I once again believed in a supernatural being whose name was Jesus.
The next question was: if there is a God, and his name is Jesus, what should I do with that information? What does he want from me? While I believe he exists, why on earth should I accept anything the Bible has to say on the matter? My objections to the Bible remained, yet I knew as a serious student of theology that without the Bible there is no Christianity, and very little information on the Jesus I believed in.
I began studying the work of the Jesus Seminar, a group of over a hundred PhD holding specialists who use textual criticism to separate the historical Jesus stories from the legends and myths. I purchased one of their books to study their results and methods, but all too soon came up against the same problem as Dawkins; they rejected any possibility of the truly miraculous. I studied some of the work of theologian John Hick, who discusses alternate readings of the Gospels, but again found exactly the same problem – no supernatural.
I searched to find any scholarly textual criticism of the Bible from a more open-minded source, but was unsuccessful. I did however read several books about supernaturalist critics who set out to disprove Christianity, and ended up being converted to it through their work! Were the only people who were both supernaturalists and textual critics on the Bible already Christians or about to be? It certainly seemed so.
The more I studied, the more the implications of believing in Jesus dawned on me. Through the miracle and the prophecy he had chosen to be personally involved in my life, therefore it was natural to conclude that getting involved in people’s lives is something that he does.
If your Granddad gives you £20 a month for pocket money, it is a very small leap of faith to think he might get you something for Christmas or your birthday. In fact, it’s better than a 50-50 chance; it’s probable that he will.
If Jesus is interested enough in my personal life to get directly involved with me in miraculous ways, then it’s not even a leap of faith to believe that he preserved the Gospel scriptures that point to him, it is in fact probable.[i]
There is no other ancient document as well attested as the New Testament. Homer’s Iliad comes in second place, but the difference between the two is immense. There are 643 copies of Iliad, the earliest of which was made at least 500 years after the original. There are 5,686 copies of the New Testament (that’s around eleven times as many), the earliest of which was made less than 100 years after the original. We may not have the first copies, but the ones we have are so early that scholars can clarify the text to 99.5% accuracy. They were written by eye-witnesses, and if one is to be consistent in treating works on antiquity without bias, there are only two reasonable options following the trail of logic: if ancient writings including Plato, Homer, Josephus etc are to be accepted, then by their criteria of acceptance the New Testament must also be accepted. Alternatively, if the gospels are discarded as inaccurate and unreliable, then literally every single other ancient workmust also be discarded as unreliable and inaccurate, because they are all accepted on exponentially less evidence.
The Bible remains the bestselling book in all history, with sales of up to 6 billion. To the reader with a non-religious outlook this is easily explainable, but to someone who has accepted the existence of the divine Jesus, it bears the hallmark of supernatural promotion and preservation. 6 billion copies? There are only 6.9 billion people in the world!
I know at this point we enter the realm of serious eye-rolling for anyone reading this from an Agnostic or Atheistic perspective, but it’s always difficult for a non-religious person to see the world through the eyes of someone with a faith, and vice-versa. Having been both religious and non-religious recently, both outlooks are fairly fresh in my mind, and I sympathise thoroughly with how ridiculous we all often seem to each other.
[i] For serious academic study of the historical reliability of the Gospel documents I recommend The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell – it’s over 700 pages long, but if you have the mind for it, a worthwhile read!
