How do we know the writers of the Gospels didn’t just look at the Old Testament and attach the prophecies to Jesus? Karlo Broussard tackles this question on Catholic Answers Live.
Questions Covered:
Caller; How do we know the writers of the Gospel didn’t just look at the Old Testament and then attach the prophecies to Jesus?
Karlo Broussard: Well, I think once again that assumes, Ryan, that these Gospel writers had mal-intentions, right? It assumes that their intentions in communicating to us what Jesus said and did was not historically reliable and that they were intending simply to fabricate events to fit a particular theological paradigm that they had.
But we would challenge that assumption because the there is no reason to think they were fudging the facts—because they had everything to lose and nothing to gain in their articulation of the story of the resurrection of Jesus and going around preaching it. So that’s one reason why they were sincere in articulating these events of Jesus as historical facts. Even Luke himself, in his prologue in Luke 1:1-4, says that he is writing an orderly account. He’s consulted eyewitnesses and he’s writing an orderly account, and he even uses sophisticated Greek in that prologue there to indicate that he is intending to write reliable history. They are not intending to present fabricated events concerning the life of Jesus.
Now it so happens that in articulating and recording these events of Jesus and looking back at these Old Testament prophecies, they’re able to make connections. And that’s reasonable; they see Jesus do this, they remember the Jewish prophecies of old, they make a conclusion: Jesus is fulfilling that prophecy. We just celebrated, you know, not too long ago, Jesus triumphantly riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. These early Christians experienced that, remembered Zechariah’s prophecy of the messianic king riding on a donkey, and they made that connection; but that connection does not mean they were fabricating the events of Jesus. So even though we affirmed the connection they were making, that does not entail fabrication of the events.
So that’s where the real issue lies, Ryan. That’s where we really have to roll up our sleeves and dig deep and ask the question: do we have good reason to think these early Christians were fabricating these events? That’s the question we have to settle first before we even begin to consider the connections they make to the Old Testament text, because if they were not fabricating the events, if we have good reason to think they were not fabricating the events and were writing legitimate history, well then the connections they make to the Old Testament in no way is going to give us reason to think that they are fabricating the events.
And of course we have extra-biblical non-Christian sources that actually verify certain gospel details, such as Flavius Josephus in the first century, a Jewish historian; Cornelius Tacitus; we also have archaeological evidence. So we have all of this extra-biblical information that confirms many of the details that the gospel writers include in their gospels, which shows us that they did write reliable history. And that’s just one reason among many to think that these early Christians were not fabricating these events; and consequently, the connections they make to the Old Testament did not give us reason to think they were fudging the facts.