Monday, December 6, 2010

More thoughts and ideas

I write in reply to Tony Sturgess's repudiation of Bryan Patterson's article from the Sunday Herald Sun on 28 November.

Sturgess wrote that 'evidence for the existence of Jesus is of poor quality.'

This is not the case. Apart from the New Testament in the Bible, there exists secondary, external evidence that Jesus Christ existed. Among them, are the writings of first century Roman historians, Tacitus, and Suetonius. A Jewish historian who lived in the first century, Josephus, wrote about Jesus, too.

As for the reliability of the New Testament, in the ancient texts, there are 5000 copies written in Greek, 10,000 Latin, and 9,300 others. These are identical, and respected Biblical scholars agree that these have not been embellished in any way.

Compare this to other ancient writings, such as Herodotus, which has eight copies.

Whilst it is up to the individual to decide for themselves whether they will believe that what is recorded about Jesus in the New Testament is true, does this sound like 'poor quality'?