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Some say the story of Jesus is a legend

Image by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen

A legend is a story that has some factual basis but, as it is passed on by word of mouth through the generations, the story is exaggerated and becomes a mixture of fact and fiction.  To distort or exaggerate the truth of a story requires a written version of it to be produced much later than the event.  The greater the time gap between the event and the written recording of it, the greater the opportunity for potential distortion or exaggeration.

 

Scholars date the earliest written forms of the New Testament between AD 40-100, that's between 10-70 years after the event which means there would have been people still alive when it was written who could have challenged the story if it was untrue but there is no evidence that the truth of what is written in the New Testament was challenged.

 

There have also been found over 5,000 Greek copies, 10,000 Latin and 9,300 other copies of the New Testament, far more copies than any other ancient documents that are considered to be reliable and true by historians.  Basically, the more copies we have, the less doubt there is about the reliability of the original.  So, based on the historical and archaeological evidence, the story of Jesus recorded in the New Testament is reliable and true and not a legend.

 

So, if the stories of Jesus in the Bible are reliable and true, who do they say he really is? 

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