The Intention Test

Was the intent of the gospel writers to accurately preserve history?

In the case of the gospel of Luke Blomberg, Lee Strobel's expert, uses Luke's own words. However, in the case of Mark and Matthew Blomberg's evidence is a little sketchy: "they are close to Luke in terms of genre, and it seems reasonable that Luke's historical intent would closely mirror theirs." Perhaps it is reasonable, but it is also reasonable that their investigation efforts were not as careful. There is no way of knowing for sure, is there?

For John there is also a weak conjecture argument that if theology is to be believed it is important that the history is accurate. I really don't believe that this is a tautology. If it is meant to be, then it certainly needs to be supported much better than to simply state it.

So what do we know of the intent of the authors of the Gospels? We know that at least one of them, Luke, has stated a clear intent to be accurate. A careful reading shows Luke's concern in context: "an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down." His aim therefore is not to play the sceptic: to determine whether or not events happened based on the supposition that they didn't happen. Rather his writing arises from the view that these things did happen, and to be accurate to the story as it was handed down.

Unfortunately, careful presentation of a case does not guaranty its accuracy. For example, it is the intent of prosecutors and the judicial system in which prosecutors play a role not to put innocent people behind bars, which is why our judicial system is founded on a innocent until proven guilty premise. However, unintended mistakes can happen. Often the more careful a prosecutor was in preparing and presenting a case, the more difficult it has been to identify and reverse mistakes. How does this happen? It happens because the prosecutor, like Luke has to rely on other people to make his case, whose intent may be unknown, or who may not be as careful as the prosecutor. In the case of a well established myth the origin may be impossible to determine, and hence the original motivation equally as impossible to know. Luke did not have the benefit of a snopes.com.

So it may be that the things that Luke writes about did happen, or it may be that they did not happen. Since bible accuracy is not an either or proposition, both may also be the case.

Chapter Two: Eight Tests

I wonder if Lee Strobel maybe didn't make a mistake in the title of this chapter. Most of his tests deal more with the question "do the writers of the gospels stand up to scrutiny," and do not answer the question: do the gospels themselves stand up to scrutiny? While it is true that the background of witnesses in a courtroom is often used judge the credibility of the witness, the fact that a witness is credible does not equate the story the witness tells being credible. Also, the accuracy of a testimony is not a dichotomy. There may be some parts of the testimony that are accurate, and there may other parts that are not. Moreover, we learned in chapter one that the gospels are bias motivated compilations of stories, history, and eyewitness accounts from multiple sources, with little indication as to the original sources nor where one story stops and an eyewitness account starts. This is the way histories were written in ancient times we learned. Such methods of writing complicate the tasks of determining the accuracy of an account, which is why lawyers don't write briefs in the same manner, nor are modern histories written that way.

In modern times we vet information through multiple sources. For example: I hear a story from someone that they know of a public pool that contains a special chemical which turns red when a child urinates in it. I also hear the same story from several other people, and happen to read about an encounter with such a chemical in an Orson Wells biography . I can believe it, or I can question and do still further research. Perhaps I can contact my friends and get more details such as: which municipalities installed the wonder pee discovering chemical? Or, thanks to Al Gore, I can check the web.

Whenever Lee Strobel or one of his experts uses words such as believable, plausible, probable, or likely, I always think of a multitude of possibilities that seem equally plausible to me. Lee Strobel does not provide me anything in this chapter that can helps me dissect the New Testament into facts and myths. Instead I'm still left with big piles of "unlikely," "maybe" and "I don't know." Hopefully future chapters will be of more value.

However, maybe I'm missing something, maybe there is evidence that I overlooked, that is right in front of me. So in case the reader is interested, what will follow are explanations for why these tests didn't work well for me.