Jesus Under Fire: Twelve Reasons We Can Trust The Canonical Gospels (Craig Blomberg)

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.

According to the Times: C.H. Spurgeon 1860

March 21st, 1860


June 16th, 1860


July 9th, 1860


August 22nd, 1860

According to the Times: C.H. Spurgeon 1859

January 12th, 1859


February 7th, 1859


February 8th, 1859


March 28th, 1859


October 8th, 1859

According to the Times: C.H. Spurgeon 1858

The first article, "Spurgeon's Idea of Heaven" is really incredible. Spurgeon's ability to paint with words is simply mind-blowing. If heaven is at all the way he describes it, sign me up.

January 15th, 1858



July 21st, 1858



November 19th, 1858

According to the Times: C.H. Spurgeon 1857

I thought that it would be a fun project to see how Christianity has been documented over the past hundred years or so, and somehow ended up at the NY Times website. They have archived articles that go all the way back to 1851 and they are basically scanned copies of the originals. Thus begins my new series: According to the Times. This will be a kind of on again, off again series, and hopefully over time I can develop a "Times Timeline of Christian People & Events" that will be both fun and educational...Seriously though, I'm excited. So without further ado, I give you series post #1, "C.H. Spurgeon 1857". (Keep in mind, Spurgeon was only 23 years old in 1857.)

March 16th, 1857: Personals




March 28th, 1857: Books of the Week




July 16th, 1857: Moral and Religious Intelligence




August 8th, 1857: Moral and Religious Intelligence (This article sounds like it was written about Mark Driscoll!)