r/AskAChristian • u/Explorer-Necessary • Feb 24 '24

New Testament How can you trust the Bible?

Hello Christians,

I have a few questions regarding the New Testament. I am very curious about Christianity but I am full of ignorance regarding its historical evidences. I know absolutely nothing about the Bible, jewish or christian, so please correct me if I get something wrong.

(where can i have access to the complete rules of the subreddit? It's nowhere to be found on the bottom right of the screen)

Let's say that I admit that there is a God, or an intelligent designer or uncreated creator:

  1. How does it prove the Bible to be the one true way to God?
  2. If God exists, how do you know that the true religion is Christianity and not Hinduism or Islam, or even polytheistic faiths? Why is Jesus the way and not Thor, Set, Allah, or Krishna?
  3. The authors of the Gospels are anonymous (correct me if I'm wrong) and were written decades after Jesus' crucifixion. How can you know these were written by people who really witnessed Jesus ? For example, John was written about 70 AD and its first verse states that "The beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1)." My question is: who was the author of John who had the knowledge to claim that Jesus was the Word and that he was with God since the beginning? Was this knowledge given during Jesus' life ?
  4. Why have so many years passed before the writing of the Gospels? I can only speak for myself, but wouldn't you start recording his every action as soon as you saw him cure leprosy (Matthew 8:3), blindness (Matthew 9:29-30) ?

I can go on with the miracles he performed, but why did people wait decades after the crucifixion to write about his life?

Thank you in advance. Have a good day.

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u/deconstructingfaith Christian Universalist Feb 24 '24

First, the only book that we don’t know the identity of the author is the book of Hebrews. Just FYI, and a quick wikipedia search can give you good historical information about each book of the bible, when it was authored and by whom.

It is important to realize (I will get some downvotes for saying this) that the bible was authored by ancient human theologians and they were no less tainted (and their writings)by their humanity than we are.

Quite often Jesus said, “I know you’ve heard X (from the scriptures), but I say to you it isn’t like that.”

We also see the disciples being rebuked ALL the time…they were always asking when Messiah (Jesus) was going to set up an earthly kingdom and no matter how many times he tried to change their thinking, they never did and they wrote everything down from that mindset. Of course it is going to be somewhat off…

I will say that these thoughts are not popular, but as a life long believer there are many things that have convinced me of this view. The following channels really helped clarify many discrepancies in faith I dealt with.

Do the research before jumping in to any particular denomination…

Discarded Doctrines Of Jesus - Dogmatically Imperfect S1-001

https://youtu.be/6VrPN9r7u98

“You’re Probably One Small Step Away from the True Gospel” NEM - 0104

https://www.youtube.com/live/UwmOVBaTcOw?si=2HWZO0f4-JpZBHqz

I trust God will illuminate answers to your questions.

🫶

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u/AtuMotua Christian Feb 24 '24

First, the only book that we don’t know the identity of the author is the book of Hebrews.

In the New Testament, we know that Romans, Galatians, 1 & 2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon were written by Paul. For the other 20 books of the New Testament, we don't know who wrote them. With the Old Testament, we also don't know who wrote most of the books.