God in History

I have always wondered what kind of evidence for Jesus' life and teachings exists outside the Bible. I was fascinated to find that Lee Strobel, an award-winning former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, a one-time atheist educated at Yale Law School, had set out to determine how reliable the New Testament is and what evidence exists outside the Gospel. He had cross-examined experts to find this out for himself, and here are the highlights:

First, how much are the Gospels (of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John) credible as biographies of Jesus ? How much are they immune from possible legends developing over time?

Craig L. Blomberg Ph.D., widely considered to be one of the foremost authorities on the biographies of Jesus, states, “The standard scholarly dating even in very liberal circles is Mark in the 70’s, Mathew and Luke in the 80’s, and John in the 90’s. That’s still within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus, including hostile eyewitnesses who would have served as a corrective if false teachings about Jesus were going around.” He goes on to make a very instructive comparison. “The two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C. Yet historians consider them to be generally trustworthy. Yes legendary material about Alexander did develop over time but it was only in the centuries after these two writers. In other words, the first five hundred years kept Alexander’s story pretty much intact; legendary material began to emerge over the next five hundred years. So whether the gospels were written 60 years or 30 years after the life of Jesus, the amount of time is negligible by comparison. It’s almost a non-issue.”

Blomberg then goes on to prove how these eyewitness accounts must be dated much earlier than that held by liberals. “The book of Acts written by Luke ends apparently unfinished. – Paul is a central figure of the book, and he’s under house arrest in Rome . With that the book abruptly halts. What happens to Paul? We don’t find out from Acts, probably because the book was written before Paul was put to detah. That means Acts cannot be dated any later than A.D.62. Since Acts is the second of a two-part work, we know the first part – the gospel of Luke – must have been written earlier than that. And since Luke incorporates parts of the gospel of Mark, that means Mark is even earlier. If you allow maybe a year for each of these, you end up with Mark written no later than A.D.60, maybe even the late 50’s. If Jesus was put to death in A.D.30 or 33, we are talking about a maximum gap of thirty years or so.” Here is how he summarizes the authenticity of eyewitness accounts in the Gospels: “Historically speaking, especially compared with Alexander the Great, that’s like News Flash.”

Now comes the next logical question: When I hold a Bible in my hands, essentially I am holding copies of ancient historical records. The original manuscripts of the biographies of Jesus and all the other books of the Old and New Testaments have long ago crumbled into dust. So how can I be sure that these modern-day versions – the end-product of countless copying through the ages – bear any resemblance to what the authors originally wrote?

Bruce M. Metzger Ph.D., who has authored or edited 50 books, several of which have been translated into German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malagasy and other languages and who is considered an authority on the New Testament text, responds, “This isn’t an issue that’s unique to the Bible; it’s a question we can ask of other documents that have come down to us through the ages. But what the New Testament has in its favor, especially compared with other ancient writings, is the unprecedented multiplicity of copies that have survived. The more often you have copies that agree with each other, especially if they emerge from different geographical areas, the more you can cross-check them to figure out what the original document was like.”

Metzger goes on to show how much greater cross-check is possible in the case of the New Testament. “There is something else that favors the New Testament. We have copies commencing within a couple of generations from the writing of the originals, whereas in the case of other ancient texts, maybe five, eight or ten centuries elapsed between the original and the earliest surviving copy.” He continues, “In addition to the Greek manuscripts, we also have translations of the gospels into other languages at a relatively early time – Latin, Syriac and Coptic. In addition to that, we have what may be called secondary translations made a little later, like Armenian and Gothic. And a lot of others – Georgian, Ethiopic, a great variety.” He cites these to show how if we even lost the Greek manuscripts today, by piecing together information from these translations from a relatively early date, we could actually reproduce the content of the New Testament. Not just that; if we even lost all the early translations, we could still reproduce the contents of the New Testament from the multiplicity of quotations in commentaries, sermons, letters and so forth of the early church fathers.

In terms of multiplicity of manuscripts and the time gap between the originals and our first copies , how does this compare with other ancient texts? Metzger points to the Annals of Imperial Rome written by Tacitus in about A.D.116. “His first six books exist today in only one manuscript, and it was copied about A.D.850. Books seven through ten are lost. Books eleven through sixteen are in another manuscript dating from the eleventh century. So there is a long gap between the time that Tacitus sought his information and wrote it down and the only existing copies.” Metzger also points to The Jewish War written by the first century historian Josephus. “We have nine Greek manuscripts of his work and these copies were written in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. There is a Latin translation from the fourth century and medieval Russian materials from the eleventh or twelfth century.” Lee was stunned that there is but the thinnest thread connecting these ancient works to the modern world.

The contrast with the New Testament is striking. According to Metzger, more than five thousand Greek manuscripts have been catalogued. “Today we have 306 of uncial manuscripts which are written in all-capital Greek letters, several dating back as early as the third century.” 2,856 of miniscule manuscripts exist, which are written in a new style of writing, more cursive in nature, that emerged in roughly A.D.800. A total of 2,403 lectionaries have been catalogued, which contain New Testament scripture in the sequence it was to be read in the early churches at appropriate times during the year. In addition to the Greek documents, there are 8,000 to 10,000 Latin Vulgate manuscripts plus a total of 8,000 in Ethiopic, Slavic and Armenian. In all, there are about 24,000 manuscripts in existence.

Metzger adds, “Next to the New Testament, the greatest amount of manuscript testimony is of Homer’s Iliad, which was the sacred book of the ancient Greeks. There are fewer than 650 Greek manuscripts of it today. Some are quite fragmentary. They come down to us from the second and third century A.D. and following.” When you consider that Homer composed his epic about 800 B.C., the gap is a thousand years. The manuscript evidence for the New Testament is overwhelming when compared against revered writings of antiquity – works that modern scholars have absolutely no reluctance treating as authentic.

Thirdly, Do we find corroborating evidence for Jesus’ life outside the gospels, in the writings of contemporary historians?

Edwin M. Yamauchi Ph.D., a graduate in Hebrew and Hellenistics, and a Master and Doctor in Mediterranean studies, who has delivered papers before learned societies and has participated in excavations cites references from Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger.

Josephus records in The Antiquities, a history of the Jewish people until his time that he completed in about A.D.93, of how a High Priest name Ananias took advantage of the death of the Roman Governor Festus, to have James killed. “He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned.” He has recorded more directly about Jesus in a section called the Testimonium Flavianum. ”About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man [if indeed one ought to call him a man]. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. [He was the Christ.] While Pilate upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. [On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him.] And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.” Given the nature of Josephus' writing, Yamauchi thinks that the statements shown within braces above, may have been added by some copyists at a later date.

Tacitus in A.D.115 explicitly states that Nero persecuted the Christians as scapegoats to divert suspicion away from himself for the great fire that had devastated Rome in A.D. 64. “Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign on Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome . . . Accordingly an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their influence, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.”

Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia in North-western Turkey , wrote the following in his correspondence with his friend, Emperor Trajan, that have been preserved to this day. “I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakeable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished . . .
“They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately among themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god., and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery and adultery . . .“This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-women, whom they called deaconesses. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to the extravagant lengths.”

Yamauchi adds, “It was probably written about A.D.111, and it attests to the rapid spread of Christianity, both in the city and in the rural area, among every class of persons, slave women as well as Roman citizens, since he also says that he sends Christians who are Roman citizens to Rome for trial. And it talks about the worship of Jesus as God, that Christians maintained high ethical standards, and that they were not easily swayed from their beliefs.”

The conclusion this leads to is that there is no dearth of evidence. Rather, men tend to suppress evidence because of its implications for them. If Jesus had indeed walked planet earth 2000 years ago, and if indeed all he said and did were as recorded in the gospels, it implies that men's intent are evil and they need God's redeeming love. It would be prudent to accept the truth and experience freedom, than to buy a lie and remain in bondage.