Proof or Poof?

What do we actually mean by proof?

Genuine question: How do we get definitive proof of events that happened thousands of years ago?

Consider Socrates, one of the most influential figures in Western philosophy. He left no writings of his own. Much of what we know about him comes from other people, particularly Plato and Xenophon, whose portraits don’t always agree. Historians have spent centuries examining those accounts, trying to distinguish the historical Socrates from the ways his followers remembered and presented him.

Yet historians rarely dispute that Socrates existed. Historians compare sources, consider the writers’ purposes and reach judgements about what can reasonably be known.

One ancient historian was unusually open about the difficulties involved. Thucydides, writing about the Peloponnesian War in the fifth century BC, acknowledged that he could not reproduce every speech word for word. Sometimes he had heard the speeches himself; sometimes he relied on what other people told him. He therefore reconstructed what he understood the speakers to have said, while attempting to remain faithful to their general meaning.

I find that fascinating. Thucydides wasn’t admitting that he had abandoned the truth. He was honestly explaining the difficulties of recording events and the methods he used to address them.

Ancient historians cared about whether things happened, but their conventions were not identical to ours. They could select material, arrange events and present speeches in ways that would make modern historians uncomfortable. Crucially, none of this guarantees that their accounts are accurate. It does, however, suggest that expecting an ancient narrative to read like a modern transcript may be asking it to do something its author never intended.

Luke tells us what he was trying to do.

I think my favorite Gospel is Luke, and that may be because right at the beginning of his Gospel, he explains why he is writing. He acknowledges that others have already produced accounts of the events surrounding Jesus. He refers to traditions handed down by eyewitnesses and says that he has carefully investigated matters before composing an orderly account for his reader. He is my kind of guy.

Luke clearly believes he is dealing with events that happened in the real world. But notice something else. He is working with existing material, examining it and deciding how to present it.

We sometimes imagine the four Gospel writers standing beside Jesus with notebooks, independently recording everything he said and did. That isn’t how these documents appear to have developed. Most scholars believe Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke drew on Mark alongside other traditions.

The writers were making decisions about what to include, how to arrange it and what to emphasis. Those choices are part of what makes their accounts worth studying.

Three accounts of the same death.

Let’s take one of the most significant events in the Gospels: the crucifixion of Jesus. All four Gospels describe Jesus being executed by the Romans, but they tell the story in different ways.

In Mark, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The words come from Psalm 22, a Jewish prayer that begins in anguish. Mark gives us a Jesus who experiences terrible suffering and reaches for the language of a familiar lament.

Turn to Luke, and the final words he records are different: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” This time the words come from Psalm 31. Luke allows us to hear Jesus entrusting himself to God, even in death.

Then there is John: “It is finished.” Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of carrying out the work given to him by the Father. At his death, that theme reaches its conclusion.

Naturally, we might ask which words Jesus actually said. Could he have said all of them? Were the writers drawing on different memories or traditions? Did their literary purposes influence which words they preserved?

The bottom line is that we cannot answer those questions with certainty. But I am also interested in why these particular words mattered to each writer. Mark brings us into the anguish of the cross. Luke draws our attention towards trust. John presents Jesus completing the work he came to do.

Each account gives us a new way of understanding Jesus’s relationship with God. Reading them alongside one another allows us to notice things we might otherwise miss, even when the precise historical details remain uncertain.

When the same story reveals a different understanding of God.

Something similar happens in the Old Testament, though the differences are sometimes considerably more difficult to explain.

In 2 Samuel 24, God is described as inciting King David to order a census. When the story is retold in 1 Chronicles 21, the responsibility is attributed to Satan.

We could spend time asking which version is historically accurate or attempt to reconcile them. But I find myself wondering why the later writer told the story differently. Had Israel’s understanding of God’s involvement in human wrongdoing developed? Was the writer of Chronicles uncomfortable attributing the action directly to God?

We cannot know exactly what motivated the change. But the difference may tell us something about the ways these ancient communities understood divine responsibility and evil.

The biblical books emerged across many centuries, among people whose lives were shaped by war, exile, political change, worship and the stories they inherited. I don’t think we should assume that every writer had precisely the same understanding of God, or that their understanding remained unchanged. In fact, it would be very strange if they did.

Nor do we need to assume that every story preserves an event exactly as it happened. Some accounts may be historically reliable, while others may have changed through generations of retelling. Some may describe events that never occurred, even though the people who preserved them believed they had. And sometimes we simply don’t know what the original writer understood to be historical fact.

What remains worth exploring is what the telling reveals about the people who preserved it. What did they believe God was like? Why did this story matter to them? What were they trying to help the next generation understand?

Understanding what somebody believed about God doesn’t mean we have to agree that they were right.

But surely history still matters?

You may be shouting at your screen right now, and it would be fair. After all, there is an important objection to all this. Christianity makes historical claims, some of which are central to the faith.

Jesus lived in Roman-occupied Judaea and was executed under Pontius Pilate. His existence and crucifixion are accepted by the overwhelming majority of historians who study the period. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing decades later, also refers to his execution, providing evidence beyond the New Testament.

But the resurrection is a different kind of claim. Paul’s letters provide early evidence that Jesus’s followers believed he had risen from the dead. Establishing that they held this belief, however, is not the same as establishing that the resurrection occurred.

I personally believe that the resurrection happened, but I recognise that historical investigation alone will not compel everybody to reach that conclusion. It is very reasonable to ask for stronger evidence when a claim involves something as extraordinary as a person returning from the dead.

I wouldn’t want my interest in what the writers meant to become an excuse for avoiding difficult historical questions. Sometimes the evidence strongly supports a conclusion; sometimes it leaves us with considerable uncertainty. It is important to acknowledge this, and faith should not require us to pretend otherwise.

But uncertainty about one question does not mean we should forget everything else we can learn from the text.

The question I keep coming back to.

Towards the end of John’s Gospel, the writer makes his intentions unusually clear. He acknowledges that Jesus performed many other signs that he has not included, then explains why he selected the ones he did:

“But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.”

John tells us what he wants his readers to understand. His account is selective, deliberately shaped around a conviction about who Jesus is.

That doesn’t prove whether the events actually happened. But it does give us a way into the writer's mind, and it invites us to pay attention to the details he considered important.

After many years of reading, studying and preaching from the Bible, that is increasingly where my curiosity lies. I want to understand the people who wrote these accounts, the worlds they inhabited and the way their experiences shaped what they believed about God. The discoveries I make along the way continue to challenge and deepen my own faith, and they’re a large part of why I keep writing about Scripture.

Very often, their understanding challenges mine. Occasionally, I find myself disagreeing with how they describe God, and some passages still leave me with more questions than answers. So when somebody asks me for proof, I understand why. I may even share many of their questions. But I find myself wondering whether proving that a particular event happened would necessarily mean we understood the story.

Suppose we could establish beyond reasonable doubt that everything in a biblical passage happened exactly as described?

Would we be clear about why the writer chose to preserve it, or might we still have missed the very thing they wanted us to see?

Many people who demand that believers must produce proofs of the events clearly written in the Bible ultimately didn't want to believe the historical accounts; they have concluded in their minds that the accounts are a myth or fables or, for lack of a better word, POOFs that should be disbelieved or discredited by all means.