The great skeptic David Hume said witnesses should be unbiased if we’re going to consider them credible. So when skeptics look at the New Testament documents, they often ask: How can you say they are reliable when they were written by the converted? These are biased accounts written by biased people.
It’s true that the New Testament writers were biased and converted people. But that doesn’t mean they lied or exaggerated. In fact, their conversion and bias may have actually driven them to be more accurate.
To try to be clearer, let’s draw this objection out: Most of what we think we know about Jesus comes from the New Testament Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But we can’t trust those books for accurate information because they were written by the converted (so we’re told).
Now, what’s wrong with that logic? What’s wrong with that logic is that it fails to ask the important question: Why were they converted? The first and most important question is not: What were the beliefs of the New Testament writers? The first and most important question is: Why did they convert to these new beliefs in the first place? In other words, why did the New Testament writers suddenly abandon their livelihoods and treasured religious traditions for these new beliefs? Was it because they wanted power over people? What power could they have? The only thing they have to show for it was being beaten, tortured, and killed. The fact is that the New Testament writers had every earthly motive to deny the resurrection of Jesus rather than proclaim it. There was no earthly motive or incentive to make up the storyline that we see in the New Testament.
A skeptic might protest: But since the New Testament writers were converted, they can’t be objective! That’s nonsense. People can be objective even when they aren’t neutral. A doctor can give an objective diagnosis even if he has strong feelings for the patient. That is, he can be objective even though he isn’t neutral. In fact, his passion for the patient may cause him to be all the more diligent in diagnosing and then treating the disease properly.
Atheists and agnostics aren’t neutral, but they too can present objective facts if they decide to. Republicans can be objective when determining if their candidate has the moral backbone to lead the country and Democrats can be objective when ascertaining whether or not their candidate has a moral backbone to lead this country as well. Whether its medicine, politics, etc, people can become objective when making certain decisions or performing certain actions. The New Testament writers could do the same.
The truth of the matter is that all books are written for a reason, and most authors believe what they are writing! But that doesn’t mean what they write is fallacious or has no objective element. The survivors of the Holocaust who wrote down their experiences certainly were not neutral bystanders. They believed passionately in recording those events so that the world would never forget the Holocaust and, hopefully, never repeat it. While passion may cause some people to exaggerate, it may drive others to be all the more meticulous and accurate so as not to lose credibility and acceptance of the message they wish to communicate.
This distinction between the neutrality and the objectivity of the New Testament writers is an extremely important point. Too often the documents that make up the New Testament are automatically considered biased and untrustworthy. This is ironic, because those who hold this view are often biased themselves. In many cases, their bias is revealed in the fact that they have not first investigated the New Testament documents or the context in which they were written in order to make an educated assessment of their trustworthiness.
With that said, there are ways we can see if a document from antiquity is overall reliable and I have talked about these in some of my other posts (check out my writing on the Red Door blog here). The criteria of embarrassment, verified details in the accounts, undersigned coincidences, the importance of names used, and others are all types of criterion that are helpful in determining whether or not an ancient document is reliable.
