The Reliability of the Gospels: Minding the Gap Between Event and Gospel

"Many people question whether the New Testament Gospels can be trusted, given they were written decades after the events they portray and with some debate about whether we can know who wrote them. Does the combination of eyewitnesses, oral culture, tradition, and the floating nature of memory work well in an ancient setting that produced these four key books of the Bible? This class will consider how the Gospels emerged in an oral cultural context with a note about how the tradition worked, how the Gospels relate to each other (especially the relationship between the Synoptics and John), dealing with the differences between them, the role of cultural background, and finally a look at how the Gospels make a case for who Jesus is.

This is Part 1 in a 5 part series on 'The Reliability of the Gospels and Their Picture of Jesus'.

1. Minding the Gap between Event and Gospel

How can we be sure that the distance between the event and the Gospel writing preserved the event’s telling well? This is a look at how orality worked in the first century in a way that prevented free creation of events and that suggests the tradition of authorship knew what was going on."