Bible

[husker]

If we cannot trust that the apostles accurately taught the people what Jesus Himself taught while He was on earth, or what He taught them by divine revelation after His ascension, why should we trust what they wrote concerning Christ's teachings and deeds in the Gospels? After all, Jesus did not write an autobiography. Jesus' words and deeds have only been preserved for us by the apostles (and Mark) in the Gospels that bear their names. The trustworthiness of those records depends on the trustworthiness of those who recorded them. If the apostles were guilty of teaching doctrines in contradiction to Christ's teachings why should we believe they quoted Christ accurately? Why should we believe that what the apostles recorded Christ as saying is truly an accurate report of Christ's words if the apostles are not trustworthy enough to continue in Christ's teachings themselves? Why would they want to accurately report what Jesus said and did if what Jesus said and did was in opposition to what they were teaching and doing? If their teachings truly differed from Jesus' teachings it would be most reasonable to assume that they would attempt to alter His words so that they would match their own. Maybe they just made stuff up, or misquoted Jesus on purpose. That is what we would expect from people of such an immoral character as to deviate from Christ's teachings in order to advance their own, and advance them in the name of Christ. Seeing that the NT is the only place in which we find Christ's teachings discussed from those who purport to have been eyewitness, and seeing that we have no reason to believe that such liars and deceivers as the apostles would want to preserve His true words (because it would contradict their own), we would have every reason to doubt that the teachings ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels are really Jesus' teachings, and thus we have no source to know what Jesus truly taught. Ultimately this leads us to believe that the whole NT is a lie, not just the epistles.

It may be argued that while the apostles deviated from Christ's teachings, the histories of Christ they penned are reliable. It must be recognized that the Gospels are not a mere history or biography of Christ, but a theological history. Even the casual observer will notice that the Gospels do not always record Jesus' words the same way, nor His live-events in the same order. Each evangelist quoted Christ in different ways and in different contexts, rearranging the historical timeline of those events to convey his own unique theological purpose. The Gospel writers, then, were not acting as mere historians, but rather as theologians. If their theology was contradictory to Christ's, why should we trust the theological history they penned involving Christ's words? We would have every reason to believe they manipulated His words to say what they wanted them to say, not what Jesus actually said, or meant to say by those words.

The real question here is What basis do we have to believe that the words and deeds attributed to Christ in the Gospels are actually Christ's words and deeds, and not just the apostles' fabrication or manipulation of those words/deeds to fit their own deceptive teachings? One cannot critically deny the words of the apostles and at the same time accept uncritically the words those same deceivers attributed to Christ. If we have reason to doubt that the words of the apostles are truth, we should equally doubt that the words they attributed to Christ are truth. The belief that the apostles' doctrine is not to be trusted, while their records of Christ's teachings can be, then, is not justified.
http://www.apostolic.net/biblicalstudies/jesuswords.htm
by
Jason Dulle
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