The Trustworthiness of Scripture

Can We Trust the Gospels?
Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
By Mark D. Roberts
Crossway Books, 2007
(202 pages, $12.99, paperback)

Pastor and scholar Mark D. Roberts wrote this book seeking to answer the title's question: Can we trust the Gospels? Can we trust them, that is, to provide "reliable historical information about Jesus of Nazareth?" In his introductory chapter Roberts admits that after a freshmen New Testament class at Harvard, taught by a "top-notch" scholar, he could no longer "trust the Gospels to provide historically accurate knowledge of Jesus. Yet, as much as I found this skeptical perspective compelling, it didn't fully satisfy me." (16)

In a "strange twist in the road" in his junior year, in a seminar on "Christians, Jews, and Gnostics" taught by the same professor, "one of the world's foremost authorities" on Gnostic texts, Roberts "began to see the Gospels as more reliable than I had once thought, in part, as I compared them to the wildly fictional portraits of Jesus in the Gnostic Gospels." (17)

Roberts continued New Testament studies at Harvard and earned his doctorate, but his studies there and subsequently have only strengthened his confidence in the Gospels:

Beginning with my days at Harvard and continuing throughout the last three decades, I have worked away on the question of the trustworthiness of the Gospels. I have come to believe that there are solid reasons for accepting them as reliable both for history and for faith. (19)

During the past several years, Roberts published a series of articles on his website defending the Gospels against increasing attacks from scholars, the media, and even popular fiction. Can We Trust the Gospels? grew out an extended blog that he wrote in the fall of 2005. Written in a "Frequently Asked Questions" (F.A.Q.) format, the subsequent chapters address 15 major probing questions:

> Can we know what the original Gospel manuscripts really said?
> Did the evangelists know Jesus personally?
> When were the Gospels written?
> What sources did the Gospel writers use?
> Did early Christian oral tradition reliably pass down the truth about Jesus?
> What are the New Testament Gospels?
> What difference does it make that there are four Gospels?
> If the Gospels are theology, can they be history?
> Do miracles undermine the reliability of the Gospels?
> Do historical sources from the era of the Gospels support their reliability?
> Does archeology support the reliability of the Gospels?
> Did the political agenda of the early church influence the content of the Gospels?
> Why doe we have only four Gospels in the Bible?
> Can we trust the Gospels after all?

Roberts adroitly distills a lot of recent New Testament scholarship supporting the reliability of the Gospels. He clearly achieves his aim:

What makes this book distinctive is its availability to nonspecialists, including non-Christian readers. . .Can We Trust the Gospels? is meant to be a shorter book that can be easily grasped by people who don't have specialized academic knowledge and who don't want to wade through a much longer tome.