This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig.

Question

Dr. Craig,

I am Brazilian and doing research on the historical Jesus found some articles written by you. I confess that I was surprised with the gift that God gave you to explain and argue about Christ. The reason of writing it is in respect of a doubt that is messing with my faith and Jesus Christ. I am a servant of our Lord Jesus as a child, but for some time, many questions have taken my mind, which meant I started researching the Bible and the gospel writers. With this research, I found that the Bible contains several flaws, but nothing that came to shake my faith. However, I found that the passage in Mark's book which deals with the appearance of Christ to his disciples after the resurrection did not exist in the first codices canonical, and later entered the church. In this way, given that the gospel of landmarks is the oldest (correct me if I'm wrong) and the other gospels used Mark as a source, the question that remains in my mind is: Could not the other gospels have interpolations also? Did many of the passages in the Gospels are not later interpolations made by the church to achieve their own interests? I would like you to help me Dr. Craig, because I confess that many of his articles helped me in my doubts and also confess that these thoughts are involuntary, they appear like waves in my mind and I cannot control. I love the Lord Jesus and not want to lose my faith in Christ.

Regards

Jonathan

Brazil

Dr. William Lane Craig’s Response

Dr. William Lane CraigHaving dealt with some rather difficult philosophical questions in recent weeks, I think it’s good to have a straightforward biblical question for a change. All the better that it comes from one of our many friends in Brazil!

What you’re referring to, Jonathan, is the fact that some manuscripts, notably those belonging to the Byzantine and Western texts, have a longer ending to Mark’s Gospel which includes what appears to be a pastiche of resurrection appearances compiled from the other Gospels. We can be thankful that we are not dependent upon just one family of manuscripts for our text of the Ne