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.