I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek
Week 11: Chapter 10 — Do We Have Eyewitness Testimony About Jesus? (The Gospels as History)
Read Chapter 10 of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.
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Building on the previous chapter's case for the reliability of the New Testament documents, Geisler and Turek now examine whether the Gospels in particular give us accurate history about the life, teachings, and claims of Jesus.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.The authors argue that the Gospel writers had both the ability and the motivation to tell the truth — they were eyewitnesses or associates of eyewitnesses, and many of them died for their testimony. How does the willingness to die for a claim differ from simply dying for a belief, and why does it matter?
2.Geisler and Turek discuss archaeological confirmations of details in the Gospels — places, people, and customs that were once doubted by scholars and later verified by archaeology. Can you recall any examples from the chapter? How does this pattern affect your overall confidence in the Gospel narratives?
3.The chapter addresses the claim that the Gospels contradict each other, making them unreliable. How do the authors distinguish between genuine contradiction and complementary accounts that each tell part of the story?
a.Think of an example where two eyewitness accounts of the same event could differ in detail without either being false.
b.Does variation in detail increase or decrease the likelihood of collusion between the authors?