Chains of custody

I typically evaluate the potential alteration of evidence over time by tracing the “chain of custody”. From the first officer who reported a particular piece of evidence, to the detectives who next handled it, to the criminalists who then examined it in the lab, to the detectives who eventually delivered it into the courtroom, I want to know what each and every one of them had to say about the evidence under question. Did they write about it? Did they take a picture of it? The “chain of custody” will help me determine if the evidence was altered over time. 

In a similar way, there is a NT “chain of custody” related to the transmission of the Gospels and letters of Paul. The Gospel of John, for example, can be traced from John to his three personal students (Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias) to their personal student (Irenaeus) to his personal student (Hippolytus). These men in the chain of custody wrote their own letters and documents describing what they had been taught by their predecessors. These letters survive to this day and allow us to evaluate whether or not the NT narratives have been changed over the years. The evidence is clear, the foundational claims related to Jesus have not changed at all from the first record to the last. 

And it is not just the apostle John, but the apostles Paul and Peter bring similar documented transmission. We have multiple, known chains of custody from the eyewitness disciples, who knew for fact what they claimed about Jesus was true or not, to their students or those they mentored, and so on, all the way to us today.