Discovery #4 – More than just a novel?

Having come through the test for integrity with flying colors, the question now facing the New Testament is this: What if it’s just a novel? Let’s face it—if a huge cache of manuscripts for the Iliad was discovered today, giving us roughly the same amount of manuscript resources that we have with the New Testament, and allowing us to reproduce the text of the Iliad as accurately as the New Testament, it still wouldn’t change the fact that the Iliad is a story based in mythology.

“The evidence we considered in chapter three (blog posts that can be found here, here, and here) gave us the confidence to know that the New Testament records we have today are essentially the same as when eyewitnesses wrote them shortly after the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. They were transmitted accurately for 2,000 years.

We will explore these questions by using an independent source of scientific evidence. The many recent discoveries of archaeology will be used for this test—evidence which verifies that today’s New Testament records are historically reliable,” (Surprised by Faith Study and Discussion Guide, pg.31).

The writers of the New Testament claimed to be historical, eyewitness accounts of what Jesus said and did (2 Peter 1:16; Luke 1:1-4). If what they wrote proves to be historically unreliable and closer to what we consider mythology today, then the content of the entire Bible can be placed under question.