Dear Theophilus, 

In the last letter, we had looked at some questions about the dating and historical reliability of New Testament documents. In this letter, as I had promised you, we will continue with this topic.

A lot of the attitude of scholars to New Testament writings reminds me of the Docetic controversy of the early period of Christianity. Docetism was a teaching which represented a sort of superspiritualized picture of Christ. Christ is divine and matter is gross and bad and therefore Christ did not really suffer on the cross but this was simply an illusion. In general, what is important is not what Christ did, but what he said. Similarly, there are scholars who feel that history is too imperfect a vehicle for conveying profound truths and therefore, it is not important if the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament correspond to some historical occurrences. What is of paramount importance is not what happened, but some spiritual message that is transmitted to us in those writings. Their arguments are very seductive but they lead to destruction one of the most important teachings of the whole Bible that creation is a wonderful and real thing. I think my last letter makes it abundantly clear that the Docetic, and more generally, Gnostic, position is incompatible with Christianity.

How are we to understand some of the theories proposed for the origin of the Gospels? The general view is that Mark's Gospel was written first and then, Matthew and Luke, using Mark's Gospel and additional collected materials, wrote their Gospels, reflecting the particular concerns of the communities that they lived in. John's Gospel was written still later and reflects a theological interpretation of events surrounding Christ. What we have seen in our previous discussion is that this view can be challenged and it probably makes more sense to say that the Gospels were written prior to the cataclysmic invasion of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. In all likelihood, there were collections of Jesus' sayings circulating within Christian circles soon after the death of Christ. The Gospel of Thomas, discovered in this century, is just such a collection of Jesus' sayings. One couldn't even rule out that these collections existed before the death of Christ. It is therefore not surprising that there seem to be identifiable common sections in the Gospels.

A concern that is often raised is that the apostles doctored the documents to say what they felt the communities that they were living in, needed to hear. Internal evidence in the writings of the New Testament does not support this criticism. Permit me to just to refer to two examples. If we read the Gospels and pay attention to the sayings of Jesus, we will be struck by his frequent use of two terms, son of man and kingdom of God. If we turn to the Epistles of Paul and others, what we find is an almost total absence of these terms in the letters. Similarly, we find the term, church, virtually absent from Christ's utterances and yet, this term figures prominently in the epistles. What this internal evidence attests to is that the writers of the New Testament did not play foot loose with their writing of what had occurred. What Jesus had said, and which may even be enigmatic or problematical, such as the possible prediction of the near end of time, were faithfully retained and not editorialized. When charges are made that those writing the New Testament did so with an eye to submitting theological teachings only, we see that this is not an accurate representation of the evidence in the New Testament.

One of the epistles of the New Testament is dated late and that is the Letter to the Hebrews which is often dated in the eighties of the first century. However, the detailed levitical arguments presented there seem to be strange if the Temple had been destroyed. Again, we must move away from our prejudices and look at the evidence given to us by the writings themselves.

There is another striking piece of evidence. During Nero's reign, a bloody persecution was started against Christians. The Christian reaction to this was so noble that a Roman historian, Tacitus mentions that the Christians won much support among the population. And yet, when we look at Acts, there is not even a hint of these persecutions, which seems a little strange if Acts were written after the late sixties AD. The other conclusion seems more plausible - Acts was written before the persecutions set off by Nero. There is another interesting fact in the book of Acts. Nowhere is there mention made of the death of Paul and, since he is the main character in the book, this seems very strange, unless the book was completed before Paul's death, which is normally dated at some point in the sixties of the first century.

Anywhere where we look, we see strong evidence that the writings that comprise the New Testament were written within a thirty year span of 40-70 AD. This lends support to the fact that what we are reading are not myths or legends, literary compositions which take a large amount of time for their development. This adds credence to the reliability of what these documents say. Christianity is inextricably linked to history and to events which took place in history, although the significance of these events is not limited to historical time but extends into eternity.

The New Testament documents struggle to represent what they witnessed but these events call forth bewilderment among the participants. What happened was something that they had not expected - the Resurrection. Note that in none of the Gospels do you have an explicit description of what happened during the Resurrection. In the light of all this, they were forced to re-evaluate their view of Jesus and to try to make some sense of those tremendous events. They turned to the main source that they had - the Old Testament and along with it the collected writings that were starting to be circulated.

When we imagine the Gospels being written in one sitting by one individual, we may be wrong. Probably what is more likely is that these were writings which grew from a nucleus through addition as more information became available and as more reminiscences came to mind. Thus, although the Gospels may have the name of one author, they are probably the result of the input of a group rather than an individual. Their disbelief in what was happening was apparent and comes through in phrases that appear in the Gospels - they could not believe the events that had overtaken them and to a certain extent, I think we are in the same position. We cannot believe the good news because it is simply too good to be true; we are not used to it because we have been fooled too many times and we are cautious in our beliefs.

What is closely allied to this whole matter is the identity of Jesus. Who was he? When we analyze the writings of the New Testament from an objective position, we find that a high Christology, that is, Christ is one member of the Holy Trinity, is present at the very beginnings of Christianity. What happens is that the implicit claims of Christ are transformed into more explicit statements. But this is not an addition nor a change of what Christ had to say. Thus when he uses the word amen, this was not an unknown word in Judaism but its form of usage was such that it appeared at the end of a statement to show God's support and endorsement for what was being said. With Jesus, the word amen prefaced what he had to say implying that the verification of the statement came from who spoke.

In summary, what we may say is that the writings of the New Testament give us valid objective evidence about the life, death and Resurrection of Christ. We may not be able to fully explain those events, but the main outline, which was clothed in theological explanation through later developments, is fairly clear. What is central to the New Testament is not some prescription for better living or self-improvement; it is an introduction to a person who has accomplished something on our behalf, and what he has accomplished has been described under a variety of labels, the most common one of salvation.

The relationship of Christianity to history is an important one and it is helpful to clarify this. History cannot prove Christianity is true, but, history can damage Christianity severely if it is shown that certain statements within Christianity have no historical basis. For example, if it were shown, as was claimed in the nineteenth century that Christ was not a historical figure but just an invention of pious imagination, then this would have a profound effect on how we view Christianity. It is therefore important that Christians understand and are familiar with the historical supports for Christianity.

With this, Theophilus, I leave you for some time. Maybe, at some point in the future, our paths will cross. Util then, adieu.

Yours,

Bar-Abbas

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