100 Reasons to Believe New Testament History
21. The Ability Test – Were the Witnesses Able to Record Accurately?
Unless the detractor can demonstrate otherwise, it must be assumed that the witness is honest and of sound mind, and of the average degree of intelligence. Any objection raised must be substantiated according to the ordinary rules of evidence and by the law and the courts. Matthew the tax collector would have been trained by his calling to habits of investigation and scrutiny. Luke the physician, we already noted, was committed to careful investigation in compiling his historical material. No doubt his profession too, demanded exactness of observation equally close and searching. John the fisherman, it has been noted, was arguably too unlearned to forge such a remarkable story of his master’s life A.
Regarding the memorization skills in Christ’s time, Craig L. Blomberg, PhD offers this insight:
“Rabbis became famous for having the entire Old Testament committed to memory. So it would have been well within the capability of Jesus’ disciples to have committed much more to memory than appears in all four gospels put together – and to have passed it along accurately…it is difficult for us to imagine today…but this was an oral culture, in which there was great emphasis placed on memorization. And remember that eighty to ninety percent of Jesus’ words were originally in poetic form. This doesn’t mean stuff that rhymes, but it has a meter, balanced lines and parallelism, and so forth – and this would have been a great memory help.” Interview with Lee Strobel, “The Case for Christ”, Zondervan, 1998, p. 43 B.
21. The Ability Test – Were the Witnesses Able to Record Accurately? - Notes and References
A. “If you were to take the sum total of all authoritive articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene – if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out the excess verbiage – if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the Sermon on the Mount. And it would suffer immeasurably through comparison. For nearly two thousand years the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restless fruitless yearnings. Here…rests the blueprint for successful human life with optimum mental health and contentment.” Psychiatrist J.T. Fisher, as quoted by John Warwick Montgomery, “History and Christianity”, Downers Grove, Illinois, Intervarsity Press, 1971, p. 65
B. John Warwick Montgomery agrees, stating, “We know from the Mishna that it was Jewish custom to memorize a Rabbi’s teaching, for a good pupil was like a ‘plastered cistern that loses not a drop’ [Mishna Aboth, II.8.]. And we can be sure that the early church,, impressed as it was by Jesus, governed itself by this ideal.” John Warwick Montgomery, “History and Christianity”, Downers Grove, Illinois, Intervarsity Press, 1971, pp. 37-38