Can You Trust The New Testament? (Part 2)
3. The New Testament Writers Included Embarrassing Details About Themselves
This is what historians call the Principle of Embarrassment: if someone includes details that make themselves look bad, they’re probably telling the truth. Think about it, who lies to make themselves look worse?
The New Testament includes plenty of those moments: These aren’t details you invent to make your story more convincing.
The disciples constantly misunderstood Jesus.
They abandoned Him when He was arrested and crucified.
Peter, a prominent leader, denied even knowing Him and was called “Satan” by Jesus.
And women whose testimony wasn’t highly valued back then were the first to witness the resurrection.
The disciples are portrayed as almost dumb, uncaring, cowardly, and even doubtful of Jesus’ resurrection. Peter, the leader, denied knowing Jesus and was even called “Satan.” Women, whose testimony carried little weight in that culture, were the first witnesses of the resurrection.
If you were making up a story, why include these embarrassing details? The most logical reason for including them is that they actually happened, and that the New Testament authors are telling the truth.
4. Non-Christian sources confirm claims made in the New Testament
We have strong evidence of the Bible's reliability also because of non-Christians. At least 17 early non-Christian sources mention Jesus within 100–150 years of His life, a relatively short timeframe for ancient history.
These include historians like Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Thallus, and Phlegon, as well as Roman officials like Pliny the Younger, Emperor Trajan, and Emperor Hadrian. Even the Talmud, a Jewish text, refers to Jesus.
We know more than 60 facts about Jesus' life from sources outside the New Testament. From these sources, we can gather dozens of historical facts about Jesus’ life, without even opening the Bible. Here are some things ancient, non-Christian writers reported:
Jesus lived during the time of Tiberius Caesar
He was known for virtuous living and working wonders
He had a brother named James
He was called the Messiah
He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, on the eve of Passover
An eclipse and earthquake were reported at His death
His disciples believed He rose from the dead and were willing to die for it
Christianity spread rapidly, even to Rome, despite persecution
His followers rejected Roman gods and worshiped Jesus as divine
All of this aligns with what the New Testament said about Jesus.
5. Archaeological Discoveries Support the Accuracy of the Bible
The amount of archaeological evidence we have that supports the Bible is vast. I will only touch on one detailed example.
The FIVE PORTICOES of John 5:2. The verse says, “Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes.”
Skeptics would often say this is a fictional creation of John's to reflect a theological truth, or a pretty saying John made up about the Five Portico(porches) Pool. This is because there are no other ancient texts that specifically mention Five Portico Pools, and none have been discovered.
This all changed when the pool with five porticoes was discovered! They found, within the sheep gate, two pools with four porticoes, and in the middle of them an extra portico, giving it five porticoes. John made accurate historical remarks about the location and the pool itself.
To close, I’ll give you a brief overview of some data we know. There are more than 50 Old Testament people confirmed by archaeology, including King David, Balaam, and King Belshazzar. The New Testament has over 30 people confirmed by archaeology and non-Christian sources, such as Caiaphas(High Priest), King Herod(Judea), and Pontius Pilate.
Summary of the Five Points
We have more copies of the New Testament than any other book from the ancient world.
Most of the New Testament was written before 70 AD, not centuries later.
The New Testament writers included embarrassing details about themselves.
Non-Christian sources confirm claims made in the New Testament.
Archaeological discoveries support the accuracy of the Bible.
Based on how historians and experts look at the historical reliability of ancient documents, we can have confidence that the New Testament is indeed historically reliable.
Want to go deeper?
Information in this post is adapted from I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, and Trustworthy: Thirteen Arguments for the Reliability of the New Testament by Benjamin Shaw.