It is sometimes said that “You can’t trust the Bible because it is inherently biased, written by devout followers of Jesus.”
Well, when my wife Julie and I visited Auschwitz, ground zero of the Jewish Holocaust, I asked the lady at the bookstore: “If I am to buy only one book, which one would you recommend?” She turned around and picked up Elie Wiesel’s Night and handed it to me. Night is a memoir written by Wiesel decades after his firsthand experiences alongside his dad in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
Would anyone be brave enough to suggest that Wiesel’s memoir can’t be trusted as a reliable source or authentic recording of the Holocaust given Wiesel’s views are biased against Nazi Germany? Even if Night is more a work of literature conveying the emotional and psychological impact of the camps, rather than a strict historical accounting of every precise detail, it remains an essential and influential document in Holocaust literature.
It is sometimes said that “You can’t trust the Bible because it is inherently biased, written by devout followers of Jesus.” Well, when my wife Julie and I visited Auschwitz, ground zero of the Jewish Holocaust, I asked the lady at the bookstore: “If I am to buy only one book, which one would you recommend?” She turned around and picked up Elie Wiesel’s Night and handed it to me.
Night is a memoir written by Wiesel decades after his firsthand experiences alongside his dad in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Would anyone be brave enough to suggest that Wiesel’s memoir can’t be trusted as a reliable source or authentic recording of the Holocaust given Wiesel’s views are biased against Nazi Germany? Even if Night is more a work of literature conveying the emotional and psychological impact of the camps, rather than a strict historical accounting of every precise detail, it remains an essential and influential document in Holocaust literature.
The point is, there is an important difference between bias and accuracy in assessing historical events. Human beings are not audio/video recorders. Bias of any kind is inevitable when we’re talking about eyewitness accounts and firsthand experiences of significant events, but that doesn’t necessarily negate the reality of those events, nor the accuracy or authenticity of their retelling.
It’s the same when it comes to the four New Testament biographies of Jesus composed by Jesus’ followers. Just as Wiesel’s perspective as a Jewish Holocaust survivor doesn’t invalidate the reliability of his memoir, neither do the religious beliefs of the authors of the New Testament necessarily discredit the accuracy of the four gospels. Each must be considered on their own terms.
