higher criticism – La Vista Church of Christ

Could Matthew and John not be eyewitness accounts?

Jeffrey Hamilton — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 02:12:00 +0000

Question:

My friend sent me this critique on the gospels of Matthew and John not being eyewitness accounts.

He said, according to the majority viewpoint, this gospel is unlikely to have been written by an eyewitness. While Papias reported that Matthew had written the Logia this can hardly be a reference to the Gospel of Matthew. The author was probably a Jewish Christian writing for other Jewish Christians. Biblical scholars generally hold that Matthew was composed between the years c. 70 and 100, and also Matthew was most likely written at Antioch, then part of Roman Syria. Most scholars hold that Matthew drew heavily on Mark and added teaching from the Q document. While Matthew arranged this material into compilations, such as the Sermon on the Mount, much of the material goes back to the historical Jesus. The infancy narrative, however, is apparently an invention. Matthew presents Jesus' ministry as limited to the Jews, though the resurrected Jesus later commissions the disciples to preach to all the world. Geza Vermes judges that the ministry of Jesus was exclusively for Jews and that the order to proclaim the gospel to all nations was an early Christian development.

And then for John, in the majority viewpoint, it is unlikely that John the Apostle wrote the Gospel of John. Rather than a plain account of Jesus' ministry, the gospel is a deeply meditated representation of Jesus' character and teachings, making direct apostolic authorship unlikely. Opinion, however, is widely divided on this issue and there is no widespread consensus. Most scholars date the Gospel of John to c. 80–95. John was composed at Ephesus. Jesus' teaching in this gospel cannot be reconciled with that found in the Synoptics, and scholars prefer the Synoptics for a view of Jesus' teaching. The gospel identifies its author as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." The text does not actually name this disciple, but by the beginning of the second century, a tradition began to form which identified him with John the apostle, one of the Twelve (Jesus's innermost circle). Today the majority of scholars do not believe that John or any other eyewitness wrote it, and trace it instead to a "Johannine community" which traced its traditions to John; the gospel itself shows signs of having been composed in three "layers," reaching its final form about 90-100 AD. According to the Church Fathers, the Bishops of Asia Minor requested John, in his old age, to write a gospel in response to Cerinthus, the Ebionites, and other Hebrew groups which they deemed heretical. This understanding remained in place until the end of the 18th century. The Gospel of John developed over a period of time in various stages, summarized by Raymond E. Brown as follows: An initial version based on personal experience of Jesus; a structured literary creation by the evangelist which draws upon additional sources; the final harmony that presently exists in the New Testament canon, around 85-90 AD. In view of this complex and multi-layered history, it is meaningless to speak of a single "author" of John, but the title perhaps belongs best to the evangelist who came at the end of this process. The final composition's comparatively late date, and its insistence upon Jesus as a divine being walking the earth in human form, renders it highly problematical to scholars who attempt to evaluate Jesus' life in terms of literal historical truth.

This is against what I mostly was taught, but I'm just wondering what your view of this is?

Answer:

Ah, the debunked foolishness of "higher criticism" raises its ugly head once again. I first ran into this nonsense 35 years ago when in college and it has always been people who imagine themselves to be scholars but who have no clue what biblical scholarship is like.

First, notice the attempts to bolster a weak position by citing unnamed "scholars." Because they are unnamed their credentials cannot be verified, nor can these statements be checked to see how they are used in context. Also the claim of a "majority viewpoint;" majority of whom?

What actual facts are cited?

Papias is mentioned as attributing the Gospel of Matthew to Matthew, but that fact is dismissed -- not from evidence, but the opinion that Papias could not have been referring to the Gospel of Matthew.
A reference to Geza Vermes' opinion that Jesus' ministry was solely for the Jews. Vermes is a noted Jewish scholar who has been trying to redefine Jesus as a Jewish only prophet.
A claim that Jesus' teaching in John cannot be reconciled with the other three gospels. Having not long ago taught a class on the harmony of the Gospels, I know this claim is false.
A claim that John was written at the request of elders in Asia Minor, but the source is conveniently left at "church fathers."

Perhaps I overlooked something but everything else is couched in terms of opinions, "perhaps," "could be," "apparently," etc. There are claims of development in stages, but the intermediary documents do not exist -- they are only figments of a few people's imaginations. It is a "Just So" story where some decided this is how the Gospels had to have developed because that is how they would have done it if it was up to them. Even the "facts" list above are really nothing more than opinions.

What I want you to note is that claims are being made that are not supported. But it is up to the one making the claim to prove his point is true. If this were a court of law, the case would be thrown out on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Let me illustrate the absurdity of what is being done. "The majority of friends tell me that you are continuing to beat your girlfriend." Do you have to defend against this absurd claim or does the claimant have to prove his point? I hope you see it is the latter. You probably can prove him wrong easily, but you don't need to get defensive because a claim is not proof.

Let's take a look at the claim that Papias was not talking about the Gospel of Matthew.

"Some of critical bent have found in Papias' reference 'Matthew composed the logia in Hebrew (Aramaic) language' a reference not to our canonical Matthew but to a primitive source book of Jesus' sayings which is commonly denominated 'Q.' This view is considered at length by Zahn. It seems highly artificial. There is no source book referred to in all of the other patristic writing. If one ever existed -- which is problematical -- its memory had evidently been replaced by the second century. That Papias would refer to it in these terms when the canonical Matthew was already a well-known book, likely even translated into Syriac, and that he would not distinquish between the one and the other, would be impossible to believe. Furthermore, the reference to Mark is clearly to the canonical Gospel. Inasmuch as Papias says that Mark did not write the gospel story in order, some have argued that he must have been speaking of a proto-Mark rather than our canonical Gospel. Regarding this Westcott remarks,

'In short, we must suppose that two different books were current under the same name in the times of Papias and Irenaeus -- that in the interval, which was less than fifty years, the older document had passed entirely into oblivion, or at least lost its first title -- that this substitution of the one book for the other was so secret that there is not the slightest trace of the time, the motive, the mode of its accomplishment, and so complete that Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement, Origen, and Eusebius applied to the later Gospel only what was true of that which it had replaced. And all this must be believed because it is assumed that John could not have spoken of our present Gospel as not arranged "in order." But it would surely be far more reasonable to conclude that he was mistaken in his criticism than to admit an explanation burdened with such a series of improbabilities.'

Westcott continues to point out that Mark actually is not a chronological biography and would suit the description that Papias quotes from Elder John. Westcott's argument should be allowed its full force, and the same argument is applicable to Papias' testimony concerning the canonical Matthew and the alleged Q." [R. Laird Harris, Inspiration and Canoncity of the Bible, 1957].

How about the dating of Matthew? The date range of AD 70-100 is actually not what you find among the scholars. The usually proposed dates are from AD 40 to 100. The earliest known quotation of Matthew is by Ignatius, who died in AD 115. Therefore, for Ignatius to be familiar with this book, it had to have been written well before AD 115. The sole reason people insist on a date after AD 70 is because Matthew contains a prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred in AD 70. These "higher critics" can't imagine anyone being able to accurately prophesy an event in advance, so they assume that it was written after the event. Lack of belief is not evidence that it could not have been written prior to AD 70. A secondary problem is that many early Christian writers say that the apostle Matthew wrote Matthew. Given that these writers were more closely associated with people who knew the apostles, their words carry more weight than skeptics living 2,000 years later. Interestingly the Gospel of Matthew has always carried that title, even to our earliest copies of the book. So, accepting that Matthew wrote the book by his name, there is the small problem that later dates would mean that Matthew lived to an extremely old age -- something that is not supported by tradition or records.

The dating of John has evidence as well. We have a scrap of papyrus that is dated around AD 125. For a copy to exist, the original had to have predated the copy by quite a few years. Clement was the bishop of Rome in AD 95 and alludes to John's Gospel in his writings, so it clearly predated him. (Clement, by the way, mentions the star that is only recorded in Matthew's Gospel.) Ignatius' writings show that he was familiar with the Gospel of John. Matthew and John appear to have been Ignatius' two favorite books. There is evidence also among the gnostic writers. While their views were false, they sought to prove themselves by quoting the New Testament. Basilides was one of the earliest of these writers, writing shortly after the age of the apostles (about AD 117-135). He clears quotes from John as one of his sources. Another early group was called the Ophities and they too quote from John. The idea that the Gospel of John was written by some mystical group is simply a modern-day myth that has no historical support but presented to explain away the presence of John.

The rejection of John as present in the New Testament early on is driven by the fact that it is deep and philosophical. To "higher critics" such deep thinking had to have been developed over many years and by a group instead of an individual. It isn't that they have proof that it was developed or came late. They start with the notion that it had to have come late and then all the theories explain away the facts that it came too early for them.

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life-- the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us-- that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full" (I John 1:1-4).

"And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe" (John 19:35).

"This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true. And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen" (John 21:24-25).

John claims to be an eyewitness account and evidence exists that it was accepted from the beginning as Scripture. Evidence exists that it was in circulation during the first century. Your friend claims that these statements are lies, but he only offers opinions as "proof." If this were a court case, I would find your friend guilty of false testimony.

The Jesus Seminar

Jeffrey Hamilton — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 02:17:00 +0000

by Jeffrey W. Hamilton

I. At the beginning of April, 1996, three major news magazines [Times, Newsweek, and US News and World Report] all carried the same lead story - “the search for the historical Jesus”

A. This wasn’t a coincidence. A group of self-proclaimed scholars, called “The Jesus Society”, were behind the stories.

B. Questions regarding who Jesus really is is not new - Matt. 16:13-16

C. As with the question of evolution, Christians need to be aware and concerned about this society. A lie repeated often enough is accepted as truth.

II. What is the Jesus Seminar

A. A group of about 50 Bible scholars and seminary professors. Started in 1985 with the stated purpose of uncovering the “historical Jesus”

1. As with most works, the scholars start out with a set of presuppositions.

a. For example, Robert Funk, the founder the Jesus Society, believes Jesus was a “Jewish Socrates” - not surprisingly, that is what he has found.

b. Marcus Borg, another member of the Jesus Society, studies mystical literature and the philosophy of Buddha and comes to the conclusion that Jesus was a Jewish mystic.

2. Membership in this society is self-selected

a. Members are selected based on agreement with the Seminar’s overall goals and agenda, not on scholarship

b. So we have a group of far-out critics and leftist theologians assembled with no one to check their incredible ideas or question their outrageous conclusions.

c. Included in the members of this society is Paul Verhoeven, director of such vulgar films as Basic Instinct and Showgirls.

3. Worse though are the goals of the society

a. Robert Funk: it is time to “reinvent Christianity” [”In Search of Jesus”, US News & World Report. April 8, 1996]

b. The society begins by stating the Gospel records are useless (too flawed) and so they would “search for the Jesus behind the Christian facade of the Christ.”

4. The society decides what portion of the Gospels were really spoken by Jesus by voting with color beads

a. Red - Jesus actually said this; Pink - This resembles something Jesus said; Gray - The idea is close to Jesus, but did not originate with him; Black - Has nothing to do with Jesus.

b. Their result? They claim that 82% of the words attributed to Jesus were not spoken by Him!

c. In all of Mark, only Mark 12:17 was judged to be authentic! The Gospel of John was completely thrown out.

d. Of course these results were widely published. Dr. Luke Johnson, a scholar and critic of the Jesus Seminar: “It was fascinating to see how the Jesus seminar . . . Was savvy enough to realize that the American media covers only three things well: personalities, elections, and scandals, and crafted their yearly performances in the form of elections (the colored beads) concerning the personality (Jesus) promised to yield a scandal.

5. They vote down any statement of Jesus that sounds Jewish or cites the Old Testament

a. The idea is that anything Jesus “truely said” must have been things that no one of his day would have thought of and so “put those words into his mouth.”

b. It assumes that Jesus cannot say anything rooted in the culture and times He lived in!

c. Jesus was a Jew, living in Jewish society, but he is not expected to sound like a Jew! Since Jewish boys are taught the Old Testament scriptures from youth, should we expect Jesus to quote them?

d. What would happen to speeches of our current leaders if we artifically excised them of every reference dealing with anything popular in our culture?

B. The quest for the historical Jesus is rooted in the late 18th century.

1. Rationalists of that time concluded that there was much myth-making involved in the writing of the life of Jesus.

a. They could not conceive the supernatural acting in the lives of men, so they sought ways to explain these acts away.

b. There influence is felt even today. A Methodist preacher once explained the feeding of the 5000 as the other people being shamed by the sharing of the young boy with the five loaves and two fish so that they brought out their own food to share with others. It was the sharing, he said, that was the true miracle!

c. One Jesus Seminar member describes the healing of a leper, “I presume that Jesus, who did not and could not heal that disease or any other one, healed the man’s illness by refusing to accept the disease’s ritual uncleaness and social ostracization . . . By healing the illness without curing the disease, Jesus acted as an alternative boundary keeper in a way subversive to the established procedures of his society. Such a position may seem to destroy the miracle. But miracles are not changes in the physical world so much as changes in the social world.” [Cynic, Sage, or Son of God, Boyd, p. 85]

(1) Note: do you think that people of Jesus’ day would have been impressed with Jesus declaring an illness heal, while the disease remained evident to all?

2. In 1838, C. H. Weisse argued that the gospels of Matthew and Luke, because of their similarities, were written by authors who copied from the same source. He then placed Mark’s gospel as the earliest of the four, thus providing Luke and Matthew’s writers with sufficent data to write their narratives. However, Mark doesn’t have as many sayings of Jesus, such as the sermon on the mount, as Matthew and Luke. Therefore, he surmised there must have been a collection of these sayings from which the authors of Matthew and Luke copied. In 1890, this “saying source” was given the name “Q”, from the German word “Quelle”, meaning “source”.

3. Note that the Q document has never been proven to exist

C. In the 1980's, John S. Kloppenborg took the idea of Q even further. He broke the document (which doesn’t exist!) into three layers:

1. Q1 contains only wisdom sayings

2. Q2 contains some of the prophetic and apocalyptic words of Jesus

3. Q3 adds some narrative and biographical information, such as the temptation).

D. This hypothetical, layered document is the core of the teachings of the Jesus Seminar. They reject anything that they don’t believe comes from Q1.

1. Notice the circular reasoning.

a. What is found in the first layer, they say, is only teachings about social issues and political statements. This eliminates the use of any claim of Jesus to be divine, any recognition of His deity by others, or any of the miracles which proved His deity.

b. If Q1 can be constructed to say only what these “scholars” want it to say, then a historical Jesus can be “discovered” to fit the preconceived ideas of the scholars.

2. Imagine a “scholar” presenting a radically new view of Julius Caesar, based on a hypothesis framed around a document which doesn’t exist! The scholar would be laughed out of every history department in the nation.

3. But when the Jesus Seminar does the very same thing with Jesus, it is accepted, and lauded!

III. What the Jesus Seminar practice is called “form criticism”

A. This is not to be confused with the legitimate science known as textual criticism, which is used to analyzed the thousands of manuscripts, scrapes, and translations that exists to determine how the original scriptures read.

B. Form criticism assumes that the stories and sayings of Jeus were in oral form long before they were written down. While they were strictly oral tales, the people telling the tales shaped and reshaped the stories to fit their situations. Therefore, what was finally written down is not what Jesus actually said, but what He was report, years later, to have said.

1. Marcus Borg, member of the Jesus Society: “We can’t imagine the followers of Jesus remembering for decades a long, complicated sermon through oral memory.”

C. The flaws of form criticism

1. It assumes that the stories of Jesus circulated for a long time in oral form before being commited to paper.

a. However, as little as 20 years passed between the events described and the written accounts.

b. If there were errors in the written accounts, the enemies of Christianity could have easily refuted and discredited any false claims of what Jesus said and did.

c. Even if you did not believe in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it is known that disciples of various rabbis of that time kept well written notes to remember their teacher’s words. It isn’t unthinkable to imagine Jesus’ disciples doing the same thing.

d. Several cultures are famous for meticulously keeping huge epics in incrediable detail -- all memorized and passed on orally. Why is it difficult to imagine Jesus’ followers doing something similar?

2. It assumes the Gospels are false unless they can be proven otherwise.

a. Yet, there is a wealth of evidence that the Gospels are historically accurate.

b. Yet all of this is dismissed with the wave of a hand.

c. The burden of proof should be on the critic to prove the Bible is false.

3. It absolutely rules out anything miraculous.

a. The resurrection, they claim, could not have happened.

b. They ignore the proofs and evidences for the resurrection and offer no supporting evidence for their belief.

D. Is it any wonder that form critics find a radically different Jesus than the one presented in the Scriptures?

E. If the Gospels are ledgendary accounts, then why do they contain so much material that is embarrassing to the apostles?

1. Why would men tell of their ignorance, spiritual insensitivity, and their many failures?

2. Why would Peter tell of his three denials of the Christ?

3. Why would the apostles admit they slept when Jesus needed them for support in Gethsemane?

F. If the early church rewrote the account of Jesus to fit their doctrine, then why are so many concepts in the epistles not found in the Gospels.

1. Ideas like “the body of Christ” or “righteousness by faith” are not attributed to Jesus.

2. Paul goes out of his way to distinguish his teachings from the Lord’s - I Cor. 7:10,12,25

G. Why would early Christians fabricate a universal Messiah who commands the apostles to preach to every creature (Matt. 28:18-19).

1. Many Jewish Christians hated Gentiles. Peter had to be nearly dragged to preach to a Gentile. (Acts 10) He then was rebuked by other Christians for what he had done (Acts 11)

2. Enmity between Jewish and Gentile Christians boiled during the early church (Acts 15; Galations)

3. Which is easier to believe?

a. The Jews completely contrived Jsus as the world’s Messiah because they loved the Gentiles so much

b. They were compelled by the clear teaching of Jesus to follow the Great Commission

4. If Jesus were a made up Messiah by the early Jewish Christians, he would have been a Jews-only Messiah who spoke heated of Rome’s destruction (not Jerusalem) and promise that God’s wrath would soon crush the idolatrous nations surrounding Judah.

IV. Sitations from books, not found in our Bibles

A. The Jesus Seminar favor sources not found in the Bible.

B. Some are found in the Apocrypha, but the most favored sources are from the Nag Nammadi Library.

1. This is a set of Gnostic literature found in 1940 in Egypt.

2. Many of the members of the Seminar date these books before the gospels of the New Testament. However, their dating methods are highly questionable and subjective.

C. Among the favored books are “The Gospel of Thomas”, “The Gospel of Peter”, and “The Cross Gospel”.

1. The Gospel of Thomas is a particular favorite because each of the 135 verses starts with “And Jesus said ...”

a. This makes is a “Saying source”

b. Providing proof that their beloved Q document could possibly exist.

c. Note they do not accept the Gospel of Thomas as the Q document

2. Problems

a. They date the Gospel of Thomas between 50-70 A.D., but there is no independent attestation to its existant until the early third century, which suggests it was written in the second century.

b. The Gnostic nature of the writing suggests a second century date.

c. Every Biblical scholar who pioneered the study of this document date it around 140 A.D.

D. Boyd, from Cynic, Sage, or Son of God: “There are for Crossan, a total of thirteen sources that qualify for his earliest strata. Of these, five are hypothetical reconstructions: an ‘early’ layer of GosThom, a triple-layered Q, a Miracles Collection, and Apocalyptic Scenario, and the ‘Cross Gospel.’ Three are obsurce fragments of papyrus text . . . And one is known only from several patristic citations: the Gospel of the Hebrews. Only the remaining four are fully extant documents -- and these all happen to be canonical: I Thessalonians, Galations, I Corinthians, and Romans.

“This already may seem like a meager data pool from which to reconstruct a historical Jesus, but in practice the situation is worse. For the papyri fragments are of such little value, and the secondary references to the Gospel of Hebrews so few, that little use is made of either by Crossan. Moreover, and most significantly, because of Crossan’s understanding of Paul, virtually no use is made of his epistles [the only extant documents he has!] Hence, functionally speaking, Crossan’s historical Jesus is completely reconstructed from a data pool that has been largely reduced to a hypothetical ‘early’ layer of GosThom, a hypothetical ‘Cross Gospel’, and a hypothetical triple-layered ‘Q Gospel.’”

E. There is no reason to accept such fradulant “scholarship” over the Bible.

1. Note: a set of papyrus fragments containing parts of Matthew have been recently dated to 70 A.D. If this proves true, the book of Matthew must have existed far earlier than the Jesus Seminar would admit.

V. Much of the ideas for this lesson came from the research of two brethren in Westlake, Texas: Mark Roberts and Rusty Miller. I did not want you to be ignorant of their findings, for they answer many of the nagging doubts that arise when one reads what the “scholars” have to say about our Lord and Savior.

A. Read “Who Do You Say That I Am?” by Mark Roberts