In our comment "A Tribute to Luke" on 5/08/05 we pointed out his accuracy as a historian. In this comment we will point out how some problem areas in the gospels of John and Mark have been solved by recent discoveries.
In Lee Strobel's book "The Case For Christ" he interviews John McRay, PhD, a professor of New Testament and archaeology, and an author on the subject.
Some scholars did not believe there was such a place as the Pool of Bethesda, the place where Jesus healed the invalid in John 5:1-15. John provides the detail that the pool had five porticoes. For a long time people cited this as an example of John being inaccurate, because no such place has been found. But as McRay points out:
"But more recently the Pool of Bethesda has been excavated - it lies 40 feet below ground - and sure enough , there were five porticoes, which means colonnaded porches or walkways, exactly as John described. And there are other discoveries - the Pool of Siloam from John 9:7. Jacobs Well from John 4:12, the probable location of the Stone Pavement near the Jaffa Gate where Jesus appeared before Pilate on John 19:13, even Pilate's own identity - all of which have lent historical credibility to John's gospel".
All this challenges the allegation that the gospel of John was written so long after Jesus that it couldn’t be accurate.
McRay also tells of some archaeologists finding a fragment of a copy of John 18 that leading papyrologists have dated to about A.D. 125. By demonstrating that copies of John existed this early and as far away as Egypt, archaeology has effectively dismantled speculation that John had been composed well into the second century, too long after Jesus life to be reliable. Other scholars have attacked the gospel of Mark, generally considered the first account of Jesus' life to be written. Atheist Michael Martin accuses Mark of being ignorant about Palestinian geography, which he says demonstrates that he could not have lived in the region at the time of Jesus. Specifically he cites Mark 7:31: "Then Jesus left the city of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis."
"It has been pointed out," said Martin, "that given these directions Jesus would have been traveling directly away from the Sea of Galilee."
McRay pulled a Greek version of Mark off his shelf, grabbed reference books, and unfolded large maps of ancient Palestine. "What these critics seem to be assuming is that Jesus is getting in His car and zipping around on an interstate, but He obviously wasn't," he said.
Reading the text in the original language, taking into account the mountainous terrain and probable roads of the region, and considering the loose way "Decapolis" was used to refer to a confederation of ten cities that varied from time to time. McRay traced a logical route on the map that corresponded precisely with Mark's description.
"When everything is put into the appropriate context," he concluded, "there's no problem with Mark's account."
Again archaeological insights have helped explain what appeared at first to be a sticking point in the New Testament. McRay was then asked: had he ever encountered an archaeological finding that blatantly contravened a New Testament reference?
He answered "Archaeology has not produced anything that is unequivocally a contradiction to the Bible...on the contrary, as we have seen, there has been many opinions of skeptical scholars that have become codified into 'fact' over the years but that archaeology has shown to be wrong."
By George Konig
July 9, 2006
www.georgekonig.org
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