Renew-Your-Mind.org

Gospel Reliability

One standard critique of Christianity is that the Biblical records are unreliable.

OC Apologist has written a good summary of the book Without a Doubt by Kenneth Samples…

Here's a summary:

The New Testament documents are the best attested documents of antiquity in terms of total number of manuscripts.
The interval of time between the date of the original authorship and the date of the earliest New Testament manuscript copies is extremely short.
The historic statements made about Jesus by ancient non-Christian authors for the most part matches well with the Gospel record.
The authors of the four Gospels were eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life themselves, or were closely associated with the eyewitnesses.
The Gospel writers intended to convey factual and historical information and the writings of their historical content have been confirmed to a significant degree.
The apostles’ testimony becomes more credible when it is considered that they had nothing to gain from it and everything to lose.

My favorite part though are the comments – there is a typical response from a skeptic, and a good rebuttal

Grace and Peace!