RookieApologises

I’ve watched some videos doubting traditional authorship, some arguing for, and some arguing against. In my opinion, it is far more difficult to hold a sceptical position for the authorship of the Gospels. Many approaches that I have seen to doubt traditional authorship seem to posit an ad-hoc explanation in the form of some mysterious author that somehow wielded command over all of the early churches whilst going unnamed, but the arguments put in favour of such hypotheses do not line up with the data at hand. As I go through the case for traditional authorship for each of the synoptic gospels starting with Matthew, I hope this will become clear. Each ensuing post regarding authorship depends heavily on material from the ‘Ignatius Catholic Study Bible’, co-authored by Scott Hann and Curtis Mitch, since I think it does a very good job of summarizing the traditional position.

Why Matthew probably wrote Matthew

Christian tradition unanimously identifies the Apostle Matthew as the author of the first Gospel. Virtually all ancient manuscripts that preserve the title of the work give some form of the heading ‘according to Mathew’. The same consensus can be found in the Church Fathers who address the issue: St Irenaeus (A.D. 180), Origen (A.D. 250), St. John Chrysostom (A.D. 390) and multiple others. There are no traces of a rival tradition that have survived from Christian antiquity.

Modern scholars are inclined to dispute the authorship due to the author very clearly relying on Mark for some passages. There is no dispute that Mark was written by a non-Apostle, and due to this, modern scholars presume that if Matthew were to write a gospel, he would likely write it according to his own memories as opposed to relying also on Mark’s gospel.

This sort of reasoning can easily be reinterpreted, though. Matthew could have relied on Mark’s gospel if he was under the impression that it were reputedly based upon the teaching of Peter – and this is not an unreasonable position at all. Peter’s authority among the twelve does seem to be a recurring theme in the gospel of Matthew (10:2, 16:17-19, 17:24-27).

Next, the idea that someone like Matthew wrote the gospel attributed to him does cohere very well with the textual data:

1. The evangelist is clearly well-steeped in the biblical and religious traditions of Israel, making it probable that this individual was a Jewish believer in Jesus.
2. The author demonstrates a bilingual competence in writing accurate Greek and translating quotations directly from the Hebrew OT
3. It is probable also that he was either native to Palestine or was educated there, for Greek was widely known in Palestine and especially in Galilee. Hebrew itself was hardly known outside of Israel.
4. Matthew’s Gospel also makes multiple references to currency, debts, business transactions, and other financial matters (17:24-27; 18:23-35; 20:1-6; 25:14-30; 26:25; 27:3-10).

Taken together, these aspects suggest that the author was Jewish, knew Hebrew and Greek, was probably from Palestine, and had some interest in episodes and teachings of Jesus involving money. Matthew, a tax collector fits this description quite well, and therefore it is not at all unreasonable to hold that Matthew actually wrote his gospel.

When Matthew probably wrote Matthew

There is not a scholarly consensus regarding the date when Matthew was written. Most place its composition in the 80s, 90s or first century, while some prefer to date it to the 50s or 60s. A date in the middle of the first century seems more likely than a date near the end of the first century, for two main reasons:

1. Matthew records two sayings that predict the fall of Jerusalem, one that refers to the burning of the city (22:7) and one that foretells the demolition of the temple (24:2). Both predictions were fulfilled when Jerusalem fell before the conquering Romans in the year 70. There is no indication in the Gospel that this catastrophe had yet occurred – even though Matthew makes it a point to stress how events of the past have a lasting significance for the Church in his day.
2. Matthew refers to the Sadducees seven times, more frequently than the other gospels combined (twice). He makes it a point to underscore, not only their opposition to Jesus, but also the danger their teaching poses to disciples (3:7, 16:1, 6, 11-12, 22:23, 34). Assuming that Matthew wrote with an eye to the situation of his audience, it is reasonable to suppose that his readers were threatened by the persecution and propaganda of the Sadducees, whose opposition to Christianity is historically documented in the NT (Acts 4:1-3, 5:17-18, 23:6). Of course, a similar inference can be made regarding the Pharisees, who also appear frequently in Matthew and come up for even more severe criticism (23:1-36). But there is a difference between the two that impinges on the question of dating: whereas the Pharisees where locked in a struggle with the Church throughout the first century, the Sadducees were a factor to be reckoned with only in the decades between A.D. 30 and 70 – since they were entirely wiped out with the Roman conquest of Jerusalem. Hence, although it remains difficult to fix a precise date for Matthew, there is good reason to think that it was composed before the critical date of A.D. 70.

One down, three to go.

Sources are linked throughout. It should be made clear that the arguments in this post (and following posts regarding authorship) are not at all my own and are, as I have said, taken from the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible (New Testament) by Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch.

This will likely be the most important blog series I write. As you might have guessed, it’s going to be aimed at “proving” the Resurrection of Jesus. I use “proving” loosely because whether or not one is convinced of the arguments that I make in this series is going to depend on your metaphysical commitments.

I intend to show that not only is it rational to believe in the resurrection, but given the historical evidence (along with some reasonable metaphysical commitments, which I will flesh out in a later series), that a true, bodily resurrection is the best (natural, or supernatural) explanation for the historical data that we have regarding the first century.

For now, I ask that the reader entertain that God’s existence is at least possible. I think I have given at least decent reasons to entertain this claim in a previous blog post, alongside some reasoning I gave in my previous series. If the reader does not want to do this, then fine, in a later series, i’ll give much stronger ones but to be honest, this series itself is a form of argument.

The first point to prove is that we can be historically certain that someone by the name of ‘Jesus’ existed around the first century AD, and that he was crucified. There are multiple good reasons as to which we can be certain of this, and part one will cover them.

1. Corroborating Evidence

Corroborating evidence is additional information or proof that supports and confirms the validity of an initial piece of evidence or claim.

Significant sources include:

1. Tacitus

Tacitus has been coined the ‘greatest Roman historian’, by some sources. His works, such as his Annals highlight that there was a strong sentiment of hatred toward Christians, that he likely partook in. For example, 15.44 reads:

“Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called “Chrestians” by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators”

This passage tells us a few things:

1. ‘Chrestus’ – Jesus, or at least someone fitting his description, existed.
2. ‘Chrestus’ – Jesus, or at least someone fitting his description, suffered the ‘extreme penalty’ (crucifixion)
3. Tacitus doesn’t have the highest opinion of ‘Chrestus’. He refers to the acts/works of Christians as ‘abominations’. Rather harsh, no? But this adds to his credibility – he’s an ‘adverse witness’ i.e., he’d have conceivably little to gain by lying about this stuff.
4. Not really necessary for this topic, but the Christians had grown in population by Tacitus’ time to be reasonably noticeable by the populace.

Some people object to Tacitus’ works. Some claim that these works are forgeries, but as stated, it doesn’t really make much sense to forge these. If these were forgeries by Christians (the rational type of thing to forge), it would make much more sense to paint Christ in a positive light.
Others object that Tacitus’ use of ‘procurator’ for Pilate is problematic – stating that because Pilate’s official title was ‘prefect’ during his jurisdiction, that it doesn’t correspond well with the time period. However, this isn’t much of a problem since Josephus and Philo also use the term. Josephus uses the terms interchangeably, making it likely that the term had evolved by the time of Tacitus’ writing.
A final objection comes from the reference to Christ (“Chrestus”), instead of ‘Jesus’, however, by the early second century – ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus’ were interchangeable by both Christians and non-Christians. The followers of Jesus were first called Christians at some point in the middle of the previous century (as Acts 11:26), and that Paul is writing to congregations of Christians before and near to his death (AD. 50-60), this is not at all an unreasonable claim.

2. Flavius Josephus

Flavius Josephus, or ‘Josephus’ as mentioned in the previous section, was a Jewish politician, soldier, and historian. This alone adds some credibility, given that it is well known that, generally, the Jewish populace did not take well to Christians at all. His work, the Antiquities writes about the rule of the procurator Albinus, but he includes a section on the death of James, the brother of Jesus:

“Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.”
(Antiquities, 20. 9)

This corroborates Tacitus’ writings, telling us that:

1. Jesus, or at least someone fitting his description, existed.
2. Jesus and Christ are interchangeable.
3. Jesus had some popularity – to be used as a referent concerning someone else.

Josephus has another, more controversial section that describes the actions of Jesus:

“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”
(Antiquities 18.3.)

It’s quite clear that some of this doesn’t really line up with first century Jewish sentiment about Christ, however, some scholars argue that much of this passage is authentic – as to which parts, well, that is debateable. Remember, all this section intends to do is show the historicity of the gospels, and the existence of Jesus.

Sources of limited value include:

3. Suetonius (AD 69 – 122, a Roman historian under Hadrian)
   1. Mentions Christians in his work ‘Lives of the Twelve Ceasars’
4. Pliny the Younger (AD 61-113, Governor of Bithnyia)
   1. Writes about the practices of early Christians and their worship of Christ
5. Lucian of Samosata (AD 125 – AD 180, a Greek satirist)
   1. Mocked the early Christians in his works – describing them as worshippers of a crucified sage
6. Thallus (uncertain – likely mid-first century, an ancient historian)
   • An individual who wrote a ‘refutation’ of the ‘darkness experienced at Christ’s crucifixionThallus’ work is only known through other references like Julius Africanus
   • Interesting, why would there be any need to write a refutation of a fiction?
7. Celsus (AD 170/late second-century, a second century Greek philosopher who wrote a comprehensive attack on Christianity)
8. Mara bar Serapion (~AD 73 – ~200, a Syriac Stoic Philosopher, who speaks of Jesus as a “Jewish king” (a wise one))

2. Criterion of Embarrassment

Another line of evidence supporting the historical accuracy of the Gospels is the fact that the manner of writing does not inflate the egos of the writers, suggesting honesty. Here are some key examples:

1. Peter’s Denial of Jesus
   • It is well known that Peter held a position of authority in the early Church – at least equal to or greater than that of the other apostles. However, Peter’s thrice-denial of Jesus is recorded in all three Gospels; Matthew 26:69-75, Mark 14:66-72, Luke 22:54-62. Quite obviously, there is very little to gain from such a prominent leader of the Christians admitting to his own cowardice when, if the intention were to deceive, such a detail could easily have been left out.
2. The Disciples Misunderstanding and Ambition
   • In Mark 10:35-45, James and John ask to sit at Jesus’ left and right in his glory, showing their misunderstanding of his mission. The mother of James and John makes a similar request in Matthew 20:20-28.
3. Jesus’ rebuking of Peter
   • In both Mark 8:33 and Matthew 16:23, Peter is rebuked by Jesus. In Mark, this is for Peter not having in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns, but the verse in Matthew is even more striking because it comes after Jesus addressing Peter and telling him that he is the rock upon which he would build his Church – such a sharp change in tone isn’t what one would expect from a fabrication.
4. The Disciples’ Lack of Understanding
   • This is detailed multiple times in the gospels, specifically in Mark 9:32 and Luke 18:34. With the disciples acting as teachers for the rest of Jesus’ followers after he had gone, it can quite clearly be seen that it would have been more advantageous for them to have left this detail out – again, making it more probable that this detail is accurate.

3. Dissimilarity

As much as the synoptics are very similar in narrative, they also have their key differences. Mark reads much like a summary of Jesus’ actions, whilst Matthew is quite clearly intended to be written with a Jewish audience in mind. Luke, on the other hand, is intended (at least as the author says) to be an “’account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, like the accounts passed on to us by those who were eyewitnesses and servants of the word from the beginning. ‘” (Luke 1:1-2).

Scholars commonly date Mark to be the earliest of the Gospels to be written – with around AD 70 being the most common date given to it (I will tackle the ~40-year gap “problem” later). Matthew and Luke are said to have been written within the next ten years or so. Much of these differences are explained through:

1. Paraphrase: Matthew and Luke may have restated some phrases or occurrences using other words
2. Abridgement: Some authors may have abbreviated some sections of memories, writing what they thought was more important in more detail
3. Explanatory addition: Some writers may have decided to explain some things in more details than others
4. Selection and Omission: some authors may have decided to omit details that were already common knowledge during the time – i.e., there may have been little use writing down what people already knew.

Ultimately, these differences are expected provided that the authors are not colluding with each other to make up a story. After all, if four people are charged with committing a crime and in separate court sessions they all detail the same alibi word-for-word, bar-for-bar, quite a few eye-brows would be going up.

4. Historical Fit

The narratives of the Gospels fit well within the times during which they were written. With Pilate being named as the Procurator of the region, Jerusalem being under Roman occupation and multiple other details such as the frequencies of names such as Mary and John being just as frequent in the texts as would be expected for that population. Furthermore, multiple archaeological excavations have been made that have confirmed the accounts of the gospels – examples include the Pilate Inscription (an inscription confirming Pilate’s prefecthood over Judea) and the Pool of Bethesda, where Jesus is said to have healed a paralytic in Judea.

5. Insufficient Time and Jewish Scribal Practice

Another point, which responds to an objection, is that there was also insufficient time between the actual event of Jesus’ crucifixion and the writings of the Gospels for there to have been legendary development/corruption of the story. Historians generally suppose that it takes at the very least two-to-three generations for legendary material to embellish itself into a historical story – it often takes longer, even centuries. The Gospels were written around a generation after the fact, which may seem like much too late given our society, but this is not an issue for two main reasons.

1. First Century Judea was a high-context culture:
   Jewish rabbis and scribes were known for being able to commit the whole to memory. It’s a remarkable detail, but it’s not completely surprising given the time, effort, and money it would take to write these scriptures down. Since this is the case, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that some of Jesus’ followers could do the same with the details of the Gospels and therefore maintain the oral ‘orthodoxy’ of the rest of Jesus’ followers until these things were written down. It should also be noted that the copying process was extremely meticulous, needing scribes to count every letter and word to preserve integrity. As Christianity was born out of such a culture, it is not unreasonable to suppose that similar practices and care would be devoted to taking care of Christian scriptures
2. Relatively ‘Live’
   Relative to other works, the Gospels are written astoundingly close to the events in question. For example, writings of records of:
   • Alexander the Great, are written over four-hundred years after his death, yet historians judge them to be historically reliable.
   • Aristotle, is largely down to the biography written about him six-hundred years after his death by Diogenes Laërtius
   • Homer’s Iliad. These epic poems are believed to have been composed around the 8^th Century BC, but they describe events from the Trojan War, which is thought to have occurred around the 12^th Century BC.

6. Immense amount of Manuscripts

The final point to make is that the New Testament is effectively the most popular, and well-kept manuscript of antiquity. We currently hold about 5800+ Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament – a dozen of which have been dated to within 150 years of the originals, and the oldest, “P52” has been dated to within 10-60 years of the original. In comparison, of the nine ‘Lives of Plutarch’ only a few dozen Greek manuscripts have been found, and the earliest of these has been dated to the tenth or eleventh century, or roughly eight to nine hundred years after Plutarch wrote them.

With regard to accuracy, well, that’s even more impressive. There are about 200,000 textual variants in the NT, but these represent only 10,000 places in the New Testament. If one word is misspelled in 3000 manuscripts, this is counted as 3000 variants. Further, according to biblicaltheology.com, “Norman Geisler stated that “Textual scholars Westcott and Hort estimated that only one in sixty of these variants has significance. This would leave a text 98.3% percent pure.” This means that out of the total number of variants within the New Testament, the text is 99% accurate and clean from any major doctrinal errors. In comparison to other ancient books, the New Testament is by far the most accurate. For instance, Bruce Metzger estimated, “that the Mahabharata of Hinduism is copied with only about 90% accuracy and Homer’s Iliad with about 95%” (Geisler, 1991, p533). By comparison he estimated the New Testament is about 99.5% accurate.”

One could object – zooming in on the fact that only a dozen of the manuscripts have been dated to the early period, however, this is simply expected. The materials these manuscripts were made from (Papyrus and Parchment) are relatively fragile, but due to Middle Eastern climate, and careful handling, we are fortunate to have even found these copies in the first place.

With all of this said, we have given good reason to be able to trust the reliability of the synoptic Gospels. We have seen that, when compared to contemporary texts, along with other texts from antiquity, that the Gospels stand head-and-shoulders above them in terms of preservation, and closeness to the events in question. We have also noted that there is good reason to believe that the Gospels are truthful accounts – at the very least in terms of the existence and actions of Jesus, and that he was almost certainly crucified. Next up – authorship!

Thanks,

Rookie