1) Who Wrote The New Testament? - Click Here
Were any of them historically reliable eye witnesses or those who knew the eye witnesses? are they all anonymous and useless as valueless historical sources?
2) Do we possess the original New Testament? - Click Here
Are we reasonably certain that what we have today, is what they actually wrote down? How much has changed? Do any of the changes have any substantial effect on our creeds, history and doctrines?
3) Is The New Testament historically reliable? Is it telling the truth about Jesus? - Click Here
3a) Check out some character assassination attempts on Paul as an unreliable witness and immoral person: some objections addressed here
4) Who gave us the New Testament as a whole and are they reliable? - Click Here
How can we be reasonably sure the Church accurately canonized the New Testament? There were so many gospels, how do we know we have the right ones?(1) Who compiled, and assimilated the New Testament canon and gave it divine authority?
Shouldn't we become either Catholic or Orthodox since that Church is responsible giving everyone the Bible? Why accept their canon given by the authority of the Church but then reject the authority of the Church?
In Summary
The New Testament we have today was written by a disciple or associate of an disciple, it is therefore very close to the events and representative of the wide apostolic opinion of Jesus. It is virtually a duplication of the original texts written down in the original authors autograph. When applied with proper analysis it provides reliable, trustworthy factual history.
It was cautiously, carefully and selectively chosen, not arbitrarily or randomly or without thought or scrutiny, it had to meet a strict set of rigorous criterion, it was collected and collated by early members of the Church, possibly the disciples or those whom they put in charge, near the end of the first century, and the Church in general submitted to the canon provided by the Apostolic community but sometimes out of ignorance (not knowing the apostolic mandates) due to location, and time restrictions slowly accepted the universal canon, it is an argument from silence to say no Church in the second century accepted the full 27 New Testament canon, we just don't have enough detail.
After Thoughts: What do I make of this as an Agnostic?
Now I don't agree with the above summary in full, I am being overly-charitable here. But I just don't see even granting these arguments why non-Christians get so upset. I can still believe Jesus died and his disciples experienced him risen from the dead. If a historian is truly restricted to making no claims of the miraculous or divine, then do not claim he did or did not raise from the dead, just remain agnostic.
Clearly Jesus blessed those who professed faith in his Resurrection, those who had no eye witness testimony nor had first hand experience with the five senses, known as the empirical senses. In the same way Jesus did not have an argument from Resurrection in mind when he had to spiritually open up the minds of his disciples to reading the Scriptures to see this Resurrection. In both cases we have faith and spiritual enlightenment which are both a supernatural basis to accept the Resurrection. At the end of the day I can believe in all the facts presented to me by the Christian apologists but unless I am given a measure of faith and given eyes to see, I will remain in darkness. I don't believe Jesus appealed to rationalism or empiricism as a basis to believe in the Resurrection.
I honestly believe historically speaking the disciples of Jesus experienced and saw appearing a post-resurrected Jesus, I especially think Stephens vision seems genuine, I certainly think Paul's vision was genuine and have a great respect for Paul probably more than any other from that time period. I just don't want to say it's true or false. It's like saying "Is a dream true or false?" It doesn't even seem like the right question to ask. How can I make claims about events I was never at or interfere with personal experiences I can't personally inherit?
I can only give a filtered interpretation schemed through my own personal bias eyes. Perhaps some myths or miracles are literally true, what matters is it's personal relationship to me and to you, does it affect us? does it bother us? is it real to us? If it's not here and now it's not in my awareness, it's dead and irrelevant. Therefore maybe Stephen and Paul really saw Jesus, maybe they saw him in their heart, in their sleep, at that moment before death, at that moment in the hot dessert sun, it just doesn't matter whether you think it's physical, literal, spiritual or mythological, it's irrelevant.
A man rising from the dead on the one hand sounds like a glorious feat, he has conquered death! He has physically and corporally done the impossible. On the other hand it's symbolic powerful myth and story, every man must conquer death in some sense.
Everyman must go to hell and be resurrected to be a man. I'm tired of approaching this question theologically and scientifically as if these were the only two categories. Naturalists claiming to have exclusive rights to rule out all miracles all together as if they even understood the limitations of the natural laws of the universe itself, when there could be millions of unknown variables which include events like miracles. There are things about reality I don't understand, there are things about reality I can't understand, reality is not ruled by science and technology, reality is not altogether logical, there are many great paradoxes.
On the other hand dogmatic Theists claiming it has to be real and literal defined in this way in this sense as followed up by the seven ecumenical councils. Blind literalism on both sides which I care not for. Neither of these groups make up the laws of reality or define the rules of existence, both dogmatists camps I don't care for either position as long as it benefits you.
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