Aletheia

Authorship and internal evidences: part 2

But what of the many objections. "Isn't it like the game of telephone? One person says something and as it goes down the line and is misunderstood it ends up being something totally different." That is an impossibility in relation to the important parts, but as for the extremely minor details that are easily forgotten, some slight differences are noticeable. The reason that it is an impossibility in relation to the important parts is that everyone checked everything. Rabbis in those days had a minimum of the first five books of the Old Testament memorized with 60-90% accuracy. This was acceptable in those days. But the 10-40% inaccuracy was in minor details. Every Rabbi had to have all the major events memorized in absolute word for word accuracy. There were fixed points that never changed. The interesting thing is that the accuracy between the gospels is 60-90%. It is important to know that the differences do not make them inaccurate, but rather more accurate because it shows that they were unrehearsed. Some parts are borrowed from others, but that is only good reporting. When someone writes a term paper on Egyptian mummies, they don't go and dig a bunch up and study them. They find books about them and maybe someone to talk to who knows more about them than they do. Also, many of the differences are of such a manor that the main point and truth is still in tact even though the wording is a little different. Mark 8:29 refers to Jesus as "The Christ" whereas Matthew Refers to "Him a Christ the Son of God" and Luke refers to him as "Christ of God." The differences are enough to show that it was unrehearsed but the similarities are great enough to show that they are the same story.

There were also many things the authors of the gospels could have left out if they were trying to gain approval of the people or were trying to glorify the story. Things such as Jesus was unable to perform miracles in Nazareth or all the times the apostles themselves were rebuked or how they ran and hid when Jesus was crucified or how his number one disciple denied Him three times. They weren't worried about selling something, they were just writing to tell the facts. Critics of the gospels have also never been able to say that they were not true because they could not deny that Jesus did many supernatural things.

But what of the amount of time between now and then, wouldn't the copiers of the documents have made mistakes? The answer is no. If one researches the process that priests took to copy a single Old or New Testament document, all such questions would disappear. For example. On the first day of copying, the priest would get a brand new quill and freshly made ink and sit down and pray all day that he would be accurate in his recording. That's the first day. As the priest would copy, every day he would have a brand new quill and brand new ink. In the case of the Old Testament scribes, every time they wrote the name of God, they would break the quill and continue with a new one. If a single mistake was made, no matter where it was, the priest would have to start all over again. That is some of the rituals that are still occurring today with some orthodox churches. Most spend their lives simply copying one maybe two books of the Bible. The seriousness of the task to them is more than most of us could ever understand.

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