The book is Can We Trust The Gospels? By Peter J. Williams. It was originally published in 2018 by Crossway. I read the 2018 paperback edition. I read it in May of 2024.
The title is the thesis of the book. Williams gives a concise survey of historical and biblical evidence for why the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are trustworthy.
I read this book because it was on my shelf and I wanted to save some money. I had planned on reading a biography of Alfred the Great but I didn’t want to buy another book so soon after my last one. There are a lot of books on my shelf that I haven’t read so I need to get to those and not just buy more and more books.
However, I have remedied the problem of buying books and not reading them. My rule now is that I do not buy a book until I am actually ready to read it. No more endlessly growing “to be read” stacks. Amazon has helped with that. Also, having well thought-out reading lists keeps me on track. I always have the next book lined up.
Whenever I get within 100 pages of finishing my current book, I order the next one from Amazon. That strategy has been successful. But there are still several books on my shelves that I have not read.
In this book Williams makes an evidentialist argument for the reliability of the Gospels. That’s usually not my cup of tea in apologetics. If an atheist or some other godless person were to attack the trustworthiness of the Bible I would first demand that they provide any sort of objective standard of reliability from their atheist worldview.
I would ask them why, as a materialist, are they holding anyone accountable to immaterial laws of logic or reason to determine “trustworthiness.” They must first provide a consistent framework of truth from their godless worldview. These are the same people who usually say there is no real truth and then turn around and say the Bible is full of lies. I would not allow them to steal rationality and intelligibility from the Christian worldview, pervert it and then attack the Bible with it.
That being said, given the case in which an atheist would admit to their self-contradicting worldview and be open to hear answers that can be provided about the legitimacy of scripture, it is good for Christians to have answers to these questions. In this objective Williams is very successful.
My main takeaway is Williams’ repudiation of the “telephone game” accusation against the Bible. In an effort to cast doubt on the accurate transmission of scripture over the centuries, atheists love to throw out the analogy of the telephone game in which one person whispers a sentence to another person, it’s then repeated to the next person in a circle, and so on until the message has made its way around the room and is completely different from what was originally whispered by the first person.
Williams writes the following.
“The analogy [the telephone game] is, however, ill-chosen. After all, this game is specifically optimized to produce corruption. Hence come the rules that one must whisper, passing on the message only once and only to a single person, and there must be sufficient people playing to ensure that the message is corrupted.
The circumstances surrounding the passing on of reliable information in the Gospels could not be more different. Not only are the names of people and places authentic, showing that they could not have been passed through multiple unreliable steps in transmission, but the very conditions in early Christianity were unsuitable for producing corruption: they were marked by a high emphasis on truth, a sense of authoritative teaching, a wide geographical spread among followers of Jesus, and a high personal cost to following him. A plausible scenario for accidental corruption simply was not there. By contrast, the view that people passed on reliable information explains the data more simply.” (p77-78)
This is important because it’s an extremely common bomb that gets lobbed at Christians against the Bible. Turns out that “bomb” is a dud. Williams goes on in the rest of the book to provide examples of how the Gospels have been tested and proven reliable through its historical transmission.
He gives examples of geographical knowledge that is recorded in the Bible that only an eyewitness could know. The Gospels mention many people, places, and things throughout the narratives. So many things could’ve have been and were reviewed for reliability.
For example, Williams offers the passage in Luke 19 where Zacchaeus climbs a sycamore tree in Jericho to see Jesus over the crowds. Sycamore trees do not grow in Italy, or Greece, or Turkey, places where a fiction would be produced in later versions of the transmission of the Bible. But they did grow in Jericho. How would the author know a subtle detail like that? It’s either because he was there or got the account from someone who was there.
Another thing that Williams does well in this book is demand more specific evidence against the Bible. So many times, atheists make vague accusations at implied errors that sow doubt in a believers mind, without providing any actual proof to an alternative to what the Bible claims.
Willaims writes the following.
“Scholars who argue that core Christian beliefs, such as the idea that Jesus rose from the dead after his crucifixion, were innovations arising as Christianity spread by word of mouth need to suggest when this might have happened.” (p23)
It’s a good point. If someone throws out a vague comment like “well they just made up that resurrection part later.” The burden is on them to provide an answer as to exactly when and where that happened. The Bible makes a claim to the resurrection of Christ and gives details of what he did and who saw him alive. Where is the evidence against it? Demand specifics.
The pings of doubtful pebbles might ring loud on the fortitude of scripture, but they can never penetrate. And besides, they’re stealing the pebbles of “proof” and “intelligibility” from us to begin with. Don’t let them do that.
This book was well written. It’s a great concise review of the historical and rational reliability of the Gospels.
Usually these apologetics books are doorstoppers. This one is just under 200 pages which is good because it means the average non-reader would be more likely to pick it up. It’s easy and clear to read.
I’d recommend this to all Christians. You could share it with an atheist friend who is actually looking for the truth. But even if not, it’s important for Christians to understand the history and trustworthiness of the Bible for ourselves.
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Notable Quotables
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However, their bias does not mean we should distrust their record. An innocent man accused of a crime may have a deep interest in proving his innocence, but this bias is not a reason to dismiss evidence he produces. (p17)
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Scholars who argue that core Christian beliefs, such as the idea that Jesus rose from the dead after his crucifixion, were innovations arising as Christianity spread by word of mouth need to suggest when this might have happened. (p23)
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They affirmed, however, the whole of their guilt or error was that they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, and of singing in alternate verses a hymn to Christ as to a god, (p25) — Pliny the Younger writing to emperor Trajan.
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Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon in France, writing around the year AD 185, said that God gave the gospel in fourfold form, referring to the four Gospels. (p39)
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These later Gospels do, however, provide us with an excellent control sample. They show that sometimes people wrote about Jesus without close knowledge of what he did. The fact that the four Gospels, both as a group and individually, contrast with these other Gospels illustrates the qualitative difference between these sources. (p63)
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The analogy [the telephone game] is, however, ill-chosen. After all, this game is specifically optimized to produce corruption. Hence come the rules that one must whisper, passing on the message only once and only to a single person, and there must be sufficient people playing to ensure that the message is corrupted.
The circumstances surrounding the passing on of reliable information in the Gospels could not be more different. Not only are the names of people and places authentic, showing that they could not have been passed through multiple unreliable steps in transmission, but the very conditions in early Christianity were unsuitable for producing corruption: they were marked by a high emphasis on truth, a sense of authoritative teaching, a wide geographical spread among followers of Jesus, and a high personal cost to following him. A plausible scenario for accidental corruption simply was not there. By contrast, the view that people passed on reliable information explains the data more simply. (p77-78)
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One reason scholars are inclined to date Matthew, Mark, or Luke after AD 70 is that these Gospels have Jesus speaking of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and related events (Matthew 24:2; Mark 13:2; Luke 21:6, 20, 24). Obviously if one does not believe in supernatural prediction, one has to date these references no earlier than when the destruction of the temple could either be naturally predicted or have already occurred. But if we allow the possibility of miraculous prediction, we are not so limited. (p81)
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Another striking piece of knowledge appears where Luke records that the tax collector Zacchaeus climbed up a sycamore tree in Jericho (Luke 19:4). The relevant species, ficus sycomorus, did not grow in northern Mediterranean countries Italy, Greece, Turkey), and in fact lacks natural pollinators in those countries. But this tree was characteristic of Jericho, according to the second-century rabbi Abba Shaul. How did the author know there were sycamores in Jericho? The simple explanation is that he had either been there or spoken to someone who had. (p82)
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What we see is this: there is no obvious reason to conclude that one author has copied the other, but the two narratives present the two characters in ways that accord with each other. This is so in the physical matters of Mary’s “sitting” and positioning herself physically at Jesus’s feet, but also in the practical concerns of Martha in both accounts. In both stories, she is also the more active. (p89)
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Jesus nicknamed the brothers James and John “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17).
…And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. (Luke 9:51-55)
…Thus, the brothers called “Sons of Thunder” in Mark are recorded in Luke as wanting to call down lightning. The two reports fit well together, as one appears to record a name based on character, and the other appears to report a character fitting well with the name. (p90)
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Even the little detail in John that the boy has barley loaves (John 6:9) fits nicely with the nearness of Passover, which immediately follows the barley harvest. (p93)
Solomon White 
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