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Dear Father Angelo Bellon,

I would like to ask you four questions which I never had exhaustive answers for. Here’s what I’d like to know:

A- I am a devotee of Padre Pio. For over twenty-five years I have been going to San Giovanni Rotondo for one or more weeks a year. I had the opportunity to speak with many people who knew Padre Pio, spiritual daughters and people who approached him: I realized that after only fifty years from his death, true deeds and other things are said; many deeds have been enhanced or invented whether out of a maniacal leadership, or sensationalism or to arouse interest. Now I ask you, what reliability have the gospels, which were written centuries later and based on handed down tales, considering the ignorance then reigning, during a period when it was easy to make anything believed by anyone?

B- Since there are no original manuscripts of the evangelists, how are possibly attributed each Gospel to a specific evangelist?

C- whoever wrote them, how did they possibly describe in great detail what happened, as if they had been present at the events?

D- reading the Bible, in the Exodus chapters, we often read that God changed His mind seeing the behavior of the Jewish people. How could God change His mind as if He did not know how the people would have behaved fleeing Egypt?

Thank you for dedicating your time to answer and I greet you with devotion.

Pio

Dear Pio,

1. Several of your questions have already been answered. Just click on the search engine.

It is true that we no longer have the original texts of the Gospels. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t trustworthy.

Even the works of ancient Greek and Roman writers are not the original ones. Indeed, their oldest copies would be from the ninth century AD. Yet no one doubts their authenticity and historicity.

2. But we have other reasons to believe in the authenticity of the Gospels.

And these are given by the vast patristic literature that reports infinite quotations from the Gospels and Sacred Scripture.

By patristic literature we mean the writings of ancient Christian authors who distinguished themselves by doctrine and holiness.

Their works are filled with evangelical quotations.

In the Introduction to the Bible [tit. tr.] by Perrella-Vagaggini we read: “The quotations from ancient ecclesiastical writers are so frequent that, joining them together, one could reconstruct the whole Greek New Testament by them.

A first partial accounting of only seven writers resulted in a total of 26,487 citations” ([tr.] p. 133).

3. Moreover, if you consider the works of the authors of the fourth century in which we find the great Fathers and doctors of the Western and Eastern Church, you can see in many of them a word-by-word commentary of the whole Gospels.

If you compare the Gospels, commented in the East by Saint John Chrysostom and in the West by Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, you will find word-by-word the same texts that we have today.

And that gives the best testimony about the faith of these people.

No one has ever thought of touching or changing a single word of the Gospels because all of them were convinced that they were not just books, but the Word of God communicated to men.

4. Then we have a large quantity of Codices, that is, of Christian ancient documents, from the first centuries and scattered in various parts of the world, containing the sacred texts. In total they would be more than four thousand (in the text of Perella-Vagaggini it is specified: 4,290).

An illustrious biblist scholar, Alberto Vaccari, was able to affirm that “no book of antiquity can even remotely be compared with the New Testament.

Almost all the classics have reached us only in a few manuscripts and of a rather early age, very few older than the ninth century AD (…).

The criticism of the New Testament is an unparalleled field for the abundance of materials and the certainty of the results” ([Tr.] Bibbia, in EIT VI, 1930, 888).

5. I fly over the statement you made: “considering the ignorance that reigned then, a time when it was easy to make people believe anything”.

In fact, even today there is a lot of ignorance especially in religious matters, and many repute themselves as intelligent while taking the bait of superficial and completely gratuitous statements. In this respect, perhaps they are more gullible than the people of the past.

6.  You ask how the evangelists were able to describe the life of Jesus and the Gospel in great detail, as if whoever wrote were present at the events that took place?

Yes, some, such as Matthew and John, were present from the beginning. They were apostles and eyewitnesses to what they wrote.

And possibly, wasn’t Marco the interpreter of St. Peter’s in Rome?

And does not Luke say “I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence” (Lk 1,3)? And he also does not say that “many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us” (Lk 1,1-2)?

Luke had before him these writings, transmitted by “those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word“, that is, by the Apostles.

Clearly, if Luke had written inaccurate things, his Gospel would have ended among the apocrypha since from the very beginning, that is, it would not have been believed.

7. Regarding the last question, you must take into account the literary genres which were used to write the texts of the Old Testament.

Not infrequently, the language is anthropomorphic, that is, humanly describing the work of God.

For example, obviously, God does not regret and does not change His mind. As Saint James recalls, “with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change” (Jam 1:17).

While reading that God “regretted that He had made men on earth” (rf. Gn 6,6), we must intend that humanity did not live at all according to divine plans. And precisely for this reason, God did not cease to be merciful and with Noah began a new work.

Thank you for the questions.

Your doubts have given me the opportunity to dispel them in many people.

I remind the Lord of you and I bless you.

Father Angelo