Last night Dr. Craig Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, gave a lecture at the University of Northern Colorado. The lecture was titled, Jesus Under Fire: Twelve Reasons We Can Trust the Canonical Gospels and involved twelve main points:
1. We have highly reliable copies of the texts of what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote.
2. The authors were in a position to report accurate historical information.
3. All four gospels were written during the first century of Christianity.
4. The gospel writers would have wanted to preserve accurate history.
5. Ancient cultures meticulously cultivated the art of memorization.
6. The differences among the gospels closely match the patterns of ancient storytelling.
7. The literary genre of the gospels most resembles that of the other more trustworthy histories and biographies from the ancient world.
8. The presence of the "hard sayings" of Jesus supports the Gospels' historicity.
9. The "missing topics" Jesus does not address also support historical reliability.
10. The testimony of non-Christian writers confirms the general contours of Christ's life.
11. Archaeology has confirmed even more circumstantial details in the Gospels.
12. The testimony of other early Christian writers supports many remaining details.
You can listen to the lecture here, and the short Q&A session can be listened to here.
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