This is the text of a talk I gave at my local Church (spread across two weeks), lightly edited, slightly expanded (restoring parts I had to cut for time) and rearranged for this medium. The appendix contains various extra material which I had to cut out.
Introduction
My topic is "How did the New Testament come to us". Now here in this Church, everything is good. We all know what the New Testament is, and what we believe. But when you go outside the Church, and start speaking about Christianity, some people will attack the New Testament. And you can see why. Atheists, deists, liberal Christians, and other post-Christians need the New Testament to be false. If it is accurate, then Christianity is true, and their views wrong. And many of those attacks seem to have good scholarship behind them. It has been building up for several centuries. Now, these attacks can seem strong for the unprepared. So we need to be prepared. My purpose today is to inform you about some ways the New Testament is attacked, but also how to respond to and evaluate those attacks. Why speak on this topic? Because we ought not to hide it. If we don't discuss it, people will first encounter this material from the Church's enemies, who will only present their side of the evidence. It is better that it is first presented with a critical evaluation of that evidence, and alongside some of the counter evidence. In this way, you won't be caught by surprise when you see a sceptic use these tools to question your faith. I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to the evidence; just that you need to be wary that just because someone claims something, that doesn't necessarily make it true (which of course applies to me just as much as to the Biblical critics I'm criticising here).
We need to learn to think critically about the critics. What assumptions do they make? What methods do they use? And are those reasonable and in accord with the facts? My aim is to help you understand some common lines of attack, and why they're wrong. Fortunately, we now have some great Christian resources to combat this, and I'll make use of some of that material, particularly next week. The topic is vast, and we'll only scratch the surface.
I'll focus on three questions.
- Do we have the same New Testament as first written?
- How were the particular books of the New Testament selected? Why the 27 books we know, and why not others?
- Who wrote the New Testament, and when?
The first and third questions are key avenues of attack by atheists. The second question is used by both atheists to attack Christians and Roman Catholics to attack protestants.
Have the texts been preserved?
Accuracy and precision aren't the same thing. Accuracy means your statement agrees with reality, precision indicates how narrowly you pinpoint that answer.
Saying 2+2 is between -17 and 35 is accurate, but imprecise. Saying 2+2 is between 4.999 and 5.001 is more precise, but inaccurate. We aim to be as precise as possible, while guaranteeing accuracy. But the important thing is to state our imprecision alongside our best estimate of the answer. Perfect precision is impossible in most circumstances. Just try measuring something with a ruler. You can't be more precise than quarter of a millimetre. Beyond that you are just guessing. That's usually good enough, but it isn't and can never be perfect. Scientists are trained to understand sources of imprecision, and how they affect the final answer. You'll never see a scientist give an answer as precisely 14.0, they always give a range. Many disagreements among experts are when people understate the imprecision. One person states that 2+2 lies between 2.1 and 4.1. Another person states that 2+2 lies between 3.9 and 5.9. Those answers are not inconsistent, even through the central values in their ranges differ, because there is an overlap in the range. But if they understated their imprecision, to +/- 0.5 rather than +/- 1 (so between 2.6 and 3.6), there would be a contradiction both between the two answers, and the given answer and the truth. So correctly estimating the precision is just as important as giving your best guess of the answer.
Other fields also have imprecision, although imprecision is treated less precisely. Words often carry a range of meanings. A text written in another language and culture always contains nuances difficult to translate into our language and culture. Interpretations ought to be expressed as a range of possible options. Imprecision is not the enemy of accuracy. Specifying with too much precision is the enemy of accuracy. The chances are that your best guess isn't perfectly correct. But if you give your answer as a range of values, then it is far more likely that the truth lies somewhere within that range. So being imprecise when there is genuine and reasonable doubt is not a weakness. It doesn't mean the answer you are giving is wrong. It is the best way to ensure that the answer you give is right.
There are variations between different Biblical manuscripts. In some places, we don't know for certain what was originally written. But we do know for certain it was among a small number of options, usually with very similar meaning. This imprecision doesn't make the text inaccurate. And this doesn't mean that we can't understand the text. It's not like a broad plain where any interpretation is possible. It's like a narrow path, not zero width, but with clearly defined boundaries.
I should start with some definitions. A manuscript is any document written out by hand. The autograph is the original manuscript. Everything else's a copy.
Unsurprisingly, we don't have New Testament autographs. They were written on Papyrus - dried reeds - and except in deserts, Papyrus rots in a few centuries. Or manuscripts might be destroyed by human activity. Other early manuscripts were written on parchment - stretched animal skins. This is more durable that Papyrus, but not durable enough. So every manuscript of any ancient literature is a copy.
A manuscript doesn't all rot at once. Small bits go first. The tears expand, join up and result in fragments. Maybe almost complete, perhaps just a few lines. We have to piece together the original from these fragments.
Copying by hand inevitably introduces errors. Ancient scribes were really good at copying manuscripts. Far better than you or I would be. But they still made mistakes. Mostly accidentally. Sometimes deliberately. We just have copies of copies. Each copy introduces more errors. How can we trust the text?
For some, this as a major problem. This is a typical reaction.
For me, though, this was a compelling problem. It was the words of scripture themselves that God had inspired. Surely we had to know what those words were if we want to know how he had communicated to us, since the very words were his words, and having some other words (those inadvertently or intentionally created by scribes) didn't help us much if we want to know His words. (Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus.)
You can see the problem here. We tend to read the New Testament in translation, but if you know Greek you can (and should) go back to the original text. But then which manuscript do you use? They are all slightly different. Whichever one you pick, it is almost certainly going to contain some mistakes. At least we can't be confident that it doesn't. It was just somebody's best guess as to what the original said. Now the Bible is meant to be God's direct word to us. But it appears we don't have that word. We just have a human best guess as to that word. And you know how rubbish most people are at guessing. So it seems that we can't trust the Bible. And if we can't trust the Bible, then our faith, especially for Protestants, is built on sand.
So what's the problem with this argument? Essentially the problem arises because we are talking about just a single best guess. It's not a range of options, but a single value. In other words, it has understated the imprecision. And, as I said, if you understate the imprecision, you get the wrong answer. If you overstate it, then your answer is too vague to be useful. But there is a sweet spot in the middle, where you can give just a small number of options, and you know that the true answer is one of them. That allows you to both have confidence that among the options is an accurate reading of the text, and sufficient clarity if those meanings aren't too far apart.
So what I am going to talk about today is how we get both our best guess, eliminate options which are impossible, and correctly list the viable options. In other words, how we can be as precise about the text as possible, without being more precise than possible, and what that means for the clarity of the meaning we take from the text.
All ancient literature is only known through copies of copies. The New Testament isn't unusual in this regard. How does the New Testament compare to other ancient works? It is traditional in talks like this to present some examples.
| Author | Oldest Manuscript/Fragment | Surviving Original Language copies |
|---|---|---|
| Homer (850BC?) | 300BC | 1800 |
| Livy (59BC-AD17) | 4th century | 27 |
| Tacitus (AD56-120) | 9th Century | 3 |
| Seutonius (AD69-140) | 9th Century | 220 |
| Thucydides (460-400BC) | 1st Century | 20 |
| Herodotus (484-425BC) | 1st Century | 75 |
| Josephus Antiquities (93AD) | 9th Century | 13 |
| New Testament (40-100AD) | 125-150AD | 5700+ |
Homer is the second best attested author in antiquity. The others I've listed are prominent ancient historians.
We should take care with comparisons like this. New manuscripts are discovered all the time. The sources I took this information from are almost certainly already out of date. Many of the early manuscripts for Homer and the New Testament are very fragmentary, while the later manuscripts are more complete, so you are not really comparing like for like.
P52, the earliest New Testament manuscript, contains just a few verses from John's gospel. And most of those New Testament manuscripts are medieval. Individual New Testament books have fewer witnesses, but still numbering in the thousands.
But however we quibble with the actual numbers, the overall point you get from this data is still correct. Even just considering our earliest complete or near complete New Testaments, which date from around 325-350AD, that's still far better than other writings. Even leaving out the small fragments, we still have far more manuscripts than any other work from the same time. The New Testament text is in a far better state than any other ancient text. We accept Livy and Tacitus. Surely our confidence in the New Testament should be even greater.
The New testament has
- Over 5700 Greek manuscripts
- But in addition, we also have the translations. There are over 10 000 manuscripts of several early Latin translations, plus Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and numerous other languages.
- Then there are numerous citations in early Christian writers, covering most of the New Testament.
- Our earliest Fragment comes from the early second century.
- And as stated, our earliest complete or near complete manuscripts date from the early fourth century.
How were these manuscripts created?
It's as you would expect. Someone found a manuscript nearby, and copied it by hand. So we start with the autograph.
Copies are made and sent out.
Copies are made from those copies. And so on.
Whenever a manuscript was copied, there would be mistakes. These mistakes are called variant readings: differences between manuscripts. These changes only affect that manuscript and those copied from it. The rest of the manuscript tree is unaffected.
Most of the time those manuscripts will be geographically close to where the error was made. There's no point going to Egypt to get your exemplar when there's one in the monastery just down the road. By comparing the surviving manuscripts and tracing back the variants, the tree's reconstructed, giving us the original text.
If the same text is found in different branches of the tree, it was in their earliest common ancestor, most likely the autograph or one of the first copies. Baring spelling mistakes and other trivial errors, a complex change wouldn't be made twice independently.
The New Testament tree split into four branches at an early date, before 250AD: Alexandrian, Syrian, Byzantine and Western. These are distinguished by the same variations and where the manuscripts were found. After this split, each family developed independently. So we have four separate witnesses to a very early text.
Common scribal mistakes include spelling mistakes, word order, omitting or repeating a word or line, trying to correct a previous error, and so on. These are easy to spot. Most don't affect the meaning.
Variations are preferred if they are:
- Early
- Common or geographically widespread
- Better explain their rivals.
Early manuscripts are preferred because they are more likely to have fewer copy between them and the original. Each copy is another opportunity for errors to be produced. Of course, this isn't a guarantee. Papyrus lasts several centuries, so it might be that a manuscript dating from 500 years after the original only has two or three copies between them, while one dating 200 years after the original might have fifty. Also there is the question of how accurate the scribes were. A better scribe would make fewer mistakes. So a late manuscript where it and the manuscripts it was based on where copied by more accurate scribes might be better than an earlier manuscript copied with incompetent scribes. So earlier doesn't necessarily mean better. But the date is the only clue we have. We don't know how many copies lay between a manuscript and an original; this isn't recorded. Nor is it recorded whether the scribes have PhDs in copying manuscripts, or if they failed at primary school. Earlier manuscripts are more likely to have fewer copies, so we have to go with that. And there is no reason to think the scribes leading to one manuscript were better or worse than those leading to another (unless the manuscripts contain a lot of obviously incorrect mistakes; but that's an independent criterion to the date). So early manuscripts are usually preferred, all other things being equal, but we have to be careful not to accept a variation just because it appears in our earliest manuscripts if there is good reason to think later manuscripts might be better.
The importance of preferring geographically widespread variations is (in my view) understated by the experts. Though I'm not an expert, so they would probably say I am over-stating it. I say this because of how the manuscripts were distributed. We know the autograph was sent to, say Rome or Ephesus, and stored in a Church there until it rotted or was destroyed. Copies would have been made of that, and those copies would have been sent out across the Mediterranean. Errors could have been made in those first copies sent out, but that's the same for every location. If you don't have any manuscripts in a particular province, then you have to rely on one arriving from overseas. But once you do have local manuscripts, you would use those to make your next copies. And the majority of steps between the autograph and the manuscript in our possession would have likely been from those local copies. And the majority of errors introduced in that local process of copying. Different errors would arise in different cities. Thus when you see a variation that only appears in one place, it is very likely to have been introduced when copies were made in that city. The alternative is that a copy of the autograph was made containing this supposed error, and then copies from that copy were sent to the many places with the variation, while a different copy with the original wording was sent only to the single place with the alternative reading. This is possible, of course, but far less likely than the error was introduced as further copies were made in that one place, or in the first manuscript to arrive there. And therefore it is unlikely to represent the autograph. Of course, this model is not perfect. There will be cross-contamination of the manuscript tradition as people travel from one city to another carrying their manuscripts with them. But in general, a variation that dominates the manuscript tradition in lots of places is more likely to accurately reproduce the autograph than one which appears only dominates the manuscripts found in a smaller number of places. To my mind, this is more likely to be a better guide to the original text than earlier dated manuscripts; but the experts tend to rank the earliest variations as most important ahead of this criteria. Most of our early manuscripts come from the desert environment of Egypt where Papyrus and Parchment are better preserved.
I haven't really seen this discussed much by the experts, but I think we should also consider those manuscripts created in the same place where the autograph resided as more reliable than manuscripts found elsewhere. The autograph likely existed for several centuries; well into the time when we have our first fragments. And in the place where it was stored, copies would have continually be made from it or checked against it. In other places, their earliest manuscript can only be a copy or a copy of a copy, and probably wouldn't be especially revered. In other words, in the place where the autograph was stored, a late copy might still have been made directly from the autograph, while elsewhere that's not going to be the case. And where the autograph was stored, even for those manuscripts not copied from the autograph there would still probably be fewer intermediaries between the surviving manuscript and the original, and therefore, all other things being equal, fewer chances for errors. Of course, we often don't know precisely where the autograph was stored, so this criteria isn't without its imprecision. But there are places where we can be reasonably certain the autograph wasn't stored.
A variation which better explains its rivals is also to be preferred. For example, if we see a line repeated or omitted in one variation -- common scribal errors -- then the other variation is more likely to be the original. Another example is when we see harmonisations introduced in the manuscripts. So, let's say Matthew has one particular wording of a parable and many manuscripts of Mark have another, but many copies of Mark directly reproduce the same text as in Matthew. It is seen as more likely that the variation in Mark is the correct reading. Scribes copying Mark's gospel but familiar with the passage in Matthew might consciously or unconsciously reproduce Matthew's wording instead of the wording of the document in front of them. They might, for example, think that document contained a mistake. Obviously this isn't guaranteed, but its an indication that can sway the balance alongside other evidence.
There are estimated to be over 500 000 variants in Greek, with each variant appearing in one or more manuscripts. I doubt anyone knows the actual number. Before you get too scared, most of these variants don't affect the meaning or can be easily ruled out. That still leaves roughly 4000 significant variants. Still a lot. But they're spread over 5000 manuscripts or manuscript fragments, which puts it into context. But don't forget, each variant is shared between numerous manuscripts. You can't just divide the number of variants by the number of manuscripts, and say there is fewer than one significant variant in each manuscript. Then you would say one verse out of place in the entire New Testament isn't bad. But that's not how it works. Individual manuscripts each contain more variations from the preferred critical text than this. But considering the size of the New Testament, it is still only a relatively small number of verses which are affected in each manuscript. The reason we have so many variants is that we have so many manuscripts. And this is a good thing, because it makes it practically certain that the original has survived somewhere in the manuscript tradition.
The end result of all this study is the construction of the critical edition of the New Testament. This Greek text is constructed by putting together the best readings from various different manuscripts. Our modern translations are based on this text. We can be certain that over 99% of the critical edition of the New Testament duplicates the autograph.
What of that remaining 1%? These are verses with 2 or 3 viable options. Mostly there is no radical difference in meaning. Just two slightly different ways of saying the same thing. The most significant are listed in your translation's footnotes. The critical edition lists all the variations.
Does this mean we can't have confidence in the text? By no means. Biblical inerrancy applies to the autograph. With so many manuscripts - and early manuscripts - the original text will survive somewhere. Mostly we know what the autograph said. Elsewhere, we know that one of two or three options is the original. This gives imprecision, but not inaccuracy.
When studying a passage, we need to check for textual variants. If a key word affecting our interpretation has a variant, we should either say so or make our point from a different passage. No point of doctrine depends on a variation. There's always another text which makes the point clearly. The variants don't introduce contradictions. They tend to be ambiguous, or add or omit phrases without changing the overall meaning.
I'll provide a few examples.
1 John 5:7
Let's compare 1 John 5:7 in the KJV and a modern translation:
For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. (1 John 5:7-8 KJV)
For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. (1 John 5:7-8, NIV)
The extra section in the KJV is found in
- 10 Greek manuscripts dating from the 10th century or later,
- One Latin translation, but not the earliest Latin texts.
- Not cited in any early Christian writers.
The KJV was translated from (a minor update to) the textus receptus, the first critical Greek text constructed in the 16th century. It's based on a few late Byzantine manuscripts. Some of those manuscripts contained this variation. The textus receptus was a massive achievement for its time, but its now badly outdated. The modern translations are unquestionably correct to exclude the extra phrase.
The doctrine this addition references is the Trinity. Does the doctrine of the Trinity depend on this passage alone? Obviously not. For one thing, the doctrine was formalised in the 4th and 5th centuries based on other passages in scripture, well before this variation appeared.
Mark 16:9-16.
Your translation has a scary note saying this is missing from the earliest manuscripts. Let's look at the data for the main 5 variations:
- Variation A: Contains verses 9-16. 1600+ Greek manuscripts and most translations.
- Variation B: Ends at verse 8. 3 Greek manuscripts and a few translations.
- Variation C: Two verse alternate ending. 1 Greek manuscript, and one translation.
- Variation D: Combines A and C. 6 Greek manuscripts.
- Variation E: A with an additional sentence. 1 Greek manuscript.
- Version A is cited by many early Christian writers, starting from the 2nd century. Irenaeus writing around 180AD is our earliest clear citation of these verses. Some claim to find allusions to the passage in the earlier writers Justin Martyr and even Papias, but I'm not convinced. For example, the supposed Justin Martyr reference is just a three words which are also found in Mark 16, but not in the same order and not the same sentence structure. The similar wording is likely to just be a coincidence. At least that possibility can't be easily dismissed. Even so, the citation by Irenaeus is still a century and a half earlier than our earliest evidence for variation B, so those who prefer variation B because it has the earliest appearance in the manuscript tradition are standing on rather dubious ground. In the third and fourth centuries, Mark 16:9–20 is also cited by Hippolytus (235), Vincentius of Thibaris (256), De Rebaptismate (258), the pagan author Hierocles (305), the Syriac writer Aphrahat (337), Acts of Pilate (4th c.), the Latin commentator Fortunatianus (350), Epiphanius (375), Ambrose (385), Apostolic Constitutions (380), Palladius (late 300s), Greek copies mentioned by Augustine, and the Old Latin chapter summaries (3rd–5th c.) These writers are widely distributed geographically, meaning that this variation was known from the time of our earlier witnesses to variation B and earlier across a far wider geographical area.
- Four early Christian writers were aware of both A and B, starting from Eusebius of Caesarea, who preferred version B. There are also some writers, such as Origen and Clement of Alexandria, who frequently cited scripture but not this passage. However, arguments from silence like this are always dangerous. There were many passages not cited by Origen in his surviving works, and he might well have reasons for not referencing it, so you can't draw any conclusions from this.
- Verses 9-16 are included in the earliest lectionaries, or a list of set readings for each day.
But it's not just about counting manuscripts. Version B is supported by one late Byzantine manuscript, of little account, and the Alexandrian manuscripts Vaticanus and Sinaticus. These date from 320-350. They are our earliest witnesses to the end of Mark's gospel. We have fragments of Marks gospel dating from around 200AD, but these lack the ending. There are also stylistic differences between 9-16 and the rest of Mark's gospel, which for many people show that those verses come from a different author. And I'll admit that some of these are quite strong.
The majority of scholars support option B. A minority argue for option A. What's clear is that both variations circulated from an early date. My own preference is for option A, mainly because I always prefer hard data in manuscripts and citations rather than more subjective judgements over style. A is attested across the world, including where the autograph resided in Italy, with wide support in early Christian writers. That's difficult to explain if the ending was added later. B, C, and D are only found in Egypt and regions influenced by Egyptian Christianity. Most of the stylistic objections aren't as strong as their proponents like to claim. The internal evidence from the style does favour variation B. But the manuscript and citation evidence favours variation A, and I don't trust stylistic analysis sufficiently to let it override the clear hard data from the manuscripts and citations. But we can't be 100% certain either way. I would make the note in our Bibles a little less scary, but it needs to be there.
Does our belief in the resurrection depend on this passage? No. We still have the accounts in Matthew, Luke and John. And also verses 1-8 of Mark 16 announce the resurrection, so its in Mark's gospel even leaving out these verses.
John 7:53-8:11
This is the well-known story of the women caught in adultery.
- 1/3 of manuscripts omit the passage, including the earliest.
- 2/3 of manuscripts include it. Half with a mark questioning its authenticity.
- Some move it to the end of Luke's gospel.
- It's present in early Latin, Syriac and Coptic translations, but missing in others.
- And there was widespread discussion about its authenticity among early Church writers.
You can't build an overwhelming case on these numbers. Most contemporary scholars reject the passage's authenticity. I think we just have to say we don't know. Which is a pity, because its a very nice little story.
I picked these examples because they are the worst. These are the only two multiple verse textual variants. Most concern just a word or a few words. But in each case, whether large or small, the difference boils down to just a few options. We know the original text was one of those options. In most cases the overall meaning isn't affected. Even where it is affected, no point of doctrine depends on the difference.
So what should we take from this discussion about manuscripts and variants?
- When we say the Bible is without error, we mean the autographs. But the copies and the best translations are very reliable. They convey the same meaning as the original. So we don't lose anything by not having the autograph.
- Variations add imprecision, not inaccuracies. The critical Greek edition lists the main variations. One is original. We don't know which one, but none drastically change the meaning. And its the meaning of the text that's conveys the gospel message of salvation.
-
I often see sceptics claiming "this person changed the text at this date." Not just with the Bible. A classic example is in the Jewish historian Josephus. In book 18 of his Antiquities of the Jews, written about 90AD, he has a short passage mentioning Jesus.
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds 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. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 18.3. 95AD)
This passage appears in all the Greek manuscripts, all the translations, and is cited many times, with only minor variations (the biggest variation is in a later Arabic translation, which removes most of the bits that deify Christ, which isn't surprising in a translation made in an Islamic context). Many people have tried to argue that the passage was inserted by a Christian in Syria around 300AD. That Christian could have changed his own manuscript, sure, but what about all the others? Or do you propose a massive conspiracy where all the scribes decided that the best way to answer a problem that wouldn't be posed for another one and a half thousand years was to insert this small passage into a Jewish historian? No, it doesn't make sense. It's far more likely that this passage was either wholly authentic, or only has minor changes from the original. And you sometimes see the same thing with the New Testament. People don't like a verse, so say maybe it was inserted by a later scribe. No, you can't do that. Unless the proposed variation is in the manuscript tradition, it's impossible. The best someone can do is to introduce a new variant which we can discover when comparing manuscripts. If there is no variant, there was no change to the text. The main reasons some people distrust the passage are because:- Josephus was a committed Jew, and as such he probably wouldn't praise Jesus quite as much as this. However, this is exagerated. Most of the language Jospehus used indicates scepticism in the original Greek which is obscured in the English translation. For example, the word translated surprising deeds, paradoxica, is only elsewhere used by Josephus to describe the supposed miracles of the Egyptians opposing Moses. Those miracles Josephus accepts are described using other words. There is a recent book by TC Schmidt which goes into details. The remaining problematic passage is "He was the Christ." Schmidt suggests this was originally "He was the so-called Christ," following a variation in a few citations and Josephus' second reference of Jesus in book 20. I'm not fully convinced we even need to make this concession. Josephus was writing in Rome less than 30 years after Nero's persecution and leading up to Domitian's (purported) persecution. Josephus' readership would have known of Christians and, if nothing else, that they worshipped a figure they called the Christ instead of Caesar and the Roman gods. By saying He was the Christ, Josephus might have been doing no more than a) identifying Jesus with this figure, and b) explaining the origin of the term Christians. Of course, Josephus, unlike the surrounding pagan culture, would have known that Christ was the translation of the Jewish Messiah, with all that implied. Writing so-called Christ (as he did in book 20) would be more consistent with his own beliefs. But everyone gets careless and makes mistakes from time to time, even careful historians such as Josephus. It is possible that he referred to the common name, without thinking about the implications until later (when he wrote book 20).
- The passage isn't mentioned in the earliest Christian writers, most notably Origen, a prominent scholar from third century Alexandria, who cited the reference in book 20 so certainly knew Josephus. This is an argument from silence. The omission would be explained if Origen's copy of Jospehus was missing this passage. But it would also be explained if he simply forgot about it when he had the opportunity to reference it (and used a different passage instead), or couldn't find it when trying to look it up, or didn't have his copy of Josephus to hand that day, or thought that the arguments he did use made the point better than citing this passage, and a host of other reasons. Arguments such as this can never be conclusive. Origen also wrote that Josephus rejected Jesus as Christ, seemingly contradicting the statement He was the Christ, but it was well known that Josephus wasn't a Christian, and this also isn't clear proof that this passage was missing from Origen's copy. And the issue doesn't apply if Josephus actually wrote the so-called Christ in this passage as well as in book 20 as some suggest.
- Other sceptics say, If Jesus really lived and performed all these miracles then loads of people would have written about him in personal letters. But we don't have those records, so Jesus wasn't anyone special. Well, maybe they did write about Him. Or maybe they didn't. We can't know. Those letters, if they existed, would have long since rotted away, and there is no obvious reason anyone would have copied them. You can't argue from silence when tallying surviving ancient manuscripts, because so few have survived.
- Despite the number of variants, we can have far more confidence in the Biblical text that other ancient work. No point of doctrine is affected by textual variants. We should be aware of them, cautious when the is a variant, but not concerned.
How do we know we have the right books?
The canon lists the books included in the New Testament. Why is a canon needed?
The Church survived without an official canon for over three centuries. Each individual Church had their own preferred books, but no universal authoritative canon was seen as authoritative. The 27 book canon we have today was proposed by Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria in 367, and ratified by councils at Rome and Carthage.
The need for a canon became apparent in response to the heretic Marcion, around 140AD. Marcion believed the Old Testament and New Testament described different Gods. The evil Old Testament God created an evil physical world. We have this good spirit from the good God imprisoned in our evil bodies. Jesus taught us how to set it free. Marcion sought to remove any Jewish elements from Christianity. So he only accepted highly edited versions of Luke's gospel, Acts, and some of Paul's letters.
This is both absurd and unacceptable. But without an agreed canon, how do you stop it happening? As Christians, we try to imitate the apostolic Church. We need to know what Jesus and the apostles taught. The early Church had the New Testament books, and traditions passed down from the apostles. Now those traditions have been diluted with errors introduced later. Tradition is still important, but doesn't have the same authority as it did in the earliest days. But we still have the text.
The New Testament's authority can't be separated from the authority of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Jesus selected the apostles. The apostles wrote or supervised the New Testament, inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit. Other Christian writers are often great, but lack the certainty that comes from the direct link with Jesus. They lack the authority of the apostolic writings. But if we have the canon wrong, then we read some non-authoritative texts as authoritative, or ignore others which are authoritative. So this question is important.
There are a several criterion used to select the canonical books. They should
- Be written by an apostle or under an apostle's supervision.
- Be orthodox and consistent with the apostolic rule of faith.
- Be widely accepted by the early Church.
- Be useful for teaching. Peter's shopping list wouldn't qualify. A gospel inspired by his teaching would.
- And, as God's inspired word, it should transform the hearts of God's people.
It should be clear why each of these points is required.
Which texts were widely accepted by the Church? The canon was discussed by the early Church. Some produced lists of accepted, rejected, and questioned books. The Muratorian fragment, dating from 170AD, is our earliest surviving record of such a list. We can study the early manuscripts. We can see which books were cited or alluded to as authoritative. So we can identify books regarded as authoritative by early Christians in the late first and early second century.
Using that criteria of accepted by the Church leaves only a small number of candidates, which I show in the table.
| Accepted | Accepted but questioned | Questioned and not accepted |
|---|---|---|
| Matthew | Hebrews | Didache |
| Mark | James | 1 Clement |
| Luke | 2 John | Epistle of Barnabas |
| John | 3 John | Apocalypse of Peter |
| Acts | Revelation | Shepherd of Hermas |
| Romans | Jude | |
| 1 Corinthians | 2 Peter | |
| 2 Corinthians | ||
| 1 Thessalonians | ||
| 2 Thessalonians | ||
| Philemon | ||
| Philippians | ||
| Galatians | ||
| Ephesians | ||
| Colossians | ||
| 1 Timothy | ||
| 2 Timothy | ||
| Titus | ||
| 1 Peter | ||
| 1 John |
Those in the first column were universally accepted, so I need not discuss them further in this brief summary. The other books were questioned by at least one person. The books in the second column made it into the canon. The books in the third column were rejected.
I'll start by discussing the rejected books. The Shepherd of Hermas is a weird parable. Some thought was written by a Hermas referenced in Romans. But records confirm it was written in the second century.
Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers who are with them. (Romans 16:14)
But Hermas wrote the Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the Prophets, whose number is complete, or among the Apostles, for it is after [their] time. (Muratorian Fragment (170AD))
It's not apostolic. The Apocalypse attributed to Peter describes a vision of heaven and hell. It is highly doubtful it was Peter's work, and is therefore rejected. The epistle of Barnabas is an anonymous work, attributed by some to Barnabas, but this is doubtful. It was written between 70AD and the early second century. It's an important book, but probably not apostolic, so doesn't make the list. Clement was a bishop of Rome at the end of the 1st century. He was probably named in Philippians as one of Paul's co-workers.
Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have laboured side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. (Philippians 4:3)That would be when he was a young man several decades before becoming Bishop. His letter to the Corinthians is excellent, well worth reading, but not apostolic. The Didache, or The Teaching of the 12 Apostles, is the best candidate to make the canon. It is probably first century. It was highly regarded by the early Church. And its very edifying. I recommend people read it. But its authorship is uncertain, and it wasn't as widely accepted as the canonical books, so it's excluded.
What of the "questioned but accepted" books? Being in this column doesn't mean we should have doubts. It just takes one maverick teacher questioning them to get them on this list. They were still widely and almost universally accepted. We have to look at why some people questioned it, and whether that's a good enough reason.
Hebrews was universally accepted in the East, but some in the West rejected it. They felt that because it is anonymous, we can't be sure it was written by an apostle. However, it discusses the temple sacrifices in the present tense, has close relations with Timothy, and the testimony of the Eastern Church is clear. It's also referenced as authoritative in early works, such as Barnabas and 1 Clement. So its apostolic, even if we aren't certain which apostle, and should be in the canon.
James was doubted by some according to Eusebius and Jerome in the 4th century, but everyone else accepted it, including much earlier writers. It is alluded to as scripture in 1 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas. So we can be confident about it, and it goes in.
Eusebius also stated that 2 and 3 John were written by an alternate John. But everyone else, including Irenaeus, who learnt from John's disciple Polycarp in the Ephesian Church where John ministered, affirmed they were written by John the apostle. One late source isn't enough to question the early and widespread acceptance.
Eusebius also stated that Revelation was accepted by some and denied by others, but the denial was due to the text's weirdness, which isn't a reason to reject it, rather than any doubts over authorship.
No-one questioned that Jesus' brother Jude wrote the letter attributed to him. Some disliked his references to the non-canonical 1 Enoch. That's not reason to exclude it.
2 Peter is the book that comes closest to missing out. It's second chapter is very similar to Jude. It's unlikely Peter would copy Jude. It isn't cited by our earliest sources. The Greek of 2 Peter is very crude in comparison to 1 Peter, although that can be explained if 1 Peter used Silas as a scribe, able to correct Peter's rough Greek, while 2 Peter used a different scribe or was Peter's own Greek.
By Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. (1 Peter 5:12)This stylistic difference was noted in the ancient Church as well as by modern scholars. But it was still widely accepted. It is clearly first century. It shows signs of Petrine authorship, such as the eyewitnesses account of the transfiguration. The objections to its authorship are answerable. So it should be in the canon.
If the list of approved books was drawn up and ratified by Church Councils from the 4th century, but only the New Testament is fully trustworthy, how can we be sure the list is right? Roman Catholics avoid this problem by ranking the Church's teaching authority alongside scripture. How would we avoid it?
- The book's authority doesn't come from the recognition of that authority, but from Jesus and the Holy Spirit through the apostles. Athanasius and the early councils received the books as authoritative, they didn't declare them authoritative. The Church didn't give the books their authority. The authority comes from Jesus, not the Church, and the later Church merely recognized that.
- A fallible council still avoids error in many of its judgements. It could still get most things right.
- We know why the books were chosen, and can review the decision for ourselves. The early Christians could access works which are now lost, so they were better informed than we are, and were better able to judge. So if we can confirm them with less evidence, so much more should we trust those who had all the evidence.
- As Anglicans, we recognize the Church's authority, especially the early Church, and that the Holy Spirit works through the Church. We believe that the Church can and has erred; that's obvious from history. Consequently we don't accept magisterial infallibility as the Roman Church does. But, nonetheless, the Church still gets most things right. It is far more likely that we are the ones mistaken than all the other Christians down the ages, unless we have clear evidence otherwise. A scholar today needs a very good reason to oppose the judgement of the wider Church, especially the early Church before the errors or speculations that were rejected by the reformation were introduced or became widely accepted. We compare the Church's judgements against scripture and the history of a doctrine. We distinguish legitimate development of apostolic truth (i.e. those beliefs which clearly trace back to the apostles, even if new language was introduced to properly explain them) from non-apostolic innovation (i.e. those beliefs which are first witnessed centuries after the apostles, or were introduced by merging secular or pagan ideas or philosophy into the Church. [Note I am not against using secular philosophy to explain Christian doctrine as established from the Biblical text or early Christian writers and show its consistency with what can be known from the physical sciences or metaphysics built on the physical sciences, as witnessed by my affinity for Aquinas, or in apologetics, or as insights to be believed alongside but not as Christian doctrine -- so you don't declare someone a heretic for rejecting them, even if you personally think it true -- but when a doctrine is accepted and enforced as Christian doctrine when the only backing for it is a secular philosophy. This is made by humans, and we know that humans, unlike God, can make errors.]). Unless they contradict scripture, those early councils still have more authority than anyone today rejecting the New Testament canon. In this case, there is no good reason to reject the verdict of those councils, so we accept them.
- We should also trust God is looking over the Church. "I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail over it." Would God permit an error as serious as this, without raising up someone to challenge it?
In addition to the orthodox writings, various additional gospels sometimes hit the headlines: the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Judas, the Infancy gospel of Thomas, and so on. Christians have always known about and rejected these. The texts have been rediscovered. We can read them ourselves. These gospels were written late, the earliest from the second century, by various heretical groups collectively known as the gnostics. Gnosticism was a syncretic religion, bringing in ideas from numerous sources, including Judaism and Christianity, and mixing them all together. There were lots of gnostic sects, all slightly different, but they had some things in common. They believed in a single high God, who created numerous minor deities called aeons. Two aeons accidentally created an evil being, the demiurge, who created the physical world. The physical world is subsequently evil. We, however, have a good spirit trapped in our bodies. To return to the good spiritual realm, we need to understand secret knowledge. The gnostics believed Jesus and the Holy Spirit were two of the Aeons. They claimed that Jesus created orthodox Christianity for the stupid people. He passed on the secret knowledge for the enlightened few.
Clearly this is nonsense. No relation to Judaism, Christianity or Jesus. Reading the gnostic gospels confirms the early Church was right to reject them. They reflected Greek not Jewish culture, and the few geographical and cultural details are wrong. Obvious works of fiction, and they tell us nothing about Jesus. Their only use is to help us better understand the gnostics, and they don't tell us anything about early Christianity or Jesus.
Who wrote the New Testament?
I wrote above that we can trust the New Testament because it was written by the apostles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the apostles were commissioned by Jesus. But can we be sure that the New Testament was, in fact, written by the apostles? Does it contain an accurate record of the teaching and life of Jesus, or is it just a fairy tale written decades or maybe even centuries later? Many people say it is just a fairy tale. Atheists have to say this when attacking Christianity, for the obvious reason that if the New Testament was written by eyewitnesses it is much harder to dismiss it. And they will claim they have many scholars backing this view. But what does the actual evidence say? That's what I will discuss in this section.
So, who wrote the New Testament? I'm sure some people will say "This is easy: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James and Jude, with one anonymous book." Others will say, "This is easy: God."
Atheists need both these answers to be false. If the New Testament is true, then so is Christianity. Someone rejecting apostolic Christianity might do so for various reasons: believing miracles are impossible or sufficiently improbable that miracle accounts must be discarded; arguments from evil; arguments from hiddenness, beliefs that science and God are in competition; or the false claim that God or Christianity lack compelling evidence. And so on. These arguments are easily defeated, but that doesn't stop people from believing them.
If you say there is no evidence for Christianity, you need to reject the New Testament as evidence. This is much easier to do if it isn't based on eyewitness testimony. Apostolic origins don't by themselves prove that the New Testament is true in its central theological claims. But it is much harder to dismiss those claims if it was written by the apostles. If the New Testament was written by the apostles, then either they were the most evil of liars, misled, mistaken, or telling the truth. There are good reasons to suppose they weren't liars, misled or mistaken. But if it was written later, by other people, you have more options to dismiss the New Testament's testimony. [The argument here is similar to CS Lewis's trilemma presented in mere Christianity -- given what he said, as recorded in the gospels, Jesus was either a lunatic, liar or Lord. That he was honestly mistaken isn't an option given the extreme claims made. Then you argue that he wasn't a lunatic or liar, leaving only the single alternative. But, as is often pointed out, there is a fourth option: that what is recorded in the gospels doesn't reflect what Jesus said about himself. Then we pass the buck onto the apostles. If the gospels accurately reflect the beliefs of the apostles, i.e. the people closest to Jesus, then either the apostles were mistaken, or lunatics, or liars, or correctly reflected Jesus' self-description of Himself as Lord. Then you present reasons why they weren't mistaken, lunatics or liars, leaving only the last option, which gets you back to the original trilemma. But there is the same get-out: what if the gospels don't reflect the beliefs of the apostles? What if they were written later by people disconnected by Jesus? This is the question I'm addressing in this section. You have still got considerably more work to do after answering this to get to the conclusion that Jesus is Lord. But those other steps (showing that neither the apostles nor Jesus are likely to be liars, for example) are harder to challenge (once they have been properly defended, which is out of the scope of this article, than the apostolic authorship, which is why I think most atheists use this point to dismiss the New Testament.]
Modern criticism of the New Testament began around the 17th century. Perhaps a little earlier. Many people had adopted a mechanistic, deistic or pantheistic world-view denying the miraculous. Clearly the New Testament contains miracles. If you don't believe in miracles, it can't be eyewitness testimony. So you have to find some other way of explaining how the New Testament came to be written.
Now, many other religious and spiritual texts also describe miracles. We shouldn't deny that. But there is a pattern to them. In other religions, miracles are first recorded in folklore several centuries after the stories were set. So perhaps the New Testament is the same. It's just another example of folklore. It would then be fireside stories, gradually embellished in the telling, and distorted until it bears little resemblance to what actually happened. People use the Chinese Whispers game as an analogy. You whisper something into the ear of the next person, who whispers it on. Each time you can't quite hear what was said, so it gets distorted a bit. And by the time you get to the end, its a completely different message.
This idea was first proposed when we had far less knowledge about the ancient world than we do now. Nobody today accepts that the gospels were written centuries after the events. That's ruled out by all the early manuscripts, and first and second century citations in early Christian writers which I discussed above. But the idea of gospels as folklore had already been accepted in some university theological departments. The accepted critical model has changed in the face of the evidence from this original "all just myth and folklore" idea, but not changed that much. They just condensed the time-frame. But is this model right?
I'll say a short introduction, then present the critical model of Gospel origins and the traditional model. I will then ask what we would expect if they were true, and compare against the evidence. I'm going to focus on the gospels and Acts. There is a great deal to say about the epistles as well, but this post is already too long.
In the ancient world, texts were released in various ways. You could publish:
- Under your own name.
- Pseudo-anonymously, using a made up name.
- Anonymously, without any name.
- As pseudepigrapha, under someone else's name.
There are sometimes good reasons to publish anonymously or pseudo-anonymously. As long as you are honest it's not a problem. The final option is fraud.
Pseudepigraphy was common in the ancient world. There was no way to stop it. You write something, stick someone else's name on it, write in their style, and send it out. Others will read it, believe it, and make more copies. Why create a forgery? Maybe to give your ideas greater circulation. Maybe to honour the person you are impersonating. Maybe to disgrace him. Or continue his legacy. Or to give your side greater authority in a debate. It was easy and common.
It was also widely condemned, especially by the early Church. People even drew up lists, so readers would know which works were genuine and which forgeries. Well, you could also forge those lists, but people certainly tried to distinguish true from false. There is no known case of an early Christian accepting what they knew to be a forgery. And you can see why. If someone needed to try to falsely ascribe their own ideas to an apostle, then that would only be because those ideas weren't be strong enough to stand up on their own and they weren't part of the apostolic tradition. You would be trying to sneak your own innovations into the faith. And that just endangers people's salvation, by making them believe things that aren't from God.
So just because it was written in Paul's name doesn't necessarily mean it was written by Paul. So scholars have challenged most of the New Testament. But are they right to challenge it?
As Christians we trust God. Its Jesus' Church, founded by the apostles Jesus sent out, empowered by the Holy Spirit. It's foundations are Jesus and the apostle's teaching, both by word of mouth, and in writing. Jesus' authority is transmitted to us through scriptural authority. The scriptures contain God's message of salvation and life. If they are corrupted, or a mixture of genuine and forgery, our salvation would be endangered. Is God unwilling or unable to protect the scriptures? Obviously not. We trust God wouldn't allow His Church to be deceived. A book claiming to be written by Paul actually written by someone else is untrustworthy. We need really good evidence to doubt the authorship.
Obviously, this argument is great for Christians, but unbelievers or doubters won't accept it. So what types of evidence could establish the authorship?
- The name at the top of the document. This isn't definitive proof. It could be forged. But it is still evidence.
- More importantly, there is the testimony of the Church. The early Christians didn't accept texts they knew to be forged. And they would have known. Suppose you are a Christian in Ephesus, in the late first century. It's twenty or thirty years after Paul's death. You receive a copy of a letter. Neither you nor anyone else in your congregation has heard of it before, but it claims to be from Paul and is addressed to your Church. Either its a forgery or the postal service was really slow. Equally, the gospels weren't published in a vacuum. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had disciples still alive by the time the sceptical scholars claim the gospels started circulating. They would have known at once if they were forgeries and published under the wrong name, because they knew the attributed authors very well, and would surely be very surprised if their mentor or colleague had written a gospel -- among the most important written records of Jesus, the most important figure in Christianity -- distributed it widely, and then never mentioned it to their students or close friends. Those doubts would have been recorded, and referenced or disputed in later Christian works. For example, the Shepherd of Hermas was an early Christian work some thought to be first century. But there are second century records saying it was written at that time. So it's excluded from our Bibles. The same process would have discounted any pseudepigraphal works in the New Testament. Combining Church testimony with a bit of common sense gives a good argument against forgery.
- There are details in the books which speak to their historicity. Various hints which mesh together despite being not being directly copied, small undesigned coincidences which are only easily explained if both accounts are referencing true events. Or they might contain personal or geographical details which a forger either would get wrong or leave unmentioned.
- Coherence of the theology and style can be used either way. Supposed disharmony is the main argument used by the critics. But there is also agreement and harmony. I'm personally sceptical about these arguments. We know from personal experience that people just aren't consistent enough. Does this unusual word mean somebody else wrote that passage? Or did the interpreter make a mistake in thinking the author couldn't have written that? These methods can never give certainty.
Are the gospels folklore? Stories embellished over time and eventually written down? Most religions have folklore. We see miracle stories appearing two centuries or more after the event. Even in Christianity we see non-canonical gospels and Acts appearing after a few centuries with some amazing stories. Most of these are heretical. All of them are fiction. It takes several generations for folklore to develop. You need the eyewitnesses to die out, and fireside stories to grow in the telling.
So are the canonical gospels folklore? No. The manuscript evidence and early citations show they are too early. There wasn't time for folklore to develop. And they don't read like folklore. As CS Lewis wrote,
In what is already a very old commentary I read that the fourth Gospel is regarded by one school as a 'spiritual romance', 'a poem not a history', to be judged by the same canons as Nathan's parable, the book of Jonah, Paradise Lost 'or, more exactly, Pilgrim's Progress'. After a man has said that, why need one attend to anything else he says about any book in the world? ... Turn to John. Read the dialogues: ... Look at its pictures: ... . I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage .... Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors, or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn't see this has simply not learned to read. ... These men ask me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. (CS Lewis, Fern seeds and elephants.)
After mentally replacing Lewis' examples with some from contemporary writers (which is easy enough, since the contemporary critics make similar absurd claims defying common sense as they over-state their case), the essay is just as relevant today as it was in the 50s. Well worth reading.
My degree and doctorate were in Physics. That means I tend to judge ideas in a particular way. This can be easily adapted to other fields. The primary method used to evaluate theories is through the method of falsification, described by the philosopher Karl Popper. This is a six step procedure:
- Construct various models which you hope will explain the data.
- Make predictions from those models.
- Gather data.
- Compare the predictions against the data.
- Either revise the models if there is only a small discrepancy, or abandon them if they are irreconcilable with the data or you need to make too many ad-hoc assumptions to make them fit.
- Go back to step 2 with your revised models.
So let's see what happens when we apply this method to the ideas about the origin of the gospels.
I'll compare two models of gospel authorship: the critical model which is proposed by atheists and liberal scholars, and the traditional model which is close to the historical view of the Church, updated with the latest research. Obviously different people hold slightly different variations of both models, but what I describe here is a reasonable middle ground description of both positions.
Why do the critics need a model? If the gospels weren't written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you need some sort of explanation of how they came to be written and most importantly how they came to be attributed to those people. You can't just say "we can't know," because you are competing with the Christian account. You need something which explains the data better if you are going to be believed. And you need that explanation to make some sort of sense. This is what the atheists and liberal scholars have come up with as the most plausible narrative where the gospels weren't written by the apostles.
| Critical model | Traditional model |
|---|---|
| Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet around 30AD. No miracles. Taught the coming Kingdom. | Jesus was the incarnate son of God, with a public ministry around 30AD |
| Jesus had various followers influenced by his teaching. Most of them were illiterate, and only spoke Aramaic. | Jesus selected and trained His apostles. These were intelligent men with a basic Jewish schooling and advanced education from Jesus. They would have known some Greek. They memorised his teaching and life stories by rote. |
| After Jesus' death, his followers established various communities. | After Jesus' ascension, His followers established various Churches. |
| The communities began without organised structure or much doctrine. These developed gradually. | Church structure and the core Christian doctrines were present from the start. |
| Stories about Jesus were told, retold and embellished in the communities, reflecting the communities' situation. Some genuine recollections of Jesus remained, but the gospel stories were mostly invented at this time. | Early Christians learnt Jesus' teaching by rote, preserving it it faithfully. Church leaders also memorised by rote, and guaranteed their accurate transmission. |
After some time, some communities wrote down their stories.
|
The gospels were written by the apostles or close associates, Matthew, Mark and Luke using the short stories memorised by the apostles under Jesus' instruction. The dates are uncertain, but Luke was before Acts around AD 62.
|
| The gospels originally circulated anonymously. The attributions to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were added in mid 2nd century. | The attributions of the gospels were attached from the beginning, and the authorship was always known. |
The traditional view is reconstructed from the testimony of the early Church and our knowledge of Judaism and early Christianity, although I have followed most contemporary scholars by putting Mark first rather than Matthew. It assumes that Christians remembered their origin story, and didn't decide to immediately suppress it and invent a fiction in its place. It assumes they took Christian doctrine and its preservation seriously, rather than caring so little for the truth and their salvation they would just place fictions in the mouth of Jesus.
The critical view arises from reading between the lines of the text. Scholars closely compare the gospels, looking at similarities and differences, and seek to explain them. They believe some features are difficult to explain from the traditional view, or the text contains anachronisms. According to this model, key Christian doctrines weren't developed until much later. If the gospels reference those teachings, they must also be later. The Jewish revolt and temple destruction in AD 70 is key to how they date the gospels. If you disbelieve in prophecy, the predictions of the temple destruction must be around that time or later. This is all worked into the model. And if they date to 70AD or later, they couldn't have been written by the apostles.
We should be critical about the critics. Their conclusions are just speculation on speculation. The many problems are explained away through convoluted reasoning. The Biblical text is interpreted through anti-Christian philosophy. They don't examine and question their assumptions. There is no hard evidence for the critical model that isn't equally well explained by the traditional model.
But let's compare it against the evidence. Let's put it to the test.
Organised or disorganised Church?
If the critical model is true, the early Church needed to be unstructured and disorganised. The stories have to pass through dozens of people before being written down. You can't have communal composition via Chinese Whispers if the apostle teaches a Bishop who teaches the text's author, with each transition spoken clearly to minimise distortion. Even accepting the critical dates, the gospels were written during the lifetimes of the first Bishops who learnt directly from the apostles. You are not whispering the stories from one generation to another, but teaching them clearly, in the open, and in community. So in the critical model, the structure including appointed authorised teachers would have to come later in Church history.
But the pattern of Bishops and presbyters was established by the apostles. We see this in the New Testament. But I'll cite Clement, third Bishop of Rome, an eyewitness to Peter and Paul's ministry, writing in the late first century.
The apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits, having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. ... And afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. (1 Clement 42, 44)
So Clement clearly states that the first Bishops were appointed by the apostles as they founded new Churches. And he was an eyewitness to this process.
Everywhere across the whole Church we see that the same structure of Bishop, Presbyter and Deacon emerged. This is an organised plan set in place from the start, not something arising spontaneously in multiple places.
Was the Church motivated to preserve its doctrine?
The critical view requires that the early Church didn't care about preserving its founding doctrine, and was willing to add to and alter it. It only became fixed several generations after the apostles. But, Christians have known from the first that our salvation depends on truth, we have sought to accurately pass on our traditions. The New Testament and other early Christian writings state this repeatedly.
As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:9)
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 3:14)
Study, therefore, to be established in the doctrines of the Lord and the apostles, that so all things, whatsoever you do, may prosper both in the flesh and spirit. (Ignatius to the Magnesians, 110AD)
Did the Churches develop doctrines independently?
The critical view states that each community developed its doctrine independently while depending on each other as they copied other gospels. No, I don't understand how those two ideas fit together either. This is required in its model of the gospel stories developed over time as each community responded to its own life-situation. The belief is that the stories in the gospels were written in each community, reflecting the challenges and debates that took place in that community more than they reflect anything that happened in Jesus. The community has a dispute, so someone retells a story about Jesus in such a way that it answers that dispute, obviously introducing distortion in the process or maybe making it up entirely. But if this is so, there is no good reason why the same stories would develop in different communities. It would be a huge coincidence if they all independently came up with the same thing. So we would expect different traditions about Jesus to appear in different cities. And the doctrines affected by this are key issues such as the incarnation and resurrection, the basis of Christianity, both in the broad details of those doctrines and the specifics. If doctrine was fluid early on -- as the critical model demands because it states many of the stories and doctrines were introduced during this period of community transmission -- and the idea of a fixed doctrine only appeared in the second century, then we would expect a great variation in beliefs. If the gospel stories developed after the communities were founded, then the same process would have presumably occurred independently in each community, and as such there is no obvious reason why different communities would have invented the same stories, or developed apostolic traditions in the same way. If this were true, different communities would develop different gospels. At this point the critic would say there were different gospels in the early Church. Yes, there were heretics in the early Church. The first of these were the circumcision party, who Paul opposed. But they don't help the critics. What did the circumcision party reject? The doctrine of grace, which liberals and critics are very fond of. What did they accept? The incarnation, resurrection, judgement. Precisely what the critics want to have developed later. So even if the circumcision party were the original Christianity, which doesn't make much sense, but even if it were true it wouldn't help the critics. Next came the gnostics. Each gnostic sect started when an individual broke away from an orthodox congregation. We see a single orthodox Christianity across the world, with diverse heretical groups breaking away. But while there were heretics and different beliefs in the early Church, these don't follow the pattern expected by the critics. The critical model expects different gospels to develop in Rome, Antioch, Ephesus and so on, and only later come together. The various heresies have a different pattern, where there is an older orthodox community sharing the same faith as everywhere else, and then an individual starts believing something different and a few others follow him. The fundamentals of the faith didn't vary from one Church to another. This is a citation from Irenaeus declaring a uniform and easily recognizable belief. He wrote,
The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father to gather all things in one, and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send spiritual wickednesses, and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning, and others from their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1:10, 180AD)
We shouldn't just take Irenaeus' word for it. We look at other Christian writers elsewhere, and see similar declarations. This is exactly as expected from the traditional model, where Christian doctrine came from Jesus and the apostles, as Irenaeus states here. It is unexpected from the critical model where key doctrines arose independently in the different early communities in response to what happened in their Churches, which then all suddenly coalesced around a single idea without any dispute. What a coincidence they all invented or accepted precisely the same thing!
Is there evidence for anonymous manuscripts?
In the critical view, as you will remember, the gospels were originally written anonymously. The titles were added in the mid first century. This idea emerged from the folklore stage of critical scholarship. Folklore is anonymous, so the gospels must be too. If the titles were initially attached to the gospels after being written by some random bloke, they would be falsely ascribed and rejected by the Church. As I alluded to above, the gospels were written during the lifetime of those who knew the evangelists, who would certainly have known if they were genuine or forgeries. Unless they were originally written and distributed anonymously, and the attributions only added later. In this case, there is no reason why anyone in the early Church would question them for this reason. So anonymous gospels is more palatable than early forgeries. So, although the anonymous gospel theory arose from the discredited folklore stage of critical scholarship, there are good reasons why it remains a key pillar of the critical model.
The model implies there would be disagreement and disputes about the authorship. Perhaps different attestations. Just as happened to Hebrews. The anonymity is often defended by saying the gospels are written in the third person and don't say who wrote them in the body of the text. This is a straw man; it says nothing about whether the titles circulated with the gospels. The question in dispute isn't whether the gospels originally named the author in the text body and were subsequently changed. It's whether the attributions in the titles of the books (the gospel according to Mark etc.) were present on the autographs or the first copies. The problem is that the critics jump from saying the gospel texts were written in third person to draw conclusions from the authors of the gospels weren't known at all in the first and early first century. This inference is invalid unless you can also show that the titles weren't present on the earliest manuscripts. And it is a very unusual use of the word anonymous. We don't consider a modern book anonymous if the author only names themselves on the title page. We think of it as anonymous if there is no name either in the body of the text or the title page. The attribution in the work's title was the ancient equivalent of our modern title page. Also some of the gospels do contain references to the author. Acts and his gospel introduction make it clear that Luke was well known to the eyewitnesses and a companion of Paul. It is plausible that Mark referenced himself into the narrative. (I'm thinking of Mark 14:51. Mark would only include this passage if the young man was important to either himself or his intended readers. The phrase a certain young man is the way an author might self-insert himself in a text he wanted to keep in the third person. We deduce from Acts 12:12 that Mark was raised in Jerusalem. Mark is the obvious candidate for this individual.) And John's gospel directly claims to be either authored or verified by the "beloved disciple," who, by a process of elimination, had to be John.
In the traditional view, the titles were attached to the gospels from the first copies. We expect uniformity.
| Manuscript | Date | Attestation | Manuscript | Date | Attestation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P4 | 180-220 | Gospel according to Matthew | Sinaiticus | 325-350 | According to Mark | |
| P62 | 300-400 | Gospel according to Matthew | Vaticanus | 320-350 | According to Mark | |
| Sinaiticus | 325-350 | According to Matthew | Washington | 375-425 | Gospel according to Mark | |
| Vaticanus | 320-350 | According to Matthew | Alexandrinus | 400-425 | Gospel according to Mark | |
| Washington | 375-425 | Gospel according to Matthew | Ephraemi | 425-450 | Gospel according to Mark | |
| Alexandrinus | 400-425 | Gospel according to Matthew | Bezae | 390-420 | Gospel according to Mark | |
| Ephraemi | 425-450 | Gospel according to Matthew | P66 | 150-200 | Gospel according to John | |
| Bezae | 390-420 | Gospel according to Matthew | P75 | 175-225 | Gospel according to John | |
| P75 | 175-225 | Gospel according to Luke | Sinaiticus | 325-350 | According to John | |
| Sinaiticus | 325-350 | According to Luke | Vaticanus | 320-350 | According to John | |
| Vaticanus | 320-350 | According to Luke | Washington | 375-425 | According to John | |
| Washington | 375-425 | Gospel according to Luke | Alexandrinus | 400-425 | Gospel according to John | |
| Alexandrinus | 400-425 | Gospel according to Luke | Bezae | 390-420 | Gospel according to John | |
| Bezae | 390-420 | Gospel according to Luke |
The table displays all manuscripts or manuscript fragments before 500AD containing the start or end of the gospel, where the attribution was placed. We have other early manuscript fragments of the gospels, but they don't include the start or end of the text, so aren't relevant for this discussion. Vaticanus and Sinaticus leave out the word "gospel." Otherwise they are all identical. There are no anonymous manuscripts, in the sense that the critics need for their model to be valid. Using the principles of textual criticism, if a variation doesn't appear in the manuscript tradition it wasn't in the original: we are forced to choose between "according to Mark." and "The gospel according to Mark." There is no evidence there were ever anonymous manuscripts. This is precisely what we expect from the traditional model, and precisely what we don't expect from the critical model.
Was there disagreement among Christian writers over the authorship?
The critical view implies there would be disagreement among early Christian writers about who wrote the gospels, just as there is disagreement about who wrote Hebrews. The traditional view implies there would be unanimity. I list the major Christian writers from the second and early third century, except one who I will come to in a moment. There are also numerous letters, which cite the New Testament without attribution, similarly to how the New Testament cites the Old Testament.
- Papias (110AD): Acknowledges accounts written by Matthew and Mark.
- The Muratorian Canon (Rome, 170AD). Affirms Luke and John.
- Irenaeus around 180AD (Turkey/France). Affirms all 4 gospels.
- Tertillian around 200AD (North Africa). Affirms all 4 gospels.
- Clement of Alexandria 230AD (Egypt). Affirms all 4 gospels.
Papias mentions Mark and Matthew. Papias' work hasn't survived. We only have short citations from other writers. One citation includes his discussion of Matthew and Mark's authorship. It's possible he also mentioned Luke and John. We can't know without the full book. Critics argue that when Papias mentioned Mark and Matthew he didn't mean our Mark and Matthew. But what alternatives are there? Papias and his readers knew of biographies of Jesus attributed to Matthew and Mark. Did those books just disappear, when they would have revered just as much as our gospels? Were the attributions changed? The only reasonable explanation is that Papias referenced our Matthew and Mark.
The Muratorian Cannon, around 170, mentions Luke and John. It describes these as the third and fourth gospels. The start of the fragment is damaged, and missing the first two gospels. It probably referred to Matthew and Mark, but we don't know that for certain.
And after this we have universal agreement. Everyone confirms that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote the gospels attributed to them.
There is a wide geographical dispersal, and all major early Christian writers bar one are in agreement. As expected from the traditional view, and not expected from the critical view.
The exception is Justin Martyr. He frequently referred to the gospels as "memoirs of the apostles," without mentioning the author's names. This passage has two of those references. The second one is particularly interesting.
For this devil, when [Jesus] went up from the river Jordan, at the time when the voice spoke to Him, "You are my Son: this day have I begotten You," is recorded in the memoirs of the apostles to have come to Him and tempted Him, even so far as to say to Him, "Worship me;" and Christ answered him, "Get behind me, Satan: you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve." ... Moreover, the statement, 'All my bones are poured out and dispersed like water; my heart has become like wax, melting in the midst of my belly,' was a prediction of that which happened to Him on that night when men came out against Him to the Mount of Olives to seize Him. For in the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them, [it is recorded] that His sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was praying, and saying, "If it be possible, let this cup pass." (Justin Martyr, Dialogue, 103. 155AD)
Justin doesn't name the gospel authors. That doesn't mean he didn't know that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote the gospels. His surviving writings were apologetic works to pagans and Jews. His target audience understood the concept of apostles, but not the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So it is understandable he didn't mention them by name. But he was confident they came from the apostles or their close followers. The word translated memoirs actually implies this. It refers to an eyewitness account. And in this citation, he makes the point directly. How could he be so confident if his copies of the gospels were anonymous? His statement, near the bottom of this citation, suggests that they were drawn up by the apostles or their followers. This is what the traditional model claims. It contradicts the critical model. So the best evidence the critics have for anonymous authorship is a source who directly contradicts their position!
Acceptance of the gospels
If the critical model were true, we wouldn't expect the gospels to be immediately accepted. Why should one Church with its own fireside folklore suddenly abandon that and accept the fireside folklore of another? If the traditional model were true, the gospels would be revered from the first as apostolic writing.
Our earliest post-New Testament Christian writings such as 1 Clement, the letters of Ignatius, Polycarp, and Barnabas, affirm the authority of the gospels. The earliest citation of a gospel as scripture is in the New Testament itself.
For the Scripture says, "You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain," and, "The labourer deserves his wages." (1 Timothy 5:18)
Let us beware lest we be found [fulfilling that saying], as it is written, "Many are called, but few are chosen." (Barnabas 4, 70-100AD)
Wherefore, forsaking the vanity of many, and their false doctrines, let us return to the word which has been handed down to us from the beginning; watching unto prayer, and persevering in fasting; beseeching in our supplications the all-seeing God not to "lead us into temptation", as the Lord has said: "The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak." (Polycarp to the Philippians, 7, 110AD)
There is also a possible, but uncertain, reference to Luke's gospel in 2nd Corinthians.
And we have sent with him the brother whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches. (2 Corinthians 8:18, KJV (58AD))
Most modern translations add service of the gospel or preaching of the gospel, but that additional word’s not present in the Greek. For this verse, the KJV is a more literal translation.
One of Paul’s companions was commended for his presentation of the gospel. “All the churches” makes more sense if that’s a written text rather than oral recounting.
So the gospels were widely accepted as authoritative by the early second century, even late first century, and there is no evidence to say that they weren't seen as authoritative before the letters to Timothy and attributed to Barnabas were written. This is what we expect from the traditional model, but not from the critical model.
Historical accuracy of the text
The critical view states that the bulk of the material in the gospels was invented by people living in various Greek communities. These people wouldn't know much about the time and place of Jesus. Not its geography. Not its material or social culture. There was no google or reference works then. If you weren't on the ground, or you weren't following an eyewitness source, you wouldn't know. If the gospel stories were created by later communities among the Greeks, they would just be making up details, and they would get them wrong. Fictional works of the time made few references to geography, and often got those wrong. Discussions would reflect the society which composed the stories, rather than their setting in Judea and Galilee. The traditional model implies the New Testament would accurately reflect the time of Jesus.
The New Testament references 26 towns or villages in Judea and Galilee. Well-known cities such as Jerusalem and Caesarea. But also obscure villages such as Capernaum, Cana, Bethany, and Bethsaida. It gets the topography right. You go up to Jerusalem and down to Jericho. Nazareth is in the hills, and Capernaum by the sea. It maps out the ancient roads. It describes public buildings accurately, as we see in the example of the pool of Bethesda, where archaeology has uncovered the pool just as John describes it.
Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. (John 5:2)
Jesus' parables reflect Jewish culture, as witnessed by Josephus and the Talmud. His debates reflect topics the Jews were debating about then. His parables reflect Jewish country life. But there is very little discussion concerning the debates which dominated the mid-first century Church. How to include gentiles, food laws and circumcision, how to cope with idolatry, responding to the first stirrings of gnosticism, and so on. If the critical model were true, we would expect lots of discussion of those topics, and little reflecting Jewish debates.
The Gospels and Acts reference numerous Roman and Jewish officials, with diverse but sometimes equivalent titles. Their names and titles are also witnessed on contemporary inscriptions or by ancient historians. Every time the New Testament gets it right. You wouldn't expect that if there was only a slender connection to what actually happened.
People in Judea and Galilee's names are recorded from inscriptions, surviving documents, and Josephus. The frequency of these names has been tabulated.
| Name | Gospels + Acts | Gospels % | Other sources | Other sources % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simon | 8 | 8.33 | 235 | 8.23 |
| Joseph | 6 | 6.25 | 212 | 7.42 |
| Lazarus | 1 | 1.04 | 165 | 5.78 |
| Judas | 5 | 5.21 | 159 | 5.57 |
| John | 5 | 5.21 | 117 | 4.10 |
| Jesus | 2 | 2.08 | 97 | 3.40 |
| Ananias | 2 | 2.08 | 80 | 2.80 |
| Jonathan | 1 | 1.04 | 70 | 2.45 |
| Mary | 6 | 6.25 | 64 | 2.24 |
| Matthew | 2 | 2.08 | 60 | 2.10 |
| Salome | 1 | 1.04 | 57 | 2.00 |
| Manaen | 1 | 1.04 | 41 | 1.44 |
| James | 5 | 5.21 | 35 | 1.23 |
| Annas | 1 | 1.04 | 34 | 1.19 |
So in this table we have the name in the first column, how many different people originating from Judea or Galilee are mentioned with that name in the Gospels or Acts in the second column, that same number expressed as a percentage in the third column, while the last two columns have the same data only taken from contemporary inscriptions or references from non-Christian writers. Yes, someone did take the time to record and count all this. These numbers on the right hand column exclude the references in the gospels and Acts. Ever wonder why there are so many Marys in the gospels? Mary was the most popular female name in Jewish society at that time.
There are 96 named individuals in the gospel and acts from Judea and Samaria. I list the most common names in this table. The percentages aren't going to line up perfectly. We only have a small sample. But the agreement is pretty good, and only the best ancient historians reproduce name frequency this well. We have plenty of examples of fictional or pseudoepigraphical works from the classical period. They never reproduce the names that were actually used in the society where the stories were set. Jews outside Judea and Samaria had different preferred names. The critical model still believes there is some historical basis behind some of the gospel accounts, but still large parts of them are believed to be fiction. So you would still expect many culturally incorrect names to be used.
This comparison isn't one-sided. There are some issues raised by the sceptics regarding a few alleged geographical and historical errors. To my mind, these are unconvincing, and in some cases actually show ignorance on the part of the sceptics. I discuss a few of them in the appendix. But even if we accept these as problems, they are vastly outnumbered by the details the gospels and Acts do get right. In general, the gospels very accurately describe the culture and geography; far better than any works of fiction of the period, and better even than many of the ancient historians. As the traditional model expects, and the critical model doesn't.
Gospel similarities and differences
Comparing Matthew, Mark and Luke shows many similarities, sometimes exact wording, and some differences in wording and selection of material. The differences partially reflect the editorial concerns of the evangelists. Matthew and Luke copied from Mark. Both models agree on this. We can't use the minor editorial differences to distinguish between the two models. The traditional model also explains minor differences in wording between the accounts.
But what about the similarities between Matthew and Luke? The traditional model explains them. The gospel writers drew on common traditions learnt by rote, and constantly repeated and practices. In this model, the gospel stories (or pericopes) are largely written down from the stories rote-memorised by the apostles during the time of Jesus. These stories would have then been constantly re-repeated as the gospel was preached. People in the ancient world were generally very good and memorising such stories, far better than we are today. Today we don't generally train ourselves in this skill, because we are a far more literate society, and can just look something up to get the exact wording. But, even so, I can still remember various passages from Virgil's Aneid I rote memorised when I learnt Latin as a schoolboy. ["Offspring of the blood of the gods, Trojan son of Anchises. The descent to Avernus is easy. Day and night the dark door of Dis lies open. But to retrace your steps, and to get clear to the open air above, this is the effort. This is the toil. A few, beloved of kindly Jupiter, or sons of the gods whose worth elevated them to the heavens, have accomplished this. But if your passion is truly to twice sail the Stygian river and to twice see black Tartarus, and if you are determined to persue this mad endevour, then learn what must be accomplished first." That's from memory. Just looked it up, and not quite right, but not bad.] And that's without constantly repeating and practicing it. And my memory's dreadful (because I don't practice it; today I just google or consult my library if I need a reference). Word for word replication even decades later is certainly possible. If the stories were learnt in both Greek and Aramaic (certainly possible since Jesus preached among the Greeks), or formalised into Greek while the Church was still primarily based in Jerusalem, then the language wouldn't have been a problem. But while memory is good its not perfect, so you would expect some minor discrepancies, which is what we see. The traditional model thus clearly explains why the same stories appear in multiple gospels, often but not always with word-for-word duplication. Sometimes the evangelists selected the same stories from the oral tradition. At other times they selected different stories.
The critical model assumes that the gospel stories developed independently in different communities, with Matthew and Luke copying from Mark and Q to explain the similarities. There is no evidence a written Q ever existed. It was apparently revered as much as Mark, spread to Matthew and Luke's communities, then never mentioned again and completely forgotten. There is no manuscript of Q. There is no reference to it in any early Christian writer. That isn't really plausible. The only evidence for it is that the critical model needs it to explain the shared passages between Matthew and Luke. But other models can explain those similarities without hypothesing a source which we ought to have direct evidence for if it existed but don't. Without Q, the critic has no good way of explaining the shared stories between Matthew and Luke. If Luke copied from Matthew, then why the different birth and resurrection accounts? We would expect greater divergence between Matthew and Luke if the critical model was correct.
Summary
In summary, I have raised 8 points of data.
- Was there structure in the ancient Church? The critical model predicts there wouldn't be. The traditional model correctly predicts there was.
- Did the early Church's look to preserve its doctrine? The critical model says Church leaders were willing to invent stories. The traditional model says otherwise
- Were beliefs about Jesus different depending on where you lived? The critical model says they would be. The traditional model correctly points to a universal faith.
- Were there anonymous manuscripts? The critical model suggests there should be. The traditional model correctly expects the same attributions.
- Did early Christian writers disagree about who wrote the gospels? The critical model naturally predicts they would. The traditional model correctly says they should be the same.
- Were the gospels accepted as scripture from an early date? If the critical model were true, we would expect it to be a very gradual process. But it seems to have happened quickly.
- Do the gospels accurately describe the geography and culture of early 1st century Judea and Galilee? Yes they do, against the critical model.
- Can we explain the similarities and differences between the gospels? The critical model needs to postulate the existence of another lost gospel, Q, to explain this. But there is no external evidence Q ever existed. The traditional model doesn't need Q, so there wouldn't be evidence for it.
In every case, the natural inference from the critical model disagrees with the data, while the natural inference from the traditional Christian view agrees with it.
The critics can explain away these issues, but only by adding convoluted and improbable assumptions to their model. Yet all the data lines up as expected if the traditional model is correct. No convoluted explanations are needed. As more evidence has emerged, its only strengthened the traditional account. There is no reason to believe the critics have this right. The gospels were written by Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. That doesn't necessarily mean they are true. We still have more work to do beyond proving their authorship to demonstrate that their contents are correct. But it does remove the main argument to reject them.
Conclusion
I could have said far more today. Many people have attacked the New Testament. These attacks have encouraged Christian scholars to respond. We now have a wealth of information showing the reliability of the text.
The New Testament has always been targetted by Christianity's opponents. The modern attacks are maybe more sophisticated, but still based on dubious assumptions. In the 18th and 19th century, Christians lacked the data to stop the methodology entering academia. Now we have the data to prove it wrong, but the bad ideas are entrenched in atheist and liberal scholarship. But their models are based on wishful thinking, guesswork, and exploiting gaps in the evidence. The Christian understanding is based on facts, data and common sense.
But to the unaware their arguments can seem strong. We need to be aware of their objections and why they are mistaken.
Appendix
This appendix contains various material I prepared to repond to possible questions, or had to cut out of the talks. It is currently unpolished and disorganised. I have included it because I don't want to waste this material. I have left it unpolished because I have fallen behind on my other projects, and need to prioritorise them.
Why are gospels questioned?
Why do sceptical scholars reject the traditional authorship, and accept the anonymous gospel model?
- Many people who developed it deny the possibility of the miraculous. If true, this means the gospels have to be largely rejected, and a different model of the authorship accepted. Historically this inspired the folklore model, which which has gradually mutated into what we have today.
- Then there is academic inertia. As a student, it is difficult to challenge your professor. As a young academic, it is difficult to publish challenging a consensus. Not impossible, of course, since there have been challenges, but difficult. Students are pressured to accept the consensus by their professors, until they come to accept it or are failed. Most scholarship concerns small details in the texts, which are interpreted according to the model, and by the time you get down to that it is harder to challenge the bigger picture. Particularly when your entire life-work depends on it.
- It is believed that the predictions of the temple destruction must post-date 70AD. Prophecy is impossible.
- It is believed that the apostles would have been illiterate, and unable to write the gospels. Literacy rates in first century Judea and Galilee are estimated to be low. And people spoke Aramaic not Greek.
- It is believed that the apostle Matthew would be unlikely to copy from Mark’s second hand account.
- It is believed that contradictions in the gospels/Acts, and between them and Paul’s epistles, rule out eyewitness testimony.
- Form, source, and redaction criticism seem to well explain the features of the text.
- Scholars come up with convoluted ideas to explain away the data, or haven’t yet appreciated the force of the argument.
- Much of the evidence I presented is new, and it always takes time for new data to challenge established views.
There are other reasons, but I think these are the main ones. None stand up to scrutiny.
- The arguments that God can’t or are unlikely to perform miracles are built on premises a theist would reject. They just beg the question. They just aren't very good; for example Hume's popular argument is based on an incorrect definition of miracles and an incorrect application of probability theory.
- Scholarly inertia is taken from models and ideas which are now universally acknowledged as false, such as the folk-lore view of the gospels. It’s not evidence.
- If you accept prophecy, then the predictions of the temple destruction could come before 70AD. And there are details in those passages, such as how they mix the temple destruction and final judgement prophecies, which fit better if they date from before the event. One verse often cited here is Mark 13:14 “But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not to be (let the reader understand).” That advice to the reader is too ambiguous to draw any conclusions, and if it did refer to contemporary events, AD 41, when the emperor Caligula tried to install an image of himself in the temple, fits better with the reference to Daniel than anything that happened around the Jewish revolt.
- The estimates of the literacy rate are estimates; we have little direct evidence one way or the other. Except for the caches stored in the deserts around the dead sea, any writing would have long since rotted away. The literacy rate would only be relevant if the apostles were selected at random, which they weren’t. And the gospels were written by Mark, Luke, Matthew and John. Mark was from the Jerusalem upper classes (c.f. Acts 12:12-13). Luke was educated. Matthew as a tax collector would have been literate. John (alongside Peter) were perceived by the Jewish council as uneducated in Acts 4:13, but this only means they weren’t formally schooled by the Jerusalem rabbis. John had been leading Greek speaking Churches for decades before writing, and had native Greek speakers to aid him, not to mention 3 years being trained by Jesus. And recent scholarship suggests that Greek was widely spoken at least to a basic level by many Galilean Jews.
- If Mark’s gospel was based on Peter’s account, then Matthew might well have drawn from it. Especially for those events where Matthew wasn’t present. And both Matthew and Peter/Mark would have drawn from the same pool of rote-memorised stories, so his account would closely match Peter’s in wording in any case.
- The supposed contradictions in the accounts are overstated, and all but a couple are trivially resolved. The minor differences which remain are as expected from multiple eyewitness testimonies of the same events.
- The traditional account explains the form of the text just as well as the critical approach; perhaps better. The critical approaches assume the anonymous gospel model, and are shaped to try to get it to work.
- For example, I have seen Bart Ehrman explain the unanimous attributions on the gospel manuscripts to the idea that someone in Rome around 150AD added the attributions into a four-manuscript codex, then sent it out widely, and because Rome was pre-eminent and the attributions agreed with what people wanted to be true they became unanimously accepted. Even if this is possible, it is hardly very probable. There is no evidence for it. Why would someone do it? Why would they send out the manuscript to everyone, against standard practice? Is this consistent with the known manuscript variations, particularly the four-family model which is already apparent by the late first century? Why would it be immediately universally accepted, without dispute? Rome was a prominent Church but not pre-eminent at this time (Alexandria, Jerusalem, Ephesus and Antioch would certainly have disagreed). This explanation is low probability and doesn’t naturally flow from the anonymous gospel hypothesis, while if the gospel titles circulated from the first we don’t need any additional explanation of why they were universally accepted.
Historical/geographical errors in the gospels?
I argued that the gospels very accurately depict the time and place of Jesus -- far better than would be expected if they were not based on eye witness accounts. There are some counter examples raised. Minor differences or mistakes in the gospels don’t mean they aren’t based on eyewitness accounts, if they aren’t too frequent. After all, everyone makes mistakes. So this isn’t evidence for the critical model. But they would challenge Biblical inerrancy if they can’t be resolved, so they are a potential problem for us.
I’ll highlight 3 of the most challenging.
The denarius mentioned in Matthew 22 (paying taxes to Caesar) wasn’t used in Judea at that time.
The denarius did exist at the time of Jesus, and is amply represented elsewhere in the empire. The claim is that it wasn’t used in Judea. Until 6AD, Judea was a protectorate rather than province of Rome, and didn’t use Roman coins. Even in Jesus’ day, we have found many coins, but they tend to be local coins from Syria rather than the Roman denarius. I think only 2 denarii have been uncovered in Judea from the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. They are much more common after the Jewish revolt. But this doesn’t mean that the denarius was unused. It just means that other coinage was used for local transactions, obviously the bulk of the transactions. Remember, only a small fraction of coins were left in the ground for archaeologists to uncover, and only a small fraction of those have been excavated. The silence from archaeology doesn’t prove that it wasn’t used. We would find the same thing if it was used considerably less frequently than local currency, to pay Roman taxes or wages, but still known to the people. And the gospels themselves count as evidence it was used. And, of course, we have abundant evidence that it was widely used elsewhere in the empire at the time of Jesus and the decades afterwards. Even in the traditional model the gospels, the gospels were written by people living outside Judea, even if they were originally from Judea or Galilee, who would have been familiar with the denarius as the coin used to pay Roman Taxes in the provinces they had moved to.
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Luke and Matthew both date Jesus’ birth to the time of Herod the great, who died around 4BC. Jesus’ birth is usually dated between 6-4BC. Luke also ties it to the census that took place when Quirinius was governor. Josephus records this census (also referred to in Acts 5:37), and dates it to 6AD. Clearly there is a discrepancy.
I personally think this is one of the few hard issues to resolve in the New Testament. But:
- The emperor Augustus records in an inscription (Res Gestae Divi Augusti) an empire wide census commissioned in 8BC. The inscription is only a record of his achievements, and just lists the number of Roman citizens rather than full population, but it could well have been broader. If the census took a few years to conduct, it’s not an unreasonable time frame for Luke’s census. A record of a later Roman census in Egypt mentions the need for people to return to their home town.
- There is an inscription saying that there was someone who governed Syria twice in this general time-period. The inscription is damaged, so we don’t know who this was. There is a gap in what we know of Quirinius’ life at the right time. So it is possible he was governor twice, once in 6AD and once in 6BC.
- Some have suggested that Luke has been mistranslated, and should say the census before Quirinius was governor.
- It is possible that Josephus, rather than Luke, is in error concerning the dating of the census.
Mark 7:31: "Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis." Sidon is to the North of Tyre; the Sea of Galilee to the South East. This seems like a rather strange route to take.
- Mark isn’t a very precise writer. It is possible that Jesus wanted to visit Sidon and the Decapolis, although the events that happened there aren’t recorded, and this is just Mark’s clumsy way of describing the journey. In fact, this speaks to the accuracy of Mark’s account. There is no reason why a forger would include this detail.
- The direct route between Tyre and Galilee is blocked by a mountain. There were two roads round that mountain: one South to Caesarea, and then across. The other North, skirting past Sidon, and taking a pass over the mountain and across into the upper Jordan valley, skirting past the Decapolis, and then down the valley to the sea of Galilee. There is no large difference between how long it would take by either road. Jesus came to Tyre by the Southern route. No reason why he might not take the Northern route back home. Jesus’ route, as described by Mark, is perfectly reasonable. Mark is showing good knowledge of the roads used in the region.
- Rather than evidence against Mark, this passage speaks to his authenticity.
Mark 11:1 is also sometimes cited, where Jesus travelling from Jericho to Jerusalem came to Bethphage and Bethany. These two villages are very close to each other, with Bethphage closer to Jerusalem on the far slopes of the mount of olives. The argument is why did Mark mention Bethphage first when Jesus would have come to Bethany first? But this reads too much into the passage. Mark is merely indicating that Jesus was in the vicinity of those two villages when he sent the disciples to find the donkey, and not giving a precise itinerary.
Gospel relations and Q
You have probably noticed that Matthew, Mark and Luke are quite similar. They share many of the same stories, even down to exact wording in many cases. This needs an explanation. Most people believe that the gospels copied from each other.
- The wording is often the same, down to the same words, although in places it is often different. This doesn’t actually show that the evangelists copied from each other. If the various stories about Jesus were memorised by rote, both in Aramaic and Greek translation, when the apostles were with Jesus, and constantly practised, then we would expect similarities. Even sometimes to exact wording. Although not always -- memory might fail, or some editing might take place when committing the stories to writing. This model explains the similarities in the text without requiring the evangelists to have copied from each other.
- The ordering of the Material. Matthew reproduces almost all of Mark’s gospel, and he not only gives the same stories, but he almost always tells them in the same order. Luke overlaps a little less with Mark, and is a bit more flexible, but is still strikingly similar. This isn’t likely if the works were fully independent. We would expect a different selection of material, and it to be presented in a different order.
Luke is clear. He states in his introduction that he based his gospel on various eyewitness accounts, which likely included Peter’s account preserved in Mark.
Did Mark come first and Matthew wrote his gospel informed by Mark, or was Matthew first and Mark based on Matthew? There is an early testimony (Papias, plus later writers) that Matthew came first, writing in Aramaic. Our Greek Matthew doesn’t read like a translation from Aramaic, so many people today doubt this tradition. Most contemporary scholars think that Mark was the first gospel written and Matthew and Luke copied from Mark. Reasons for this include that Matthew has the habit of tidying up Mark’s rather dodgy Greek, and smoothing out the rough edges. It doesn’t make much sense that Mark would copy from Matthew, omit material, and express it in poorer quality Greek.
There is also material overlapping between Matthew and Luke. This was traditionally explained by suggesting an additional source, called Q. The hypothesis that Q was a written source is falling out of favour. There is no direct evidence for it -- no manuscripts, no references in the early Christian writers, and you would expect that if it was written early and spread far enough to reach both Matthew and Luke it would have been revered by the Church as much as Mark. Also the Q material doesn’t generally follow the same order in Matthew and Luke. It seems more likely that Q was an oral source, in which case we have no real need to separate it from the rest of the material that made up Matthew and Luke. There was a pool of stories about Jesus which both Matthew and Luke drew from, and sometimes they selected the same material and at other times they didn’t.
That, at least, is my own view. There are alternatives, such as that Luke drew on Mark and Matthew, and there are some people who think Matthew came first, and Mark and Luke drawn from an early version of Matthew.
John’s gospel is obviously different from these. That doesn’t mean that it is independent of them. If we read through John’s gospel, we often see that he presupposes that his readers will know various things discussed in the synoptics. His gospel fits in with the synoptics, and fills in the gaps. There is a case that John was familiar with Mark’s gospel at least.
Gospel Genre
Understanding a work’s genre is important in trying to understand it. For example, we read poetry differently to a historical novel and both differently to a mathematics textbook. So what genre are the gospels?
The early form critics supposed that the gospels were folklore. The point of folklore is that its the underlying moral of the story which is important, rather than whether the events actually happened. So if the gospels were intended as folklore, then that would mean that the authors need not have believed that their account was actually true. It’s part of the means by which the text is dismissed. But folklore doesn’t fit the text we have. For example folklore, both ancient and modern, contains far fewer geographical and cultural markers than the gospels.
The traditional, and now modern, view is that the gospels are closest to ancient biographies. This was dismissed because they don’t read like modern biographies, but this misses the point. They are ancient biographies rather than modern biographies, and that distinction is important.
- Ancient biographies focus on the life and death of a public individual. They might contain birth accounts, but will then skip forward to their public life and death.
- Ancient biographies tend to be about the same length as the gospels; longer than letters and shorter than histories.
- Ancient biographies often begin with a genealogy.
- Ancient biographies don’t say everything about a person. Their goal is to promote a particular message about that person, and they arrange their material to make that message. John 21:25 specifically states his purpose, but we can see this in the structure of Mark’s gospel. The first part of Mark’s gospel looks at the question of who Jesus is, culminating with Caesarea Philippi and the transfiguration. Then we turn to the journey to Jerusalem and the crucifixion and resurrection (which is announced and present in even the short ending of Mark’s gospel, as well as predicted by Jesus).
- Ancient biographies were historical. They didn’t make things up. They were selective about their material, and rearranged it to fit their theme, but the events described were believed by the author to have happened. We can see that the gospels emphasised their historicity, particular in Luke’s prologue and John’s epilogue.
What consequences does this have in how we read the gospels? I’ll mention four.
- Ancient biographies arranged their material to promote their theme. This isn’t necessarily chronological order. We shouldn’t read the gospels as necessarily putting the events in chronological order. For example, the clearing of the temple came at the start of Jesus’ public ministry in John, but at the end in Mark, Matthew and Luke. Possibly Jesus cleared the temple twice. But Mark’s thematic ordering had only one visit to Jerusalem at the end, so he had to put the clearing of the temple then. So given this expectation of the genre, if there was only one clearing of the temple, there is no contradiction because we should not expect the accounts to be chronologically ordered.
- Ancient biographers didn’t have the ability to record audio. So when they reported speeches, the was no expectation that these were the precise words spoken, but represent a paraphrase of the author’s own words. Thus the biographies weren’t expected to contain the precise words, but they did convey the same meaning. The gospels should be held to a higher standard than this. I have suggested that the episodes in Mark, Matthew and Luke were based on the words rote-memorised by the apostles as disciples of Jesus, and thus we should expect them to be accurate. John’s gospel is freer, but represents his memories of Jesus’ conversations and we shouldn’t doubt that Jesus spoke as recorded, perhaps translated from Aramaic into Greek. And the gospels were inspired and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit. But, equally, we shouldn’t think that the minor differences in words between the gospels represent an issue to textual inerrancy (assuming that Jesus didn’t repeat the same stories with minor variations). They would only be a contradiction if the gospels should be read as perfectly precise. But the genre allows for a certain imprecision, without sacrificing accuracy (i.e. the overall meaning). Of course they also translate Jesus’ Aramaic into Greek, which in turn suggests that we should be aware of some imprecision when interpreting the text, but not inaccuracy. Also we shouldn’t be surprised to see some material omitted or simplified.
- Each evangelist stamped their own character and preferred emphases onto their texts and how they arranged the material. Again, this isn’t a problem, but we need to bear it in mind when reading the gospels.
- The genre of biography implies that the evangelists believed that what they were writing accurately (within the precision allowed by the ) represented what happened.
Papias on Mark's gospel
Papias on Mark (cited by Eusebius): And the presbyter said this. Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements.The Epistles
Liberal scholars accept as authentic Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians and Philemon unanimously. Pretty much the rest of the New Testament is challenged by some or most critical scholars.
As stated, pseudepigrapha (writing in someone else’s name) was common in the ancient world. But it was not generally accepted, and in particular Christians didn’t knowingly accept pseudepigrapha, at least as far as we have records. And it is easy to see why: Christians believe that the gospel is true, and the key to salvation. Passing off your writings as someone else is deception. Why do it, except to wrongly promote your views? And why do you need to dishonestly promote your views if they truly represent the apostolic position? Couldn’t you just write the letter in your own name, and say “This is what I heard from Paul?” And at least some Christians would have known if the letters were forgeries. And this doubt would be passed on, recorded and discussed.
A further argument in favour of the authenticity of the letters are undesigned coincidences. These are when we have details in two different sources, such as an epistle and Acts, which don’t directly reference each other, but nonetheless together explain each other. For example, in Acts we learn that Timothy had a Greek Father and Jewish mother. 2 Timothy refers to the faith of Timothy’s mother and grandmother, identified by name, with no mention of his father. Lydia McGrew has written on this. Her ideas have had mixed reception, and perhaps some of her examples are a bit dubious, but the cummalative case is fairly convincing. Does it rule out the critical model of the authorship of the epistles? Possibly not definitely, but again these coincidences are not what you expect if the epistles were forgeries, and you have to come up with convoluted explanations to accomadate them. But no such explanations are required with the traditional authorship. You expect some such coincidences to appear when multiple sources look back on the same events.
Furthermore, the personal details in the letters aren’t that consistent with forgeries.
There is thus a very high bar needed to be confident that the New Testament letters are forgeries.
Generally, the arguments that they are forgeries are based on various arguments:
- Questions over the literacy of the claimed author.
- Claims that there are anachronisms in the text, i.e. a doctrine is presented in a developed form which is unlikely if it was written at the date implied by the named author.
- Difficulty in fitting in the biographical details with what’s known from other sources (e.g. from Acts).
- Claimed contradictions in theology, imagery or definitions of words with other works by the same author.
- Matters of style and grammar: vocabulary, sentence structure, common and uncommon words, and so on.
- A cumulative case based on all the above.
Are these strong enough reasons to doubt the text?
- There is no proof that the Biblical authors were illiterate. It is based on guesswork from literacy rates based on sparse data. Even if they were illiterate, they could still have produced their work through dictation to scribes.
- These are based on models about how doctrines could develop which ultimately have no evidence behind them. There is no reason to suppose that the doctrines didn’t arise from the life time of the attributed author.
- There are models which fit the epistles in with Act’s Chronology, and (e.g.) Acts ends when Paul still had 4-5 years of his life left, so there is room to fit in the events described in the letters after that.
- These are either spurious or arise from misunderstandings. For example, I have seen it suggested that Paul couldn’t have written Colossians because when discussing the body of Christ in Colossians Paul says that Jesus is the head, while in 1 Corinthians and Romans he didn’t. As though Paul was the one author in history who couldn’t adapt his metaphors. Or that Paul uses faith to mean “trust” in the letters to the Churches, and “body of belief” in the letters to Timothy and Titus. But, like most Christians, there is no reason why Paul couldn’t have used both meanings of the word according to context. And there are examples which don’t fit this pattern (e.g. 1 Corinthians 16:13, 2 Corinthians 13:15, Galatians 1:23, 1 Timothy 1:4, 4:12, etc.). And, for minor differences that don’t amount to contradictions, there is no reason why Paul might not have developed his views over time. Many writers change their mind between their earlier and later works, so this isn’t proof of different authorship.
- While stylistic analysis shouldn’t be wholly dismissed -- in some cases it does provide useful data -- it is far weaker evidence than many critical scholars suppose. Unless it is clear-cut (such as in the difference between John’s and Paul’s writing), conclusions based on it alone cannot be treated as certain. The reason is that we know that authors aren’t perfectly consistent in their style, especially over a long period of time.
- Authors will adjust their writing depending on their intended readership.
- Style might change as authors mature (or degrade) over time.
- Stylistic changes might be deliberate devices to help convey a point. Different vocabulary might just indicate that the author understood the two terms to have slightly different meanings, and used the one most appropriate to his message.
- Co-authors and scribes might well influence the wording.
- Revision of a text might influence the wording. A text produced in a rush might use less sophisticated vocabulary than one carefully planned out.
- If the author draws ideas from a source, that source might influence the wording.
- The wording might depend on recent conversations the author had, or how they felt the day they wrote it.
- Some people just aren’t that consistent.
- These analyses often focus too much on the differences, and fail to weigh the similarities.
- These methods have been rejected pretty much everywhere outside Biblical scholarship
- The sum total of nothing is nothing
Let me offer an example. Colossians is often challenged for various reasons.
- The heresy opposed in Colossians 2:8 is second century gnosticism. But this isn’t clear from the text, and might refer to a precursor to gnosticism. 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
- The household code in 3:18-41 resembles second century beliefs. But how do you know those beliefs didn’t also exist among first century Christians?
- Colossae was destroyed by an earthquake in 60AD, but claims to be written while Paul was in prison and with Timothy, Mark and Luke. This is difficult to fit in with the chronology in Acts (especially combined with 1 and 2 Timothy). But the date of the earthquake and extent of the damage are uncertain (excavations at Colossae are just starting).
- Some minor supposed theological differences, such as a lack of a mention of the Holy Spirit. But these aren’t convincing, and are from reading too much into certain verses and unsubstantiated guesswork.
- The language and style is different from other Pauline letters, except Ephesians. This concerns distinctive vocabulary, longer sentences. But, as argued above, these are not definitive. Similar length sentences are found in Romans (albeit with less frequency), so Paul was not incapable of writing them. In particular, Paul tended to use longer sentences when giving praise to God, and shorter sentences when giving instruction, and the subject matter of Ephesians and Colossians contains more exaltation of God. There are more distinctive words than usual in these two letters, but not significantly more than in (say) Galatians. And Ephesians and Colossians contain many features similar to the universally accepted letters. This is probably the strongest evidence, but it can’t be definitive.
- There seems to be more of an emphasis on Jesus’ divinity in Colossians and Ephesians than the other letters. But the other letters don’t contradict this, and its no more so than in Philippians 2, for example.
- The similarities and differences with Philemon purportedly show that Colossians was based on key details from the (accepted) Philemon. But they don’t contradict, the similarities explained by the letters being sent at the same time, and differences that one was a personal letter and the other a letter to the whole Church.
As stated, a high burden of proof is needed to make us doubt the Church’s testimony since at least some people in the early Church would have known it was forged. These reasons, neither individually or collectively, meet that bar.
On the ending of Mark’s gospel
Examples of stylistic differences:
- Reintroduction of Mary Magdalene.
- Restating of date and time.
- No meeting in Galilee.
- Use of the word and.
- Unusual words not found elsewhere in Mark.
- The word for travel, ἀπέρχομαι (aperchomai) in 9-16, v ερχομαι (erchomai) elsewhere.
- Frequent use of ἐκεῖνος (those).
- Draws on parallel material from other gospels.
This is where the unpolished nature of this appendix really hits home. I ought to expand and comment on this list. Some of these reasons look quite strong to me. Others not so much. For example, while the verses do contain many unusual words for Mark, other similarly sized passages also have a similar number of unique words, and it is partly explained because Mark 16:9-16 deals with a different topic. I'm also not convinced the passage does deviate too much from the rest of its Mark in its use of the word kai (or onw of its contractiona such as kakeinos). True, the word appears less frequently in this passage. But, we see that Mark omits it elsewhere 1) in dialogue; 2) when skipping to a new scene with no connection to the previous one; 3) occasionally he just forgets to put it in. Arguably each ommission in 9-16 bar one falls into one of these categories; only verse 10 fails to fall into categories 1 or 2. So I find some of these reasons fairly weak. Others look stronger, and certainly the stylistic case overall is against this being part of the original version of Mark's gospel. But, as stated, I am generally suspicious of this type of argument and don't think it can ever form a convincing proof. I find the manuscript tradition strong evidence that Mark 9-16 was part of the original -- even if they are the earliest which have survived to our day, two manuscripts from one family are not sufficient to overturn the wider geographical dispersal of manuscripts attesting to the passage. Not to mention the quotations of these verses a century and a half earlier than the main evidence we have for its absence. The four Church Fathers questioning the passage are all dependent on Eusebius, and again I don't think that one writer's opinion -- and Eusebius was aware of both endings -- should overturn the far wider and earlier consenus among the fathers who seemed to accept the passage without controversy. I think the direct evidence is strongly in favour of the passage's authenticity, and the indirect evidence from stylistic issues isn't sufficient to overturn that. Another argument against its inclusion is variation B is needed to explain variation C. But I don't see why we couldn't have started with A, which then lost its last few verses (perhaps through accidental damage to the scroll or codex) when being transported to Egypt to become B, and then the shorter ending was added to B from a scribal gloss or similar.
Eusebius To Marinus 1: The actual nub of the matter is the pericope which says this. One who athetises that pericope would say that it is not found in all copies of the gospel according to Mark: accurate copies end their text of the Marcan account with the words of the young man whom the women saw, and who said to them: “‘Do not be afraid; it is Jesus the Nazarene that you are looking for, etc. … ’ ”, after which it adds: “And when they heard this, they ran away, and said nothing to anyone, because they were frightened.” That is where the text does end, in almost all copies of the gospel according to Mark. What occasionally follows in some copies, not all, would be extraneous, most particularly if it contained something contradictory to the evidence of the other evangelists.
Dates of the gospels
The critical dates of the gospels are usually cited as:
- Mark:67-70AD
- Q: similar
- Matthew: 80AD
- Luke: 85AD
- John 95AD
Why are these dates chosen? These critical scholars generally start with proposed dates for Mark, and then work forwards.
Firstly, there is the ordering of the gospels. Mark and Q are written first, Matthew and Luke based on Mark and Q, so must be a decade or so later, with John after them. Secondly, the texts describing the destruction of the temple are assumed to date after the temple’s destruction. In particular, the following verse is highlighted:
But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. (Mark 13:14)
The key part of this is the statement “let the reader understand.” This is taken to indicate that the events in questioning were happening at that time. Those events refer to the Jewish revolt, leading to the destruction of the temple in 70AD. The abomination of desolation is either taken to be the sacrifices of the Jewish rebels when they took control of the temple leading up to the revolt, or the Roman legions as Jerusalem was captured. Other reasons I have seen cited include the reference to the denarius in Mark 12:15, supposedly barely known in Judea before the Jewish revolt, and the reference to the region of the Gerasenes in Mark 5:1, which was the site of a prominent campaign during the Jewish revolt.
Clearly none of these are good reasons. Arguing the denarius was not used in Judea prior to the destruction of the temple is an argument from silence; and it certainly was used in Rome and Alexandria well before this, the two candidates for where Mark might have written the gospel. The mention of the Gerasenes clearly doesn’t imply anything. Christians would say that the description in Mark 13 is a prophecy of Jesus, so there is no reason to date it during the temple revolt. But, even so, the references to the book of Daniel in the passage, the allusions to the destruction of Solomon’s temple, the combination of the temple destruction with Jesus’ return in the discussion, and the lack of direct details of the actual Roman campaign give us reasons to think that this passage could well pre-date the temple’s destruction. Similar considerations apply to Matthew and Luke’s parallel accounts; they better fit a time-frame before the prophecy was fulfilled than after it. The parenthetical comment is too ambiguous to draw any clear meanings. It might just be a general warning, or pointing out the allusion to Daniel, or even to some other event. For example, in AD41, the emperor Caligula ordered that a statue of himself be placed in the Jewish temple. For various reasons, mainly Caligula’s death before it could be put in place, this didn’t happen. But for about a year it looked like it was going to happen. This is a far better match to the reference in Daniel -- where images to Zeus were set up in the temple -- than anything that happened around the Jewish revolt. The reference could be referring to this event just as well as the Jewish revolt, which would put the composition of Mark’s gospel in the early 40s. But we don’t know what Mark was referring to here, and the verse is too vague to draw any conclusions. One other piece of internal evidence is found in these three verses:
And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. (Mark 1:19)
He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); (Mark 3:16-17)
And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. (Mark 5:37)
Why is John introduced as the brother of James, and not the other way round? This suggests that Mark expected his readers to be more familiar with James than they were with John. Yet surely John was the most prominent of the two brothers? Notably when Luke references these passages, he switches the order of the brothers, naming John first then James. James was martyred in 44AD. John became prominent because he was the last of the apostles to survive. It is quite possible that before 44AD James was the best known of the two brothers, and if Mark was written around this time his reference makes sense. On the other hand, if Mark was written over two decades after James’ death, he would more likely refer to John and John’s brother James. Again, this is far from proof. But shows that the internal evidence from Mark isn’t all pointing to a later date.
I should mention the external testimony. All the early Christian writers state that Mark was based on Peter’s account of Jesus’ life. But they disagree as to when this happened. Irenaeus suggests it was after Peter’s death:
Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3:1)
Mark, the follower of Peter, while Peter publicly preached the Gospel at Rome before some of Caesar's equites, and adduced many testimonies to Christ, in order that thereby they might be able to commit to memory what was spoken, of what was spoken by Peter wrote entirely what is called the Gospel according to Mark. (Clement of Alexandria, COMMENTS ON THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER.)
So, then, through the visit of the divine word to them, the power of Simon was extinguished, and immediately was destroyed along with the man himself. And such a ray of godliness shone forth on the minds of Peter's hearers, that they were not satisfied with the once hearing or with the unwritten teaching of the divine proclamation, but with all manner of entreaties importuned Mark, to whom the Gospel is ascribed, he being the companion of Peter, that he would leave in writing a record of the teaching which had been delivered to them verbally; and did not let the man alone till they prevailed upon him; and so to them we owe the Scripture called the "Gospel by Mark." On learning what had been done, through the revelation of the Spirit, it is said that the apostle was delighted with the enthusiasm of the men, and sanctioned the composition for reading in the Churches. Clemens gives the narrative in the sixth book of the Hypotyposes. (From Eusebius ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, II. 15, referencing a lost work of Clement.)
So Irenaeus seems to imply that Mark was written after Peter’s death, while Clement prefers a date while Peter was still alive. With conflicting accounts, we ought not to draw anything definitive from the references in early Christian writers.
Evangelical and Catholic scholars generally start from the date of Luke’s gospel, and work backwards. There are several indications of when Luke was written:
- The most natural explanation of the abrupt end to Acts was that Luke stopped there because that was the most recent event. Luke had spent the previous several chapters building up to Paul’s trial in Rome. It is most peculiar that he never mentioned it as the climax to his book, unless it hadn’t happened by the time he was finishing the gospel. This would date Acts to around 62AD, and Luke’s gospel a little earlier than this.
- The citation of Luke’s gospel in 1 Timothy 5 also indicates a date in the early 60s or before, if 1 Timothy is genuine. The dating of 1 Timothy is a little unclear, but it would have to be before Paul’s death in 67AD.
- The possible allusion to Luke’s gospel in 2 Corinthians 8:18 would indicate a date in the late 50s or earlier.
- The temple destruction narrative lacks knowledge of the actual destruction of the temple, suggesting a date before 70AD.
- There is no mention of the Jewish revolt -- aside from the prophecy of the temple destruction -- or Nero’s persecution, or the death of James brother of Jesus. (As an argument from silence this is rather weak.)
All these combine to suggest a date in the early 60s or late 50s. However, none of them are clear cut, and critical scholars would have their answers to all of them. In my view, these points make a better case for an early dating for Luke than a later dating in the 80s. The date in the 80s is suggested because
- It fits in with the proposed date for Mark.
- Some similarities between Luke’s accounts in Acts and Josephus, which it is claimed show that Luke was aware of Josephus.
The first point is dependent on the critical date for Mark, which can be questioned. The second could just show that both Luke and Josephus were two witnesses to actual historical events, and how those events were described in first century Judea. The critical date for Luke and Acts is from before the Antiquities was published.
Matthew’s gospel is a bit harder to date. There is a strong early tradition that Matthew was the first to write his gospel, which he did in Aramaic or Hebrew. Our Greek Matthew would have to be a translation of this, except it doesn’t really read like a translation. It is possible that it was a loose reworking of Matthew’s Aramaic gospel in light of Mark’s gospel, or Matthew himself later re-wrote the gospel in Greek. Needless to say, many scholars today dismiss this traditional account. Are they right to do so? Possibly not. If we do accept the priority of Mark’s gospel, then Matthew was probably written around the same time as Luke, which tradition states is the third gospel.
As Luke depends on Mark, Mark must predate Luke. That places Mark in the early to mid 50s or even in the 40s.
There is a strong tradition that John’s gospel was the last written. There are some good but not conclusive arguments that John was aware of Mark’s gospel. It is dated by the critics to around 95AD, which given John’s long life is possible and some evangelical and Catholic scholars accept this date.Again, there isn’t much internal evidence. John 21:19 fairly clearly shows that the gospel was written after Peter’s death around 66 or 67AD
Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.” (John 21:18)
John 5 also contains an intriguing hint,
Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. (John 5:2)
This is written in the present tense, which suggests that the sheep gate and Bethesda pool were still standing as the account was written. This might indicate a date before or only just after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. This is again far short of proof. The passage might be interpreted in other ways; we don’t know the extent of the damage the Romans did to Jerusalem; and John might not have known of the extent of the damage to Jerusalem.
In short, we don’t know when the gospels were written beyond the date range from 33AD-100AD. We know they were first century from early manuscripts and citations. Anyone who supplies definitive dates is going beyond the evidence. There are various hints which might suggest some dates, but these aren’t definitive. I personally think that an earlier date has more and better evidence supporting it than the later date preferred by the critical scholars, but the case certainly isn’t water-tight by any means. So we have to say we don’t know.
Types of criticism
The methods of “higher” criticism lie behind the critical model of gospel authorship:
- Form criticism compares individual stories in the gospel, reconstructing the living situation of the communities which composed them.
- Source criticism tries to reconstruct the oral and written gospel sources.
- Redaction criticism considers the editor who put it all together.
All of these methods, at least as they are applied, presuppose the critical model. If they assume it, then they can’t be used to prove it. That’s just begging the question. I won’t say the critical methods are completely useless. But they are based on a model which in turn is based on various dubious assumptions and conflicts with the evidence. So they are just mostly useless.
Bibliography
These are the main reference works I referred to when preparing this work, or which more generally influenced my views. For the critical perspective, I primarlily referenced various works of Bart Ehrman, Raymond Brown, but some others as well.
- Bauckham, Richard (1997). The Gospel For All Christians. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
- Bauckham, Richard (2017). Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
- Bernier, Jonathan (2022). Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament. Baker.
- Blomberg, Craig (2016). The Historical Reliability of the New Testament. B and H Publishing Group.
- Bruce, Frederick (1960). The New Testament Documents: Are they reliable? Inter-Varsity.
- Carson, Don and Moo, Douglas (2019). An Introduction to the New Testament. Zondervan.
- Evans, Craig (2007). Fabricating Jesus. IVP
- Gathercole, Simon (2018). The Alleged Anonymity of the Canonical Gospels. The Journal of Theological Studies 69 (2) 447.
- Geisler, Norman and Nix, William (2012). From God To Us Revised And Expanded: How We Got our Bible. Moody.
- Goodache, Mark (2002) The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem. Trinity Press International.
- Hemer, Colin (1990). The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. Eisenbrauns.
- Lewis, Clive (1959, 1975). Fern Seeds And Elephants. Fount.
- Licona, Michael (2024). Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently
- Linnemann, Eta and Yarbrough, Robert (2001). Historical Criticism of the Bible. Kregel.
- Linnemann, Eta and Yarbrough, Robert (2001). Biblical Criticism on Trial. Kregel.
- McGrew, Lydia (2017). Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts. DeWard.
- Metzger, Bruce (1968). The New Testament: Its Background Growth and Content. Abingdon Press
- Millard, Alan (2000). Reading and Writing in the time of Jesus. Sheffield.
- Pitre, Brant (2016). The Case For Jesus. Image.
- Roberts, Alexander and Donaldson, James (1873). The Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325. T and T Clark.
- Sevenster, Jan Nicholas (1968). Do You Know Greek?: How Much Greek Could the First Jewish Christians Have Known? Brill.
- Snapp, James (2011). Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20.
- Vaganay, Leon and Ampphoux, Christian-Bernard (1991). An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism. Cambridge.
- Williams, Peter (2018). Can we Trust the Gospels? Crossway.
So about the canon and disputed parts/passages: (I started writing this after reading your blogpost. It got way out of proportion, and I wrote it mostly to collect some of my own thoughts on this. It got quite messy. Nevertheless, I tought I should post it, perhaps you or someone who accidentally got here will read it one time and find it thought provoking.) (First I adress some issues related to consistency about relying on tradition for the Canon as a list of books that contain Divine Revelation. After that, distinguishing between something being revealed and being inspired, I argue that Protestants cannot hold that all the NT books are necessarily inspired, or at least they cannot believe this with divine faith, though they might hold that it is Revelation nonetheless.)
I think the question of disputed passages is in itself a serious problem for Protestantism as a whole. Of course, even if something was not written by the original author or was placed elsewhere etc., it could still be written in the apostolic age and be authentic Revelation. We have reason to think that the story of the adulterous woman was a known story in the early Church, and it might have been omitted by an influential scribe due to how strongly adultery was condemned in some circles. But these reasons are not conclusive, unless one has some objective way of deciding about the fact of inspiration, like Catholics do. This does point out the shaky grounds the Protestant canon is built upon. But this is not my main point, and of course not a conclusive argument.
You said basically that the Church didn't make the books authoritative, but merely recognized that they are inspired. This is what Catholics believe as well. But I think there are problems with your approach to determining the canon. (The inspired vs. revealed distinction will be adressed later.) You said that the Holy Spirit guides the Church, and while it can err, the Church (or the early Church) still gets most things right. So you can accept a 4th century canon coming from the Church without recognizing it as infallible in matters of faith and morals.
My problem with this would be: on what ground do you accept that the Church got the NT canon right, but reject a bunch of other things that were accepted as universally, or sometimes even more universally, as the NT canon?
This would include distinctively Catholic/Orthodox doctrines like the mass/liturgy as a propitiatory sacrifice, post mortem purification, the necessity of apostolic succession, etc. Or at the very least some of these:) You said: ""I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail over it." Would God permit an error as serious as this, without raising up someone to challenge it?"
I agree that God would not permit something like this, but the same could be said about many other things that God did permit, if Protestants are correct, for hundreds of years.
So this does seem to be a bit self-undermining. I think any reading of the claims about the Holy Spirit preserving the Church can only be taken seriously if there is at least some degree of infallibility or preservation assigned to the Church as a whole, and also if this Church can somehow be identified throughout the ages, in a non-circular way. (Eg., "the correct Church is the one with the correct doctrine" is a circular way.) And it seems ad hoc to only allow for this preservation by the Holy Spirit for the NT Canon. A way out of this would be to say that the preservation of the Holy Spirit only applies in matters of essential doctrines, or matters necessary for salvation. But wouldn't the whole NT canon be actually 'too much' on this view?
But I think there is a logical case against this view of the Canon as well, that I haven't heard answered yet. Protestants don't merely think that Scripture is divinely revealed or infallible/inerrant, they also think that it is inspired.
For the argument, let's use this definition of divine faith: An act of (supernatural or divine) faith is an assent of the intellect to Divine Revelation on the authority of God (moved by Grace through the Holy Spirit). (It is not “blind faith”, because there are external signs joined to the revelation, - ‘motives of credibility’ - that rationally validate the revelation’s divine origin and invite intellectual assent, without forcing it. )
I think this view of (divine) faith is pretty convincing and widely accepted.
As an example, it works like this: I'm a Jew in 33 AD. I see Christ perform miracles, get crucified, then I get credible testimony from many people that he walked out of his tomb.
All of these things count as motives of credibility for me, and they move me to accept Him as a Divine Legate with authority. After this, I can accept what he authoritatively teaches with the assent of (divine) faith. It's important that I can only do this as a response to Revelation, so I cannot have divine faith even in a math proof, that would be a different kind of certainty. (And assenting to something with divine faith is not the same as the theological virtue of faith, which also has different senses.) The problem arises when we see that the fact of inspiration (the fact that a given book is inspired by God) is a supernatural fact, that cannot be known through sensory observation, historical or scientific methods etc.:
Inspiration is an act of God. An inspired text has the Holy Spirit as its primary author. There are no external attributes of texts that necessitate that they are inspired. There are effects and signs of inspiration, but these are not unique to the inspired texts. (There is no possible standard that would include all NT books, but exclude everything else, like 1 Clement.) And even if they were unique, that still wouldn’t show sufficiently that they are inspired, precisely because inspiration is a supernatural act of God. It is not something that we can observe through the senses, test scientifically, or conclude from historical analysis. Yes, we might use those other means as motives of credibility to conclude that something like Sacred Tradition _is_ authentic divine revelation, then, motivated by the reasons obtained through those means, accept through divine faith the claims of Sacred Tradition about whether a certain book in inspired. But we cannot conclude from those means something that is a matter of supernatural (divine) faith directly. We might even do the same about a text claiming to be inspired, so this does not mean that some of Scripture cannot authenticate itself. But there is no way to accept with the assent of faith that eg. Hebrews was inspired, if there is no non-Scriptural revelation, since it is not asserted within Scripture itself anywhere.
The Protestant could, in principle, also conclude that Scripture is authentic Revelation, but that is not the same as inspiration, and also not the same as infallibility. Something can be authentic Revelation without being inspired, the point is that inspiration is something supernatural, something special.
This is how this argument would look like if formalized:
- If Sola Scriptura is true, public Divine Revelation is constrained to Scripture.
- The fact of inspiration (the fact that a given book is inspired by God) is a supernatural fact, that cannot be known through sensory observation, historical or scientific methods etc.
- Therefore, the fact of inspiration can be known only through an act of supernatural faith.
- An act of (supernatural or divine) faith is an assent of the intellect to Divine Revelation on the authority of God (moved by Grace through the Holy Spirit). (It is not “blind faith”, because there are external signs joined to the revelation, - ‘motives of credibility’ - that rationally validate the revelation’s divine origin and invite the assent of the intellect.)
- Therefore, the fact of inspiration can only be known if it is divinely revealed (in Scripture or otherwise).
- Every book of Scripture is inspired.
- The fact of inspiration is not revealed in Scripture itself for _every_ book.
- The fact of inspiration is not privately revealed to everyone concerned.
- Therefore, it is publicly revealed somewhere else.
- Therefore, Sola Scriptura is false.
So it seems to me that under Sola Scriptura, the fact of inspiration cannot be believed by divine faith, which might be problematic. I'm not saying that the existence of a given authentic Divine Revelation can only be accepted through another Revelation, which would lead to a vicious regress/circle for Catholics as well, I'm only talking about inspiration.
The Catholic, on the other hand, can tell a story that is internally consistent, even if it rejected by the Protestant: we can have motives of credibility (from the NT books first considered as merely human, historical documents, from other miracles, from the ongoing witness of the Church etc.) that support that Christ is God, rose from the dead, and established a Church, which he gave certain promises, to be his authentic witness throughout the ages, and that this Church still exists today and can be found in the Catholic Church. This Church then can teach in a way through Sacred Tradition that we can give the assent of divine faith to, that these books are inspired and therefore canonical, besides just being merely human documents that serve as historical witness.
Another coherent story would be admitting that one cannot believe with divine faith that all the NT documents are inspired. This could be held while maintaining that they are nevertheless authentic Divine Revelation in some sense. It is on this view that we would get to the non-conclusive problems I considered earlier, regarding consistency about relying on tradition for the canon.
Response on the canon of scripture
Thanks for your comment, and questions about the canon. And yes, I agree that this is a difficult issue for Protestants (possibly the most difficult issue). I can't respond in detail, but I'll make a few points.
Firstly, we need to be careful when responding to a "Protestant" interlocutor, since there are many different Protestants who believe different things. This includes on the meaning of Sola Scriptura. (That's even before we get into liberal protestants, who are almost an entirely different religion altogether.)
I obviously can't speak for other traditions, but only my own, which I usually define as being a disgruntled layperson on the Catholic end of classical evangelical Anglicanism. By Anglican I mean someone who accepts the 39 Articles, homilies, and book of common prayer as the standard for those doctrines in dispute at the time of the reformation (these, of course, back on scripture as the ultimate standard, the creeds, and early Church Fathers, in order of priority). These days, I would personally add the GAFCON Jerusalem declaration as guiding us on contempoary disputes. (There are other definitions available, such as belonging to a Church with historical links to the Church of England, but I prefer the confessional definition: the question we are interested in is does this denomination belief true or false doctrines, and that's best addressed if the denominations are defined by their statements of belief). By classical evangelical, I mean really believe in the Anglican reformers got it more right than anyone else, and don't just give them lip service when they contradict something I want to believe (and, in particular, take the historical position on matters such as divorce, ordination of women, etc. which others in the spectrum of evangelical Anglicans deny). By the Catholic end, I mean I have a higher view of the sacraments and Church Fathers than many classical evangelicals. By disgruntled, I mean that I'm angry that some 90% of the Bishops of my Church of England are either incompetent, heretical, invalidly consecrated (even ignoring Rome's statement about our orders), or, quite frequently, all three. But that's another story. I also, of course, have a very healthy respect for Catholic philosophical theology, and slightly disappointed that the evangelical/protestant tradition (with few exceptions) hasn't built up something with equal rigour.
Why am I Anglican, and not Roman? Ultimately because I accept the 39 Articles etc., i.e. believe that, at of all the movements that came out of the reformation (Protestant and Roman), it comes closest to duplicating the belief and practices of the early Church (I'm not claiming its perfect, just that it strikes the best balance between Roman and the more extreme Protestants). As such, I believe that Rome/the Eastern Orthodox erred by adding to the deposit of faith, while other Protestant Churches erred by either taking too much away, or adding some beliefs of their own (Zwingli's symbolic interpretation of the sacrament being perhaps the clearest example, or the "I" and "P" in TULIP). Even though I disagree with the direction the visible Church of England is heading in, that isn't a reason to convert to Rome. The reason to convert to Rome would be if I accept the Catechism, which isn't where I am. I'm currently in a good congregation, and officially the Church still accepts good doctrine (I expect you'll disagree that its good, but according to the formularies I accept), and there aren't viable alternatives where I live. So either the Church of England will be rescued, or I will have some serious decisions to make in the future. But that's tomorrow's problem (well, possibly next month's problem), and not one I do or should bear alone.
Secondly, I don't want this to be a space for Roman/Protestant/Eastern Orthodox debate. I would love to get back to a position where we can recreate the diet of Worms and thrash everything out, but this isn't the right time. We agree on far more than we disagree, we share the same Lord, and right now need to focus on defending that body of belief against the external enemies of (for example), modernist (Richard Dawkins/Betrant Russell etc.) atheism, post-modernist (Feuerbach/Horkheimer/Marcuse etc.), Islam, etc. and the internal enemy of theological liberalism. Arguing between ourselves over smaller (still important) matters is a distraction.
But having said that, I'll break my rule by making a few comments in reply.
1) I agree this is a major problem for Protestantism. I don't think it a fatal problem, but its clearly a weakness (especially for the more radical branches of Protestantism).
2) On what grounds do I say the Church got the NY canon right, but reject other things? It's mainly a matter of looking at the history of the doctrine. It was agreed from pretty much the start that there needed to be a NT canon. The core of the canon (Gospels/Acts/Paul's letters/1 Peter/1 John) was settled on from the earliest days. There was a debate over the other books, and a consensus eventually reached. But when we consider other doctrines, we usually find that they are first discussed at a late date. For example, consider the assumption of Mary. There is no evidence this was believed in the first or second centuries. There is a possible allusion in the third century (I believe), but it clearly wasn't widespread. It isn't until the fourth/fifth century that we start seeing in depth accounts of it, until later that it was accepted by the majority, and it wasn't until 1950 that it was declared as dogma. Those earlier references were in the context of a gradually increasing veneration of Mary, particularly emphasising the theotokos title (God-bearer, which I accept) in response to the docetists. This is precisely the pattern we expect of a belief that arose from human speculation rather than genuine apostolic tradition. The canon of scripture was a major issue, debated in full from the start. There was disagreement until the 4th century, but it wasn't a fringe issue. It's what we expect for something present from the start, but not properly defined initially so had to be refined and debated over time. (I would class the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation in the same category.) It's not something added to the faith. The assumption of Mary was at best very peripheral in the early days, gradually got embellished over time. Maybe it does stretch back to a first century tradition, but the evidence seems to better support that it was added to the faith, and gradually developed and embellished over time. i.e. precisely the sort of thing that Protestants sought to remove when returning to the earliest faith without later human-made traditions.
You mention apostolic succession. This clearly goes back to the first century, and I accept it, albeit with some minor differences in its definition and application.
The mass as sacrifice: there are references discussing sacrifice and the Eucharist in the same context in the early Church Fathers (e.g. Didache 14, 1 Clement 44, Ignatius to Philadephians 4, Dialogue with Trypho 41). But these don't say the Eucharist is a representation of Christ's sacrifice. They are consistent with the Protestant notion that the celebration of the Eucharist is a "sacrifice of praise" (Hebrews 13:15). Jesus entered "once for all" "by the means of his own blood" (Hebrews 9:12), i.e. his sacrifice on the cross didn't need to be repeated, although its benefits are communicated with us through the Eucharist. So we have a belief that existed in the early Church, but was misinterpreted, gradually embellished, and gradually transformed into the modern Roman belief. Protestants reject the Roman belief because it appears to be a distortion of the primitive belief, and diminishes the efficiency of Christ's own sacrifice.
With regards to purification after death, we find hints of this from the second century (e.g. Shepherd of Hermas), but usually in fairly dubious works. The Biblical justification, 1 Corinthians 3:15, is based on a rather strained interpretation, while other passages (1 Corinthians 15:52) speak of an instantaneous transformation. Once again, the earliest references don't describe the doctrine in full. The references I have seen mainly refer to prayers for the dead; consistent with purgatory but but also consistent with other beliefs. We see something that gradually developed and embellished, was originally hardly mentioned and thus a fringe belief, and was eventually accepted as a corollary to the Roman doctrine of justification (and I'm certainly not going to get into that huge discussion here).
So both of these show evidence of originally fringe beliefs which were gradually embellished and developed over time and gradually gained a wider acceptance, which contrasts with the discussion on the canon of scripture.
3) Didn't God raise up someone to challenge the other beliefs that Protestants reject? He did -- that's what the reformation (and its precursors in Wycliffe and Hus) did. Why delay? The differences between the Roman Church and Protestantism are less important than the canon of scripture. And the Roman beliefs developed over time. We see precursors to them in the early days, but its not until the late medieval period that they really become superstitions harmful to believers (particularly, e.g. around the simony associated with indulgences, and the relics industry). And then we get Wycliffe and Hus.
4) "I think any reading of the claims about the Holy Spirit preserving the Church can only be taken seriously if there is at least some degree of infallibility or preservation assigned to the Church as a whole" But what do you mean by "as a whole" here? Does that mean everybody within the Church? Clearly not. When everyone in the Church believes precisely the same thing? Has that ever been the case (unless you take the circular approach as defining the "true" church as those who take one side on a contested issue)? The majority of members or even majority of Bishops? Its not obvious that was the case during the height of the Arian controversy. The Bishop of Rome? But Bishops of Rome have erred, e.g. Nicolas V's 1455 papal bulls endorsing slavery in the Americas, which seem to have the majority of the Church backing them (even if there wasn't a council confirming the bulls, it was still the belief at the time) with only a few dissenters. These were rightly overturned by later Bishops of Rome from the 16th century, and were against the spirit of previous doctrine. So 1455 was an aberration -- but it was still an error. If the Roman Church committed an error, then it can commit errors, and if it can commit errors it isn't infallible. I think it obvious that people within the Church have made mistakes from time to time, sometimes even the majority of people. But, even without infallibility, the Holy Spirit raised up first de Casas and his colleagues, then Wilberforce and Clarkson and others, to bring the Church back to the right path on slavery. So we see the Church makes mistakes, but then the Holy Spirit corrects the Church to bring it back to the true belief. So in this instance we see the Spirit preserving the Church, while the Church isn't infallible. In contempoary times, I fully expect theological liberalism (which infects the Roman Church as well as Protestant denominations, even if not yet to the same degree) to reign for a while, but then suffer the same fate as Arianism and the acceptance of slavery (unless our Lord returns first). Sometimes this correcting influence means a split in the Church, such as how the Donatist groups were expelled from the early church, and sometimes the split group can endure for a while.
5) You discuss inspiration, and how we can know a text is inspired. Firstly, your discussion begs an important question: how can we be sure that the Roman Magesterium is inspired? There are no external attributes of Magesteria that necessitate that they are inspired. There are effects and signs of inspiration, but these are not unique to just inspired Magesteria. You might respond that Christ said he will build His Church on the Rock of Peter, but this merely implies that Peter is inspired, and doesn't mention Peter's successors.
You also say there is no historical method we can use to validate supernatural inspiration of a text. Clearly some supernatural events can be validated historically -- this is at the root of the proofs of Christ's resurrection. Similarly for the incarnation. I think it evident that Christ regarded the Old Testament (we'll leave the debate of which Old Testament for another time) as inspired. Thus we can accept these texts as inspired through historical reasoning. Likewise for the New Testament. We know the apostles were commissioned by Christ, influenced by His teaching, and given a particularly large helping of the Holy Spirit. I'm not sure I would accept "inspired" as meaning the Holy Spirit is the primary author, because its not clearly defined what "primary author" means. Clearly, there is dual authorship of the text: the apostle and the Spirit. But what we know about the apostles (assuming the New Testament is generally reliable and not complete fiction; I won't repeat the arguments for that here) is enough to demonstrate that their writings had this dual authorship. It then leads to the historical question of which texts were written by the apostles (or under their successor). There is also the question of to what extent works such as the Didache and 1 Clement are inspired. I wouldn't want to say that the Holy Spirit played no role in the Christians who wrote them. But, for reasons discussed in the main post, they lack the authority of the apostolic writings. The apostles had a particularly high authority over the Church because they were given that authority by Jesus. Therefore their writings also have the highest authority. The apostles successors clearly have authority, which they were granted when appointed by the apostles, but less authority because the apostles have less authority than Jesus. Consequently their writings have less authority than those by or approved by the apostles. And, while we know for certain the surviving apostles (excluding Judas Iscariot) were genuinely filled with the Spirit, we are less certain about their successors.
So I would disagree with your assertion that we can't deduce the inspiration of a text from historical methods. We can with the Old Testament, and arguably the New Testament as well. And, as suggested above, I prefer to phrase the discussion in terms of authority rather than inspiration. (Not that I deny they were inspired, obviously.) Clearly there is a jump from "most authoritative" to "inerrant", but that will have to be another discussion (I've spent far too long writing this reply already -- another day when I can't work on my next blog post which is getting embarassingly delayed). If any Christian works are inerrant, it will be the most authoritative.
Responding to your argument, I would disagree with how you phrase point 1. Sola Scriptura means that the methods which produced scripture alone were infallible, meaning that scripture is the only claimed revelation we can be certain is inerrant. It doesn't mean that it is the only source of revelation, or even the only revelation without error, but the only source of revelation that we can be certain was without error. It is the standard by which we judge everything else. If a later Christian writer makes an argument whose contrary would contradict scripture, either directly or indirectly though logical argument, then we would accept that argument as being without error. Even if the writer makes errors elsewhere. If an argument contradicts scripture, then it is rejected. If it is consistent but not demanded by scripture, then we have to judge it. Sometimes we might accept it (although not as firmly as we accept something directly revealed in scripture), other times say its a matter indifferent, or reject it if it either clearly developed later in time, arose due to dubious reasons or from dubious sources, or encourages effects which are against scripture (such as when excessive veneration of the saints slips into idolatry, while veneration of the saints is clearly also unnecessary as we have Christ as a mediator between God and man). Equally, divine revelation isn't necessary to have inerrant statements. For example, Mary Boas' "Mathematical methods in the Physical Sciences" might contain a few mistakes, but they are few and far between. It isn't divinely inspired, but it can still be trusted.
Sola Scripture then is simply saying Scripture has a higher authority than the Church's Magesterium. That doesn't mean the Church's Magesterium has no authority, only that it can make mistakes (even if it hasn't done so, although obviously I believe it has), and its statements must be judged against Scripture and challenged when they disagree.
So Sola Scriptura doesn't demand that public Divine Revelation is constrained to scripture. It demands that the only public method we can be certain only recorded Divine Revelation is that which produced Scripture. Other writers can record Divine Revelation, or be without error, but they aren't guaranteed to do so all the time.
Is this quibble enough to defeat your argument? Well, as stated above I also disagree to an extent with your point 2. We can use reason, history, etc. to judge how likely a statement is to be Divine Revelation. We can agree that a council or Bishop Athanasius might be guided by the Spirit in one case, while disagreeing that everything they did or wrote was inspired text. I don't doubt that Athanasius was truly baptised in the Spirit, and particularly strongly. He wouldn't have achieved what he did otherwise. We can analyse, and assign a probability (given whatever premises are appropriate) that a particular statement is divinely inspired. (These probabilities are Bayesian, to be used according to decision theory.) For something that is genuinely scripture (leaving aside the question of what is genuinely scripture), that probability is 1. For everything outside scripture, it lies between 0 and sufficiently close to 1 to make no difference. The same writer or council might produce statements with different probabilities. "Therefore, it is publicly revealed somewhere else" doesn't deny sola scripture. Because sola scripture allows that there can be other public divine revelation (or inspiration is a better way of phrasing it in this context), and that we can be sufficiently certain about some statements of it to remove doubt.
I haven't discussed whether Athanasius' Festal letter is one of those cases where we can't reasonably doubt its inspiration (and I'm not sure we need to prove inspiration, only that its inerrant), but I don't need to to defeat the argument.
So I think your argument fails because point 2 is questionable, and point 1 is based on an incorrect definition of sola scriptura.
Hi, thanks for you reply.
Yeah, I didn't want this to turn into a Catholic/Protestant debate either. (Tho I'm happy to do that anytime, as a former Protestant. Altough after I replied to most of these things, I might have accidentally turned this into that already.:) )
I just wanted to focus on the Canon-problem, since that was brought up.
i'll make two comments, one regarding the formal argument I made and your response, and one about the other things.
Here I'll try to reply to you response to my formal argument.
I think you misunderstood parts of it.
It's my mistake, as I haven't gone into sufficient detail in fleshing out the details. The most important part was the understanding of what is faith.
Aquinas deals with this in the ST: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3001.htm#article1
Regarding 5, : "Firstly, your discussion begs an important question: how can we be sure that the Roman Magesterium is inspired?"
We can't be sure, because it is not inspired. I didn't say it was anywhere. It wouldn't even make sense to speak of an institution as inspired. We can have motives of credibility for it's authenticity, just like we can have motives of credibility that the Gospel of Mark contains Divine Revelation.
"Clearly some supernatural events can be validated historically"
Yes, they can. And this brings us back to the definition of faith. Things you experience, research historically etc. can and do serve as motives of credibility. You can validate Christ's resurrection historically, using the NT documents as merely human texts. And then you can assent with divine faith to what Christ says, because he is God.
We don't know from the NT documents themselves which OT documents did Christ think were inspired. We might know about many of them, (Such as the Torah), but definitely not all.
"Thus we can accept these texts as inspired through historical reasoning."
This is the crux of the issue. If subjective historical reasoning enters into it, it's not divine faith anymore. If I take something that's manifestly evident in Revelation, and then reason from that through some subjective process to a conclusion, what I get is a theological conclusion, that I can accept and hold, but I won't believe it with divine faith.
As an example, I can be confident that one among the thomistic, molinist or some other account of predestination is correct, based on my reasoning that starts from things manifestly evident in Revelation (that is, there is predestination, it involves some things and it doesn't involve other things), but I cannot believe my conclusion with divine faith, because that can only be done as a direct response to revelation.
I cannot conclude something, and then give the assent of faith. It must be proposed to me,
either by God directly or through some messenger or other means. (which messenger or other mean has certain signs that serve as motives of credibility) It is only after that proposal that I can give the assent of faith.
(Aquinas talks about this in the section that I linked.)
So I think my Point 2&3 still stand.
"But what we know about the apostles (...) is enough to demonstrate that their writings had this dual authorship."
i think this is not true. Are you implying that every writing of an apostle would have necessarily been inspired? I think not many people would accept that, and there is nothing in Scripture that indicates this. Inspiration /= infallibility. Inspiration is a special act of God.
Eg., if we found a lost epistle of Paul, and we were sure that is was written by him, we could not believe with faith that it was inspired, even if it is completely orthodox and contained amazing preaching. For men are able to do that by their own power, without a special, supernatural act of God.
But if you do think that every apostolic writing would have to be automatically inspired, this would have to either _necessarily_ extend to their succesors or not. If it did, you solved the Canon problem, but at the expense of including a bunch of non-canonical books that also have been written by their successors. If it did not extend to their succesors _necessarily_, then there would have to be some criterion about which of their successors it does extend onto, which would be some non-revealed standard, so we are back at not being able to believe in the fact of inspiration with divine faith.
It seems to me you're treating inspiration as more of a gradual, and not a binary question. I agree, the Holy Spirit can play some sort of role in the writings of non-inspired documents. But that the fact of inspiration is a binary state is I think very important: Scriptural inerrancy comes from that one thing. If one can say that Clement is somewhat inspired, but 1Chorinthians is a bit more inspired, inspiration loses it's meaning.
"Sola Scriptura means that the methods which produced scripture alone were infallible, meaning that scripture is the only claimed revelation we can be certain is inerrant. It doesn't mean that it is the only source of revelation, or even the only revelation without error, but the only source of revelation that we can be certain was without error."
I think this operates on some misunderstandings. Something either is or is not authentic Divine Revelation. If it is that, then it cannot, by definition, be wrong, because God cannot lie because he is Truth itself. (How important divine simplicity is:) )
If something has the possibility to contain error, then it cannot be Divine Revelation.
We have a dilemma: 1. if Scripture is the only thing that we can be certain is inerrant, then that is equivalent to the statement that public divine revelation is constrained to Scripture.
On the other hand, if the argument is:
2. Sacred Tradition or something else is authentic Revelation and is inerrant, but we cannot clearly know what part of the tradition is actually that and what is just some "addition", then the problem with not being able to give the assent of faith to the fact of inspiration still remains, and we have an argument for a kind of Magisterium "handling" revelation, such as the universal consent of the Bishops. (Which did exist about the NT canon from the 4th century onwards I think.)
If 1. is true, then my definition of Sola Scriptura is correct, so the argument proceeds.
If 2. is true, then that seems incompatible with SS on its own.
This is the whole basis for understanding what faith is: faith is believing on the authority of God revealing. It is in that sense that we can say that "faith is certain".
If probabilities and Bayesian reasoning enters into it, it just simply cannot be called faith. To be sure, those things can and do enter into the picture when they function as motives of credibility, that then help the intellect to accept that something _is_ authentic Revelation.
Everything hinges on this.
An an example: Let's say I have X motives of credibility for accepting the Gospel of Luke and Acts as sources of Divine Revelation. After accepthing this, I can then assent with divine faith to the claims that 1. Jesus was resurrected, and 2. He was born in Betlehem by Mary, who was a virgin.
Both of these claims I believe with divine faith.
I have much more historical etc. evidence for the Resurrection, but nevertheless, I accept both of these with the same faith, because they are both revealed by God. ( That the resurrection is both something to be believed by divine faith AND a motive of credibility for that very thing complicates this example. But you can switch 1. with 1.*: Jesus was crucified. Then the comparison gets even stronger, since the evidence for his crucifixion is also stronger, but nevertheless both 1.* and 2. are believed by divine faith. )
( As I said, the resurrection is BOTH an object of faith and a motive of credibility.
Certain propositions about morality for example can also work this way in regards to the Christian faith, which is interesting.)
The same thing happens with the Church: I can have motives of credibility for it, as I said in my previous comment, that establish and help me to accept it's divine origin and it being a rule of faith (see below), and then I can give the assent of faith to what it proposes, which includes the fact of inspiration for Hebrews eg.
(And since you mentioned the Assumption of Mary: how well something that is part of Sacred Tradition is represented in the ecclesiastical tradition of the Church can vary. But regardless of tradition, we would say that the Assumption of Mary is contained virtually or implicitly in Scripture. This links into the question of "what is faith" again. It is not manifestly evident in Scripture, so unless it is established by the proper authority it cannot be believed with divine faith, only as a theological opinion or conlusion. But since it is proposed by the proper authority now, we can give the assent of faith to it.
This is true about many other propositions that are not manifestly evident in Scripture, and require additional argumentation to get to, but nevertheless we believe it with faith. And based on my example above about Jesus's birth and his crucifixion, the Protestant cannot argue that one has less evidence than the other and therefore shouldn't be dogma, since what matters is that both are clearly proposed as objects of faith by the proper authority. )
About the differing authorities: in the traditional definition, something is a rule of faith if it is able in and of itself to bind the conscience to something. So there is no meaningful distinction between infallible and fallible rules of faith. Since whatever the Church says, you can disregard it if you think it is not what Scripture teaches.
An ecumenical council might be authoritative, but it cannot bind the conscience if you can nevertheless reject it's ruling on faith and morals if you think that's not what Scripture teaches. The difference between high-Church and low-Church Protestants in this regard would be perhaps that you're obliged to give an appropriate judgment on what the Church says and cannot just reject it out of hand (in the case of high-Church), but it still can't bind the conscience.
Catholics have the same thing with regards to prudential judgments and judgments of empirical circumstances by the Magisterium, we can disregard them if we are convinced that they are erroneous, but definitive statements on faith and morals do bind the conscience.
But this is only tangentially relevant.
So overall, since Point 1&2 still stand in my opinion, I still think that once it's properly understood, the only way out of this argument is to deny the traditional understanding of inspiration or the understanding of faith that I used.
My other comment, about some of the other things you mentioned:
(I'll have a third comment as well.)
I agree that the most important thing is defending Christianity and important moral truths against those attacking it. But obviously the importance of being in the right Church depends upon what someone thinks about what the Church is. If person X thinks that it is the will of Christ that everyone be joined to the Catholic Church and partake of the sacraments there, then surely X will be more inclined to talk to Christians who
do not "fulfill" these conditions yet, than person B who doesn't think the same about his own Church. And this can coexist with X also thinking that nevertheless, the most important mission is towards those furthest away from the truth, so mission towards atheists is more important than towards Eastern Orthodox. But of course this doesn't mean that we can't deal with less important topics.
About the Church and infallibility:
Yes, by Church I mean a visible Church, not just an abstraction. And to me it's clear that Christ didn't want his Church to be some abstract entity, he wanted it to exist in a visible way, with a means of unity. He said to us: Be one as I and my heavenly Father are one. The early Christians understood his Church to be something that is visible,
and I trust Jesus that if he commands us something, he will also provide the means to accomplish that thing.
"But it is our teaching that there is only one ecclesia [Church], and not two, and that this one and true Church is the assembly of men bound together by the profession of the same Christian faith and the communion of the same sacraments, under the rule of the legitimate pastors, and especially that of the Roman pontiff, the one vicar of Christ on earth." Robert Bellarmine, De Ecclesia Militante, quoted in Joseph Clifford Fenton, The Catholic Church and Salvation (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1958), pp. 172
This is the body of Christ. Some people might only be part of the body, but not the soul, and some might not be part of the visible body through no fault of their own, bit still be part of the soul. Occasionally we can't decide whether some specific person is part of it or not, but we still have a normative means of doing that.
And since Christ promised certain things to His Church, I must believe Him.
And to go downstream from that, I think the universal teaching on matters of faith and morals of all the bishops in the world in communion with the Bishop of Rome cannot err, and the Vicar of Christ also cannot err in those matters when he exercises his teaching authority ex cathedra. People in the Church do indeed make mistakes. They are not perfect, they make bad judgements, they might express things in a bad way, they can act immorally, and this includes the Popes as well. What the Popes cannot do is formally bind the Church to heresy.
Obviously it would be pointless to go into all these things in depth, books have been written about these things. I just wanted to adress this:
Most alleged contradictions in Magisterial teaching involve a misunderstanding of what papal or magisterial infallibility is, and are not stronger than many of the alleged Bible-contradictions atheists often raise.
Tho I admit that there are some that are far from being obvious about how to resolve them, I can think of a few right now, for example the Pope Vigilius controversy. (Just like in the case of alleged Bible-contradictions, there are stronger and weaker ones.).
By the 1455 Bull of Nicholas V do you refer to Romanus Pontifex?
This document contains zero doctrinal declarations or statements, so I don't see how it could logically disprove papal infallibility.
After reading it, it is clearly a stain on the Church, like all its scandals, I don't question that.
That some Popes used their temporal powers in bad ways and made bad and immoral judgments and decisions doesn't disprove anything about the Church's nature and it's claims. (Because its seems to me that's what happened in the case of this Bull- it's an exercise of the Pope's temporal authority. It seems to declare Portugal's action as a just war, in a context where the subjugation and enslavement of the enemy was seen as normal. And people were clearly wrong about seeing it as ok.
But at any rate, no doctrinal declaration can be found there, not even a fallible one. )
If anything, that the deposit of faith remained unblemished amidst such leadership points to its divine protection.
(And I would point out that slavery was very much condemned by the Church both before and after Nicholas, both in doctrinal and in non-doctrinal terms, very very consistently. That one Pope failed in his non-doctrinal judgment doesn't invalidate that.)
So It seems to me that this alleged contradiction is based on a very fundamental misunderstanding of the character of the Pope's teaching authority.
(Even without taking into account the distinction between fallible/infallible modes of teaching.)
My third and final comment:
Regarding the sacrifice of the mass:
Catholics/Orthodox agree that the once for all sacrifice of Christ on the Calvary does not need to be repeated. It does need to be applied tho, just like the Paschal sacrifice needed to be eaten.
Christ is the priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, whose priesthood was reflected in the offering of bread and wine. Therefore, Christ's high priestly offering
must somehow also involve the offering of bread and wine. But since we know that Christ's sacrificial offering is only his body and blood once for all at the Calvary, the bread and wine must become that same thing, serving as a typological fulfillment of Melchizedek's offering. And since Jesus commanded his disciples to perpetually celebrate the Supper, where his body and blood was offered under the species of bread adn wine, until he comes again, those who do so must function as extensions of Christ, exercising his priesthood after the order of Melchizedek, and so the Mass where this happens must involve the real, propitiatory offering of His body and blood.
But of course this would take a whole lot more details to discuss.
Tho I think this provides a good summary of the Scriptural proof.
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10006a.htm
I didn't really mean the 2nd century. Even if there could be some ambiguity about that (which I don't concede), the propitiatory nature of the Mass has undeniable assertions in the 3rd/4th/5th century, so around the time of the establishment of the NT canon. Eg. Cyprian, Augustine, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Cyril and liturgical texts.
And the Sacrifice of the Mass is an incredibly important doctrine.
As the reformers said, if this doctrine is not true, it involves the highest form of blasphemy.
It seems really weird to me that God decided to wait at least 1000 years until his providence made some people start objecting, all the while the Lord's Supper involved blaspheming Christ and the Eucharist every day, universally within Christianity (not just in Catholicism, but in all ancient branches, as far as I know.)
And to elaborate on the notion of talking about other topics:
Do you think one can give a non-controversial example of per se causal series, given modern physics? (per se as it's usually understood today)
I don't think so, (or at least I'm not aware of one), but i still see the common examples used that don't actually work with our laws of nature. Not that we need it to work, since contingency arguments work just as well on an infinite chain of contingent beings/propositions, but it's still an interesting question.
See Pruss's blog: https://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2025/11/per-se-and-per-accidens-ordered-series.html
Once again, thanks for your thought provoking comments. As stated before, I don't want to get into these debates in depth, so I think this will be my final response. Yes, the difference between Protestants and Romans (and different branches of Protestantism) are important issues. But I think at the moment there are other things which are more important, and I would rather devote what little time I have to studying and commenting on them. Even in this response, I'm not going to comment on everything you have written, but only pick up on a few things.
I would like to make one correction to my earlier comment, which bears on your response (and apologies for this, since its going to seem like I'm shifting the goalposts, but I don't treat these comments especially, or even blog posts, as academic articles which I repeatedly re-review, so I don't always phrase things correctly). I wrote,
"Sola Scriptura means that the methods which produced scripture alone were infallible, meaning that scripture is the only claimed revelation we can be certain is inerrant. It doesn't mean that it is the only source of revelation, or even the only revelation without error, but the only source of revelation that we can be certain was without error."
My conclusion here doesn't follow from the definition. I should have written something along the lines of "the only source of revelation that we can be certain was without error on account of how it was produced." We can also determine that a statement within claimed revelation is without error by other means, such as through scientific, historical, or logical analysis. This doesn't prove that the claimed revelation is genuine revelation, but in the present case that's not what is at stake. What matters is whether Athanasius and the early council's list of the 27 New Testament books, correctly lists the books and (aside from the OT) the only books that should be received as authoritative scripture, or whether this statement is incorrect. I'm not even sure that Athanasius or the councils would claim their list as revelation. I guess it depends on what is precisely meant by revelation. I would agree that the Holy Spirit was present in those godly Church Fathers, as He is present in believers today, and part of the role of the Spirit is to remind us of Jesus' truth. But we also know that this doesn't protect Christians from saying things which are false. So I would distinguish this inspiration from divine revelation. Divine revelation is always true. That someone is known to be Spiritually inspired is one reason to accept their statement, but its not determinate proof that the statement is correct. So we must also judge the statement using other means: against scripture where applicable (which is of limited use here, other than to help outline the criteria), or historical analysis (as I did in the original post). That the Church came to this conclusion is one reason out of several which combine to build a case for accepting the canon. In this case, those reasons all point in the same direction. In the disputed matters, the judgement of the Church (when it was eventually settled from the 4th and 5th centuries onwards) points in one direction, but there are other reasons (such as from a close reading of scripture) either pointing elsewhere or stating that we ought to leave the question open.
You offered me a dilemma:
"1. if Scripture is the only thing that we can be certain is inerrant, then that is equivalent to the statement that public divine revelation is constrained to Scripture." I didn't say that scripture is the only thing we can be certain is inerrant. Even in my original formulation of the statement, I said "scripture is the only claimed revelation we can be certain is inerrant," and obviously the correction I made above qualifies this further. There is a difference between "claimed revelation" and "thing". I gave the example of a mathematics textbook. We can be certain that every statement in a mathematics textbook is correct, by carefully checking it. Mathematics is just an extension of logic, and we can be sure about logical proof. This doesn't make that mathematics textbook scripture. 1) The author doesn't claim it is divine revelation. 2) The author is certainly fallible. The process by which they wrote the book can lead to mistakes, it just happened not to in this instance. Thus I don't see why there is an equivalence between your two statements. Your argument seems to rest on the assumption that public divine revelation is the only thing we can be certain is inerrant. As I just stated, that isn't true. So this leg of the dilemma isn't what I'm saying.
"2. Sacred Tradition or something else is authentic Revelation and is inerrant, but we cannot clearly know what part of the tradition is actually that and what is just some 'addition', then the problem with not being able to give the assent of faith to the fact of inspiration still remains, and we have an argument for a kind of Magisterium 'handling' revelation, such as the universal consent of the Bishops." This is closer to what I am suggesting, although I wouldn't phrase it this way. Firstly, I am uncomfortable with saying Tradition is authentic revelation. Tradition is something handed down. It's value is because we know that the apostles communicated many truths in writing (the New Testament, or at least those books which ought to be in the New Testament), but also many other things orally. That oral teaching was passed down, and some of it recorded by later writers. That tradition is valuable because it gives us access to the oral teachings of the apostles, and through that the teachings of Jesus, i.e. it contains a record of authentic revelation. But the Fathers didn't always say (for example) "This was passed down from Irenaeus who got it from Polycarp who got it from John who got it from Jesus," and even where they did we are just taking their word for that chain of transmission. So their writings contains much truth, but also can contain "additions" created somewhere along that line. I would say there is still authentic Revelation of the direct sort, through visions similar to those experienced by the OT prophets, though again this needs to be tested and not treated with the certainty we accord to scripture. But that's not relevant in this case. But my main objection to this leg is in the statement "we cannot clearly know." In some cases that's true, but in other cases we can know if its an authentic record of revelation. The most obvious example is when the Fathers directly quoted or alluded to scripture. We can judge how consistent it is with scripture. Again, the primary question isn't "Was this statement faithfully passed down from the apostles, or was it a later addition?" but "Is this statement true or false?" If the statement logically follows from scripture, we can be sure its true. Obviously when discussing what is and isn't scripture this criteria is limited in its usefulness. But we can also examine through other means. We can search for a wide consensus, for example. In the case of the Canon, this establishes the gospels, Acts, Paul's letters, 1 Peter and 1 John, which were (I believe) pretty much unanimously accepted. As for the other letters, we can do the historical analysis I discussed in the original post. And, again, the consensus that developed in the early Church is another piece of evidence; not because the early Church is an infallible Magisterium, but because they were intelligent people, gifted by the Holy Spirit (even if those gifts don't include infallibility, they do still gift them with good discernment) who had access to more and better raw data than we do. We have numerous lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction, none conclusive by themselves but which together make a conclusive case.
And in general, I don't see why we need a Magesterium to determine what is and isn't authentic Revelation. The question is whether the statement is or isn't true. For some of them we can be sure is true, either because it is directly taken from scripture, or can be reasoned from scripture, or there is some indubitable historical or logical reasons for accepting it, or all contrary positions can be shown to be false. Other statements we can be certain are false. For everything else, we keep an open mind. If it was widely accepted in the early Church, we should be reluctant to declare it false without clear proof. The early Church does have authority. But not the same authority as Jesus or the apostles.
In other words, the Protestant can have good reasons for thinking the canon of scripture is the correct list, without having to rely on an infallible Magesterium. At least, you haven't shown they don't, as far as I can see. A Magesterium which got most things (if not necessarily everything) right in the early Church is good supporting evidence.
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Moving on to a few of your other points,
"I cannot believe my conclusion with divine faith, because that can only be done as a direct response to revelation." Aquinas wrote in the section you linked: "For the faith of which we are speaking, does not assent to anything, except because it is revealed by God." He distinguishes the reasons why we assent to something, and what we assent to. Divine Faith has its source in things revealed by God. But it assents to more than just God, although everything it assents to is related to God.
We need to distinguish between two things:
1) The assent to certain literature as records of revelation.
2) The assent to various proposition arising from those records of revelation (i.e. the revelation itself).
Aquinas later on added.
"Now the intellect assents to a thing in two ways. First, through being moved to assent by its very object, which is known either by itself (as in the case of first principles, which are held by the habit of understanding), or through something else already known (as in the case of conclusions which are held by the habit of science). Secondly the intellect assents to something, not through being sufficiently moved to this assent by its proper object, but through an act of choice, whereby it turns voluntarily to one side rather than to the other: and if this be accompanied by doubt or fear of the opposite side, there will be opinion, while, if there be certainty and no fear of the other side, there will be faith."
We have to be a bit careful because faith in the passage above is described in a general sense, which makes no mention of whether it arises from God's revelation, while the first article discussed more particularly divine faith. There might be other things the intellect assents to via an act of choice without doubt which aren't based on divine revelation.
According to these definitions, things assented to via point 2 might be articles of faith, as they arise from divine revelation. But why do we assent to 1)? We can do so in either of Aquinas' two ways. Divine revelation, or because it can be known by itself either directly or through reason, or a combination of the two. You stated "Inspiration is a supernatural act of God. It is not something that we can observe through the senses, test scientifically, or conclude from historical analysis." (I would also treat inspiration as a weaker category than divine revelation; restricting divine revelation to those things directly from God, such as the visions of the prophets, or Moses' encounters on Sinai, or the words of Jesus, and inspiration as when God works through a human author such as Paul or Moses when not recording the direct revelation from God.) But I would dispute this, because of the incarnation. For example, consider the apostles. They believed that Jesus rose from the dead, but because they had direct experience of it. They accepted Jesus as incarnate, by reasoning from what they saw and heard Jesus say. The heard Jesus promise He would return. This promise arises from divine revelation, and assenting to it is an act of faith, because it relates to God and is not yet seen. It is one thing hearing Jesus saying this, but you still have to choose to accept it, even though there is no doubt, so trusting in the promise is an act of faith. But that it is revelation, and thus inspired, falls under Aquinas' first means by which the intellect gives assent. That Jesus said it is directly sensed. That Jesus saying it means it is inspired by God is something deduced from what they previously directly observed. So it is possible to give assent to the statement that a statement is inspired by God "through the senses, test scientifically, or conclude from historical analysis." The apostles understood it through the senses, we rely on historical analysis to make the same conclusion. But if this applies to the direct statements of Jesus, why can't it also apply to those statements indirectly transmitted through the apostolic writings? So I would dispute that we can only give assent to the New Testament as God's revelation through divine faith (as we have been defining it), but we can still give assent to it with certainty (or something so close to certainty it makes no difference) by other means. And why isn't that sufficient? Why do we have to accept the canon through divine faith, rather than some other means which gives certainty. The key question isn't "Is this list of books provided through divine revelation," but "Is this list of books correct?"
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"Are you implying that every writing of an apostle would have necessarily been inspired?" I addressed this in the original post. Apostolic authorship (or approval) is one of the criteria, but not the only one. It still has to be useful for teaching, etc.
"Eg., if we found a lost epistle of Paul, and we were sure that is was written by him, we could not believe with faith that it was inspired, even if it is completely orthodox and contained amazing preaching." The problem in this example is we couldn't be sure it was written by him, and not a forgery. The lack of attestation or acceptance in the early Church would count against it's genuineness, and we know there were many forgeries in the ancient world. So there would always be considerable doubt.
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"It seems to me you're treating inspiration as more of a gradual, and not a binary question. I agree, the Holy Spirit can play some sort of role in the writings of non-inspired documents. But that the fact of inspiration is a binary state is I think very important: Scriptural inerrancy comes from that one thing. If one can say that Clement is somewhat inspired, but 1 Corinthians is a bit more inspired, inspiration loses it's meaning."
I disagree. It is possible to have graduation and certainty at the top of that graduation. I prefer to discuss in terms of degrees of authoritative rather than degrees of inspiration. Authoritative combines both "to what extent is this inspired" and "how certain are we that this is inspired." So we can say 1 Clement or the Didache is 95% authoritative (either because e.g. 1 Clement contains a few things which are Clement's own flawed ideas rather than from apostolic tradition or the direct prompting of the Spirit -- ao 95% of 1 Clement is inspired, and 5% his own work, or we are only 95% certain that 1 Clement or the Didache are inspired, or some combination of the two), while 1 Corinthians is 100% authoritative. We thus trust 1 Corinthians completely, and turn its statements into dogmas of the Church, while the Didache is still trusted, but needs to be tested against 1 Corinthians (and the others), and those parts of it which pass the test, and can't otherwise be proved from scripture or logical necessity, only treated as good practice rather than dogma.
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"An an example: Let's say I have X motives of credibility for accepting the Gospel of Luke and Acts as sources of Divine Revelation. After accepting this, I can then assent with divine faith to the claims that 1. Jesus was resurrected, and 2. He was born in Bethlehem by Mary, who was a virgin. Both of these claims I believe with divine faith." But you don't need to accept the first claim through divine faith (but some other means that gives equal or at least good enough certainty), to give assent to the second claim with divine faith.
Can we assent to the virgin birth through divine faith, without assenting to the Gospel with divine faith? You say you have X motives of credibility for accepting the gospel, and then through the gospel and Acts assent to that the Church's Magisterium can rule infallibly and through divine revelation, and based on that revelation assent to the Gospel and Acts through divine faith. But why accept the Church's Magisterium as revelation? Either your system of belief will be circular, or you will have to fall back at some point to relying on motives of credibility. So why shouldn't that point be (say) your acceptance of the resurrection, and through that reason to the incarnation, and through that to assenting to the Gospels?
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Christ prayed for the Church to be one in John 17, but this passage doesn't refer to organisational or structural unity. It refers to unity around the truth and unity around Christ as Lord. We know that unity around truth isn't about every statement (Aquinas and I disagree on physics, for example, and at most only one of us is true; also see 1 Corinithians 11:19, Romans 14:13-23); so there is room for disagreement. You can't reason from this passage that the "one" Church is identical to those under the rule of the Roman pontiff, or that the Roman pontiff is the one vicar of Christ on earth.
[I'm particularly sensitive to this at the moment because the bishops of my own Church are misusing this passage to argue that organisational unity is more important than unity in belief, while trying to argue (not in these words, but this is the effect) that heretics and the orthodox should both get along as part of the same Church.]
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"By the 1455 Bull of Nicholas V do you refer to Romanus Pontifex?"
Yes, particularly this statement. "We [therefore] weighing all and singular the premises with due meditation, and noting that since we had formerly by other letters of ours granted among other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso — to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit." This passage is frequently used by atheists to say "Look, the Church approved of slavery, and is thus completely evil." Of course that doesn't tell the full story. As you say, it was an aberration, and there were both statements before this which it contradicted, and after it which overturned it. For those reasons, the atheist argument that "Christianity is evil" is flawed, because clearly this statement doesn't represent Christianity, and was a mistake. We have never claimed that everything a Christian teaches is in line with Christianity.
You say "This document contains zero doctrinal declarations or statements, so I don't see how it could logically disprove papal infallibility." Papal infallibility declares that any statement declared ex Cathedra by the Bishop of Rome is without error. Why do you believe this? You can't believe its because Bishops of Rome can never make mistakes, because they can, since a) the doctrine only applies in certain examples and implicitly accepts this, and b) as the 1455 Bull (alongside other examples) shows. So ultimately you need to believe it because it was decreed by the Vatican I council in 1870. So to assent to papal infallibility, you need to assent to Vatican I as giving inerrant statements. Why do you assent to this? Again, it can't be because the Bishops in the council were themselves infallible, because they weren't. So it must be because you regard councils of assembled Bishops under the invitation of Rome as infallible, or maybe even giving divine revelation. The Holy Spirit acts through the means by which the council declares its doctrine to turn the collection of fallible Bishops into something infallible. But why do you accept this? It's not from scripture -- even if we accept the Jerusalem council as infallible, that doesn't show its successors past the apostolic age were. It's not something proved by reason built on direct observation or scripture. Do you accept it as inspired through "motives of credibility?" Then how is that different from a Protestant accepting that scripture is divine revelation through "motives of credibility." Because you have received a personal divine revelation telling you the council is inspired? That's no better than the Protestant receiving a personal revelation concerning the New Testament. Because your senses, or scientific or historical analysis tell you its inspired? By your own words, "Inspiration is a supernatural act of God. It is not something that we can observe through the senses, test scientifically, or conclude from historical analysis." Everything you stated about not being able to distinguish through textual analysis whether an inerrant text is inspired or merely a great work of man also applies to the statements of Church Councils or the Church Magisterium. And if you escape this dilemma by denying that inspiration cannot be deduced from historical analysis or the force of reason based on such premises, then you undermine the case that the Protestant can't assent with confidence to the New Testament as defined by the canon as revelation through historical analysis or the force of reason. That just leaves circular reasoning (i.e. a statement of another council), or the statement of a Bishop (who we know wasn't infallible).
So the example of Nicolas V might not by itself show papal infallibility false, but its part of an argument that either undermines papal infallibility (or the infallibility of the Magisterium) and thus your reasons for accepting the New Testament Canon, or it undermines the arguments you use against the Protestant's acceptance of the New Testament Canon by reducing your assent to the Magisterium to the same sort of arguments that the Protestant uses to accept the New Testament Canon.
Thank you for your response.
I constrain myself to responding to the last part, in this comment.
"Papal infallibility declares that any statement declared ex Cathedra by the Bishop of Rome is without error. Why do you believe this?"
I believe this because I think there is good evidence from history, from miracles, from the perpetual witness of the Church, the internal and external coherence of it's teaching, from the NT and OT documents, first considered perhaps as merely human documents, that Christ is God, rose from the dead and established a Church that he gave a certain authority to teach, and this Church still exists and can be found in the CC. These work as motives of credibility that help me to accept that the Magisterium has that divinely established authority,
and therefore, moved by grace through the Holy Spirit, I can assent with faith to the de fide propositions made by the Church.
I still think you're misunderstanding the definition of faith that I'm working with, and also inspiration.
-Just to clarify: Councils do not give any new public divine revelation. Public divine revelation has ended with the death of the last apostle. Anything declared by the Councils
is drawn from the Word of God and is contained therein either manifestly, implicitly or virtually.
Councils are not inspired. Neither can persons be. Inspiration is a special act of God, that means that the Holy Spirit is in some sense the author of the text. Infallibility is a purely negative term, it merely stops you from something. If I'm made infallible by God in regards to statements about physics when writing my electrodynamics test, I couldn't write anything false, but I could still get a zero by not writing a thing.
- "Do you accept it as inspired through "motives of credibility?" Then how is that different from a Protestant accepting that scripture is divine revelation through "motives of credibility.""
I don't accept it as inspired, I accept it as infallible, because it was made by an authority capable of that declaration, and it was done in a manner where it was manifestly evident that this capacity was used.
And there is nothing different about the methods that I can use to accept the authenticity of that authority from the ones the Protestant can use for the books of Scripture as revelation.
There is nothing (automatically) incoherent about Protestants accepting the Bible as authentic Revelation. I was purely arguing that they cannot accept it as _inspired_. (Or not for all the books.) So I agree with you there. And of course the reasoning behind this is that if someone is convinced of this doctrine about inspiration in it's traditional formulation, then this would point them towards the Catholic paradigm.
I aknowledge that adopting a different or loosened sense of either divine faith or inspiration is a way out. So to argue for/against either paradigm other arguments would be needed.
Thank you for the thougtful discussion, I very much enjoyed it.
As a closing point, I couldn't resist replying to some, but not all things. I tried to not bring up anything new.
(Of course if you do decide to reply at some point, I'm happy to engage)
----"You offered me a dilemma ...."
About point 1.: What I meant was that if Scripture is the only thing that is inerrant _by it's intrinsic nature_. Could also use the term infallible, which I don't like when it's used in reference to texts alone so I didn't use it. We can be certain that a math textbook is without error in the actual world, but that would be a contingent fact about it. So it's my mistake, I should have clarified.
"And in general, I don't see why we need a Magesterium to determine what is and isn't authentic Revelation"
I agree, but remember, my point isn't about something being "mere" Revelation.
-----------------------------------------------------------
About the divine faith/Aquinas point:
----"I would also treat inspiration as a weaker category than divine revelation"
I think this is a break from the traditional understanding of both inspiration and revelation, so it might explain some of our differences.
If Thomas the Apostle, or a prophet, has something told to him by God, and he gives this information on, in his own words, it is revelation. It is not inspired. Even if he wrote it down and passed it on in that way, it would still not be inspired. So revelation isn't necessarily something "directly shown to you", it is God adressing man, whether in immediate or mediate ways. According to your definition which restrict divine revelation, the Bible _as a whole_ couldn't be said to contain God's Revelation to mankind, only in places where God speaks directly.
--"But I would dispute this, because of the incarnation ... "
The case of Jesus is interesting and a bit different than the usual ones. As I mentioned, it is both an article of faith _and_ a motive for that very faith.
That being said, I don't think what you said is a counterexample to my premise, but I may have misunderstood you.
On my understanding, this is what happened with the Apostles: they encountered Jesus. Things he did worked as motives to accept him as an authentic "Divine Legate". Thus, they could assent with faith to what he said. Of course they had to use their senses and reasoning etc. for those motives to work. But once they did accept him, their subjective reasoning didn't (and couldn't) play a role in what they believed with divine faith.
Inspiration is not a good word for this in my opinion, as Jesus's words werent inspired by God, they were simply and directly said by God himself. But either way, there was no extra reasoning process from the person of Jesus to "his sayings are also Revelation", rather they first accepted Him wholesale as someone who is an authentic messenger or legate from God, and then they believed him.
So I don't think this is an example of "assent to the statement that a statement is inspired by God "through the senses, test scientifically, or conclude from historical analysis."
-------
"And why isn't that sufficient? Why do we have to accept the canon through divine faith, rather than some other means which gives certainty."
This is a fair question. As I aknowledged earlier, if by canon one just means a list of books containing authentic divine revelation, it can be done, so my argument only works against those who do think that the fact of inspiration is an article of faith. And many Protestants do think that!
(Though I would say that in such matters, only faith is certain. And by article of faith i simply mean a proposition that _can_ be given the assent of faith to.)
About inspiration:
- I still maintain that whether God chose to inspire a letter or not is a special supernatural act of His.
"These books are held by the Church as sacred and canonical, not as having been composed by merely human labour and afterwards approved by her authority, nor merely because they contain revelation without error, but because, written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and have been transmitted to the Church as such."
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm Chapter 2 on revelation
So under this view I think gradual inspiration is not a thing. I don't think God inspired the texts of 1Clement, or the Council of Nicea, Constantinople or Trent, however authoritative they might be. But we probably hold a different view.
Of course I don't contend that the whole doctrine of the Church can be derived from that passage in John. A case could be made that if both unity and doctrinal orthodoxy are to be preserved, and indeed Jesus wished for them to be preserved, the fitting means for that would include an infallible teaching office or some other similar means. But that is way too far from the topic at hand.
At any rate: I hope, and pray for the orthodoxy of Anglican bodies in the UK, and in general for Christianity there. God Bless.
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This is a very good summary of this topic.
A few things: As I understand, traditionally Herod's death has been put to 1 BC. 4 BC became the popular view in the last century, but some new scholarship also supports the 1 BC date. So this would pretty much clear up the problems related to the dates.
The 'census' would be some kind of registration.
This article goes over this topic in a condensed manner, for any reader interested (and also provides sources):
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-truth-of-the-nativity-story
It also gives some very plausible explanations for Quirinius, that I didn't see adressed here.
I would push you on a few things tho, related to the Canon and disputed passages.
I might post this in a different comment, so it can be deleted separately if you consider it off-topic.