The Blackberry Walk

I remember back in secondary school many in our Religious Studies lessons used to say how the bible was written long after the events and how much of it is made up. Such sentiments I haven't just seen in my secondary school classroom, but everywhere, whether it be from respected public individuals or opinions people say on the street. Most people talking casually about the bible will say it isn't contemporary and it is untrue; and many who feel a little spicy go on to say how the gnostic gospels - the gospels discovered in the Nag Hammadi library in 1946 - are the true Christianity that the Catholic church has been hiding all these years! Many a stoner also holds such sentiments. But as is often the case, the opinion of the layman is about a hundred years out of date. Our framework of physics is still mostly Newtonian rather than Einsteinian; and the average man on the streets is only beginning to think in a post-modern way. Similarly, this dating of the canonical gospels dates back to 19th century German scholars of the liberal school of Lutheran theology which flourished at this time. Such ideas are no longer respected in academic circles since their very process of 'higher criticism' - that is placing the text within its time - has begun to demonstrate the precise opposite. Many who didn't believe in the bible in the 18th century did so for what are to us odd reasons. They didn't cease to believe in the various acts of Jesus, but instead believed there was at play some kind of scientific or practical trickery. For instance, a belief some held was that when Jesus walked on water, there were hidden props underneath; or when Jesus turns water into wine, the ceramic pots were changed out without anyone realising. It feels like 12-year old atheism talk; I remember people joking Jesus had swapped out with his twin brother after his death to give the appearance of a resurrection. It's hard to imagine, but the very psychotechnology of textual criticism hadn't yet been invented, so no one had thought to claim that part of what was written hadn't in fact happened. The coming into being of textual criticism as a technique was like giving those modern 12-year old theorists alcopops. Instead of claiming none of the events happened, liberal theologians took it upon themselves to use their limited sources to imagine what life was like in 1st c. A.D. Judea; and based on that imagination, prune the bits they reckoned weren't true. These liberal theologians began to dilute and dilute the gospels into a mere 'social gospel', unable to proclaim any higher spirituality than 'be nice to one another'. These superstitions regarding the alleged falsity of the gospels have stuck; however, I reckon it's quite clear that the gospels are as old as they say they are, and that they were written by whom they say they were. It's first worth considering why an early dating of the gospels is important. An early dating would place the gospels within the living memory of the apostles. And if the gospels were written by those who they say they are written by, we can assume these are eyewitness accounts of what happened. In short, if by an early dating we can go on to prove authorship; and if we can prove authorship, we can prove reliability. So, starting with authorship, the main reason the German scholars of the past, and those who hold on to the same beliefs today like the scholar Bart Erhman, have for the later dating is the fall of the temple. Jesus correctly prophesies the destruction of the temple, a prediction later the Romans later make true in 70 A.D. These theologians argue, therefore, that the source must have been written after the destruction of the temple, and that the prophesy was written after the fact. The issue here is quite obvious: one presupposes that Jesus can't prophesy in order to place the date later. Indeed, if we presuppose that the bible contains no miracles, only fictions, it's very easy to make the claim that Jesus' prophesy is a fabrication of a later date. But even beyond this issue of faith in miracles, the analysis of the sources is left wanting. The synoptic gospels quote Jesus as saying 'not one stone shall rest on another'; but this description is not of fires engulfing the temple, the description most reminiscent of how contemporary accounts describe the incident. If the aim was to put words in Jesus' mouth to prove he could prophesy the future, why wouldn't they capitalise on more accurate and popular imagery? But most importantly, it fulfilment of this prophesy isn't mentioned anywhere. The synoptic gospels nor the author of Acts at no point mentions the destruction of the temple. Nay, the author of Acts doesn't even mention the martyrdom of James the brother of Christ either, an event the contemporary source Josephus places in 62 A.D.; and nor is there any mention of the Neronian persecutions of 64 A.D. after the Great Fire of Rome. Given the early dating, the question then becomes who wrote them. Well, it was Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, of course. Why though? Why are there so many gospels? It takes a bit of imagining to put into perspective why each of the gospel authors wrote their gospels when they did. Let's first discuss the synoptic gospels. Matthew was a tax collector before becoming a disciple of Christ, and there are no shortage of references to money in Matthew's gospel. Mark was a travelling companion of Barnabas after Barnabas parted ways with Paul over Mark's involvement (Acts 15). Traditionally Mark is seen as an apprentice of Peter; this is evidenced in Peter's first epistle, where he implies that he's with Mark, who he calls his son (1 Pet. 5). And given Peter's poor literacy, Mark was the one to write down Peter's account of Jesus. Mark's gospel also mentions Peter significantly more than the other synoptics, tells some stories from Peter's perspective, and Mark occasionally covers up some of Peter's mistakes which Luke nor Matthew feel the need to hide. Luke, on the other hand, was a travelling companion of Paul. Before becoming a disciple, Luke was a physician, and as a result was a learned man in writing. Luke and Paul are generally considered to be the best of the New Testament authors. Luke begins his gospel describing how he aims at writing a history of Jesus, placing himself as part of the Greco-Roman tradition of writing histories. He gathers sources, whether these were written or oral, and compiles a narrative of Jesus' life. Luke is also considered by all to be the author of Acts; here, however, it isn't just source work and spoken testimonies, because half-way through the author of Acts transitions from 'they' to 'we', as Luke joins Paul as a travelling companion. Now we've got to know the author's, why do their accounts match so frequently? Many modern textual scholars see the gospel texts as part of a flurry of early texts borrowing and stealing from one another, to form the texts we've received. A popular contemporary account claims that both Matthew and Luke take from Mark and from a hypothesised lost 'Q-source' in different measures. They mainly believe this because Mark is the simplest of the gospels, and evolutionary reasoning places the simplest before the most complex. But were not the mightiest pyramids of Egypt also the oldest? There is no reason the simplest things must be the oldest. The sources are however clearly copy one another, there is no doubt about that; there are too many identical passages of text. But consider this: what if the authors of the gospels were all in correspondence? If the gospels are being passed around, different authors will want to amend them and subtract from them with their own eyewitness accounts. Perhaps Matthew, reading Mark's account, recalls an extra detail, and rewrites Mark's account including his interpretation and experience of events. And maybe Luke, reading Matthew's account, adds a detail from someone he met who had witnessed Christ. The Virgin Mary was said by tradition to have been preaching with the apostles, so it isn't too great a presumption to think Luke met her and asked her about the conception of Jesus. Once you realise the authors of the gospels are real people, living real lives, moving about, instead of sitting atop towers writing with a brushes and velum scrolls, they strikingly come to life. It begins to make sense that the gospel writers can describe things they haven't seen, like the interior of Herod's court with the death of John the Baptist. Joanna, wife of Churza is mentioned in Luke 8 as being a steward in Herod's court - just the source we would need! She's never referenced in relation to the events of John the Baptist, but nevertheless it explains how the apostles could have this information. The reliability across sources through unintended explanation is known as the argument from undesigned coincidences, of which there are many across the four gospels. Turning our eyes to the Gospel of John, we see a very different gospel, and on the face of it a very different Jesus. A lot of modern scholarship posits Johannine communities arising in contradistinction to communities following the synoptics and Paul; however tradition has a far more sensible reading. John was the last of the apostles to die, not only because he was the youngest, but also because he was never martyred. According to tradition, he lived out the last of his days imprisoned in a salt mine from where he received and wrote Revelations. But prior to then, John would have read the synoptic gospels in circulation, and would have wanted to add to them what he knew had been omitted. But unlike the other synoptic gospels, who added and subtracted from the source text, John wrote his own gospel filling in the blanks of the story. This is the reason why John very rarely mentions the same stories as the synoptics: simply because he feels he has no need to repeat them. Some modern scholars see the Gospel of John as one telling of Christ, and the synoptic gospels as a different mishmash tradition of sources; and they say only if a story is found in both sources can it be deemed reliable. They make competitive what is clearly designed to be complementary. Again, only once the gospel authors are seen as people, we can interpret their omissions and additions sensibly. A familiar theme through much of the critical scholarship is that the gospel authors are nobodies, forgers, non-people; grand processes, and odd amalgamations. The fact that we have four separate contemporary sources for an event two-thousand years ago means nothing to them. But this is an abnormally high number of unique contemporary sources for this era: particularly for a popular event as opposed to an event involving political figures and wars. But the authors aren't necessarily doubted just because they are Christians. There isn't much debate about the authorship of the letters of the martyr Polycarp - a man who was directly taught by John the Apostle. And granted, there isn't as much riding on them; but isn't it intellectually dishonest to disbelieve a source solely because of its importance? There is a narrative quality, a fictional quality, to the apostles and to Christ, which undoubtedly many of the scholars criticising these texts have in the past turned away from; but the truth is, they themselves can't get over the narrative. Those who deny the authenticity of the sources of the gospels can only see the apostles as characters in a play rather than flesh and blood people who lived in the past, historical figures who moved history. That's why there's so much debate over Pauline authorship (a topic I might soon return to), and the authorship of the other epistles: because many a scholar can't both see the narrative character and the essayist as the same person. Through post-modernity, many have become very sceptical of narratives, and many have devoted their life to scrutinising these texts as if they were juicing an orange. They want to remove all the pure, concentrated, flavourful juice of the text into a mere philosophy. But Christianity has more than that. Christianity has pith and fibre; it has grit because it really happened! C. S. Lewis once remarked that Christian narrative has many of the hallmarks pagan mythology; the main difference being it really happened! It is set in historical testimonies rather than ancient, fallible oral traditions. There are many a system of stories to make sense of the world and to make sense of the divine, but Christianity is the only belief system based in history. When we yield ground in the historicity of the bible to the paper tanks of erroneous biblical textual criticism, a compelling element to the truth of Christ is abandoned; one which is most especially compelling in the modern day. Especially, when the truth is that the more the bible's looked at, the more reliable a source it becomes.