Are the NT Gospels Eyewitness Testimony? (2/5)

You are reading the second of a series of posts on the historical reliability of the NT Gospels written in response to some of the claims made in Jesus Before the Gospels by NT scholar Bart Ehrman. On page 289, Ehrman writes: “The gospels were written decades after Jesus’ death by people who were not eyewitnesses and had probably never laid eyes on an eyewitness.” [1] If Ehrman is correct, can we really trust what the NT Gospels have to tell us about Jesus? What should we make of this claim?

While it is true that most scholars, including Ehrman himself, agree that the NT Gospels were written several decades after the events they record, there is evidence within the NT Gospels themselves that suggest that they are the product of eyewitness testimony from first century Palestine. This post will take up the task of providing this evidence. 

HISTORICAL FICTION WITHOUT RESOURCES? 

Imagine with me that about thirty or so years ago in the early 1990’s there was a small religious sect in New Jersey (New Jersey just so happens to be similar in size to the area which Jesus ministered to in first century Palestine). Let’s say this small sect did most of their activity around the small towns and rural communities near the Round Valley Reservoir—which is called the “Bermuda Triangle” by most of the locals because so many boats have been lost in it. 

Now imagine that this sect’s leader was from Perryville, NJ; but made Potterstown, NJ the homebase for his ministry. Let’s say that this sect’s leader was named Joseph (incidently, Joseph was roughly as prominent a name in New Jersey during the 90’s as the name “Jesus” was during the first century in Palestine). Sometimes, Joseph would lead his followers to the state capital of New Jersey, Trenton; but when he did, he would spend the night just outside the city in a town called Mercerville (these are all real places in New Jersey by the way). Eventually, Joseph was given the death penalty after some local religious leaders convinced the New Jersey police and the governor at the time (which in 1994 was James J. Florio) that Joseph had committed a capital offense. 

If you feel like this story sounds like a modern-day version of the story of Jesus as portrayed in the NT Gospels, then you would be absolutely right! 

Now imagine with me that you don’t know the details of this story as I laid them out in the previous paragraphs, but are given the task (in 2025) of having to write a believable story regarding this sect. The only problem is that you are constrained in two ways. The first constraint is that you cannot consult any resources that tell you about New Jersey (you can’t get a book on New Jersey; you can’t look at a map of New Jersey or google anything about it). The second constraint is that you have to mention the names of the people involved in the story of this sect and those names have to match in proportion the names people had in New Jersey in the early 90’s. How likely is it that you would be able to write a story about this religious leader’s life that would be believable to those who lived in that area, at that time, and interacted with this religious leader? I think if we are honest, we would have to admit that it would be nearly impossible for us to do that, and besides why would we want to?! And yet, this is exactly the type of details we find in the NT Gospels.  

INTERNAL EVIDENCE IN THE NT GOSPELS 

In the New Testament Gospels, we have the mention of small, relatively unknown villages that existed during that time—places like Nazareth (where Jesus grew up), Capernaum (his ministry HQ), and Bethany (the village where Jesus would stay the night when he visited the capital city of Jerusalem). Some of the landmarks mentioned in the NT Gospels are even called by the name that locals gave them. Think of how they called the hill where Jesus was crucified outside of Jerusalem “Golgatha” or the “place of a skull” (Mark 15:22); or how the sea of Galilee is sometimes called by its local nickname “the sea” (Mt 13:1; 14:25; Mk 2:13; 3:7). Calling the Sea of Galilee the “sea” reminds me of when I used to live in the central valley of California and just about everyone called San Francisco “the City.” Would it have been possible to know these types of details without either having been there during the time of Jesus or having heard about them through eyewitnesses? [2]

In addition to this, there is a New Testament professor named Dr. Richard Bauckham who has done a good amount of work to show that the names found in the New Testament Gospels match in proportion names found during the time of Jesus in Palestine, which are different in proportion to names found among Jews outside of Palestine. Would someone have been able to reproduce names in this way if these stories did not originate with eyewitnesses? [3]

These examples, plus others—such as speaking of travel in terms of elevation appropriate to the topography of the area (ex: “going up to Jerusalem” or “down to Capernaum”) or referring to specific gardens that only those familiar with the area would know, like the Garden of Gethsemane or the Garden near Golgatha—all suggest that the New Testament Gospels are either the product of the writer’s own experiences of those areas as they walked with Jesus or that they were very attentive to the eyewitness testimony of someone else who was. There is no other way they would have had this type of knowledge. Incidentally, the other ancient Christian writings that Ehrman sometimes cites as having just as much claim to historical accuracy as the NT Gospels, such as the Acts of Peter or the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, do not share these characteristics. [4]

CONCLUSION

Contrary to Ehrman’s claims, internal evidence found within the NT Gospels suggest that they are the product of eyewitness testimony regarding the life and ministry of Jesus from first century Palestine. This is just one piece of the puzzle supporting my larger thesis:

Rather than being the products of stories and memories of Jesus freely and frequently reshaped to meet the immediate needs of different early Christian communities, the NT Gospels are the reports of carefully preserved eyewitness testimony written down within the lifetimes of those who would have been able to and would have desired to safeguard their historical accuracy.  

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[1] Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), 289.

[2] Peter J. Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels? (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2018), 51-63.

[3] Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 84.

[4] Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 63, 69.