Biblical Evidence #2: The Scribes

How is it that we can determine if what the Apostle said was true? The same way we determine it today. We begin by looking at what they said. Do they give details that can be verified? Are their possible motives for them to make up the things they are saying? These thing usually accompany dishonesty: motive to lie, lack of details in account, and want few people to know.
So do the authors give details? The Bible is full of details. The Old Testament gives detailed histories of Kings and their reigns. The New Testament gives reigns of Emperors and other events and places that can be confirmed in their accuracy. The book of Acts is full of historical details. The Gospel of Luke gives numerous historical details.
Luke 1:5 “In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest name Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Alijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.”  
Luke 2:1-2 “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quinines was governor of Syria.)”
Throughout the book of Acts, Luke records many details that are historically veritable. Luke mentioned a total of 32 countries, 54 cities, 9 Mediterranean islands, and 95 people. All of the information that is verifiable has shown to be 100% accurate. In fact Sir William Mitchell Ramsay (1851-1939), a well-known Archeologist of the turn of the century, was skeptical of Luke’s record of events. He set out to prove Luke wrong and finally “concluded that Luke was an exemplary historian” (Thompson, 2002, para 7). The history that Luke recorded was absolutely accurate. While this in itself does not prove that everything he said was accurate, it definitely lends weight to the fact that he is a reliable source.
Also the New Testament was originally written for people that were contemporaries of those who were writing so if there were inaccuracies, they would easily be known to be true or false. If these authors of the New Testament were writing things that were false, we would expect to see many people who would claim that the Apostles were wrong or lying. This is not what we find however. We don’t find any contemporary’s disputing the facts. What we find is them trying to explain them away.  
The opponents of Christianity at the time don’t dispute that the tomb was empty on the third day. They only try to give alternate explanations. But do the authors have motive to lie? When someone is lying, it is to benefit themselves in some regard. Nobody lies so that they will be harmed.
Did writing these books and letters benefit the Apostles in any ways? Did they make up the things they said so that they would profit? On the contrary it was because of their preaching about Jesus that they suffered and died.  
Acts 5:40 “They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.”
Another support to indicate that the New Testament authors were reliable is that they do not portray themselves very favorably sometimes. They are often portrayed as weak and faithless. They fled the night Jesus was arrested. Yet after they saw the resurrected Christ, they went on to become bold proclaimers of the Gospel. All of them, except John, died because of what they were preaching. And this is important. They did not benefit in terms of earthly wealth or success because of what they were preaching. Because of what they preached, it brought hardship and death.
Now there are people today who go to their death for what they believe, both Christians and non-Christians. We see some even fly their planes into buildings. But the difference between them and the Apostles is that the Apostles not only believed what they were saying, they knew the truth of it for sure, because they had seen these things with their own eyes.
1 John 1:1-3 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched-this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life. The Life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and hear,”  
This is a huge difference. These men saw the risen Christ, and because they saw, they believed it and preached it fearlessly because they knew that they had an eternity with the Savior and were emboldened by the Holy Spirit to preach it even unto death.
Well maybe they were all crazy. That is not reality. If they were crazy they would not have all proclaimed the same thing. Other religions where there is only one witness or person testifying to the truth of something cannot defend against this argument. This is a major difference between Christianity and Islam or Mormonism. There, Muhammad could have been a lunatic or crazy. The writings of the Koran are what he said. And Muhammad is dead. Or Joseph Smith who wrote the book of Mormon. He claimed to have gotten it on plates from an angel, but how do we know he is not making it up or that he was not crazy.
In Christianity, we have multiple men all claiming the same thing, that they saw Jesus alive after He had been crucified. We are not relying on one person account. And we are not relying solely on these Apostles.
Paul in writing to the Corinthians told them this in 1 Corinthians 15:3-6 “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.”  
There  were many other people who saw Jesus alive. As Paul wrote here to the Corinthians, he is basically saying, ‘Hey, I am not telling you things that you cannot corroborate with other people who saw the same thing.’
So we have scrolls that we can be certain say the things that were written and we can trust that the Apostles wrote down what they saw and believed, but that is not all…