Four Reasons to Believe the Accounts of Jesus' Message and Miracles (Apologetics for Teens Part 9)

When the multiple ancient sources that mention Jesus, including the books of the New Testament, are examined, we find that they provide good reasons to trust their historical accounts. First, we have more than 20 sources that record Jesus' life and words. These sources are independent and thus record the testimonies of multiple individuals about Jesus' life. The sources written by Christians are consistent with one another and corroborate the facts contained in each account. For example, an early Christian named Papias provides an early, first-century account of Jesus that confirms what it written in the New Testament. Some skeptics point to differences between the gospel accounts found in the New Testament as evidence that they aren't reliable, but many of these criticisms are the result of an overstated "hyper-skepticism." Most gospel differences are small and reconcilable when various reasonable explanations are considered. Finally, the sources written by non-Christians also corroborate the facts contained in the Christian sources. For example, the Roman author Tacitus and the Jewish author Josephus both give us early corroborating information about Jesus. In fact, we could know many of the basic facts about Jesus' life and ministry just from reading extrabiblical, non-Christian sources.

To watch the six-part series Adam mentioned around 11:30 where he goes through the evidence provided in Bart Ehrman's book in much more detail, see here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTEkXbr4qlVPGF3Qa2td7jZtRQhhIkcha

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0:00 We Only Have Testimony About Miracles
6:28 Criteria for Ancient Historical Sources
9:23 Reason #1: We Have Multiple Sources for Jesus
13:40 Reason #2: These Sources Are Independent
17:24 One Early Christian Source: Papias
24:11 Reason #3: The Christian Sources Corroborate Each Other
28:15 Differences Between the Gospels: Hyper-Skepticism
34:50 Hyper-Skepticism Applied to Modern News Stories
39:59 Gospel Differences Are Small and Reconcilable
45:59 Reason #4: The Non-Christian Sources Corroborate Christian Sources
49:49 Non-Christian Source: Tacitus Mentions Jesus
51:58 Non-Christian Source: Josephus Mentions Jesus
54:48 What Would We Know About Jesus if We Didn't Have the Bible?