The New Testament is a reliable account on the life of Jesus

Welcome to this debate, I will be defending the statement that the account of the New Testament are reliable on the life of Jesus, infact I will go one step further. The New Testament accounts, are the most reliable documents on any historical figure during the 1st century. Their will be themes that I will discuss throughout: 1. Reliability of the Manuscripts- Have they been transmitted correctly? 2. Internal Reliability of the Documents- are there signs within that demonstrate they are reliable? 3. External Reliability of the Documents- Do they agree with other sources around the time? Before I begin argueing, I wan't to make a few things clear: 1. The reliability has to be proven without appealing to the Supernatural 2. I will be comparing the NT to other historical figures- a standard to assess 3. This debate isn't about science, but history, so arguments about whether or not miracles are not are possible won't be refuted, that can be done in another debate. Ok on to the topic: 1. Reliability of Manuscripts: Before even assesing the content, the copies we have today have to be established as the majority of the text to be contained with the originals. Just to note, I do accept that certain passages have been included into the text, such as Mark 16: 9-20, but using this discredits the passage, not the wholethe whole 27 books. The way by which historians do this is by manuscript tradition. Below are a list of ancient works and their manuscript tradition, if you want sources please say: Caesers Writings: Earliest Copy 1000 years after being written, Number of Manuscripts: 10 Tacitus: Earliest copy 1000 years after, Number of Manuscripts: 20 Suetonius: Earliest copy 800 years after, Number of Manuscripts: 8 Homer: Earliest copy 500 years after, Number of Manuscripts: 643 The reason why I have listed these 4, is due to the fact that these writings establish alot we know about ancient Rome and the Greeks, now to be compared to the New Testament: Earliest Copy: Less than 100 years, some scholars even say 25 years after being written Number of Manuscripts: 5,700 in Greek alone, 24,000+ in all other languages The earliest full copy of the New Testament, appear around the early 4th century, with large portions and complete books appearing around the late 2nd and early 3rd century Scholar John Warwick Montgomery says: "to be sceptical of the resultant text of the NT is to allow all other classical antiqutiy to slip into obscurity" Sir Frederic G Kenyon principal librarian of the British Museum states "Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament maybe regarded as established" I challenge you to find one ancient work of antiquity that's manuscript attestation is as large, early and freely transmitted across the globe. Now just because you have a solid manuscript tradiition, doesn't mean the manuscripts you have are any good, or agree, variants have to come into consideration. Bart Ehrman, is renowned for saying there are 400,000 variants in the NT manuscripts, which, anyone can agree, is huge, at first glance, until you really understand what a variant is. A variant, simply means a difference, this can be, and is the majority of the time as small as a letter or grammar, such as in 1 John 1: 4 where two variants occur in many manuscripts "We write this to make our joy complete." "We write this to make your joy complete." Out of those 400,000 variants, only 0.01% of these can't be distuinguished between scholars due to appearing in multiple manuscripts equally and have an viable effect on what the text says. This moves this down to, 40 variants in the whole 5,800 Greek Manuscripts. Considering that there are more than 830,000 letters in the New Testament and there are thousands of manuscripts which contain thousands of charecters, that equates to around 4.8x10 to the power of 9 in total of all manuscripts, placing 400,000 as not even 0.001% of the charecters in the manuscripts being different. Secondly, it is well known the New Testament was a freely transmitted text, which means some manucripts haven't been in touch for hundreds of years in completely different locations yet when we compare them, say exactly the same thing. 2. Internal Evidence for the Reliability This is reffering to the New Testament alone, one thing has to be understood, that the documents are actually 27 documents, with multiple authors written in different locations, but since the Gospels are the main sources of data for Jesus, I will only really focus on these. Dating The dates given for the gospels haven't been established by NT scholars, this is due to the lack of information from the writers on when they were written, however there are hints, some give evidence for early dates such as how acts ends abruptly on the imprisonment of Paul (61 AD) and have no mention of any events such as other deaths, the Fall of Jerusalem after. One thing for certain, they were written in the 1st century, this is due to finding manuscripts of the latest Gospel, John, far away from original location which date to the early 2nd century, the time taken for these manuscripts to be written, transcribed then transported would take years. In additon to this, Early Church Father such as Clement or Ignatius at the brink of the 1st and 2nd century, start to quote and write about them. Personally, I don't care if they were written in 30 AD, or 99 AD, as long as the actual sources and information within them dates back to the disciples, it doesn't bother me. But lets say we go with the standard dating, of Paul's Letters of 50-60 AD, Gospel of Mark 65-70 AD, Gospel of Matthew and Luke 80-90 AD and John 90-95 AD. How do these sources compare to other historical figures? If we look at Alexander the Great, he has 5 primary sources, similar to the NT, however these don't within the century he was born, not even the year after, infact Plutarch writes almost 500 years after the events, yet these are considered reliable enough accounts on the life of the Great. Emperor Tiberius, who ruled during the time of Jesus, two main sources (Suetonius and Tactius) date to the 2nd century, infact one of the first mentions is in the Gospel of Luke. Once you compare, the 4 gospels to other historical works, the dating becomes no problem for the scholar, since the documents demonstrate a line of tradition going back to the original disciples and Paul. Authorship Much dispute is on who wrote the Gospels, one thing for sure, is that they MUST of been followers of the original disciples at the very minimum, to have such authority and considered scripture by 1st/2nd century Christians who quoted them and lived with the disciples of Jesus. Secondly, the argument that they aren't eyewitnesses, has no credibility once you apply the same standard to other historical figures, infact, Christians already admitted this, with Luke who was a follower of Paul, and Mark a follower of Peter. To state two members as the authors, who never even met Jesus, rather than one of the 12 disciples, seems very unlikely to be made up by the early church, why not Peter or one of the others? This is what we find in later, gnostic gospels. Again, it doesn't matter, when the information within the text goes back to the eyewitnesses, which i will prove in Round 2, but even the claim that Matthew and John weren't written by eyewitnesses, lacks conviction, once you see the evidence in comparison to the Historical Method. When looking at the external attestation, we find that followers of early disciples such as Polycarp, Justin Martyr etc, all s attribute the gospels to the authors they say, and never anyone else. Infact, when we see the map of whole vast this attestation was of who wrote the gospels, across vast countries, in the 2nd and 3rd century, the date to the origins literally falls back to when they were written. In comparsion, the first mention of who wrote the Annals (By Tacitus) was over 300 years after being written, by one man, the New Testament has dozens by that time, and several within 50-100 years. 3. External Evidence When we look at other accounts on who they said Jesus was: Christian, Jewish, Greek, Roman etc, we find complete agreement with the New Testament text. Tacitus (115 AD) , one of the greatest Roman Historians of all time on many emperors and events of the 1st century, who had access to primary data, being a senator such as the Actus Senatus, and other historians works, comments of Jesus' crucifixion under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius and being the founder of the group, which lead to mischevious superstition, and persecution of the Christians, this is supported by Josephus (90 AD) twice, born in a Pharisee background, once with the death of James, and also comments on Jesus' crucifixion and who Christians thought he was, and how they report he rose again, Suetonius (107 AD) on expelling the Jews from Rome because of the problems of jesus, and the persecution of the Christians along with Pliny the Younger, on their early teachings, with the gospels and pauls letters, the Crucifixion even according to Bart Ehrman, is the GREATEST fact in ancient 1st century history. 40 authors mention Jesus and his life, to compare to the gospels within 150 years, this is compared to Emperor Tiberius who had 9 in the same period, even if you removed the Christian writings, you have a Jewish Carpenter equalling the amount of attestation as the Emperor of Rome. I will go into more detail in round 2 especially on archealogy I have shown that when applying the same standard of the NT to any other book, it comes out far more reliable and stronger, with multiple attestation from various sources, all agreeing on the death, ressurection and miracles of Jesus Christ Thankyou