Historical reliability of the Gospels Historical reliability of the Gospels The historical reliability of the Gospels refers to the reliability and historic character of the four New Testament gospels as historical documents. Some believe that all four canonical gospels meet the five criteria for historical reliability; and others say that little in the gospels is considered to be historically reliable. Almost all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed, but scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the Biblical accounts of Jesus, and the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and
Antisemitism and the New Testament Antisemitism and the New Testament The idea that the New Testament is anti-Semitic is a controversy that has emerged in the aftermath of the Holocaust, although the Holocaust is almost exclusively known as a byproduct of the anti-Semitic ideas of racial supremacism and social Darwinism. It is often associated with a thesis put forward by Rosemary Ruether, and the various positions depend on how anti-Semitism is defined, and on scholarly disagreements over whether anti-Semitism has a monolithic continuous history, or is an umbrella term gathering in many distinct kinds of hostility to Jews over time. James Dunn has argued that