The Character Test

Where the gospel writers truthful?

Dr. Blomberg implies that the honesty of the gospel writers is supported because they are not shown to be dishonest. Were it a formal argument this would be a logical fallacy. It may be that the gospel writers were honest people, but it may also be that they were not. Could they have perpetrated a great hoax, or perhaps a small hoax of embellishing history? It may be unlikely, but it is possible. For example there is no historical reference of Jesus that Lee Strobel mentions that was written while Jesus was alive. All writings regarding Jesus were written after his death. Why is it impossible that later references refer to an established hoax? However, I'm willing assume that Dr. Blomberg mentions the lack of negative information about the gospel writers not to convince us of their honesty, but only as fact.

So perhaps it is because Jesus' followers were willing to die for their beliefs? There are other possibilities to consider: the person may not know that what they believe is false, the liar may prefer death than to have the truth disclosed, the consequences of either disclosing the truth or maintaining the lie are equivalent, or some combination. In any event, someone enduring unspeakable hardships because of their professed beliefs does not necessitate the validity of those beliefs. Since you can find religious people of other faiths being persecuted terribly for their beliefs, perhaps the Christian may agree that the willingness to endure suffering and death due to firmly held beliefs does not necessitate the truth of those beliefs.

So once again, this test gives us no more or less information than we had before as to the validity of the beliefs held by the writers of the gospels, nor their written word. Some parts may be true, some parts may be false, some may be a mix.