Chapter 11: WERE THEY PRESENT?
Chapter 11
WERE THEY PRESENT?
Why was the tomb supposedly empty? I say supposedly because, frankly, I don’t know that it was. Our very first reference to Jesus’ tomb being empty is in the Gospel of Mark, written forty years later by someone living in a different country who had heard that it was empty. How would he know?31
—Bart Ehrman, New Testament scholar, professor of religious studies, and author of Jesus Interrupted
The so-called Gospel of John is something special and reflects … the highly evolved theology of a Christian writer who lived three generations after Jesus.32
—Geza Vermes, scholar, historian, and author of The Changing Faces of Jesus
No work of art of any kind has ever been discovered, no painting, or engraving, no sculpture, or other relic of antiquity, which may be looked upon as furnishing additional evidence of the existence of these gospels, and which was executed earlier than the latter part of the second century.33
—Charles Burlingame Waite, historian and author of History of the Christian Religion to the Year Two Hundred
IF THE GOSPELS ARE LATE, THEY’RE A LIE
When I was a nonbeliever, I eagerly accepted the skeptical claims of people like Ehrman, Vermes, and Waite. In fact, I often made similar statements (although mine were much less articulate) as I argued with Christian friends and coworkers at the police department. Like the skeptics quoted here, I was inclined to reject the Gospels as late works of fiction. I considered them to be mythological accounts written well after all the true eyewitnesses were dead. They were late, and they were a lie.
I worked in our Gang Detail in the early 1990s and investigated a variety of gang-related assaults. One of them involved a stabbing between members of two rival gangs; both parties were armed with knives. It was hard to determine which of the two gang members was actually the victim, as both were pretty seriously injured and no eyewitnesses were willing to come forward to testify about what really happened. About a year after the case was assigned to me, I got a telephone call from a young woman who told me that she witnessed the entire crime and was willing to tell me how it occurred. She said that she had been deployed as a member of the army for the past year, and, for this reason, she had been unaware that the case was still unresolved. After a little digging, I discovered that this “eyewitness” was actually a cousin of one of the gang members. After a lengthy interview with her, she finally admitted that she was training in another state at the time of the stabbing. She didn’t even hear about it until about a week before she contacted me. She was lying to try to implicate the member of the rival gang and protect her cousin. Clearly, her story was a late piece of fiction, created long after the original event for the express purpose of achieving her goal. She wasn’t even available or present at the crime to begin with, and for this reason, she was worthless to me as a witness.
As a skeptic, I believed that the Gospels were penned in the second century and were similarly worthless. If they were written that late, they were not eyewitness accounts. It’s really as simple as that; true eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus would have lived (and written) in the first century. The first criterion of eyewitness reliability requires us to answer the question “Were the alleged eyewitnesses present in the first place?” Like the unbelieving scholars, I answered this question by arguing that the Gospels were written in the second or third century, much closer to the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire than to the alleged life of Jesus:
Before I could ever take the Gospels seriously as eyewitness accounts, I needed to decide where they fell on this timeline. If the writers first appeared toward the right (closer to the church councils and the formal establishment of the Catholic Church), there was good reason to doubt that they were true witnesses to the sufferings of Christ (1 Pet. 5:1) or that they actually saw Jesus with their own eyes (1 John 1:1–3). If, on the other hand, they appeared to the left of the timeline, I could at least begin to consider them earnestly. The closer they appeared to the life and ministry of Jesus, the more seriously I could consider their claims.
INCHING BACK ON THE TIMELINE
There are many pieces of circumstantial evidence that form a compelling case for the early dating of the Gospels. There are several good reasons to believe that the gospel writers are standing on the left side of the timeline. The more I examined this evidence, the more I came to believe that the Gospels were written early enough in history to be taken seriously as eyewitness accounts. Let’s take a look at this evidence before we locate each piece on the timeline.
THE NEW TESTAMENT FAILS TO DESCRIBE THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE
We begin with perhaps the most significant Jewish historical event of the first century, the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70. Rome dispatched an army to Jerusalem in response to the Jewish rebellion of AD 66. The Roman army (under the leadership of Titus) ultimately destroyed the temple in AD 70,34 just as Jesus had predicted in the Gospels (in Matt. 24:1–3). You might think this important detail would be included in the New Testament record, especially since this fact would corroborate Jesus’s prediction. But no gospel account records the destruction of the temple. In fact, no New Testament document mentions it at all, even though there are many occasions when a description of the temple’s destruction might have assisted in establishing a theological or historical point.
THE NEW TESTAMENT FAILS TO DESCRIBE THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM
Even before the temple was destroyed, the city of Jerusalem was under assault. Titus surrounded the city with four large groups of soldiers and eventually broke through the city’s “Third Wall” with a battering ram. After lengthy battles and skirmishes, the Roman soldiers eventually set fire to the city’s walls, and the temple was destroyed as a result.35 No aspect of this three-year siege is described in any New Testament document, in spite of the fact that the gospel writers could certainly have pointed to the anguish that resulted from the siege as a powerful point of reference for the many passages of Scripture that extensively address the issue of suffering.
LUKE SAID NOTHING ABOUT THE DEATHS OF PAUL AND PETER
Years before the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, another pair of events occurred that were significant to the Christian community. The apostle Paul was martyred in the city of Rome in AD 64, and Peter was martyred shortly afterward in AD 65.36 While Luke wrote extensively about Paul and Peter in the book of Acts and featured them prominently, he said nothing about their deaths. In fact, Paul was still alive (under house arrest in Rome) at the end of the book of Acts.
LUKE SAID NOTHING ABOUT THE DEATH OF JAMES
Luke featured another important figure from Christian history in the book of Acts. James (the brother of Jesus) became the leader of the Jerusalem church and was described in a position of prominence in Acts 15. James was martyred in the city of Jerusalem in AD 62,37 but like the deaths of Paul and Peter, the execution of James is absent from the biblical account, even though Luke described the deaths of Stephen (Acts 7:54–60) and James the brother of John (Acts 12:1–2).
LUKE’S GOSPEL PREDATES THE BOOK OF ACTS
Luke wrote both the book of Acts and the gospel of Luke. These two texts contain introductions that tie them together in history. In the introduction to the book of Acts, Luke wrote:
The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. (Acts 1:1–2)
It’s clear that Luke’s gospel (his “first account”) was written prior to the book of Acts.
PAUL QUOTED LUKE’S GOSPEL IN HIS LETTER TO TIMOTHY
Paul appeared to be aware of Luke’s gospel and wrote as though it was common knowledge in about AD 63–64, when Paul penned his first letter to Timothy. Note the following passage:
The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing,” and “The laborer is worthy of his wages.” (1 Tim. 5:17–18)
Paul quoted two passages as “scripture” here—one in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament. “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing” refers to Deuteronomy 25:4, and “The laborer is worthy of his wages” refers to Luke 10:7. It’s clear that Luke’s gospel was already common knowledge and accepted as scripture by the time this letter was written. To be fair, a number of critics (like Bart Ehrman) have argued that Paul was not actually the author of 1 Timothy and maintain that this letter was written much later in history. The majority of scholars, however, recognize the fact that the earliest leaders of the church were familiar with 1 Timothy at a very early date.38
PAUL ECHOED THE CLAIMS OF THE GOSPEL WRITERS
While some modern critics challenge the authorship of Paul’s pastoral letters, even the most skeptical scholars agree that Paul is the author of the letters written to the Romans, the Corinthians, and the Galatians. These letters are dated between AD 48 and AD 60. The letter to the Romans (typically dated at AD 50) reveals something important. Paul began the letter by proclaiming that Jesus is the resurrected “Son of God.” Throughout the letter, Paul accepted the view of Jesus that the gospel eyewitnesses described in their own accounts. Just seventeen years after the resurrection, Jesus was described as divine. He is God incarnate, just as the gospel eyewitnesses described in their own accounts. In fact, Paul’s outline of Jesus’s life matches that of the Gospels. In 1 Corinthians 15 (written from AD 53 to 57), Paul summarized the gospel message and reinforced the fact that the apostles described the eyewitness accounts to him:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. (1 Cor. 15:3–8)
In his letter to the Galatians (also written in the mid-50s), Paul described his interaction with these apostles (Peter and James) and said that their meeting occurred at least fourteen years prior to the writing of his letter:
But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus. Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. (Gal. 1:15–19)
Then after an interval of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also. (Gal. 2:1)
This means that Paul saw the risen Christ and learned about the gospel accounts from the eyewitnesses (Peter and James) within five years of the crucifixion (most scholars place Paul’s conversion from AD 33 to 36, and he visited Peter and James within three years of his conversion, according to Gal. 1:19). This is why Paul was able to tell the Corinthians that there were still “more than five hundred brethren” who could confirm the resurrection accounts (1 Cor. 15:6). That’s a gutsy claim to make in AD 53–57, when his readers could easily have accepted his challenge and called him out as a liar if the claim was untrue.
PAUL QUOTED LUKE’S GOSPEL IN HIS LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS
Paul also seems to have been familiar with the gospel of Luke when he wrote to the Corinthian church (nearly ten years earlier than his letter to Timothy). Notice the similarity between Paul’s description of the Lord’s Supper and Luke’s gospel:
For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood.” (1 Cor. 11:23–25)
And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.” (Luke 22:19–20)
Paul appears to be quoting Luke’s gospel—the only gospel that has Jesus saying that the disciples are to “do this in remembrance of Me.” If Paul is trying to use a description of the meal that was already well known at the time, this account must have been circulating for a period of time prior to Paul’s letter.
LUKE QUOTED MARK (AND MATTHEW) REPEATEDLY
Luke, when writing his own gospel, readily admitted that he was not an eyewitness to the life and ministry of Jesus. Instead, Luke described himself as a historian, collecting the statements from the eyewitnesses who were present at the time:
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1–4)
As a result, Luke often repeated or quoted entire passages that were offered previously by either Mark (350 verses from Mark appear in Luke’s gospel) or Matthew (250 verses from Matthew appear in Luke’s account).39 These passages were inserted into Luke’s gospel as though they were simply copied over from the other accounts. It’s reasonable, therefore, to conclude that Mark’s account was already recognized, accepted, and available to Luke prior to his authorship of the gospel.
MARK’S GOSPEL APPEARS TO BE AN EARLY “CRIME BROADCAST”
Mark’s gospel bears a striking resemblance to a “crime broadcast.” When first-responding officers arrive at the scene of a crime, they quickly gather the details related to the crime and the description of the suspect, then “clear the air” with the radio dispatchers so they can broadcast these details to other officers who may be in the area. This first crime broadcast is brief and focused on the essential elements. There will be time later to add additional details, sort out the order of events, and write lengthy reports. This first broadcast is driven by the immediacy of the moment; we’ve got to get the essentials out to our partners because the suspects in this case may still be trying to flee the area. There is a sense of urgency in the first broadcast because officers are trying to catch the bad guys before they get away.
Although Mark’s gospel contains the important details of Jesus’s life and ministry, it is brief, less ordered than the other gospels, and filled with “action” verbs and adjectives. There is a sense of urgency about it. This is what we might expect, if it was, in fact, an early account of Jesus’s ministry, written with a sense of urgency. It is clear that the eyewitnesses felt this urgency and believed that Jesus would return very soon. Paul wrote that “salvation is nearer to us than when we believed” (Rom. 13:11), and James said, “The coming of the Lord is near” (James 5:8). Peter, Mark’s mentor and companion, agreed that “the end of all things is near” (1 Pet. 4:7). Surely Mark wrote with this same sense of urgency as he penned Peter’s experiences in his own gospel. Mark’s account takes on the role of “crime broadcast,” delivering the essential details without regard for composition or stylistic prose. Papias confirmed this in his statement about Mark’s efforts:
Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.40
The accuracy of the account was more important to Mark than anything else; for all Mark knew, Jesus would return before there would be any need to write an ordered biography of sorts. Mark was in charge of the essential crime broadcast. As the years passed and the eyewitnesses aged, others made a more deliberate effort to place the narrative in its correct order. Papias seems to indicate that this was Matthew’s intent:
Therefore Matthew put the logia in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language, but each person interpreted them as best he could.41
Luke also seems to be doing something similar according to the introduction of his own gospel:
It seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order. (Luke 1:3)
Both Matthew and Luke appear to be writing with a much different intent than Mark. Their accounts are more robust and ordered. While Mark seems to be providing us with the initial “crime broadcast,” Matthew and Luke are more concerned about the “final report.”
MARK APPEARS TO BE PROTECTING KEY PLAYERS
We’ve already talked about how important it is to “hang on every word.” In my years as an investigator, there have been many times when a witness carefully chose his or her words to avoid dragging someone else into the case. This was particularly true when working gang cases. There were a number of times when a witness had the courage to come forward with information, but was less than forthcoming about the identity of others who might have seen something similar. Driven by the fear that these additional witnesses might be in a position of jeopardy, the witness would mention them in his or her account but refuse to specifically identify them. Most of the time the witnesses were simply trying to protect someone who they thought was defenseless and vulnerable.
I experienced just the opposite in some of my cold-case investigations. When reinterviewing witnesses who spoke to investigators years earlier, I found that they were now willing to provide me with the identities of people whom they previously refused to identify. Sometimes this was because they developed some animosity toward these people over the years; this was especially true when boyfriends and girlfriends broke up and were eventually willing to talk about each other. Sometimes it was a matter of diminishing fear; when the suspect in a case died, it wasn’t unusual to have people come forward and identify themselves simply because they were no longer afraid to do so.
Many careful readers of Mark’s gospel have observed that there are a number of unidentified people described in his account. These anonymous characters are often in key positions in the narrative, yet Mark chose to leave them unnamed. For example, Mark’s description of the activity in the garden of Gethsemane includes the report that “one of those who stood by [the arrest of Jesus] drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear” (Mark 14:47). Mark chose to leave both the attacker and the man attacked unnamed in his description, even though John identified both (Peter as the attacker and Malchus as the person being attacked) in his gospel account. Similarly, Mark failed to identify the woman who anointed Jesus at the home of Simon the leper (Mark 14:3–9), even though John told us that it was Mary (the sister of Martha), who poured the perfume on Jesus’s head.42 While skeptics have offered a number of explanations for these variations (arguing, for example, that they may simply be late embellishments in an effort to craft the growing mythology of the Gospels), something much simpler might be at work. If Mark, like some of the witnesses in my gang cases, was interested in protecting the identity of Peter (as Malchus’s attacker) and Mary (whose anointing may have been interpreted as a proclamation of Jesus’s kingly position as the Messiah), it makes sense that he might leave them unnamed so that the Jewish leadership would not be able to easily target them. In fact, Mark never even described Jesus’s raising of Mary’s brother, Lazarus. This also makes sense if Mark was trying to protect Lazarus’s identity in the earliest years of the Christian movement, given that the resurrection of Lazarus was of critical concern to the Jewish leaders and prompted them to search for Jesus in their plot to kill him. If Mark wrote his gospel early, while Mary, Lazarus, Peter, and Malchus were still alive, it is reasonable that Mark might have wanted to leave them unnamed or simply omit the accounts that included them in the first place.
Scholars generally acknowledge John’s gospel as the final addition to the New Testament collection of gospel accounts. It was most likely written at a time when Peter, Malchus, and Mary were already dead. John, like some of the witnesses in my cold cases, had the liberty to identify these important people; they were no longer in harm’s way.
THEY WERE EARLY ON THE TIMELINE
Given these eleven pieces of circumstantial evidence, what reasonable inference can be drawn about the dating of the Gospels? First we’ve got to account for the suspicious absence of several key historical events in the New Testament record: the destruction of the temple, the siege of Jerusalem, and the deaths of Peter, Paul, and James. These omissions can be reasonably explained if the book of Acts (the biblical text that ought to describe these events) was written prior to AD 61–62. These events are missing from the accounts because they hadn’t happened yet.
We know from the introductory lines of the book of Acts that Luke’s gospel was written prior to Acts, but we must use the remaining circumstantial evidence to try to determine how much prior. The fact that Paul echoed the description of Jesus that was offered by the gospel writers is certainly consistent with the fact that he was aware of the claims of the Gospels, and his quotations from Luke’s gospel in 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians reasonably confirm the early existence of Luke’s account, placing it well before AD 53–57. Paul was able to quote Luke’s gospel and refer to it as scripture because it was already written, circulating at this time, and broadly accepted. Paul’s readers recognized this to be true as they read Paul’s letters.
Luke told us that he was gathering data from “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word” (Luke 1:2). As a result he either referred to or quoted directly from over five hundred verses that are found in either the gospel of Mark or the gospel of Matthew. It is reasonable to infer that these accounts were in existence prior to Luke’s investigation. If this is the case, Mark’s gospel would date much earlier than Luke’s, and can be sensibly placed in either the late 40s or very early 50s. This then explains some of the characteristics we see in Mark’s gospel. There appears to be a sense of urgency in the gospel, similar to the crime broadcasts that are made by responding officers, and Mark appears to be protecting key players in the account as if they were still alive at the time of his writing.
Let’s place the evidence on the timeline to see where the gospel accounts are located relative to the life of Jesus:
The reasonable inference from the circumstantial evidence is that the Gospels were written very early in history, at a time when the original eyewitnesses and gospel writers were still alive and could testify to what they had seen. This is why Mark was careful not to identify key players and Paul could reasonably point to five hundred living eyewitnesses who could still testify to their observations of Jesus’s resurrection. While skeptics would like to claim that the Gospels were written well after the alleged life of the apostles and much closer to the councils that affirmed them, the evidence indicates something quite different.
The circumstantial evidence supports an early dating for the Gospels. The gospel writers appear in history right where we would expect them to appear if they were, in fact, eyewitnesses. This early placement alone does not ensure that the Gospels are reliable accounts, but it keeps them “in the running” and becomes an important piece of circumstantial evidence, in and of itself, as we determine the reliability of the gospel writers.
SO, WHY DO SOME CONTINUE TO DENY IT?
Some are still skeptical of the early dating of the Gospels, in spite of the circumstantial evidence that supports such a conclusion. Many skeptics are quick to embrace alternative explanations that place the Gospels so late in history that they simply could not have been written by eyewitnesses. As with any process of abductive reasoning, we need to examine the alternative possibilities to see if any of them are reasonable (based on evidence). Let’s examine some of the reasons why skeptics like Ehrman, Vermes, and Waite claim that the Gospels were written either “forty years later,” “three generations after Jesus,” or in “the latter part of the second century.”
THE AUTHORS OF THE GOSPELS ARE ANONYMOUS
Some have argued that the Gospels are late because none of the authors specifically identifies himself in the accounts. This lack of identification is seen as evidence that the accounts were not actually written by anyone in the first century, but were falsely attributed to these authors much later in an effort to legitimize the forgeries.
BUT …
The Gospels are not the only ancient documents that fail to identify the author within the text of the manuscripts. Tacitus (the Roman senator and historian who lived from AD 56 to AD 117) wrote a history of the Roman Empire from the reign of Augustus Caesar to Nero entitled Annals. Tacitus was, in fact, present during much of this period of time, but failed to include himself in any of his descriptions or identify himself as the author. Like the Gospels, the Annals are written anonymously yet are attributed to Tacitus without reservation by historical scholars. Why? Because, like the Gospels, Tacitus’s authorship is supported by external evidence (such as the claims of other early writers who credited Tacitus with the work). The Gospels were also attributed to their traditional authors quite early in history (Papias, living in the late first century and early second century, is one such example).
In fact, no one in antiquity ever attributed the Gospels to anyone other than the four traditionally accepted authors. That’s a powerful statement, in and of itself, especially considering the fact that early Christians consistently recognized, identified, and condemned the false writings of forgers who tried to credit false gospels to the apostolic eyewitnesses. The Traditions of Matthias (AD 110–160), for example, was identified as a forgery by early Christians and was eventually included in a list with other forgeries (including the gospels of Thomas and Peter) by Eusebius, the “Father of Church History.”
One might also wonder why, if these gospel accounts were falsely attributed to the authors we accept today, the second- or third-century forgers would not have picked better pseudonyms (false attributions) than the people who were ultimately accredited with the writings. Why would they pick Mark or Luke when they could easily have chosen Peter, Andrew, or James? Mark and Luke appear nowhere in the gospel records as eyewitnesses, so why would early forgers choose these two men around which to build their lies when there were clearly better candidates available to legitimize their work?
It’s not as if the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John have been discovered in some ancient collection under someone else’s name. The only copies we possess of these Gospels, regardless of antiquity or geographic location, are attributed to one of the four traditional authors. No early church leader has ever attributed these Gospels to anyone other than Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John. There is no alternative ancient tradition that claims, for example, that the gospel of Mark is actually written by anyone other than Mark.
While it is possible that the Gospels were not written by the traditional first-century authors and were given these attributions only much later in history, it is not evidentially reasonable. If skeptics were willing to give the Gospels the same “benefit of the doubt” they are willing to give other ancient documents, the Gospels would easily pass the test of authorship.
THE TEMPLE DESTRUCTION IS PREDICTED
While the absence of any description of the temple’s destruction can reasonably be interpreted as a piece of circumstantial evidence supporting the early dating of the New Testament accounts, skeptics sometimes use this fact to make just the opposite case. Many have proposed that Jesus’s prediction related to the destruction was inserted to legitimize the text and make it appear that He had some prophetic power. If this was the case, the Gospels would clearly date to after the event (post AD 70), as the writers already knew the outcome before they cleverly inserted the prediction.
BUT …
This sort of skepticism is clearly rooted in the presupposition we described in chapter 1. If we begin from a position of philosophical naturalism (the presumption that nothing supernatural is possible), we have no choice but to describe the supernatural elements we find in the Gospels as lies. From a naturalistic perspective, prophetic claims are impossible. The skeptic, therefore, must find another explanation for Jesus’s prediction related to the temple; critics typically move the date of authorship beyond the date when the prophecy was fulfilled to avoid the appearance of supernatural confirmation. But as we described earlier, a fair examination of the evidence that supports supernaturalism must at least allow for the possibility of supernaturalism in the first place. The naturalistic bias of these critics prevents them from accepting any dating that precedes the destruction of the temple in AD 70 and forces them to ignore all the circumstantial evidence that supports the early dating.
When explaining why the destruction of the temple itself was not included in the gospel record, skeptics have argued that the gospel writers intentionally omitted the fulfillment to make the accounts look like they were written early. But if this was the case, why were the gospel writers unafraid to describe the fulfillment of prophecy in other passages in the Gospels? Over and over again we see the fulfillment of Old Testament messianic prophecies that are attributed to Jesus in one manner or another. In addition to this, on several occasions Jesus predicted His own resurrection. The gospel writers readily described the fulfillment of these predictions in the resurrection accounts. Why would they be willing to describe this aspect of fulfilled prophecy, but shy away from discussing the destruction of the temple?
In addition, Luke freely admitted that he was not an eyewitness to the events in his gospel. He told us from the onset that he was writing at some point well after the events actually occurred, working as a careful historian. Why not include the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple? There was no reason to be shy here. Other Old Testament authors wrote from a perspective that followed the events they described and were unafraid to say so. Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, for example, repeatedly reported on events that took place well before their written account; they often wrote that the conditions they were describing continued from the point of the event “to this day” (indicating the late point at which they were actually writing). Why wouldn’t Luke take a similar approach to the destruction of the temple, especially given the fact that he made no pretense about writing as a historian?
While it is certainly possible that the Gospels were all written after the destruction of the temple, it is not evidentially reasonable. In fact, the primary motivation for denying the early authorship of the Gospels is simply the bias against supernaturalism that leads skeptics to redate the Scriptures to some point following the fulfillment of Jesus’s prophecy.
THE ACCOUNTS ARE REPLETE WITH MIRACULOUS EVENTS
Many critics have also pointed to the presence of the miraculous to make a case for late dating. Surely the miracles are works of fiction. If the gospel accounts were written early, eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus would have exposed these miracles as fictitious, right? Much of this critical analysis comes from a literary discipline known as “form criticism.” Form critics attempt to classify portions of Scripture on the basis of their literary “type,” “pattern,” or “form.” Once these pieces are isolated within the larger narrative, form critics attempt to explain their origin. In the case of the Gospels, form critics have argued that the supernatural elements are different from those parts of the narrative that can be trusted as accurate history. They explain the “paradigms,”43 “sayings,”44 “miracle stories,”45 and “legends”46 as late additions inserted by local Christian communities to make a particular theological case or to present Jesus as something more than He was.
BUT …
By now you probably recognize that the presupposition of naturalism (and the bias against supernaturalism) is once again the impetus behind this criticism. The form critics of history (a movement that was most popular in the mid-twentieth century) simply rejected the possibility that any description of a miracle could be factually true. It turns out that it was the miraculous “content” of these passages, rather than their common literary style or form, that caused critics to identify the verses they thought should be removed or handled with suspicion. In fact, they often selected passages that were very different from one another in terms of their stylistic forms. Sometimes they identified passages that did not fit neatly into one of their categories (or appeared to be a blend of more than one literary form), and they often disagreed with one another about the identity of particular types of literary forms and passages. They did agree on one thing, however: passages that contain miraculous events were not to be taken seriously as part of the original narrative.
These skeptics evaluate the gospel accounts with the assumption (based on the presence of the miraculous) that Christians must have written them in the second or third century, unafraid that their lies would be detected by those who lived in the first century. This proposal ignores, of course, all the evidence that supports an early dating for the New Testament documents. It also assumes that the gospel accounts are false until proved true. This is just the opposite approach we take with witness testimony when it is presented in court. We ought to presume that witnesses are telling us the truth until we discover otherwise, and the presence of the miraculous alone should not cause us to believe that the gospel eyewitnesses were lying.
There is no evidence, aside from the existence of supernatural elements within the gospel accounts, to support the assumption of late dating that form critics have proposed. While the insertion of miraculous elements late in history might be possible, it is not evidentially reasonable. Once again, the primary motivation for denying the early authorship of the Gospels is simply the bias against supernaturalism.
THERE WAS A SECOND-CENTURY BISHOP IN ANTIOCH NAMED “THEOPHILUS”
Some have tried to argue that the “Theophilus” described by Luke in the introduction to his gospel and the book of Acts was actually Theophilus, the bishop of Antioch (who served in that city from approximately AD 169 to 183). They support this claim by pointing out that some ancient authorities maintained that Luke originally came from this city, and the fact that Theophilus of Antioch wrote a defense of Christianity that discussed the canon of the New Testament (which, of course, would have included the gospel of Luke). Skeptics who argue for this identification of Theophilus also point to the opening sentence of Luke’s gospel, where Luke wrote, “Many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us.” Isn’t it possible that Luke was referring to the many late-second-century heretical, false gospels (like the gospel of the Egyptians) that caused Theophilus of Antioch to write his own defense in the first place? If this is true, Luke’s gospel ought to be dated in the second century, after the appearance of these heretical gospels and during the tenure of Theophilus of Antioch.
BUT …
Luke addressed Theophilus as “most excellent” in his gospel introduction. This is a title of authority, indicating that Theophilus held a position of leadership. If Theophilus were already in a position of lifetime Christian leadership (governing the church of Antioch as a bishop and deserving of Luke’s title), would he really know so little about the life of Jesus that Luke would need to send him an account “in consecutive order” so he could “know the exact truth about the things [he had] been taught”? Luke’s introduction makes it sound as if Luke was in a position of greater knowledge than Theophilus and seems completely inconsistent with the possibility that Theophilus was someone already knowledgeable enough to have ascended to such an important position of Christian leadership.
Who Is “Theophilus”?
It does appear, however, that Theophilus was in some position of leadership, given the way that Luke addressed him. Are there any reasonable first-century explanations consistent with the other pieces of circumstantial evidence placing the gospel in the first century? Yes, in fact, there are. Luke used the same “most excellent” title when addressing Felix (in Acts 24:3) and Festus (in Acts 26:25), both of whom were Roman officials. Theophilus may, therefore, have been a Roman official of some sort. It’s interesting to note that Luke did not use this title when addressing Theophilus in the book of Acts. This may reflect the fact that Theophilus was serving a short-term position in the Roman government (rather than a lifetime position as a bishop in Antioch). Perhaps Theophilus began to serve his term of office during the time when Luke was writing the gospel. Such positions of leadership were certainly available in the first-century government of the Roman Empire.
Roman officials of the first century aren’t the only reasonable candidates for Theophilus’s identity. There were a number of Jewish leaders in the first century who possessed the name, including Theophilus ben Ananus (the Roman-appointed high priest of the Jerusalem temple between AD 37 and AD 41).47 If this was, in fact, the Theophilus whom Luke was addressing, it might explain why Luke began his gospel with a description of another priest, Zechariah, and his activity in the temple. This might also explain why Luke alone spent so much time writing about the way that Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the temple following His days of purification and then again when He was twelve years old. It might also explain why, interestingly, Luke failed to mention Caiaphas’s role in the crucifixion of Jesus (Caiaphas was Theophilus ben Ananus’s brother-in-law).
While it is possible that Luke was writing to Theophilus of Antioch late in the second century, it is not evidentially reasonable. Even if we don’t have enough evidence to identify the true Theophilus with precision, there are some reasonable first-century explanations available, and the manner in which Luke described Theophilus in Luke 1 is inconsistent with Theophilus of Antioch.
LUKE AGREED WITH MUCH OF WHAT JOSEPHUS REPORTED
Some skeptics have examined the writings of Titus Flavius Josephus, the first-century Roman-Jewish historian who lived from AD 37 to approximately AD 100 and wrote about life in the area of Palestine, including the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. Josephus wrote Antiquities of the Jews in the early 90s (AD 93–94). Critics cite a number of similarities between Luke and Josephus and argue that Luke actually used Josephus as a source for his own work. This, of course, would place the date of Luke’s work sometime after the early 90s, perhaps even as late as the early second century.
BUT …
The fact that Josephus mentioned historical details that are also described by Luke (e.g., the census taken under Quirinius, the death of Herod Agrippa, the identity of the tetrarch Lysanias, and the famine during the reign of Claudius) does not necessarily mean that Luke was using Josephus as his source. Josephus may, in fact, be referencing Luke’s work; both may be referencing the work of someone who preceded them; or each may simply be citing the facts of history independently. In any case, the dual citations we see here ought to give us confidence that Luke’s record is historically accurate.
If Luke was using Josephus as a source (in a manner similar to his use of Mark or Matthew), why didn’t he quote Josephus? This would certainly be consistent with his introductory proclamation that he was referencing other sources to compile his history. Luke readily quoted Mark and inserted many parallel accounts that are also found in Matthew’s record; why not quote or mirror Josephus in a similar way? Luke never did this, however, and his work demonstrates no similarity with Josephus’s literary style.
While it is certainly possible that Luke was borrowing from Josephus, it is not evidentially reasonable. There are a number of unrelated pieces of circumstantial evidence that point to an early date for Luke’s gospel, nearly forty years prior to the work of Josephus. All the alleged evidence that supports the claim that Luke referenced Josephus can also be used to defend the claim that Josephus referenced Luke. The cumulative circumstantial case for early dating can help us determine which of these possibilities is the most reasonable.
THE MOST REASONABLE CONCLUSION
We can now employ some abductive reasoning as we try to determine which explanation related to dating is the most sensible. Like our dead-body scene described in chapter 2, we begin by listing all the evidence that we’ve examined so far, including the evidence that has been identified by skeptics. Next, we list the two possible explanations that might account for this evidence:
Using the lifetime of the alleged eyewitnesses (the gospel writers) and the destruction of the temple as a point of differentiation, the evidence can allow for two possible inferences: either the Gospels were written prior to the destruction of the temple (and during the span of time in which the alleged eyewitnesses were alive), or the Gospels were written well after the destruction of the temple and after the alleged eyewitnesses would have been long in the grave. If we accept the first explanation, we can integrate and embrace all the evidence without any contradiction or friction between pieces. The second explanation may explain the last five pieces of evidence, but has great difficulty (at best) explaining the first eleven. The inference that the Gospels were written in the first century, prior to the destruction of the temple (and during the lifetime of those who claimed to see Jesus), is the best explanation. The explanation is feasible, straightforward, and logical. It exhausts all the evidence we have assembled, and it is superior to the alternative explanation. It meets the five criteria we established for abductive reasoning; we can have confidence that we’ve arrived at the most reasonable explanation.
THE GOSPELS PASS THE FIRST TEST
Juries are encouraged to evaluate eyewitnesses in the four categories we described in chapter 4. They begin by making sure that witnesses were truly present at the time of the crime. When evaluating the gospel writers, the most reasonable inference from the evidence is an early date of authorship. Does this mean that they are reliable? Not yet; there’s much more to consider. But the Gospels have passed the first test; their testimony appears early enough in history to confirm that the gospel writers were actually present to see what they said they saw.
CASE NOTES
31. Bart Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 177.
32. Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus (New York: Penguin, 2002), 8.
33. Charles Burlingame Waite, History of the Christian Religion to the Year Two Hundred (San Diego: Book Tree, 2011), Kindle edition, Kindle locations 5080–5082.
34. Flavius Josephus, Complete Works of Flavius Josephus: Wars of the Jews, Antiquities of the Jews, Against Apion, Autobiography, trans. William Whiston (Boston: MobileReference), Kindle edition, Kindle locations 7243–7249.
35. Barbara Levick, Vespasian, Roman Imperial Biographies (New York: Routledge, 1999).
36. Adam Clarke, Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1983), commenting on Acts 28:31.
37. Josephus, Complete Works of Flavius Josephus, Kindle locations 28589–28592.
38. Kenneth Berding, Polycarp of Smyrna’s View of the Authorship of 1 and 2 Timothy, Vigiliae Christianae 54, no. 4 (1999), 349–360.
39. F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984), Kindle edition, Kindle location 409.
40. Papias, quoted in Eusebius, “Church History,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wallace (New York: Cosimo, 2007), 172–73.
41. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3.39.16, as translated by Bauckham in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 222.
42. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Kindle location 3072.
43. Howard I. Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Principles and Methods (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 155.
44. David Alan Black and David S. Dockery, New Testament Criticism and Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1991), 184.
45. Marshall, New Testament Interpretation, 156.
46. Black and Dockery, New Testament Criticism and Interpretation, 184.
47. Mentioned by Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Unabridged Books, 2011), bk. 17, chap. 5, sec. 3.