Connecting to the thoughts from my previous post, in the same class a few days ago, Dr. Redick brought up an interesting question of apologetics: If Jesus’ words were written 40-60 years after the fact, are they still true? Did he actually say them?
The gospels were not written for a literate people. They were written so people could understand who Jesus Christ was and is and did for them by dying and being resurrected. Before the gospel accounts were even written down, people repeated these stories over and over again for years. According to Biblical text, the Christian Church did not start 40-60 years after Christ’s death, but it began immediately with Jesus’ Commission right before he ascended into heaven. These apostles he commissioned were eyewitnesses to the events they had seen in Jesus’ time. There were 12 of them, a big enough group to collectively remember Jesus’ words, but small enough for the same accounts to be told from differing perspectives.
Through orality, these accounts were sustained for 40-60 years. In fact, Luke was not even an eyewitness to the life of Christ; but he was a physician, “who carefully investigated everything from the beginning (Luke 1).” This must mean he received testimonies from some of the eyewitnesses and maybe had access to some papers and official documents.
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