120 Things ABC CBS CNN FOX and NBC Won't Tell You" Cont..
31. The Gospel writers were either eyewitnesses or close associates of eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life.
Ankerberg: Is it true or false that, among scholars, that the gospel writers are considered not to be eyewitnesses?
Witherington: Well, there’s a debate about that. I mean, I think frankly scholars are divided about what they really want to say about this. Now, the early church made no bones about Mark and Luke not being eyewitnesses. These were secondary figures, not apostles, not eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus, who wrote at some remove from the time of Jesus, but Mark, according to tradition, was the interpreter of Peter’s evidence, who was certainly an eyewitness, and Luke was a sometime companion of Paul. So here we have two non-eyewitnesses but nonetheless not far removed from the eyewitnesses. Possible to consult the eyewitnesses and most scholars would say that they do believe that there was a John Mark who wrote that gospel, and there was indeed a Luke, probably a companion of Paul, who wrote Luke’s gospel as well.
Now what’s striking to me about that is that, if the early church had been in the business of trying to make up authors of these foundational documents, surely they would have picked two of the twelve if they wanted to talk about these earliest gospels written. The fact that they dealt with more marginal, secondary figures who were not apostles and said these gospels were written by these persons, well, that has its own inherent credibility in it. It doesn’t seem to be something likely that the second century church would make up because the second century church was very concerned about apostolic testimony and these were not apostles, so there’s an inherent credibility to that.
32.
The Gospels were written within the lifetime of eyewitness to the events of Jesus’ life.
Ankerberg: Where would you date the gospels?
Witherington: Well, I would say that the first gospel, Mark, was written somewhere in the late 60s or maybe as late as 70, and the others that are dependant on it, Matthew and Luke, were probably written either in the later 70s or into the 80s. The gospel of John seems to have been the last one to actually reach a public forum, written probably sometime in the 90s. But all of them were written during the first century A.D., all of them were written when there were still eyewitnesses around who could be consulted or could correct them of their evidence. So even though we’re dealing with a generation away from Jesus, we’re not dealing with a time beyond all the eyewitnesses.
33.
The information in the Gospels is reliable.
Ankerberg: How much should people rely on the information in the gospels?
Witherington: Well, I think they should rely, and of course we have to, to do any kind of historical study, you have to rely heavily on this material, because there’s not a lot of material outside of the gospels and certainly not outside of the New Testament about the historical Jesus. There’s a couple of paragraphs in Josephus, there’s a paragraph in Tacitus, the Roman historian, not a lot of extra-biblical evidence that could be arguably traced back to the first century A.D. And that’s precisely the point. The earlier the evidence the more likely that it could reliable.
Ankerberg: How do we know, then that we could trust that evidence?
Witherington: Well, there’s several factors there. The earliest documents we have in the New Testament are the letters of Paul. And Paul tells us quite succinctly in 1 Corinthians 15 that there were these folks who had been with Jesus, who had been at the cross, knew that he was buried, he rose on the third day, and he appeared to this host of witnesses, 1 Corinthians 15. Now Paul quotes that in the mid-50s A.D. as a testimony that the church had always believed to be true. He himself, according to Galatians 1 had gone to Jerusalem and talked to the pillar apostles, Peter, James and John. So, if you leave the Gospels aside for a minute, we have this other evidence from the New Testament that comes to us from Paul that tells us that it’s unlikely that this stuff was simply made up out of whole cloth. We know that, for example, Paul cites a tradition in 1 Corinthians 11 about the last supper, what happened to Jesus on the night that he was betrayed. So it seems very clear that before there were ever written Gospels there was oral and written testimonies circulated by eyewitnesses among the early Christians. You must remember that Christianity is a historical faith, it’s not a philosophy of life, and therefore, being a historical faith, history, and the veracity of reporting that history, was extremely important for an evangelistic religion founded on historical evidence. |
