How do we know there was a George Washington? Or, reaching farther back, a Julius Caesar? Or, reaching farther still, an Alexander the Great? The same way we know there was a Jesus of Nazareth. We know the deeds and words of historical people by the history we have of them. The quantity and quality of historical sources we have for Jesus of Nazareth embodied in the New Testament rival that of any figure in ancient history – religious or otherwise. Therefore, if it’s history we need to provide a basis for faith, we have way more than enough in the 27 New Testament texts.
When professional historians want to learn about a person from the past, they search hardest for what are called “primary historical sources.” Such sources include, but are not limited to letters, diaries, and journals produced either by the person or by people who knew the person. There can be many other historical sources besides the primary ones, but they are all secondary. For a historian, secondary historical sources are legitimate and helpful, but not as valuable as primary sources. When you and I read history books, we are reading secondary sources; the historians have done the grueling work of finding and examining the primary sources for us, and the history books they write are a report of what they learned. This saves us time but leaves us one step removed from the primary sources.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the New Testament is that the primary historical sources have been put on full display for anyone who wants to know about the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The New Testament thus puts at our disposal the best sources that professional historians have at their disposal. Historians usually have to dig around in dank basements or cavernous libraries to locate primary sources, but we receive them as if they’re served on a silver platter.
Notice that in all that I am saying here, I am keeping to a historical perspective on Jesus, independent of any religious analysis or implications. That is, I’m talking here about the New Testament strictly as the word of men – not as the word of God. Put another way, let’s just focus on searching for facts until we’ve found the most important ones. Then we can make whatever decisions we need to make about religious aspects.
All 27 of the New Testament texts were written in the 1st century by members of the same generation of which Jesus was a part. We know this, as well as the identity of writers, from the people who first received those writings and then spread them around to other Christian congregations, all of whom subsequently passed them down to succeeding generations. And so this process continued, generation after generation.
By the 4th century, when the Roman emperor and then the empire itself were ready to adopt Christianity instead of persecute it, the thousands of Christian congregations spread all over the world were bearing a common witness to what came to be considered the founding documents of their movement – collectively called the New Testament. There were some disagreements here or there about this text or that, but all such disagreements were settled without an ecumenical council as was required for theological controversies. This is because the authenticity and authorship of texts is a matter of tracing sources through a chain of custody, not of debating and voting on varying theological interpretations. It was fundamentally a matter of validating sources and rooting out counterfeits.
After the 3-4 hundred years of vetting, here are the eight authors with their respective contributions that stood the test.
- Apostles
- The Original Twelve
- Peter – 2 letters
- John – 1 Gospel, 3 letters, and Revelation
- Matthew – 1 Gospel
- Other
- Paul – 14 letters
- The Original Twelve
- Brothers
- James – 1 letter
- Jude – 1 letter
- Helpers
- Mark (associate of Peter’s) – 1 Gospel
- Luke – (associate of Paul’s) – 1 Gospel and Acts of the Apostles
There are two general kinds of writing in the New Testament:
- Gospels (4) and the Acts of the Apostles (1) – biographical about Jesus and his apostles
- Letters (22) – also called epistles, these are communications to churches about a wide variety of subjects
The 27 writings of these 8 men not only bear witness to Jesus, the men bear witness to each other. That is, in Paul’s writings, he makes reference to Peter. In Peter’s writings, he makes reference to Paul. And so on. Such references confirm that these men not only had connections to Jesus, they had connections to each other.
As the writings themselves indicate, the apostles’ mission was oral in nature. That is, the apostles accomplished their work through face-to-face preaching. They were not engaged in a publishing enterprise. What writing they did was driven by particular needs – such as an apostle’s inability to be in two places at the same time (the letters), or the threat of martyrdom that made it prudent to get facts about Jesus into writing before the apostles were all killed (the gospels). And even when they wrote, it was with the intent that the writing was to be read aloud in church gatherings.
Not only was writing incidental to the apostles’ mission, the writings were internal to the movement. That is, they were not directed to skeptics and certainly not to posterity. These writings have a tone of immediacy and they leave unanswered the kinds of questions that posterity would naturally have. The writers and readers knew each other, or else there was an intermediary delivering the document who could fill in the gaps. In other words, these writings read like those of the individual leaders of the first stage of any major social movement – not like the official communications of an organization or organizations that such a movement spawns. This personal aspect is the nature of primary historical sources and one of the factors that makes them so valuable. Their purpose is not to convince historians of anything, but simply to advance the social movement. Such writing makes for more reliable history because it catches people being themselves.
Given that the printing press wasn’t invented until the 15th century, modern liberal academics claim that these historical texts are not reliable because they have been corrupted over time by the errors that inevitably come with handwritten copies. But if handwriting disqualifies these texts, it would disqualify all texts written before the 15th century. Are we as a society to give ourselves Alzheimer’s concerning all ancient history because it was written and copied by hand? Will academics give up Homer, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, and a host of other ancient authors because they didn’t use keyboards and machine copiers? The 27 New Testament texts and 8 authors should be judged by the same standards used for all pre-printing press writings, and by those standards are just as reliable as any other writings from antiquity – if not more so.
A similar complaint made by some modern “experts” is that we cannot be sure of what the New Testament texts say because we no longer have the originals. What would having the originals tell us that we don’t already know? If all the copies of a book say the same thing, then we know what the original of it says. Do you inquire about the status of the originals when you check books out of the library or buy them at a bookstore?
The New Testament that is accessible to you and everyone else reflects what the eight men wrote. The proof of this is that all New Testaments say the same thing. They may be written in different languages. And there are surely different translations in the same language. And there are discrepancies in certain words, verses and even a few passages – but the discrepancies are all minor. Materially, the contents of all 27 texts are identical. Any “expert” denying this is doing so for reasons other than historiographical ones.
The New Testament may have been written and assembled in ancient times, but this does not prevent modern people from knowing what was written.
Related essays:
What Does the New Testament’s Table of Contents Tell Us? (9 min)
Lunatic, Liar, Lord…or Legend? (5 min)
All Essays
9/28/25
The Duty of a Man 