God's Not Dead: Evidence for God in an Age of Uncertainty by Rice Broocks

sources faithfully. Minor differences do exist between parallel accounts, but these tensions are usually explained in terms of the flexibility ancient authors had in rearranging material, paraphrasing teachings, and contextualizing stories for particular audiences. 14 Some differences are more challenging to harmonize, such as the accounts of Judas’s death (Matthew 27:5; Acts 1:18). However, none of these tensions affect our understanding of the core message or events, and no unbiased historian would consider these differences as evidence that the books were fabrications.
    Even more striking, descriptions of events in one gospel “interlock” with parallel descriptions in other gospels. For instance, Jesus asked Philip where they could buy food in John’s account of a miraculous feeding (6:5), but no explanation is given as to why Philip was asked. In Luke we learn that this miracle occurred near Bethsaida (9:10), which was Philip’s hometown (John 12:21). Jesus asking Philip, as described in John, makes sense with the additional information from Luke. These connections show that the gospel stories must have been based on real historical events. 15
    A RCHAEOLOGICALLY V ERIFIED
    Archaeology has verified the historicity of the Bible. The view that the New Testament authors were intimately involved in the stories they described is supported by numerous archaeological confirmations. For instance, the famed archaeologist William Ramsay confirmed that countless details in the book of Acts are correct. He originally expected his studies to disprove the book’s reliability, but his work proved his theory wrong.
    The more I have studied the narrative of the Acts, and the more I have learned year after year about Graeco-Roman society and thoughts and fashions, and organization in those provinces, the more I admire and the better I understand. I set out to look for truth on the borderland where Greece and Asia meet, and found it [in the Book of Acts]. You may press the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historian’s, and they stand the keenest scrutiny and the hardest treatment, provided always that the critic knows the subject and does not go beyond the limits of science and of justice. 16
    More recent scholars have likewise confirmed the extraordinary reliability of Luke as a historian. 17
    Archaeologists have also confirmed countless details in the Gospels from the description of the pool at Bethesda (John 5:2) to details about the coin mentioned when Jesus was questioned about paying taxes to Caesar (Mark 12:13–17). Since many such details in the Gospels and Acts were not widely known outside the original locales, the authors must have been drawing from firsthand experience. 18
    The historical reliability of the Old Testament is a much more complex question since many of the recorded events take place in the distant past. Many of the details that were challenged by skeptics have been confirmed by recent archaeological evidence. In summary, the Old Testament has fared quite well where compared to other ancient documents. 19 Any remaining historical difficulties in no way threaten the Bible’s reliability.
    R ELIABLE M ANUSCRIPTS
    The number of early manuscripts of the New Testament far exceeds any other ancient documents’. For instance, manuscripts of the early Greek writer Homer ’s Iliad are more than a half millennium later, with less than two thousand discovered. But there are more than five thousand copies of the New Testament, and more than one hundred were written within the first four centuries.
    Let me repeat: the majority of the differences between manuscripts simply consist of differences in spelling, different synonyms, and summaries of sections. Very few differences represent significantly different understandings of the text, and none in any way alter any foundational Christian teaching.
    The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed startling evidence for the reliability and integrity of the Old