In this eight part series we will be looking at a timeline from Jesus’ death and resurrection in 33AD up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD and how the gospels and nearly all of the New Testament came together during this time.  This week in Part 1 we start with an overview of how this 37 year timeframe changed the world!

“The fact that something is written down is persuasive to people not used to asking questions like: ‘Who wrote it, and when?’ ‘How did they know what to write?’ ‘Did they, in their time, really mean what we, in our time, understand them to be saying?’ ‘Were they unbiased observers, or did they have an agenda that colored their writing?’  Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the history of the real world.  All were written long after the death of Jesus, and also after the epistles of Paul, which mention almost none of the alleged facts of Jesus’ life.”  Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006

“Such skepticism has become endemic in Gospel studies as a result of form criticism.  Many New Testament scholars seem to suppose that the more skeptical of the sources they are, the more rigorously historical is their method.  But this is not how historians usually work.  In good historical work it is no more an epistemic virtue to be skeptical than it is to be credulous.  In everyday life, we do not systematically mistrust everything anyone tells us…When someone is who is in a position to know what they tell us does so, we normally believe them.  But we keep our critical faculties alert and raise questions if there is specific reason to doubt.  There is no reason why historical work should be substantially different in its dialectic of trust and critical assessment.” Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2006