The Muslim Challenge:
Christians, how do you confirm those words in the Bible are the words of Jesus and not words put into his mouth?
TK’s Response to my previous answers:
again you’re quoting events and speeches as if they’re all true.
My question is still not addressed.
How do you check if these events and speeches are true?
You don’t seem to get what I mean!
My Answer:
What is recorded in the four Gospels has been checked by reputable modern scholars. I am talking about academic scholars, including historians. Even unbelieving scholars have agreed that the basic history recorded in the Gospels is true to fact.
All agree that Jesus died by crucifixion. All agree the tomb was empty. All agree that the disciples of Jesus were remarkably changed by their experience of seeing Jesus alive after His death. And history shows that the world was changed for the better by the impact of the lives and message of these men.
The speeches of Jesus contained predictions of events both soon to happen and things predicted of specific events to happen in the more distant future.
The Gospel record presents the fact that Jesus repeatedly predicted His own death and subsequent bodily resurrection from the dead three days later. This indeed is what happened. This is an example of His prediction of events soon to happen.
Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple. In all, I have counted 25 or more specific predictions Jesus made regarding this event that came true. This would be a very remarkable example of things Jesus predicted regarding things that would happen in the more distant future.
There are what are called internal evidences of the truth of what is recorded in the New Testament about our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the long-predicted Messiah of Israel. He fulfilled many specific messianic prophecies recorded in the Old Testament. Some of these prophecies were time prophecies that had to be fulfilled at the time Jesus actually came and could not be fulfilled later. No one could appear now and successfully make the claim to fulfill those prophecies of a coming Jewish Messiah.
There is an internal evidence of the truth of the words of Jesus seen by the unity of the witness of the whole of Scripture by the consistency of all Jesus said and did down to the minutest matters which is displayed by the cross references I and other scholars have assembled as found in my books The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge and The Ultimate Cross Reference Treasury. Sensitive readers who carefully consult these references come to unshakably know the unity and truth of Scripture they display and confirm.
Note to readers of this Real Bible Study site:
Many of the evidences I make reference to in my comment to TK are extensively documented elsewhere on this site. A prime example would be my enumeration of the predictions Jesus made about the future destruction of Jerusalem which were fulfilled in 70 AD.
Here is the link to that page: