.
Apart from Scripture, the Holy Spirit is their only sourcebook:
For to one God grants the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of
knowledge (gnsis) according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, and
to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, and to another workings of power, and to
another prophecy, and to another interpretations of spirits, to another different kinds of
utterances, and to another the interpretation of these utterances. (1 Corinthians 12:8-10)
Wisdom. Knowledge. Faith. All come from the Holy Spirit. Not from research. Not from
making inquiries. Not from questioning witnesses accurately and weighing different
kinds of testimony. Indeed, when Paul declares the hierarchy of reverence, the list goes:
"first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing,
then the ability to help, then to administer, then varieties of speaking in tongues" (1
Corinthians 12:28). Again, fact-checkers don't even make the list.
Christianity's earliest critic certainly noticed the problem, and it is well worth looking at
what he said on this matter, and what the Christian apologist Origin had to say in reply,
even though this comes two hundred years late. When Celsus attempted to investigate the
claims and doctrines of Christians, he kept running into this same wall: Christians would
simply exclaim "do not question, just believe!" They expected converts to simply trust in

Jesus--without evidence or demonstration. And Origen does not deny it. To the contrary,
he defends it! He says, point blank: "we admit that we teach those men to believe without
reasons." So much for the supposed encouragement to "check the facts" first.
Origen does claim that Christians believe in inquiry into the meaning of their prophetical
writings, the parables of the Gospels, and "other things narrated or enacted with a
symbolical signification," but mentions nothing about checking witnesses, documents,
physical evidence, histories, or anything empirical at all. And what's worse, not only is
"study of scripture" the only inquiry Christians engage in, Origen declares that most
people don't even have the time for that (since people worked long hours in antiquity just
to get by), and "therefore" the Christian exhortation to "simply believe" is actually a good
policy! So rather than refute or even challenge Celsus on this point, Origin defends the
very anti-empirical policy we have found throughout the Epistles, on the dismal argument
that faith is good for people.
By wasting no time on "fact-checking" before committing to the faith (or even
afterward!), people can gain salvation and moral improvement. "Isn't it better for them,"
Origen insists, "to believe without a reason, and then become reformed and improved,"
rather than "not to have allowed themselves to be converted on the strength of mere faith,
but to have waited until they could give themselves to a thorough examination of the
reasons?" Origen says it is indeed better to "just believe," because most people could
never complete such an examination, and therefore would remain wicked and die
unsaved. So it is better they simply have faith, and not waste time checking the facts.[3]
So much for Holding's argument. (Richard Carrier, Was Christianity Too Improbable
to be False? (2006), Chapter 7: Did the Earliest Christians Encourage Critical
Inquiry?, Source)

Thus, we see that the earliest Christians were not the type of people that bothered to do their
homework and critically examine the sources of the texts that they deemed to be holy. Contrast
this with the early Muslims who did their utmost to ensure where everything came from.
Thus, David's appeal to the early Christians (whoever they are) cannot be taken seriously. We
have no reason to trust the early Christians for utilizing any sort of scientifically reliable
methodology of examining the sources of the information that they have obtained.

David Wood said:

Third, why do we know of absolutely no one in the first century who questioned the reliability of
the Gospels? Here you would have to come up with some conspiracy theories.

My Response:
Well, neither do we know anyone from the first century who did not question the reliability of
the canonical gospels! In fact, we do not know of anyone from the first century (probable
exceptions, Matthew and Luke, who knew Mark) who knew about the canonical gospels let
alone was intimately familiar with their contents. The best guess we can make is that some knew
one or some gospel narratives initially, becoming aware of additional narratives over time. It was
not that from the start all canonical gospels were instantly accepted everywhere. Instead, the
early period is a fluid one. There were probably traditions around which ultimately did not
survive, and more written gospel writings which have not survived. A lot was being said and
written about Jesus and his activities, with differences between the accounts as these circulated
and moved along to more people. All sorts of changes were made to the stories and sayings
attributed to Jesus, minor, small and some were also invented.
Also is David seriously trying to argue that NO ONE in the first century questioned the
reliability of the Gospels? What about all the skeptics and Jews who rejected the Gospels? Is
David trying to say that even though they rejected the Gospels they still believed in its
reliability? Is David trying to say that everyone in the first century who read the Gospel of
Matthew which spoke about the resurrection of dead saints during Jesus' crucifixion actually
believed in that story and trusted the reliability of the Gospel, yet still rejected it and refused to
become a Christian?

In conclusion, David Wood has failed miserably to convince us of the reliability of the Gospels.