Throughout the New Testament Gospels, we find a wealth of detail that would put the disciples in a bad light or would be of substantial embarrassment on the part of the disciples of Jesus. Here we explore how this adds further reliability and trustworthiness to the authenticity of the eyewitness accounts, and why we can hold confidently to their words.
I think it's fair to say that we don't usually like admitting our most embarrassing moments, and certainly not making up embarrassing moments to put ourselves in greater shame. If you were concocting a story you wanted to pass off as truth, there would be no desire to make yourself appear cowardly, full of doubt, rebuked, dim-witted, and uncaring. Instead, you would want to make your cause look as attractive and endearing as possible. As a result, if there is something embarrassing on the part of the authors in their accounts, there is a very good chance that it's probably the truth; this is why the principle of embarrassment is an applied standard for historical accuracy. Time and time again we see embarrassing details admitted in the New Testament accounts, and we can therefore be reasonably confident that they are true - we'll only scrape the surface in this article.
Cowardly and faithless
Mark is widely agreed to be the earliest of the Gospels and reveals that the disciples regularly lacked faith. The disciples accused Jesus of not caring about them as they encountered a storm when crossing the lake, and were rebuked by Jesus for their lack of faith before he calmed the storm (Mark 4:35-41). Two chapters later, the disciples are terrified to see Jesus walking on the water, thinking it was a ghost (Mark 6:50). We also read later in Mark 9:17-19 that a man brought his demonized son to the disciples, who were too incompetent and lacking in faith to give the boy any help. Jesus criticized them for their lack of faith, at the same time Jesus' own family thought he was crazy (Mark 3:21). Later we read in Acts, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians that James and Jesus’ other siblings (the same that thought him to be crazy) became leaders in the church (Acts 15, 1 Cor 9:5, Galatians 1-2). That doesn't put the heads of Jesus’ church in a good light at all but holds great authenticity and reliability.
In Gethsemane, while Jesus was praying, the disciples all fell asleep (Mark 14:37-42). And when Jesus was arrested, they all fled in fear (Mark 14:50). Peter ended up denying him three times when pressed by a servant girl (Mark 14:66-72), and they all dispersed in disillusionment on the day of the resurrection having previously failed to give Jesus a proper burial (Mark 16:1-9). This occurred even after Jesus had repeatedly told them he’d rise again three days later, and is embarrassing to the disciples for failing to understand his words and teachings over the last 3-years (Mark 8:31-32, 9:30-32, 10:32-34, 14:28).
All three Synoptic Gospels record the betrayal of Simon Peter (Luke 22:54-62). Simon Peter was considered to be the first major leader of the Christian church after Jesus ascended to heaven. Yet with all of his importance to the early church, Peter is shown to have denied that he even knew Jesus three times (As Jesus had predicted) in the courtyard outside of where Jesus had been arrested and tried. For one of the main early church leaders, this is extremely embarrassing and would not have been documented unless it was rooted in some historical truth.
In Mark 15:40-41, the women watched the crucifixion of Jesus from afar, attending to His needs until the very end. However, the male disciples were nowhere to be found, only John of Zebedee who was caring for Mary, the mother of Jesus (John 19:26-27). The male disciples had fled in fear of the Jews, while it was the women who were brave and faithful to Jesus. In the first century where male bravery was held in high esteem, it is extremely difficult to think that this is nothing other than an authentic detail that wouldn't have been told unless it was true.
Women first to the empty tomb
After the Jewish Sabbath, which occurs on Saturdays, women who were present at Jesus’ crucifixion came to his tomb to anoint his corpse with spices. These are things his close disciples should have done - who hid in fear of the Jews (Mk 16:1-8). The fact that the women were the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb and Mary Magdelene the first to witness the risen Jesus is particularly embarrassing to the rest of the disciples who were hiding in fear and mourning. In Jesus’ darkest hour, they all bragged about being willing to die for their faith before abandoning him! (Mk 14:31). At the time a woman’s testimony in the 1st-century context carried very little weight, and was seen as almost worthless:
“But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex” … (Josephus, Antiquities, 4.8.15).
“Any evidence which a woman [gives] is not valid (to offer)” … (Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 1.8c)
Luke tells us that the disciples thought the women’s testimony was “nonsense.” and that they didn’t believe them (Luke 24:11). For this reason, the testimony of women serves as an embarrassing detail that speaks to the authenticity of the empty tomb and resurrection event.
New Testament scholar NT Wright describes the embarrassing detail as such:
“As historians, we are obliged to comment that if these stories had been made up five years later, let alone thirty, forty, or fifty years later, they would never have had Mary Magdalene in this role. To put Mary there is, from the point of view of Christian apologists wanting to explain to a skeptical audience that Jesus really did rise from the dead, like shooting themselves in the foot. But to us as historians, this kind of thing is gold dust. The early Christians would never, never have made this up.”
The Resurrection of the Son of God
Doubt and Denial
The consistent doubt and denial experienced by the disciples during Jesus' three year ministry and after his resurrection shine with the authenticity of the recorded accounts of events. After Jesus rose from the dead, the Gospel writers are honest in admitting the doubts that some of the disciples hold.
In Mathew 28:16-17, even after Jesus had risen from the dead and appeared to the disciples on the mountain in Galilee where he had previously predicted and told the disciples He would go after rising from the dead, we see that some of the disciples still doubted. Thomas is identified as one of those who had persistent doubts (John 20:24-25), hence his common title "Doubting Thomas". This doubt and unbelief would not have been reported by a first witness if it had not occurred historically, it would serve no value in any kind of manufacturing trying to pass off as truth. Yet Thomas's transformation having seen and touched the risen Christ - exclaiming "My Lord and my God" - is shown in the historical evidence, indicating that Thomas was martyred for his faith by being speared in Mylapore, India on July 2, 72 AD.
Moreover, James (Jesus’s half-brother) served as the first pastor of the Jerusalem Church and was a key early Christian leader in Judea. However, He was not originally a disciple of Jesus, with John recording that none of Jesus’s brothers and sisters believed in him during his 3-year earthly ministry (John 7:5), his family thinking that Jesus was “out of his mind” at one point (Mark 3:21). It is difficult to contest that this is not something a person would record unless it is grounded in some historical truth and authenticity.
The details presented here only scratch the surface of the embarrassing details which could be mentioned throughout the Gospels. Importantly, the value lies in the Evangelists’ willingness to document these stories, and details that cast the earliest disciples in a negative light highlight the value they placed on recording the biographies of Jesus accurately. Just from these inferences, we can be confident that these details are grounded in historical fact and authenticity, and provide another element of trustworthiness to the accounts.
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