The Gospel Truth: How We Can Know What Christ Taught
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Hundreds of books have been written to vindicate the Gospels by noting that they were written closer to the events they record than any other ancient history. But how do we know that they accurately recorded what Jesus said and did? How do we know they didn’t fabricate their contents? That Jesus really did work the miracles reported in the Gospels? Most important of all, how do we know what is the authentic interpretation of his words and deeds?
Christian apologists have largely neglected to answer these significant questions because they have focused instead on vindicating the Gospels apart from the community that wrote them.
The Gospel Truth fills in this gap by demonstrating that a concerted and sophisticated effort was made to ensure that what Jesus taught and did was accurately retained, recorded, verified, and passed on to future believers. It also shows how we can know whether our copies of Scripture reflect the original, whether the books in our Bible really belong there, and ways to know how to correctly understand them.
- Demonstrates that what Jesus taught and did was accurately passed on to future believers
- Shows how we can know whether our copies of Scripture reflect the original
- Provides ways to know how to correctly understand the books in the Bible
- Chapter 1: Something Happened
- Chapter 2: What Was Passed On?
- Chapter 3: That’s Not Greek to Me!
- Chapter 4: Formatted for Accurate Recall
- Chapter 5: The Dare to Verify
- Chapter 6: Verification of Meaning
- Chapter 7: Text, Canon, and Content
- Chapter 8: Verification through Hostile Witnesses
- Chapter 9: Something Is Happening
- Appendix: “Erring” Fathers and Other Variants
Gary Michuta will shame those who dismiss the Gospels as pious opinions unconcerned with historical reliability or eyewitness testimony. With great precision, Michuta demonstrates how Jesus utilized time-tested rabbinic techniques to ensure that his disciples would have accurate recall of his teaching formatted for reliable transmission. Jesus’ public ministry was public for a reason: to invite verification of his claims. Witnesses are identified and named. Michuta identifies seven different eyewitness groups who form the basis for the unfolding of Christ’s claims. He also pays attention to the integrity of Gospel texts and their transmission. Michuta shores up the confidence of even veteran Gospel readers, delights new Gospel readers, and easily meets the challenge of any fair-minded skeptic.
—Al Kresta, President/CEO of Ave Maria Radio and Host of “Kresta in the Afternoon”
Gary Michuta, with this book, has done a great favor to believers and skeptics alike. The long history of conflict, scholarship, and misunderstanding has tied together bundles of knots of seemingly unsolvable problems regarding the reliability of the New Testament in general and of the Gospels in particular. Step by step, Michuta untangles these knots and shows that Christianity’s sacred texts are not mere fables or fabrications but reliable and accurate accounts of what Jesus said and did. I learned a lot from this book—I expect you will too.
—Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J., Host of “The Catholic Current” and Author of Christendom Lost and Found and Real Philosophy for Real People
For far too long the Bible has been under attack from atheist skeptics and Protestant critics alike—and the Catholic Church has unfortunately imbibed much of it under the guise of scholarship. While there are few popular-level resources to help the faithful combat these attacks, Gary Michuta has given us a great one in The Gospel Truth. Although he interacts with academia, even those new to the discussion will find this book profitable. The chapter on verification of meaning is worth the price of the whole book!
—Douglas M. Beaumont, Author of With One Accord: Affirming Catholic Teaching Using Protestant Principles