How Historians Actually Read the New Testament - ABS EP 22

You can read the New Testament for devotion, or you can read it like an ancient historian and those are not the same project. I grew up being told the Bible is not only a holy book, but a history book, and I didn’t even know there was another way to approach it. Then I started hearing scholars ask questions I’d never been taught to ask: When was it written? Who wrote it? What sources stand behind it? Why do the Gospels tell the same stories differently, and what can historians actually know with confidence?

We break down the biggest mindset shifts behind historical criticism and New Testament scholarship, including why historians are comfortable with uncertainty and why their conclusions often sound like “most scholars think” rather than church style certainty. From there, I explain source criticism using the synoptic problem: the striking overlap between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the logic behind Markan priority, and why theories like Q and redaction criticism exist in the first place. Whether you love those models or hate them, understanding the methods helps you understand the debates.

We also slow down and separate historical questions from theological questions. History can investigate what early Christians believed, how traditions developed, and how context shaped the texts, but it has limits when it comes to proving the supernatural. Finally, we talk about why context matters so much, how comparing sources like Paul’s letters and the later Gospels changes the timeline, and why faith conversations often stall when people are using different frameworks. Subscribe, share this with a friend who debates Bible topics, and leave a rating or review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Shift

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My whole life I was told that the Bible was not only a holy book, but a history book as well. And because I automatically believed that the Bible was completely true, I never even thought to approach it in any other way but a devotional one. But what happens when people start treating the New Testament the way historians treat other ancient sources? That was one of the biggest shocks in my life because I was probably in my late 20s before I ever really heard the Bible discussed that way. And that's what we're going to dive into today. How do historians actually approach the New Testament? What's going on, and welcome to another episode of the Agnostic Bible study. I'm your host, Joe Teal, and today feels like one of the most important episodes I've done so far because understanding how historians approach the New Testament can completely change the kind of questions you start asking about the Bible. For me, hearing the Bible broken down historically for the first time, that felt like stepping into an entirely different conversation than the one I grew up with. Instead of only hearing questions like, what does this first mean for my life? I suddenly started hearing questions like, When was it written? Who wrote it? What sources stand behind it? How did traditions develop? Why do the gospels sometimes tell stories differently? And what can historians actually know with confidence? And whether you agree with historical criticism or disagree with it, I still think understanding the methods themselves matter because these approaches shape so many modern conversations about the New Testament. Now, before we go any further, I do want to make something clear. I am not a professional historian. I'm just a guy who spends a ridiculous amount of time listening to and reading historians, scholars, and critical scholars, and these are the patterns and methods I've personally picked up on over time. So today I want to slow down and walk through how historians approach these texts, why they ask the kind of questions they ask, and why hearing the Bible discussed this way was such a massive shift for me personally. So, whether you believe, you don't believe, or you don't know what to believe, you are welcome here at the Agnostic Bible study. Let's get into it.

Devotional Reading Vs Historical Reading

SPEAKER_00 2:27

So let's start with one of the biggest differences between devotional reading and historical reading, because I think this is where a lot of the confusion begins. Most devotional approaches to the Bible begin with faith assumptions. The text is approached primarily as scripture, as spiritually authoritative, and as something meant to teach, guide, inspire, or reveal truth about God. So naturally, the kinds of questions people ask tend to sound like: what is God teaching here? How does this apply to my life? What lesson should I take from this? And how does this strengthen my faith? And there's nothing really wild about that. For millions of people, that is the entire purpose of reading the Bible in the first place. There is more people that read the Bible this way than the way I'm about to explain. Now, I do remember a girl back in youth group whose method of reading the Bible was literally closing her eyes, opening the Bible to a random page, and reading whatever passages her finger landed on. She told me that was her way of letting God choose what he wanted to say to her. And then she would read a few sentences, spend some time thinking about what it meant for her life personally, no context, no history, no questions about authorship, audience, or genre, just faith. In the realm of the devotional reading, that is not even that strange of a thing to hear. A lot of believers approach the Bible primarily as a living spiritual text speaking directly into their lives. But a historian might completely faint. They might fall over if they saw somebody doing that and thinking that that is somehow going to get you some historical analysis. Because historians usually begin from a very different starting point. Instead of first asking what spiritual meaning a passage has, historians often begin by treating the New Testament as a collection of ancient texts that emerge from real historical communities. That means the first questions historians ask are often things like, when was it written? Who likely wrote it? Who is the audience? What historical situation may have shaped this text? What sources may stand behind it? How does this compare to other ancient writings? And this distinction was huge for me because I realized these approaches are not necessarily trying to accomplish the same thing. A devotional reader may be primarily looking for a spiritual meaning, while a historian is usually trying to reconstruct history as carefully as possible using the tools of historical analysis. And because the goals are different, the conversations can sound completely different, even when both groups are reading the exact same passage.

Learning To Live With Uncertainty

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Another thing that surprised me when I first started listening to historians is how comfortable they were with uncertainty. Growing up in church, I was used to hearing a lot of certainty language. Matthew wrote this, Paul wrote this. This event happened exactly this way. This verse clearly means this. This doctrine is obviously taught here. And again, that makes sense in many faith settings because churches are usually trying to teach, guide, and build confidence in belief. But historians often speak very differently. Instead of speaking in absolutes all the time, they tend to speak more in terms of probabilities, evidence, the strongest explanations, scholarly consensus, minority views, and degrees of confidence. This was a huge adjustment for me because at first it almost sounded weak or uncertain compared to the confidence I was used to hearing in church. But over time, I started realizing this is just how historical work often functions in general. History is not really like math or science, where we can just plug in numbers into an equation and solve for X. Historians have to look at ancient sources, clues, cultural context, language, manuscripts, and competing accounts. And then they piece together working theories that best explain the data they have available. And through a historical lens, nobody can know with absolute certainty exactly what happened in every moment of the first century. I want to say that again. No one can know with absolute certainty exactly what happened in every moment of the first century. That uncertainty can frustrate people at first, but is also just a part of working with ancient history. Historians are dealing with ancient sources, incomplete evidence, translation issues, missing documents, possible biases, oral tradition, copying processes, and debates about authorship and dating. So they usually approach conclusions with varying levels of confidence instead of pretending every question has a perfectly certain answer. And this was where I first started hearing phrases like most scholars think. The majority view is there is a debate about this. This may preserve an earlier tradition. Hearing people talk about the New Testament that way jarred me at first because I wasn't used to hearing the Bible discussed in categories of probability and historical reconstruction. I was used to hearing it discussed in categories of certainty and doctrine. That shift alone completely changed the way I listened to conversations about the Bible. One

Source Criticism And The Synoptic Gospels

SPEAKER_00 8:01

of the first historical methods that really caught my attention was source criticism. And I know that phrase can sound intimidating at first, but the basic idea is pretty simple. Historians want to know where information may have come from and how these texts may have developed over time. If you have spent any time listening to this channel, then you've probably heard me bring up the synoptic gospels and mark in priority before, because this is one of the clearest examples of historians approaching the New Testament historically instead of purely devotionally. When historians compare the Gospels side by side, they notice that many passages in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are extremely similar. Sometimes entire sections have nearly identical wording, structure, and sequence. Other times, one gospel expands a story, shortens it, or places it in a completely different order. That raises historical questions. Did the gospel writers know about each other's writings? Were they using shared oral traditions? Did they have access to earlier written sources? Did authors adapt earlier material for different audiences or theological purposes? And this is where I first started hearing terms like mark and priority, the Q source, or tradition, literary dependency, redaction criticism. Again, whether someone ultimately agrees with these theories or not is a separate conversation. The important thing for this episode is understanding the kinds of questions historians are asking in the first place. For many historians, the similarities between the synoptic gospels, I'll remind you, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are too close to simply ignore. So they try to build historical models that best explain the data. The most commonly scholarly view today is usually called Mark and Priority, the idea that Mark was likely written first and later used in some way by Matthew and Luke. One reason scholars argue this is because much of Mark appears in Matthew and Luke, often in similar wording and order. Now, if you want an even deeper breakdown of Mark and Priority, I have an episode specifically on it. You can go to the channel and check that out. Now, growing up, I don't think I ever really heard the Gospels discussed in those categories before. I mostly approached them as four completely independent eyewitness style accounts all telling the same story. So hearing historians compare wording, order, literary structure, and possible source relations completely changed how I viewed the text. And once I understood source criticism better, a lot of the conversations subtly started making more sense. Why chronology debates matter, why contradictions matter historically, why scholars compare parallel passages so carefully, why wording differences get analyzed so deeply. Because historians are not reading the New Testament devotionally, they are trying to understand how these texts may be composed, transmitted, shaped, and developed within the ancient world. Let's move to the next

History Questions Vs Theology Questions

SPEAKER_00 11:12

one. Another major shift for me was realizing that historians often separate theological questions from historical questions. And at first, I don't think I even understood that there was a difference between these categories. Growing up, I tended to blend them together automatically. If the Bible said something happened, then to me, it was both historically true and theologically true at the same time, without hardly any studying. I just believed it. I never really separated those conversations in my head. But historians may approach things differently. For example, a historian may ask, did Jesus exist historically? What can we know about his life using ancient sources? What did early Christians believe about him? How did those beliefs develop over time? Those are historical questions. But questions like, was Jesus divine? Did God inspire Scripture? Was the resurrection supernatural? Is Christianity ultimately true? Those move into the realm of theology and philosophy. Now that distinction does not mean historians are automatically denying theological claims. It just means historical methods have limits. Historians work with ancient text, sources, probabilities, cultural context, and evidence. They can study what people believed, how traditions developed, and what claims communities were making. But history as a discipline cannot scientifically prove supernatural events the same way you would solve a math equation. Now, at the same time, a good historian still has to engage with theology because theology itself becomes part of the historical context. What people believed shaped how communities formed, how texts were written, how doctrines developed, and how conflicts emerged within early Christianity. And on the other side, I think a good theologian would also be wise to not completely ignore the historical perspective either. Sometimes people are arguing past each other because one person is making a theological argument while the other person is making an historical argument. This happens to me all the time when I'm on the internet, when I'm debating, when I'm this this happens all the time. I'm they're bringing a theological debate, I'm bringing historical debate, and we just can't seem to get on the same page. It's because we're starting at different places. And if you don't slow down and separate those categories, the entire conversation can become confusing really fast. Another

Why Context Changes Everything

SPEAKER_00 13:47

thing historians spend a lot of time paying attention to is context. And the deeper I get into studying the New Testament, the more I realize how much context can completely change the way a passage is understood. And if you want to deeper dive into this idea specifically, I already have an entire episode on context here on the channel because context became one of the biggest shifts in how I personally started approaching the Bible. Growing up, I mostly read the Bible in small sections, a verse here, a chapter here, a sermon focused on one story or one teaching. But historians usually want to place the text back in the world it came from. That would mean asking questions like: what was happening politically at the time? What did the first century Judaism look like? How much influence did Rome have over daily life? What tension existed between different Jewish groups? What would people in that culture have assumed automatically? Once you start looking at the New Testament that way, the world behind the text starts feeling much more alive and much more complicated. Jesus is no longer just speaking in a vacuum. He is speaking in a Roman-occupied region filled with political tension, religious disagreement, apocalyptic expectations, economic pressure, and different interpretations of Judaism competing with each other. And Paul is not just writing random theological thoughts. He's writing letters to actual communities dealing with real issues, arguments, division, persecution, questions about the Gentiles, food laws, leadership, and how this new movement fit into the wider world around them. And historians also care a lot about literary context. For example, ancient biographies were not always written in the same way modern biographies are written today. Ancient authors often cared deeply about meaning, themes, symbolism, moral teaching, and shaping narratives in a way that communicated the larger truths to their audience. That doesn't automatically mean ancient writers were inventing everything. It just means ancient writing conventions were often different from modern expectations of journalism or documentary-style reporting. I started realizing how easy it is to accidentally read modern assumptions back into the text. Historians are constantly trying to bridge that gap between the modern world and the ancient world. And once I started seeing the New Testament inside its historical setting, instead of floating around outside of history entirely, so many passages start feeling more layered and more understandable to me. Another thing

Comparing Sources And Tracing Development

SPEAKER_00 16:30

that really changed the way I viewed the New Testament was realizing that historians are constantly comparing sources against each other instead of only reading each text in isolation. This becomes especially important once you realize that the New Testament is not just one book, it is a collection of different writings produced by different authors in different places for different audiences across different time periods. And historians immediately start noticing that some sources are earlier than others, some are independent of each other, some appear connected, while some focus heavily on theology, some focus more on narrative, some preserve traditions differently than others. For example, Paul's letters are usually considered earlier than the Gospels. That means historians often pay very close attention to Paul because his writings may get us closer chronologically to the earliest Christian beliefs and communities. If Paul was one of the earliest writers in the New Testament, and this was happening somewhere around the 50s, that means he can possibly give us a glimpse into what the Christian beliefs were at that time, which would be very important. And historians may even compare some of Paul's earlier letters up against some of his later letters. An earlier letter like 1 Thessalonians may sometimes be way differently than a later letter like Romans, because historians are trying to trace how ideas, theology, and the movement itself may have developed over time. And this was another thing that surprised me because growing up, I mostly thought of the New Testament as one complete package that all arrived together at the same time. But historians usually think much more developmentally than that. They ask questions like what source came first? How did ideas develop over time? Which traditions appear earlier? Which doctrines become clearer later? How did the later authors build on earlier traditions? Once you start reading the New Testament like that, it changes how you think about the entire timeline of early Christianity. The Gospels were not written the week after the resurrection. Paul's letters were not written all at once. The canon did not instantly fall from the sky, complete and finalize. Early Christianity developed over time within real historical communities, arguments, debates, and theological disagreements. And historians are trying to reconstruct that development as carefully as possible using the sources available to them. That's another reason historians often compare the New Testament to other ancient writings from the same world. They're trying to understand not just what the texts say, but how the movements, traditions, beliefs, and communities tend to develop historically in general. Once I started realizing that the New Testament was something that emerged gradually through history, instead of appearing all at once fully formed, it completely changed how I view the early Christian movement. And

What Can We Know Confidently

SPEAKER_00 19:32

maybe one of the biggest things historians constantly wrestle with is the question right here: what can we actually know with confidence about the first century? Because historians are not just trying to collect facts, they are constantly trying to evaluate sources, weigh probabilities, compare traditions, and decide what conclusion best fits the evidence available. And this is where historical debates can get really complicated really fast. For example, how much weight should be given to oral tradition? How reliable are later sources compared to earlier ones? How much theological shaping may exist within a narrative? When two accounts differ, how should historians handle that? What counts as strong evidence historically? And how much certainty is even possible when studying ancient history? These are not simple questions. And I think this is one reason people sometimes become frustrated with historical study. Historians often can't give absolute certainty the way many people want. We want that. We want somebody to tell us this is exactly how it happened. Instead, they usually offer conclusions that they believe best explain the evidence while still admitting there are limits to what can be known. And that uncertainty can feel uncomfortable, especially if someone grew up in an environment where the Bible was mostly discussed with complete confidence and clear answers. But over time, I learned that uncertainty does not automatically mean history is meaningless. It just means ancient history is complicated. Historians are working with texts written thousands of years ago, copied by hand, translated across languages, preserved through communities, and interpreted through different theological traditions for centuries. Of course, there are going to be debates and disagreements. And I think one of the healthiest things historical study taught me was learning to become more comfortable saying, I don't know. I'm not fully convinced yet that theory is possible. There may not be enough evidence to say that for certain. Those are historically defensible phrases. Because once you enter the world of historical analysis, certainty becomes much harder to hold on to than many people expect at first. So

Does Historical Study Kill Faith

SPEAKER_00 21:55

after hearing all this, somebody listening might ask a pretty fair question. Does approaching the New Testament historically automatically destroy faith? And I think the answer to that is clearly no, because there are still many historians, scholars, theologians, and ordinary believers who are fully aware of these historical discussions and still remain Christian. Some become more conservative, some become more progressive, some rethink certain doctrines while holding on to others, some become agnostic, like me, and some leave religion entirely. People respond to this material very differently. For me personally, one of the biggest changes was realizing the Bible started feeling less like one perfectly smooth book that drops straight from heaven and more like a collection of ancient writings emerging from real history, real communities, real arguments, real traditions, and real human beings trying to make sense of what they believed about God. And whether somebody sees this realization as faith strengthening or faith destabilizing probably depends a lot on that person and the framework they started with. Because if someone is taught from childhood that the Bible must function with perfect harmony, perfect chronology, perfect historical precision, and no tension whatsoever, then historical study can feel very threatening once complexities start appearing. But if somebody already expects ancient texts to contain human perspective, literary shaping, theological emphasis, development over time, and historical complexity, then those same discoveries may not feel nearly as destabilizing. And I think this is one reason conversations around the Bible can become so emotional. A lot of people are not just debating facts, they're defending entire frameworks they inherited about what the Bible is supposed to be in the first place. For me, historical study did not make the New Testament less interesting. If anything, it made it far more fascinating because suddenly these texts were no longer floating outside of history. They became connected to some real people, real cultures, real politics, real theological disagreements, and real historical development inside the ancient world. Once I started looking at it through that lens, I could never really go back to reading it the exact way again. And like I said earlier, I think this also explains why so many conversations about the Bible end up turning into people talking past each other instead of actually understanding each other. Sometimes one person is approaching the New Testament devotionally while the other person is approaching it historically. One person may be focused primarily on faith, theology, and spiritual meaning, while the other person is focused on sources, evidence, development, chronology, and historical reconstruction. And if those two people don't realize that they are operating from different methods and asking different kinds of questions, the conversation can become frustrating really fast. One person may say the gospels are spiritually true, and another may respond, but there are historical tensions between the accounts. And both people may walk away thinking the other person completely missed the point. Or one person may say the Bible is inspired by God, while another person is asking, how did these texts develop historically over time? Again, those are not always the same category of discussion. And this is one reason I think understanding historical methods matters even if someone remains fully Christian, because once you understand how historians are approaching the New Testament, you at least begin to understand why certain debates exist in the first place. Why scholars debate authorship, why chronology matters, why or tradition matters, why source criticism exists, why textual variants matter, why context matters so much. Without understanding the methods underneath those conversations, historical criticism can sound random, hostile, or confusing. But once you understand the framework historians are working within, the conversations start making a lot more sense and whether you ultimately disagree with the conclusions or not. And I think it's important to say learning these methods did not suddenly answer every question. In some ways, it creates more questions, but it did teach me to slow down, define categories more carefully, and become more comfortable with complexity instead of immediately forcing everything into simple answers. So I guess if there is one big takeaway from this entire episode, it's this. Historians are not usually approaching the New Testament the same way devotional readers approach it. They're asking different kinds of questions, using different methods, and working towards different goals. That doesn't automatically make one side evil and the other side enlightened. It just means the conversations are happening inside different frameworks. As always, don't just take my word for any of this. Read broadly, listen to historians and scholars from multiple perspectives, compare arguments, challenge your own assumptions, and most importantly, understand why people reach different conclusions in the first place. You gotta know why you believe what you believe. Thanks again for hanging out with me on another episode of the Agnostic Bible study. If you're watching on YouTube, please like, share, subscribe, drop your comments down, let me know what you're thinking. Those things really help. And also, if you're on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, please rate the show. That also helps me tremendously. Man, on topics like this, it's fun to just get into it and really try to bridge that gap. As someone that debates a lot of people, talks to a lot of people, the underlying things are what's causing the most tension because person A is not fully understanding person B. They're starting at different points. They're never going to get to the same spot. So the arguments and the debates and the stalemates and all the things that happen make a lot of sense. So maybe we talk about the methods, maybe we dig a little deeper, and maybe we can understand each other a little bit more. So to my Christian friends, I hope you don't take this as an attack. I'm not saying that history destroys Christianity. That's not the argument here. I'm saying history does make it a little bit more complicated, sure, but not destroying it and doesn't mean you can't have faith. That's not what this is. And to my agnostic friends or skeptic friends or listeners here, I hope this brings some clarity to you. You you might be getting in these conversations, you might have uh deconstructed from Christianity. Now you want to talk to Christians, and you're not understanding why they're not getting what you're saying. They're not getting these points that you're bringing. Well, maybe it's because they're still approaching it devotionally, and now you're trying to come at it from this different things. And so I just believe that studying the methods is an important thing for us to do. So I'll be back with more episodes as fast as possible. And most importantly of all, never stop learning. We'll see y'all next time.