Posted by Clark Bates
February 12, 2019
No matter where you turn, whether it be internet bloggers, published mythicists, or academic skeptics, it seems that the reliability of the New Testament is always under fire. The existence of
In the face of all this skepticism, what is a Christian to do? Certainly there are many books and websites that cover this material, and Christians should avail themselves of those resources, but I believe there is another, far more valuable resource, that answers all of these objections sitting in the home of every Christian, and maybe even the non-Christian. It's the Bible. Now, I know that it sounds naive to some for me to say, "just read your Bible", but I'm not saying that. Well, I am saying that, but I'm not saying JUST that. This might seem to be a bold statement, but I believe that many Christians, regardless of denomination, fail to take the text of the New Testament seriously enough. What I mean is that if we read the text carefully, it actually communicates a lot about the world in which it existed and the manner in which the NT itself came to be.
- Disclaimer, what I’m about to relate requires that the reader approach the NT as a trustworthy document. A great deal of discussion has been had about this topic elsewhere, but perhaps the most recent work that I would recommend for readers on the matter is Peter William’s new book Can we Trust the Gospels?. If the reader approaches the NT with a “hermeneutic of suspicion” wherein the text is deemed unreliable from the start, there will be no point in continuing further.
The New Testament and the Argument from Orality
So what things do we discover from this kind of “careful” reading? To begin with, nowhere in the NT do we read that Jesus wrote anything.[1] We read consistently that he taught in multiple locations and at various times, but never that he wrote anything. This might seem trivial, but it is odd that a renowned Rabbi would not write his teachings down. For some, even if they believe Jesus existed, they use this as a reason to doubt his literacy. However, to conclude that Jesus was illiterate from this is unnecessary, as we have examples of his ability to read in the Gospel of Luke (4:16-19), and the popular use of an amanuensis (scribe), as seen in the writings of Paul, would not preclude him from being able to record written works. Additionally, in the earliest writings of the apostles, there is no mention of them writing anything either. In the book of Acts or the Gospels, there is no mention of any apostle recording any letters or documents.
What does this mean? Well, if you take the earliest letters of the apostle Paul (i.e. 1/2 Thessalonians and/or Galatians) and place them into the timeline of the book of Acts, you have approximately a 15-20 year gap between the time of Jesus’ death to the time of any writing by the Christian church. These letters, in turn, make no mention of any written gospel at all, but rather refer to the stories of Jesus as “traditions” that are remembered and passed down.[2] Therefore, the NT itself points to the oral nature of the message of Christ in its earliest stages, so while it has been used in recent years as ammunition against the teaching of the Gospels, the oral nature of the teachings of Jesus is actually confirmed by the Gospels!
From Orality to Literacy
"Now many have undertaken to compile an account of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as the accounts passed on to us by those who were eyewitnesses and servants of the word from the beginning."
Luke 1:1-2
The word translated here as “undertaken” is ἐπεχείρησαν which means to “put one’s hand to”. This marks a recognition of a shift from what was once a message primarily "preached" and "passed on" to something that was written down. This is what the author refers to in the same section as “accounts passed on” or oral records. So, not only does Luke inform us that he, himself is writing his Gospel to make certain what Theophilus has been taught, but also that there are others who have done the same.
"...just as the accounts passed on to us by those who were eyewitnesses and servants of the word from the beginning."
"...the things that have been accomplished among us..."
One more point is that Luke refers to the events of Jesus as having been “accomplished” among “us”. He does not write that it happened during the times of “our fathers” as might be expected if it were written late, but instead writes of the events of Jesus’ ministry as occurring in his own lifetime, i.e. the early to mid-1st century.
Moving past the Gospels we have the writing of 2 Peter,
"Indeed, I will also make every effort that, after my departure, you have a testimony of these things."
2 Pet. 1:15
This statement marks a change in direction for the church. A church that began on the oral tradition and faithful teaching of the apostles was growing older, and these teachers were dying. Peter himself seems to acknowledge that his life is close to its end (v.14). The best way to ensure that the teaching would remain, was to have it written down. Thus, the people of the church would soon become known as the “people of the book” for their unique devotion to a written Scripture over an oral tradition.
This letter closes with a reference to the apostle Paul and his letters,
"And regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as also our dear brother Paul wrote to you, according to the wisdom given to him, speaking of these things in all his letters. Some things in these letters are hard to understand, things the ignorant and unstable twist totheir own destruction, as they also do to the rest of the scriptures."
2 Peter 3:15-16
Peter not only references that Paul is “writing” but that these “letters” were available to Peter, and he knows them enough that he is familiar with them. What’s more, Peter assumes that his audience also knows these letters and are familiar enough with them to recognize what he means by them being “difficult”. This is only possible if the letters were not only written, but were being circulated in the church by the time of the writing of 2 Peter. Added to this is the comparison made by Peter between the writings of Paul and “the rest of the scriptures” both placing the Pauline corpus on par with the Old Testament, but also recognizing that there are “other” writings that constitute Scripture circulating in the church.
Lost Gospels and the Challenge to Canonicity
As we have seen to this point, what mattered most to the church was the teaching of the apostles. The strength of the canonical books was not that they were authored by apostles but that they faithfully transmitted apostolic teaching. For the sake of this discussion, we might call this the “apostolic Christianity” of the 1st century. However, there are those who departed from this teaching in the Christian community. We read in 1 Cor. 15:12 that Paul is combatting those teaching that there is no resurrection from the dead. If there are Christians who are in the church at Corinth teaching that there is no resurrection from the dead, what would it look like if they wrote a Gospel? This kind of Gospel might be of the kind that would remove any references to the resurrection. It might also remove the need of a physical body, not unlike what we read in the Gospel of Judas. Now, we don’t have a 1st century Gospel like this, but the NT prepares us for the possibility of alternative Gospels to be written, which we do have examples of by the time of the 2nd century.
Additionally, in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2 Paul writes,
"Now regarding the arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to be with him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to be easily shaken from your composure or disturbed by any kind of spirit or message or letter allegedly from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here."
If we read this carefully, we see that there is apparently a letter being circulated to the church at Thessalonica that pretends to be written by Paul. How often do we hear arguments that Paul didn't write all the letters attributed to him? Now, I'm not saying that any of the Pauline epistles in the NT are not Pauline, at least in my view, but, yet again, there is the recognition in the NT itself that pseudepigraphal Pauline letters were being passed around! The claims of modern skepticism are nothing that the apostle himself didn't admit was the case in the 1st century! While we do not have this letter in question, nor do we have any 1st century non-Pauline epistles, there was a letter circulating in the church until the 4th century known as 3 Corinthians, which was supposedly written by Paul. It was determined to be a forgery and removed from circulation and the author punished, but this serves as a real-world example of the very thing the NT has already told us existed.
Conclusion
Through and through there will always be objections to the Word of God. There will always be objections to the Gospel message. Challenges will always mount against the text and some will even seem formidable, but the more we mine the resources of the New Testament itself, the more we find that nothing that has been "discovered" to date that has been anything that the New Testament hasn't already acknowledged to be true. The apostles didn't live in a world of perfect belief and consistent faith. They lived in a culture that struggled with their message. A message that first relied solely on their preaching, the very thing that the Holy Spirit was promised to help them do (John 14:26). The culture that struggled with the message often abandoned it, but some took the message and twisted it, teaching their own brand of gospel. The evidence for this has been found in the Egyptian sands, but the fact that it happened was attested long before, by the very authors of Scripture who watched these groups leave. While it might surprise or even worry us to hear of these things, take heart dear Christian, it wasn't a surprise to God, nor was it a surprise to the authors of your Bible.
[1] The immediate exception in the minds of some readers will be the story of the woman caught in adultery found in some Bibles between John 7-8. For the textual instability of this story consider To Cast the First Stone by Tommy Wasserman and Jennifer Knust, and for the impact or purpose of Jesus writing in the sand in this story consider the essay by Chris Keith, The Preicope Adulterae, The Gospel of John and the Literacy of Jesus, published by Brill in 2009.
[2] Consider Paul’s repeated use of “preached” in association with “the gospel” in Galatians 1. 1 Cor. 11:23 is relayed as an oral tradition, as is the creed of 1 Cor. 15
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