Apologetics Bible History

Are the 4 Gospels historical?

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Reading time 39 minutes
  • Jesus’ story is allegorical, not historical
  • don’t mention sources like others
  • genre of novel
  • too many coincidences
  • legends
  • presence of miracles

  • non-mythic
  • the genre of the Gospels
  • similarities to Greco-Roman biographies
  • based on eyewitness testimonies
  • archeology
  • verisimilitude
  • undesigned coincidence

Are the Gospel myths?

Former atheists Lee Strobel (investigative journalist) & J. Warner Wallace (detective) used to believe that the Gospels were myths12. After doing many years of researches using the standard methodology used by investigation journalism3 and criminal law4, they end up changing their mind and converted to Christianity. The same happened with C. S. Lewis, an expert on ancient mythology.

Lee Strobel

J. Warner Wallace

C. S. Lewis

“I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths.” 5
C.S. Lewis

The short answer is no. If they’re not myths, then what are they?

The genre of the Gospels

Richard A. Burridge (biblical scholar) argues that the four Gospels are in the category / genre of ancient “Greco-Roman biography” for five reasons6.

  1. Focus on the life & death of a single individual
  2. Average between 10K to 20K words in length
  3. Often begins with ancestry
  4. Don’t have to be in chronological order
  5. Don’t tell you everything about a person

1. Focus on the life & death of a single individual

Ancient history tend to give us an overview context of the general population or event, while a biography focuses exclusively on one character in particular. That was the case for Plutarch’s biography of Alexander the Great7.

Here’s some example of biographies8:

  • Tacitus’ Agricola
  • Plutarch’s Lives & Cato Minor
  • Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars
  • Lucian’s Demonax
  • Philostratus’ Apollonius of Tyana

Greco-Roman biography 4 Gospels
Birth & childhood Birth & childhood 9
Public career Public career 10
Death Passion & death 11

2. Average between 10K to 20K words in length

A typical scroll is about 30-35 feet long (40-80 pages)12. All the 4 Gospels fit this description

Author Number of words
Matthew 18K
Mark 11K
Luke 19K
John 15K

3. Often begins with ancestry

Paul & Acts also include a creed of the lineage of Jesus back to David13 before we even got the Gospels.

Matthew 1:1 Luke 3:23
“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, …” “When Jesus began his ministry he was about thirty years of age. He was the son, as was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, …”

Matthew and Luke differ on the chronology because both have their target audience: Matthew for the Jews (trace back to Abraham as a father figure for Judaism) and Luke for Gentiles (trace back to Adam as the first man of all humanity).

4. Don’t have to be in chronological order

Ancient biographies tends to be arranged by topic, not necessarily in chronological order.

The 4 Gospels start differently, having different orders of events except until the end of the texts, where they all have the same narrative: passion, death & resurrection14.

Papias (AD 60 – 130) tells us that Mark didn’t write in order15.

Suetonius (AD 69 – 122) also wrote “Life of Cesar Augustus” (article 9) in a similar way, as well as Arrian’s Discourses of Epictus, Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and Diogenes Laertius’ biographies16.

Papias Suetonius
"This, too, the presbyter used to say. ‘Mark, who had been Peter’s interpreter, wrote down carefully, but not in order, all that he remembered of the Lord’s sayings and doings." "Having given as it were a summary of his life, I shall now take up its various phases one by one, not in chronological order, but by classes, to make the account clearer and more intelligible."

5. Don’t tell you everything about a person

We wish to have many more details about the life of Jesus, but historically, we must deal with what we have.

  1. Papyrus scrolls are limited in space
  2. Our memories can’t remember every single small detail

“There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.”
John 21:25

Later forgeries emerged from the 2nd century, known as the apocryphal gospels, in order to fill the missing gaps.

Other reasons

Michael Licona lists out several additional reasons from Richard’s work17:

  • written in continuous prose narrative
  • stories, logia, anecdotes, and speeches are combined to form a narrative
  • ideas & teachings are arranged in topics
  • little to no attention for psychological analyses of the main character
  • 25 to 33% of the verbs are “dominated by the subject, 15 to 30% occur in sayings, speeches, or quotations from the person
  • main subject’s character is illuminated through his words and deeds as a model for readers either to emulate or to avoid18

Other parallels can be find:

  • written in Greek
  • anonymous authorship19
  • oral tradition20
  • miracles / supernatural21
  • authorship in the third-person22

No material in Jewish literature about the life and character of an individual rabbi is comparable to the portrait of Jesus in the gospel traditions23.

Archeology

The four Gospels were all written outside of Palestine (Matthew in Antioch, Mark in Rome, Luke in Greece, John in Ephesus).

Archeologists rely on the four canonical Gospels to do excavations, something that doesn’t happen with the Gnostic texts24. If they were forgeries, we would expect a lot of anachronisms (historical & geographical mistakes), like the apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas for example25.

Verisimilitude

In contrast, Craig A. Evans & Peter J. Williams argues that the Gospels exult a great deal of verisimilitude (it resemble reality)2627. The Gospels authors got the details right because knew exactly what happened around28.

In archeology, we only have discovered less than 5% of what the Bible speaks about29. 95% of it is still to be discovered (too soon to claim that the Gospels are myths).

Mark cares about accuracy: he bother explaining Jewish customs for a Gentile audience (Mk 7:3-4, 12:18).

  • real people (Pontius Pilate, Annas, Caiaphas, Herod Agrippa I & II, Felix, Festus)
  • real events (death of John the Baptist & Agrippa I)
  • real places (villages, cities, roads, lakes, mountains)
  • real customs (Passover, purity, sabbath, divorce law)
  • real institutions (synagogue, temple)
  • real offices (priests, tax collectors, Roman governors, Roman centurions)
  • real beliefs (Pharisees & Sadducee, interpretation of Scripture)

Historical reliability of Acts

Archeology

Colin Hemer lists out 84 historical facts that Luke got right in the book of Acts30. It also corroborate with Paul’s letters31.

Speeches of Acts

  • Acts’ portrait of the Palestinian church in the 30s CE corroborate with Qumran32
  • The speech of Jesus in Acts 1 reflects well the apocalyptic expectations of the early church
  • Stephen’s opposition to the Temple isn’t a Lucan idea (Luke isn’t hostile to the Temple: he describe the disciples of Jesus attending the Temple weekly)

Greek novel

History of Greek litterature

After all, just because they wrote accurate informations, doesn’t necessarily mean their story is entirely real. It could be a fictional story using real settings33. Like Chariton’s romance Callirhoe, written around the same years of the Gospels.

Ancient Greek novel only started in the 50s CE34, and later popularized in the 2nd century CE35.

These romantic novels never take a recent historical figure as their main character, and if it was the case, it was only about people in a distant past36.

Unlike the major biographers (e.g. Nepos, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius, Diogenes Laertius), Luke doesn’t cite his sources directly: that’s because he is writing a recent history. Most authors who composed within the living memory often don’t need to mention many of their sources37.

On the other side, ancient bios existed since the 5th century BCE38 and still continue in the 2nd century CE (e.g. Suetonius, Plutarch, etc).

In other words, the Gospels are situated in a period of time where it was common to write biographies.

History had more value over fiction: more copies of Herodotus and Thucydides has survived than all ancient novels combined39.

As of the New Testament, it is by far the best preserved documents of ancient history in the world.

Of course, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are next to the Bible and they aren’t “historical” per se. But the point here, is to compare ancient history with novelty.

Not a work of fiction

While Callirhoe is a product of the author’s imagination, the four Gospels are a re-collection of ancient oral traditions concerning the life of Jesus. It’s like comparing Harry Potter with the newspapers. The Gospel authors may adjust some details, but didn’t invent stories substantially.

Between the four Evangelists, Mark and Luke weren’t eyewitnesses (many skeptics would include Matthew and John as well), so it is fair to conclude that they weren’t biased by making up stories, but simply writing down accurately what they heard from others40.

Apocryphal gospels however, do fit the genre of ancient novels. They have little indication of Judean and Galilean elements or other signs of earlier tradition41.

The Gospels as history

The Synoptic Gospels had historical and biographical interest in the ancient sense42.

Luke’s prologue (1:1-4) resembles a lot to those ancient histories & biographers scholars generally find to be the most trustworthy, mostly for their preference of ‘seen over heard’4344 (Polybius45, Herodotus, Thucydides, Ephorus, Lucian, Dioscorides46, Josephus47). He used the word “narrative” (Greek word ‘diēgēsis’), a common word specifically for the writing of ancient history48.

Luke is a first-rank historian49, where his claims corroborate with Josephus50. If he used Mark as a source, he would expect that it was already factual51.

Justin Martyr & Augustine recalls the Gospels as ‘memoirs’ (Greek word ‘apomnēmoneumata‘, a biographical term also used by Xenophon about his ‘memoir’ of Socrates5253) & testimonies of the Apostles5455.

Paul wasn’t an eyewitness. He used the Greek word ‘ἱστορῆσαι’ (historeó) to describe that his visit to Peter (Gal 1:18) was intended to get information56. As C. H. Dodd would say: we can presume that he wasn’t talking about the weather57.

Signs of historicity

Skeptics found discrepancies, contradictions, historical problems, exaggerations, and embellishment58, but that in itself, don’t invalid the entirety of a work. When we talk about ancient history, we should let go of our perfectionism, and deal with probabilities instead of absolute certainty. The Gospels aren’t exempt of it. Critics came out with criterion/method to evaluate the historicity of a passage in the Gospels.

IDEA: take J. Warner Wallace’s method of examination eyewitness testimony

Probability over certainty

Bart Ehrman “How Jesus became God”, page 95+ : criterion of independent attestation (multiply attested), criterion of dissimilarity (if a tradition about Jesus is different to what the early Christians would have wanted to say about Jesus, it’s more likely to be accurate – criteria of embarrassment), criterion of contextual credibility (…)

  • Multiple independent sources
  • Enemy attestation
  • Corroboration with archeology
  • Embarrassing material

  • Early testimony
  • Alleged contradictions
  • Fits within the cultural context
  • Undesigned coincidences

Multiple independent sources

When it’s mentioned by a reliable external source, the chances that it really happen increase. One example can be the Great Fire of Rome (64 CE) which is attested in five sources59.

Event Sources
crucifixion of Jesus Mt 27:25, Mk 15:24, Lk 23:33, Jn 19:18
Last Supper 1 Cor 11:17-34, Mt 26:17-30, Mk 14:12-26, Lk 22:7-39, Jn 13:1-17:26
feeding of 5,000 Mt 14:13-21, Mk 6:31-44, Lk 9:12-17, Jn 6:1-14

Enemy attestation

If two opponents agree on a same fact, there’s a high chance that it is true.

Event External sources
crucifixion of Jesus Josephus / Tacitus / Talmud / Lucian / Thallus / Mara bar Serapion / Phlegon
expulsion of the ’Jews’ from Rome (Acts 18:2) Suetonius

Embarrassing material

It happen quite often that ancient texts tend to exaggerate a claim to make it look more appealing.

If a passage display embarrassing details (self-damaging material), where there is no good reason to include it in order to make point, this increase the chances that the authors were honest about it and don’t intend to lie.

The Gospel authors didn’t remove embarrassing details to make themselves look good in front of others. Instead, they preserved them.

  • Jesus is crucified (it was considered as a curse by Jews (Deut 21:23))
  • Jesus got baptized (He didn’t need to if He is sinless)
  • Peter is called ‘Satan’ (Mt 16:23)
  • the women were the 1st discoverers of the empty tomb
  • Peter denied Jesus 3 times (Mt 26:73-75, Mk 14:69-70, Lk 22:43-57, Jn 18:13-27)
  • Thomas was skeptical about the resurrection

Alleged contradictions

Good eyewitness accounts are expected to have minor differences between them, as long as they retain the core of the story60. Because people don’t pay attention to events the same way.

Differences between the four Gospel accounts might troubles many readers, but the same things happened with Greco-Roman texts (authors don’t agree with each other). The more sources and writers we have, the more variants we should expected to happen.

  • crossing of the Rubicon (Velleius Paterculus, Lucian, Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian, Orosius)
  • Great Fire of Rome (Cassius Dio, Suetonius, Tacitus)
  • suicide of the Roman emperor Otho (Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch)61

  • number of women who discovered the empty tomb
  • Judas Iscariot’s death
  • last words of Jesus
  • genealogy of Jesus
  • time of the Last Supper

Undesigned coincidences

Lydia McGrew argues that the Gospels and Acts contain undesigned coincidences, details that are too subtle to be made up62. Since they were all written independently from each other, they still remain consistent. When one lacks information, the other ones fill the gap.

For example: why did Peter enter the tomb first? (Jn 20:5-8) it’s because all the other disciples were scared of ghosts (Mt 14:26), while Peter is the boldest one (Mt 14, Jn 18, Jn 21, Acts 5:18, 29; 12:3).

Recommended books

  • Richard A. Burridge – What are the Gospels?
  • Craig S. Keener – Christobiography

  1. Lee Strobel, “The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus”, (ZONDERVAN, 1998), 12
  2. J. Warner Wallace, “Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels”, (David C Cook, 2013), 159
  3. See Lee Strobel’s book “The Case for Christ”
  4. J. Warner Wallace, “Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels”, (David C Cook, 2013), 16
  5. C.S. Lewis, “Surprised by Joy: The shape of my early life”, (William Collins, 2012), 274
  6. Brant Pitre, “The Case For Jesus: The Biblical And Historical Evidence For Christ”, (Image Books, 2016), 70
  7. Plutarch, “Life of Alexander”, 1.2-3
  8. Richard A. Burridge, “What are the Gospels? A comparison with Graeco-Roman biography”, (Baylor University Press, 2018), 150
  9. Mt 1-2, Lk 1-2
  10. Mt 3-25, Mk 1-13, Lk 3-21, Jn 1-12
  11. Mt 24-27, Mk 14-15, Lk 22-23, Jn 18-19
  12. Richard Burridge, “About People, by People, for People: Gospel Genre and Audiences,” in The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences, ed. Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 122.
  13. Rom 1:3, 2 Tim 2:8, Acts 13:22-23
  14. Craig L. Blomberg, “The Historical Reliability of the New Testament: Countering the Challenge to Evangelical Christian Beliefs”, (B&H Academic, 2016), 21
  15. Eusebius, “History of the Church”, 3, 39
  16. G. N. Stanton, “Jesus of Nazareth in New Testament Preaching”, (Cambridge University Press, 1974), 120-121
  17. Michael R. Licona, “Why are there differences in the Gospels?: what we can learn from ancient biography”, (Oxford University Press. 2017), 3-4
  18. Helen K. Bond, “The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel”, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020), 25
  19. All Greco-Romans biographies are anonymous except for Lucian and the story of Aelius in the Historia Augusta
  20. Xenophon, Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Arrian, Cornelius Nepos, Tacitus, Herodotus, Philostratus
  21. Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, Dio Cassius, Philo, Philostratus, Porphyry, Diogenes Laertius
  22. Xenophon, Josephus, Julius Cesar, Thucydides, Polybius
  23. G. N. Stanton, “Jesus of Nazareth in New Testament Preaching”, (Cambridge University Press, 1974), 129
  24. Craig A. Evans, “Jesus and his world: The Archeological Evidence”, (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 10
  25. Slomp, Jan (1978). “The Gospel in Dispute. A Critical evaluation of the first French translation with an Italian text and introduction of the so-called Gospel of Barnabas”. Islamochristiana. 4 (1): 94.
  26. Craig A. Evans, “Jesus and his world: The Archeological Evidence”, (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 9
  27. Peter J. Williams, “Can we trust the Gospels?”, (Crossway, 2018), 51
  28. Gerd Theissen, “The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition”, (Fortress Press, 1992), 166-167
  29. Craig A. Evans, “Jesus and his world: The Archeological Evidence”, (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 3
  30. Colin Hemer, “The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, (Eisenbrauns, 1990)
  31. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Acts of the Apostles (A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary)”, (Yale University Press, 1998), 134-135
  32. Raymond E. Brown, “New Testament Essays”, (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 69
  33. “The story of Jesus: Are the Gospels historically reliable?” debate between Peter J. Williams & Bart D. Ehrman on ‘Unbelievable’ podcast, (October 5, 2019)
  34. N.T. Wright, “The Resurrection of the Son of God”, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 69
  35. Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon, Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, Xenophon of Ephesus’ Ephesian Tale, Heliodorus of Emesa’s Aethiopica
  36. Craig S. Keener, “Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels”, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 41
  37. Craig S. Keener, “Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels”, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 182
  38. Craig S. Keener, “Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels”, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 69
  39. Craig S. Keener, “Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels”, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 50
  40. Irenaeus (“Against Heresies”, 3.1.1), 1 Pet 5:13
  41. Craig S. Keener, “Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels”, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 59
  42. Martin Hengel, “The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ”, (London: SCM Press, 2000), 87
  43. Craig L. Blomberg, “The Historical Reliability of the New Testament: Countering the Challenge to Evangelical Christian Beliefs”, (B&H Academic, 2016), 27
  44. Richard Bauckham, “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: the Gospels as Eyewitness testimony”, (Eerdmans, 2017), 406
  45. Histories, 4.1
  46. Materia Medica, 1.1
  47. Against Apion, 1.1-4
  48. Josephus, “Life”, 336; Lucian, “How to write history”, 55
  49. William Ramsay, “Saint Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen”, (New York: Putnam, 1896), 90-91
  50. Martin Hengel, “Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity”, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 39
  51. Craig S. Keener, “Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels”, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 51
  52. Larry W. Hurtado, “Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World”, (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), 115
  53. Brant Pitre, “The Case for Jesus: the biblical and historical evidence for Christ”, (New York: IMAGE, 2016), 68
  54. Justin Martyr, “Dialogue with Trypho”, “1 Apology” (chapter 66)
  55. Augustine of Hippo, “Harmony of the Gospels” (chapter 1, article 1)
  56. Craig A. Evans, “Jesus and his world: the archeological evidence”, (Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 6
  57. C. H. Dodd, “The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments” 3rd edition (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1967), 26
  58. Bart D. Ehrman, “How Jesus became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee”, (New York: Harper One, 2014), 92
  59. Fabius Rusticus, Marcus Cluvius Rufus, Pliny the Elder, Cassius Dio, Suetonius, Tacitus
  60. J. Warner Wallace, “Cold-Case Christianity: A homicide detective investigates the claims of the Gospels”, (David C. Cook, 2013), 236
  61. Craig S. Kenner, “Otho: A Targeted Comparison of Suetonius’s Biography and Tacitus’s History, with implications for the Gospel’s historical reliability” (BBR 21, no. 3, 2011): 331-56
  62. Lydia McGrew, “Hidden in plain view: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts”, (Ohio: DeWard Publishing, 2017), 27