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Can We Trust The Bible Written 2000 Years Ago? Dr. William Lane Craig.

I often hear students say you can’t know anything that happened 2000 years ago. And what they fail to understand, is that the crucial gap is not the gap between the time of the evidence, and today. The crucial gap is the gap between the evidence and the events described by that evidence. If the gap between the events and the evidence for those events is short, then how long it has been since the evidence of those events to the present day is just irrelevant. Good evidence doesn’t become bad evidence simply because the lapse of time.

And with the regard of the New Testament when we looked at the evidence, what we discover is that this record of the life of Jesus were written down within the 1st generation after those events while the eyewitnesses were still alive, with people who had first hand contact with those who had accompanied Jesus during His lifetime. So that we actually have better sources for the life of Jesus of Nazareth then we do for the most of the major figures of antiquity.

For example take Alexander the Great, the great Greek conqueror, our earliest biography, earliest sources for Alexander  the Great comes from Arrian and Plutarch, 400 YEARS after Alexanders  death, and yet Greco Roman historian still regard this records as a very trustworthy accounts of the life of Alexander the Great. The fabulous legend of Alexander diden`t arise until the centuries following those two authors and contrast that to the New Testament where we have books and records  that is written in the 1st generation after the events while the eyewitnesses are still alive. So I think we have very good evidence for the life of Jesus of Nazareth very trustworthy evidence, and how long it has been sense that evidence til today is simply irrelevant to reliability and trustworthiness to that evidence.