Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 31:61 (Autumn 2018)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

JOTGES 31:61 (Autumn 2018) p. 87

Book Reviews

The Historical Reliability of the New Testament. By Craig Blomberg. Nashville, TN: B & H Academic, Lexham Press, 2016. 783 pp. Paper, $39.99.

Since my view of inerrancy is stricter than that of Blomberg, I began reading this book wondering if he would regularly question the historicity of the NT (i.e., would he say that it was historically reliable based on the standards of historiography when written, but it would not be historically reliable based on our current standards?). While his view on the Gospels is not totally to my liking, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament (THRNT) defends the historicity of the Gospels and the entire NT.

It is a mammoth book. However, despite its length, it really is not that hard of a read. For someone with a Th.B. or higher, I think THRNT will make perfect sense and will be relatively easy to follow. (For the layman this book may be heavy sledding, but it should still be readable.)

On the one hand, I was sorry to see Blomberg assert that the way to discern whether the Gospel writers and other ancient authors “erred in some of the statements they made” was “to have a feel for what would have counted as an error in the context in which the statement first appeared” (p. 26). He went so far as to say, “concluding that the Gospels are biographical is not the same as deciding that everything in them actually happened” (p. 27). My understanding of inerrancy is that the Bible is without error based on the highest standards of historiography.

On the other hand, I was pleased to see that with many of the discrepancies in the Gospel accounts, Blomberg suggests reasonable harmonizations (e.g., pp. 77, 78, 84, 85–86, 88–90, 95–96, 100–108). Unfortunately, he rules out (or finds highly unlikely) what he calls “classic additive harmonization” (p. 72) and “purely additive harmonization” (pp. 87–88). He is referring to those who would simply add together what different Gospel writers say. For example, some say (myself included) that the Father said both, “You are My beloved

JOTGES 31:61 (Autumn 2018) p. 88

Son” and “This is My beloved Son” at Jesus’ baptism. Some think (myself included) that the centurion both sent representatives to Jesus and then later spoke with Him personally. In my opinion “additive harmonization” quite often tells us what actually happened.

While he seems to think it most likely that the cleansing of the temple in John 2 is “a topically or thematically relocated version of the incident” (p. 194), I was pleasantly surprised that Blomberg says that it is possible that the cleansing of the...