Should We Trust the Gospel Writers’ Memories?
People have foggy memories. Not many of us can remember conversations we had three weeks ago, let alone three years ago. If this is true, it raises obvious questions about the reliability of the Gospels. Should we trust them considering the authors didn’t write them until decades later? Wouldn’t they have forgotten large swaths of what Jesus said and did by that time?
The skeptics certainly think so. Bart Ehrman often asks how many of us can remember what the president said this last year during the State of the Union Address? What about two years ago? Or two decades ago? The point he attempts to make is that since none of us can remember what the president said a short while ago, we shouldn’t trust the Gospel writers who documented Jesus’ story decades later.
Skeptics also point to a study conducted at Emory University following the Challenger space shuttle explosion. Forty-four freshman students were interviewed immediately after the event to give details about how they heard and what they were doing at the time. Those same students were asked the same questions three years later and not one of them gave the same exact answer. The point? Our memories aren’t as reliable as we think they are.
Should Christians be concerned about poor memory, and therefore, doubt the reliability of the Gospels? I don’t believe so. In fact, let me give you five reasons why I believe the authors would have remembered the details of Jesus quite well.
JESUS WAS AN ITINERANT PREACHER
As a pastor, I can attest that our parishioners don’t remember most sermons I preach. That, however, is because I preach a different sermon every time. Imagine how different it would be if I preached the same five sermons over and over on rotation. Don’t you think our church members would remember those sermons quite well after hearing them a dozen times? Of course they would.
Well, Jesus wasn’t a pastor. He didn’t preach to the same congregation week in and week out. Rather, he traveled around Galilee and Judea preaching about the Kingdom of God. Jesus would have preached the same messages over and over and over and over. His disciples, who accompanied him on his journeys, would have, therefore, heard the same messages dozens and dozens of times. Imagine how many times they heard the Parable of the Sower or the Good Samaritan. Think about how often Jesus told his hearers that the greatest commands were to love God and love others. Imagine how many times Jesus preached the contents of the Sermon on the Mount. It was too good to only preach once.
Because the disciples heard Jesus’ messages countless times, the probability of them remembering them accurately increases substantially. Referring to Bart Ehmran’s example, imagine if you heard the State of the Union fifty times. Don’t you think you would be able to recall most of its contents? It seems reasonable to think so.
THE DISCIPLES RETOLD THE STORIES COUNTLESS TIMES
The picture the skeptic gives is one where the disciples try to recall the ministry of Jesus decades later in a complete vacuum. That is, they presume that the disciples hadn’t talked or thought about Jesus for thirty years, and now all of a sudden they attempt to recall his ministry and write it down for us. This is a gross misrepresentation of how it worked.
We know that from the time Jesus rose again, the disciples fervently preached the Gospel of Jesus. The group started small, but pretty quickly grew to thousands of people within weeks. The disciples continued to tell the stories about Jesus’ ministry to countless people countless times. Just like they heard the stories over and over and over, they were now telling the stories over and over and over.
Imagine if the same study at Emory involved students who were not only asked the questions their freshman and senior years, but they were asked those questions every day in between? Don’t you think there’s a better likelihood that as they rehearsed the details ad nauseam that their answers would have remained the same their senior year?
Unfortunately, the skeptic assumes that the disciples weren’t regurgitating the details about Jesus on a daily basis. If they weren’t, how do we account for the vast explosion of Christianity in the first few decades following Jesus’ death? They simply had to be telling these stories over and over and over, and therefore, the memories of Jesus would have been cemented in their brains.
THE DISCIPLES RETOLD THE STORIES IN COMMUNITY
Countless eye-witnesses to Jesus’ ministry existed. Not only the twelve disciples, but other followers as well. All of them heard the same stories and witnessed the same acts done by Jesus. If one person ever shared a detail incorrectly, others would have immediately corrected them.
Imagine if twenty people listened to the State of the Union address dozens of time together. Then those same twenty people went out together telling others exactly what the president said. What do you suppose would happen if one person started to share an incorrect detail? Would the other nineteen people go along with it? No, of course not. They would correct that detail. You see, the community safeguarded the disciples from sharing false information.
The same would have been true for the disciples. They all witnessed the teachings and miracles of Jesus together. If John or Matthew ever went off base with their details, other disciples would have corrected them.
PEOPLE REMEMBER IMPORTANT EVENTS WHERE THEY WERE PERSONALLY INVOLVED
I’ve been to countless weddings, but I can’t tell you many details about any of them. I can, however, tell you lots of details about my wedding. For example, I can tell you the name of the venue, the color of the bridesmaids dresses, the general details about the pastor’s message, the color of our unity sand, the menu, the name of our photographer, and the messages my groomsmen wrote all over my car, just to name a few. I can tell you these details, because I was personally invested in the event.
The same is true for Jesus’ disciples. They weren’t simply random folks who heard these stories passed down to them. They weren’t even chance bystanders who happened to catch one of Jesus’ messages or see one of his miracles. These were Jesus’ closest followers. They were deeply invested in Jesus’ ministry, and because of this, they would have remembered crucial events.
Going back to the Emory study, it would be one thing for a student to forget details about where he was when the Challenger exploded, but it would be a completely different thing if someone on the Challenger team at NASA forgot the details.
So be honest with yourself. If you were one of Jesus’ closest followers, and you saw him raise a dead person to life, do you honestly think you would ever forget that? Do you think you would forget the time he walked on water or calmed the storm by simply speaking to it? I can’t imagine any world where anyone forgets anything like that.
THE JEWISH CULTURE RELIED HEAVILY ON MEMORIZATION
We live in a day and age where memorization is unimportant. Consequently, I’ve seen the emphasis on Scripture memory decline rapidly. Why do you suppose that is? It’s because we live in an era of Google. We can Google anything we want whenever we want. We aren’t forced to memorize the State of the Union because we can Google the transcript later.
Imagine, however, living in a culture where Google didn’t exist. More than that, books didn’t exist either. How do you suppose you would learn from your favorite teacher? You’d have to commit their words to memory — which is precisely how Jewish disciples learned from their rabbis. Furthermore, it wasn’t at all uncommon for Jewish scribes to have the entire Pentateuch memorized. The contents found in the Gospels are minuscule by comparison.
This sounds radical to us because we don’t memorize much of anything anymore, but it’s actually quite reasonable. Take my two-year old daughter, for example. It’s not an exaggeration to say that she has 30-50 songs memorized verbatim. She can’t read yet, so her only hope of being able to sing these songs is by memorization, which she has been able to do. The Jewish culture was exactly the same. Because they didn’t have access to books, much less the internet, they were forced into memorizing everything.
WE CAN TRUST THEIR MEMORIES
Based on the five points I listed above, I think it’s not only reasonable, but probable, that Jesus’ disciples accurately remembered the details of Jesus’ ministry.
