Preface:
The age of the text is
a different topic then textual variance.
The age of the text has direct implications on the Resurrection, whereas
variance could only have at most secondary implications. All variances in New Testament manuscripts
have been documented at Instituts für Neutestamentliche Textforschung in
Munster Germany. Therefore, this blog
will focus on information regarding the age of New Testament texts.
How old are our New Testament (NT) texts? When were they originally written?
I think
that we can, with some level of accuracy, limit the timeframe in which they
were written by what they contain [One could say this is an argument from
silence, and it is, but it’s at least a pregnant argument from silence]:
1. Who is the emperor? Augustus is mentioned in Luke 2:1 and
Tiberius is mentioned in 3:1. Caligula is not mentioned, but Claudius is
mentioned twice in Acts, specifically 18:2 relates an edict that he issued. Nero is not mentioned, which is odd because
under him is when the first state sponsored Christian persecutions began. But none of the other first-century Roman
emperors are ever mentioned. That
includes Vespasian and it was under him that the temple was destroyed and
Domitian, who also sponsored Christian persecutions.
2. Which of the disciples are
dead? The NT only recounts the deaths of
two of the original twelve disciples, Judas (Matt. 27:5, Acts 1:18) and James
the brother of John (Acts 12:2). According
to Eusebius (c. AD 260-5 – 339/340) both Peter and Paul were martyred under
Nero; ergo, they are dead before AD 68.
According to Josephus, the high priest Ananus ben Ananus ordered the
execution of James the brother of Jesus in 62.
3. The Jewish revolt began in 66 and
the temple was destroyed in 70. Yet,
there is no reason from the NT to think either of those events have
happened. Note especially the appearance
of the Jerusalem Temple in Revelation 11.
There is no indication in the text that this is not Herod’s Temple, nor
is there any surprise by anyone that there is a Temple in Jerusalem.
a. If the destruction of the Temple
had happened before the writing of any NT texts, there are good reasons to
expect it to be mentioned. To begin with
early Jesus followers were 1st century Jews and as can be seen in
the book of Acts, very early in the existence of the church the temple was
still relevant in their minds.
b. Second, by the second half of the
first century, the division between Jew and Christian was becoming more and
more clear. If the Temple had been
destroyed, it would be well within expectations for a report in the NT leaning
towards God’s judgment on the Nation of Israel or the like. Its absence should be suspect if the event
had happened.
c. In Matt. 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21,
Jesus is recorded as predicting the destruction of Jerusalem, and we know that
happened in 70. However, no NT uses its
destruction as evidence for Jesus’ claims.
If someone says those were written after the event, note that in all
four Gospels, landmarks and locations in Jerusalem and its area are mentioned
as if they were still standing; therefore, there is no indication in the texts
that those events had already happened.
4. In part 1 of this series, I
pointed out that the canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John get both
political and religious rulers correct.
We can compare that track record to texts written later, such as the
‘Gospel of the Birth of Mary’. In its first
chapter there is a Jewish High Priest named Issachar. That, however, is demonstrably false because
the Jewish records of their High Priests show there was never a High Priest
named Issachar. If the canonical Gospels
were late 1st-century or early 2nd-century, then we’d
find errors such as mentioned above.
5. The Didache, which can be dated to
the later part of the 1st-century or early 2nd-century,
quotes the Gospels. Both Pseudo Barnabas
(late 1st-century or early 2nd-century) and the Shepherd
of Hermas (2nd-century) quote the NT including the Gospels. Finally, early Church fathers including
Clement I allude to or quote the Gospels by the end of the 1st-
century.
6. There is little doubt that Paul is
the author of 1st Corinthians and we know that he was in Corinth
when Gallio became proconsul of Achaia in AD 51 (Delphi Inscription). After Paul left Corinth, he was in Ephesus
for a few years and there he wrote 1st Corinthians around AD 54. It specifically mentions that Jesus died, was
buried, rose on the third day and had several post-resurrection
appearances. This is within 35 years of
the event, within the lifetime of eyewitnesses and confirms details reported in
the Gospels.
7. Gallio’s response to Paul being
brought before him by the Jews reveals that Rome did not yet notice a
difference between Judaism and Christianity.
8. The Synoptic Gospels all contain
the ‘Beelzebul controversy’ (Matt. 12:24, Mark 3:22 and Luke. 11:15). Two points about this can be made, first if
you were going to invent a story, would you include an episode like this? Second, Beelzebul is present in some 2nd-temple
Jewish literature; however, it would be unlikely for late first-century
Gentiles to know about this and make reference to it; therefore, these two
facts point to this being an accurate charge made against Jesus and the
earliness of this report.
9. I can understand why a skeptic
would be doubtful if I cited a conservative Evangelic source, so I’ll quote
liberal Biblical Scholar, William F. Albright, “In my opinion, every book of
the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew between the forties and eighty
of the first century…” (Albright 1963) .
10. The atheist Bart D. Ehrman, distinguished
professor of Religious Studies at Chapel Hill and NT critic wrote in his book
The Triumph of Christianity, that the Christians believed in the bodily
resurrection of Jesus before Saul of Tarsus’ conversion (Ehrman, 46) . Moreover, Ehrman also wrote that within
Jewish communities the message of Jesus’ resurrection could have been being
spread within a year or two of the crucifixion (Ibid.)
a. The fact that this comes from an
atheist NT critic and scholar makes this powerful enemy attestation.
b. If Jewish converts are speaking
the news of Jesus’ resurrection within a year or two of the event there is no
reason to reason that it’s a later invention of late 1st century or
2nd century Christianity.
Taken collectively, these arguments show, there is good
reason to regard the belief in Christ’s resurrection very early and that NT
documents including the Gospels were written within a few decades of the
crucifixion.
Next week, what did 2nd temple Judaism believe
about resurrection.
Written by Pastor Ozzy
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Works Cited
Albright, W.F. 1963. "Toward a More Conservative
View." Christianity Today, Jan. 18: 4.
Ehrman, Bart D. 2018. The Triumph of Christianity:
How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. New York City: Simon and
Schuster.
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