Earlier Versus Later Sources
Earlier Versus Later Sources
The question of how soon the gospel sources derive after the events that they report is essential to the discussion of their potential reliability. Ancient as well as modern historians valued firsthand sources most highly (all other factors being equal), and after these they valued those closest in date to the events reported. 95 On this count the Gospels fare better than many historians.96
Ancient historians were especially happy, when reporting recent events, to include oral tradition from eyewitnesses.97 The second best source after the author being an eyewitness was the author’s use of eyewitnesses.98 Josephus concurs with Gentile historians in preferring this practice.99 Of course, whether due to bias or memory lapse, even eyewitnesses did not always agree on details, requiring some weighing of individual testimony.100 (Among logical principles deemed useful then as today, witnesses were considered most dependable shortly after the events they purported to attest.)101
Because oral traditions were most reliable in the generation they recounted, Greek historians liked to travel to compile oral sources in the generation of the current events they reported. Thus “the historians of each generation establish the record of their own time” most effectively.102 Nevertheless, sources committed to writing often held a special authority;103 even an eyewitness might even cite another eyewitness source written before his own work had been committed to writing.104 Writers often recognized that whereas oral tradition could be modified over time, written sources were fixed.105
When historians or biographers were themselves eyewitnesses, they usually noted this.106 Audiences naturally would give special credence also to writers whose works bore the approval of eyewitnesses. Josephus emphasizes that he wrote his autobiography while witnesses remained alive who could verify or falsify his claims,107 and complains that Justus, one of his rivals, waited twenty years to publish, till after the eyewitnesses were dead.108 Josephus thus contends that Justus should be less believable than himself, whose work was known to the eyewitnesses and never contradicted by them.109
Elsewhere also Josephus condemns Greek historians willing to write about events where they were neither present nor dependent on those with firsthand knowledge.110 Some, he complained, wrote about the war without having been there, which he regarded as inadequate research for appropriate histories.111 By contrast, Josephus says, he was present112 and he alone understood the Jewish refugees and wrote the information down;113 his accusers did not know the Jewish side of the story.114 Justus was not present when the events he describes took place in Galilee, and those who could have supplied Justus with such information perished in the siege of Jerusalem.115 Josephus himself was not present for most of his Antiquities or parts of his War, but the principle of dependence on eyewitness or early sources when possible is useful for considering the Gospels; they differ from works written centuries after the events they narrate. Most scholars date Matthew and Luke after 70 or even 80, hence over four or five decades after the events described in the Gospel, albeit while some eyewitnesses may remain alive. That some eyewitnesses remained alive when Mark was written is very likely; probably even more remained alive (and in church leadership, Gal 2:9) during the primary period of oral transmission.
The critical sensitivity of ancient historians about the proximity of sources to events especially affected their understanding of the remote past. Ancient historians were less accurate when they wrote about people of many centuries past than when they wrote about more recent events (as the Gospels do),116 and they were themselves aware of this difference.117 (Conversely, the advantage of writing about ancient history was that one could simply collect what earlier historians said, whereas writing about recent matters could lead to offense!)118
Ancient historians, like their modern successors, generally preferred not only witnesses but writers closer in time to the events reported rather than later sources.119 Following the same principle, many ancient writers pointed out the obscurity of reports from centuries earlier, expecting a much higher standard of accuracy when handling reports closer to their own period.120 Most writers recognized that the earliest period was shrouded in myth,121 even if they sometimes found the myths’ basic outline acceptable.122
Sources about characters who lived many centuries in the past often conflicted, a conflict that inadvertently attests to a proliferation of written historical sources no longer extant (see our discussion of sources in ch. 9). When writing about characters of the distant past, then, historians would have to sort through legendary as well as actual historical data,123 and might well have difficulty ascertaining which was which.124 Sometimes they simply repeated apparently incredible information and warned readers to use discretion;125 often, however, they sought to “demythologize” their ancient reports.126 We may take the example of Plutarch writing about Theseus, who was thought to have lived over a millennium before him. Plutarch proposes to purify “Fable, making her submit to reason and take on the semblance of History” by determining what is probable and credible.127 This means that when depending on historically remote sources, ancient historiography sometimes had to settle for historical verisimilitude rather than high probability (by modern standards) concerning the events that ancient historians reported.128
Their criteria for distinguishing what was credible from what was not were often inadequate, but they illustrate ancient intellectuals’ recognition of the problem and their critical intentions.129 Sometimes writers employed a criterion of coherency with other evidence,130 such as known customs of a report’s day;131 other historical context132 (including chronological data);133 coherence with documentary sources;134 consistency of reported behavior with a person’s other known behavior (something like modern form critics’ criterion of coherence); 135 or even material remains.136 Following the probability argument standard in the law courts,137 a historian could challenge an event recounted in earlier histories because of intrinsic improbabilities in their accounts.138 Another historian often evaluates various reports by comparing them; he notes that one story too prominent to ignore is not reported by any of the eyewitness writers, hence is likely unreliable.139
Historians’ generally more cautious approach to early sources contrasts with their greater trust in more recent material, and we generally agree with their intuitions, which were informed by greater knowledge of their period. We respect Thucydides, Polybius, and (closer to the Gospels’ era) Josephus as contemporaries of much of what they report (regardless of some rhetorical embellishments). We depend heavily on writers of the early empire like Tacitus and Suetonius, who report relatively recent events (of the past century to century and a half, with accuracy increasing further later in that period). Despite their biases, they provide an invaluable source for understanding the early empire (see discussion below on evaluating degrees of historical reliability). Barring convincing evidence to the contrary (such as much greater divergence from primary sources than we find in such historians), we should evaluate the Gospels analogously. They write about events fulfilled within the past century, mostly roughly half a century or so before they wrote.
Ancient as well as modern writers recognized that one could communicate truths through fictitious stories, whether Jewish sages’ story parables, Greek fables, or philosophers’ illustrations. But the stakes changed once authors made claims about history, thereby inviting historical falsification. Early Christians and their critics recognized the genre of gospels and Acts as offering public claims in the arena of history (cf. 1 Cor 15:3-8; Lk 1:1-4; 2:1-2; 3:1-2; Acts 26:26), and proceeded in their debate accordingly.
Sometimes the distinction between myth and history served polemic or apologetic purposes, but it did so precisely because many thinkers believed that the nature of foundational claims mattered. “The distinction between myth (or fiction) and history” became one crux in early Christianity’s debates with its detractors; “Celsus describes the gospels as fictions (πλἀσµατα) and viewed them as largely unhistorical,” and Christians took the same approach toward Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius.140 Celsus, Porphyry and Julian all claimed that the gospels were fictions, fabricating stories and not history,141 apparently assuming “that one needs to show the falsity of the sources (e.g. the biblical literature) of the Christians’ message before one can stop the religion.”142
But using information for an agenda is not incompatible with the presence of genuine information. Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, early Christians did have historical interest, and this is what we might expect in their setting. In the context of a Jewish covenant understanding of history as the framework for God’s revelation, the earliest Christians should have been interested in the history of Jesus.143 Even apocalypses often provide “historical reviews.”144 Indeed, even the Qumran sect, whose teacher was important but much less central than in the Christian movement,145 preserved at least some information about its teacher.146 Interest in history distinguished the Christian movement147 from both Mithraism, with its more cosmic emphasis,148 and earlier mystery cults,149 but fits the commitment of ancient historians.150