Were the Gospel Accounts Reliably Recorded?

A common challenge to believers is the contention that the gospel accounts we read today are not particularly reliable. Referring to the “telephone game,” the skeptic will claim that since the gospel accounts were penned three to five decades after the life of Christ, the accounts they portray are probably much different than the original accounts, just as the tenth telling of what was said in the “telephone game” is much different than the first. This analogy resonates with many people, who realize how hard it is to memorize in exact order a string of words that are spoken once. By the time the sentence is repeated to that tenth person, it will indeed bear little resemblance to its original form.

But does this analogy aptly describe what occurred with the biblical texts? Are there valid reasons to be concerned that the words of the gospel writers were distorted by retellings and the passage of time?

The first step in assessing this analogy is to consider the unspoken assumptions that are at play. The “telephone game” usually involves a rather meaningless sentence, spoken once, in which word-for-word memorization is the goal. The sentence is not important to the listener and has no particular significance, other than to memorize it word for word. Modern players of this game face a particular challenge – memorization is neither valued nor practiced today. We live in a culture in which electronic information storage systems have virtually eliminated the need to memorize long passages of information.

Another assumption is that having an exact word for word transcript is necessary. Given the existence of technology that can easily make recordings, one may begin to believe that nothing short of this should suffice. Take for instance a criminal trial. As a juror, you may want to view the actual interview in which the killer confessed, because you want to know exactly what he said, and the way he said it. You will insist on viewing the officer’s body worn camera footage before accepting that the events described took place exactly as they were relayed in the testimony. When the non-believer takes this approach to the gospel accounts, he will reject them before he even considers their reliability because they will never meet these assumptions and expectations.

The early Christians lived in a much different world. The writers of the first century did not have electronic means to record statements, nor did their culture put a premium on recording history in the way we do. They did, however, have a rich tradition of passing on stories, of using their minds to memorize long passages, and in some cases even entire books. Accurately passing their traditions, stories and knowledge from generation to generation was often practiced and highly valued. After all, they were not distracted with endless sources of stimulation, as we are today.

When the first followers of Christ began to document Jesus’ message, they were not playing a game in which he quickly said a string of words and asked them to repeat it. He was not providing them with some type of obscure code, which if spoken in just the right order would magically unlock the doors of the kingdom. He did not call a convention at which he spoke on only one occasion to an assembled crowd, with no one taking notes to capture the details of the teaching. No, Jesus traveled from town to town spreading a consistent and repeated message. Much of what he said was shocking to his followers, often contradicting what they were expecting the Messiah to say. His followers no doubt heard him speak on each subject on numerous occasions. They struggled to make sense of his words, and no doubt discussed his sayings among themselves. Jesus’ technique aided the process; he often used parables that were easy to remember and vividly conveyed a point he was trying to make. And when they did not understand the meaning of the parable, he explicitly expanded upon his intended meaning.

Given this context, it is not difficult to understand how those who heard Jesus repeatedly discuss topics they considered critically important to their ultimate salvation would have committed to memory what was said. The important thing for the writer would not be that he got every word in the exact order in which it was said. Indeed, it is likely that Jesus himself varied the words he spoke from speech to speech. The important thing would be that the meaning was accurately captured and passed on.

This process of repeating the revered words of their Lord did not begin out of the blue decades later. No, the process of retelling began immediately after his death. In addition, there were authors such as the apostle Paul who wrote numerous letters that set forth much of what had occurred. Had this process of retelling not been so robust, Christianity would not have grown so rapidly in the succeeding decades. Consider: by AD 64, some thirty years later, Christians had become so large and troublesome a group as to garner the attention of the emperor, who (according to the writer Tacitus) blamed them for the fire which occurred that year in Rome. Consequently, when the gospel writers eventually committed to writing their verbal teachings, they were not attempting to remember the words of a single speech given thirty or forty years earlier, a nearly impossible task. They were instead committing to paper what they had witnessed firsthand and what they had been consistently teaching in the preceding decades.

While the challenge of the “telephone game” has some surface appeal, it is at most a red herring, a distraction which prevents some people from ever giving the historical truth claims of Christianity a fair hearing. The Christian message is far more robust – and meaningful – than a simple children’s game.

And that simple truth is certainly worth remembering.

Recommended Resources:

Why We Know the New Testament Writers Told the Truth by Frank Turek (mp4 Download)

The New Testament: Too Embarrassing to Be False by Frank Turek ( DVD , Mp3 , and Mp4 )

Counter Culture Christian: Is the Bible True? by Frank Turek ( Mp3 ), ( Mp4 ), and (DVD)

The Top Ten Reasons We Know the NT Writers Told the Truth mp3 by Frank Turek

Al Serrato earned his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He began his career as an FBI special agent before becoming a prosecutor in California, where he worked for 33 years. An introduction to CS Lewis’ works sparked his interest in Apologetics, which he has pursued for the past three decades. He got his start writing Apologetics with J. Warner Wallace and Pleaseconvinceme.com.