As a church, we look to the Bible for answers to life’s big questions. However, many people question the Bible’s accuracy and some even label it “fake news”, so how can we be sure that we can trust the Bible for these answers? In light of this, “Is the Bible Fake News” was the “big question” we explored in our message this past weekend.  I had a chance to share my thoughts on this topic in that message (found here, starting at 43:15) and previously posted on the topic (see this post from last year), but now want to go a little further in thinking through the concept of “fake news” as it relates to the Bible. I will focus mainly on the New Testament gospels not only because of my research interests, but also because I believe the truth of the Christian faith rises and falls upon the person and work of Jesus, and thus the reliability of the New Testament gospels.

The Correct Category: News

In one sense, the category of “news” is what we should think as it relates to the Bible. There are a number of different genres in the Bible (some of which is poetry, and thus figurative language), but the overall message is that of testifying of what God has done — it is like the news in that it is reporting the actual events that took place! While most of the news we see on television is of  bad things going on in our world (crimes, disasters, etc.), the Bible features good news in what God has done to save sinful people. In fact, it is not just some good news that lifts your spirit in this time of much turmoil and confusion, it is THE good news that brings answers to the deepest questions in life. Therefore, we should look at the Bible, and especially the gospels we have as news.

The “Other” Gospels Are Fake News

Every now and then you will hear various stories about other gospels (stories of Jesus) that people claim show the “truth” about Jesus as opposed to the gospels we have in the Bible. The ones perhaps most well known are the “Gospel of Thomas” and the “Gospel of Judas”, but there are many others out there. In many ways, these stories and gospels are great examples of “fake news,” both in terms of the claims about the books and also what is found in the books. 

The claims about these gospels are greatly overstated. For example, the evidence that we have for these gospels in comparison to the New Testament gospels is vastly inferior in terms of quality and quantity — the manuscripts we have of the New Testament gospels are much earlier and closer to the date of the New Testament writings and there are also many of them. In fact, some of the gospels that people start talking about – such as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” that was said to be found years ago, are very fragmentary and require much reconstruction and speculation about the words. (FYI,  the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” was shown to be much later than initially thought and potentially a forgery, and the translation some scholars offered has also been challenged.) In addition, when we start looking at these “other gospels,” we notice that they seem to be dependent upon and addressing issues we find in the New Testament gospels — showing that their origins are later than the gospels in the New Testament. In fact, it seems that the “Gospel of Thomas” was written after the church had already discussed that there were four gospels (the four that we know). Therefore, from an objective standpoint, they do not offer a better window into Jesus.

These “other” gospels are also fake news in the sense that they seem to be imitations of what we find in the gospels of the New Testament. While often called “gospels,” they look very different, not following the same patterns we find in the New Testament in terms of a historical narrative; many are only particular instances or occurrences in Jesus’s life and do not fit the ancient genre of biography. Others are simply sayings that have been strung together, with the “Gospel of Thomas” being the most prominent of those. In addition, while the New Testament gospels present realistic pictures that seem to be rooted in the time and space of Palestine, these other gospels do not feature the same sort of details (or accuracy). For example, though the language may be figurative, in the “Gospel of Peter” there seems to be a gigantic Jesus coming from the tomb and/or a talking cross)! The New Testament gospels feature miracles that might be hard to believe in some ways, but seem described in ways that are realistic. In Can We Trust the Gospels?, Peter Williams notes how the New Testament gospels have remarkable familiarity with the geography and bodies of water in Palestine, while the other gospels barely mention places. In addition, the majority of names that appear in the “Gospel of Judas” do not reflect the names of the time, and when common names are used in some of the other gospels, they do not make the same attempts at clarifying which particular person has this name (as we see in the New Testament gospels). Thus, they are imitations, serving as “click-bait” (if you will) offering alternative views or a conspiracy theory about the origins of Christianity that will appeal to people who desire to find a truth other than that found in the gospel.

One final note: if someone says that these other gospels are to be considered in terms of finding the “truth” about Jesus, I always encourage them to read them and then examine them in comparison to what we have in the New Testament. Here are a couple of the excerpts from the “Gospel of Thomas” (translated by Marvin Meyer in the Nag Hammadi Scriptures).

Saying 114: (1) Simon Peter said to them: “Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of life. (2) Jesus said: “Look, I shall guide her to make her male, so that she too might become a living spirit resembling you males. (3) For every female who makes herself male will enter heaven’s kingdom” 

Saying 7: (1) Jesus said: “Blessed is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. (2) And cursed is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion will become human.”

I find these sayings to be bizarre, and while there are some potential explanations for what they are saying in the context of the overall teaching and worldview found in the community in the “Gospel of Thomas”, I am not exactly sure why these teachings are deemed by some to be more likely true and/or more appealing.

News You Can Trust

To go back to the “news” analogy, I would say that the Bible is “news you can trust.” In terms of the manuscripts we have and the transmission process, I believe we can trust that the words we are reading today in our Bibles are the words that were actually written. When we examine the data, we see that it fits the historical and cultural context of the time and also reflects how ancient history was compiled. It is true that the gospel writers were not objective, unbiased writers, but we must remember that no ancient historians were objective outsiders, but typically witnesses who had access to the events; also,  no one is ever truly 100% objective. They wrote what they believe happened. and I trust that they were telling the truth. While watching the news does one of two things: makes me sad or makes me do nothing,  this good news can give us hope and should lead us into action. The Bible is not “fake news” — it is good news!

An Additional Note: Upcoming Posts and Other Resources

My plan for the posts in the next few weeks is to discuss some of the questions that have been submitted but not addressed in other places, such as in the sermons or on Facebook videos. I’m looking forward to answering the questions that we have received. 

For more on the background of how we got the Bible, I wrote a series of posts back in February 2016 that might prove helpful. 

There are also a number of books that go into more depth on this topic. Here are some  recommended.

These books are written for a general audience (so not specialized, scholarly books) and cover why we believe the Bible is accurate, with the Strobel book focusing more on the New Testament and the McDowells on the entire Bible:

• Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
• Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Joshua and Sean McDowell

These books cover why we believe in the historical reliability of the gospels and New Testament  (might be a little more technical in places than the ones above).

• Can We Trust the Gospels? by Peter J. Williams
• Historical Reliability of the New Testament by Craig Blomberg

These two focus on the Old Testament. The first one is a LONG and thick one that may assume a good background of issues; the second one is a little older but also helpful. 

• On Reliability of The Old Testament by Kenneth S. Kitchen
• The Old Testament Documents – Are They Reliable and Relevant? by Walter Kaiser  

Questions about the Bible or theology? Email them to Pastor Brian at Theology@WeAreFaith.org. You can also request to receive weekly emails with our blog posts by filling out the information on the right side.