"The knowledge about the land in the Gospels concerning agriculture, architecture, botany, culture, economics, geography, language, law, personal names, politics, religion, social stratification, topography, weather, etc., are types of details that would fall away or be easy to get wrong if we did not have high quality eyewitness accounts. That combined with the incredible quality and number of manuscripts makes them the strongest historical accounts in existence."

For instance, if you were to create story that took place in another country 100 years ago that included over 100 personal names, would you be able to pick the right names and in right frequencies to be historically accurate? Our intuition about which names are common or uncommon is often inaccurate because of a small sample size, so without the Internet, it is doubtful anyone could get that right even if they were writing a modern story that took place in their own country.

There is a strong correlation between the names used in the Gospels and those that were actually used in 1st century Palestine. On the other hand, the names of 1st century Jews in Egypt had a completely different pattern. It’s not only the right frequency, but there is disambiguation for the more common names, such as Simon Peter, Simon the Zealot, Simon the Leper, Simon of Cyrene, Simon the Tanner, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, all while there is no disambiguation for the less common ones. Furthermore, the Gospels all have different patterns for how they refer to the principle character, but they all have the same pattern for disambiguation.

Names are also one of the hardest things to remember. You can remember all sorts of details about someone, but not their names because there usually isn't a logical connection between a name and the person. If the Gospels have correctly got the detail that’s the hardest thing to remember, isn't there every reason to think they could get the more important details right?

There are also other minor details that can be independently checked, such as in Luke 19, where Jesus is passing through Jericho and Zacchaeus climbs a sycamore fig tree in order to see him, so the question is...were there sycamore fig trees in Jericho at that time? The answer is yes, but someone writing from outside the land wouldn’t have known unless they had been to Jericho or someone who had been to Jericho had told them. Another example is at the feeding of the 5000, where Mark and John both comment on there being green/much grass. Mark says there were many coming and going, but he doesn't say why. John fills us in by saying it was Passover time and Luke tells us the feeding was near Bethsaida, so the question is...would there have been green grass at Passover time near Bethsaida? Precipitation charts say they were at the end of their rainy season, so yes.

The four canonical Gospels contain many of these types of minor detail that would have been very easy to get wrong if they were just making stories up, but the fact that they consistently get them right strongly indicates that they are eyewitnesses or that they were accounts given to them by eyewitnesses. If the accounts were created much later and removed from the events they narrate, then these sorts of details about the land would drop out, which is what we see when we look at non-canonical Gospels. So instead of conflicting with the canonical Gospels, they are evidence for them, because they give us a baseline for what later development would look like.

Dr. Peter Williams’ lecture on this topic.

This is greatly over-simplifying a very complex topic where there is a lot more disagreement than agreement among scholars. There are just too many things don’t fit nicely into one established theory of who copied from whom, to what extent they copied, if some copied at all, if they had a common Q source, what that hypothetical source would have contained, etc.. Even if Matthew and Luke used Mark, there is enough difference in the synoptic gospels that they qualify as independent sources, so they still remain worthy and useful sources of historical data.

Dr. Mike Licona is currently doing research into a different topic that has a strong potential to throw a monkey wrench into this one. He’s been researching almost 100 Greco-Roman biographies and looking at where they report the same events. In particular, Plutarch wrote nine biographies of people who lived around the same time and participated in some of the same events, so we can compare how he told the same story multiple times. When we do that, we see a lot of what we would call contradictions between his own accounts of the same event, but he consistently makes the same kinds of modifications over and over, which strongly suggests that they are instead intentional compositional devices. Licona has identified a number of compositional devices that ancient biographers used that gave them the flexibility to modify how they presented what they were reporting in order to emphasize, combine, or clarify something. Furthermore, Licona has identified the same compositional devices used many times in the Gospels, which also strongly suggests that they are intentional.

Some examples of the devices are compression, transference, and dislocation. Compression is where the author combined several related events that took place over a period of time and made it appear to happen at the same time. Transference is used sometimes where someone sends a messenger and the author has the person who sent the messenger saying the words rather than the messenger. Dislocation is where the author takes an event or part of an event and places it in a different context.

Dr. Mike Licona’s lecture on this topic. Apostolic authority was the primary criteria for which books were considered authoritative, so the four Gospels and Paul’s letters were quickly recognized as such by the early Church. The books of 1 Timothy and 2 Peter also testify of this. Only 7 of the 27 books in the NT canon were in question, so the councils functioned as a definitive step at the end of a careful process that confirmed those books that were already largely believed.

Gnostic teachings became popular during the 2nd century and indirectly caused the formation of canon by forcing the Church to put its stamp of approval on those books it already considered to be authoritative. Authors of new books could not pretend to be someone with apostolic authority, so it became easier for them to write about events that no one could verify, which again explains the stark contrast in historical details between them and the canonical Gospels. I think that fact combined with the late date they were written gave the Church good ground to reject the books they did. By the around start of the 3rd century, we have a number of writers that give is us a good idea of what they considered to be canonical, which are closely align with the modern canon. If you think they should have included something they didn’t, then you’re welcome to make that argument.

I’ll grant that it’s possible that Jesus was an alien, but I think anything that is logical is possible, so simply granting things that are possible isn’t saying much. However, if you say we can’t claim that Jesus was raised as long as naturalistic explanation is remotely possible, then you’re no longer doing serious history. “Careful” means an investigation that proceeds under strict controls, not stubborn denial of anything that can’t be proven beyond all doubt.

In Dr. Mike Licona’s book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, he discusses the criteria employed by professional historians for weighing hypotheses, he looks at which historical facts the vast majority of historians on both sides agree on, and he does his best to objectively apply those criteria to the Bible is order to determine which hypotheses best fits the facts.

For instance, the vast majority of historians on both sides grant the empty tomb, that the disciples believed that Jesus had appeared to them after his death, and Paul’s conversion. The idea that the body was moved explains the empty tomb, but it lacks explanatory scope because it does not explain the appearances to the disciples or Paul’s conversion. If I were to recommend one book to you, it would be this one.