Welcome back, everyone, to the third session of our Alexio Bible study on Jesus, where we

examine the biblical and the historical evidence for Christ.

In our first two sessions, we looked at the internal and external evidence for the authorship

of the Gospels, the authorship of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

by eyewitnesses to Jesus, such as Matthew and John, or the companions of apostles like Mark

and Luke. And in this session, what I want to do is go a little further into the historical

foundations by asking a really important follow-up question, because someone might eject,

a skeptic might say,

okay, maybe the Gospels were actually written

by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're true.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they're historically reliable.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they're historically accurate.

How do you know that the Gospels aren't fiction or

folklore? What kind of books are the Gospels? That's really what we're asking here. And so this

session we're going to be looking at the evidence for seeing the Gospels as biographies. Okay, as biographies. And again, in my own life, this is,

this is a really important question, because when I was studying the New Testament as an undergraduate

and a master's student, I was exposed to the idea that the Gospels are not biographies,

but rather they're more like folklore.

Okay?

And so I mentioned earlier in an earlier session, Professor Bart Ehrman,

whose textbook I had used when I was a student and his analogy about the telephone game.

...