More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell
Week 9: Chapter 9 — Are the Gospels Mythology?
Read Chapter 9 of More Than a Carpenter.
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The claim that the Gospels are myth or legend — inspiring stories that were never meant to be taken as historical fact — is one of the most sophisticated and culturally appealing alternatives to orthodox Christianity. McDowell takes it on directly.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.What does McDowell mean when he distinguishes between 'myth' and 'history'? Why does the distinction matter so much for evaluating the Gospel accounts of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection?
2.McDowell appeals to the testimony of New Testament scholar C. S. Lewis (who was also a professor of medieval literature and mythology) that the Gospels do not read like myths — they read like eyewitness accounts. What features of the Gospel narratives support that judgment?
a.What is the difference between the style and tone of, say, Homer's Odyssey or ancient mythology and the style of Luke's Gospel?
b.What details in the Gospels are too embarrassing, too specific, or too unflattering to the writers to have been invented for effect?
3.The 'legend hypothesis' argues that stories about Jesus grew and were embellished over decades, eventually producing the divine figure we see in the Gospels. McDowell's chapter on manuscript reliability (Week 5) already addressed the time-gap problem. How does the evidence for early dating of the Gospel texts undermine the legend hypothesis?
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