Delia Knox healed of a spinal injury


A life changing accident



Healed after 22 years



Examining the evidence





Considering the hoax accusation




Links to videos


Modern day miracles

I define a miracle as a supernatural event that cannot be explained by any natural or scientific law. Such an event would clearly be a strong evidence of the supernatural and an indication that God exists. However, it does not automatically follow that a complete absence of miracles would disprove the existence of God; it merely gives us the choice to believe one of three options: he doesn’t exist, he exists but is utterly removed from mankind or he exists but wishes to hide his existence from mankind.

In my topic, God doesn’t want his existence proven I describe how God might want his existence to remain unproven to allow mankind the freedom to make their own moral choices. However, a God who wishes to remain unproven would not necessarily want to hide his existence altogether; if he were to exist he could still reveal himself through the supernatural and still remain unproven. Most of the world’s religions believe in a God that reveals his existence on occasions and I believe that it is reasonable to expect to find some evidence that cannot be purely attributed to natural phenomenon.

Staying objective

If God were to exist he might not limit himself to supernatural acts. For example, we owe the existence of the human race to numerous highly improbable natural events. The omission of one of these would have meant that life on earth, the universe as we know it or even matter itself would not have existed. The combined improbability of these events has led some people to postulate that a divine being might be working within the natural laws of the universe to steer the outcome of chance events to create life. Others have remained resolute that God does not exist and have instead questioned the accepted understanding of the origins of the universe and life.

In the same way that the absence or rarity of miracles on their own shouldn’t lead us to assume that God doesn’t exist we need to guard against the opposite mindset where we assume that all unexplained events are miracles. We are fortunate to live in a time where our understanding of the physical world is far greater than it has ever been before. In fact, our understanding is so good that nearly all events that we experience on a day-to-day basis can be explained. However, there are still some areas of the natural world that are poorly understood. Little is known about the mechanisms that underlie the conscious mind and emotions. A profound and sudden healing of the emotions may be miraculous, but, because we know so little about the functioning of the human brain, we cannot rule out a natural cause. In addition to being cautious in areas where scientific knowledge is poor, we also need to be careful to screen out the effects of external and random influences. For example, some medical conditions can fluctuate in their intensity overtime due to any number of influences: diet, physical exercise, stress. A sudden alleviation of symptoms might be miraculous,but they might instead be attributed to one of these other external influences.

The placebo effect can add even further complications. A patient’s belief in their healing could also make them feel better even when they are not cured in the same way that the mere act of taking a sugar tablet can have the same effect.

Miracles cannot be tested like medication in a medical trial

Medical trials attempt to screen out these effects statistically by assuming that the medication that they are testing is one influence of many unknown or random influences. If the medication is a consistent positive influence then its effect will appear as a significant bias in the test results. However, we are looking for miracles that, by definition, are acts of God and are therefore subject to the will of God and not under our control.

Miracles are reported to happen to one person at a time; they aren’t repeated on demand in the same way that medication can be re-administered to a group of patients. It is impossible to use statistical analysis with this sample size of one. We are therefore forced to limit our search of the miraculous to events that are profound, where scientific and natural laws have either been broken or where the effect of the miracle is too great to be attributed to random external influences. This is a demanding challenge and would be the equivalent to finding a ‘miracle drug’ with a single medical test on a single person. This approach becomes the most sceptical of filters, screening out all events that could be attributed to natural causes.

Four criteria for a miracle to be treated as evidence of God

With this in mind my criteria for selecting these ‘super miracles’ are:

  • The natural limitations of the situation before the miracle should be fully known. So, for a healing, the health condition must be one that medical science fully understands and has identified all possible remedies that aren’t supernatural.
  • It must not be possible to attribute the miraculous change in the situation to a natural phenomenon. So, for a healing, it must not be possible to attribute the recovery to dietary change, physical exercise, the placebo effect, an immune system response or medication.
  • The change in the situation must coincide with a spiritual event or experience, for example, prayer or worship.
  • Evidence must be available for both the situation prior to the miracle and for the changed situation after the miracle. So, for a healing, these might be medical notes that record the medical condition and the recovery.

The first three criteria help ignore any miracle that could be attributed to natural phenomenon. The fourth helps to ignore those that could be attributed to exaggeration, imagination or even worse a hoax. The isolation of these ‘super miracles’ is still a work in progress for me, but for the moment here is one that has a high profile on the internet: the healing of Delia Knox.

Christians aren’t required to believe in a 6 day creation

The first chapter in the first book of the Bible (Genesis 1) unambiguously states that God created the heavens and the earth in six days. This leads some people, who may be Christians or non-Christians, to assume that Christians, by definition, must believe in a six day creation. Genesis also attributes the origin of the human species to the supernatural creation of two people, Adam and Eve, and provides enough information to make it possible to place some of the descendants of Adam and Eve into a family tree. This family tree, together with dates of later archaeological events has led some Christians to attribute an age of about 6000 years to the Earth.

The six day creation and the belief in a young Earth is one of the most divisive parts of the Bible in so far as it divides Christians from those non-Christians who concur with the theory of evolution. Scientists have spent generations considering the history of the Earth and the means by which new species arrive. They have developed strong theoretical models that seem to be correct and that are incompatible with a six day creation.

Resolving the conflict between faith and science

I’ve listed four different strategies that Christians might employ to resolve the apparent conflict between Genesis’ creation narrative and the theory of evolution. There are others, but these four cover a good range of views:

Strategy 1: View the Bible as literally correct and science as flawed

Broadly speaking, when evolution leads to the generation of new species over a large number of generations it is calledmacroevolution, but when it leads to the adaption of a species to an environmental change it is called microevolution. Microevolution is generally universally accepted and can be observed, for example, in bacterial strains developing antibiotic resistance.

Some Christians seek to identify flaws in any science that supports macroevolution or the 4.5 billion year age of the Earth. Sometimes they use science to support a belief that species were created rather than evolved and that the age of the Earth is a few millennia.

This point of view is called scientific creationism and was advocated by Phillip E. Johnson, the father of Intelligent Design, in his book Darwin on Trial. Johnson is a retired university law professor and set out in his book to demonstrate that scientists had not found sufficient evidence to prove that purely natural mechanisms were responsible for the creation of life on earth, though he did not go so far as to try to demonstrate that the earth is a few millennia old. The book has been criticised by the scientific community for containing discredited science and also for its attempt to prove creation as if it were in a criminal trial by merely presenting flaws in science and evolution. In a criminal trial the case for the defence could be made by discrediting the case for the prosecution. Science seeks to present models that describe reality. Most science is flawed to some degree and these models may not be completely accurate, but their flaws don’t automatically make the alternative models correct by default. I personally feel that the scientific models of the origin of species and the age of the Earth have proven to be too useful to scientists for too long to be dismissed lightly.

Scientific creationism has however raised some interesting arguments against a purely materialistic approach. The theory of the origin of species through evolution does not demonstrate how the very first life form came into existence. Even the most primitive single celled life form is immensely complex and employs highly sophisticated and compact mechanisms for their reproduction. Viruses are far simpler, but are unable to reproduce without host cells. Reproduction is a fundamental requirement for evolution to occur, meaning that the first life form could not have come into existence through evolution. Theories have been created to explain how inanimate matter might ‘self-organise’ into a life form that was sophisticated enough to reproduce, but these are very tenuous. At this stage in our understanding, it is very hard to imagine how life could have been formed by purely natural means, in other words, without a designer.

Strategy 2: Believe that a young Earth was created with the appearance of an old Earth

Some Christians, though only a few in my experience, believe that God could have created the Earth and the universe just a few millennia ago, but created them to appear as if they had been in existence for much longer. This is called the Omphalos hypothesis and originates from a book written by Philip Henry Gosse in 1857 called Omphalos.

Gosse argued that everything has a cycle of reproduction and development and that God must have created the Earth and everything in it fully developed, as if it had come into existence through reproduction, in order for it to properly function. He argued that the Earth would therefore have had the appearance of being older than it was. This line of reasoning does not, however, properly explain the existence of fossils within rocks or why we can see stars when their light takes millions of years to reach the Earth. These signs of age are unnecessary for the Earth and universe to function correctly. Some critics of this hypothesis have suggested that God would have had to have created a deception for the hypothesis to work and have therefore rejected it on the basis that such an action would be contrary to God’s nature.

Strategy 3: View the creation narrative in Genesis as a metaphorical description of Earth’s history

Many Christians accept that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and view the creation narrative in Genesis as being a metaphorical, but nonetheless correct, description of Earth’s history. They view the six days of creation as six periods of time, recognising that the concept of a day would not have existed prior to creation and that a day could therefore not have been a unit useful for the measurement of the creation time span.

Some of those Christians will, however, deny that macroevolution was the mechanism through which new species originated, instead choosing to believe that God intervened at specific points in Earth’s history to create new species. This is called progressive creationism. Other Christians will accept that macroevolution was the mechanism through which new species originated and believe that God used this mechanism to create the species that he wanted. This is called theistic creationism.

Many Christian denominations support or accept a non-literal interpretation of the creation narrative in Genesis along with the generally held scientific view that the age of the Earth is 4.5 billions years old.

Strategy 4: Trust the scientific model of evolution more than the Genesis creation narrative

This is not really a formally defined viewpoint, but I include it here because it is the one that I adhere to. I am essentially a theistic creationist. However, I suspect that some theistic creationists will still view the creation narrative in Genesis as the inerrant inspired Word of God, even though they interpret it as a metaphorical narrative. Their rationale being that the narrative is a theological one rather than a scientific one that should therefore be viewed as theologically inerrant. I personally struggle to attribute inerrancy in any form to the creation narrative. I’m not opposed to its theology, but I do recognise that we know very little about the narrative’s origins, authenticity and age other than that it might be a compilation of older narratives. The creation narrative clearly cannot have been recorded by eye witnesses, which means that the only reason for trusting it completely is if we were to attribute inerrancy to it by virtue of it appearing in the Bible. In my topic, The Bible should not be treated as a single inerrant book, I challenge the case for treating Genesis as inerrant, but also show that any doubt that we may have regarding the narratives of Genesis should not be automatically carried over to the rest of the Bible. The Bible should not be treated as a single book, but a collection of books written over a period of more than a millennium.

Don’t let distrust in Genesis stop you from investigating the rest of the Bible

Even though there may be grounds to distrust the creation narrative in Genesis, the gospels should be treated differently. In my topic, The Gospels are reasonable records of Jesus’ life, I show that we know far more about the origins of the gospels than of Genesis and that, by considering the society in which they were written, we can actually conclude that the authors of the gospels were attempting to write reasonably accurate records of Jesus’ life, his miracles and his resurrection and that this should lead us to seriously consider what they wrote about Jesus and who Jesus really was.

The Bible should not be treated as a single inerrant book



A look inside the Bible


  • Prophets (books written by Jewish prophets)
  • Minor prophets (smaller books written by Jewish prophets)

The New Testament contains,

  • The four gospels (biographies of Jesus’ life)
  • The epistles (various letters written to churches)
  • Revelation (an apocalyptic prophecy)





Examining the case for an inerrant Bible





The Bible contains millennia of history, not just religious doctrine




There is no natural explanation for Jesus’ miracles




Could Jesus really have performed miracles – a modern day analogy?



The Gospel of John – the best source of information



Finding miracles that aren’t open to interpretation






Appendix – References to the miraculous and Jesus’ divinity

Reference Type of Account Comments

The gospels are reasonable records of Jesus’ life

The canonical gospels are the four books in the Bible that record the events of Jesus’ life. In this topic I’ll ask whether they were fiction or fact, propaganda or a sincere attempt to record the facts of Jesus’ life.

Before we can trust the gospels as reasonable records of Jesus’ life we need to ask three questions:

  • Are our modern day gospels accurate copies of the original gospels?
  • Were the authors of the gospels motivated to record events accurately?
  • Were the authors of the gospels objective enough and able enough to record events accurately?

Are our modern day gospels accurate copies of the original gospels?

The answer to this is largely undisputed. The original gospels, being written down by a poor marginalised community, were probably written on cheap papyrus paper. Papyri in anything other than the driest of climates are almost guaranteed to perish. It is not surprising, therefore, that we do not have the originals of any of the four gospels. It is fairly typical for the originals of historical manuscripts to be lost; for example, none of the 37 originals of Shakespeare’s plays exist today, even though they were written only four hundred years ago.

Due to early persecution, the Christian community fled from the Land of Israel into other parts of the Roman Empire. It was probably this migration of Christians that initially led to the distribution of numerous copies of the gospels across the Roman Empire. Today, there are hundreds of vellum manuscripts and early papyrus fragments of New Testament texts. In contrast, we only have a single 12th century copy of Tacitus’ history of the early Roman emperors.

The prevalence of the gospel manuscripts helps us determine how similar the oldest surviving manuscripts are to the originals. A copying error or modification in one manuscript would have been preserved in its future copies. However, the errors or modifications would not have migrated across to those manuscripts that already existed. Those manuscripts would themselves be copied and distributed without those errors or modifications. The commonality between the copies that we now have gives us a feeling for how close our best copies are to the original gospels. Overall, there is good reason for us to be confident that the gospels in a modern day Bible are very close to the original gospels. There are indications of minor copying errors and some minor additions in some copies. Some of these additions can be attributed to the inclusion of marginal notes into the main text during the copying process. There seems to be one significant addition, the story of the woman caught in adultery whose imminent execution by stoning was prevented by Jesus’ words, “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” The ending of Mark’s gospel is sometimes considered to be a latter addition because it is omitted in some manuscripts, though some believe that this, because it is at the end, may have been caused by a loss of the outer pages of one manuscript, which was later copied.

Some modern Bibles highlight these differences to their readers. None of these differences give any reason at all to doubt that the gospels in a modern Bible fundamentally agree with the original gospels, in particular, with respect to their record of Jesus’ preaching, miracles, crucifixion and resurrection. In addition, the abundance of copies of the gospels means that we can be sure that a later institution or government has not biased the gospels for their own purposes. Even if they had been able to rewrite one subset of the copies, they would not have been able to destroy or rewrite all the remaining copies across the known world.

Were the authors of the gospels motivated to record events accurately?

If we can understand the motives of the gospel’s authors then we’ll be more able to decide whether we can trust the gospels ourselves. It might seem unreasonable to try and guess their motives nearly 2000 years after their writing, but, I believe, by the process of elimination, we can make a convincing attempt. The following is a list of every possible motive a writer of any narrative of events might have. They might be motivated to write:

  • Folklore that has lost touch with the events that inspired it.
  • Fiction for the purpose of entertaining its reader.
  • Propaganda for the purpose of manipulating a group of people.
  • A hoax for the purpose of fooling its readers and entertaining its writer.
  • A deliberate deception for the purpose of achieving a financial or social gain.
  • A genuine attempt to record events for the purpose of informing other readers or reminding the writer of the events in the future.

I’ll discuss each one of these in turn.

Folklore that has lost touch with the events that inspired it

I use the term ‘folklore’ here to describe stories that have been passed down through the generations and, by virtue of their retelling, have become embellished to such an extent that they no longer represent the real events that gave rise to them. This embellishment can only happen over multiple generations, allowing each generation to forget some details and embellish others. There will clearly be little or no scope for embellishment once the narrative is written down and widely circulated as a literal account

The gospels do not fit this pattern of embellishment. In my topic, The gospels were written within eye witnesses’ lifetimes, I show how they were probably written early enough to be verified by eye witnesses of Jesus and that their early acceptance into the Christian community suggests that they would have been seen as being sufficiently accurate. In addition, there is reasonable evidence indicating that the Gospel of John was indeed written by one of Jesus’ apostles. Furthermore, the commonality between the copies of the gospels that remain to this day shows that the gospel stories weren’t embellished after they were first written down. We can therefore confidently conclude that the gospels do not contain mere folklore.

Fiction for the purpose of entertaining its reader

The gospels do not exist in isolation. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus quickly inspired the formation of an early Christian community that were prepared to risk isolation, danger and death to follow their religion. The early Christians clearly didn’t behave as if they believed the gospels to be mere entertainment. Copies of letters to churches, some of which are now called epistles and are found in the Bible, clearly echo this. None of these epistles treat the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as fictional. If contemporaries of the gospel writers were convinced that the gospels were not intended to be viewed as fiction then we too can be sure of this as well.

Propaganda for the purpose of manipulating a group of people

I’m using the term ‘propaganda’ to describe a form of fabrication organised by a powerful governing body that has the means to deceive a large number of people. Throughout history many states or institutions have used propaganda to control or influence people. There were only two governing bodies in power in first century Israel: the Roman Empire and the Jewish religious authorities: the Sadducees and Pharisees. Neither the Roman Empire nor the Sadducees and Pharisees would have had any motive to write the gospels as a form of propaganda. The Christian’s refusal to worship the Roman pagan gods and their independence from the Jewish religious authorities threatened the religious status quo of both Rome and the Land of Israel. 300 years after Jesus’ death the Roman Empire Constantine might have had success uniting the Roman Empire with the Christian religion. However, up until this point, almost from Christianity’s start, the Roman Empire actually persecuted Christians and so was certainly not responsible for writing the gospels that would have been a centre of strength for the religion.


I’m using the term ‘hoax’ here to describe a fabrication that is organised by people with limited means for no purpose other than to fool its readers. Powerful governing bodies are not motived to utilise their resources to create hoaxes because hoaxes offer little gain to the hoaxers other than mere entertainment. Although a small group of people would have had the means to fabricate the gospel stories, mere entertainment would be insufficient motivation for the life’s work and full time dedication required to fool a community into believing and following this hoax. The Christian community grew too quickly and too soon to be substantiated by nothing more than fictitious characters and events. In reality, the rapid growth that early Christianity enjoyed could only have happened if Jesus and his actions were already publicly known, which they would not have been if they were the result of a fabrication.

In addition, I feel it would be unlikely that a hoax could become so firmly established that it would even be recorded as fact by the well educated Roman-Jewish historian Josephus a few decades after Jesus’ death.


If the entertainment of a hoax would have provided insufficient reward for founding a religion based on fabricated truths then maybe financial gains would have. It is true to say that religious teachers earned livings from their teachings in first century Israel. A sceptic could suggest that the apostles fabricated or embellished the gospel stories in order to earn a living from the subsequent religious following. However, the Christian community underwent severe persecution within a few years of the start of the religion. Firstly, they were persecuted by the Jewish religious authorities and then a few years later in the reign of the Roman Emperor, Nero, many of the Christians were tortured and killed. It is believed that some of the founder members, the apostles, were martyred in this latter persecution. Whatever motivation they would have gained from the livelihood offered by the new religion would have been utterly inadequate to sustain them through such terrifying persecution. The fact that Christianity instead prospered with the founding apostles holding fast to their convictions even to the point of death shows that they were convinced that their religion was based on substance not fabrication.

A genuine attempt to record events

This is the only motive for the writing of the four gospels remaining from our original list. All the others have crumbled under even very basic scrutiny. There is, however, no reason that I’m aware of for rejecting this one remaining motive. To assume this to be true would not even be a misplaced modern day notion; two of the gospels themselves, Luke and John, state that they are an attempt to record events:

Luke 1:3-4

John 21:24

I feel that there is no other reasonable explanation as to why the gospels were written. There is, however, one other question that needs answering before we can trust the gospels ourselves …


For the writers to be able to write a reasonably accurate record of events when motivated to do so three factors need to be in place: they need the time and skill to write, a source of reliable information and a moderately objective view point with which to interpret events. We know that the writers had the time and skill to write because the gospels exist, so I’ll focus my attention on the two remaining points instead. In my topic, The gospels were written within eye witnesses’ lifetimes, I describe what we know of the gospel’s authors. I believe there is adequate room for both the believer to trust and the cynic to distrust the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Although, the traditionally held view is that the Gospel of Matthew was written by the apostle Matthew there is little surviving evidence to support this. The Gospel of Luke states that it is the result of careful investigation. Although there is some evidence to suggest that Luke was a colleague of the apostle Paul, there is no record of his sources. (Paul himself was not a witness of Jesus, although he was a close colleague of the apostles who were.) In summary, there is no reason to doubt these two gospels, but, likewise, there is no reason for the cynic to believe them either.

However, there is some surviving evidence stating that the Gospel of Mark was written by a translator of the apostle Peter who transcribed the gospel from Peter’s sermons. If this is true then we know that he would have had an excellent source for his information. The Gospel of Mark does contain some reporting errors with regard to the geography of the Land of Israel and the interpretation of Jewish divorce law, but these are in keeping with the author being a non-Jew and are insufficient, in my view, to cast doubt on the basic account of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

The Gospel of John is the most interesting. It states that it was written by one of Jesus’ apostles, which, if true would mean that it would have been written by a very close eye witness of Jesus. In my topic, The gospels were written within eye witnesses’ lifetimes, I briefly describe how some early church writings state that John was the last of the apostles to write a gospel and that he lived to a great age, even into the reign of Trajan in the second century (AD 98-117). There is an inference that he wrote his gospel in his latter years. John is traditionally believed to have settled in the Hellenistic city of Ephesus in Asia Minor and the gospel was written with a style that reflects this. Some scholars have believed that the Hellenistic style dates the gospel to even later than the beginning of the second century, which, if true, would discredit its claim to being written by an apostle. However, more recently, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid 20th century has shown that a Hellenistic style of writing was in existence in the middle of the first century before AD 70. In addition, the Gospel of John includes many accounts taken from the view point of a close eye witness and it includes detailed and accurate references to geographical features of Jerusalem that would have been difficult to achieve by a writer who was not familiar with the city prior to its destruction in AD 70. It seems that there is enough evidence to challenge even the deepest of cynics that the Gospel of John was written from an excellent first hand account.

So, there is evidence to suggest that the gospels of Mark and John, at least, were supplied by eye witness accounts. Of course, any form of writing is affected in some way by the bias of its author. We need to finally ask if it is possible that the events of the gospel have been unwittingly embellished through the author’s own religious fervour or through a trick of their memory. To answer this question we need to carefully distinguish between the events that could be subjectively recorded and those that cannot. In my topic, There is no natural explanation for Jesus’ miracles, I sift through those events in the Gospel of John that are subjectively recorded and those that are based on third party evidence to see if there are enough of the remaining events, those that are objectively recorded and based on a first hand account, to justify Christianity’s claims regarding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

The gospels were written within eye witnesses’ lifetimes

The canonical gospels are the four books in the Bible that record the events of Jesus’ life. This topic discusses whether they were written early enough to be verified by eye witnesses and it forms the foundation of several of my other topics that discuss whether they can be trusted significantly to be used as evidence for the existence of God. The question of who wrote these gospels and how close they were to Jesus affects how we trust their contents.

Who wrote the gospels?

Traditionally, the authorships of the four gospels have been attributed to the apostles Matthew and John, an interpreter of the apostle Peter called Mark and a companion of the apostle Paul called Luke. However, although the contents of the gospels have been diligently copied and preserved since their creation the evidence supporting these authorships is a little sparse.

It is mostly tradition that attributes the Gospel of Matthew to the apostle Matthew, although Papias, one of the leaders of the Christian church in the second century states that, “Matthew collected the oracles in the Hebrew language,” and this is sometimes assumed to refer to a Hebrew version of the gospel of Matthew, though this is now highly contested. Papias also states that the gospel of Mark was written by Mark, the interpreter of the apostle Peter. Irenaeus, one of the church fathers in the second century, agreed that the Gospel of Luke was written by Luke the companion of Paul and this is echoed when the first person plural is used in the Acts of the Apostles (a continuation of the Gospel written by the same author), “After three months we put out to sea in a ship that had wintered the island” (Acts 28:11). Irenaeus also recorded that the Gospel of John was written by John the apostle. In his youth, Irenaeus had heard Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, speak, who in turn was a disciple of the apostle John. Epiphanius, the bishop of Salamis in the fourth century records that John delayed the writing of his gospel out of humility until he was in his nineties. Interestingly, this gospel, which mentions other apostles by name, does not mention the name of John the apostle at all, but refers to him as ‘the disciple who Jesus loved’. This might be further evidence of John’s humility and some scholars have suggested that this is a further indication that the gospel was indeed written by John.

However, the sparseness of the supporting evidence has led some scholars to question the authorship of the gospels and even their dates. It has to be said that no serious scholars have dated the gospels beyond AD 70 for Mark and AD 100 for John.

When were the gospels written?

Dating any archaeological document accurately can be difficult. References to known historical events typically cause the document to be dated after that event, whilst the lack of any reference to a significant event that would normally be expected to be found can indicate that the document was written before that event. With regard to the gospels, the date of AD 70 is profoundly significant; it is the date in which Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed by Roman soldiers following a Jewish uprising against their Roman occupiers and the subsequent siege of the city. Not only did this inflict terrible suffering on the residents of Jerusalem, but it destroyed the political and religious cornerstone of the Jewish culture at the time. The Christian community, which was predominantly resident in the Land of Israel was profoundly affected and fled to an area that is now located in present day Jordan.

The Gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke all contain a prediction of this event by Jesus:

Mark 13:1-4
‘Do you see all these great buildings?’ Jesus replied. ‘Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down'”

Some scholars have assumed that this was retrospectively written after the events of AD 70. However, John AT Robinson in his book ‘Redating the New Testament’ convincingly argues that these passages don’t accurately describe the events well enough to be written after their occurrence. They are recorded alongside Jesus’ prophesies of the end of the world and clearly show that the gospel writers were not aware that the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the world were different events. Although, both the destruction of Jerusalem and temple and the end of the world prophecies are similar in so far as they are cataclysmic, Robinson shows that the end of the world prophesies differ significantly from the AD 70 events and that they instead probably reflect the Old Testament prophesies in Daniel. Writers prior to the event of AD 70 would not have been aware of this distinction and could easily confuse the two, whilst the differences would have been obvious to writers after AD 70, who would have avoided the confusion.

Robinson also presents other similar counterarguments. For example, Matt 22:1-10 contains a parable in which a king burns the home city of some people who rejected his invitation to a banquet and killed his servants. Some scholars suggest that this burning of the city, which could easily reflect many military expeditions of the day, is actually an inference to AD 70. The perceived inference is unlikely to be real, particularly as the Caesar who sent the Roman armies to destroy Jerusalem was Nero, the infamous persecutor of Christians, who would not have been suitable inspiration for the king in the parable, which was actually an analogy of God.

Robinson concludes that there are no significant retrospective references to the events of AD 70 and quotes Charles Torrey, who argues that if none of the gospels make any retrospective references to such a momentous event then they were probably written before that event.

Where Robinson argues that there is no significant evidence to suggest that the gospels were written after AD 70, Carsten Peter Thiede in his book ‘The Jesus Papyrus’ claims that there is significant papyrological evidence to suggest that Matthew and Mark were written prior to AD 66.

Thiede redated a papyrus fragment of the Gospel of Matthew which was originally found in Luxor, Egypt in the late 1800’s and was bequeathed to Magdalen College, Oxford in 1901. He noticed that it had remarkable similarities in format and style to a smaller fragment (indexed 7Q5) found amongst the dead-sea scrolls of Qumran and concluded that it is likely to have been written about the same time. It is known that the religious community in Qumran abandoned their scrolls in AD 68 and there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that Cave 7, where the fragment was found, was ever revisited after that date. This indicates that 7Q5 was not written after AD 68. Additionally, 7Q5 was not written on a codex (a book format), but a scroll. Scrolls were quickly being superseded by codices at that time; something that affirms the earlier date. Thiede also argues that 7Q5 is a fragment of the Gospel of Mark (Mark 6:52-53); however, the small size of the fragment makes this latter point difficult to prove and highly contested.

Theide and Robinson therefore put forward strong arguments that some of the gospels, at least, were written within 2-3 decades of Jesus’ Crucifixion. They also both show how the later datings of the gospels have been based on academic assumptions, which have, in turn, been based on further assumptions, which like a house of cards, can easily fall if the underlying assumption is proven false. For example, some dates were based on the assumption that papyri would only be copied and transported between countries at an interval of ten years. These dates would then set the standard upon which other dates would be assumed. However, we now know that a papyrus could be copied and transported across the Roman Empire within days or weeks, leading to different dates.

The late datings seem to be further fuelled by a culture prevalent amongst the scholarly community in which scepticism is merited far more than a willingness to affirm traditionally held beliefs.

The Gospel of Luke is another gospel that could have easily been written before AD 70. The last half of the Acts of the Apostles closely follows the life of the Apostle Paul, even through his house arrest in Rome, but it stops short of his execution in AD 65. This is a strong indication that it was written before AD 65. In its opening sentence it also states that it is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke. This indicates that the Gospel of Luke would have been written before the Acts of the Apostles and therefore before AD 65.

To me it seems perfectly likely that some gospels at least would have been written within a few decades of Jesus’ crucifixion. The early Christian community was spawned from the Jewish community, which, in turn placed a great importance on the reading and study of scriptures. It would have seemed perfectly natural for the early Christians to document and circulate their own scriptures early on.

Their validation by eye witnesses

Gospels that were written a few decades after Jesus’ crucifixion would have been in the Christian community during the lifetime of eye witnesses of the events that they recorded. These eye witnesses would then be able to either validate or discredit those gospels, which would in turn affect how well they were accepted. There are other gospels that exist that were never included in the Bible, but, judging by the numbers of papyri that remain to this day, it would seem to me that the Biblical gospels were most widely accepted and circulated, particularly the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John. The very fact that the church fathers, such as Irenaeus, were quoting from the canonical gospels a couple of generations later shows that they had by then become trusted.

Theide’s and Robinson’s arguments are by no means universally accepted, but even if we accept the later dates suggested by the more sceptical scholars, we can still see that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke were written only four to five decades after Jesus’ crucifixion, early enough to be verified by those contemporaries of Jesus.

My feeling is that if the contemporaries of Jesus were involved in the writing and/or acceptance of these gospels then they can be trusted as a reasonable effort to record the facts of Jesus’ life as they were understood at the time.