In a media horizon currently littered with caricatures of Christ and the

church that he founded, Reinventing Jesus is a refreshing breeze of honesty

regarding Christian origins. People ought to know that the Gospels and
early records of the church are extremely reliable, but they are being misled
by the current spate of books, movies, and television specials that offer
torque instead of truth, sensation in place of sense, and the radical in place
of the real. Unlike the writers and publishers who have sold their souls to
the fiscal bottom line, the authors of these pages have not falsified a single
syllable at the expense of truth, and I can't think of a more appropriate book
"for such a time as this." Though aimed at the general public, professionals
can also read these pages with enormous benefit. I know I did!

-PAUL L. MAIER

Author, In the Fullness of Time

Professor of Ancient History,
Western Michigan University

In our postmodern, secular culture, religion is treated as privatized,

relativized blind faith whose sole value is that it is meaningful to those who
take the leap. In keeping with this milieu, Jesus has been reshaped and
reinvented to fit virtually every ideology in sight. When this is done by
scholars, the average believer may get the impression that something has
been found out by those in the know that renders an orthodox view of Jesus
naive and unreasonable. Reinventing Jesus corrects this impression and it
represents a rigorous yet readable defense of the orthodox understanding of
Jesus. While most books of this genre focus exclusively on the general
historicity of the New Testament documents, Reinventing Jesus is unique in
including but going beyond this concern by tackling questions of the
accuracy of the New Testament textual materials, the credibility of the New
Testament canon, and the relationship between Jesus and evolutionary
Christology rooted in pagan religious myths. This book is a welcomed
resource.

-J. P. MORELAND

Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy, Biola University
Director, Eidos Christian Center
Through sound reasoning, strong documentation, and a winning style, this
book puts the lie to many popular but misguided claims about Jesus and
early Christianity that deny the objective truth and power of the Gospel. It
is a winsome, timely, and needed antidote to the truth decay that is infecting
our culture's perception of Christianity.

-DOUGLAS GROOTHUIS

Author, On Jesus Professor of

Philosophy, Denver Seminary

We live in an era that is flooding us with books that present various types of
claims about Jesus. They seek to undercut the idea that we have a
trustworthy portrait of him. So it is refreshing to see a volume clear away
the seeming fog. Reinventing Jesus effectively presents the other side of the
public debate about Jesus, where seemingly glitzy speculation is shown to
be more like virtual reality than the history it often claims to be.

-DARRELL BOCK

Author, Breaking the Da Vinci

Code and The Missing Gospels
Research Professor of New
Testament Studies, Dallas
Theological Seminary

This carefully argued book offers a detailed and very helpful critique of
many of the recent extreme approaches to the Gospels (from the Jesus
Seminar to The Da Vinci Code). It explains the issues of Jesus scholarship,
text criticism, and other subjects on a level that all readers who read the
book through can grasp. Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace have made a
significant contribution!

-CRAIG KEENER

Author, A Commentary on the

Gospel of Matthew and The Gospel
 of John Professor of New
Testament, Palmer Theological
Seminary of Eastern University

Many college students, unfortunately, enroll in a university religion class

only to have their faith shattered. And in the last few years, dozens of radio
and TV news programs have also been demolishing Christian faith by citing
researchers with the Jesus Seminar or proponents of The Da Vinci Code.
Fortunately, Reinventing Jesus provides sound, biblical answers to these
questions being raised on campus and in the culture. This book answers the
major questions being raised today about the Bible and Jesus Christ, yet it
provides those answers in a way that is easy for the layperson to
understand. Reinventing Jesus will answer your questions and help you
answer the questions others may have about the truthfulness of Christianity.

-KERBY ANDERSON

National Director for Probe

Ministries Cohost of Point of View
(USA Radio Network)

For the past decade Jesus has been a major figure in the news. The popular
media have tended to showcase a few radical scholars whose "new views"
have been presented as "new discoveries." Was the real Jesus different from
what the New Testament reports? Were other books with a negative picture
of Jesus banned from the Bible to repress the truth? These are the new
questions being asked and they deserve fresh answers. Reinventing Jesus
answers the call and reflects scholarship that is both sound and honest. No
attempt is made to ignore or dismiss skeptical arguments too quickly.
Instead, these three scholars present solid reasons for holding that the New
Testament presents the most accurate portrait of the real Jesus available.
Readers will be pleasantly surprised by how clearly the authors have
presented the data, some of which is seen for the first time!

-MICHAEL LICONA
 Author, The Case for the
Resurrection of Jesus and Paul
Meets Muhammad Director of
Apologetics Evangelism, North
American Mission Board, Southern
Baptist Convention

Reinventing Jesus puts top-flight scholarship on the bottom shelf.

Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace have crafted a book that is carefully
researched, copiously documented, and clearly written. It will handsomely
repay the effort of any serious reader looking for the real evidence behind
historic belief in the deity of Christ.

-JOSH MCDOWELL

International author and speaker

Whatever problems orthodox Christians have in demonstrating either

historical reliability or historical integrity, the problem does not reside in
whether or not the New Testament itself contains what was originally
written. The facts are that, in spite of a welter of variations, the evidence
that survives permits us to know with utter certitude that we are in touch
with the original Gospels, letters, and writings of the first century. Recent
skepticism advocating that the orthodox corrupted the text is proven in
Reinventing Jesus to be an overstated conclusion driven by otherthan-
historical forces.

-SCOT MCKNIGHT

Karl A. Olsson Professor in

Religious Studies, North Park
University

Never in the history of the Christian faith has unbelief had the tools at its
disposal that it has today. Every kind of argument against the Bible and its
portrait of Jesus is picked up and repeated endlessly in published works and
on the Internet. Christians are often hit with "scholarly" arguments
indicating that we can't have any knowledge of what the Bible originally
said or who Jesus really was. We are told Christianity is not unique and the
story of Jesus is patterned after pagan myths. Reinventing Jesus cuts
through the rhetoric of radical skepticism and provides a clear,
understandable, and compelling response to those attempting to rewrite the
history of early Christianity. People loosely slap "must read" on just about
anything these days. But when it comes to Reinventing Jesus, the label
sticks!

-JAMES WHITE

Author, The King James Only

Controversy and The Forgotten
Trinity Director, Alpha and Omega
Ministries

Perhaps like never before, some radical reinterpreters of the historical Jesus
have tried to do a makeover of Jesus' public image, turning him into a
politically correct guru who echoes snippets of today's popular cultural
agenda. It seems that any Gospel data that do not fit this image are
automatically jettisoned. The authors of Reinventing Jesus march into this
morass in order to sift the evidence for the New Testament reports. Their
careful, painstaking analyses invite us to study the data for ourselves and
compare the ancient, accredited records with today's reconstructions. The
endnotes alone are worth the cost of the book! Bravo, Kregel Publications,
for this fine entry into the fray!

-GARY R. HABERMAS

Author, The Historical Jesus

Distinguished Research Professor,
Liberty University

We are living in a day when "truth is up for grabs" both within and outside
the church. Ed Komoszewski, Jim Sawyer, and Dan Wallace have done a
superb job of writing an in-depth, yet accessible, book that challenges the
radical skepticism about Jesus flooding popular culture. I highly
recommend it!

-CHIP INGRAM

President and CEO, Walk Thru the

Bible Teaching Pastor, Living on
the Edge radio broadcast

"Who do men say that I am?" is a question Jesus asked his disciples, and it
is one that is still being asked today. In Rein venting Jesus, the authors
answer this question, addressing some of the most well-known arguments
offered by those who do not confess that Jesus is Lord. They do so in a
respectful way, with academic rigor and clarity of prose.

-FRANCIS J. BECKWITH

Associate Professor of Church-State

Studies, Baylor University

The authors of Reinventing Jesus convincingly demonstrate that the Jesus

of faith and the Jesus of history are one and the same. Amidst the swirl of
misinformation and myth assaulting thepopular culture today, here is a
clear, digestible explanation for anyone wanting to know the facts about
how the New Testament and the church's earliest teachings were developed
and transmitted.

-DAVID GREGORY

Author, Dinner with a Perfect

Stranger
REINVENTING
 JESUS
J. ED KOMOSZEWSKI

M. JAMES SAWYER

DANIEL B. WALLACE
REINVENTING
 JESUS
HOW CONTEMPORARY SKEPTICS
MISS THE REAL JESUS AND
MISLEAD POPULAR CULTURE
Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics
Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture
© 2006 by J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer,
and Daniel B. Wallace Published by Kregel
Publications, a division of Kregel, Inc., P.O. Box
2607, Grand Rapids, MI 49501.
To our children:
Katie and Emily Dan, Jon, Joel, and Josh Noah, Ben, Andy, and Zack

May you always know that you never need fear the pursuit of truth.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments / 13 /

Introduction: Reinventing Jesus? / 15 /

PART 1: I BELIEVE IN YESTERDAY

1. The Gospel Behind the Gospels / 21 /

2. Oral Tradition and a Memorizing Culture / 33 /

3. An Eccentric Jesus and the Criteria of Authenticity / 39 /

PART 2: POLITICALLY CORRUPT? THE TAINTING OF ANCIENT

NEW TESTAMENT TEXTS

4. Can We Trust the New Testament? The Quantity and Quality of Textual
Variants / 53 /

5. Myths About Manuscripts / 65 /

6. An Embarrassment of Riches: Recovering the Wording of the Original

New Testament Text, Part 1 /75/

7. The Methods of Textual Criticism: Recovering the Wording of the

Original New Testament Text, Part 2 /83/

8. Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then? 11031

PART 3: DID THE EARLY CHURCH MUZZLE THE CANON?

9. The Range of the Canon / 121 /

10. What Did the Ancient Church Think of Forgeries? / 135 /

11. What Did the Ancient Forgers Think of Christ? / 151 /

PART 4: THE DIVINITY OF JESUS: EARLY TRADITION OR LATE

SUPERSTITION?

12. Divine Portraits: Jesus in the Gospels / 169 /

13. Supreme Devotion: Jesus in the Larger New Testament / 181 /

14. From the Pens of Fathers and Foes: Jesus Outside the New Testament /
195 /

15. Simply Divine? The Real Issue at Nicea / 207 /

PART 5: STEALING THUNDER: DID CHRISTIANITY RIP OFF

MYTHICAL GODS?

16. Parallelomania: Supposed Links Between Christianity and Pagan

Religions / 219 /

17. The Virgin Birth of Alexander the Great? / 239 /

18. Osiris, Frankenstein, and Jesus Christ / 249 /

Conclusion: The Real Jesus / 259 /

Endnotes / 263 /

Further Reading / 329 /

Scripture Index / 333 /

Subject Index / 337 /

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

~e can't take credit for the substance of this book. Though we've
tucked a few new (and we hope helpful!) insights into the pages, our
priority has been to acquaint a vast audience with the best scholarship.
What is of value in this volume is the work of great minds-past and present-
that have wrestled vigorously and honestly with the historical data. We
stand on the shoulders of giants.

We can only take partial credit for the shape of this book. Profound
thanks go to the following: Jim Weaver, director of Academic and
Professional Books at Kregel Publications, who caught the vision for the
project, got it off the ground, and gave it direction; Jarl Waggoner, our
editor, whose keen eye made the manuscript cleaner and clearer; Robert M.
Bowman Jr., Dan Lioy, and Glenn L. Weaver, who made helpful
suggestions for improving the manuscript; Grant Edwards, Eric
Montgomery, and Ivan Yong (Dan Wallace's interns at Dallas Seminary
during the 2004-05 academic year), who dug up vital information on the
pseudepigrapha, Gnostic gospels, and canon; and other folks at Kregel
Publications, whose patience, support, and guidance saw this book to
completion. Keeping authors, who sometimes live too close to the data,
moving down the right path was no small feat.

We accept responsibility for the shortcomings of this book. Because the

evidence for historic Christianity is plentiful, though sometimes complex,
we were frequently torn over what to say (or not say) and how to say it. No
doubt we missed some things in our aim to pare a massive amount of
evidence down to manageable size. And we know we didn't entirely escape
our professorial tendencies to lapse into shoptalk or long-windedness.
Fortunately, our wives-Shelley, Kay, and Pati-repeatedly read the pages of
this book and constantly reminded us that not everyone has the inclination
(or endurance!) to decipher the complex ramblings of men who live for this
stuff. If anything we've written is judged to be clear and concise, they are
owed a large share of the credit.
Introduction

REINVENTING JESUS?

ttempts to reinvent Jesus are nothing new. The vines of radi,cal

skepticism toward the biblical Christ have been creeping up the walls of the
ivory tower for two centuries.' But only in recent years has such intense
cynicism sprouted at the grassroots. And it has spread quickly.

This comes as no surprise. After all, our culture is ripe for conspiracies
about Jesus.

The seeds of radical skepticism have been widely sown by mass media for
over a decade. From the Jesus Seminar-a fringe group of scholars whose
color-coded version of the Gospels repeatedly made headlines in the 1990s-
to the recent blockbuster novel and now movie The Da Vinci Code, skeptics
of all stripes have used the popular media to promote their demoted versions
of Jesus.

Distrust spawned in the media has taken firm root in our postmodern
society, where the quest for truth has been replaced by a convenient
tolerance for every idea. "That's just your interpretation!" has become the
tired mantra of hurried people who can't be bothered by a thoughtful
evaluation of evidence. It's simply easier to pretend all interpretations are
created equal.

The radical skepticism sown in the media and rooted in postmodernism

has been cultivated in an environment of biblical ignorance. As New
Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson notes:

Americans generally have an abysmal level of knowledge of the Bible.

In this world of mass ignorance, to have headlines proclaim that this or
that fact about [Jesus] has been declared untrue by supposedly scientific
 inquiry has the effect of gospel. There is no basis on which most people
can counter these authoritative-sounding statements.2

The media's assault on the biblical Jesus, postmodernism's laissez- faire

attitude toward truth, and America's collective ignorance of Scripture have
joined to create a culture of cynicism. In short, society has been conditioned
to doubt.

To be sure, an open mind is a good thing. But a mind is open only as long
as it is closing in on truth. Our hope is that you will approach the evidence in
this book with an open mind, whether it's opened completely or cautiously.

If you are skeptical of the Jesus of the Bible, we hope you'll discover that
a step toward him doesn't require leaving your brain behind. If you embrace
the biblical Christ but think faith isn't concerned with matters of the mind,
we want you to see that belief in the Incarnation-God entering the time-space
world as a man two millennia ago-compels you to take history seriously.
And if you are a Christian already committed to loving God with your heart
and mind, we trust your faith will be strengthened and you'll be equipped to
share it more compellingly.

This book is not written for scholars but for laypersons-motivated

laypersons. While we have tried to capture the essence of arguments and
avoid technical jargon, we realize that the material will stretch many of our
readers. For one thing, much of it will be new. What's more, it will be far-
reaching. Since the most probable interpretation of Jesus is grounded in the
totality of evidence, it's essential to see the broad landscape. This may seem
a bit much, but as one automotive manufacturer says, "It's not more than you
need. It's just more than you're used to."

We have not endeavored to critique or review the various attempts at

reinventing Jesus. Counterfeits are legion, and the list is growing. Rather,
our primary objective is to build a positive argument for the historical
validity of Christianity. We contend that a progressive case, built on the
following sequence of questions, undermines novel reconstructions of Jesus
and underscores the enduring essence of the Christian faith:
 • If the first Gospels were written decades after the life of Jesus, how do
we know the writers got the story right? We'll tackle this question in our
first section, "I Believe in Yesterday."

• If the writers got the story right, how do we know the Gospels and
other New Testament documents were copied faithfully? Is what we
have now what they wrote then? This will be addressed in "Politically
Corrupt? The Tainting of Ancient New Testament Texts."

• If the writers got the story right and the documents were copied
faithfully, how do we know the right documents were included in the
Bible? How did the church decide which ones to include? Was there a
conspiracy to hide competing books? Our third section explores the
question "Did the Early Church Muzzle the Canon?"

• If the writers got the story right, the documents were copied faithfully,
and the right documents were included in the Bible, what does this say
about earliest belief in Jesus? Did Jesus' followers view him as more
than a man from the onset of Christianity? Or was Jesus' divinity the
invention of a fourthcentury church council? We'll get to the bottom
line in "The Divinity of Jesus: Early Tradition or Late Superstition?"

• If the writers got the story right, the documents were copied faithfully,
the right documents were included in the Bible, and the Bible reveals
belief in the divinity of Jesus, how do we know the whole thing wasn't
plagiarized from other religions? Our case concludes with "Stealing
Thunder: Did Christianity Rip Off Mythical Gods?"'

Our focus is mainly on the integrity of the New Testament text as it bears
witness to historic belief in the divinity of Jesus. As such, our approach is
primarily historical rather than theological. Of course, history and theology
are inextricably linked. But our starting point is not belief in the Bible as
divinely inspired or infallible-or anything similar. We believe that when the
tools of the historian are applied to the biblical text, it builds its own case for
its unique character. Or as one British scholar said, "We treat the Bible like
any other book to show that it is not like any other book."
 As you make your way through the pages of this volume, we invite you to
recall the story of Thomas in John 20:24-28. Despite the testimony of the
other disciples, Thomas doubted that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead.
In fact, Thomas insisted, "Unless I see the wounds from the nails in his
hands, and put my finger into the wounds from the nails, and put my hand
into his side, I will never believe it!" (v. 25b). The living Jesus appeared to
Thomas eight days later, saying, "Put your finger here, and examine my
hands. Extend your hand and put it into my side. Do not continue in your
unbelief, but believe" (v. 27). Interestingly, Jesus didn't scold Thomas for his
doubt. Rather, he called him to examine the evidence. He invites you to do
the same.
PART 1
I BELIEVE IN
YESTERDAY
Chapter I
 THE GOSPEL BEHIND
THE GOSPELS
The Jesus of the gospels is an imaginative theological construct,
into which has been woven traces of that enigmatic sage from
Nazarethtraces that cry out for recognition and liberation from the
firm grip of those whose faith overpowered their memories. The
search for the authentic Jesus is a search for the forgotten Jesus.

-ROBERT W. FUNK, Roy W.

HOOVER, AND THE JESUS
SEMINAR, The Five Gospels, 4

ow do we know the Gospel writers got it right? Why was the writing
of the Gospels delayed for decades? What happened in the meantime? Isn't
it likely that the Gospel writers (or Evangelists, as they are sometimes
called) simply forgot most of the details about what Jesus said and did by
the time they put pen to papyrus? Since all the Gospel writers were
obviously people of faith, how do we know their faith didn't get in the way
of accurate historical reporting? Since they were writing to specific
communities, how do we know they didn't radically rework the material to
meet the needs of their audiences? These and other questions will be
explored in this section.

DEFINING OUR TERMS

As a preliminary task, it might be good to begin with some basic
definitions, because these terms will be used throughout this section by
scholars we are quoting. It's helpful to get some of the basic terminology
down so that you can understand what they are saying.
 We begin with the expression Synoptic Gospels. Synoptic refers to those
works that take a similar point of view. The synoptics are the Gospels that
look at Jesus in approximately the same way. Three Gospels seem to have
quite a bit of overlap of material (both in wording and arrangement of
narratives); hence they are known as the Synoptic Gospels-Matthew, Mark,
and Luke. John's view of Jesus is so different that it has been estimated that
90 percent of the material in John is unique to that Gospel, while less than
10 percent of Mark is unique to his Gospel. Hence, John is not one of the
Synoptic Gospels.

When thinking about the Synoptic Gospels, scholars are concerned about
source criticism. This has to do especially with the written sources that the
Evangelists used when writing their Gospels. "Criticism" in this sense
relates to "research," or critical assessment; it has nothing to do with a
critical attitude.

When it comes to source criticism, most scholars consider two starting

points for a discussion. First, they are of the opinion that there is a literary
relationship among the Synoptic Gospels. That is, Matthew, Mark, and
Luke were not written in total isolation from each other; their authors
engaged in literary borrowing. (We might call it plagiarism to some degree,
but that is a modern concept. Besides, each Evangelist made his own
contribution to his Gospel by selecting, arranging, and editing the material.
The scholarly examination of such editing is known as redaction criticism.)

Second, in terms of literary relationship, most scholars hold to Markan

priority. The usual formulation of this is that Mark was the first Gospel, and
Matthew and Luke independently used Mark for their own Gospels. There
is, however, a vocal minority of scholars who hold to Matthean priority. The
usual formulation of this is that Matthew wrote first, and Luke wrote later
but independently of Matthew. Mark then utilized both Matthew and Luke
to write his Gospel.

One other point about source criticism needs to be mentioned: those who
hold to Markan priority generally hold to the four-source hypothesis.
Essentially, this means that Matthew and Luke used four different sources
to write their Gospels. These four sources are designated:

• Mark: The Gospel of Mark.

• Q: Either a written source that no longer exists or an oral source (i.e.,

the passing on of the life and especially teachings of Jesus through the
spoken word rather than the written text), or a little of both.

• M: Material unique to Matthew. Some scholars think of it as a written

source, while others think of it as oral; still others consider the
Evangelist as his own source of information, if he was an eyewitness.

• L: Material unique to Luke. Since Luke's Gospel was definitely not

written by an eyewitness (in Luke 1:1-4 the author mentions that he
used sources for his Gospel), this has to be sources other than the
Evangelist himself.

All of this terminology can be quite bewildering, and the issues involved
are rather complex. But the basic concepts are relatively simple. As an
imperfect illustration, consider modern translations of the Bible. Most
Christians do not realize that many modern translations are conscious
revisions of the King James Version of 1611. It started in 1885 with the
Revised Version. Then, in 1901 the American Standard Version appeared.
In 1952, the Revised Standard Version was published. After that, the New
American Standard, New Revised Standard, and English Standard Version
all came out. All of these modern translations are revisions of the KJv, as
their prefaces note.

Now suppose these Bibles did not have prefaces or title pages. Could you
tell which ones were earlier translations and which were later? Certainly,
most readers would be able to recognize the KJv as the oldest translation.
As well, the Revised Version and American Standard Version would be
recognized as archaic in their language. But even the Revised Standard
Version and the New American Standard would probably stand out because
of the "thees" and "thous"used in these translations only in prayers to God.
And an expert in English would notice other shifts in language usage,
helping to pinpoint when each Bible was produced.
 Detecting the relationship between these translations is source criticism.
Obviously, catching all the nuances of the literary relationships between the
modern translations requires very detailed study. But only a basic
knowledge of the history of the English Bible is needed to see that multiple
sources do indeed stand behind our modern translations.

By pressing the analogy further, a couple of other points become clear.

First, the modern translations do not differ from the KJV only in the mere
updating of the language. There are also interpretive differences. The KJv at
times interprets the Greek or Hebrew in a way that is ambiguous or
misleading to the modern reader. Modern translations try to clarify the
wording. At other times, the KJV simply missed the point of the original
Greek or Hebrew, and modern translations correct the wording.

Second, there are textual differences. The KJV is based on later

manuscripts, while modern translations utilize manuscripts that are many
centuries older than those used for the KJV. We will discuss these matters in
the next section of this book.

Certainly modern translations that are revisions of the King James

Version do not simply duplicate KJV wording. They alter the wording,
correct misleading impressions, and offer a different rendering based on
different manuscripts. In short, even though there is literary dependence, it
is not wholesale dependence. But the very fact that they begin by revising
the KJV shows a great deal of respect for the old translation. However, the
differences in interpretation and text also show their own emphases for their
own, modern-day readers.

No doubt, by now you see many parallels between the Synoptic Gospels
and Bible translations: source criticism, redaction criticism, and literary
dependence are all relevant terms to both areas of study. The basic concepts
of scholarly study of the Gospels are not difficult to grasp, even though the
terminology may seem foreign to you.
 There are many other terms we could discuss, but these should be enough
to get you into the discussion without feeling like you're in a foreign
country.

Now, let's return to the issue in this chapter. There are some skeptics who
think that the faith of the early Christians somehow corrupted their memory
of Jesus and transformed him into something that he was not. If true, the
transformation was carried out in a coherent fashion and caught on
throughout the Greco-Roman world with breathtaking speed.

The arguments of skeptics have been amply answered! Our objective is

simply to focus on a few things relevant to the person and work of Jesus
Christ. Since so many of the questions that relate to the historical Jesus are
more about what happened after the Gospels were written, we will focus on
those issues in this book as well. Here we want to address the primary
question: Did the Gospel writers get it right when it came to Jesus?

This means exploring the issue of the gospel behind the Gospels. That is,
we will address the proclamation of the words and deeds of Jesus before
they were written down in the Gospels. This is known as oral tradition. We
will also look at the criteria that scholars use to determine what Jesus said.
We need to know the criteria of authenticity. But what we need to keep in
our frontal lobes in all this is the question, Were the Gospel writers faithful
in recording what Jesus said and did?

WHY THE WAIT? THE DELAY OF THE WRITTEN GOSPELS

The Gospels, by any reckoning, were written some decades after Jesus
lived. Several skeptics consider this an embarrassment to the historical roots
of the Christian faith and argue that during these decades of silence
Christians were fomenting a conspiracy. Earl Doherty boldly claims, "When
one looks behind the Gospel curtain, the mosaic of Jesus of Nazareth very
quickly disintegrates into component pieces and unrecognizable
antecedents."' The Jesus Seminar is even more to the point: "The Jesus of
the gospels is an imaginative theological construct, into which has been
woven traces of that enigmatic sage from Nazareth-traces that cry out for
recognition and liberation from the firm grip of those whose faith
overpowered their memories. The search for the authentic Jesus is a search
for the forgotten Jesus."3

At issue is what happened in the decades between the time Jesus lived
and the writing of the Gospels. This issue involves two questions: Why was
there such a delay in writing the Gospels? And, What happened in the
interval between the life of Jesus and the written Gospels?

Many reasons could be given for the delay of the written Gospels, but
even thinking about the question this way is perhaps looking at it from the
wrong perspective. It might be better to ask, Why were the Gospels written
at all? If we think in categories of delay, then this presupposes that the
writing of the Gospels was in the minds of these authors from the
beginning. However, that is almost certainly not the case. What was
paramount in the apostles' earliest motives was oral proclamation of the
gospel. They wanted to disseminate the word as quickly as possible.
Starting in Jerusalem, and traveling throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria,
the good news about Jesus Christ became known. When the Pharisee Paul
became a Christian, the gospel then spread rapidly to other regions of the
Mediterranean. By the time he got to Thessalonica in the late 40s, the Jews
who opposed his message complained to the city council that Paul and Silas
had "stirred up trouble throughout the world" (Acts 17:6).

In the book ofActs a common refrain is that the gospel was spreading and
the young church was growing rapidly (Acts 2:47; 6:7; 9:31; 12:24; 13:49;
16:5; 19:20; 28:31). Paul confirms this in his letters. He commends the
Thessalonians for making known the gospel he preached to them (1 Thess.
1:8-10) and tells the Romans that their faith "is proclaimed throughout the
whole world" (Rom. 1:8). We also see strong evidence of the spread of the
gospel in other letters (e.g., James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1; Jude 3).

In other words, the apostles and leaders of the young church were
preoccupied with broadcasting the gospel orally. There was no need to think
about a written gospel at this time. The remarkable speed with which the
good news of Jesus Christ became known throughout the Roman Empire in
the first few years of the church's existence is testimony to the apostles'
success in the task of oral proclamation.

Scholars often point to two catalysts that prompted the writing of the
Gospels. First, the apostles started to die off. And second, the Lord's return
was evidently not going to happen within the first few decades of the
church's existence. These two factors are often suggested as the main
reasons why the Gospels began to be written.

However, if the Gospels were written because the apostles were dying
off, we would expect them to be written to their communities. However, at
least two of the four Gospels (Mark and Luke), and probably three (John),
were written to Gentile Christians, and the principal apostle to the Gentiles
was Paul, not one of the original Twelve. Paul was never in a position to
write a Gospel in the first place because he did not know Jesus in his earthly
existence.' And if the Gospels were written before the Jewish War (66-70) -
a possibility we will consider next-then thoughts about the delay of the
Lord's return might not have been as prominent. In reality, each one of the
Gospels has its own reasons for being written when it was written and to
whom. But the fundamental point that the oral proclamation of the gospel
was of primary concern to the leaders of the church in the first few decades
is vital to remember.

What kind of delay are we actually talking about? How long did it take
for the four Gospels to be written? Most scholars regard Mark as the first
Gospel, written no later than the 60s. If Jesus died in 30 or 33 (there is some
debate between these two dates), then the first Gospel would have been
written within four decades of the death of Jesus.

Even if Mark were written this late, there would have been plenty of
eyewitnesses still living to confirm the truth of what he wrote. But there is
significant evidence to suggest that he wrote earlier than this. The dating of
the New Testament books can be rather involved. Without trying to make
the matter too simplistic, we wish to highlight just a few points.

First, if Luke used Mark to write his Gospel (as most scholars believe),
then Mark, of course, must have been written prior to Luke's Gospel.
 Second, Luke is in reality the first volume of a two-volume work; Acts is
the second volume. And there is increasing evidence that Acts was written
in the early 60s, prior to Paul's trial in Rome. (After all, the book begins
with a bang but ends with a whimper-dragging on for chapter after chapter
in anticipation of the trial that never comes. But if Acts is meant, in part, as
some sort of "trial brief," then the reason it doesn't get to the trial makes
sense.)'

Third, the Olivet discourse, in which Jesus predicts the destruction of

Jerusalem, is found in Mark 13. Many scholars simply deny the possibility
of true prophecy in the Bible and hence demand a date after 70 for Mark (as
well as Matthew and Luke). But Robinson, in Redating the New Testament,
made the interesting case that the prophecy in Mark 13 actually argues for a
date prior to 66. He points out that the specifics of the Olivet discourse do
not altogether match what we know of the Jewish War: "`The abomination
of desolation' cannot itself refer to the destruction of the sanctuary in
August 70 or to its desecration by Titus' soldiers in sacrificing to their
standards. [Furthermore,] by that time it was far too late for anyone in
Judaea to take to the hills, which had been in enemy hands since the end of
67."6 Yet in Mark 13:14, Jesus tells his disciples, "But when you see the
abomination of desolation standing where it should not be (let the reader
understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains." Robinson
concludes, "I fail to see any motive for preserving, let alone inventing,
prophecies long after the dust had settled in Judaea, unless it be to present
Jesus as prognosticator of uncanny accuracy (in which case the evangelists
have defeated the exercise by including palpably unfulfilled predictions).

Robinson is correct that the prophecy in Mark 13 was not fulfilled

exactly as it was recorded. But whether the Jewish War is all that was
envisioned in the prophecy is a different matter. Nevertheless, his
fundamental point is solid, increasing the likelihood that Mark was written
prior to 70.

What all this means for Matthew and Luke is simply that they too were
most likely written before 70. Again, the two basic reasons to argue this are
that (1) Luke is the first volume of Luke-Acts and Acts was most likely
written in the early 60s; and (2) the argument that the Gospels must be
written after 70 because predictive prophecy is impossible backfires in the
Olivet discourse (recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels) since the prophecy
was not completely fulfilled at that time."

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MEANTIME?

A fundamental disagreement in scholarly circles over the life of Jesus

concerns the role that oral tradition played. Skeptics such as Robert W.
Funk and the Jesus Seminar argue implicitly that the oral tradition behind
the Gospels was isolated and faulty to the extreme:

Scholars of the gospels are faced with a similar problem: Much of the
lore recorded in the gospels and elsewhere in the Bible is folklore,
which means that it is wrapped in memories that have been edited,
deleted, augmented, and combined many times over many years.9

As we noted above, the interval between Jesus and the written Gospels
was not dormant. The apostles and other eyewitnesses were proclaiming the
good news about Jesus Christ wherever they went. This, of course, would
have happened both in public settings and in private meetings. People
hungry to know about the Lord would inquire of the apostles. The stories
about Jesus and the sayings of Jesus would have been repeated hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of times by dozens of eyewitnesses before the first
Gospel was ever penned.

The period of oral proclamation involves some implications for the

accuracy of the written Gospels. If the earliest proclamation about Jesus
was altered in later years, then surely first-generation Christians would
know about the changes and would object to them. It would not even take
outsiders to object to the "new and improved Christianity," since those who
were already believers would have serious problems with the differences in
the content of their belief. Not only this, but the rapid spread of the gospel
message meant that there were no longer controls on the content. That is,
once the gospel spread beyond Jerusalem, the apostles were no longer in a
position to alter it without notice. And the gospel indeed spread from day
one of the church's existence-the Day of Pentecost-since Peter proclaimed
the message to Jews who had traveled from as far away as Rome (Acts 2:9-
11). So, if there was some sort of conspiracy-or a faith that "overpowered
their memories," as the Jesus Seminar argues-then it had to have been
formulated before the Day of Pentecost.

The problem with this hypothesis is twofold. First, it is hardly

conceivable that the apostles could have forgotten so much about the "real"
Jesus in a matter of fifty days after his crucifixion and allowed their faith in
him to overpower their memories of him. Second, they were not the only
witnesses to Jesus Christ. Hundreds of other followers of Jesus knew him
well, had seen his miracles, and had heard his messages. What Jesus taught
and what Jesus did were not things done in secret. This hypothesis is so full
of holes that no scholar holds to it.

This leaves us with only two alternatives: either the gospel message
changed dramatically over several years, or it remained stable over several
years-until the time it was written down. The first alternative, as we noticed
above, is improbable in the extreme. British scholar Vincent Taylor noted
this long ago. His insights are still worth quoting today. In discussing form
criticism (the view that the Gospels were patchwork efforts that invented
situations in which to place stories about Jesus10), he does not mince
words:

It is on this question of eyewitnesses that Form-Criticism presents a

very vulnerable front. If the Form-Critics are right, the disciples must
have been translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrection. As
Bultmann sees it, the primitive community exists in vacuo [in
isolation], cut off from its founders by the walls of an inexplicable
ignorance. Like Robinson Crusoe it must do the best it can. Unable to
turn to any one for information, it must invent situations for the words
of Jesus, and put into His lips sayings which personal memory cannot
check. All this is absurd.... However disturbing to the smooth working
of theories the influence of eyewitnesses on the formation of the
tradition cannot possibly be ignored. The one hundred and twenty at
Pentecost did not go into permanent retreat; for at least a generation
they moved among the young Palestinian communities, and through
preaching and fellowship their recollections were at the disposal of
 those who sought information.... But when all qualifications have been
made, the presence of personal testimony is an element in the
formative process which it is folly to ignore."

Taylor wrote these words in 1933. Sixty years later, the Jesus Seminar
proclaimed that faith in Jesus overpowered the apostles' memories and that
the real Jesus had been forgotten-the very points that Taylor debunked! And
the fact is, Taylor's argument has been repeated by other scholars for
decades. They have added other arguments as well, but his fundamental
tenets have not been answered.

We are left with one alternative: the proclamation of the gospel had a
stable core that was reproduced in public and private settings and confirmed
by eyewitnesses. We need to examine how faithfully an "oral culture"
would have been able to remember Jesus Christ, which is the subject of
chapter 2.
Chapter 2
 ORAL TRADITION AND A
MEMORIZING CULTURE
... memory is as much or more creative reconstruction as accurate
recollection.

-JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN, The

Birth of Christianity, 59

REMEMBERING JESUS

-ow accurate were the disciples in transmitting the proclamation

about Jesus? Opinions vary about the disciples' memory of Jesus-from
almost zero ability to exacting duplication. Those who argue that the
disciples simply forgot (such as John Dominic Crossan') or that their faith
overpowered their memories (such as the Jesus Seminar2) have some
roadblocks in their way.

As we mentioned in chapter 1 (pp. 29-31), their recollections were not

individual memories but collective ones-confirmed by other eyewitnesses
and burned into their minds by the constant retelling of the story. Thus, both
the repetition of the stories about Jesus and the verification of such by other
eyewitnesses served as checks and balances on the apostles' accuracy.'
Memory in community is a deathblow to the view that the disciples simply
forgot the real Jesus.

Another deficiency in Crossan's approach is that his anecdotes for faulty

memories simply do not relate to deifying a man or anything like it! They
involve such instances as forgetting where one was when he or she learned
of the Challenger explosion in 1986 or forgetting the lines of a memorized
poem. Yet, though some people forgot where they were when the
Challenger exploded, did they forget that the Challenger was lost in an
explosion or embellish the story? Applying this to the Gospels, Crossan's
illustrations show only that the time and place of Jesus' miracles or sayings
could have gotten muddled in the disciples' minds; there would have been
no hint of changing a non-miracle into a miracle. Consider that this was
memory in community, in which the disciples would surely have been
talking with each other immediately after one of Jesus' miracles or
messages. Also remember that the disciples were eyewitnesses to the
events. Given this situation, Crossan's entire construct becomes largely
irrelevant when applied to the Gospels.

Remarkably, the Jesus Seminar (of which Crossan was a member) seems
to recognize that faulty memory is not an adequate explanation for the Jesus
of the written Gospels. For them, faith has trumped memory. At least this is
a better explanation for what we see in the Gospels, but it involves, as we
have seen, a conspiracy theory that leaves too many loose ends.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who believe that the disciples
reproduced verbatim what Jesus said. Birger Gerhardsson has brought
together a massive amount of data to show how deeply entrenched the
culture of memory was in the ancient Jewish world.' He shows that Jesus
would have been regarded as a rabbi and his followers as disciples. In such
a relationship memorizing the master's words would have been completely
natural. He notes, for example:

A well-known saying of Hillel is reproduced in b. Hag. 9b (bar.): "The

man who repeats his chapter ... one hundred times is not to be
compared with the man who repeats it one hundred and one times."
And when the question of the Rabbis' repetition for their pupils is
taken up, it is the tireless Rabbi who is praised. Thus R. Perida is
treated as exemplary; he used to repeat every passage "four hundred
times" for a dull pupil, and once when the pupil in question had still
not absorbed the passage, R. Perida proceeded to repeat it "four
hundred times" more. This hyperbolical description gives us a most
eloquent picture of the simple, yet effective, methods used by teachers
when they wished to pass on doctrinal passages to their pupils.'
 The problem is that the verbatim quotation view doesn't square
completely with the written Gospels. Many scholars point out that ancient
historians were not concerned with quoting the very words of a person but
were very much concerned with getting the gist of what he had to say.' This
is almost surely the case with the Gospel writers as well.' For now, we
simply need to point out that the Gospels don't always record the words of
Jesus (or others) in exactly the same way-even for sayings that must surely
have been uttered on only one occasion (e.g., Jesus' cry from the cross or
the heavenly voice at Jesus' baptism). In the least, this suggests that
Gerhardsson's view is somewhat overstated.

At the same time, Gerhardsson has put forth real parallels from the
culture of the ancient Jewish rabbis and their disciples.' This contrasts with
the general tenor of those who see memory as individual and untrustworthy.
Crossan, for example, brings in many anecdotes from modern society to
show how our memories play tricks on us. Even apart from the probability
that the differences in abilities to memorize between modern and ancient
cultures must surely be significant, almost all of his illustrations are of
individuals whose memory is based on hearing something said, rather than
of communities (or groups of individuals) who were eyewitnesses? His
anecdotes are seriously deficient as true and proper parallels."

GETTING IT RIGHT
Perhaps the best model for what the disciples actually did in
remembering Jesus was developed by Kenneth Bailey. He speaks of an
"informal controlled oral tradition."" He argues that, although there was
some flexibility in the retelling of stories in an oral culture such as that of
ancient Palestine, a stable core was invariably repeated exactly the same. In
his epic volume, Jesus Remembered, New Testament scholar James D. G.
Dunn affirms Bailey's insights:

The crucial question, of course, is whether such an understanding of

oral tradition provides an explanatory model for the Jesus tradition,
and in particular, whether we can find the marks of such "informal,
 controlled oral tradition" in the Synoptic tradition itself. I believe it
does and think we can.12

A similar viewpoint is put forth by Darrell Bock in his essay, "The Words of
Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex?"13 He argues that "each
evangelist retells the living and powerful words of Jesus in a fresh way for
his readers, while faithfully and accurately presenting the `gist' of what
Jesus said. I call this approach one that recognizes the Jesus tradition as
`live' in its dynamic and quality."14

We have argued that the apostles and other eyewitnesses would surely
have told the story of Jesus repeatedly by the time the Gospels were written.
This repetition by multiple witnesses would provide quality control over the
tradition that was passed on. But four other things should be noted. First, as
Gerhardsson observes:

In the tradition of western culture it is only in our own day that the
memory has been effectively unloaded into books. Not until our own
day have we learned to accept a form of education which to a great
extent consists of being able to find the material which is required in
the right books, without needing to carry it all in the memory. Not until
our day has the pedagogical revolution taken place which has been
called "the dethronement of memory."15

This is such an important point-though largely ignored by those who

assume that the disciples forgot Jesus-that it needs to be stated differently
(lest you forget!). Dunn puts it this way:

One of the most striking flaws in the quest of the historical Jesus
results from the fact that it was undertaken in the age of the printed
word. Gutenberg and Caxton had instituted a revolution in human
perspective in sixteenth-century Europe much more significant in its
outworkings than the revolution associated with the names of
Copernicus and Galileo.... Consequently, we in the West simply take it
for granted that the basis of a sound education is the ability to read and
write.... In a word, we are all children of Gutenberg."
In terms of a deteriorating memory, there are actually three great epics: the
period before the printing press; the centuries from the printing press to the
personal computer; and the present age of the personal computer. It may
well be that some day the names of jobs and Gates will be mentioned in the
same breath with Gutenberg. Anyone who teaches Greek or Hebrew knows
how increasingly difficult it is today to convince students of the need to
memorize paradigms and vocabulary! Regardless, memorization has been
deemphasized for a long time in education due to the availability of the
printed page.

Second, as Bock noted, "If the role of oral tradition was important to the
ancients in general, it was especially important to Jewish culture."" This is
the point that Gerhardsson underscores with ample illustrations.

Third, Jesus' instructions were often, if not usually, uttered in rhythmic or

otherwise memorable fashion. As Barnett notes, "Much of his teaching is
cast in poetic form, employing alliteration [repetition of same sounds or
letters], paronomasia [puns, wordplays], assonance [resemblance of sound],
parallelism, and rhyme. According to R. Riesner, 80 percent of Jesus'
teaching is cast in poetic form."18 At the least, this suggests that Jesus
expected his disciples to learn from him, and learn well, both the content
and the form of much of his instruction.

Fourth, some of Jesus' disciples may well have taken notes during his
lifetime." Along these lines, an interesting parallel is found in the Dead Sea
Scrolls, where "attention is drawn to the Teacher of Righteousness, founder
of the Qumran sect, whose teachings appear to have been written down
during his lifetime."20 There is no reason why some of the disciples could
not have taken notes, though there is also no proof that they did.

In conclusion, the ancient Jewish culture, the relation of the disciples to

Jesus as their rabbi, the multiple witnesses, and the repetition of the stories
about Jesus from the very beginning all point to a strong oral tradition
behind the written Gospels. Although this oral culture does not suggest that
the Evangelists always wrote down verbatim what Jesus said, they certainly
got the essence right. (And this is in line with ancient historical reporting.)
But besides the general evidence from oral tradition, there is the specific
evidence known as the criteria of authenticity. These criteria also point to
the faithfulness of the Gospels in the proclamation about Jesus. We will
look at these criteria in our next chapter.
Chapter 3

AN ECCENTRIC JESUS
AND THE CRITERIA OF
AUTHENTICITY
Beware of finding a Jesus entirely
congenial to you.

-ROBERT W. FUNK, Roy W.

HOOVER, AND THE JESUS
SEMINAR, The Five Gospels, 5

-ow do critical scholars go about determining whether Jesus said

something recorded in the Gospels? They utilize what are called the criteria
of authenticity. Although there are several such criteria, we will look
specifically at four of the most important ones.

THE CRITERION OF DISSIMILARITY

First is the criterion of dissimilarity. This criterion essentially says that if

a saying attributed to Jesus differed from the teachings of the Judaism of his
day and from what the early church later taught, then the saying must be
authentic. The reason for this is easy to understand: If such a saying cannot
be found in Judaism prior to Jesus, then there is good reason to think that it
really goes back to him and not earlier. And if the early church did not pick
up on it, then obviously they did not invent the saying and put it on Jesus'
lips. The Jesus Seminar states as a fact that "we know that the evangelists
not infrequently ascribed Christian words to Jesus-they made him talk like a
Christian."' Whether such dogmatism is warranted is a matter we will not
take up here. We simply want to note that it is an important criterion that
Jesus said things that were unique.
 Application of this criterion usually is restricted to Jesus' difference from
Judaism rather than Christianity. For example, the Jesus Seminar notes that
the saying in Mark 7:15 ("There is nothing outside of a person that can
defile him by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that
defiles him") surely must be an authentic saying of Jesus because this is "a
broadside against his own religious traditions."' But this principle was
picked up by early Christianity (e.g., 1 Tim. 4:4: "For every creation of God
is good and no food is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving"), so
it is not absolutely unique to Jesus.

A major problem with the criterion of dissimilarity is that if it is observed

rigidly, the only Jesus we have left is an eccentric Jesusone who had
nothing in common with the Judaism of his day and had no influence on his
followers! As Darrell Bock observes, "If both sides of the dissimilarity are
affirmed, so that Jesus differs from both Judaism and the early church, then
Jesus becomes a decidedly odd figure, totally detached from his cultural
heritage and ideologically estranged from the movement he is responsible
for founding. One wonders how he ever came to be taken seriously."3

A second problem with this criterion is that scholars often use it to make
a negative assessment on whether Jesus could have said something. But in
light of its first inherent weakness, this criterion really can legitimately be
used only to make a positive assessment. That is, it should not be used to
deny that Jesus said something (since what he said could indeed be similar
to the Judaism of his day or the early church). This is true of virtually all of
the criteria of authenticity: these criteria should not be used to deny
whatJesus might have said, but only to confirm it. Unfortunately, critical
scholarship applies these criteria in ways they are not designed for. If we
were to apply this criterion to the work of the Jesus Seminar, one wonders
what would be left of their work-for what they say has been said by many
others before them and after them.

A third problem is that the Jesus Seminar and others often apply this
criterion inconsistently. That is, even when a saying passes the most
rigorous dissimilarity test, its authenticity might still be rejected. For
example, Jesus seems to be the only person in ancient Judaism to have
placed an "amen" at the beginning of his own statements. In Judaism, amen
was used almost exclusively to affirm God's will or to agree with statements
about his character.4 But in the Gospels, Jesus used "amen" at the beginning
of his own statements-as if to say that what he is about to declare is the will
and word of God. And in the twenty-five times that such an "amen" occurs
in John, it is always doubled (thus, "amen, amen, I say to you . . ."). The
usage in both the Synoptic Gospels and in John is dissimilar to anything in
Judaism or early Christianity. Almost invariably, Jesus' use of amen signals
a solemn statement about "the history of the kingdom of God bound up with
His person. Thus in the [amen, `amen'] preceding the XEyco U'[-Iv [lego
humin, `I say to you'] of Jesus we have the whole of Christology in nuce ['in
a nutshell']."' These sayings are both unique to Jesus and have a consistent
content-a content that addresses what he thought of himself in relation to
God's kingdom.

Before we discuss what the Jesus Seminar does with these unique sayings
of Jesus, a word should be said about their colored beads. The Jesus
Seminar made international headlines for the use of these beads, most likely
because the general public could easily grasp the concept. Each member of
the Jesus Seminar cast a vote by placing a bead into a box. Each bead was
red, pink, gray, or black, with the following meanings:
How does the Jesus Seminar deal with such a unique saying? Of the
seventy-five "amen"-prefixed sayings of Jesus, only four are considered
likely to go back to Jesus in some sense (all get the color pink). In addition
there are twenty "gray" sayings. The rest (fifty-one) are black.7 What would
cause the Jesus Seminar to reject the majority of "amen"-prefixed sayings
of Jesus? Some other criterion is apparently overriding the criterion of
dissimilarity. We will look at another example to see what it is.

According to the four Gospels, "the Son of Man" was Jesus' favorite self-
designation. What is unusual about the phrase is that it is almost never
found in ancient Judaism or early Christian literature-except when it
appears on the lips of Jesus. The British scholar C. F. D. Moule draws the
conclusion that

the simplest explanation of the almost entire consistency with which

the definite singular is confined to Christian sayings is to postulate that
Jesus did refer to Dan 7, speaking of "the Son of man [whom you
know from that vision] ." .. . To attribute the phrase to Jesus himself is
not to deny that some of the Son of Man sayings in the Gospels may
well be an addition modeled on the original sayings; but I can think of
no reason why there should not be a dominical origin for each of the
main types of sayings.'

At the least, Moule is arguing from the criterion of dissimilarity for the
authenticity of such "Son of Man" sayings in the Gospels.

What does the Jesus Seminar do with these sayings? Bock notes that they
"are excluded as being authentic, except when they describe humans as the
son of man, a usage attested to in Judaism through its use in the Psalter and
Ezekiel! The reason why the title `Son of Man' is excluded is the fact that it
expresses such a high Christological view of Jesus."9
 Regarding the Jesus Seminar's inconsistent application of this criterion,
Bock observes:

What this "Son of Man" example reveals perhaps is a hidden criterion-

a Christological standard-in the Seminar's evaluation of sayings: If a
saying says Jesus is more than a sage and a teller of parables, then it is
not authentic. But this approach begs the question. If, on the other
hand, the critical criteria are not consistently applied by the Seminar's
scholars, then certainly a claim of bias may be justified. On the other
hand, if Jesus was merely a sage and teller of parables, then why all
the fuss over him? Where did the severe animosity surrounding him
come from? How can they explain his rejection, given their slight
portion of authentic sayings on mostly proverbial topics?"

Bock raises several significant points here. Not only is the Jesus Seminar
inconsistent in applying its own principles due to a strong bias against
seeing Jesus as more than a man, but such bias also leaves them with a
Jesus whose death as a criminal is a huge mystery. All historians know that
an effect must have a sufficient cause. But in the Jesus Seminar's
reconstructed and tamed Jesus, the cause is not sufficient for the effect of
his crucifixion.

We might add one other point here that we will address more fully in the
rest of this book. In the first century A.D., the state of Jewish monotheism
was remarkably strong. But the Gospels present Jesus as claiming to be
more than merely a prophet, more than a sage, more than a storyteller. His
actions as well as his words show him coming perilously close to claiming
to be divine. The Judaism of Jesus' day certainly would have an aversion to
this-and did! But would the first Christians readily accept it? Since the first
Christians were Jews, they too would have the same problems with this idea
as the rest of their Jewish culture. To the extent that the Gospels are rooted
in Palestinian soil, the criterion of dissimilarity reveals Jesus to be more
than a mere man. But if someone is simply not open to this possibility, only
then will this criterion-and thus, Jesus' divinity-be rejected.

CRITERION OF MULTIPLE ATTESTATION

 Second is the criterion of multiple attestation. This criterion says that
"when a saying appears either in multiple sources (M, L, Q, Mark) or in
multiple forms ([e.g.], in a miracle account, a parable, and/or apocalyptic
settings)" then it has multiple attestation." As a reminder of what we said at
the beginning of this section, M, L, Q, and Mark refer to the four sources
that are used by Matthew and Luke. M simply means material unique to
Matthew, L is material unique to Luke, and Mark is the Gospel of Mark. Q
refers to the common material between Luke and Matthew and may have
been a written or an oral source or a combination of the two.

As with the criterion of dissimilarity, the rigorous application of this

criterion would give us a truncated Jesus, accepting only those sayings that
he repeated in different contexts and in different ways. What it leaves out
are many sayings uttered in unique situations or said only once. Like the
criterion of dissimilarity, this criterion is limited in that it should be used
only for positive affirmations of what Jesus said. If a saying of Jesus is
recorded just once, does this mean that he did not really say it? If we were
to apply that criterion to most other ancient historical figures, we would
have to throw out most of what we know of ancient history! As Bock notes,
"This criterion is helpful for what it includes, though one must be careful
not to suggest that failure of a saying to be attested in multiple sources is
adequate reason for rejecting it.""

Sadly, the Jesus Seminar and others use this criterion both positively and
negatively. Yet, if we were to apply this criterion to the writings attributed
to Robert Funk-which are far more plentiful than the words of Jesus in the
Gospels-how would they fare? Some of his volumes were on the cutting
edge of biblical scholarship while others were at least provocative, but what
he said in these volumes was not echoed in other works of his. He often
dealt with one issue in a book, abandoning the topic completely in later
writings. Does this mean that he didn't really write those books and say
these things?

In addition, like the criterion of dissimilarity, the criterion of multiple

attestation is applied inconsistently by the Jesus Seminar. For example,
consider the expression "I have come"/ "the Son of Man has come," one of
Jesus' pet phrases by which he introduced his mission. This is found in
multiple sources. It is, in fact, found in all four synoptic sources-M, Mark,
Q, and L (see Matt. 5:17; 11:19 [M] ; Mark 2:17; 10:45 [Mark]; Matt.
10:34-35/Luke 12:49-51 [Q]; and Luke 19:10 [L]).13 That he would speak
of his mission (which "I have come" implies) obviously shows that he is
more than a sage, a poet, or a peasant philosopher. Included in this mix of
sayings is Mark 10:45 ("For even the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many"). One of the finest
scholars on Luke's Gospel today, Darrell Bock, has observed the irony that

the Jesus Seminar regards much of this famous line as "Mark's

creation," printed in gray. Why do they reject it? The original saying in
their view was about service, not redemption. The service concept
belongs to Jesus, but not the redemptive idea. They argue that Luke's
shorter version indicates that Mark made the change and supplied the
more theological version of what originally was just a proverb, even
though Mark, in this case, is recognized by all as the earlier Gospel!14

Bock concludes by noting the inconsistency in the Jesus Seminar's methods:

Again, the real criterion applied to this saying is not multiple

attestation but the hidden Christological standard of the Seminar that is
applied even when the source evidence goes the other direction. In
fact, one can suggest that Christology is the real issue in the debate
over many sayings, much more so than history or the objective
application of abstract criteria. In an almost circular kind ofway, a
saying is accepted because it reflects a certain circumscribed
Christology formed on an impression not created by the consistent
application of the criteria, but by the preconceived, limited
Christology. This Christology is affirmed because Jesus was only, it is
argued on the basis of the accepted sayings, a sage and teller of
parables."

CRITERION OF COHERENCE
 Third is the criterion of coherence. This criterion argues that whatever
else scholars discover about Jesus in the Gospels, it should conform to or
cohere with the rest of the picture that scholars have painted of the real, or
historical, Jesus. Of course, to the extent that they have painted an
inaccurate picture of the real Jesus, this criterion will be invalid. Now the
Jesus Seminar affirms only 18 percent of Jesus' words as authentic-as going
back to Jesus either verbally or conceptually. 16 To the extent that that
database is too small, the Jesus Seminar's Jesus is too small. Their
inconsistencies in applying the other two criteria have already given them a
skewed Jesus. The criterion of coherence is thus only valid when the first
two criteria are applied properly.

CRITERION OF EMBARRASSMENT

A fourth criterion is that of embarrassment. This has to do with things in

the Gospels that could be perceived to be an embarrassment to early
Christians, to the disciples, or even to Jesus. The only reason to put such
embarrassing sayings in the Gospels is that they were really uttered. It is
hard to imagine the early Christians inventing embarrassments for
themselves when they already had enough problems from persecution!
Although this criterion is very important, like the others it is not used
consistently by the Jesus Seminar.

For example, in Mark 13:32, Jesus declares, "But as for that day or hour
no one knows it-neither the angels in heaven, nor the Sonexcept the Father."
The early church came to see Jesus as more than a man-in fact, as deity in
the flesh. So, such a statement would indeed cause them some
embarrassment.17 That Jesus identifies himself as "Son" here fits perfectly
with his other self-descriptions. But the Jesus Seminar regards this saying
as inauthentic. Why? "The Jesus Seminar was in general agreement that
Jesus did not make chronological predictions about the end of history at
all."18 Here we plainly see a criterion against a high view of Jesus at work.
But if the Jesus Seminar is against seeing Jesus as more than a man as an a
priori assumption, wouldn't that unduly bias them in any assessment about
who the real Jesus was? How can they honestly, openly assess the data if it
is simply not possible for Jesus to predict the future?
 There are other instances of the criterion of embarrassment in the
Gospels. For example, the many negative statements in the Gospel of Mark
about the first heroes of Christianity-the apostles-fits this criterion. Jesus'
frequent rebukes of the disciples for their lack of faith, their apparent
dullness in understanding his words, and their wrangling for positions of
leadership all point to authenticity. It is hard to read the Gospel of Mark
without getting a negative impression of the apostles, yet this is the earliest
of the Gospels according to most scholars. Eyewitnesses would still be
around, including some of the apostles. Negative statements are strong
indications that these things were said. "The fact that the perplexing and
offensive material ... was preserved at all and reached Mark says much for
the general reliability of the sources used by him."19

Another illustration of the criterion of embarrassment would be the first

witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. All four Gospels say that women
were the first ones to the tomb, the first ones to learn that Jesus was alive
(Matt. 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-11; John 20:1-14). Why should this
cause embarrassment? Because women in Jewish society were not
considered credible witnesses.20 No wonder the disciples reacted as they
did in Luke 24:11: "But these words [that the women spoke] seemed like
pure nonsense to them, and they did not believe them."

By the criterion of embarrassment, the Jesus Seminar has fully agreed

that Jesus was indeed baptized by John (especially since John's baptism was
a baptism of repentance).21 Why, then, do they reject the saying in Mark
13:32 or the testimony that Jesus had risen from the dead?

As Bock has noted, the Jesus Seminar has been inconsistent in the use of
their own criteria, apparently because of a hidden agenda. Ironically, the
Jesus Seminar warned readers about the "temptation ... to create Jesus in
our own image, to marshal the facts to support preconceived
convictions."22 They sum up all of their criteria as a single general rule:
"Beware of finding a Jesus entirely congenial to you."23 We couldn't agree
more.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
 One of the things missing in all these criteria is intersection with other
parts of the New Testament. The rest of the New Testament, for example,
places a high view on preserving the tradition, on keeping the fundamental
truths about Jesus intact.

In Galatians 2, Paul expresses concern about the purity of his gospel.

Paul had been preaching the gospel as he knew it for fourteen years. Then
he came to Jerusalem to verify that his gospel was exactly the same as that
of the rest of the apostles-those who had known Jesus in the flesh. He says,
"But I did so only in a private meeting with the influential people, to make
sure that I was not running-or had not run-in vain" (v. 2). He says that
"those influential leaders added nothing to my message" (v. 6). Here we see,
in an indisputable letter from the apostle Paul, that the gospel that Paul had
been preaching for years was the same gospel that the rest of the apostles
preached.

In Galatians 1, Paul says that about three years after his conversion, the
church in Jerusalem had heard that he was preaching "the faith he once tried
to destroy" (v. 23). What is significant here is the continuity between the
apostles' gospel prior to Paul's conversion and Paul's gospel shortly
thereafter. There is no hint of collusion, no sense that the gospel had
changed over the years. From the very beginning, the good news about
Jesus Christ always had the same key elements. There is a large gap left in
scholars' use of the criteria of authenticity when they fail to consider the
independent confirmation from Paul that the gospel from the beginning was
the same gospel. Although such confirmation does not deal with many
particulars in the life of Jesus,24 the reasons for Jesus' death, the belief in
his resurrection, the title Messiah, and by implication his performing of
miracles, are all part of this independent confirmation. To reduce Jesus to a
mere sage, as some skeptics want to do, simply does not handle the
historical data adequately. Apart from the fact that such a minimalist view
of Jesus cannot explain why he died on a cross as a criminal, to
categorically deny that Jesus was called Messiah by his disciples or that he
performed miracles is to ignore the available confirmatory data.

CONCLUSION
 We have argued in this section that the period between Jesus and the
writing of the Gospels was anything but dormant. The gospel spread, and
the narratives about Jesus' life and teachings were repeated hundreds or
thousands of times by reliable eyewitnesses. We also have noted that the
Jewish culture of the first century A.D. was a memorizing culture. This,
coupled with eyewitness testimony and the confirmation of memory in
community rather than merely by individuals, argues strongly that the oral
tradition behind the written Gospels was a stable, reliable source of
information. We also have noted that the criteria of authenticity that
scholars employ to determine what Jesus said and did can only make
positive assessments, not negative ones. Otherwise, the Jesus portrayed is
an eccentric Jesus who learned nothing from his own culture and made no
impact on his followers.

After critiquing various critical reconstructions of the life of Jesus, Scot

McKnight addresses the basic issue of historical causeand-effect: "My
fundamental disagreement with each of them is that such a Jesus would
never have been crucified, would never have drawn the fire that he did,
would never have commanded the following that he did, and would never
have created a movement that still shakes the world."25

In sum, it is hard to avoid James D. G. Dunn's conclusion about oral

tradition: "What we today are confronted with in the Gospels is not the top
layer (last edition) of a series of increasingly impenetrable layers, but the
living tradition of Christian celebration which takes us with surprising
immediacy to the heart of the first memories of Jesus."26
PART 2
 POLITICALLY
CORRUPT?
The Tainting of Ancient
New Testament Texts
Chapter 4
 CAN WE TRUST THE
NEW TESTAMENT?
The Quantity and Quality of Textual Variants
Even careful copyists make mistakes, as every proofreader knows. So
we will never be able to claim certain knowledge of exactly what the
original text of any biblical writing was.

-ROBERT W. FUNK, Roy W.

HOOVER, AND THE JESUS
SEMINAR, The Five Gospels, 6

" Te have traced the oral tradition behind the Gospels to the written
texts and have seen that the Gospels are at least generally reliable as
witnesses to the person and work of Jesus Christ. But what if the copies of
those Gospels were corrupted? And what if the New Testament books were
copied so poorly that we can't possibly recover the original text? After all,
hasn't the Bible been copied and recopied and translated and retranslated so
many times that the original wording must have been lost long ago? In short,
is what we have now what they wrote then?

In this section we will take a bird's-eye view ofthe issues involved in the
transmission of the New Testament down through the centuries. There is a
vast amount of literature on this topic. Our objective is to acquaint you with
the general discipline known as textual criticism. Myths and silly notions
abound when it comes to this subject, but by the end of this section you
should understand the basic facts about the text of the New Testament.

THE GOAL OF NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM

Textual criticism in general is the study of the copies of any written

document whose original is unknown or nonexistent in order to determine
the exact wording of the original. Such a task is necessary for an extensive
amount of literature, especially that which was written prior to the invention
of the movable-type printing press in the mid-fifteenth century. And the New
Testament is no exception to this rule.' Textual criticism is needed for the
New Testament for two reasons: (1) the original documents (known as
autographs) no longer exist, and (2) no two copies agree completely. In fact,
among even the most closely related copies from the first millennium A.D.,
there are as many as ten differences per chapter. If the originals were still
with us, there would, of course, be no need for this discipline. Since the
remaining (or extant) copies disagree, however, some criteria are needed to
determine the wording of the autographs.

THE QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF THE TEXTUAL VARIANTS

The Greek New Testament, as we know it today, has approximately one

hundred thirty-eight thousand words. There are thousands upon thousands of
textual variants. A textual variant is any place among the manuscripts of the
New Testament where there is not uniformity of wording. The best estimate
is that there are between three hundred thousand and four hundred thousand
textual variants among the manuscripts. That means that on average for
every word in the Greek New Testament there are at least two variants. If
this were the only piece of data we had, it would discourage anyone from
attempting to recover the wording of the original.

One way to measure the impact of these variants is a comparison of the

Greek New Testament that the King James Version (1611) translators used
and the Greek New Testament that most scholars today use. The Greek text
behind the KJV was based essentially on about half a dozen manuscripts,
none of which were earlier than the tenth century. The Greek New Testament
used today is based on thousands of manuscripts, some of which even date
back to the second century. We will discuss this point later, but what we
should note here is this: Most modern scholars view the Greek manuscripts
that stand behind the KJV to be inferior because, in part, the copyists added
words to Scripture. But how much they added can be overstated. Over a
period of many centuries, only about twenty-five hundred words were added
to the original text. The New Testament grew in size from the earliest copies
to the latest copies-fourteen hundred years later-by about 2 percent. That is a
remarkably stable transmissional process. Thus, although the New Testament
has grown over time, it has grown very little. Since the earliest texts that we
have agree substantially with the later ones, if we were to project backward
to the original, the changes from the original text to the earliest copies would
be miniscule. One might be pardoned if he or she thinks that this remarkably
stable transmission implies something about the providence of God in
preserving the Scriptures.2

Nevertheless, even twenty-five hundred words is not an insignificant

amount. Furthermore, these represent only the additions. There are also
hundreds of substitutions that do not add to the length of the New Testament
but are nevertheless differences between the earlier manuscripts and later
ones. And what happened to all those hundreds of thousands of variants?
They may not show up in the King James Version, but they need to be
reckoned with.

We cannot consider the quantity of the variants without also looking at

their quality. How many of them affect the meaning of the text? How many
of them are "viable"-that is, they are found in manuscripts with a sufficient
pedigree that they have some likelihood of reflecting the original wording?
The variants can be broken down into the following categories:

• spelling differences and nonsense errors;

• minor differences that do not affect translation or that involve

synonyms;

• differences that affect the meaning of the text but are not viable; and

• differences that both affect the meaning of the text and are viable.
 Spelling Differences and Nonsense Errors

Of the hundreds of thousands of textual variants, the majority are spelling

differences that have no impact on the meaning of the text. For example, the
name for John is spelled in Greek two different ways, either Idannes or
Manes. The same person is in view either way; the only difference is
whether the name has two n's or one. One of the most common textual
variants involves what is called a movable nu. The Greek letter nu (n) can
occur at the end of certain words when they precede a word that starts with a
vowel. This is similar to the two forms of the indefinite article in English: a
or an. But whether the nu appears in these words or not, there is absolutely
no difference in meaning. It is so insignificant that most textual critics
simply ignore the variants involving a movable nu when transcribing the
words of a manuscript? It affects nothing.

Some of the spelling differences are nonsense readings. These come about
when a scribe is fatigued, inattentive, or perhaps does not know Greek very
well. Now, you might think that scribes who made such errors could have a
serious impact on the copies of the text. In reality, nonsense readings are
almost never repeated by the next scribe. Further, nonsense readings tell
scholars a great deal about how a scribe went about his work. For example,
an early manuscript of Luke and John, known as Papyrus 75, or P75, has
some interesting nonsense readings. Each reading involves one or two
letters, suggesting that the scribe copied the text one or two letters at a time.'
Indeed, this scribe was very careful. He (or she)' was a detail person!

Another early manuscript, Codex Washingtonianus, or Codex W (so-

called because it is in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.),
contains all four Gospels. In one place, the scribe wrote the word and when
he should have written the word Lord. In Greek, the two words look
somewhat similar (kai and kurios), thus creating the occasion for the mental
lapse. But using the "and" makes no sense in the context. There is evidence
that the error came at the end of the scribe's shift, when fatigue had set in.6
In such cases, the wording that the scribe bungled is easy to reconstruct.
Differences That Do Not Affect Translation or That Involve Synonyms

The next largest category of variants consists of readings that do not affect
translation or that involve synonyms. These are variants other than spelling
and nonsense readings but nevertheless do not alter the way the text is
translated-or at least understood.

We will begin with those variants that do not affect translation. For
example, Greek sometimes uses the definite article with proper names, while
English does not. The Greek New Testament will speak of "Mary" or "the
Mary," "Jesus" or "the Jesus," "Paul" or "the Paul." Scholars debate the
significance of the article with proper names, and no definitive principles
have developed.' One of the reasons scholars do not see much significance in
this is simply that the manuscripts vary on the presence of the article. But in
English no translational difference occurs. Thus, for example, in Luke 2:16
we read, "So they hurried off and located Mary and Joseph, and found the
baby lying in a manger," while the Greek text speaks of "the Mary" and "the
Joseph."

Another frequent variant of this sort is known as transposition. Unlike

English, the meaning of the sentence in Greek is more dependent on the
inflection of the words than on word order. That is because Greek is a highly
inflected language-one that has a myriad of suffixes on nouns and verbs, as
well as prefixes and infixes on verbs. The forms of the words change to fit
the syntax of the sentence. In English, a sentence comprised of the three
words God, loves, and Paul can mean two quite different things depending
on the word order. But in Greek, since there is one form for God when it is
the subject of the verb and another form for God when it is the direct object,
word order is much more flexible. Because syntax resides in the forms rather
than in the order, Greek can use a construction like the English words "God
loves Paul" in any of several ways, even the order "Paul loves God" if the
word endings mean "God loves Paul":

• "God loves Paul."

• "Paul loves God."

 • "Loves God Paul."

• "Loves Paul God."

• "God Paul loves."

• "Paul God loves."

As long as "God" is in the nominative case and "Paul" is in the accusative

case, all of the above sentences mean "God loves Paul." The difference in
word order indicates emphasis, not basic meaning.

How does this relate to textual criticism? Word order changes are frequent
in the manuscripts, yet these transpositions do not affect the basic syntax of
what is being said.'

Then there are the variants that involve synonyms. The translation maybe
affected by these variants, but the meaning is not. We can understand how
these variants arose when we consider the "growth" of the New Testament
over time. One of the principal reasons why the New Testament grew over
the centuries was due to its liturgical use. Specifically, manuscripts known as
lectionaries contributed heavily to the expansion of the New Testament.

Lectionaries are manuscripts that have assigned Scripture readings for

various days of the week. The assigned reading for a particular day could not
very well begin with, "Now, when he was teaching by the seashore." Who is
the he? The lectionaries added clarification to the text precisely because they
pulled passages out of their larger contexts-passages that often used only
pronouns to identify the main characters. The scribes knew the Scriptures
well, especially because of constant use and memorization of the
lectionaries. They would often import the added words from the lectionaries
into the biblical text. For example, in the heart of Mark's Gospel, for the
space of eighty-nine verses (Mark 6:31-8:26), Jesus is never identified by
name or title. He is not called "Jesus," "the Lord," "teacher," or "rabbi." The
pronouns9 are the only indications to go on that tell who is in view. Because
of the influence from the lectionaries, most manuscripts add nouns here and
there to identify the person in view. In these eighty-nine verses in Mark, for
example, the majority of later manuscripts add "Jesus" in 6:34; 7:27; 8:1,
and 17. These variants certainly affect the translation, but the referent (Jesus)
is still the same either way.

Meaningful Variants That Are Not Viable

The next largest category consists of variants that impact the meaning of
the text but are not viable. They are variants found in a single manuscript or
group of manuscripts that, by themselves, have little likelihood of going
back to the wording of the original text. For example, in 1 Thessalonians 2:9,
instead of "the gospel of God" (which is found in almost all manuscripts), a
late medieval manuscript has "the gospel of Christ." This is meaningful, but
it is not viable. There is little chance that one late manuscript could contain
the original wording when the textual tradition is uniformly on the side of
another reading.

The many harmonizations in the Gospel manuscripts offer other examples

of meaningful variants that are not viable. Scribes had a tendency to
harmonize parallel passages in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Two groups of
manuscripts, known as the Western text and the Byzantine text, especially
did this kind of thing. Indeed, one of the ways that scholars can tell whether
a particular variant is authentic is to see if it harmonizes. Since it is a known
scribal practice to harmonize the wording between two Gospels," the reading
that does not harmonize is typically considered to be authentic. Especially
when such non-harmonizations are found in earlier manuscripts, the
evidence that there is no harmonization is convincing that these readings are
authentic. An example of harmonization in the Gospel manuscripts can be
found on any page of the Gospels. One will have to suffice for our purposes.

In Matthew 9, Jesus is eating with some unsavory people. (This story is

also found in Mark 2 and Luke 5.) This offends the Pharisees. In verse 11
they ask Jesus' disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and
sinners?" A handful of Greek manuscripts and other early versions add "and
drink" after "eat" to conform the wording to what is found in Luke 5:30.
Meanwhile, in Mark 2:16, the wording is similar to Matthew's, but here the
majority of later manuscripts add the words "and drink." As for Luke 5:30,
there is only one known manuscript that omits "and drink," thus bringing it
into conformity with the wording in Matthew and Mark.

This textual problem illustrates a couple of things. First, scribes were

prone to harmonize the Gospel accounts, even when there was no real
discrepancy between them. Second, when it came to harmonization, the
scribes tended to add material to one Gospel rather than take away material
from another.

Meaningful and Viable Variants

The final-and by far the smallest-category consists of variants that are

both meaningful and viable. Only about 1 percent of all textual variants fit
this category. But even here the situation can be overstated. By "meaningful"
we mean that the variant changes the meaning of the text to some degree. It
may not be terribly significant, but if the variant affects our understanding of
the passage, then it is meaningful. To argue for large-scale skepticism
because we cannot be certain about a very small portion of the text is a
careless overstatement, yet this is just the impression given by Funk,
Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar." We have seen that the vast bulk of textual
variants are inconsequential. To be sure, whether John's name was spelled in
Greek with one nu or two may remain a mystery. But the point is that John's
name is not spelled Mary. The issues that textual critics face are, frankly, of
such small importance to most other New Testament scholars that the latter
often assume that there is nothing left to do in the discipline. The reality is
that, although most of the text of the New Testament is not in dispute, some
passages are. We will discuss in a later chapter what is at stake, but for now
we wish simply to illustrate this last category of usage, the meaningful and
viable variants."

A notorious textual problem is found in Romans 5:1. Does Paul say, "We
have peace" (echomen) or "let us have peace" (echomen)? The difference
between the indicative and subjunctive mood is a single letter. The similar
sounding omicron (o) and omega ((w) were most likely pronounced alike in
Hellenistic Greek (as they are in later Greek), making the decision even
more difficult. Indeed, scholars are split on this textual problem." But the
point here is this: Is either variant a contradiction of the teaching of
Scripture? Hardly. If Paul is saying that Christians have peace (indicative
mood), he is speaking about their positional status with God the Father. If
Paul is urging Christians to have peace with God (subjunctive mood), he is
urging them to grab hold of the "indicatives of the faith"-the foundational
truths on which the Christian life is based-and live them out in their daily
lives.

In 1 Thessalonians 2:7, Paul describes himself and his colleagues either as

"gentle" or "little children." The difference between the variants in Greek is
just one letter-epioi versus nepioi. If "little children" is the correct reading,
then Paul has mixed his metaphors (though he is prone to do this from time
to time14), for he follows this up by declaring that he has loved the
Christians in Thessalonica "like a nursing mother."15

One of the most common variants involves the use of the first person
plural pronoun and the second person plural pronoun. There is only one
letter difference between the two in Greek. A significant place where this
textual problem occurs is in 1 John 1:4. The verse says either, "Thus we are
writing these things so that our joy may be complete," or "Thus we are
writing these things so that your joy may be complete." The meaning is
affected, and both readings have ancient testimony. At the same time, neither
variant necessarily cancels out the other. Whether the author is speaking of
his joy or the readers' joy, the obvious point of this verse is that the writing
of this letter brings joy.16 It's not much of a stretch to see one party as
becoming the joy for the other.

Scholars look at a combination of factors in determining the wording of

the original text. One of these of course is the manuscripts and ancient
versions-known collectively as external evidence. But another, equally
important factor, is internal evidence. We will discuss both of these issues in
chapter 7. Suffice it to say here that what scribes were likely to do (such as
harmonize passages) and what the author was likely to do constitute internal
evidence. External evidence and internal evidence are normally on the same
side-that is, both of them usually point to the same reading as authentic.
Thus, they become a twofold cord, one that is not easily broken.
 On rare occasions, the external evidence and the internal evidence are at
odds with each other. For example, Philippians 1:14 says, "Most of the
brothers and sisters ... dare to speak the word fearlessly." The question
naturally arises, What word? Paul doesn't say. Scribes predictably added "of
God," clarifying what word is in view. Surprisingly, it is the early, better
manuscripts that add "of God," while the majority of later manuscripts leave
this out. Here is a classic example of the internal evidence and the external
evidence disagreeing with one another. In such cases, scholars have to
choose the reading that seems to give rise to the other. In this case, the
shorter reading is deemed by most to be authentic. Nevertheless, there is no
doctrine at stake and no great historical argument that rests with either
variant.

As a last example of meaningful and viable variants, we will consider the

largest textual variant in the New Testament. It involves a dozen verses." In
the last chapter of Mark's Gospel (chap. 16), the earliest and best
manuscripts end the book at verse 8: "Then they went out and ran from the
tomb, for terror and bewilderment had seized them. And they said nothing to
anyone, because they were afraid." This is an awfully abrupt ending to a
Gospel. The women who were afraid had been told by the angel that Jesus
Christ had risen from the dead and that they were to announce this to the
disciples. The vast majority of manuscripts have twelve more verses after
this, but the earliest and best manuscripts stop here.

Scholars have debated whether Mark intended to end his Gospel at this
point, whether he wrote more but his real ending was lost, or whether the
twelve verses found in the majority of manuscripts are the original ending to
the Gospel.18 For our purposes, we simply want to point out that whether
these verses are authentic or not, no fundamental truth is gained or lost by
them. To be sure, the textual decision will affect how one views the Gospel
of Mark as a whole, but it does not affect any cardinal doctrine. We will
come back to the issue of what teachings of Scripture are influenced by
viable textual variants in chapter 8. For now, we need only to note that this
textual variant does not affect any cardinal doctrine.

Although the quantity of textual variants among the New Testament

manuscripts numbers in the hundreds of thousands, the quality of these
variants as changes in meaning pales in comparison. Only about 1 percent of
the variants are both meaningful and viable. And, as we will see in our final
chapter in this section, these do not affect foundational beliefs. We can
visually represent the kinds of variants we have in the New Testament in a
pie chart. Notice again how very few actually are significant.

Quality of Variants Among New Testament Manuscripts

Chapter 5

MYTHS ABOUT
MANUSCRIPTS
Even if we had more extensive copies of the Gospels from within a
couple of generations of their writing, this would not establish the
state of the originals, nor how much evolution they had undergone
within those first two or three generations. It is precisely at the
earliest phase of a sect's development that the greatest mutation of
ideas takes place, and with it the state of the writings which reflect
the mutation.... We have nothing in the Gospels which casts a clear
light on that early evolution or provides us with a guarantee that
the surviving texts are a reliable picture of the beginnings of the
faith.

-EARL DOHERTY, Challenging the

Verdict, 39

The temporal gap that separates Jesus from the first surviving
copies of the gospels-about one hundred and seventy-five years-
corresponds to the lapse in time from 1776-the writing of the
Declaration of Independence-to 1950. What if the oldest copies of
the founding document dated only from 1950?

-ROBERT W. FUNK, ROY W.

HOOVER, AND THE JESUS
SEMINAR, The Five Gospels, 6
 ~ur task in this chapter is to discuss a couple of attitudes that are held
by some today. On the one hand, some skeptics make the situation look
much worse than it really is. Although it is true that we do not know exactly,
in every instance, what the wording of the original New Testament was, this
does not mean that we should abandon all hope of grasping the New
Testament's basic contents. Much more can be said, and much more will in
the next chapter. On the other hand, some Christians have replaced a quest
for truth with a quest for certainty. In so doing, any hint of doubt is anathema
to them. But that, too, is an unreasonable position.

MYTHS AND ATTITUDES

There are two attitudes to avoid when it comes to the text of the New
Testament: absolute certainty and total despair. Essentially only one group
claims to have absolute certainty, the "King James only" folks. For them,
having certainty about the text is a sine qua non of the Christian faith. We
won't spend much time on this viewpoint, but we do want to touch on it. As
for absolute despair, only the most radical liberals embrace this-and with
relish! To be skeptical about the text of the New Testament is essential to a
postmodern agenda, in which all things are possible but nothing is probable.
The only certainty of postmodernism is uncertainty itself. Concomitant with
this is an intellectual pride-pride that one "knows" enough to be skeptical
about all positions.

The Mvth of Absolute Certainty

There is a popular myth that we are getting further from the original text
of the New Testament as time passes. Since the King James Version was
published four hundred years ago, this viewpoint argues, it must surely be
closer to the original text than modern translations. Indeed, it must be four
hundredyears closer. But in order for this view to be true, three assumptions
must be demonstrated: (1) We have lost all data about the manuscripts that
were used in producing the KJv New Testament, (2) no earlier manuscripts
have been discovered in the past four hundred years, and (3) all modern
translations are based on earlier translations exclusively rather than on an
examination of the manuscript data.
 The Myth About Modern Translations: "As time goes on, translations get
further removed from the original."

All three of these assumptions are demonstrably false. First, we still have
almost all of the manuscripts that were used in producing the KJV. And of
those manuscripts used in the King James Version that are no longer known
to exist, their wording is found in the early printed Greek New Testaments of
the sixteenth century. Erasmus's third edition of his Novum Instrumentum
(1522) stands squarely behind the KJV, though through the route of several
other editions of the Greek New Testament. Erasmus used about half a dozen
manuscripts for the majority of his work, the earliest from the tenth century.
The KJV, therefore, was based on manuscripts only six hundred to seven
hundred years older than the translation itself.

Second, the number of Greek manuscripts known today is nearly one

hundred times greater than the number used in producing the KJv. Not only
this, but the principal manuscripts on which modern translations are based
are significantly earlier than those that stand behind the KJV. Our earliest
manuscripts date to the second century, and the major manuscripts are from
the fourth and fifth centuries. Altogether, over four hundred manuscripts are
known today that predate the earliest ones used by Erasmus.'

Third, although modern translations of the New Testament are produced

by a comparison with former translations (and some of them are consciously
in the tradition of earlier works'), the newer translations are also based on a
detailed examination of the best critical editions of the Greek manuscripts.

Finally, since modern translations follow the eminently reasonable

principle of being based on the earliest manuscripts unless there are good
reasons to prefer later copies, we must admit to some doubt about the
original wording. As the centuries passed, there was, in fact, greater
uniformity among the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.'

Modern translations are based on earlier and more numerous manuscripts

than the KJv. The manuscripts that stand behind the KJv are not forgotten;
rather, better and earlier witnesses have displaced them.

The Manuscripts Behind the Modern Translations

The Myth of Total Despair

Earl Doherty's response to Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ" sets up an
imaginary courtroom scene. In his third chapter, "Manuscripts and the
Canon," he cross-examines Bruce Metzger, the preeminent New Testament
textual critic from Princeton Seminary. He first tries to dismiss Metzger's
credentials by asking whether Strobel's accolade of Metzger as "on the
cutting edge of New Testament scholar ship" leaves room "for true radicals
like John Dominic Crossan and Burton Mack, or moderate liberals like
Helmut Koester."5 This sort of tactic mixes apples and oranges. Crossan,
Mack, and Koester are well-known liberal New Testament scholars, but not
one of them is a textual critic. Yet Doherty uses this sleight of hand to cast
aspersions on Metzger's credentials.
 He then argues that the wealth of New Testament manuscripts we have
today gives us no indication of what the original New Testament text looked
like.

Even if we had more extensive copies of the Gospels from within a

couple of generations of their writing, this would not establish the state
of the originals, nor how much evolution they had undergone within
those first two or three generations. It is precisely at the earliest phase
of a sect's development that the greatest mutation of ideas takes place,
and with it the state of the writings which reflect the mutation.... We
have nothing in the Gospels which casts a clear light on that early
evolution or provides us with a guarantee that the surviving texts are a
reliable picture of the beginnings of the faith.'

This sort of skepticism is unwarranted. Although it is true that the textual

transmission of the early decades after the New Testament was written are
shrouded in mystery, it is inconceivable that the manuscripts, ancient
translations, and patristic quotations that emerge shortly thereafter all got it
wrong.

Similarly, the statement in The Five Gospels by Funk, Hoover, and the
Jesus Seminar is also unwarranted: "The temporal gap that separates Jesus
from the first surviving copies of the Gospels-about one hundred and
seventy-five years-corresponds to the lapse in time from 1776-the writing of
the Declaration of Independenceto 1950. What if the oldest copies of the
founding document dated only from 1950? '17 What is wrong with this
statement?

First, the facts are wrong. Three pages later, The Five Gospels says that
the earliest Gospel fragment "can be dated to approximately 125 G.E. or
earlier." This would mean that this fragment comes from within one hundred
years of the life of Jesus. And although it is but a small fragment, it agrees
almost exactly with the earliest Gospel copies.

Second, if we applied this analogy to other ancient literature, we would

still be waiting for hundreds of years before any text of Herodotus or Livy or
Homer were to show up! No one thinks that a copy of these documents that
came even hundreds of years later is created out of nothing. To be sure, it
may not be exactly like the original, but the increase in early, diverse
manuscripts from all over the Mediterranean world ensures that scholars
have the tools to reconstruct substantially what the original text said.

Third, to argue the way the Jesus Seminar has-without reference to the
copies of other ancient literature-is to ignore the relevant comparative data.
Ironically, this is very much against a true liberal spirit of intellectual inquiry
that pursues the truth at all costs.

As we look at the materials and methods of textual criticism in the

succeeding chapters, we will see that there are solid reasons for regarding
the manuscripts of the New Testament as substantially correct in
representing the original text. The rest of this chapter will show why total
despair is totally wrong. But we wish to begin by comparing the manuscripts
of the New Testament with those of other ancient writings.

One often hears the line, "We really don't know what the New Testament
originally said, since we no longer possess the originals and since there
could have been tremendous tampering with the text before our existing
copies were produced." Is this an accurate assessment of the data? Is that
kind of skepticism true to the facts? Not exactly.

If this supposition is true, then we must deny that most facts of ancient
history can be recovered, because whatever doubts we cast on the text of the
New Testament must be cast a hundredfold on virtually any other ancient
text. The New Testament manuscripts stand closer to the original and are
more plentiful than virtually any other ancient literature. The New Testament
is far and away the bestattested work of Greek or Latin literature in the
ancient world.
We will discuss the New Testament manuscript evidence in the next chapter
in more detail. But for now, we wish to make more comparisons with other
ancient writings.

As noted above, approximately fifty-seven hundred full or partial New

Testament manuscripts are known to exist at this writing. The number of
sources is growing. Every decade and virtually every year new manuscripts
are discovered. Meanwhile, the average classical author's writings are found
in about twenty extant manuscripts." The New Testament-in the Greek
manuscripts alone-exceeds this by almost three hundred times. Besides the
Greek manuscripts, there are Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Gothic,
Georgian, Arabic, and many other versions of the New Testament. The Latin
manuscripts number over ten thousand. All told, the New Testament is
represented by approximately one thousand times as many manuscripts as
the average classical author's writings. Even the well-known authors-such as
Homer or Herodotus-simply can't compare to the quantity of copies that the
New Testament enjoys. Homer, in fact, is a distant second in terms of
manuscripts, yet there are fewer than twenty-five hundred copies of Homer
extant today.11

How do skeptics react to this sort of information? Doherty argues:

Considering that the survival of ancient manuscripts was dependent

upon Christian copyists, and that many ancient works were deliberately
burned by the Christians, that disparity hardly proves anything. It is not
surprising that the textual witness of many ancient works of literature
survives by the merest thread. But I will suggest that it is not
multiplicity per se which is the important factor here, or even any
comparison at all with other ancient writings[;] it is how closely we can
arrive at the original text of these Christian documents.12

Again, Doherty has mixed categories. It is true that "many ancient works
were deliberately burned by the Christians," but these were heretical books.
This is not to excuse the early Christians for doing such a thing, but it is to
note that none of these books are the books in the comparison above. They
were not the writings of the classical authors.

Doherty also fails to mention that Christianity was outlawed until the
fourth century. Further, the worst pogrom against this new religion was
conducted by Diocletian in 303-311-"the last war of annihilation waged by
paganism against Christianity."13 The persecution of Christians included
wholesale destruction of their sacred Scriptures." So successful was this
campaign that after reversing Diocletian's edict and legalizing Christianity,
Constantine felt the need in 331 to order the production of fifty Bibles."
When it comes to manuscript production and preservation from the first
three centuries, the Christian documents were at a decided disadvantage
because the political cards were stacked against them.16 Yet, remarkably, the
New Testament manuscripts are more plentiful during this era than are
copies of any other ancient literature.
 Finally, in the same sentence Doherty admits that "the survival of ancient
manuscripts was dependent upon Christian copyists." Which ancient
manuscripts is he now talking about? These would include classical Greek
and Latin literature-including works in the chart above.17 The argument that
the plentiful and early evidence of New Testament manuscripts is really no
evidence at all is an argument hardly worth considering. And given the early
persecution of Christians and the preservation by Christian scribes of even
classical writings, the claim is utterly falsified."

MYTHS, ATTITUDES, AND REASON

We have seen that the attitudes of absolute certainty and total despair are
inappropriate starting points for examining the New Testament text.
Although we cannot be certain about every detail in the text, we can be
certain about most. It is naive to think that the KJV represents the original
text better than do most modern translations. However, it is an overstatement
to say that because we can't be sure about everything we can't be sure about
anything. As we saw in the previous chapter, only a very small percentage of
the New Testament text is in doubt. What is at stake in this small percentage
of texts will be taken up later.
 Chapter 6
AN EMBARRASSMENT
OF RICHES
 Recovering the Wording of the
Original New Testament Text,
Part 7
Worse yet, for each book [of the New Testament] there exist
different families of [manuscript] types, often of approximately
equal antiquity, but differing from each other in characteristic
ways.

-FRANK ZINDLER, "The Real

Bible: Who's Got It?"

" -e have seen that most of the variation among the New Testament
manuscripts involves mere spelling differences. The smallest amount (about
1 percent) deals with meaningful and viable alternative wording. But even
here, the vast bulk of variants affect only minor issues related to meaning.

Predictably, some folks are so skeptical of the early manuscripts going

back substantially to the original text that they end up making mountains
out of molehills. These skeptics fall into two groups: radical liberals and
"King James only" fundamentalists. The radical liberals want us to believe
that we can have no assurances about anything regarding the wording of the
original text. Nothing is probable; everything is only possible. Nothing can
be affirmed. The "KJV only" crowd wants us to believe that the early
manuscripts are all corrupt and that we should trust the later, more uniform
majority. Ironically, both approaches start with the result that they are
seeking to prove, then deal only with the evidence that supports it. The
results drive the method, rather than vice versa. This is hardly an honest
pursuit of truth.'

Our task in this chapter is to discuss what textual critics have to work
with in order to determine the wording of the original New Testament text.
It is sometimes alleged that because the manuscripts can be grouped into
families, we have no idea how to get back to the original wording. The
reality is that these very families help determine the original wording. If the
manuscripts were unrelated to each other, we would have few clues about
which manuscripts faithfully reproduce the original. But with families of
manuscripts, a genealogical tree can be constructed to show which groups
of manuscripts are derived from which. Not only this, but a family
presupposes a common ancestor. And although that common ancestor has to
be reconstructed, textual critics have many tools at their disposal to find
when and even where such a common ancestor would have existed.

We will discuss these genealogical relationships more in the next chapter

to show that, rather than hamstringing our attempts to recover the original
wording, groups of manuscripts facilitate it.

The fundamental problem of New Testament textual criticism is this:

Since the originals no longer exist and since there are disagreements among
all the remaining copies, how are we to determine the wording of the
original? Two things must be discussed: materials and method. This chapter
will explore the former.

It is an understatement to say that the materials used for determining the

wording of the Greek New Testament are overwhelming. What adjectives
can truly describe the situation? While scholars of other ancient literature
suffer from a lack of data, those who work with New Testament
manuscripts suffer from an embarrassment of riches. These have three
subcategories: Greek manuscripts; ancient translations (or versions) of the
New Testament into other lan guages; and quotations from the New
Testament in the writings of the church fathers.

GREEK MANUSCRIPTS
The Greek manuscripts are the principal documents used to determine the
wording of the New Testament. They can be broken down into groups
denoting papyri, uncials, minuscules, and lectionaries. The first group-
papyri-consists of manuscripts identified by the material that they are made
of. The second and third groups-uncials and minuscules-refer to the writing
style (either capital letters or cursive) of the manuscripts. The last group-
lectionaries-refers to manuscripts that do not contain continuous texts from
the Gospels, or Epistles, but rather are texts arranged for daily study and
meditation.

New Testament manuscripts are primarily transcribed on vellum or

parchment, with the exception of the papyri and some of the latest
manuscripts, which were written on paper. Generally speaking, the papyri
are the earliest of these four groups of manuscripts, and certainly the rarest
(owing to the fragile writing material), while the uncials are next, followed
by the minuscules and lectionaries.

As of January 2006, the statistics on the Greek manuscripts of the New

Testament are as follows:'

Most of these manuscripts date from the second to the sixteenth centuries?
The earliest fragment is most likely from the first half of the second century
(100-150), known as Papyrus 52 or P52.4 In recent years, a cache of several
papyri was discovered at Oxford University, bringing the number to ten to
fifteen that are as early as the second century.' Two of these papyri are
substantial. Beginning in the third century, there is a steady stream of
witnesses to the text of the New Testament.

Bythe fourth century, the great uncial manuscripts were produced,

including what is now the earliest complete New Testament, Codex
Sinaiticus, and Codex Vaticanus, a manuscript that is probably from the
early fourth century. Sinaiticus (designated in manuscript shorthand by the
Hebrew letter aleph [s]) and Vaticanus (designated B) both belong to what
is called the Alexandrian text-type. (Texttypes will be discussed in the next
chapter.) These two manuscripts are closely related to each other. However,
they are not as closely related as some might think. There are thousands of
differences between them. Yet both are fourth-century manuscripts. Many
scholars believe that since both manuscripts belong to the same text-type
yet have so many differences, their common ancestor must have been
copied several generations before. This is similar, to some degree, to
relatives at a family reunion. Some members may be tall, thin, blue-eyed,
and blond, while others are short, fat, brown-eyed, and have black hair.
Others are somewhere in between. Those that look substantially like each
other could well be more closely related.6 Following this analogy, x and B
are distant cousins from long after their common ancestor, which itself must
go back several generations. Indeed, when they agree, their common
reading usually is from the early second century.

Some of the later manuscripts show evidence of being copied from a

much earlier source. For example, manuscript 1739, a tenthcentury
minuscule manuscript, was most likely copied directly from a late-fourth-
century manuscript.? Even some of the early manuscripts show compelling
evidence of being copies of a much earlier source. Consider again Codex
Vaticanus, whose text is very much like that of P75 (B and P75 are much
closer to each other than B is to x). Yet the papyrus is at least a century
older than Vaticanus. When P75 was discovered in the 1950s, some
entertained the possibility that Vaticanus could have been a copy of P75, but
this view is no longer acceptable since the wording of Vaticanus is certainly
more primitive than that of P75 in several places.' They both must go back
to a still earlier common ancestor, probably one that is from the early
second century. In combination with x, this is a powerful witness to the
earliest form of the text.

Many other examples could be given of early manuscripts that are from
the same text-type and what their agreement means for the date of the
reading. We will discuss these issues in the next chapter.

VERSIONS
The second most important witnesses to the New Testament text are
known as versions. A version is technically a translation. The value of a
version depends on its date, the translation technique and care, and the
quality of the text it is translated from. But the textual basis and technique
are not always easy to determine, hampering scholars' assessment of various
versions. For example, Latin has no definite article, while Greek has a
highly developed use of the definite article. Latin simply cannot adequately
represent the Greek in places where the textual problem involves the article.
However, major differences in the text can easily be detected (such as
adding or dropping whole phrases). Also, by comparing the text-forms of
the various versions with New Testament quotations in patristic writers (or
church fathers), it is possible to determine when the various versions came
into existence. Except in rare and controlled instances, once a version was
completed it did not interact with the Greek manuscripts again. This means
that when a particular version consistently has one reading in its remaining
copies, one may usually regard that reading as going back to that version's
origin.' The three most important versions are the Latin, Coptic, and Syriac.
Other versions of relative value are the Gothic and Armenian, followed by
the Georgian and Ethiopic.

Latin

Through a rich and complex history, the Latin manuscripts of the New
Testament have come to predominate this field-in quantity. There are
roughly twice as many Latin manuscripts of the New Testament as there are
Greek, more than ten thousand, compared to about fifty-seven hundred.10
They date from the third century to the sixteenth, but their origins may go
back deep into the second century. This can be confirmed by an
examination of the text-form used by certain church fathers: Irenaeus,
Tertullian, Justin Martyr, and others all seemed to use the form of text
(known as the Western text-type) that is found in the oldest Latin
manuscripts."

Coptic

The Coptic language is based on the old Egyptian hieroglyphic language.

Essentially, Coptic is hieroglyphics in Greek dress (with a few new letters
added). The most important dialects are the Sahidic and the Bohairic. The
origin of the Sahidic New Testament reaches back to the beginning of the
third century. Hundreds of manuscripts exist, perhaps even thousands, but
only a few hundred have been catalogued. Probably at least a thousand
Coptic manuscripts exist, representatives of the Alexandrian text-type.

Syriac

The Syriac church finds its origins in the second century. Although no
extant Syriac New Testament manuscripts are that early, it is certain that the
New Testament was translated into Syriac no later than the early third
century.' The earliest form, the Old Syriac, is a representative of the
Western text. The surviving copies of Syriac New Testament manuscripts
number in the hundreds, perhaps thousands.

Other Versions

Besides the Syriac, Latin, and Coptic, other ancient versions should be
noted. The Gothic originally was translated in the fourth century, as was the
Ethiopic, and the Armenian probably from the fifth. Well over two thousand
manuscripts represent these versions today.

All told, probably between fifteen and twenty thousand texts of the
ancient versions of the New Testament remain. There are no exact numbers
because not all the manuscripts have been carefully catalogued.

CHURCH FATHERS
"Besides textual evidence derived from New Testament Greek
manuscripts and from early versions, the textual critic compares numerous
scriptural quotations used in commentaries, sermons, and other treatises
written by early church fathers. Indeed, so extensive are these citations that
if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament
were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of
practically the entire New Testament."13
 The quotations by the church fathers of the New Testament number well
over one million-and counting!" The Fathers are as early as the late first
century, with a steady stream through the thirteenth, making their value for
determining the wording of the New Testament text extraordinary.

However, there are problems in citing the Fathers. First, their writings are
found only in copies, not originals. Consequently, the Fathers' texts need to
be reconstructed. Second, some are notorious for quoting the same passage
in different ways. These differences are usually due to lapses in memory,
integration of Scripture into the warp and woof of the father's sentence
structure, or the use of different biblical manuscripts.

In many cases there are ways to determine with a great deal of certainty
what form of the New Testament text a particular father was quoting. In
particular, when a father is quoting from a long passage, it is likely that he
is not quoting from memory but is transcribing from a manuscript. There
are other ways to gain certainty about a father's text of the New
Testament.15 In addition, sometimes a father discusses textual variants,
noting manuscripts that have one wording or another.16 "When properly
evaluated .... patristic evidence is of primary importance ...: in contrast to
the early Greek MSS, the Fathers have the potential of offering datable and
geographically certain evidence."17

CONCLUSION
The wealth of material that is available for determining the wording of
the original New Testament is staggering: more than fifty-seven hundred
Greek New Testament manuscripts, as many as twenty thousand versions,
and more than one million quotations by patristic writers. In comparison
with the average ancient Greek author, the New Testament copies are well
over a thousand times more plentiful. If the average-sized manuscript were
two and onehalf inches thick, all the copies of the works of an average
Greek author would stack up four feet high, while the copies of the New
Testament would stack up to over a mile high! This is indeed an
embarrassment of riches.
 As we saw in a previous chapter, these thousands of manuscripts,
versions, and patristic quotations have produced hundreds of thousands of
textual variants. We also noted that the New Testament text is remarkably
stable over the many centuries of its transmission and that only about 1
percent of the variants are both meaningful and viable. These two
considerations-the number of manuscripts and the number of variants-lead
to our next issue: How do scholars sift through all this material? What
methods do they use to determine exactly the original wording of the New
Testament?
Chapter 7
 THE METHODS OF
TEXTUAL CRITICISM
Recovering the Wording of the
Original New Testament Text,
Part 2
There is a stray manuscript (Old Latin manuscript b) that omits
Mary's question in Luke 1:34, "How shall this be, since I know
not a man?". . .

Note that without this verse there is nothing in Luke that even
implies a supernatural conception or birth.

-ROBERT M. PRICE, The

Incredible Shrinking Son of Man,
70

this great wealth of material at their disposal, how do tex. tual

critics go about determining the wording of the original New Testament?
After all, the manuscripts disagree with each other significantly, which
means that some method must be employed to cut through the Gordian
knot. In short, how do scholars know which variants are authentic?

For the vast majority of the textual variants, there is simply no difficulty
determining the original wording. But for a small percentage of the variants,
a combination of approaches is the key to making a determination. First,
scholars examine the external evidence-the manuscripts, versions, and
biblical quotations by the Fathers. There are ways to tell from the external
data how early a particular reading is. Second, they examine the internal
evidence-the habits and writing styles of the authors, as well as the habits
and even mistakes of scribes. These two approaches are handled separately,
then the results are compared. The governing principle of the whole
endeavor is this: The reading that gives rise to the other readings is most
likely the original reading. When the external and internal evidence point in
the same direction, textual critics have great confidence that they have the
wording of the original. We will look briefly at the process and conclude
with one or two illustrations to show concretely how it works.

EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
There are three external criteria used to judge which variant is more
likely to be the wording of the original: date and character; genealogical
solidarity; and geographical distribution.

Date and Character

The preferred variant or reading normally is the one found in the earliest
manuscripts. Less time has elapsed between those manuscripts and the
originals and fewer intermediary copies have introduced errors. The more
direct pipeline a manuscript has to the original, the better are its chances of
getting the wording right. Also, the manuscripts that elsewhere prove to be
the most reliable are given preference. Thus, a meticulous scribe working
on a fifth-century manuscript may produce a more reliable text than a third-
century scribe who is more interested in getting the job done quickly.

As for character, it is usually considered more important to see if a given

manuscript is a good witness to its text-form rather than to the original text,
because the route to the wording of the original text is through the various
text-types. This is an important distinction, but one that must be maintained
in doing textual criticism.

Thus, the date of the manuscripts is a significant factor in determining the

value of a given reading, and the general character of said manuscript, at
least in relation to its text-form, is also an important factor.

Genealogical Solidarity
 Most of the manuscripts were written in locales in which certain
traditional variants were copied repeatedly. That is to say, most manuscripts
find their roots in a local ancestor (or what we might call a regional
archetype) that influenced the various descendants in this area. Thus,
geographical patterns of readings emerged, giving each locale a distinctive
type of text. When all or almost all of the manuscripts that are identified as
belonging to a certain text-type agree on a certain reading, one can conclude
that the local ancestor of that text-type probably contained that reading.

What exactly is a text-type? English-language Christian culture provides

a modern analogy. Often, when people in church hear a preacher read from
the Bible, they can figure out which of the numerous English translations is
used-even when a copy of the translation is not in front of them. This is
because translations take on a stylistic pattern of language use. Thus, the
KJV sounds archaic but elegant; the NIV sounds almost conversational;
The Message sounds lively.

Now, suppose that the printing press had not yet been invented and each
pastor had to spend the first year of his seminary training writing out his
own copy of the Scriptures. At each seminary, a different version of the
Scriptures is used, and the students are expected to learn that version well.
Students in Chicago might write out a copy of the NIV; those in Los
Angeles the NASB; those in Dallas the NET. None of the handwritten
copies of the various versions would be exactly like the "local original." But
they would be close, and a comparison of them to each other would help
one to see what the original archetype looked like.

Now, suppose that hundreds of years have gone by and all that remains of
the NIV, NASB, or NET are a dozen or so copies of each "text-type." But
one of the NIV copies was found in Dallas, and it has several NET-like
readings in it. One would say that that manuscript had mixture. And even if
it was early, the mixture would make it less important than a purer NIV
copy that came later. It would be less important because it would not be as
reliable a witness to its text-type. This is how the "character" of a
manuscript can be assessed: Is it close to the wording of the local original,
or does it have a lot of mixture from other text-types? The former is better
than the latter for the purposes of trying to get back to wording of the local
archetype.

The text of the New Testament is similar to this. There are three major
text-types: the Alexandrian, the Western, and the Byzantine. The
Alexandrian was produced especially in Egypt, the Western in Rome and
the West (though also elsewhere), and the Byzantine mostly in the East.
Most scholars agree that the Alexandrian texttype began in the second
century, as did the Western. The Byzantine text, however, was a later
development, based largely on Western and Alexandrian manuscripts.' The
best Alexandrian manuscripts are those that do not have mixture from
Western or Byzantine readings. And when one looks at all the Alexandrian
manuscripts, a pattern emerges for a given reading. When the better
Alexandrian manuscripts have the same reading, then scholars can be
relatively assured that the Alexandrian local original had that reading. This
is true even though that local original no longer exists. It is a simple
deduction from the available evidence. Thus, by genealogical solidarity, one
can push back the date of a reading within a text-type to its local original.
This is similar to the deduction one would make if he were to meet an
extended family of fifty blue-eyed Swedes: the ancestors also most likely
had blue eyes. Since the Alexandrian and Western texts have roots in the
second century (which can be confirmed by patristic quotations from
certain locations in the second century), when each of these text-types has
genealogical solidarity, their readings are said to be second-century
readings.

Consider two families whose ancestors immigrated to the United States

in the early 1800s. In the Dodd family, the story of where they came from,
what year they arrived, and where they landed is consistent: Wales, 1833,
New York. Virtually all the sources agree, whether those sources are living
voices or diaries and letters from previous generations. To be sure, some
later sources have different information, but there is very little
disagreement. One letter, written by a twelve-year-old, says that her
ancestors arrived in 1883; the diary of a person who married into the family
said that they came from England. Thus, although not all the records agree
entirely, the best witnesses agree and the deviating ones don't deviate too
much. Further, the deviations can be explained. In one case, the difference
is due to accident (1883 vs. 1833), while in the other case it maybe due to
the tendency to replace the less familiar with the more familiar.

The Wallace family has a less-certain history. Some say that the ancestors
came to the United States in 1819, while others say it was 1847; some say
the ancestors came from Scotland, while others say they came from
Germany;' some say the ancestors landed in Boston, but others say it was
Rhode Island. When there are discrepancies of this sort, there is no
genealogical solidarity. The truth needs to be determined by some other
means. However, the Dodd family has a consistent story, and genealogical
solidarity suggests that this story reaches all the way back to 1833. By
itself, genealogical solidarity is not enough to prove that a reading is
authentic, but it does demonstrate that it is older than any of the remaining
manuscripts of that text-type.

Even when the manuscripts of the Alexandrian text-type are not

completely solid, one can often suggest a date for two streams of tradition
that predate the extant witnesses. This is because the Alexandrian text most
likely had two branches-a primary Alexandrian and a secondary
Alexandrian. Both of these are ancient streams of transmission, with the
primary Alexandrian being more carefully produced. Thus, even though the
original copies of various regional archetypes have disappeared, it is
possible to suggest a date for a variant that predates any of the manuscripts
in which it is found.

Geographical Distribution

The variant that is found in geographically widespread locations in the

first few centuries of the Christian era is more likely to be original than the
one that is found in only one location. Collusion of witnesses is much less
probable when these witnesses are distributed in Rome and Alexandria and
Caesarea than when they are all in Jerusalem or Antioch. Thus, if a third-
century manuscript in Egypt, a third-century version in Rome, and a third-
century father in Gaul all agreed on the wording of a passage, chances are
that they all are reproducing an earlier source. The geographical spread of
sources that agree with each other is a very important factor in determining
the wording of the original text.

Not only does this demonstrate that the particular reading was not
produced by some sort of collaboration, but it also shows that the reading is
much earlier than any of the extant sources. By this method, scholars can
legitimately "push back" the date of a reading to a time that predates the
sources that attest it.

Consider again our analogy with the Dodd and Wallace families. If
another family, unrelated to either of these families, were to confirm some
of the statements in the family records of the Dodds or Wallaces, that would
be similar to geographical distribution. There is no relation between this
other family and the Dodds or Wallaces, yet they offer an independent
witness that confirms the truth of events recorded in the Dodd or Wallace
family records. This kind of "multiple attestation" strengthens the likelihood
that the event really happened. By itself, this evidence is not proof, for there
could be independent reasons for both sets of records to say the same thing,
as we will see below. Though not infallible, geographical distribution is an
important factor in determining the wording of the original New Testament.

It should be noted that after the first four centuries, geographical

distribution is no longer nearly as helpful since by this time there would be
extensive cross-pollination (mixture) among the manuscripts, due to the
freedom of exchange of information once Christianity became a legal
religion.

Geographical distribution also can be imperfectly illustrated by a

variation of the "telephone game." This game involves a line of people, with
the first one whispering some statement into the ear of the second. As this
message is repeated down the line, it gets garbled. The whole point of the
telephone game, in fact, is to see how garbled the original message can
become. There is no motivation to "get it right." Now suppose that instead
of one line we used three lines and the last person in the line is not the only
one who tells what has become of the message. We can learn how it was
understood at various points along the way. One may well be able to
construct much of the original utterance by comparing the three lines and
finding the things they had in common. This is geographical distribution.

Taking this one step further, suppose it was determined that one of the
lines was far more accurate than the other two in conveying the utterance.
This could be tested by hearing what someone "up the stream" said
compared with someone farther down the line. If there were very little
change from person to person, that line would be deemed superior to the
other lines. But to solve the riddle, internal evidence would need to be
brought in.

Date and character, genealogical solidarity, and geographical distribution

are three indications in external data that help us decide which reading is
the earliest-the reading from which the rest originated. But external
evidence is not the whole approach. For example, in places where the early
manuscripts disagree, or there is minimal geographical distribution, or one
of the readings is just the kind of wording a scribe would be likely to create,
internal evidence may be far more important.

INTERNAL EVIDENCE
Internal evidence is an examination of the wording of the variants to
determine which reading gave rise to the other(s) and is, therefore, probably
original.

The Canons of Internal Evidence

The basic guideline of internal criticism is: Choose the reading that best
explains the rise of the other(s). This is the same rule for all of textual
criticism, external or internal. Same principle, different (but
complementary) methods. Judging internal evidence is sometimes quite
subjective, sometimes very objective. Everyone practices this sort of textual
criticism every day. David Parker ingeniously illustrates this in The Living
Text of the Gospels:
 Everybody who reads the newspaper is expert in textual criticism,
in coping with those distctive errors of omssion and displaced
lines, and jumbling of letrset. This sophisticated process of
recognizing nonsense and picking up the sense is so natural to us
the classical scholars of ancient Alexandria or the Benedictines of
that we perform it without thinking, unaware of our kinship with
St Maur. Textual criticism is not an arcane science. It belongs to
all human communication.'

Although some of the errors in the above paragraph may take a little
while to figure out, you should be able to establish exactly what they are.
You need no other manuscripts to compare the statement to; you can
determine what the author meant to say simply by examining the wording
and eliminating known errors. This is internal evidence.

Although there are numerous guidelines under the broad umbrella of

choosing the reading that best explains the rise of the other(s), two of these
rules stand out: The harder reading is preferred, and the shorter reading is
preferred.'

The Harder Reading Is to Be Preferred

The harder reading is the reading that is more awkward, more

ambiguous, more cumbersome. Harder readings also use rarer words or
involve wording that could be perceived as a discrepancy. This canon is
important because scribes tended to smooth out difficulties in the text rather
than create difficulties. In chapter 4, we noted that Mark described Jesus
only with the use of pronouns through eighty-nine consecutive verses.
(Actually, the pronouns themselves are often absent, since Greek uses the
verb endings to indicate the person and number of the subject.) Scribes
would naturally want to add the name of Jesus to clarify who is in view. In
such instances, the original reading is both shorter and harder.

Or consider a textual problem in John 4. This is in the narrative of Jesus'

encounter with the woman at the well in Samaria. After a brief exchange,
Jesus instructs the woman to go home and bring her husband back: "Go,
call your husband, and come here" (v. 16). The woman responds, "I don't
have a husband" (v. 17). To this Jesus responds, "Correctly you have said,
`A husband I don't have"' (v. 17). Now, at this stage some scribes had a
problem. Jesus has quoted the woman's words, but he has reversed the
order, as our translation above shows. To some, it may have looked like he
misquoted her. So what do they do? They don't change the order of Jesus'
wordsrather, they change the order of the woman's words! To these scribes
Jesus didn't quote the woman incorrectly; she said it wrong in the first
place! So they conformed the order of her words to his quotation of her
words. Only a few (though ancient) manuscripts do this, but they obviously
create the smoother reading.

This sort of thing often happens with Gospel parallels. A smoother

reading is introduced to harmonize the wording of one Gospel to another.
Scribes smoothed out grammar, style, and even theologyyes, theology. Over
time, scribes would change the wording of a text to make it conform more
explicitly to their theological convictions. This does not mean that the
original text was not orthodox; rather, it is not always as explicitly orthodox
as the scribes would like, or its orthodoxy is slightly different from what the
scribes believed.

Perhaps an analogy regarding the rough texture of the original text is in

order. For those acquainted with J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,
this analogy will make good sense. When the beleaguered hobbits meet the
dark stranger, Strider, at the Prancing Pony Inn, they are relieved to learn
that he is on their side. He announces that he is Aragorn, and that if he had
been their enemy, he could have killed them easily.

There was a long silence. At last Frodo spoke with hesitation, "I
believed that you were a friend before the letter came," he said, "or at
least I wished to. You have frightened me several times tonight, but
never in the way that servants of the Enemy would, or so I imagine. I
think one of his spies wouldwell, seem fairer and feel fouler, if you
understand."5

Likewise, the original text has a stubborn way of making Christians

nervous, but in the end it is something that we can both discern and trust.
 An illustration of moving the text into conformity with orthodoxy is
found in 1 Timothy 3:16, a verse we discussed in chapter 6 (see note 9).
The wording "God was revealed in the flesh" is an explicit affirmation of
the deity of Christ, while "who was revealed in the flesh" is only implicit.6
Although there are plenty of texts that affirm the deity of Christ, orthodox
scribes occasionally changed other texts to make them say this too. The
harder reading, in this instance, is "who."

The Shorter Reading Is to Be Preferred

Scribes had a strong tendency to add words or phrases rather than omit
them. The text tended to grow over time rather than shrink, although, it
grew only 2 percent over fourteen hundred years. Scribes almost never
intentionally omitted anything.' Thus, as long as an unintentional omission
is not likely, the shorter reading is usually to be preferred. We have already
discussed the addition of the name Jesus in several places in the Gospels
where it was not originally used.

At the end of every book of the New Testament, the word amen appears
in at least some of the manuscripts. Such a conclusion is routinely added by
scribes to New Testament books because a few of these books originally
had such an ending (Rom. 16:27; Gal. 6:18; Jude 25). A majority of Greek
witnesses have the concluding "amen" in every New Testament book except
Acts, James, and 3 John (and even in these books, "amen" is found in some
manuscripts). It is thus a predictable variant and a longer reading.

Scribes also made more substantial additions. For example, in Romans

8:1, the external evidence points conclusively to the wording, "There is
therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Two
variants compete with this wording. Some manuscripts add "who do not
walk according to the flesh." Still later manuscripts add "but who walk
according to the Spirit." Scribes had a tendency to add to grace, to qualify
absolute statements. In this instance it is obvious that the third reading
originated from the second. If it arose without the second reading in place,
the verse would make no sense at all: "There is therefore now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, but who walk according to
the Spirit." In this instance, the shortest reading gave rise to the
intermediate reading, which then gave rise to the longest reading.

These two rules are very helpful in determining the wording of the
original text. At the same time, they must not be applied in isolation from
other considerations. Some manuscripts, especially of the Western text,
were prone to omit whole verses. Although the Western text is early, it is
also somewhat careless. Here is where external evidence weighs in and
exercises some quality control over internal evidence.

The Divisions of Internal Evidence

Transcriptional Probability

Transcriptional probability has to do with what a scribe (copyist) would

be likely to do. There are two types of changes to the text that scribes made-
intentional and unintentional.

Often scribes intentionally altered the text for grammatical, theological,

or explanatory reasons as noted above. It is here especially that the two
canons of shorter and harder reading are helpful. (See discussion above for
illustrations.)

Many scribal changes were unintentional. Due to problems of sight,

hearing, fatigue, or judgment, scribes often changed the text unwittingly.
Some of these instances were discussed in a previous chapter. We can add
here that a common mistake of the scribes was to write once what should
have been written twice. This is called haplography. It occurred especially
when a scribe's eye skipped a second word that ended the same way as the
word before it. But it also occurred when two lines ended the same way. For
example, in 1 John 2:23 we read, "Everyone who denies the Son does not
have the Father either. The person who confesses the Son has the Father
also." In Greek these two clauses both end with "has the Father." A literal
rendering would be, "Everyone who denies the Son neither has the Father;
everyone who confesses the Son also has the Father." Now, if this were
written in sense-lines, the parallels would be even more striking:
 Everyone who denies the Son neither has the Father; everyone who
confesses the Son also has the Father.

The Byzantine text-type lacks the second clause of this verse. Although
shorter readings are usually preferred, this rule doesn't apply if an
unintentional error is likely. This is a classic example of such an
unintentional omission: The "has the Father" of the preceding clause
occasioned the haplography.

Intrinsic Probability

This examines what the biblical author was likely to have written.
Although there are others, two key issues are involved-context and style.

Which variant best fits the context? For example, in John 14, Jesus is
speaking to his disciples on the night before he was crucified. In verse 17 he
tells them about the Holy Spirit: "But you know him, because he resides
with you and will be in you." There is a textual variant here; instead of "will
be," some early and fairly reliable manuscripts have "is." The difference is
between a future tense and a present tense verb. When one considers what
the author would have written, the future is on much stronger ground. The
immediate context in 14:16 and in the chapter as a whole points to the
future, and John's Gospel overall regards the advent of the Spirit as a
decidedly future event. The future tense thus has better credentials in terms
of the context.8

Which variant better fits the author's style? Here the question concerns
what an author normally does, how he normally expresses himself, what his
motifs and language usually involve. For example, one of the reasons that
most scholars do not regard Mark 16:9-20 to be authentic is that the
vocabulary and grammar in these verses are quite unlike what is found in
the rest of the Gospel of Mark. When this observation is coupled with the
strong likelihood that scribes would want to finish Mark's Gospel with more
than "they were afraid," and with the fact that the earliest and best
manuscripts lack these twelve verses, the evidence is overwhelming that
Mark 16:9-20 was added later.
 Stylistic considerations even weigh in when the variant involves only one
word. Thus, in John 4:1, the manuscripts vary between "Now when Jesus
knew that the Pharisees had heard that he was winning and baptizing more
disciples than John" and "Now when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had
heard that he was winning and baptizing more disciples than John...."
Indeed, many of the better and earlier manuscripts have "the Lord" here
instead of "Jesus." However, the narrative of John calls Jesus "Lord" at
most only twice prior to the Resurrection (6:23; 11:2). Meanwhile, "Jesus"
is used scores of times. Thus, the stylistic consideration is in support of
"Jesus" instead of "the Lord."

CONCLUSIONS
When external evidence and internal evidence are compared, scholars
come to a conclusion as to which reading is the original. The textual variant
that has the greater claim to authenticity will be found in the earliest, best,
and most geographically widespread witnesses. It will fit the context and
author's style, and will be the obvious originator of its rival readings on a
literary level. Ninetynine percent of all textual problems are easily resolved
by comparing the external and internal evidence. And even a good portion
of the remaining 1 percent that are meaningful and viable can be resolved
with a great deal of confidence by a careful comparison of the external and
internal evidence.

However, there are many occasions in which the external evidence seems
to point one way, while the internal evidence points another. How do
scholars decide in such instances? This is the kind of conundrum that fills
theological journals! In the next chapter we will wrestle with exactly what
is at stake in such situations. But here, we need to stress one very important
thing: if a particular variant is found only in non-Greek manuscripts or is
found only in a few late manuscripts, even if its internal credentials are
excellent, it must be rejected. When we are dealing with as many thousands
of manuscripts as we are, unpredictable accidents and unknowable motives
may be the cause of a stray reading here or there that internally may have
good credentials. On the other hand, on a rare occasion the external
evidence is very solidly on the side of one reading, but there are sufficiently
important manuscripts for an alternate reading, and the internal evidence is
completely on the side of the second reading. In such instances, the second
reading is most likely original.

In Philippians 1:14, the NET Bible has "and most of the brothers and
sisters, having confidence in the Lord because of my imprisonment, now
more than ever dare to speak the word fearlessly." But what word do they
speak fearlessly? This kind of ambiguity left the scribes in a quandary.
Some sort of clarification just begged to be added. A predictable variant
arose: "of God." This particular variant is found in some of the best and
earliest manuscripts, especially of the Alexandrian text-type. Some
manuscripts of the Western texttype have "of the Lord." It is not easy to see
why "of God" or "of the Lord" would have dropped out of the text. No
intentional or unin tentional reason on the part of the scribes can be
discerned. This, coupled with the fact that Paul is often a bit ambiguous,
means that the internal evidence-both the transcriptional and intrinsic-are on
the side of the shorter, harder reading. Internally, it seems clear that Paul
wrote "speak the word fearlessly" rather than "speak the word of God [or of
the Lord] fearlessly," and scribes added an explanatory phrase to make the
meaning clearer.

Turning to the external evidence, the shorter reading is supported by the

majority of later manuscripts (those that belong to the Byzantine text-type).
However, it is also supported by the earliest witness to Philippians, P46
(dated to about 200). In addition, other non-Byzantine manuscripts have the
shorter reading (most notably, Codex 1739, which we discussed in chapter
6). Although the external evidence is not compelling for the shorter reading,
one can easily see how the original reading could be found in these
manuscripts without the support of the rest of the early witnesses. Most of
the usually better manuscripts in this instance have added a predictable
variant, one that could have arisen in several places independently of other
manuscripts. What is crucial to understand is that if a scholar thinks that the
original reading is found in inferior manuscripts, he has to have some
plausible explanation for how these manuscripts ended up with the right
reading while better manuscripts did not. He has to explain history. In this
case, the fact that Paul's wording is often ambiguous, the fact that both "of
God" and "of the Lord" are variants that some manuscripts add, and the fact
that the shorter reading has at least some excellent and early manuscripts on
its side is sufficient grounds for seeing "speak the word fearlessly" as the
authentic reading. The external evidence for the shorter reading is not
strong, but it is adequate, and the internal evidence on its behalf is
overwhelming. These two combine to indicate that "speak the word
fearlessly" is what Paul wrote.

Now consider another textual problem. This is the one we started the
chapter with, the textual problem in Luke 1:34. Listen again to Robert Price
on this verse:

There is a stray manuscript (Old Latin manuscript b) that omits Mary's

question in Luke 1:34, "How shall this be, since I know not a man?" .. .

Note that without this verse there is nothing in Luke that even implies
a supernatural conception or birth.... It makes a lot of sense [to see this
verse as added by later scribes], but the evidence is too meager for us
ever to be able to settle the question.'

Robert Price was a fellow of the Jesus Seminar. He is a New Testament

scholar. But is he treating the evidence fairly? Let's examine his evidence in
light of the standard principles of textual criticism.

We will address the internal evidence first. Price tries to argue his case
mostly on internal evidence: "Verse 34 makes Mary counter the angel with
a skeptical objection precisely parallel to Zechariah's in 1:18, `How shall I
know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.' Gabriel
strikes him deaf and mute until the child John is born, in punishment for
daring to doubt his word. Would Luke so easily attribute the same
incredulity to Mary, and if he did, would he let her off with no angelic
reprisal?"10

Price assumes that the internal evidence is all on the side of the omission
of this verse, largely because the parallel between Mary's and Zechariah's
responses to the angel elicit a different response from Gabriel. But are
Zechariah's and Mary's responses "precisely parallel" as Price alleges?
Zechariah asks, "How shall I know this?" He is asking for a sign that the
angel is telling the truth. But Mary's response is, "How will this be?" As
Darrell Bock notes, "She does not doubt the announcement, for she does not
ask for a sign as Zechariah did. Rather she is puzzled as to how. . . this birth
can occur, a question that causes the angel to elaborate (1:35)."11 The
internal evidence thus is very much on the side of inclusion.

Not only this, but a characteristic feature of Luke is to use doublets to

develop his argument. In this case, he is showing by Mary's different
response that she is more righteous than Zechariah. He is also showing, by
the parallel accounts, that Jesus' birth is more miraculous than John the
Baptist's. Furthermore, if her conception were by natural means, why does
the angel say, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the
Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be
holy; he will be called the Son of God" (v. 35)? This is the angel's response
to Mary's query; it would be a most curious thing to have the angel respond
to a question that was not asked. The intrinsic evidence, then (Luke's style
as well as the context), is entirely on the side of the inclusion of verse 34.

Perhaps the external evidence is stronger for the omission. If so, it would
have to be nearly unanimous in order to overcome such strong opposition
from the internal evidence. But Price acknowledges that external evidence
is terribly weak-one Latin manuscript! Basically, there is no external
evidence to support his claim. One fifth-century Latin manuscript involves
no geographical distribution, no genealogical solidarity, and only minimal
date and character credentials. The rest of the Latin manuscripts have this
verse, as well as all the Greek manuscripts. And patristic writers have
commented on this verse from early times.

Price is entirely too generous in his assessment of the omission when he

gives it equal billing with the inclusion. His conclusion that "the evidence is
too meager for us ever to be able to settle the question"" sounds as if we
need to suspend judgment because the evidence is so evenly balanced.
Rather, the evidence for the omission is too meager to take Price's
suggestion seriously. Remarkably, earlier in the book he invoked the name
of F. C. Baur as a model of good biblical scholarship:

We must ever keep in mind the dictum of Ferdinand Christian Baur

that anything is possible, but that we must ask what is probable. This is
important because of the very widespread tendency of conventional
Bible students, even of otherwise sophisticated scholars, to weigh
arguments for critical positions and then toss them aside as
"unproven." ... But scholarly judgments can never properly be a matter
of "the will to believe." Rather, the historian's maxim must always be
Kant's: "Dare to know."13

It seems that Price has not taken his own advice in following this dictum
ofBaur (who also did not always take his own advice!). Further, we can
reverse this: Scholarly judgments also can never properly be a matter of the
will to disbelieve. The evidence for the lack of Luke 1:34 is so palpably
weak that it is not even entertained by any serious New Testament scholar.
How is it possible for one lone Latin manuscript to have gotten the wording
right when all the other thousands of manuscripts-many of which are
significantly earlier and with far better credentials than this one manuscript-
let it slip through their nets? Price offers no plausible way in which the
transmission of the text could have occurred so that the true text somehow
was missed through more than four hundred years of copying but was
caught by this one scribe. A good historian must at least offer some
plausible explanation for such a unique anomaly. And he should also give
evidence that, elsewhere in the text, a versional manuscript-or even a group
of versional manuscripts-can contain the original wording when all the
others produce an error.

It is instructive that Price enlists Baur and Immanuel Kant in defense of

his destructive view of the text. Baur applied a method learned from
philosophy (Hegelian dialectic) to the New Testament. Though his views
were all the rage in the middle of the nineteenth century, they have since
been proven false by historical evidence. Kant, of course, was a
philosopher. But for Price to put "historian" and Kant in the same sentence
gives the impression that Kant was primarily a historian. Philosophical
presuppositions and historical evidence are not always good friends. It has
often been said regarding new ideas in New Testament scholarship that "the
Germans create it, the British correct it, and the Americans corrupt it." Price
has started with a presupposition and sought to find any scrap of evidence
that will support it. This is a method driven by the results one wants to find.

Furthermore, Price got his facts mixed up. It is not Old Latin manuscript
b that lacks this verse, but Old Latin manuscript P. That is a later
manuscript than b by two centuries (seventh century vs. fifth century). It
lacks Luke 1:34 because the manuscript is a fragmentary manuscript that
contains only Luke 1:64-2:51. But Price does not tell us that the manuscript
is fragmentary; he gives the clear impression that the scribe was unaware of
this one verse and thus did not include it in his copy of Luke. If we were to
apply that kind of logic to other manuscripts, we would have to say that the
scribe of Codex Vaticanus thought that Hebrews ended in the middle of
9:14 because there is no more text after that-in fact, the page breaks off in
the middle of a word.14

The reality is that manuscripts suffer the ravages of time. Hundreds of

them are missing a leaf or two or are mere fragments of a larger manuscript
that is no longer extant. Price bases his argument on absolutely no evidence
at all-no external evidence, no internal evidence. Rather, his philosophical
presuppositions are driving his decisions. How then can he say, "The
evidence is too meager for us ever to be able to settle the question"? The
evidence, on the contrary, is absolutely solid that the Gospel of Luke never
lacked 1:34. As William Lane was fond of saying, "An ounce of evidence is
worth a pound of presumption."

In this case, we have a pound of evidence versus an ounce of

presumption. Even scholars who deny the Virgin Birth know that the texts
that speak of it are not in question. It is a mere grasping at straws to even
entertain the possibility that this is not the case, and it unmasks a wholesale
agenda of destroying the faith of Christians by playing fast and loose with
historical data. This is not the way any bona fide textual critic applies his
trade. The most charitable thing we can say is that Price was sloppy and
irresponsible in handling the data. And again, scholarly judgments can
never properly be a matter of the will to disbelieve.
Chapter 8
 IS WHAT WE HAVE NOW
WHAT THEY WROTE THEN?
When Constantine commissioned new versions of these documents, it
enabled the custodians of orthodoxy to revise, edit, and rewrite their
material as they saw fit, in accordance with their tenets. It was at this
point that most of the crucial alterations in the New Testament were
probably made and Jesus assumed the unique status he has enjoyed ever
since. The importance of Constantine's commission must not be
underestimated. Of the five thousand extant early manuscript versions
of the New Testament, not one predates the fourth century. The New
Testament as it exists today is essentially a product of fourthcentury
editors and writers-custodians of orthodoxy, "adherents of the
message," with vested interests to protect.

-MICHAEL BAIGENT, RICHARD

LEIGH, AND HENRY LINCOLN,
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 368-69

'op culture promotes bizarre myths about the Bible. These urban
legends are then fueled by self-proclaimed authorities on the Internet or in
novels that make it on the best-seller lists. Meanwhile, biblical scholars tend
to ignore these childish antics, since they know that there is no substance to
them. This leaves the layperson without a clue as to what's really going on.

As an illustration of the sort of unfounded myth we're talking about, the

comments of Sir Leigh Teabing, a character in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci
Code, readily come to mind. He pontificates, "The Bible is a product of man,
my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man
created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved
through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never
had a definitive version of the book."1 There is of course a grain of truth in
all this. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds, and the Bible had
human authors. But to say that the Bible has evolved through translations,
additions, and revisions, with the implication that the original is no longer
detectable, is just plain silly. We discussed these issues in our first chapter on
textual criticism, noting that this kind of myth involves unwarranted
assumptions that are easily disproved by the manuscripts themselves. It
plays on the experiences of everyone who has passed on information without
recourse to the earlier sources (such as in the telephone game). But in the
case of the New Testament, this is not valid. As time goes on, we are getting
closer and closer to the wording of the original text because of the vast
number of manuscripts-many of which are quite early-that scholars continue
to uncover.

But what about the claim that Jesus' divinity was not to be found in the
New Testament manuscripts-that Constantine essentially invented this
doctrine? We will address that specific issue toward the end of this chapter
with concrete evidence that again shows how this kind of language is
patently false and misleading.

What is really at stake when it comes to the accuracy of the copies of the
New Testament text? We have already noted four kinds of textual problems
relevant to this issue:

1. The largest number of textual variants (well over half) involve

spelling differences and nonsense readings that are easily detectable.
These affect nothing of significance in the text.

2. Next in number are those variants that do not affect translation or, if
they do, involve synonyms. Variants such as "Christ Jesus" versus
"Jesus Christ" may entail a slightly different emphasis, but nothing of
great consequence is involved.

3. Other, more meaningful variants are not viable. They simply have no
plausibility when it comes to reflecting the wording of the original
because the manuscripts in which they are found have a poor pedigree.
This issue involves careful historical investigation and requires the
scholar to take the transmission of the text seriously. We saw that
Robert Price's attempt to excise Luke 1:34 from the Bible belonged to
 the category of "meaningful but not viable." In his case, there was
absolutely no manuscript evidence on his side, only wishful thinking.

4. The smallest category, about 1 percent of all textual problems,

involves those variants that are both meaningful and viable. Most New
Testament scholars would say that there are far fewer textual problems
in this category than even 1 percent of the total. But even assuming the
more generous amount (by expanding the scope of both "meaningful"
and "viable"), not much of a theological nature is affected.

Our objective in this chapter is to discuss this fourth kind of variant in

more detail to see whether the deity of Christ (as well as other cardinal
beliefs) is affected by these variants. We will first look at the possibility of
"conjectural emendation"-variants that have no manuscripts in support of
them. How many are there, and how do scholars deal with them? Then, we
will discuss which doctrines are affected by the variants. Finally, we will
examine some of the early manuscripts to see what they have to say about
the deity of Jesus Christ.

CONJECTURAL EMENDATION
We have noted throughout this section that New Testament textual
criticism suffers from an "embarrassment of riches" unparalleled by any
other piece of ancient literature. The manuscript copies of the New
Testament are far more plentiful and earlier than any other Greek or Latin
texts. In terms of manuscript data, any skepticism about the Jesus of the
Gospels should be multiplied many times for any other historical figure. We
have more and earlier manuscript evidence about the person of Jesus Christ
than we do anyone else in the ancient world-including Julius Caesar and
Alexander the Great.

But let's quantify that more specifically. How many gaps are in the New
Testament that need to be filled in-places where no manuscripts exist and
scholars simply must guess at what was originally written?
 It might be good to get a frame of reference. Is there a need for conjectural
emendation for other ancient literature and, if so, how great is this need? For
many important authors, we only have partial works. Thus, of the ancient
historian Livy's 142-volume work on the history of Rome, copies of only
thirty-five volumes survive. Of Tacitus's Histories, fewer than five of the
original fourteen books can be found in any copies.2 Hundreds of books
from antiquity are known to us only by name; no manuscripts remain. And
even in some of the better-preserved writings, there are many significant
gaps. For example, in his Patristic Textual Criticism, Miroslav Marcovich
complains that the surviving copies of some of the early patristic writers are
"lacunose [filled with gaps], corrupt, dislocated and interpolated."3 He then
proceeds to lay out principles of conjectural emendation that he must follow
in order to reconstruct the original wording.4

The situation with New Testament textual criticism is entirely different:

Virtually no conjectural emendation is required because of the great wealth,
diversity, and age of the materials we have.' Most New Testament scholars
would say that there are absolutely no places where conjecture is necessary.
Again, this is because the manuscripts are so plentiful and so early that in
almost every instance the original New Testament can be reconstructed from
the available evidence.

For example, Kurt and Barbara Aland, the first two directors of the
Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Munster, Germany (Institut
fur neutestamentliche Textforschung or INTF), wrote a standard textbook on
New Testament textual criticism. At the INTF, over 90 percent of all Greek
New Testament manuscripts are on microfilm. For the past forty-five years,
the institute has been more influential than any individual, school, or group
of scholars anywhere else in the world for determining the exact wording of
the original New Testament. In short, they know their stuff. "Every reading
ever occurring in the New Testament textual tradition is stubbornly
preserved, even if the result is nonsense ... any reading ever occurring in the
New Testament textual tradition, from the original reading onward, has been
preserved in the tradition and needs only to be identified."6

The Alands go so far as to say that if a reading is found in just one

manuscript, it is almost surely not authentic: "The principle that the original
reading may be found in any single manuscript or version when it stands
alone or nearly alone is only a theoretical possibility."7 Further, "textual
difficulties should not be solved by conjecture, or by positing glosses or
interpolations, etc., where the textual tradition itself shows no break; such
attempts amount to capitulation before the difficulties and are themselves
violations of the text."8 Their opinion in these matters should be considered
as that of expert witnesses. Most in the discipline share their views.9

The "non-need" to guess about the wording of the original New Testament
means that in virtually every instance the original reading is to be found
somewhere in the manuscripts. That "somewhere" can be narrowed down by
the methods we discussed in the last chapter. Further, since the original
reading need not be guessed at, we have an actual database-the pool of
variants found in the manuscripts-that can be tested for theological
deviations.

An illustration is in order here. Suppose conjectural emendation were

needed for Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. In the opening sentence,
a comparison of the manuscripts might show something like this:10

Manuscript A: Four score and seven ago our brought forth, upon this
continent, a new nation, conceived in dom, and dedicated to the
proposition that "all are created equal."

Manuscript B: Four score and ago our s brought forth, upon this
continent, a new nation, in lib , and dedicated to the proposition that
"all

Comparing these two manuscripts, we notice that there are gaps. Perhaps
there is a wormhole in one manuscript and water damage on the other.
Fortunately, some of the gaps are filled in by the other manuscript, but not
all. Putting the data together from both manuscripts, we can get the
following:

Four score and seven ago our s brought forth, upon this continent, a
new nation, conceived in {lib I dom?}, and dedicated to the proposition
that "all are created equal."
In such an instance, would Lincoln scholars have the right to put anything
they wish in the gaps? Of course not. There are a finite number of options.
For example, since we know the date of the Gettysburg Address, the "four
score and seven" cannot refer to days or months. It must refer to years. Also,
if one variant has "lib " while the other has " dom," scholars may guess that
something like either liberty or freedom belonged here. Perhaps they cannot
decide between these two, but they do not have the right to think that
libations or Christendom was the appropriate word. Common sense has to
prevail when doing conjectural emendation. As to who brought forth the new
nation, scholars might suppose that something like fathers, forefathers, or
leaders would be appropriate. Nothing of substance is at stake here, of
course, except for the exact wording. But again, only a finite number of
options are really possible. Finally, the last statement-that "all are created
equal"-might require something like people or men. But people would hardly
do in 1863, since men was the generic term used at that time when all people
were in view.

Finally, to make their argument, Lincoln scholars would have to find other
speeches by the president, as well as his writings, to get a sense as to what he
might have said. Manners and customs of the day would be examined, and
the conjectures would have to make sense. All in all, even in a text such as
this, there would be a finite number of options, and no reasonable person
would consider all conceivable options as equally possible.

The situation for the New Testament is hardly as bleak as this! Of the
138,000 words of the original text, only one or two might have no
manuscript support. And in the places where conjecture may be necessary,
this does not mean that we have no idea what the original text said. Instead,
precisely because almost all the possible variants are already to be found in
the manuscripts, scholars have a rather limited number of options with which
to contend. Now, suppose that when faced with variants, textual critics
simply picked readings at random without any genuine scholarly method,
like chimps taking a multiple-choice exam. But even if this were the case,
virtually all of the answers would make sense, and most of them are very
close to the wording of the others. Furthermore, almost never is there the
option, "None of the above." Of course, as we saw in the previous chapter,
New Testament textual criticism is a very exacting discipline, with several
checks and balances. It is not a bunch of chimps randomly picking from a
list of options. Frankly, when skeptics try to make the claim that we simply
have no clue what the original New Testament text said, one has to wonder
what drives their dogmatic skepticism, because it certainly isn't the
evidence."

WHAT THEOLOGICAL TRUTHS ARE AT STAKE?

The short answer to the question of what theological truths are at stake in
these variants is-none. Most New Testament scholars are of the opinion that
no doctrine, no teaching of the New Testament, is jeopardized by textual
variants. The view goes back to J. A. Bengel (1687-1752), who came to this
conclusion after examining thirty thousand variants.12 Since his day, many
others have argued the same thing-that no doctrine is jeopardized by textual
variants."

Some scholars, however, have argued that doctrines-even cardinal,

foundational affirmations-are affected by the variants. Kenneth W. Clark, for
example, attempted to show that a particular New Testament teaching was
suppressed in some manuscripts." Of course, even if true, this does not
demonstrate that the doctrine is eradicated or truly jeopardized. Still, the
wording in Acts 1:11, for example, differs among the manuscripts. One
manuscript group known as the Western text lacks "into heaven" in the
clause: "this Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven...." Thus, some
claim that the Western text undercuts the New Testament affirmation of the
ascension of Christ because of this verse. However, to maintain that view,
the Western text must lack all references to the ascension. Yet Acts 1:11
reads, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking up into the sky? This
same Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come back in
the same way you saw him go into heaven." The "into the sky" and the
second "into heaven" in this verse are untouched in the Western text. And
most other ascension texts are not altered either. It may be that the Western
scribes were trying to trim words and phrases for stylistic reasons, but it is
extremely doubtful that they were attempting to eradicate any reference to
the ascension of Christ. If that had been their motive, they were singularly
incompetent in their attempt.15
 More recently, Bart Ehrman, a leading textual critic, has written a book
for a popular readership titled Misquoting Jesus. Ehrman is well known for
his indefatigable scholarship and provocative opinions.16 This work, which,
according to Ehrman, is the first book written on New Testament textual
criticism for a lay audience,17 concludes that

It would be wrong ... to say-as people sometimes dothat the changes in

our text have no real bearing on what the texts mean or on the
theological conclusions that one draws from them. We have seen, in
fact, that just the opposite is the case.18

Some of the chief examples of theological differences among the variants

that Ehrman discusses are a passage in which Jesus is said to be angry (Mark
1:41), an explicit statement about the Trinity (1 John 5:7-8), and a text in
which "even the Son of God himself does not know when the end will come"
(Matt. 24:36 NIV).19 But Ehrman's argument is overstated in each instance.
For example, although certain ancient manuscripts speak of Jesus as being
angry in Mark 1:41 while others speak of him as having compassion, the fact
is that in Mark 3:5 Jesus is said to be angry-wording that is indisputably in
the original text of Mark. So it is hardly something that changes the
interpretation or theology of Mark's Gospel to see Jesus as angry in 1:41. As
for the explicit Trinitarian passage, see our discussion below.

Regarding Matthew 24:36, many manuscripts record Jesus as speaking of

his own prophetic ignorance ("But as for that day and hour no one knows it-
neither the angels in heaven, nor the Sonexcept the Father alone"), but many
others lack the words "nor the Son .1121 Whether "nor the Son" is authentic
or not is disputed, but what is not disputed is the wording in the parallel in
Mark 13:32: "But as for that day or hour no one knows it-neither the angels
in heaven, nor the Son-except the Father." Thus, there can be no doubt that
Jesus spoke of his own prophetic ignorance in the Olivet discourse.
Consequently, what doctrinal issues are really at stake in Matthew 24:36?

Curiously, in his six discussions of Matthew 24:36, not once does Ehrman
mention this parallel passage. Instead, he insists that scribes struggled over
the wording, even altering the text because of their theological convictions.
(He also does not mention that even if "neither the Son" is not explicitly
stated in Matthew, the idea of the Son's ignorance is implicitly seen in the
final phrase of verse 36: "except the Father alone.") Why, then, did these
same scribes simply skip over Mark 13:32, leaving the wording untouched?
The notion that Jesus confessed prophetic ignorance is solidly attested in the
Scriptures. There is no new revelation here. The only issue is whether
Matthew represents the words of Christ the same way that Mark does. But
since the early church obviously knew of such a text in Mark and left it
unaltered, this tells us that the theology taught in Mark 13:32 hardly caused a
ripple21 (since only a handful of late manuscripts deleted the words) and
that therefore the reasons for its omission or addition in Matthew 24:36 must
be accounted for on other grounds." One simply cannot maintain that the
wording in verse 36 changes one's basic theological convictions about Jesus
since the same sentiment is already implied in Matthew and explicitly stated
in Mark.

The idea that the variants in the New Testament manuscripts alter the
theology of the New Testament is overstated, at best.23 Quite a bit more
nuance is required to see what the real trouble areas are. Unfortunately, as
careful a scholar as Ehrman is, his treatment of major theological changes in
the text of the New Testament tends to fall under one of two criticisms.
Either his textual decisions are suspect or his interpretations are suspect.
These criticisms were made of his earlier major work, Orthodox Corruption
of Scripture, from which Misquoting Jesus has drawn extensively. Yet, the
conclusions that he put forth there are still stated here without a recognition
of some of the severe criticisms of his work the first go-around.24 For a
book geared toward a lay audience, one would think that he would want to
nuance his discussion a bit more, especially with all the theological weight
that he says is on the line. Significant textual variants that alter core
doctrines of the New Testament have not yet been produced.

A little perspective is in order here. Two groups of people tend to claim

that the early manuscripts of the New Testament are badly corrupted, radical
liberals and "KJV only" advocates (and advocates of the Greek New
Testament that the KJV is translated from, the Textus Receptus or TR).

The "KJV only" pamphleteers have waged a holy war on all who would
use any modern version of the New Testament, or any Greek text based on
the few ancient manuscripts rather than on the many late ones.25 Jasper
James Ray is a highly influential representative of this approach.26 In his
book, God Wrote Only One Bible,' Ray says that no modern version may
properly be called the Bible, that salvation and spiritual growth can only
come through versions based on the TR, and that Satan is the prime mover
behind all translations based on the more ancient manuscripts.28 David Otis
Fuller calls the modern translations "bastard Bibles,"29 and argues that
anyone who uses them has been duped by Satan.3o

When it comes to the details, however, the "KJv only" folks get a little
fuzzy. New Testament scholar Dr. Greg Herrick relates the story of a
conversation he had with a "KJv only" man recently:

When this fellow told me that all modern translations were based on
corrupt manuscripts, and that they were filled with heresy, I began to
ask some questions:

"Do you believe in the deity of Christ?" I asked.

"Yes, of course!" the KJV man said.

"Do you believe in the Virgin Birth of Christ?" I inquired.

"Yes, I do!" he responded.

"What about the bodily resurrection of Christ, the Trinity, salvation by

grace?" I asked.

"Yes, I believe in all these things."

"Whew! I'm relieved to hear that, because I got all those doctrines from
my modern translation."31

It is not only the "KJV only" advocates, however, who think that the
ancient manuscripts are terribly corrupt. Frank Zindler, an outspoken atheist
and critic of Christianity, discusses the famous Comma Johanneum, a
passage found in 1 John 5 in the KJv but not in modern translations. This
text says, "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the
Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" (1 John 5:7 KJV).
Zindler correctly notes that this verse was added to an early edition of the
Greek New Testament, published in 1522, because of pressure from church
hierarchy. He also notes that the wording was not found in any Greek
manuscripts prior to the fifteenth century. But then he stumbles:

The discovery that the oldest Bibles omit 1 John 5:7 leaves Christians
without biblical "proof of the Trinity." While there are still other verses
that are compatible with trinitarian doctrine, none are proof of it. Unless
Christian apologists consider the Trinity trivial, they must admit that the
differences in MSS are important!32

Is the Trinity truly a trivial doctrine? Is it something that cannot be

demonstrated by the oldest manuscripts? If so, how is it possible that the
Council of Constantinople in 381 explicitly affirmed the Trinity? How could
they do this without the benefit of a verse that didn't get into the Greek New
Testament for another millennium? Further, Constantinople's statement was
not written in a vacuum: the early church put together in a theological
formulation what they saw in the New Testament. Zindler does not answer
the historical question; rather, he simply wants to cast doubt on the
orthodoxy of the early manuscripts. His logic is flawed because it doesn't
square with history. As we have said before, an ounce of evidence is worth a
pound of presumption.

An important distinction needs to be made here. If a particular verse does

not teach the deity of Christ in some of the manuscripts, does this mean that
that doctrine is suspect? It would only be suspect if all the verses that affirm
Christ's deity are textually suspect. And even then the variants would have to
be plausible. It is well known that later manuscripts did add words here and
there that conformed to orthodoxy.33 But this hardly means that all the
verses that affirm a particular doctrine are affected.

If major teachings of the New Testament are not impacted by viable

variants, what about minor doctrines? By minor doctrines we mean some
noncentral belief or practice. Yes, some of those seem to be affected. But
these are quite rare.34 Thus it is better to say that no viable variant affects
any cardinal truth of the New Testament. The key words here are viable and
cardinal. Many New Testament scholars, however, would say that that is too
cautious a statement.35

THE EARLY MANUSCRIPTS AND THE DEITY OF CHRIST

In their 1982 best-seller, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, authors Michael

Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln suggest that Constantine
changed the text of the New Testament in the fourth century:

In A.D [. ] 303, a quarter of a century earlier, the pagan emperor

Diocletian had undertaken to destroy all Christian writings that could be
found. As a result Christian documents-especially in Rome-all but
vanished. When Constantine commissioned new versions of these
documents, it enabled the custodians of orthodoxy to revise, edit, and
rewrite their material as they saw fit, in accordance with their tenets. It
was at this point that most of the crucial alterations in the New
Testament were probably made and Jesus assumed the unique status he
has enjoyed ever since. The importance of Constantine's commission
must not be underestimated. Of the five thousand extant early
manuscript versions of the New Testament, not one predates the fourth
century. The New Testament as it exists today is essentially a product of
fourthcentury editors and writers-custodians of orthodoxy, "adherents
of the message," with vested interests to protect.36

As we have argued throughout this section, the factual errors in this sort of
statement are legion. The authors set the reader up for their shocking
assertion by claiming that there are "five thousand extant early manuscript
versions of the New Testament" Although nothing in ancient Greek or Latin
literature compares to the New Testament in terms of the surviving
documents, it is hardly accurate to say that there are five thousand early
manuscripts of the New Testament. There are several hundred from the first
millennium; the rest are from 1000 or later. The implication that Holy Blood,
Holy Grail seems to make is that with thousands of early manuscripts, and
none before the fourth century, a conspiracy is afoot. And Constantine is the
culprit. This, of course, makes for titillating reading, but it bears no
resemblance to historical fact.

We will focus on a single point here (see the later section "The Divinity of
Jesus: Early Tradition or Late Superstition?" for evidence of belief in the
divinity of Christ prior to Constantine): Is it true that no New Testament
manuscripts predate the fourth century, thus allowing for the possibility that
Constantine invented the doctrine of the deity of Christ? Hardly. The reality
is that there are at least forty-eight Greek New Testament manuscripts that
predate the fourth century.37 Now, to be sure, all of these are fragmentary,
but many of them include very large fragments (such as most of Paul's letters
or almost the entirety of two Gospels). Altogether, they cover about half of
the New Testament.

Let's look at some of the verses in pre-fourth-century manuscripts that

speak explicitly of Christ's deity. We are restricting our discussion to those
verses in which Jesus is called "God." Beyond these, there are dozens of
other passages that affirm his deity implicitly (some of which we will
discuss in the section "The Divinity of Jesus"). But here we want to show
that it is quite impossible for Constantine to have invented the deity of Christ
when that doctrine is already found in manuscripts that predate him by a
century or more.

Explicit References to Christ's Deity in New Testament Manuscripts Before

the Fourth Century
 It is important to note that these three papyri are among our most
important manuscripts of the New Testament. P" includes eight of Paul's
letters and the letter to the Hebrews. P66 covers most of John's Gospel. P75
includes most of Luke and part of John. The later manuscripts from the
fourth century-the manuscripts that Constantine allegedly corrupted-are very
much in agreement with these manuscripts. Indeed, the manuscript that
modern translations rely on as much as any other is Vaticanus, a fourth-
century codex that has about three-fourths of the New Testament. The
agreement between Codex Vaticanus and P75 is as great as any two ancient
manuscripts.38 Not only this, but in all the passages listed above, there are
no significant variants from any manuscripts of any age.39 They all tell the
same story: Jesus is true deity.

We have argued two basic points in this chapter. First, there is virtually no
need for conjecture about the original wording. That is, the wording of the
original text is almost always to be found in the extant (remaining) copies.
Second, any uncertainty over the wording of the original New Testament
does not have an impact on major teachings of the New Testament. The deity
of Christ certainly is not affected by this.

There is simply no room for uncertainty about what the New Testament
originally taught. Whether one chooses to believe it is a different matter, and
that is taken up in other chapters. Our concern here is simply to show that
the fundamental teachings of the New Testament are undisturbed by viable
textual variants.
PART 3
 DID THE EARLY
CHURCH MUZZLE THE
CANON?
Chapter 9
 THE RANGE OF THE CANON
Eventually, four Gospels and twenty-three other texts were canonized
(declared to be the Holy Scriptures) into a Bible. This did not occur,
however, until the sixth century.

-DAN BURSTEIN, Secrets of the Code, 116

-1 o far we have argued that the Gospel writers basically got the story
1of Jesus right. We discussed the deeply rooted oral tradition in the Jewish
culture and noted that the story of Jesus would have been passed on
faithfully from teacher to student in the first few decades of the Christian
faith. When the Gospel writers put pen to papyrus, each one certainly had
his own take on things. Each selected what to put in and what to emphasize,
shaping the material for his particular readers.

But shaping what was already found in the story of Jesus and inventing-
out of nothing-a life of Christ are two very different things. The fact that the
Gospels have several differences shows that they were not produced in
collusion with one another. And even though Matthew and Luke used
Mark's Gospel as a template, this in no way means that they gullibly copied
his narratives without verifying the truth of the story. Just the opposite
seems to be the case: If they used Mark, then they approved of Mark in his
essential affirmations. We can't have our cake and eat it too. That is, we
can't, on the one hand, affirm that Luke and Matthew gullibly copied Mark
but, on the other hand, claim that they strayed from Mark because of their
own creativity. Frequently, when they stray from Mark, the story gets
blander and shorter, clearer, or stated more accurately. This kind of editing
can hardly be due to the imagination of the authors! The oral tradition,
coupled with the way in which Matthew and Luke used Mark, argues that
all three Synoptic Gospels got the essentials of the life of Jesus right.

We also have seen that the rest of the New Testament was copied in such
a way that we can recover most of the original wording. The suggestion that
the scribes went wild on the text, that there were no controls, and that
scholars cannot determine the wording of the original because of such chaos
is nonsense. Even though we may not know exactly, in every instance, what
the original wording is, that's a far cry from saying that we don't know
anything about the original wording. Further, no cardinal doctrine depends
on any plausible variant. Although we cannot have absolute certainty about
the wording of the original, there is no need for total despair. The lack of
one does not necessarily produce the other, even though alarmists on both
the left and the right argue that this must be so. Neither dogmatic certitude
nor dogmatic skepticism is warranted when it comes to the text of the New
Testament. In sum, we can have a high degree of confidence regarding the
authentic wording behind the great majority of variants in the New
Testament.

INTRODUCTION
But how do we know which books should be included in the New
Testament? How did the early church decide what was Scripture and what
was not? What were the criteria? In particular, how do we know that our
four Gospels should be there rather than, say, the Gospel of Thomas or
some other work? Some radical scholars today are arguing, in fact, that the
Gospel of Thomas should find its place next to the other four Gospels, or
even replace the Gospel of John in our New Testaments.' Are their claims
justified?

Discerning which books belong in the Bible and how we can tell is called
canonization. This process involves a long and complicated history. A book
accepted as Scripture is said to be canonical or to have the status of
canonicity. Some of the issues include when the New Testament books were
considered as Scripture; what criteria were used to determine which books
were in and which books were out (we will look at only a couple of these
criteria); how the New Testament canon relates to the Old Testament canon;
why Protestants have a different list of Old Testament books than do Roman
Catholics; and whether the canon is truly closed in that no more books can
be added. Thinking Christians wrestle with these topics. But as important as
they are, they are not central to what occupies us here. Our goal is simply to
highlight a few major issues that ultimately relate to the person of Christ. In
the back of the book we list some helpful works on this subject that you can
consult for more information.

In this section, we want to explore three key questions: (1) When and
why were the books of the New Testament accepted into the canon, and,
especially, which were accepted early on and without dispute? (2) What did
the ancient church think of forgeries? (3) Was there a conspiracy against the
"lost books of the Bible"? Before we begin, it might be helpful to offer a
definition of "canon."

DEFINITION OF CANON

What does it mean to say that the New Testament is canon? "Canon" is a
transliteration of the Greek word kanon, which means "rule" or "standard."
When applied to the New Testament, two similar, though different, answers
are given to the question: either the New Testament is "a collection of
authoritative books or an authoritative collection of books."' That is, either
the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were discovered to be
authoritative because of their intrinsic worth, "ring of truth," and obvious
authority (thus, a collection of authoritative books), or those books were
determined to be authoritative by some other authority (thus, an
authoritative collection).

William Barclay said, "It is the simple truth to say that the New
Testament books became canonical because no one could stop them doing
so."3 Bruce Metzger concurs: "The Church did not create the canon, but
came to recognize, accept, affirm, and confirm the selfauthenticating quality
of certain documents that imposed themselves as such upon the Church."4
This implies that their authority was intrinsic and only needed to be
discovered by the early church. Thus, the canon is a list of authoritative
books.

A CANON WITHIN THE CANON?

 Many discussions about the canon of the New Testament focus on the
books that struggled for acceptance, as though this told the whole story. For
example, Dan Burstein suggests that the entire process was long and drawn
out: "Eventually, four Gospels and twenty-three other texts were canonized
(declared to be the Holy Scriptures) into a Bible. This did not occur,
however, until the sixth century."' Such a statement has a grain of truth in it.
It is true that in one branch of the ancient church (the Syrian), some books
were not considered canonical until the sixth century.' But the Syrian church
was the exception to the rule. By the end of the fourth century, the church in
the West had accepted all twenty-seven books as canonical. The church in
the East, to some degree, wrestled with a few of the books much longer.7
But the majority of the New Testament books were accepted centuries
earlier by all branches of Christianity.

The problem with a statement such as Burstein's is that it gives the

impression that all the books were up for grabs until the sixth century. It is
akin to saying that World War I did not end until June 1921 because that is
when the United States signed a peace treaty with Germany (the U.S.
Senate never ratified the Treaty of Versailles). But even though the war was
not officially over until 1921, hostilities ceased on November 11, 1918.

Should a major conflict be considered terminated only when it is

officially terminated or when the fighting stops? If we argue that it's not
over until some official document says it is, then World War I went on for
two and one-half years after the cessation of hostilities. But in World War
II, just the opposite happened: The war officially ended on September 2,
1945, but the hostilities continued for decades. Many know the story of
Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier on the Philippine island of Lubang, who
hid out in the jungles for twentynine years. But many do not know that
thousands of Japanese soldiers did not lay down their arms on September 2,
1945. By January 1948, nearly five hundred more Japanese soldiers had
surrendered, not realizing that the war had been over for more than two
years. Later in 1948, as many as twenty thousand soldiers in the mountains
of Manchuria surrendered. Between 1949 and 1973, more than thirty other
Japanese soldiers surrendered. Hiroo Onada was not the last holdout.
Captain Fumio Nakahira surrendered on Mindoro Island in the Philippines
in 1980. No one today would claim that World War II lasted for forty years
beyond 1945-even though it did not end that year for thousands of soldiers.

When it comes to the canon of the New Testament, no official

churchwide creed ever pronounced the canon closed.8 Even during the
Protestant Reformation, some of the Reformers as well as Catholics
expressed serious doubts about books on the fringes of the canon. As
recently as 1968, several clergy argued that Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter
from a Birmingham Jail" should be included in the New Testament!' On the
other hand, the majority of New Testament books were accepted as
authoritative very early. And by the fourth century, the canon was
unofficially closed in the West. Further, in the East several lists, beginning
in the fourth century, gave the same twenty-seven books as the New
Testament canon. Thus, apart from a few stragglers (both churches and
books), the canon was practically, though not officially, closed in the fourth
century. It's a misrepresentation of the facts to claim that the books of the
New Testament were not considered canonical until the sixth century, just
because a few were still doubted by one segment of the church.

Three key criteria were used to assess the authority of these books-
apostolicity, orthodoxy, and catholicity. Was a book written by an apostle or
an associate of an apostle (apostolicity)? Did it conform to the teachings of
other books known to be by apostles (orthodoxy)? Was it accepted early and
by a majority of churches (catholicity)? Although the ancient church
wrestled with a few of the books in light of these criteria, a substantial core
was accepted quickly and without dispute.

At first, Christians did not have a New Testament canon. The

proclamation of the gospel was by word of mouth. Even Paul's letters,
though obviously viewed as weighty and authoritative, were most likely not
perceived to be Scripture as soon as they were penned. Further, to circulate
the books of an illegal religion in the ancient world was not an easy task.
Prior to the second century, they could not even be collected into one
volume because the modern book form, the codex, had not been invented
yet, and scrolls could hold only so much information. The largest usable
scroll, in fact, could hold little more than one of the Gospels.
 But it is one thing to say that the early church did not recognize the New
Testament books as Scripture immediately, and another to say that they did
not recognize them as authoritative in some sense. Our question in this
chapter has to do especially with the collection and formal recognition of
these books that would later be labeled Scripture.

The first canon list we are aware of was written by Marcion in about 140.
Marcion was a Docetist-that is, he believed that Jesus Christ only appeared
to be human. He was also anti-Semitic, denying, among other things, that
the Old Testament was Scripture. He denied that Jesus was the son of the
Old Testament God, which he called a demiurge;10 rather, Jesus was the
son of the good God of the New Testament. Consequently, Marcion's canon
excluded Matthew, Mark, and John. Of the Gospels, the list included only a
heavily edited copy of Luke. Marcion's canon included ten of Paul's letters,
also edited. Marcion was influenced by the radical dualism common in
Greek philosophy, which saw spirit as good and material as evil.11

Two important facts relate to Marcion's list. First, since he was a heretic,
Marcion's list gave the early church impetus "to publish more
comprehensive and less idiosyncratic lists."12 Several books were already
circulating in collections, such as Paul's letters and the Gospels, but no
formal list had been drawn up. Marcion's canon prompted the church to do
just this.

Second, even though Marcion was a heretic whose views were largely
compatible with Gnostic teaching," which was gaining a foothold at this
time, he only included parts of our New Testament in his list. To be sure, he
edited these books heavily to suit his own purposes, but why didn't he
include such works as the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary or the
Acts of Peter? Marcion was certainly exposed to Gnostic ideas," so why
didn't he include any Gnostic writings in his list? The most likely inference
is that they did not yet exist. And even if some of them did exist, they
would not have been regarded as authentic because of their obviously recent
vintage. Marcion easily could have edited any Gnostic work for his own
purposes, just as he did the New Testament books. Indeed, his job would
have been considerably easier, since he would not have had to cut out
nearly as much material! The fact that he used only New Testament books
for his truncated canon, and mutilated those copies, suggests that even a
radical heretic like Marcion knew that these books were already highly
regarded.15

After Marcion, other canon lists started to appear. The Muratorian Canon
was composed in the latter part of the second century,16 most likely in
Rome. Although the copies of the Muratorian Canon are all fragmentary,17
most of it can be made out. The list includes the four Gospels, Acts, Paul's
thirteen letters, Jude, Revelation, 1 John, and either 2 John or 3 John or
both.18 Thus, at least twenty-one or twenty-two books are listed as
authoritative before the end of the second century.

The anonymous author of the Muratorian Canon also comments on other

books, which fall into three categories: disputed books, edifying but not
authoritative books, and books that were to be rejected as heretical. The one
disputed book was the Apocalypse of Peter: "We receive only the
apocalypses of John and Peter, though some of us are not willing that the
latter be read in church."19 One book that was judged to be edifying but not
authoritative was The Shepherd of Hermas. It was recognized as a recent
work and thus could be read privately. Finally, several other works are
mentioned as both recent productions and heretical and therefore not
acceptable at all .20

It is important to note that the age of a work was a determining factor in

canonicity. A book that was perceived to have been written after the time of
the apostles was categorically rejected. As time went on, and as memories
of the age of certain books died out, canonical claims were made for some
of the second-century documents. But in the earliest canon lists, these books
were absent (in Marcion's list) or were explicitly rejected (in the Muratorian
Canon) as being recent works and therefore nonapostolic.

Other writers began to explicitly discuss the canon. Over the following
decades, some of the books "sitting on the fence" of the canon were
disputed, but the core remained largely the same. In some places, various
noncanonical books were looked on favorably, even receiving temporary
and localized canonical status. But over all, the same books showed up on
each list as undisputed authoritative books on which the faith and practice
of the church were built.

As New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger notes:

What is really remarkable ... is that, though the fringes of the New
Testament canon remained unsettled for centuries, a high degree of
unanimity concerning the greater part of the New Testament was
attained within the first two centuries among the very diverse and
scattered congregations not only throughout the Mediterranean world
but also over an area extending from Britain to Mesopotamia.21

So what did the ancient church recognize as the "greater part of the New
Testament" or the "canon within the canon"? The four Gospels (Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John) and Paul's thirteen letters were almost always on the
lists, as well as the book of Acts. Only on rare occasions was any doubt
expressed about any of these. As well, 1 Peter and 1 John were usually
included. In the East, Hebrews was considered canonical and placed with
Paul's letters. Revelation was considered canonical in many circles. Thus,
twenty to twenty-two of the twentyseven books of the New Testament were
consistently regarded as Scripture as early as that label was applied to the
New Testament.

THE CLOSING OF THE CANON?

By the fourth century, Christians were coming to terms with even some
disputed books. The early fourth-century church historian Eusebius of
Caesarea (c. 260-340) has a lengthy discussion of the canon of the New
Testament as it was perceived in the East. But his discussion reflects the
attitudes of still earlier fathers, Clement and Origen:

At this point it seems reasonable to summarize the writings of the New

Testament which have been quoted. In the first place should be put the
holy tetrad of the Gospels. To them follows the writing of the Acts of
the Apostles. After this should be reckoned the Epistles of Paul.
 Following them the Epistle of John called the first, and in the same
way should be recognized the Epistle of Peter. In addition to these
should be put, if it seem desirable, the Revelation of John, the
arguments concerning which we will expound at the proper time.
These belong to the Recognized Books [homolegou- mena]. Of the
Disputed Books [antilegomena] which are nevertheless known to most
are the Epistle called of James, that of Jude, the second Epistle of
Peter, and the so-called second and third Epistles of John which may
be the work of the evangelist or of some other with the same name.22

Eusebius recognizes twenty-two of the twenty-seven books of the New

Testament as undisputed (though he later vacillates on Revelation), and the
rest as disputed but widely read and recognized. He includes Hebrews
among the letters of Paul, even though elsewhere he is aware that some do
not regard it as Pauline. By the early fourth century, then, all twenty-seven
books of the New Testament were tentatively considered canonical, with
twenty-two of them definitely so. We will come back to Eusebius in the
next chapter to see what he has to say about some other writings. But for
now, we simply wish to stress that the majority of the books of the New
Testament had been accepted from early times, and about half a dozen
books still on the fringes of canonicity were nevertheless recognized as
ancient and orthodox. As D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo observe
concerning Eusebius's statement, "The Gospels, Acts, the thirteen Paulines,
1 Peter and 1 John are universally accepted very early; most of the
remaining contours of the New Testament canon are already established by
the time of Eusebius"23

In the West, a flurry of unofficial canon lists were composed by leading

church fathers, and during the fourth century, the core books were always
included. By 393, the canon was effectively closed when Augustine
weighed in on the matter. Jerome added icing on the cake by discussing at
some length the disputed books. Further, he included the twenty-seven New
Testament books in his translation of the Bible (known as the Vulgate).
Since that time, the Catholic Church (except in rare instances) has never
questioned which books were in and which were not.
 The situation in the East was not quite as decisive. There was greater
sensitivity in the East to works of value even if apostles did not write them.
Hence, the Eastern lists often included those books that were definitely
canonical, those that were possibly canonical, and those that were good
sources of spiritual truth but not canonical.

In 367, Athanasius, in his Thirty-ninth Festal Letter, pronounced without

reservation the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as canonical. Not
all in the East agreed with Athanasius on this list. Gregory of Nazianzus (d.
389) agreed with him except on the book of Revelation. Amphilochius (c.
after 394) accepted all except 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation.
Didymus the Blind (d. c. 398) accepted all except, apparently, 2 and 3 John.
Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Theodoret, all from the East and
writing in the late fourth or early fifth century, all included at least twenty-
two of the twenty-seven books. Thus, even though Eusebius and Athanasius
argued for a canon of twenty-seven books, later Eastern fathers restricted
the list.

It is important to note, however, that none of them added any other

gospels or letters or apocalypses to the New Testament canon. Furthermore,
the books they rejected had been disputed from the beginning-the shorter
letters (2 and 3 John and Jude), 2 Peter (because it differed in style from 1
Peter), and Revelation (because it differed in style from John's Gospel and
because of its apparent eschatological viewpoint). But the twenty-two core
books remained solidly confirmed.

CONCLUSION

The canon of the New Testament was a list of authoritative books "that
imposed themselves as such"24 upon the early church. As early as the label
Scripture was applied to any books of the New Testament, the four Gospels
and Paul's thirteen letters were included. As well, Acts, 1 Peter, and 1 John
were generally undisputed. The same can be said for the most part for
Hebrews and Revelation. By the end of the fourth century, the canon was
effectively, though not officially, closed in the West. In the East, certain
influential voices argued for a canon of twenty-seven books, but some
writers dissented. It is important to realize that their dissent did not move in
the direction of a larger canon but a smaller one. Only a few books on the
edges of the canon were disputed. These same writers rejected outright the
heretical books, if they discussed them at all.

What are we to make of the fact that in the East the canon remained an
open question for a long time? This belongs to the larger question of why
no official churchwide council or no ancient creed made a pronouncement
on the canon. We can draw at least three implications from this fact.

First, there was never any great pressure within the church to accept
certain books as canonical." This makes it all the more impressive that the
church came to such firm conclusions about the majority of the books early
on, and the rest in due time.

Second, because there was no pronouncement, some books naturally

were debated, at least in a part of the church. The debates always related to
apostolicity, catholicity, and orthodoxy. On this score, the shorter letters
came up short on catholicity because their very brevity made them easy to
overlook, 2 Peter was suspect because its apostolic authorship was
questioned, and Revelation was doubted for reasons of orthodoxy. But
Paul's letters and the Gospels were always the core on all three fronts. The
very lack of a council's decree allowed the ancient church to wrestle with
the legitimacy of these books. And on this score, the most important books
were never doubted.

Third, that no decree ever announced what books were canonical also
tells us implicitly that the canon was a list of authoritative books rather than
an authoritative list of books. Those books that belong in the canon belong
there because of their intrinsic worth and authenticity as witnesses to Jesus
Christ, not because some church council declared them to be authoritative.
As Metzger notes:

Neither religious nor artistic works really gain anything by having an

official stamp put on them. If, for example, all the academies of music
in the world were to unite in declaring Bach and Beethoven to be great
musicians, we should reply, "Thank you for nothing; we knew that
 already." And what the musical public can recognize unaided, those
with spiritual discernment in the early Church were able to recognize
in the case of their sacred writings through what Calvin called the
interior witness of the Holy Spirit. This testimo- nium Spiritus Sancti
internum, however, does not create the authority of Scripture (which
exists already in its own right), but is the means by which believers
come to acknowledge that authority. It is the correlative to the self-
authentication (autopistia) of Scripture, and neither the Fathers nor
Calvin attempted to resolve differences over the delineation of the
canon by a simple appeal to the Holy Spirit's dictates.26

We wish to conclude this chapter by coming back to our original

question: Did the early church get it right when it came to which books
should be included in the canon? Let us suppose, for sake of argument, that
only Eusebius's "recognized books" (homolegou- mena) should be in the
canon. What is lost? Five books comprising eleven chapters of material. It
is not accidental that some of the shortest books of the New Testament were
on the disputed list. They simply would not have been quoted as often as
the longer works and could have flown under the radar of the early church
fathers' affirmation. To require notice of them would be akin to requiring
notice of every chapter in Paul's letters, since three of these books are
merely one chapter long. None of these books are primary witnesses to the
historicity of Jesus Christ, though they certainly make a contribution to
understanding who he is and what the early church believed about him.

Of course, we are not suggesting that they should be removed from the
New Testament. But even if they were removed, the portrait of Jesus would
be essentially the same. To suggest that because the canon was still open in
the fourth century means that we have a right to replace the four Gospels
with any others, or that we can throw out Paul's letters, is a ridiculous
notion. It simply does not stand up to the facts of history. Rather than seeing
the ancient church as involved in some sort of cover-up, we might question
the motives of those who make such claims. They are so selective and
cavalier in how they remember the past that historical facts seem to be
trivial things that just get in the way of a good story. Just as Marcion cut up
his copy of Luke, so these historical revisionists have carved up the data of
history and have told only that part of the story that supports their claims.
Chapter 10
 WHAT DID THE ANCIENT
CHURCH THINK OF
FORGERIES?
It is a remarkable fact that although nearly all modern forms of
Christianity do not question the texts included in the New Testament,
in the first four centuries every single document was at some time or
other branded as either heretical or forged!

-TIMOTHY FREKE AND PETER

GANDY, The Jesus Mysteries, 224

-any Christians seem to think that any particular New Testa_ment

book belongs in the Bible just because it claims to be written by an apostle.
When Paul tells the Thessalonian church that the letter is from him, that's
enough to settle the issue in their minds. It might surprise them to learn that
a large number of other ancient books claimed to be written by apostles or
other well-known New Testament figures. Why aren't these books part of
our New Testament if they make the claim of apostolic authorship? After
all, if they make the claim of apostolic authorship, they belong in the New
Testament, right? Not necessarily. Should such books as the Gospel of
Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Acts of John, the Acts
of Paul, and the Apocalypse of Peter be in the New Testament? What about
the Epistle of Barnabas or Paul's Letter to the Laodiceans? Did the ancient
church get rid of books that belong in the New Testament and keep some
that don't? Did the ancient church muzzle the canon?

Dozens of books allegedly written by apostles or other leading figures in

the New Testament didn't make it into the New Testament. What criteria did
the early church use? If apostolic authorship was one of them, didn't the
church fail since so many other books also claimed to be by apostles?
Further, aren't some of the books in the New Testament pseudonymous
written by someone other than the purported author?

The next two chapters discuss how the ancient church dealt with the issue
of forgeries. This chapter will focus on method: What criteria did the
church use to sniff out a fake? The next will focus on content: What did the
books that are not in the New Testament have to say? This chapter also will
focus on what books are in the New Testament, while the next chapter will
focus on which books are not. Finally, this chapter will examine four New
Testament books-one Gospel, two letters, and one apocalypse-that offer
insights into the process of canonization, while the next chapter will focus
especially on the gospels that didn't make the cut.

THE IMPULSE OF APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY

The New Testament states clearly and forcefully that the apostles held a
special place in the establishment of the church. Ephesians 2:20 goes so far
as to claim that the church has "been built on the foundation of the apostles
and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone."

The immediate successors of the apostles recognized that the authority

the Lord had given the apostles was unique. The Apostolic Fathers (church
leaders in the generations immediately following the apostles) recognized a
definitive break in authority between the apostles and themselves. Ignatius,
bishop of Antioch (d. c. 110), acknowledged that the apostles belonged to a
clearly marked era that was now completed. He tells one church, "Be eager,
therefore, to be firmly grounded in the precepts of the Lord and the
apostles."1 He is viewing what the apostles taught as the standard by which
all other Christian teachings should be measured. On the way to his
execution, he writes to another church, "I did not think myself qualified for
this, that I, a convict, should give you orders as though I were an apostle."'
The apostles were eyewitnesses to the person and work of Jesus Christ. As
such, their testimony naturally became the standard by which other teaching
was measured.
 The authority of the apostles regarding the truth of the gospel was
obvious to anyone acquainted with Christianity in its early centuries. This
explains why dozens of pseudepigraphical gospels, epistles, and
apocalypses (books written in someone else's name) were produced: It was
an easy route to claim authority for some document that otherwise would
have none. The motive thus seems clear?

The clear demarcation in the early patristic period between the authority
of the apostles and that of the current church leaders must have created a
strong impulse to attribute apostolic authorship to various books. If the ploy
worked, these books would gain instant credibility and an air of authority.'
The question that we now turn to is whether this same motive existed for
the New Testament books. That is, were some of the books falsely
attributed to apostles?

We will look at four cases that have contributed to our understanding of

the canonization process: the Gospel of Mark, the letter to the Hebrews, the
book of Revelation, and 2 Peter.

The Gospel of Mark

The New Testament includes Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as Gospels.
We all know them by these names. What may be surprising is that originally
they all were anonymous works.' The titles we know were attached to the
writings very early and used consistently: two were by apostles (Matthew,
John), one was by a close associate of Paul (Luke), and one was by Mark. It
is this last Gospel that interests us here.

The most ancient testimony about the authorship of the Gospel of Mark
is by Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis until c. 130. Born most likely in the
60s A.D., Papias learned from first-generation Christians about the roots of
the faith. His testimony about the authorship and composition of Mark's
Gospel thus should be given much weight:

And the Elder used to say this: "Mark, having become Peter's
interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered, though
not in order, of the things either said or done by Christ. For he neither
 heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, followed
Peter, who adapted his teachings as needed but had no intention of
giving an ordered account of the Lord's sayings. Consequently Mark
did nothing wrong in writing down some things as he remembered
them, for he made it his one concern not to omit anything which he
heard or to make any false statement in them."6

Papias is appealing to an earlier testimony, "the Elder," as his source. That

elder is possibly John the apostle or, if not, at least a firstgeneration
Christian in a position of some authority.

The testimony of the ancient church after Papias is consistent on two

points about Mark's Gospel: first, Mark wrote it; second, Mark got his
information from Peter. But this raises a serious question: If early Christians
wanted to ascribe apostolic authorship for their sacred books, why didn't
they do so for this Gospel? The ancient testimony always makes a
distinction between Mark as the author and Peter as the source of
information. Further, Irenaeus, writing several decades after Papias,
disagrees with Papias on one key point. He believes that Mark wrote the
Gospel after Peter had died. Here is where we see the impulse toward
apostolic authorship come into play: Irenaeus wanted the first Gospel to be
written by an apostle (in this case, Matthew), so he disagreed with Papias
on when Mark wrote. But Irenaeus's chronology of events is doubtful.'
What is important for us to see is that even Irenaeus-whose motives in
making Matthew earlier than Mark are questionable-does not say that
Mark's Gospel was really written by Peter. The patristic writers were
notorious for getting chronological facts mixed up, but when it came to
authorship, they fared better. The ancient writers, even those who
succumbed (to a degree) to the temptation of apostolic authority, never
completely yielded to this temptation.'

The treatment of the Gospel of Mark in the ancient church ought to serve
as a bold reminder that the early Christians took seriously the question of
authorship. Especially when a particular book was anonymous, it allowed
any influential person to fill in the blank with his favorite apostle. But this
was not done with the Gospel of Mark. Surely the impulse to claim that one
of the Gospels was written by Peter was especially strong. That the church
refrained from this, claiming only that Mark got his Gospel from Peter,
shows remarkable restraint. In fact, the claim has all the earmarks of
authenticity.

If the early church refused to call this Gospel "The Gospel according to
Peter," would they capitulate when it came to less important works? Many
today question the authenticity of Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and 2
Peter. But only one of these books was ever questioned in the ancient
church. Perhaps the church fathers had more savvy than modern scholarship
gives them credit for. Should we not give these ancient authors the benefit
of the doubt when there was no dissent about authorship?

We can apply this question to another Gospel. Many scholars deny that
Matthew wrote Matthew because they believe the church fathers wanted to
ascribe apostolic authorship to the Gospel. Yet the same fathers do not give
in to that temptation with Mark. Further, Matthew, like Mark, received
unanimous testimony in the early church as to its authorship, even though it
too was originally an anonymous work. Finally, if the impulse to ascribe
authorship to an apostle could overcome conscience, this still doesn't
explain why Matthew's name is always assigned to the first Gospel. After
all, he was not a major disciple. Why, then, is his name-and only his name
associated with the Gospel that stands first in the New Testament? Unless
we want to be totally selective, picking and choosing from the Fathers what
we like and don't like, we might want to give them the benefit of the doubt
in these matters.

The Letter to the Hebrews

The letter to the Hebrews is another anonymous work. One author says,
"Scholarly comments on the New Testament document sometimes called
the Letter of Paul to Hebrews usually contain the quite valid observation
that the document is not a letter, is not by Paul, and is not written to
Hebrews."9 It is true that no author's name is on this book. And it is also
true that it looks more like a homily than a letter, although it does have
some resemblance to ancient letters. But even letters often had ascriptions
of authorship." One very plausible suggestion as to why no name appears
on the document is that it originally was written on a scroll. Scrolls
dispatched in the ancient world often had the addressee and author's name
on the outside of the scroll (much as we have on envelopes today), and
these may have worn off before copies of the document were made.

Regardless of the reason for the anonymous nature of Hebrews, this letter
soon became associated with Paul. In part, this was no doubt due to the
mention of Timothy in Hebrews 13:23 ("You should know that our brother
Timothy has been released. If he comes soon, he will be with me when I see
you"). As well, the letter has similarities with Paul's way of thinking and
seems to be clearly indebted to Paul's ideas."

The first author to cite this epistle was Clement (c. 96), though he does
not say who wrote the book. Hebrews is omitted from both Marcion's canon
and the Muratorian Canon. From the earliest times in church history, there
was much dispute as to its authorship. Unlike the Gospel of Mark, a number
of different authors were proposed, though Paul headed the list (so Clement
of Alexandria and others). Yet Pauline authorship was explicitly denied by
Origen, the successor to Clement, who uttered his famous agnostic
confession: "Whoever wrote the epistle, God only knows for sure."

Why did the ancient church ultimately reject Pauline authorship of

Hebrews, and what were the consequences? Although the Revised Version
(1881) uses the title, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews"
(following in the footsteps of the King James Bible), almost no one today
argues that Paul wrote this book.12 There are simply too many differences
between Hebrews and Paul's letters. These differences were noticed by
readers in the ancient church as well.

If Paul did not write Hebrews, then who did? Since the letter did not pass
the test of apostolicity, could it be regarded as authoritative, as Scripture?
The fact that Hebrews displayed an obvious literary and theological depth,
was quoted frequently (beginning in the late first century), and agreed with
the known apostolic writings ultimately assured its place in the canon.
 The debates regarding the authorship of Hebrews that eventually resulted
in the church recognizing its anonymous character (i.e., that it was not
written by Paul) tell a remarkable story of ecclesiastical integrity. The
temptation to call this letter apostolic (because to do otherwise might
exclude it from the canon) was overcome. As important as this letter was-
and as loved as it was, for it bore the ring of truth-the church did not
capitulate to false advertising regarding its authorship. The fact that dozens
of names of possible authors have been offered over the centuries shows the
keen interest and fascination that Christians have had with this letter. That
no consensus has been reached shows that its canonical status is firmly
based on other grounds. Hebrews is a mirror on the entire canonical
process. As William Barclay noted, "It is the simple truth to say that the
New Testament books became canonical because no one could stop them
doing so.""

The Book of Revelation

In the last book of the New Testament, the book of Revelation, the author
identifies himself only as "John" (Rev.1:1, 4, 9; 22:8). He does not call
himself "John the apostle" or "John the elder" but simply "John." Unlike
other ancient apocalypses that used pseudonyms of well-known figures of
the past, this author apparently had no intention to deceive, for "John"
doesn't really narrow down the field much!

Revelation's struggle for canonical status is related to this question. It is

neither anonymous nor pseudonymous. But the question as to the identity of
this John prompted doubts about its inclusion in the New Testament.

The earliest testimony about Revelation seems to assume that John the
apostle wrote the book (so Melito, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, the Muratorian
Canon, and possibly Papias). Not only this, but two of these writers,
Irenaeus and Melito, were from two of the cities addressed in Revelation,
Sardis and Smyrna respectively. They thus "could well be reporting
firsthand evidence."14

But not all agreed that John the apostle wrote this book. Marcion rejected
apostolic authorship, as did Dionysius, a third-century bishop from
Alexandria. Lively debates about the authorship ensued. To see this author
as other than the apostle John took some mental gymnastics. As D. A.
Carson and Douglas J. Moo note,

We might question whether a John who is never mentioned in the

abundant sources for first-century Asian church life would have had
sufficient stature to write a book of this sort, so different from anything
else in the New Testament, simply under his own name. Particularly
does this seem unlikely when we recall that there was a John [the
apostle] who was well known in this area at just this period."

Even with significant evidence that the John of this book was the apostle
John, the church balked. Early Christians did not naively accept this book
as authentic because it had the name John in it. Further, everyone who
accepted it as canonical in the ancient church recognized that the author
was really someone named John. It was no forgery.

Whether John the apostle wrote Revelation ultimately is not what

decided the issue of this book's canonicity. Today, many conserva tive
scholars question apostolic authorship but still regard the book as Scripture.
Other tests besides apostolic authorship obviously were in play in making
decisions about the canon in the early church,16 although apostolic
authorship was an important factor. Thus, as strong as the evidence was for
John the apostle as the author, there were and are some doubts. The very
fact that the church accepted this book as canonical without necessarily
affirming apostolic authorship speaks highly of the church's integrity. To
argue that John the apostle wrote it would have been a great temptation to
those who embraced its theology. That they did not succumb to this
temptation gives us a window on their method.

Second Peter

The shorter letters of John, Jude, and James were often disputed. So was
Revelation. But the most disputed book of the New Testament, in terms of
authorship, is 2 Peter. Unlike the Gospel of Mark and the letter to the
Hebrews, it is not an anonymous work. The author claims to be Simon Peter
(1:1), the apostle. This letter is not quoted or alluded to very often in the
second century17-some would say not at all-and this raised suspicions
about its authorship early on.

We will not delve deeply into why the early church disputed the
authorship of this letter, but we need to note two things: There were doubts
about its authenticity because there were doubts about its antiquity; the style
of writing in 2 Peter was perceived to be markedly different from the style
of writing in 1 Peter. Jerome notes that the stylistic differences between 1
Peter and 2 Peter are substantial, though he believed they could be
explained by Peter's use of different secretaries who contributed their own
stylistic touches.18 Eusebius, who doubted the authenticity of the letter,
argued that it was not mentioned by name by the most ancient church
fathers.19 These still are two of the most prominent reasons scholars give in
arguments that the apostle could not have written this letter.

Without entering into the debate about the authorship of 2 Peter, we

simply wish to make two observations. First, the letter was not accepted
without a struggle. The combination of lack of ancient citations and stylistic
differences from 1 Peter was almost a fatal blow to 2 Peter's placement in
the canon. Second, since this letter claimed to be by Peter, the early church
could not accept it if it were deemed a forgery. They would either reject it
as non-Petrine or accept it as authentic. There was no middle ground; there
was no sense of a "benign forgery."

Whether the church was ultimately correct in their assessment of the

authorship of this letter is a very important question. But it is not the most
important. More significant is that most of the books of the New Testament
were never questioned as to authorship precisely because they were used,
quoted, and loved from the very beginning. And no book was ever accepted
if it was thought to be a forgery.

These debates over authorship are a window into the ancient church's
struggles over the canon of the New Testament: The early Christian writers
were fully engaged in thinking about the authenticity of various documents.
They were not willing to accept even purported apostolic documents at face
value but evaluated those claims on two bases. First, they examined the
external historical evidence, asking whether the testimony to a particular
book was ancient and plentiful. Second, they compared the internal
consistency with the undisputed works that were regarded as having divine
authority.

Furthermore, the early Christians ultimately resisted the urge to grant

instant authority to an anonymous document by ascribing apostolic
authorship to it. Contrary to the notion that the ancient church rushed to put
an apostle's name on an anonymous work, they carefully worked out their
understanding of authorship. The very fact that several books of the New
Testament were originally anonymous or insufficiently labeled to make a
positive identification of the author (e.g., "John" for Revelation, "Jude" for
his letter) shows that the craving for authority that was exhibited regarding
so many later heretical works did not seem to be a major factor for the New
Testament books. Paul's letters are an exception to this; that is, in many of
his letters apostolic authority is consciously defended. But this was due to
his opponents questioning his authority and apostleship.

FORGERIES AND FORGERS IN THE CHURCH

We have seen, then, that the early church was very much engaged in
thinking about which books were authoritative and canonical. They simply
did not rubber-stamp books as "sacred." This brings us to the final question
of this chapter: How did the church react to forgeries?

Many scholars today see pseudepigraphy (the writing of a document in

someone else's name) as a practice accepted in the ancient church. The topic
of forgery actually was discussed at some length in the early church. We
wish to make three brief observations.

First, there are examples of forgeries coming to light in the ancient

church, and the church's response to them is illuminating. For example, 3
Corinthians, a document that circulated both by itself and as part of the Acts
of Paul, was discovered to be a forgery. The author, an elder who wrote the
work because of his love for Paul, was defrocked by Tertullian for this
fabrication. In about 200, when Serapion, bishop of Antioch, learned that
the Gospel of Peter was not written by the apostle, he declared, "For our
part, brethren, we receive both Peter and the other apostles as Christ, but the
writings which falsely bear their names we reject, as men of experience,
knowing that such were not handed down to us."20

In the second century, the Muratorian Canon condemned both the letter
to the Laodiceans and the letter to the Alexandrians because both were
"forged in Paul's name."" One of the proofs of forgery was a lack of early
attestation. In fact, if a work was found to be of recent origin, even if its
authorship was not in doubt, it was not considered to be canonical. For
example, the Muratorian Canon rejected the Shepherd of Hermas because,
though it was edifying literature, it was composed "very recently, in our
times, in the city of Rome." Lack of antiquity was the sole reason for its
rejection, for this document was written after the time of the apostles.22

Eusebius echoes this sentiment. In the first quarter of the fourth century,
he spoke about the New Testament canon at length. In chapter 9, we quoted
the first part of Eusebius's remarks to show that at least twenty of the
twenty-seven New Testament books were already accepted by his time and
that the rest were tentatively accepted. It is worthwhile to see all of his
reasoning and why some books were to be rejected outright:

At this point it seems reasonable to summarize the writings of the New

Testament which have been quoted. In the first place should be put the
holy tetrad of the Gospels. To them follows the writing of the Acts of
the Apostles. After this should be reckoned the Epistles of Paul.
Following them the Epistle of John called the first, and in the same
way should be recognized the Epistle of Peter. In addition to these
should be put, if it seem desirable, the Revelation of John, the
arguments concerning which we will expound at the proper time.
These belong to the Recognized Books [homolegou- mena]. Of the
Disputed Books [antilegomena] which are nevertheless known to most
are the Epistle called of James, that of Jude, the second Epistle of
Peter, and the so-called second and third Epistles of John which may
be the work of the evangelist or of some other with the same name.
 Among the books which are not genuine must be reckoned the Acts of
Paul, the work entitled the Shepherd, the Apocalypse of Peter, and in
addition to them the letter called of Barnabas and the so-called
Teachings of the Apostles. And in addition, as I said, the Revelation of
John, if this view prevail. For, as I said, some reject it, but others count
it among the Recognized Books. Some have also counted the Gospel
according to the Hebrews in which those of the Hebrews who have
accepted Christ take a special pleasure. These would all belong to the
disputed books, but we have nevertheless been obliged to make a list
of them, distinguishing between those writings which, according to the
tradition of the Church, are true, genuine, and recognized, and those
which differ from them in that they are not canonical but disputed, yet
nevertheless are known to most of the writers of the Church, in order
that we might know them and the writings which are put forward by
heretics under the name of the apostles containing gospels such as
those of Peter, and Thomas, and Matthias, and some others besides, or
Acts such as those of Andrew and John and the other apostles. To none
of these has any who belonged to the succession of the orthodox ever
thought it right to refer in his writings. Moreover, the type of
phraseology differs from apostolic style, and the opinion and tendency
of their contents is widely dissonant from true orthodoxy and clearly
shows that they are the forgeries of heretics. They ought, therefore, to
be reckoned not even among spurious books but shunned as altogether
wicked and impious."

Beyond the twenty or more books Eusebius considered undisputed, some

books were disputed because of doubts about authorship or antiquity. But if
they were sufficiently early and widely read, they were considered as
possible candidates for the canon. Finally, other books were rejected
outright because they were of recent vintage or plainly taught error. Thus,
forty years before the first definitive canon list of twenty-seven books was
composed by Athanasius in 367, the church already had been wrestling
seriously with the criteria of canonicity: apostolicity, catholicity, and
orthodoxy. The heretical books failed all three tests.
 Second, the heretical gospels were products of the second and later
centuries. We will consider this point more in the next chapter. One piece of
evidence that supports this is found in the very first canon list, produced by
the heretic Marcion in about 140. Marcion lists only Luke and ten of Paul's
letters in his canon. As noted previously, Marcion was a Docetist, whose
views would be largely compatible with Gnostic teaching. Why then did he
include parts of only our New Testament in his list? Why didn't he include
such Gnostic works as the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary or the
Acts of Peter? The most likely inference is that these books did not yet
exist, or they were too new to be regarded as authentic.

Third, as Carson and Moo note, "So far as the evidence of the Fathers
goes, when they explicitly evaluated a work for its authenticity, canonicity
and pseudonymity proved mutually exclusive."24 Even though scholars
today often argue that the ancient church was soft on issues of authorship, if
these Christians were convinced that a book was bogus, it got the boot.

In his important work, The Making of the New Testament Documents, E.

Earle Ellis discusses the possibility of benign forgeries, or "`Innocent'
Apostolic Pseudepigrapha." He concludes:

In the patristic church apostolic pseudepigrapha, when discovered,

were excluded from the church's canon. This applied whether or not
the pseudepigrapha were orthodox or heretical.

The hypothesis of innocent apostolic pseudepigrapha appears to be

designed to defend the canonicity of certain New Testament writings
that are, at the same time, regarded as pseudepigrapha. It is a modern
invention that has no evident basis in the attitude or writings of the
apostolic and patristic church ...25

CONCLUSION
Was the early church totally naive about which books belonged in the
canon and which did not? Hardly. As we noted in chapter 9, the majority of
the New Testament books were accepted as authentic from the very
beginning. The notion that all the books were disputed is a gross
exaggeration. Although it is likely that someone could dig up a stray
quotation here or there to this effect, it hardly represents the facts.26

We have seen that the ancient church did not instantly and uncritically
assign apostolic authorship to anonymous books, even though that would
have been a temptation. Even when a book had an apostle's name on it, the
church could be very skeptical. Ultimately, they questioned whether the
book was cited from the earliest era of the church, was accepted widely, and
was orthodox. Most New Testament books made the cut without much ado-
but precisely because they obviously met all three criteria. Others struggled
for acceptance. This very struggle should put an end to the question of
whether the early Christians were terribly gullible about their sacred books.

On the other hand, some unworthy books were accepted as Scripture in

parts of the church for a limited time. But these books could not pull the
wool over the church's eyes for long.27

Eventually, three kinds of literature were decisively rejected as

noncanonical: (1) those that were obvious forgeries; (2) those that were late
productions (i.e., second century or later); and (3) those that did not
conform to the orthodoxy of the core books already known to be authentic.
That this method is not an antiquarian peculiarity-a curiosity from the past
is seen in the fact that the same three criteria are used by scholars today.
One has to wonder, then, why some modern writers simply refuse to give
the ancient Christian writers the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, one has to
wonder who really is being naive about the canon.
Chapter II
 WHAT DID THE ANCIENT
FORGERS THINK OF CHRIST?
More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament,
and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion-Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John among them.

-DAN BROWN, The Da Vinci

Code, 231

The early church needed to convince the world thatthe mortal

prophet Jesus was a divine being. Therefore, anygospels that
described earthly aspects of Jesus' life had to be omitted from the
Bible.

-DAN BROWN, The Da Vinci

Code, 244

'n chapter 10 we discussed the criteria that the early church used ..to
determine whether a book was worthy of being included in the canon. There
were essentially three criteria: (1) apostolicity (or antiquity); (2) catholicity;
and (3) orthodoxy. Was a book old enough to be considered authentic? Was
it widely read in churches all over the Mediterranean region? And was it in
line with the books that had unimpeachable credentials on the first two
criteria? The records from the ancient church show no evidence of tolerating
pseudepigrapha (works written by one person in someone else's name). But
even if they did, since the Gospels themselves were all originally
anonymous, this pretty much rules out the motive of forgery on the part of
the authors!

In this chapter we want to see what all the fuss is about. What were these
other gospels really like, and why didn't they make the cut? Specifically,
how many other gospels were there, when were they written, and what did
they have to say about Jesus?
THE PURPOSE OF OTHER GOSPELS
Gospels not accepted into the canon are called apocryphal gospels. The
ancient Greek word apocrypha means "hidden things." It described a variety
of Jewish and Christian books and, because of its elastic meaning, could be
used in two quite different ways. Those who approved of such books saw
them as hidden in the sense that they "were withdrawn from common use
because they were regarded as containing mysterious or esoteric lore, too
profound to be communicated to any except the initiated."' But other ancient
writers said that these books were apocryphal because they deserved to be
hidden! That is, they were heretical in their teaching and should not be read
in public.' We will refer to these apocryphal gospels as gospels (spelled with
a lowercase "g") that did not make it into the New Testament. These are
distinguished from the canonical Gospels (spelled with an uppercase "G").

We know of several apocryphal gospels that floated around in the early

centuries of the church. Some of them we know only by name, since no
remnants exist today. We have fragments of others and whole documents of
still others. In general, all of these gospels intended to accomplish one of
two things: "to supplement [or] ... to supplant the four Gospels received by
the Great Church."3 Some of them, it seems, wanted to do a little of both.
The apocryphal gospels focused on two tantalizing gaps in the life of Jesus
as recorded in the Gospels: his childhood and the three days between his
death and resurrection.' In the following section, we will look at some of the
gospels that deal with these aspects of the life of Jesus.

Among those who wrote to supplement the four canonical Gospels, the
desire sometimes may have been only to entertain the growing population of
Christians. After all, books were the medium of communicating creative
ideas among the literate who could gain access to them and share their words
with others. Christians craved more information, especially about the
infancy of Jesus. Thus, the motive could have been, in some cases, no more
than that of benign entertainment, of capturing the imagination of the reader.
No harm was meant; no deep theological agendas were involved. Likewise,
no one took these gospels seriously (or, at least, no one should have!).
Sometimes, of course, even a work meant to entertain has a point to make.
For example, sci-fi thrillers entertain, but often they intend more. From The
Boys from Brazil to Jurassic Park, cloning as a science fiction theme
uncovers its dark side. Whether this was the main point of the authors and
screenwriters is hard to assess. Likewise, it is not always possible to
determine for certain the agenda of the apocryphal gospels.

Another, more pernicious, motive of the apocryphal gospels was to offer a

different Jesus. Again, just as some movies today are intended to alter the
public's perception of an individual, so many of the apocryphal gospels
intended to promote a Jesus who didn't look like the one in the Gospels.

What kind of Jesus do the majority of these gospels present? One who
was not really human. It's almost as if this Jesus hovered three feet above the
ground: He doesn't need to learn anything as a human being, speaks in
intelligent sentences as an infant, and seems altogether otherworldly. The
predominant heretical gospel envisioned Jesus as more than a man and other
than a man.

Dan Brown speaks of more than eighty gospels being considered for
inclusion in the New Testament. He says, "Any gospels that described
earthly aspects of Jesus' life had to be omitted from the Bible."5 But such
statements are terribly misleading, having next to nothing to do with the
evidence. For one thing, the vast majority of rejected gospels emphasized
Jesus' divinity over his humanity, rather than the other way around.' This
hardly supports Brown's argument! For another thing, these gospels came
later-often centuries later-than the canonical Gospels. So how could they
have been considered for the canon if they didn't even exist by the time the
four Gospels were recognized as authoritative? Finally, we don't know where
Brown got the number of more than eighty gospels. Any way we look at the
historical data, the numbers don't seem to add up that high.

What do we really know about these apocryphal gospels? Actually, quite a

bit. In the next section, we will look at some representative apocryphal
gospels to see what they actually say about Jesus.

THE JESUS OF THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS

 Dozens of apocryphal gospels did exist at one time or another. A few are
known only by name; some are fragmentary; others survive in complete
copies.' Some obviously were intended to supplement the canonical Gospels,
others to supplant them with a Jesus who differed from the one in the four
Gospels. We will look at examples of two kinds of gospels, infancy gospels
and the so-called Gnostic gospels.

Infancy Gospels

Although we are distinguishing the infancy gospels from the "Gnostic"

gospels, in many cases the former belong to the latter category. But the
motives for writing an infancy gospel were broader than that of promoting a
sectarian view of Jesus. Sensationalism or entertainment seems to have been
a driving force. "These texts were the popular literature of the pious for
many centuries."8 Those that were influenced by Gnostic thought viewed
Jesus as not really human and as someone fully mature as an infant. This
child's deep wisdom permeated all his activities. He could perform miracles
at will, even miracles of dubious value.'

The earliest infancy gospels are the Protevangelium of James and the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas (not the same Gospel of Thomas that we will
discuss later). Most scholars date these books to the second half of the
second century. Some later infancy gospels are based on these first two,
including the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Arabic Infancy Gospel,
Arundel 404, and the History of Joseph the Carpenter.lo

The Protevangelium of James is more about Mary, the mother of Jesus,

than about Jesus. It is unashamedly a work intended to glorify her. As
perhaps the earliest infancy gospel, it shows more restraint than later
gospels. But there are still remarkable incidents in the life of Mary and Jesus
that go beyond the conservative descriptions found in the canonical Gospels.
For example, Mary is dedicated to the temple at a young age; she was
"nurtured like a dove and received food from the hand of an angel" until she
was twelve years old." The Protevangelium of James expands on the infancy
narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, filling in details with vivid
imagination. It obviously is based on Matthew and Luke but adds much
more entertaining material.
 In the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is seen as a spoiled child, an
uncontrollable, monstrous prodigy. But other infancy gospels also portray
Jesus in a ridiculous way. Consider the following statements about Jesus
from these gospels:

• Infancy Gospel of Thomas 3.1-3: The boy Jesus (apparently when he

was five years old) calls a playmate an "insolent, godless dunderhead"
when the child stirs up some water that Jesus had somehow "gathered
together." The boy shrivels up and dies on the spot at Jesus'
command.12

• Infancy Gospel of Thomas 4.1-2: When a boy accidentally ran into

Jesus, Jesus declared, "`You shall not go further on your way,' and the
child immediately fell down and died." Some of the villagers
complained to Joseph, asking him to take his family and leave: "Since
you have such a child, you cannot dwell with us in the village; or else
teach him to bless and not to curse. For he is slaying our children."13

• Infancy Gospel of Thomas 5.1-3: Joseph rebukes Jesus for doing these
things. Then Jesus makes blind his accusers and "14 rebukes Joseph,
saying, "Do not vex me.

• Infancy Gospel of Thomas 7.2: Again, when Jesus was five years old,
Zacchaeus, his Greek teacher, claims that "this child is not earth-born;
he can tame even fire. Perhaps he was begotten even before the creation
of the world."15 This statement by Zacchaeus was in response to Jesus'
unfolding the mysteries of the Greek alphabet before his eyes. The
Gospel of Thomas seems to have picked up where this Infancy Gospel
of Thomas left off in seeing Jesus as a "mystery man."

• Infancy Gospel of Thomas 14.3: People feared the boy Jesus. At one
point Joseph told Mary, "Do not let him go outside the door, for all
those who provoke him die."

• In the Arabic Infancy Gospel, written in the fifth or sixth century, we

read of the mischievous child Jesus. One day, he goes into a dyer's
workshop and puts all the cloths into a cauldron that is full of indigo.
 This ruins the cloths. When the dyer finds out, he is distraught and says
to Jesus, "What have you done to me, son of Mary? You have ruined
my reputation in the eyes of all the people of the city; for everyone
orders a suitable colour for himself, but you have come and spoiled
everything." But the child Jesus responds, "I will change for you the
colour of any cloth which you wish to be changed." When Jesus
performs this miracle, the villagers are amazed and praise God.16
Unlike any miracle in the Gospels, this is one that Jesus did to make up
for the trouble he had caused.

• Elsewhere, in the same infancy gospel, Jesus turns his playmates into
goats and then back into children! Apparently these children don't mind
either way, because they "began to skip around him" while they were
goats."

• Pseudo-Matthew, an eighth-to-ninth-century work, had enormous

influence on medieval art depicting Jesus and Mary. Like the
Protevangelium of James, this infancy gospel glorifies Mary. It also
portrays the child Jesus as fully mature in his thinking, able to perform
miracles, and deeply concerned for his mother. The infant Jesus, while
escaping to Egypt with Joseph and Mary, speaks as an adult and
performs several miracles, even while his mother carries him through
the desert. For example, Joseph complains to Jesus about the
unbearable heat. Jesus responds, "Do not fear, Joseph; I will shorten
your journey: what you were intending to traverse in the space of thirty
days, you will complete in one day."18 The prophecy and miracle are
then fulfilled.

Such absurd tales certainly do not do justice to the historical Jesus. Are
these really the gospels that competed with the canonical Gospels for
inclusion in the canon, as Brown alleges? The problem with seeing such
gospels as in any way competing with the canonical Gospels is threefold: (1)
They are late, sometimes many centuries later than the canonical Gospels.
(2) Although some were popular among the masses, the patristic writers
condemned them as unworthy descriptions of the real Jesus. They were seen
to be hokey and palpably untrue. (3) They usually included docetic ideas-
that is, that Christ only appeared to be human-or even Gnostic ideas." As
such, they did not see Jesus in any sense as a real human being who
developed naturally, but as a supernatural being who was born already with
powers of mature thought and the ability to do miracles, even malicious
miracles.20 Thus, these gospels were unorthodox in that they greatly
diminished the humanity of Jesus while elevating his deity.

Brown argues that the shape of the canon was dictated by Constantine,
who "commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels
that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made
Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and
burned."21 Certainly he cannot be speaking about the infancy gospels! They
embellished the accounts of the canonical Gospels, were later than the
canonical Gospels, and emphasized the divinity of Jesus over his humanity.
Indeed, the remarkable thing about the canonical Gospels, when compared to
the infancy gospels, is their tremendous restraint.

Perhaps the second group of apocryphal gospels will fit Brown's

description, because these gospels certainly don't.

So-called Gnostic Gospels

Several gospels have been identified as Gnostic gospels, protoGnostic

gospels, or gospels that at least have Gnostic leanings." The Gnostics were a
knockoff pseudo-Christian group that came to be defined by (1) a
"commitment to a radical anticosmic dualism in which all that is material-the
world and the body-is seen as evil";23 and (2) a view of spirituality that
equated knowledge-especially secret knowledge-with salvation."

Gnosticism seems to have been influenced by Docetism, a heresy that

taught that Jesus was divine but not human. The biggest problem with
defining Gnosticism has to do with the date of the material: the earlier it is,
the less it has the so-called "defining characteristics." Nevertheless,
asceticism (the extreme self-denial and austere lifestyle), the matter-spirit
dualism, and the emphasis on secret knowledge as the path to salvation, all
seem to be part of it from very early on. At the same time, it maybe
gratuitous to label a particular gospel as Gnostic. For our purposes, it does
not matter whether these apocryphal gospels were Gnostic works or not.

Regardless of the label one puts on them, their deviation from orthodoxy,
their late date, and their lack of acceptance in the ancient church rendered
them unfit for inclusion in the canon. Today, some scholars still refer to the
bulk of these gospels as Gnostic, while others dispute that term at every turn.
For those gospels in doubt as to identification, we will use "Gnostic" in
quotations.

"Although the Gnostics themselves called most of their writings `gospels'

and composed them to some extent as counterpoints to the Gospels of their
opponents in the Great Church, these gospels are remarkably non-
narrative."25 The fundamental reason why "Gnostic" gospels typically lack
narrative is that they have little regard for the humanity of Christ. Their view
of spirit as good and matter as bad means that what they can extract from the
life of Jesus are his words rather than his deeds.26

By far, the most notorious "Gnostic" gospel is the Gospel of Thomas.

Although referred to in the writings of church fathers, no copy of the Gospel
of Thomas was known to exist until 1945, when the Nag Hammadi
manuscripts were discovered. The copy of Thomas found in Nag Hammadi
is in Coptic, though it is probably based on an earlier Greek text. Most
scholars date the original Thomas to about the mid-second century, though it
is possible that it could be somewhat earlier."

The Gospel of Thomas might be better characterized as "protoGnostic"

rather than full-blown Gnostic in its teachings. "Although many of the
sayings have a Gnosticizing tendency, the practical spirituality taught is not
one that would have been untenable in catholic Christianity."28

Other gospels, such as the Gospels of Philip, Mary, Peter, and the
Egyptians, are also Gnostic or proto-Gnostic, or Gnostic-like. None were
written earlier than the second century. The tendency in these gospels toward
asceticism produced a loathing of marriage, sexual intimacy, and the bearing
of children. In such documents, Mary, Salome, and other women are
elevated in their status as disciples of Jesus. (It was not just Mary who was
the lead female disciple in these gospels. In the Gospel of the Egyptians,
Salome gets top billing.") Why would these women be featured prominently
in these gospels? They were not elevated, as Brown and others allege,
because of their intimacy with Jesus-especially sexual intimacy-but precisely
because, as women, they modeled for the men what it meant to be a celibate
and ascetically minded disciple. These very gospels that discourage marriage
would hardly have promoted a picture of sexual intimacy between Jesus and
any woman."

For a time, a few of these apocryphal gospels were temporarily considered

canonical in some corners of the church.31 But when push came to shove,
they were rejected.

What caused the early church to finally sift out such literature? The major
catalyst was the persecution of Christians by Emperor Diocletian. One
author describes Diocletian's eight-year attack on the church (303-311) as
"the last war of annihilation waged by paganism against Christianity."32 It
was indeed a bloody campaign and included wholesale destruction of the
church's sacred Scriptures.33 This surely must have had a powerful effect on
Christians in thinking about what really belonged in the canon.

When the imperial police knocked at the door and demanded of

Christians that they surrender their sacred books, it became a matter of
conscience in deciding whether one could hand over the Gospel of John
as well as, say, the Gospel of Thomas without incurring the guilt of
sacrilege. In such an existential moment most Christians would
naturally be careful to determine on solid grounds precisely which were
the books for adherence to which they were prepared to suffer. The
persecution under Diocletian may almost be said to have given the
touch by which previously somewhat unsettled elements of the canon
were further crystallized and fixed.34

Thus, although some segments of the church had dabbled with a few
apocryphal works, the purifying fires of persecution drew a line in the sand.
After all, who wanted to be punished for owning a book that was not really
Scripture? Significantly, "During the Diocletian persecution Mensurius, the
bishop of Carthage, hid his copies of the Scriptures in a safe place, and in
their stead handed over to the waiting magistrates writings of `the new
heretics.""' Similar acts were no doubt played out over and over across the
empire.

What was it that made these gospels obviously inferior? First, as we have
mentioned repeatedly, they were recent productions. They did not bear the
stamp of antiquity. "In general, these gospels show far less knowledge of
Palestinian topography and customs than do the canonical Gospels-which is
what one would expect from the circumstances and date of the composition
of such books."36

Second, many, if not most, of them had Gnostic tendencies, and some may
have been full-blown Gnostic documents. That is, they emphasized the deity
of Christ while sacrificing his humanity. Further, they deviated from what
was known about Jesus in many other respects. "Gnostic documents
represent neither the earliest nor most authentic materials about Jesus and his
followers. Indeed they represent a departure from early materials in various
ways, including their theology of creation and redemption. Gnosticism was
not only out of line with mainstream Christianity, it was also out of line with
Judaism as well."37

Third, they were generally nonnarrative gospels, giving snippets of Jesus'

teaching without a context. This made it all the more difficult to interpret
them-or rather, easier to take Jesus' words any way one pleased, opening the
door wide for all sorts of unorthodox views of Jesus.

Fourth, when they did give a narrative description, it was often an

embellishment of the canonical Gospels and sometimes a bizarre one at that.
Such embellishments show that the apocryphal gospels were later, because
they were dependent on the four Gospels. As well, they simply didn't have
the restraint, the ring of truth, the lack of forced apologetic that the canonical
Gospels displayed.

Fifth, they tended to self-consciously promote their claim to authorship by

an apostle. As we have seen, the canonical Gospels were all anonymous
works to begin with. But many of the apocryphal gospels claim apostolic
authorship. This marked difference suggests that they were trying to get on
the fast track to acceptance by the church. Since they were not first-century
documents, something had to be done to give them an edge. Claiming to be
written by an apostle was just the ticket. But in due time, the church was
able to sniff them out and declare them heretical or, at least, noncanonical.

Below are some examples of what these apocryphal gospels have to say.
You can judge for yourself whether they bear the stamp of authenticity.

• The Gospel of Thomas consciously moves in the realm of

nonverifiability, for it allegedly consists of secret sayings of Jesus given
just to Thomas. The opening of this gospel says, "These are the secret
words which the living Jesus spoke and Didymus Judas Thomas wrote
down." That this is at least proto-Gnostic is seen in the first saying (or
logion): "And [Jesus] said, `He who finds the interpretation of these
sayings will not taste death."'38 Later, after the disciples compare Jesus
to others, Thomas declares, "Master, my mouth is incapable of saying
whom you are like." When Thomas said this, Jesus "took him and drew
him aside and spoke three words to him. When Thomas returned to his
companions they asked him, `What did Jesus say to you?' Thomas said
to them, `If I tell you one of the words which he spoke to me, you will
pick up stones and throw them at me. And fire will come from the
stones and burn you up."'39 This is unlike the canonical Gospels, where
Jesus' instruction is to multiple disciples.

• In Gospel of Thomas 22, Jesus speaks out against marriage: "When

you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and
the outer as the inner and the upper as the lower, and when you make
the male and the female into a single one, so that the male is not male
and the female not female, when you make eyes in the place of any eye,
and hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, an image in
place of an image, then you shall enter the kingdom."

• The Gospel of Thomas, like other nonnarrative gospels, includes

several sayings of Jesus that are puzzling precisely because they are not
placed in any context. For example, logion 105 reads: "Jesus said, `He
who knows father and mother will be called the son of a harlot."'
Logion 108 has: "Jesus said, `He who drinks from my mouth will be as
I am, and I shall be that person, and the hidden things will be revealed
to him."' Logion 74 says, "Lord, there are many standing around the
drinking trough, but no one in the well." Such statements without a
context enabled readers to twist their meaning into any shape they
desired.

• Perhaps the most notorious saying in the Gospel of Thomas is the last
saying, logion 114: "Simon Peter said to them, `Let Mary leave us,
because women are not worthy of life.' Jesus said, `Look, I shall lead
her so that I will make her male in order that she also may become a
living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes
herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."' Here we see plainly the
asceticism that found a home in Gnostic circles and an attitude toward
women that is hardly compatible with the biblical portrait.

• The Gospel of Peter, probably written in the middle of the second

century,40 embellishes the resurrection narrative as follows: "When
those soldiers saw this [the stone moving from the entrance of Jesus'
sepulcher], they awakened the centurion and the elders, for they also
were there to mount guard. And while they were narrating what they
had seen, they saw three men come out from the sepulcher, two of them
supporting the other and a cross following them and the heads of the
two reaching to heaven, but that of him who was being led reached
beyond the heavens."41 This kind of bizarre embellishment nowhere
occurs in the canonical Gospels.

• In another second-century "gospel," the Gospel of Mary, Jesus is

clearly seen as more than a mere man. In this work, Jesus says that "the
Son of Man is within you."42 This is reminiscent of Paul's teaching that
the ascended Christ would reside in believers, but it is not something
that can be found in the earthly ministry of Jesus in the canonical
Gospels.

• Very tellingly, we can see perhaps a more orthodox view of Mary in

this Coptic document: "But Andrew answered and said to the brothers
(and sisters), `Tell me, what do you say about what she has spoken? I at
 least do not believe that the Saviour said this. For these teachings seem
to be according to another train of thought.' Peter answered and spoke
about these same things, he reflected about the Saviour: `After all, he
did not speak with a woman apart from us and not openly. Are we to
turn and all listen to her? Has he chosen her above us?"' (17.10-22) 43
Of course, at this point, Peter is rebuked by both Mary and Levi, since
he and Andrew are the orthodox antagonists who must be answered!
But the secret knowledge that Jesus imparted to just a few of his
disciples is in line with Gnostic tendencies.

• The gospels are not the only ones having fun at truth's expense. In the
Acts of Paul, Paul is facing down the gaping jaw of a large lion in the
Ephesian amphitheater. Unshaken, Paul approaches the beast and
simply reminds the creature that he had baptized the lion (after the lion
uttered his confession of faith, of course) some time before! The lion
then helps Paul to escape.

• In the Acts of John, Jesus seems to be out of this world. John says,
"Sometimes when I meant to touch him [Jesus] I met with a material
and solid body; but at other times when I felt him, his substance was
immaterial and incorporeal, as if it did not exist at all.... And I often
wished, as I walked with him, to see his footprint, whether it appeared
on the ground (for I saw him as it were raised up from the earth), and I
never saw it."44 Clearly, a divine Jesus-but not a human Jesus-is in
view. Elsewhere, Jesus was "constantly changing shape, appearing
sometimes as a small boy, sometimes as a beautiful man; sometimes
bald-headed with a long beard, sometimes as a youth with a
prepubescent beard (§§87-9)."45

These fanciful descriptions have nothing to do with biblical Christianity or

historical Christianity. They are stories devised, at best, as bubblegum for the
soul and, at worst, as propagandist devices to persuade the church to
abandon its orthodox roots.

Obviously, fringe Christian groups had their own agenda, which had
nothing to do with the biblical narratives.
 What can be said about this myriad of apocryphal works? They are
sensational, bizarre, secretive, and unorthodox. Many are pseudepigraphical,
which means that the author of each work is pretending to be someone he is
not in order to gain a hearing and credibility for his ideas. And they were
universally rejected by the ancient church, at one time or another, as
noncanonical works. Indeed, the closer we look at these gospels, the worse
they look and the better the canonical Gospels look. Bruce Metzger
summarizes the situation well:

One can appreciate the difference between the character of the

canonical Gospels and the near banality of most of the gospels dating
from the second and third centuries. Although some of these claimed
apostolic authorship, whereas of the canonical four two were in fact not
apostolically titled, yet it was these four, and these alone, which
ultimately established themselves. The reason, apparently, is that these
four came to be recognized as authentic-authentic both in the sense that
the story they told was, in its essentials, adjudged sound by a
remarkably unanimous consent, and also in the sense that their
interpretation of its meaning was equally widely recognized as true to
the apostles' faith and teaching. Even the Gospel of Peter and the
Gospel of Thomas, both of which may preserve scraps of independent
tradition, are obviously inferior theologically and historically to the four
accounts that eventually came to be regarded as the only canonical
Gospels 46

Criteria of Canonicity and the Apocryphal Gospels

We have seen in this chapter that the evidence for authenticity within
these apocryphal books is disappointing at best. The material is secretive, the
Jesus in view floats above the earth, and he discourages marriage as a valid
lifestyle choice of a disciple. His relation to women is ascetic in the extreme,
to the point that they need to be changed into men in order to become his
disciples. None of the apocryphal works have credentials that would demand
a firstcentury production. They are, in fact, all works from the second
century or later. And as such, when they claim to be written by an apostle,
they are already on thin ice because of the church's view of pseudepigrapha.
Further, their acceptance was always shortlived-if they were accepted at all.
They were never commended to the church universal. Finally, they had some
unorthodox features that were known to go against the truth that had been
revealed in the Scriptures. Thus they were rightly rejected as at least
noncanonical and sometimes heretical. Brown's claim that such books
emphasized the humanity of Christ and therefore were swept under the rug
simply does not square with the facts. The vast majority of apocryphal works
that were rejected were not rejected because they had too low a view of
Jesus-a too human and earthly Jesus-but because the Jesus they envisioned
could hardly be called human in any sense. His deity was so pronounced that
even his footsteps made no marks in the sand! Such hyperembellishments of
the canonical Christ cannot be reasonably believed to represent the real,
historical Jesus.

By contrast, the canonical Gospels were accepted from the earliest

periods, were not given to bizarre embellishments, and proclaimed Jesus of
Nazareth as both man and more than a man. If Constantine had really picked
the Gospels to go into the New Testament, wanting only those that elevated
Jesus to the heavens, he must have been singularly incompetent because he
left out all the juicy tales! The four Gospels, on the other hand, have the
earmarks of authenticity due to their age, their use in the churches, and their
conformity to the truth of the gospel as it was known, both in oral tradition
and in the New Testament letters that were emerging when the Gospels
began to be penned.
PART 4
 THE DIVINITY
OF JESUS
Early Tradition or Late Superstition?
Chapter 12
DIVINE PORTRAITS

Jesus in the Gospels

Jesus' establishment as "the Son of God" was officially proposed
and voted on by the Council of Nicaea.

-DAN BROWN, The Da Vinci

Code, 233

There is nothing recorded in the Gospels showing that Jesus

clearly affirmed his own divinity.

-SHABIR ALLY, Muslim apologist

on PAX's Faith Under Fire program,
November 27, 2004

"hatever trouble the modern mind has with the idea of God
becoming a man, this much is certain: Jesus' earliest followers viewed him
as divine. Even scholars who do not personally embrace the divinity of
Jesus readily recognize that the New Testament authors did. Somehow this
fact escaped the attention of Leigh Teabing, the scholarly gadfly in Dan
Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Speaking of the Council of Nicea, an
ecumenical meeting of bishops that took place nearly three hundred years
after the time of Jesus, Teabing declared, "Until that moment in history,
Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet ... a great and
powerful man, but a man nonetheless."' We have no argument with the fact
that Jesus was a man.' But, as we intend to show in the next few chapters,
the notion that his divinity was invented at the Council of Nicea is nothing
more than a novel speculation.

Throughout this section we'll see that the bishops at Nicea did not unveil
new doctrine when they affirmed that Jesus was the Son of God. Rather, the
council unpacked the significance of a belief rooted in centuries-old texts.
We'll survey those texts in the next few chapters, beginning with the
canonical Gospels.

THE HISTORICAL LANDSCAPE

In order to appreciate early Christian testimony about Jesus, it is vital to
understand the Jewish context in which it emerged. Firstcentury Jews were
stubbornly monotheistic. To be monotheistic in a fiercely polytheistic
Greco-Roman culture was to have an unflinching belief that dominated-and
often endangered-one's life. At least twice each day, all faithful Jews recited
the Shema, a text that begins: "Listen, Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord
is one" (Dent. 6:4). This passage not only affirms the uniqueness of God; it
implies that he is the only one worthy of worship.

New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham cuts to the heart of this

conviction when he asks, "What distinguished God as unique from all other
reality, including beings worshiped as gods by Gentiles?" Significantly, "the
answer given again and again, in a wide variety of Second Temple Jewish
literature, is that the only true God, YHWH, the God of Israel, is sole
Creator of all things and sole Ruler of all things."5 In other words,
exclusive worship of YHWH was the defining feature of first-century
Judaism.

Christianity not only arose in a Jewish monotheistic context; it also

embraced the monotheistic convictions of Judaism. Indeed, Christianity
shared Judaism's intolerance for devotion to any socalled god but the
supreme God. In light of this fact, it would be remarkable to find any hints
in early Christian writings that Jesus was treated as divine. Yet the Gospels
and the larger New Testament supply such hints-and more.

Our focus in this chapter will be upon the Gospels. Much could be said
about these documents and their diverse, yet unified portraits of Jesus.'
Scores of commentaries and books include discussions of specific texts in
the Gospels that implicitly point to the deity of Christ or explicitly equate
him with God.' Rather than survey these texts that permeate Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, we'll provide snapshots of prominent themes in each
Evangelist and take a close look at two powerful scenes in the earliest
Gospel.

HOW THE GOSPELS FRAME THEIR PORTRAITS OF JESUS

Biblical authors frequently use a literary technique known as inclusio to

stress important themes in their writings. An inclusio "frames" a paragraph,
chapter, or book by beginning and ending it with the same word, phrase, or
concept. It is the author's way of identifying a theme and telling his readers
that everything between the "frames" should be read in light of that theme.
Interestingly, all four Gospels make use of the inclusio technique.

Consider Mark, which most scholars believe to be the earliest of the four
Gospels, written no later than the 60s. (See chapter 1: "The Gospel Behind
the Gospels" for a discussion of the dates of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.)
Mark opens with the words, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God" (Mark 1:1)8 and climaxes with the confession of the
Roman centurion attending to Jesus' crucifixion: "Truly this man was God's
Son!" (Mark 15:39).9 The inclusio formed by references to Jesus as God's
Son suggests that everything between is to be read in light of the belief that
Jesus was no mere man. From beginning to end, Mark presents Jesus as the
unique Son of God.

It's significant to note that, in spite of Mark's emphasis upon the divinity
of Jesus, his Gospel reveals Jesus' disciples to be a bit slow in recognizing
his true identity. In the least, this demonstrates that Mark was not trying to
theologically embellish his Gospel. To the contrary, he seems genuinely
constrained by actual history.

A poignant moment in the Gospel is when Jesus and his followers are on
a boat in the Sea of Galilee. The winds and waves suddenly convulse,
causing the disciples to panic. Jesus wakes from his nap and commands
nature to quiet down. There is a buzz among the disciples: "Who then is
this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!" (Mark 4:41b).
 The question both reveals the disciples' perplexity about who Jesus is and
hints that he is more than a man. At the same time, the question reflects the
fact that the disciples did not readily or uncritically embrace the divinity of
Jesus. The reason for this is plain to see: they were Jewish monotheists
devoted to the one true God. To see a man as both on par with God and,
indeed, as God himself was a radical paradigm shift that took some time to
sink in. Yet Mark gives significant clues as to Jesus' true nature, even early
on, and he invites the reader to go on the same journey of discovery that the
first disciples did.

Like Mark, Luke probably was written no later than the 60s. And, like
Mark, Luke stresses Jesus' identity as the unique Son of God. Though Jesus'
role as Messiah is foremost in Luke's mind when he refers to Jesus as God's
Son, Luke uses the "Son of God" inclusio to make clear that he views Jesus'
sonship as one-of-a-kind.10 In Luke 1:35, the angel declares to the Virgin
Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most
High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be holy; he
will be called the Son of God." Whatever can be said about the theological
implications of the Virgin Birth, at least this must be acknowledged: Luke
presents Jesus as a man with a supernatural origin.

Luke also presents Jesus as a man with a supernatural destiny. The

Gospel's "Son of God" inclusio concludes with the words of Jesus' accusers
at his trial: "`Are you the Son of God, then?' [Jesus] answered them, `You
say that I am"' (Luke 22:70, emphasis added). The word "then" looks back
to Jesus' statement in the previous verse: "But from now on the Son ofMan
will be seated at the right hand of the power of God" (Luke 22:69). When
Jesus' accusers ask him whether he is the Son of God, it is in the wake of
Jesus' staggering claim that he will be uniquely exalted to God's right hand
as one exercising God's universal rule. (See the discussion of "right hand"
language later in this chapter.) In other words, once again, Jesus is referred
to as God's Son in a way that underscores his one-of-a-kind role as God's
stand-in. This is hardly appropriate imagery to describe, in the words of
Dan Brown, "a mortal prophet"!"
 Mark and Luke, both penned before 70, declare Jesus to be the unique
representative and Son of God. Surely this is enough to undercut Dan
Brown's claim that Jesus was seen to be no more-though no less-than a
great man by his early followers. But there's more. As the Gospels of
Matthew and John make clear, Jesus' identity went beyond his divine
position as God's Son. He also was viewed as a divine person who was
God's equal.

Matthew moves in this direction through the use of a conceptual inclusio

that emphasizes Jesus' divine presence. Composed as early as the 60s, this
Gospel begins with the proclamation that Jesus' name means "God with us"
(Matt. 1:23) and climaxes with Jesus' promise to his disciples then and now:
"I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matt. 28:20, emphasis
added). If God is with Jesus, then God is with the disciples who are with
Jesus. Matthew's inclusio forms a theological framework for his Gospel that
stresses the intimacy Christians share with God through the ever-living Son.

According to the Gospel of John, which most scholars agree was written
no later than the 90s," Jesus is not only the ever-living Son but also the
eternal Son. That is, the divine person of the Son-who took on human flesh
at a specific moment in history and permanently conquered physical death
through his resurrection-has always existed.

John wastes no time in making this plain: "In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God.13 ... All
things were created by him" (John 1:1, 3). To be sure his readers make no
mistake, John identifies "the Word" for them: "the Word became flesh and
took up residence among us. We saw his glory-the glory of the one and
only, full of grace and truth.... For the law was given through Moses, but
grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ" (1:14, 17, emphasis
added). In short, the eternal Word became incarnate in the earthly Jesus.
And since the Word is called "God," Jesus must be called "God," too.

John's opening salvo is like a theological two-by-four over the head. He

boldly asserts that Jesus is fully God and sets out to authenticate his claim.
That this is John's intent is clear from the inclusio he constructs between
John 1:1 and another text in which Jesus is called "God." In John 20:24-28,
Thomas refuses to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead, despite the
testimony of the other disciples who have seen their master alive. But when
doubting Thomas sees the living Jesus, he is persuaded of more than just
the resurrection. Amazingly, he calls Jesus "My Lord and my God!"
(20:28). This is an incredible response: not only does Thomas now believe
that Jesus has been raised, but he also identifies him with the God of
heaven. And so does John. The combination of John 1:1 with 20:28 is a
onetwo punch that levels any doubts about early belief in the divinity of
Jesus.

As we conclude our brief look at portraits of Jesus in the Gospels, some

readers may be wondering, Why do the Gospel writers explicitly call Jesus
"God" so seldom, if at all? It's true that only John's Gospel explicitly calls
Jesus "God," and it does so only a few times (John 1:1, 18; 20:28). In fact,
Jesus is directly called "God" only a handful of times in the entire New
Testament. But this hardly dulls the force of such affirmations. As R. T.
France, former principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, notes, we
shouldn't be surprised that

explicit use of God-language about Jesus is infrequent in the New

Testament, and is concentrated in the later writings.... It was such
shocking language that, even when the beliefs underlying it were
firmly established, it was easier, and perhaps more politic, to express
these beliefs in less direct terms. The wonder is not that the New
Testament so seldom describes Jesus as God, but that in [a radically
monotheistic] milieu it does so at all.14

Indeed, as W. L. Schutter observes,

The incarnation first scandalized the Jews, because it threatened their

commitment to radical monotheism. Christian Jews, like Paul or John,
had to wrestle with the possibility that they were compromising that
faith. What is more, the doctrine surely represented an obstacle in the
church's mission to Judaism. Hence, the Jewish leadership of the infant
 church had to have had very deep convictions about the incarnation or
they would have abandoned it.15

In light of these observations by France and Schutter, we should expect

to see roundabout depictions of Jesus as God outnumber direct statements
to the same effect. The indirect approach was strategic. And, as we will see,
it was just as compelling.

MASTER IMAGES: Two POWERFUL SCENES FROM THE

"SECOND" GOSPEL

Jesus' miracles are not ends in themselves. They point beyond the power
to the person, revealing the extraordinary identity of one exercising the
authority of God.16 Thus, we might think of these miracles as "theological
audiovisuals," illustrating spiritual truths about the one performing them.
Sometimes these truths were lost on eyewitnesses to the miracles; other
times, they were not.

The theological audiovisual was loud and clear in Mark 2:1-12. The
scene is Capernaum, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was
inside a house teaching those who had gathered there. The account tells of a
lame man who was lowered through the roof of the house by his friends
because the crowd was so big it was blocking the doorway. The friends,
eager for the man to be healed, went out of their way to get to Jesus. Moved
by their show of faith, Jesus didand said-an astonishing thing. To the
amazement of the crowd, he restored the lame man's limbs. But even more
remarkably, Jesus told the man, "Son, your sins are forgiven" (v. 5).

Some religious leaders in the crowd immediately recognized a

theological problem in Jesus' statement: "Why does this man speak this
way?" they thought. "He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God
alone?" (Mark 2:7). They were half right: God alone can forgive sins. But
Jesus was not blaspheming. He was implicitly and authoritatively claiming
equality with God. 17

Jesus himself made clear that the healing of the lame man pointed to a
greater reality when he asked his enemies,
 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven," or to
say, "Stand up, take your stretcher, and walk"? But so that you may
know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins ...
(Mark 2:9-10)

Jesus let his actions speak where his words trailed off. Indeed, everyone
within eyeshot of the man's restored legs saw that Jesus' proclamation
stood: the paralytic's sins had been forgiven. Significantly, it was this claim
that caused Jesus' enemies to scoff. They made no attempt to explain away
the miracle itself. We thus have strong historical witness to a miracle that,
in turn, gives powerful theological testimony to Jesus' divine identity.

Another powerful affirmation of Jesus' own belief in his divinity took

place at his trial before the Jewish council on the eve of his execution
(Mark 14:53-64). Looking to pin a charge on Jesus that would stick until
Jesus could be brought before Pilate, the high priest Caiaphas asked, "Are
you the Christ [Messiah], the Son of the Blessed One?" (Mark 14:61b).
Jesus' answer jarred the high priest and his associates:

"I am," said Jesus, "and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right
hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven." Then the
high priest tore his clothes and said, "Why do we still need witnesses?
You have heard the blasphemy! What is your verdict?" They all
condemned him as deserving death. (Mark 14:62-64)

At first blush, the reaction of Caiaphas and the council seems extreme.
After all, there was nothing inherently blasphemous about the claim to be
Messiah." But, as we will see, Jesus claimed far more than that.19

Jesus claimed to be more than the King of the Jews when he identified
himself as the "Son of Man" (Mark 14:62). It's often wrongly assumed that
the title "Son of Man" refers simply to Jesus' humanity. However, Jesus'
interrogators, who were saturated in the Hebrew Scriptures, wouldn't have
had Jesus' earthly qualities in mind. They would have been thinking of the
heavenly vision in Daniel 7:13-14:
 I was watching in the night visions, And with the clouds of the sky one
like a son of man was approaching. He went up to the Ancient of Days
and was escorted before him. To him was given ruling authority,
honor, and sovereignty. All peoples, nations, and language groups were
serving him. His authority is eternal and will not pass away. His
kingdom will not be destroyed.

Obviously, human frailty was far from the mind of Daniel, who portrayed
the Son of Man as an exalted, humanlike figure possessing all judgment
authority and ruling over an everlasting kingdom. Daniel's vision also
revealed the Son of Man to be more than human. In other Old Testament
writings, the image of riding on clouds was used exclusively for divine
figures (Exod. 14:20; 34:5; Num. 10:34; Ps. 104:3; Isa. 19:1).20 Daniel
employed this image, and Jesus embraced it as his own.

Jesus made an even more staggering claim when he said that hea divine-
human figure with all judgment authority-would be seen "sitting at the right
hand of the Power" (Mark 14:62). This imagery was not unfamiliar to the
Jewish council, which was intimately familiar with the Psalms:

Here is the LORD'S proclamation to my lord:

"Sit down at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool!"
(Ps. 110:1)

That Jesus would apply this text to himself was astonishing. Only a few
significant figures in Judaism ever entered God's presence. Even fewer sat
in it." But up to this point, no one in Jewish literature was ever afforded the
privilege of sitting at God's right side. Yet Jesus personally insisted on his
right to do so.
 The priests of the Jewish council, before whom Jesus made this radical
claim, could not, as a rule, even go into the inner sanctum of the temple.
The Holy of Holies-God's earthly dwelling placecould only be entered on a
specific day in a specific way by a specific person. On the annual Day of
Atonement, the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies to offer
the blood of a bull for personal purification and the blood of a goat for the
people's atonement. This was preceded by a change of garments and ritual
washings (Lev. 16). In other words, God's presence in the temple was
entered cautiously. Failure to proceed with caution resulted in death."

With such restrictions for entry into the earthly Holy of Holies, we can
imagine what went through the priests' minds when Jesus claimed the right
to enter God's heavenly presence.23 And we can only begin to imagine
what they thought when Jesus said he would enter into the heavenly Holy of
Holies and sit down. He might as well have claimed that he owned the
place!24

Jesus' response was too much for the religious leaders to swallow. He had
claimed to exercise the authority of God, implying that he sat in judgment
over the Jewish council-not the other way around. He also had committed
blasphemy by threatening the uniqueness of God's presence.25 Jesus spoke
brashly about going directly into the heavenly Holy of Holies and staying
there, thus occupying a place far above even the angels, for "the place on
the throne of God at the right hand of the Father is the highest place in
heaven."26 Jesus' words staggered the Jewish council; their reaction
strongly suggests that they understood him to be claiming divinity. No
doubt, this is how Mark understands Jesus. And this is how Jesus
understood himself.27 We are thus safe in concluding with Richard
Bauckham that "the earliest Christology was already the highest
Christology."28
Chapter 13
SUPREME DEVOTION

Jesus in the Larger New Testament

For Paul ... the Christ represents the one awareness that is the true
identity of all of us.

-TIMOTHY FREKE AND PETER

GANDY, The Laughing Jesus, 62

have seen that the Gospels clearly portray Jesus as more than a
man, as truly divine. That should settle the issue. Someone might argue,
however, that the disciples were awestruck by Jesus' majesty and miracles
and that they went over the top in their descriptions of him. Or that the
Gospels are late productions and have no historical credibility. We have
already answered these charges, but in this chapter we will take a different
tack. We will look at what the rest of the New Testament writings have to
say about Jesus. And we'll start with a former enemy of the gospel, a man
who ended up writing almost half the books of the New Testament.

THE APOSTLE PAUL

Paul was not one of the original twelve disciples. He never sat at Jesus'
feet, never witnessed any of his miracles, never even met him in the flesh.
When the Christian movement began, Paul (or Saul) vehemently opposed it.
He was, as he put it, "a Hebrew of Hebrews," a Pharisee who persecuted the
church (Phil. 3:5-6).

What was the reason Paul was so hostile to this new sect known as
Christians? The apostles were proclaiming that God had raised Jesus from
the dead. But Paul-who had been rigorously trained by the great rabbi
Gamaliel-knew the Scriptures. He knew the Deuteronomic curse: "anyone
hung on a tree is under God's curse" (Deut. 21:23 NRSV). If Jesus was
raised from the dead, the Scriptures were wrong. After all, how could God
bless a man by raising him from the dead if he had cursed him by hanging
him on a tree? This was the dilemma that the early Christians needed to
answer and what drove Paul the Pharisee to persecute them.

On the way to Damascus to hunt down more members of this new sect,
Paul had a remarkable experience. He met the risen and ascended Christ.
When the heavenly voice asked, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? "
(Acts 9:4), Paul was puzzled. He must have thought, Who in heaven could
possibly think that I was persecuting him? I'm doing God's will by rounding
up these heretics and putting them in prison! So he asked, "Who are you,
Lord?" The heavenly voice shot back a response that changed the face of
history: "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting!" (v. 5). Paul now knew two
things. First, the persecution of the church was ultimately the persecution of
one who occupied heaven, Jesus himself; second, Jesus was alive!

Now Paul was in conflict. As a pious Jew, he believed the Old Testament
Scriptures. The Deuteronomic curse must be true. But his Damascus Road
experience could not be denied.' After this encounter Paul's answer to this
conundrum was the key to unraveling the identity of Jesus Christ. He soon
recognized that Jesus could not have been cursed for his own sins;
otherwise, he would still be in the grave. Yes, God cursed him-and he
cursed him for sins. But those sins were not his own.

By the time of the apostle Paul's first letter, written to the Galatian
churches in about 49, he had already come to this conviction. He notes in
Galatians 3:13 that "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by
becoming a curse for us (because it is written, `Cursed is everyone who
hangs on a tree')." This is the language of substitutionary atonement: a
perfect, sinless person was sacrificed in our place. By definition, if Christ
was without sin, then he was no ordinary man, no "mere mortal."

Paul never changed in that assessment of Christ. Over the next several
years, he wrote frequently of Christ's death in our place. He was not just
mimicking what the Gospels say, for some of his letters were written before
any of the four Evangelists put pen to papyrus. Since Paul died sometime
around the year 64, his letters were all written within little more than three
decades from the time of Jesus. Although Paul did not know Jesus in the
flesh, Paul's dramatic experience on the road to Damascus brought him
face-to-face with the ascended Lord.

According to Paul, who exactly was Christ? The apostle tells us in

several places, three of which we will treat here. The first passage is
Romans 10:9-13, where Paul discusses saving faith:

Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe
in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For
with the heart one believes and thus has righteousness and with the
mouth one confesses and thus has salvation. For the scripture says,
"Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." For there is
no distinction between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord is
Lord of all, who richly blesses all who call on him. For everyone who
calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

In Romans 10:9, we have an explicit ascription of the title "Lord" to

Jesus. What does Paul mean by this? Note in this paragraph that his
argument begins with a confession about Christ and continues: "Everyone
who believes in him will not be put to shame." The object of belief ("him")
is still Christ.' In verse 12, Paul again mentions "Lord": "There is no
distinction between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of
all." The Lord of verse 9 ("Jesus is Lord") is the "him" of verse 11
("Everyone who believes in him"), who is also the "Lord" of verse 12 ("the
same Lord is Lord of all"). Finally, Paul wraps up his argument by quoting
from Joel 2:32: "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be
delivered." In the Hebrew text of Joel, "Lord" is YHWH. Thus, there is
continuity from verse 9 through verse 13; in view throughout is "the same
Lord," Jesus Christ, YHWH himself. Here we see Paul making a startling
statement: confessing Christ as Lord means confessing Christ as God. As
such, this is explicit identification of Jesus with the God of Israel.'
 The second passage is in Paul's letter to the Philippians. In 2:6-11, we
read a text that may well have been part of an ancient hymn, incorporated
into the letter by Paul.'
 Several important issues surface in this passage, only three of which will
be touched on here. First, Christ existed in "the form of God." Today when
we think of form, we often think of appearances that lack substance: "She's
beautiful on the outside, but she has a cold heart"; "there's no depth to his
character-he's all show." Form, to us, means something that does not
correspond to reality. That is not the case in this text. Note the parallel
between the expression "the form of God" and "taking on the form of a
slave [or servant]." The same Greek word rendered "form" (morphe) is used
both times.' Paul here draws a contrast between Jesus' heavenly mode of
existence, in which he had "the form of God," and his earthly mode of
existence, in which he had "the form of a slave." Jesus was not a mere man
to whom his followers later accorded divine honors. Rather, Paul says,
Jesus was a divine person, existing in the form of God, who "humbled
himself" by becoming a man in order to effect our salvation. His point here
is similar to Jesus' statement in Mark 10:45, "The Son of Man did not come
to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Now if
Jesus was truly a servant on earth, then he was truly God in heaven. The
inherent lexical meaning of morphe also suggests this. Although the precise
nuance of what Paul meant by this word has been hotly debated, it's safe to
say that it indicates a form that fully and accurately corresponds to the
being that underlies it.' If we think of form as an exact replica, or rather, as
identical to the original, we get a good sense of what this means here. Thus,
in a most succinct manner, Paul here indicates both Christ's deity and his
humanity ("form of God ... form of a slave").

The second important issue is that universal worship must be given to

Christ: "every knee will bow ... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord." In this assertion we find a conceptual link to Exodus 20:4-5, the
second commandment, which expressly forbids worship to any except the
Lord (YHWH), the God of Israel. In Philippians 2, Jesus receives not only
worship, but the same kind of worship that the second commandment
restricts to God himself. Notice the parallels between Exodus 20:4 and
Philippians 2:10.
 In one respect, the Philippian hymn employs even stronger, more explicit
language than Exodus. The commandment is not to make a "carved image,"
with the implication that such an image would be worshiped. In Philippians,
Jesus is explicitly the object of worship-and not just of some, but of all. It is
unthinkable that the early church, comprised at first only of Jews, would
forget about the second commandment. Instead, they incorporated it into a
hymn for Christ. To put it mildly, this is not the kind of thing that could be
said of a mere man.

Third, not only is Exodus 20 in the background of this hymn but so is

Isaiah 45:23.' Here God declares, "I solemnly make this oathwhat I say is
true and reliable: `Surely every knee will bow to me, every tongue will
solemnly affirm."' In this passage, "the uniqueness of the God of Israel is
proclaimed and his universal triumph is hailed. The Lord, who has already
declared that he will not share his name or his glory with another, swears
solemnly by his own life that `every knee will bow before me; by me every
tongue will swear."'s Earlier, in his letter to the Romans, Paul used this very
passage to refer to God (Rom. 14:11). He knew the Old Testament context,
that God and God alone was in view. Consequently, his application of Isaiah
45:23 to Christ is not sloppy and unwitting; it is intentional. And his
intention is to show that Jesus Christ is God himself and is to be worshiped
as such. Such usage by New Testament writers of the Old Testament texts
that speak clearly of YHWH is neither cavalier nor accidental. Their use of
such texts to point to Jesus Christ occurs so frequently and in such lofty
contexts that the intention is unmistakable.
 The third passage from Paul is Colossians 1:15-20, which is likely
another ancient hymn to Christ.'

Note that in verses 16-17, Paul emphasizes Christ's role as Creator: "for
all things in heaven and on earth were created by him." As if to make sure
that the reader does not miss the point, the apostle first defines what "all
things" includes: "all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or
dominions, whether principalities or powers." Remarkably, the accent is not
on the mundane or the lowly things in life but on the greatest potentates on
earth and in heaven-the thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers.
Christ is Lord over them all.
 Paul then defines in what sense Christ is Creator and Ruler of the
cosmos: "all things were created through him and for him. He himself is
before all things and all things are held together in him." As Richard
Bauckham has noted, in the Jewish literature of the day, what distinguished
the God of the Bible is that he "is sole Creator of all things and sole Ruler
of all things."" That early Christians could sing to Christ as, in some
measure, both Creator and Ruler at the least puts him in the same ballpark
with YHWH. Although it is disputed as to exactly what Christ's role was in
Creation, the traditionally hard-drawn Jewish lines with regard to God get
fuzzy when Christ enters the picture. It is of course impossible for the
language of Colossians 1:15-20 to describe a mere man. Mere men do not
create the universe or sustain it.

Several other passages in Paul's letters could be mentioned, but the three
we have examined are sufficient to show that the apostle consciously and
intentionally embraced the deity of Christ."

THE WRITER OF HEBREWS

In Hebrews 1, the author12 presents a case for the supremacy of Christ.

First, Christ is superior to any prophets (vv. 1-2). This opening gambit
proves beyond question how ludicrous it is to think of the early church as
embracing Jesus only as a man, a prophet. Like Paul in Colossians, the
author of Hebrews speaks of Christ as both Creator and Sustainer of all
things: He is the one whom God "appointed heir of all things, and through
whom he created the world. The Son is the radiance of his glory and the
representation of his essence, and he sustains all things by his powerful
word" (vv. 2b-3). Now if Christ is on this plane, one can correctly conclude
that he is above even the angels. And in the best tradition of Jewish
monotheism, the author refuses to allow angels to share credit with God for
creating or ruling the universe. The former concept he implies in verses 2-3;
the latter he makes explicit in verses 6-8:

But when he again brings his firstborn into the world, he says, "Let all
the angels of God worship him!" And he says of the angels, "He makes
his angels spirits and his ministers aflame of fire," but of the Son he
 says, "Your throne, 0 God, is forever and ever, and a righteous scepter
is the scepter of your kingdom."

There is an obvious contrast here between the angels and Christ. The
description of angels in Hebrews 1:6-7 speaks of their subordinate role (of
worship for God-or in this context, Christ) and their inferior essence ("He
makes his angels ... a flame of fire"). But the description of Christ does the
opposite: He is the one being worshiped, and his reign is forever. Indeed,
the author goes so far as to explicitly identify Christ with God: "Your
throne, 0 God, is forever and ever."13

The writer of Hebrews continues his affirmations of Jesus' exaltation

with a quotation from the Old Testament about the Lord God as Creator,
which he also applies to Jesus: "You founded the earth in the beginning,
Lord, and the heavens are the works of your hands" (Heb. 1:10; quoting Ps.
102:25). With this quotation, the author is giving biblical context for his
earlier statement that God made the world through his Son (Heb. 1:2).

In Hebrews 1 the author presents Jesus Christ as superior to the prophets

and the angels. In so doing, the author makes some astounding claims: (1)
Christ is the Creator; (2) angels are commanded to worship him; (3) he is
God, sitting on the throne; and thus (4) he is both Ruler and Judge. There is
hardly a more explicit way for the author of Hebrews to have indicated that
Jesus is fully God.

AUTHOR OF THE APOCALYPSE

Finally, we take a quick look at the book of Revelation (the Apocalypse).

Revelation was written no later than 96. As such, it is most likely the last
book of the New Testament to be written. What is interesting is that both in
Philippians 2 and Revelation 5, we see the universal worship of Christ. In
Philippians 2:10, we are told that everyone "in heaven and on earth and
under the earth" will worship Christ as Lord. Revelation 5 says the same
thing, though the setting is heaven itself:
 (Rev. 5:13-14)

If proper worship is practiced anywhere, it is in the very throne room of

God. And it is here, in that throne room, that the Lamb, Christ, is worshiped
together with God. This chapter is sometimes labeled "The Christology of
Heaven." Heaven's assessment of Christ is of course the right assessment.
Remarkably, Revelation 5:13, like Philippians 2:10, alludes to Exodus 20:4
("You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of
anything that is in heaven above, or that is on earth under it, or that is in the
water below"). And if the worship of Christ is not a violation of this
commandment, it can only be because he, too, is considered to be God.

Again, we are forced to conclude that the New Testament authors are
neither sloppy in their wording nor unaware of what they are saying. When
they describe their devotion to Christ, they use reverential, worshipful,
unmistakable language, for they are describing their devotion to God.

POSTSCRIPT: WORSHIP IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The New Testament references to worship of Jesus Christ invite the

question, Could the New Testament Christians have accorded worship to
anyone other than God? Were first-century Christians comfortable assigning
divine titles and honors to exalted creatures? The consistent answer given
throughout the New Testament is an emphatic no, beginning with Jesus
himself. When the Devil tempted Jesus in the Judean wilderness by offering
him the kingdoms of the world if he would only worship Satan, Jesus
quoted Deuteronomy 6:13, "You are to worship the Lord your God and
serve only him" (Matt. 4:10).

It is all the more surprising, then, to see Jesus' response to Thomas's

confession in John 20:28-"My Lord and my God!" Thomas exclaims this to
the risen Christ, as we saw earlier. But what is Jesus' response? Remarkably,
Jesus does not rebuke Thomas but instead says, "Have you believed
because you have seen me? Blessed are the people who have not seen and
yet have believed" (v. 29). Jesus affirms the rightness of Thomas's response.
Now perhaps Jesus was just being polite; perhaps he was so glad that
Thomas came to believe in the Resurrection that he didn't want to squelch
the moment or quench Thomas's zeal. No, this answer won't do, as we'll see
in the following passages. When God's honor is on the line, politeness is not
an option.

About a dozen years later, King Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod
the Great, had a dispute with the people of Tyre and Sidon. He came to
Caesarea and met with a gathering of citizens in the theater. The citizens
were eager to solve the dispute because Agrippa controlled their food
supply (Acts 12:20). He made a grand entrance followed by a speech,
inciting in the crowd an exuberant response: "On a day determined in
advance, Herod put on his royal robes, sat down on the judgment seat, and
made a speech to them. But the crowd began to shout, `The voice of a god,
and not of a man! "' (Acts 12:21-22).

The praise offered to Agrippa is not nearly as strong as that offered by

Thomas to Jesus: "a god" versus "my God." Further, Jesus explicitly
accepted this praise from Thomas, while Herod only implicitly did, as far as
the record in Acts tells us. Yet, there was divine judgment on Agrippa, and
it came swiftly: "Immediately an angel of the Lord struck Herod down
because he did not give the glory to God, and he was eaten by worms and
died" (Acts 12:23). How is it possible that Jesus could accept higher praise
from Thomas and yet not be struck down by God? The contrast makes no
sense unless Jesus is indeed God in the flesh.

Two chapters later in Acts we see another instance of people worshiping

men as though they were gods. Paul and Barnabas had come to Lystra to
preach the gospel. And there, Paul healed a lame man. "So when the crowds
saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, `The
gods have come down to us in human form!' They began to call Barnabas
Zeus and Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker" (Acts 14:11-12).
Apparently, the crowd came and reported to the local pagan priest that the
gods had visited them, for he, in turn, began preparing animal sacrifices.
"But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard about it, they tore their
clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting, `Men, why are you doing
these things? We too are men, with human natures just like you!"' (Acts
14:14-15a).

We see here a similar situation to that of Acts 12: Men are worshiped as
gods without recognition of the God. Agrippa accepts the worship and is
struck down. Paul and Barnabas are repulsed by the honor extended to
them. In fact, their initial reaction was to tear their clothes. Recall that this
was the response of Caiaphas to Jesus' proclamation that the Son of Man
would be sitting at the right hand of God, coming on the clouds. Judaism
taught that tearing one's clothes was the appropriate reaction upon hearing
blasphemy.14

Paul and Barnabas's reaction to their deification is exactly the opposite of

Agrippa's reaction. It is also the opposite of Jesus' reaction when Thomas
worships him. In light of Paul and Barnabas's abhorrence to being
worshiped, why did Jesus react differently? If what Thomas said was
blasphemy, shouldn't Jesus have torn his clothes too? The contrast between
Paul's and Jesus' reactions to being worshiped is startling and inexplicable
on any grounds other than that Jesus Christ was, in fact, true deity.

Now perhaps a distinction needs to be made here. Even though it is not

permissible for mere men to receive worship, perhaps angels may be
worshiped. After all, they are not mortals. They have superhuman powers.
And they are unlike us, thus naturally eliciting a reverent response from
human beings.

We again turn to the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, for
some help on this question. In chapter 19, we read that John, the author, is
overcome with emotion in the presence of an imposing angel. He says, "So
I threw myself down at his feet to worship him." The angel reacted quickly
and decisively: "Do not do this! I am only a fellow servant with you and
your brothers who hold to the testimony about Jesus. Worship God, for the
testimony about Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" (Rev. 19:10). The angel's
reaction shows unequivocally that neither men nor angels may receive
worship. There is no exception. We already noted in Matthew 4:10 that
Jesus told Satan, the chief of the fallen angels, to worship only God. And
yet, in Hebrews 1:6, God tells the angels to worship Christ ("Let all the
angels of God worship him!"). How is it possible that Christ-and only
Christ-is excluded from the divine punishment for being worshiped? The
only way to make sense of the New Testament's witness to Christ is that
these writers embraced him as true deity. Nothing short of that does justice
to their words.

As we have seen in just a handful of representative texts, the New

Testament clearly and forcefully presents Jesus Christ as more than a mere
man. In fact, it presents him as more than an angel: he is God himself. The
notion that his divinity was invented nearly three hundred years after his
time on earth is an absurd fable, created out of thin air. Although The Da
Vinci Code is a fascinating tale, that is all it is: a tale, a fable, a good yarn
spun by a master storyteller.
Chapter 14
 FROM THE PENS OF
FATHERS AND FOES
Jesus Outside the New Testament
If we were to take away all the miraculous events surrounding the
story of Jesus to reveal a human, we would certainly find no one who
could have garnered huge crowds around him because of his
preaching. And the fact is that this crowd-drawing preacher finds his
place in "history" only in the New Testament, completely overlooked
by the dozens of historians of his day, an era considered one of the best
documented in history.

-ACHARYA S, The Christ

Conspiracy, 100

esus' place in history is secure. We've seen that the biblical Gospels are
generally reliable witnesses to his life, that core New Testament teachings
about his person and work have remained intact, and that the bulk of New
Testament writings made the canonical cut without much ado. In short, the
New Testament is historically credible.

That credibility is confirmed in part by noncanonical references to Christ,

both Christian and non-Christian.' Several non-Christian writers supply
surprising detail about the life of Jesus and his extraordinary impact upon
the ancient Mediterranean world.' Comments like those of Acharya S that
imply that Jesus never existed because he is not mentioned outside the New
Testament are remarkable for their bluster. This would be an interesting
topic to pursue fully,' but our goals are more focused.

In this chapter, we will explore what friends and foes of Christianity had
to say about the deity of Christ. Surveying the period after the apostles (c.
100) and up to the Council of Nicea (325), we'll take a brief look at three
non-Christian writers who show that antiChristian rhetoric was well aware
of belief in Jesus' divinity. Significantly, each of these writers predates the
Nicene Council by at least 125 years.

We'll also sample writings from early Christian thinkers known as the
ante-Nicene Fathers. Their works were penned after the close of the New
Testament era and before the Council of Nicea. Though the Fathers (or
patristic writers, as they're sometimes called) drew heavily from the New
Testament and so can't be seen as purely noncanonical witnesses, many
deserve attention as careful scholars in their own right.' Indeed, it is their
reflection on the teachings of the New Testament about Christ that most
interest us in this chapter. Highlighting second- and third-century Fathers,
our sampling will reveal continuity between their convictions about Christ's
deity and biblical affirmations of the same.

TESTIMONY FROM CHRISTIANITY'S OPPONENTS

It is a remarkable thing that we have any statements about Jesus by non-

Christian writers. After all, he was a Jewish carpenter who spent most of his
time on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, occasionally journeying to
Jerusalem with his disciples. What's more, writers in the Roman Empire
were typically upper-class men who looked down on Eastern religions and
gazed back on Rome's celebrated past. So why would they ever pay
attention to a Nazarene who founded a religion embraced by the lowest
rungs of society? Simply put, he couldn't be ignored. The rise of the religion
bearing Christ's name was rapid, widespread, and revolutionary. And it
turned the Roman Empire upside down. Although we may not have
extensive non-Christian sources about Jesus, some writers recognized that
the early Christians treated Jesus as divine, threatening pagan culture as a
result.

It's axiomatic that skeptics rise with scorn whenever Christians bow
before Christ. And what's true in the second millennium was even truer in
the second century. Take, for example, the Greek satirist Lucian of
Samosata. Writing around 170, Lucian blasted Christians for their devotion
to Jesus, "whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine
because he introduced this new cult into the world."5 Lucian used his pen to
poke fun at followers of Christ, "poor wretches" who revealed their
gullibility "by denying the Greek gods and by worshiping that crucified
sophist [i.e., philosophical huckster] himself."6 In addition to confirming
basic facts about the life and impact of Jesus, Lucian's writings supply that
which is of most interest to us here: non-Christian testimony that Jesus was
treated as divine long before the Council of Nicea.

Despite severe ridicule, Christians stubbornly refused to stop worshiping

Jesus. Around 177, the Roman philosopher Celsus wrote a treatise that
revealed both his ignorance of early Christian doctrine and the intensity of
early Christian devotion. Celsus scoffed at Christians who were worshiping
a man as God:

Now, if the Christians worshiped only one God they might have reason
on their side. But as a matter of fact they worship a man who appeared
only recently. They do not consider what they are doing a breach of
monotheism; rather, they think it perfectly consistent to worship the
great God and to worship his servant as God. And their worship of this
Jesus is the more outrageous because they refuse to listen to any talk
about God, the father of all, unless it includes some reference to Jesus:
Tell them that Jesus, the author of the Christian insurrection, was not
his son, and they will not listen to you. And when they call him Son of
God, they are not really paying homage to God, rather, they are
attempting to exalt Jesus to the heights.'

Celsus, himself a monotheist, didn't see how Christians could revere

Jesus as God without retreating into polytheism. Further, he found it absurd
to imagine that God himself came down to earth, since that would, in
Celsus's mind, require alteration of God's nature.' Of course, the early
Christians did not believe that God changed into a man; they believed that
he added humanity to his divine nature. Nevertheless, Celsus's complaints
spurred church leaders to devise clearer expressions of doctrine and
supplied us with more non-Christian testimony of early belief in Jesus'
divinity. And, as Celsus noted above, that belief was unswerving.
 Early Christians refused to veer from their devotion to a divine Jesus,
even when it put them on the road to martyrdom. And rulers like Pliny the
Younger stood eager to point the way. Pliny, governor of Bithynia (a
secluded Roman province in Asia Minor, or modernday Turkey) from about
111-113, didn't care for the impact Christianity was having on business in
pagan houses of worship. Demand for sacrificial animals was down, sacred
holidays were set aside, and sanctuaries were boarded up. If Pliny's
religious industry was going to survive, Christians would have to die. But
on what grounds?

Pliny admitted that the Christians lived good, clean lives. He could not
pin a standard felony on them. So he took a creative angle and ran it by the
emperor. In a letter written around 112, Pliny informed Trajan of his
dealings with the "wretched cult" of Christianity:

For the moment this is the line I have taken with all persons brought
before me on the charge of being Christians. I have asked them in
person if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question
a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting
them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for,
whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their
stubbornness and unshakeable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished.'

Pliny, however, was lenient in the case of those who denounced their
faith:

Among these I considered that I should dismiss any who denied that
they were or ever had been Christians when they repeated after me a
formula of invocation to the gods and had made offerings of wine and
incense to your statue ... and furthermore had reviled the name of
Christ: none of which things, I understand, any genuine Christian can
be induced to do.10

Eventually, Pliny revealed the specific crime to which the Christians had
admitted: "They had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant
verses alternately among themselves in honour of Christ as if to a god."11
In other words, the martyred Christians were guilty of worshiping Jesus.

The writings of Lucian, Celsus, and Pliny make clear that early Christian
beliefs about Jesus can't be reduced to mere reminiscences of a great man.
Rather, belief in the divinity of Jesus was the heart of early Christian
confession. For believers like those in Bithynia, that confession was a
matter of life and death.12 To suggest that Jesus' divinity was the
convenient creation of a fourth-century council does more than make a
mess of history; it sullies the graves of martyrs-second century or
otherwise-who staked their lives on the conviction that Jesus is God.

THE REAL QUESTION: WAS JESUS REALLY A MAN?

In the first century A.D., a form of thought known as Platonism was

growing in popularity throughout the Greco-Roman world." The defining
feature of Platonism was its distinction between two levels of reality: the
physical world, experienced through the ordinary senses; and the "spiritual"
world, where ideas represented ultimate reality. In Platonic thought, the
spiritual world was actually more real than its physical counterpart. At best,
the physical world was inferior; at worst, it was devoid of anything good.
This philosophy, coupled with others, influenced some in the early church
to adopt a view of Christ that was far removed from that of the New
Testament.14

The early second century witnessed the growth of a Christological heresy

known as Docetism. Named after the Greek verb meaning "to seem or
appear," Docetism taught that Jesus only looked human. Speaking of Jesus
as if he were some sort of phantom, proponents of this heresy argued that it
would have been impossible for Jesus to truly suffer in life and experience
death on the cross.15

The church father Ignatius vehemently opposed Docetism and warned

Christians not to accept anyone who "blasphemes my Lord by not
confessing that he was clothed in flesh."16 Even with such strong
condemnation of the Docetic heresy, it became the prevailing position of
Gnostic thinkers and writers.
 What's the upshot of all this? Simply that second-century debates over
the nature of Christ were far more concerned with his earthly qualities than
his heavenly status. In the world in which the church Fathers lived and
wrote, embracing the divinity of Jesus wasn't the problem." Embracing his
humanity was. It shouldn't surprise us, then, to find a lack of articulation of
Jesus' divinity in the patristic writings. Nonetheless, in their defense of
Jesus' humanness, the Fathers left us several affirmations of their belief that
Jesus was far more than a man.

TESTIMONY FROM THE APOSTOLIC

FATHERS
The first patristic writers, active from the 90s through the first half of the
second century, are known as the Apostolic Fathers. They were given this
name because some of them had known the apostles or those who had
learned directly from the apostles. The Fathers' proximity to the apostles
and apostolic doctrine made them influential in the ancient church and
makes them important to modern church historians. We'll look briefly at
some representative Fathers and their affirmations of Christ's deity.

Though the Apostolic Fathers didn't spend time speculating how Jesus
was divine or systematizing arguments for his deity, they did make
statements that reveal belief in Jesus as a sovereign figure who existed
before time.

Clement of Rome, writing at the end of the first century, speaks of Jesus
as the "majestic scepter of God,"18 emphasizing his role as God's
instrument of divine sovereignty." Thus, according to Clement, the
resurrected Jesus is afforded divine honor in the presence of the Father.20
Such honor is apparently equal to that given the Father, since Clement
speaks of Jesus (as well as the Spirit) as existing on the same plane with
God: "For as God lives, and the Lord Jesus Christ lives, and the Holy Spirit.
. ."" Similarly, 2 Clement (a second-century sermon by a different author)
exhorts its readers "to think of Jesus Christ, as we do of God, as `Judge of
the living and the dead."'22 Both Clements clearly ascribe to Jesus activities
and honors belonging to God.

Clement also affirmed his belief in the preexistence of Jesus Christ, who
spoke through the Spirit in the Old Testament Psalms.23 The author of the
Epistle of Barnabas (written sometime between 70 and 135) goes even
further, proclaiming that the preexistent Christ shared creative duties with
the Father:

For the Scripture speaks about us when he says to the Son: "Let us
make man according to our image and likeness, and let them rule over
the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea."
And when he saw that our creation was good, the Lord said, "Increase
and multiply and fill the earth." These things he said to the Son.24

Not surprisingly, the same author declares that Jesus is "Lord of the entire
Cosmos."" Such a statement not only affirms that Jesus Christ existed
before time; it also implies his identity as God.

Ignatius did not feel compelled to merely imply such a thing; he stated it
explicitly. As the bishop of Antioch, Ignatius wrote seven epistles to various
churches in Asia Minor while on his way to martyrdom in Rome (c. 107-
110). In those epistles, he spoke of Christ as one who "before the ages was
with the Father,"26 who was "the mind of the Father,"27 and who can
properly be called "our God."28 Of course, since Ignatius was an outspoken
opponent of Docetism, he was sure to note that Jesus Christ was "God
[who] was revealed in human form."29 He further unpacks the idea of
God's union with human flesh:

There is only one physician, of flesh and of the Spirit, generate [born]
and ingenerate [unborn], God in man, life in death, Son of Mary and
Son of God, first passible [subject to suffering] then impassible
[beyond suffering], Jesus Christ our Lord.3o

The above quotation clearly shows that Ignatius saw Jesus as both God
and man. But his statement is even more precise than it may first appear.
When he calls Jesus ingenerate, Ignatius uses a technical term that
distinguishes the eternal Creator from his creatures.31 In other words, when
Ignatius calls Jesus "God," he uses the title in its fullest sense.

Although the Apostolic Fathers do not have a highly articulated doctrine

of the Incarnation, they clearly embrace Jesus' divinity. That they were
generally well connected to the apostles suggests continuity between the
New Testament view of Christ and their own. That continuity continued
into the next era.

TESTIMONY FROM THE APOLOGISTS

During the early decades of the church's existence, there was little formal
theological development. The Apostolic Fathers simply asserted truths like
the deity and humanity of Christ and resisted speculation. But when attacks-
arising both inside and outside the church"-were leveled against cherished
beliefs, a different kind of resistance was needed. Enter the Apologists-
church Fathers who lived and wielded their pens in defense of the faith
between the middle of the second century and the end of the third.

The most prominent early apologist was Justin Martyr (c. 100165). Justin
argued vigorously for the divinity of Christ and his preexistence, featuring
proofs from the Old Testament. For example, he claimed that Old
Testament manifestations of God were actually appearances of the
preincarnate Christ," and he identified Jesus as "Wisdom" speaking in the
book of Proverbs.34 Additionally, he saw "Let us" statements in the
creation text of Genesis 1 as dialog between the persons of the Trinity, one
of whom was, of course, the preincarnate Christ.35 Throughout his
writings, Justin distinguished between the Father and the Son, while
maintaining the true and eternal deity of both.36

The greatest theologian of the second century was Irenaeus (c. 130-200),
Bishop of Lyons (in modern-day France). As a youth he sat under the
tutelage of Polycarp (martyred c. 155), who was in turn a disciple of the
apostle John. Only one generation removed from the apostles, Irenaeus was
passionate about defending the apostolic faith. Significantly, he is best
known for emphasizing the God-man as the crux of all theology.

Irenaeus unequivocally affirms the deity of Christ when he writes the

Father is God and the Son is God; for He who is born of God is God."37
Ever concerned with the heretical Christologies of Docetism and
Gnosticism, Irenaeus also asserts the true humanity of Christ with vigor:

But in every respect, too, [Christ Jesus our Lord] is a man, the
formation of God: and thus he took up man into himself, the invisible
becoming visible, the incomprehensible being made comprehensible,
the impassible becoming capable of suffering, and the Word being
made man.38

As J. N. D. Kelly notes, Irenaeus's writings insist "almost monotonously

on the unity of the God-man."39 He clearly thought it was a point to be
stressed. So did others.

During the third century, affirmations of Christ's deity increasingly stood

alongside the defense of his humanity. This approach characterized
apologists in both the Latin-speaking West and the Greek-speaking East.
Western apologist Hippolytus (c. 170-236), a disciple of Irenaeus, took for
granted that the Incarnation involved a joining together of true deity and
true humanity.40 Taking a page from the Gospel of John, Hippolytus
declared that "the Word [preincarnate Christ] was made incarnate and
became man"41 and was "manifested as God in a body."42 That body was
one of flesh and blood according to Hippolytus, who was careful to note
that "[the Word] became man really, not in appearance or in a manner of
speaking."43

Another Western apologist, Tertullian (c. 160-225), describes the eternal

union of the preincarnate Christ with God the Father:

The Word, therefore, is both always in the Father, as He says, "I am in

the Father"; and is always with God, according to what is written,
"And the Word was with God"; and never separate from the Father, or
other than the Father, since "I and the Father are one."44
 In addition to his affirmation that Jesus shares the divine nature of the
Father, Tertullian declares that Jesus shares the human nature of the Virgin
Mary.45 Mary was not, as some avowed, a mere conduit through which
some sort of spiritual body passed-like "water through a pipe."46 To the
contrary, Jesus received his flesh directly from her.47 Emphasizing both the
divine and human natures of Jesus, Tertullian's Christology can be stated
simply: "one person ... God and man."48

When it came to the deity of Christ, writings of the Eastern apologists

were essentially in harmony with those of their Western colleagues.
Clement of Alexandria (c. 155-220) insisted that "the Word Himself has
come to us from heaven,"49 and that Jesus is "alone ... both God and
man"50 Similarly, Origen (c. 185-254) insists that the Son is begotten, not
created, by the Father and that the begetting was in eternity past so that the
Son was eternally generated: "His generation is as eternal and everlasting as
the brilliancy which is produced from the sun."51 Their belief in "the
eternal generation of the Son" has not been shared by all orthodox writers,
but it did not diminish their conviction that Jesus Christ was both man and
God. Indeed, theologians have sometimes criticized them for stressing
Christ's deity in a way that overpowers his humanity. The details of such
criticism are not important to our discussion here. Suffice it to say that the
church Fathers were eager-perhaps overly eager in the case of Eastern
apologists-to emphasize the divinity of Jesus.

Much more evidence could be cited to show that the church Fathers
believed Jesus to be divine. Our brief survey has shown that as the third
century drew to a close, there was agreement that Christ was sovereign,
existed before time, and participated in Creation. Indeed, he was viewed as
true God and true man united in one person. And the Council of Nicea was
still on the horizon.
Chapter 15
 SIMPLY DIVINE?
The Real Issue at Nicea
By officially endorsing Jesus as the Son of God, Constantine
turned Jesus into a deity who existed beyond the scope of the
human world, an entity whose power was unchallengeable.

-DAN BROWN, The Da Vinci

Code, 233

"o one with a seat at the Nicene Council thought that the fact of Jesus'
divinity was on the table. It was simply assumed. By the time the bishops
had convened at Nicea on May 20, 325, the divinity of Jesus had been
affirmed by the majority of Christians for almost three centuries (see chaps.
12-14). Like their forefathers in the faith, each of the participating bishops-
and the congregations they represented-actively worshiped Jesus, prayed to
him, and confessed him as universal Lord. These actions, of course,
presupposed faith in a man who was out of this world.

Current popularity of the claim that Jesus' divinity was invented at Nicea
is a sign of our historically illiterate times. Ironically, such a claim would
have been viewed by fourth-century Christians as seriously behind the times-
nearly three hundred years out-of-date. This is not to say that the Council of
Nicea was not a trendsetting event. Indeed, the council launched a new
campaign-complete with catchwords, slogans, and a position paper-to
articulate and promote its new official stance on Jesus. Its impact resonates
to this day. But this begs the question: If Jesus' divinity had been a pillar of
Christian belief for so long, then what made the council's proceedings and
pronouncements so monumental? What more could be said about a Jesus
already viewed as divine? In other words, what was the real issue at Nicea?

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON?

 The road to Nicea began in Alexandria. Situated on the Mediterranean Sea
in northwest Egypt, Alexandria boasted the ancient world's largest library
and a reputation as the intellectual center of its day. It was also home to
some of the most prominent theologians of old.

One of those theologians was Alexander, the archbishop of Alexandria

from 313 to 328. Alexander, who took his role as an overseer with utmost
seriousness, regularly held seminars for the senior clergy under his watch. A
member of that senior clergy, Arius, the presbyter of an important church
district in Alexandria, was at odds with Alexander over the precise way to
describe Jesus' divine status. In what would prove to be a pivotal lecture,
Alexander unequivocally proclaimed that Christ shared all of the divine
attributes of the Father-including eternality. Arius, who denied that the Son
was timeless, was pushed to his limits.

Arius believed that Jesus was divine inasmuch as he was like the Father.
Jesus was like the Father in that he existed before creation, played a role in
the origin of creation, and was exalted over all creation. Yet the Son himself
was a creature. According to Arius, the Father created the Son ex nihilo
("out of nothing") in eternity past and, in turn, commissioned the Son to
create the universe. So while Jesus was like the Father in his divinity, their
divine natures were not identical. Jesus was divine in a lesser sense.

Alexander vigorously maintainedthat divinitywas like pregnancy; it was

absolute. Just as a woman cannot be more or less with child, Jesus must be
all that divinity is or he is not divine at all. Sensing that Jesus' deity was the
head domino in a line of essential Christian truths (especially truths related
to salvation), Alexander used his pulpit and his pen to challenge Arius's
teachings. But Arius was persistent, so something had to be done. If the head
domino fell, all the rest would fall with it. Even though Alexander was a
gentle leader who loathed conflict, he knew he could not avoid it when it
came to the nature of Christ. So in 318 Alexander gathered a hundred or so
bishops in Alexandria to discuss the matter and formally defrock Arius.

Arius was outraged. He rejected the defrocking, retreated to Nicomedia

(in modern-day Turkey), and rallied his supporters. His strongest backer,
Eusebius of Nicomedia, was related by marriage to the emperor,
Constantine, and was the theologian of the imperial court. Together Arius
and Eusebius embarked on a letter-writing campaign to bishops who had not
presided over Arius's defrocking. A savvy publicist, Arius also set his
teachings to rhymes' and put them into "songs to be sung by sailors, and by
millers, and by travel- ers."2 It wasn't long before graffiti were covering
walls, pamphlets were blanketing public squares, and violence was
spreading in the streets. With the help of his well-connected friend, Arius
had ignited a cause with an explosive effect.

The reverberation was felt throughout the imperial territory. Constantine,

who had toppled his final challenger and emerged as the sole ruler of the
Roman Empire in 324, was embarrassed by the bickering among his bishops.
More than anything else, the new monarch wanted unity in his empire. And
he would seek it on the twentieth anniversary of his ascent to a Roman
throne.

In 325 Constantine summoned all of his bishops to what would be the first
ecumenical council in the history of the church. Constantine, who normally
resided in Byzantium (later renamed Constantinople; now modern-day
Istanbul, Turkey), stayed at his lakeside palace in Nicea while renovating the
city that would later bear his name. It would be the perfect setting for the
bishops, who were treated like royalty. Constantine's honored guests arrived
at Nicea on the imperial transport system, reserved for official imperial mail
and the travel of imperial officials? The all-expenses-paid trip included
welcome gifts, fine meals, and luxurious, secured living quarters. Indeed, the
accommodations were "splendid beyond description."4 Constantine was
going out of his way to bring unity to the church in his empire. But the final
say did not belong to him.

NOT ONE IOTA

The bishops at Nicea were more accustomed to persecution than
pampering. Many of them had lived through the injustices of Emperors
Diocletian (ruling c. 284-305) and Maximian (ruling c. 286305). Diocletian
was eager to confiscate Christian writings, burn Christian buildings, and
arrest Christian clergy. Maximian didn't hesitate to execute, disable, or exile
those who refused to renounce Christ. At least one of the bishops at Nicea
had personally experienced Maximian's cruelty. Paphnutius lost his right eye
and gained a limp in his left leg-before being banished to the mines-as a
result of confessing his faiths There were more victims of persecution at the
hands of others. Some lost use of their fingers because their nerves had been
seared with hot pokers. Still others lost limbs altogether. The marks of
persecution were so prevalent that one ancient writer said, "The council
looked like an assembled army of martyrs"!6 Of course, men who had
suffered such physical injuries for the sake of spiritual integrity were not
about to be told what they should believe about Christ-imperial pressure or
not.

Indeed, the bishops at Nicea were more preoccupied with preaching than
politics. Their burdens were for their congregations and for faithfulness to
"the Holy Fathers," to whom they often referred. They were keener on
apostolic tradition than theological innovation, and they sought the Spirit's
witness to truth in the context of community. In other words, the council was
not a collection of individuals with isolated opinions. To the contrary, they
brought under one roof the collected wisdom of the church Fathers who had
gone before them in understanding the nature of Christ. The bishops
momentarily left the practice of theology in their congregations to join the
broader Chris tian community in discussing such practice. The upshot of this
should not be overlooked: the council was informed-no, driven-by the
devotional life of the church at large. Constantine knew that whatever
solution came about would have to reckon with the deeply held convictions
of the majority of bishops and the churches they represented.

The emperor wasn't much of a theologian, so he relied on his theological

advisor, Hosius, to get him up to speed before the bishops arrived. Hosius
would have known that the majority of three hundred or so' bishops expected
at Nicea would not be quick to side with Arius. In fact, less than thirty would
have come prepared to say that the Son was a created being. Many more,
perhaps even most, entered the meeting hall straddling the fence. They did
not yet have a clear understanding of the issues.
 Concerned more with imperial unity than theological precision,
Constantine was eager to adopt a solution that would appeal to the largest
number of bishops-no matter what that solution might be.8 The Arians
unwittingly helped him on this front. Shortly after the council went into
session, a call was made for a clarification of the Arian position. Arius's
friend and stand-in (Arius could not sit on the council since he was not a
bishop), Eusebius of Nicomedia, took the opportunity to present the Arian
position in no uncertain terms. He strenuously asserted that the Son was in
no way equal to the Father and was, in fact, a finite creature. The bishops
were scandalized. Church historian Roger E. Olson describes the scene:

Some of the bishops were holding their hands over their ears and
shouting for someone to stop the blasphemies. One bishop near
Eusebius stepped forward and grabbed the manuscript out of his hands,
threw it on the floor and stomped on it. A riot broke out among the
bishops and was stopped only by the emperor's command.9

The bishops straddling the fence were suddenly staring at Arius from the
other side. Apparently, they didn't previously understand how black-and-
white the issue really was. Jesus was either finite, or he was not. The
majority of bishops couldn't stand the thought of the former. Constantine had
the council sitting right where he wanted it-or so he thought.

As things in the meeting hall quieted down, talk of an official statement

against Arianism picked up. The bishops didn't like what Arius and his
followers said about the finite nature of the Son. They knew what they did
not believe. But how precisely should they articulate what they did believe
about the deity of Christ? Therein lay the real issue at Nicea: determining
how-not if-Jesus was divine.

Eventually the bishops and the emperor agreed that a formal statement
would be crafted and signed by all of the bishops. Those who refused to sign
the document would be deposed from their positions of leadership within the
church.10 Constantine immediately appointed Hosius as secretary of the new
document, but talks with the bishops stalled over the matter of language. The
handful of Arians on the council insisted that only terminology found in the
Bible be used; those opposed to Arius argued that extrabiblical language was
needed to unpack the meaning of words used in Scripture. Constantine, most
likely at the prompting of Hosius, proposed a solution.

The emperor suggested that the Son be described as possessing the "same
substance" (Greek homoousios) as that of the Father. Constantine apparently
believed this label would identify Jesus as full deity (thus pleasing those
opposed to Arius) without implying too much beyond that (thus alleviating
the concerns of the Arians). If this proved to be the case, the emperor would
have a catchword that unified all of the bishops-regardless of their views of
Christ's divinity. Indeed, the majority of bishops seemed eager to adopt the
description. But hard-core Arians thought the word was too pregnant with
meaning. In their view, it gave Jesus equality with the Father but didn't
adequately explain how that equality fit into the framework of belief in one
God.

Despite the loud objections of a few-including those of his nephew, the

court theologian-Constantine forged ahead with the majority to create a new
creed declaring Christ to be identical in substance to the Father. The
resulting article of faith stated:

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things, visible
and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the
Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God
from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made,
of one substance [homoousios] with the Father, through Whom all
things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth, Who
because of us men and because of our salvation came down and became
incarnate, becoming man, suffered and rose again on the third day,
ascended to the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the
dead;

And in the Holy Spirit.

But as for those who say, There was when He was not, and, Before
being born He was not, and that He came into existence out of nothing,
 or who assert that the Son of God is from a different hypostasis or
substance, or is created, or is subject to alteration or change-these the
Catholic Church anathematizes."

All of the bishops signed the creed-with the exception ofTheonas of

Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais. Some who signed did so reluctantly,
but the overall message was clear: Arianism was inconsistent with the
historic faith and practice of the church. Those who embraced it would find
themselves on the outside looking in.

Some who were unwilling to embrace Arianism were nevertheless uneasy

with the term homoousios. They were worried that a word meant to suggest
that the Father and Son shared the same substance could be twisted to say
that the Father and Son were the same per- son.lZ These folks suggested that
a slight modification to the term homoousios might solve the problem.

In the Greek language, the difference between the words for "same"
(homo) and "like" (homoi) is the letter iota. By changing homo-ousios to
homoi-ousios, some anti-Arians described the Son as sharing "like
substance" with the Father. In so doing, they affirmed the Son's divinity and
yet treated him as a person distinct from the Father. But other anti-Arians
objected to the blander term, arguing that it didn't do full justice to Christ's
essential equality with God. What's more, Arius and his followers were all
too eager to use the term in describing a created Christ. For these reasons,
many antiArians stood resolutely behind the decision to describe Jesus with
the term homoousios. Athanasius was one such man who would not budge-
not one iota.

THE EMPEROR STRIKES BACK

Athanasius was in his twenties when he accompanied Bishop Alexander
to the Council of Nicea. Three years later, in 328, he would succeed his
mentor as the bishop of Alexandria. Four decades later, he would prove to be
the church's greatest champion of Nicene Christianity.
 Indeed, a champion was needed if the decisions at Nicea were going to
stand. Despite the clear pronouncement of the council that Jesus shared the
Father's exact nature, in-house squabbles over the terms homoousios and
homoiousios continued. Some members of the council proclaimed the
wording as a triumph of Sabellianism-that view of the Godhead that did not
distinguish its persons. The ousted Arians played this to their advantage,
arguing that the creed had gone too far. Quickly, they gathered steam and
were able especially to persuade secret sympathizers of Arianism to speak
up. Even many of the anti-Arians began to waffle about the wording. Yes,
Jesus Christ was truly God. But did the Nicene Creed open the door to
saying more? By jumping out of the frying pan of Arianism with this creed,
they may have inadvertently landed in the fire of Sabellianism. Precise
clarification would be needed on the nature of Christ and his relationship to
the Father, but the church would have to wait over fifty years to get it (at the
Council of Constantinople in 381).

The prolonged debate over how to describe Christ's divinity both showed
that Constantine lacked the power to force a decision upon the church and
set the stage for him to act out his real agenda.

In 328, an assembly of bishops restored Arius and his followers to

fellowship. These bishops also began to lobby the emperor for Arius's
formal reinstatement as an Alexandrian presbyter. Constantine, who just a
few years earlier had condemned Arius as a heretic, acquiesced. In 332, the
emperor pronounced Arius a presbyter in good standing and ordered the new
bishop of Alexandria-a young Athanasius-to accept Arius back into the fold.
Athanasius rebuffed Constantine's command and rejected Arius's
confirmation. For staying true to the Nicene Creed and standing against
those the emperor had earlier condemned, Athanasius was rewarded with
exile to the outer limits of the western empire. In this act Constantine
revealed that doctrinal precision was far less important to him than imperial
unity.

Athanasius would find himself banished four more times, spending a total
of seventeen years in exile. Not once would he waver from the Nicene
pronouncement that Jesus shared the exact same nature as the Father.
Athanasius would stand against the world, if need be, in defense of this truth.
 Constantine, on the other hand, would die embracing Arians before letting
go of his vision for unity. His alternating favor toward Athanasius then Arius
makes sense when we realize that Constantine's main agenda was not to
support orthodoxy or suppress heresy. It was to promote harmony. To
suggest that Constantine had the ability-or even the inclination-to manipulate
the council into believing what it did not already embrace is, at best, a silly
notion. At worst, the emperor was merely a speed bump in the church's
march toward a deeper understanding of the nature of Christ. And although
Constantine may have called himself "bishop of the bishops," the church was
going to believe what it knew it must believe-with our without him. And it
believed, as it had from the beginning, that Jesus is God.13
PART 5
 STEALING THUNDER
Did Christianity Rip Off Mythical Gods?
Chapter 16
PARALLELOMANIA

Supposed Links Between Christianity and Pagan

Religions
Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis,
Attis, Mithras, and the other Pagan Mystery saviors as fables, yet
come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context
and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem?

-TIMOTHY FREKE AND PETER

GANDY, The Jesus Mysteries, 9

Jesus was a Pagan god. . . and Christianity was a heretical product

of Paganism!

-TIMOTHY FREKE AND PETER

GANDY, The Jesus Mysteries, 9

Nothing in Christianity is original.

-DAN BROWN, The Da Vinci

Code, 232

The traditional history of Christianity cannot convincingly

explain why the Jesus story is so similar to ancient Pagan myths.

-TIMOTHY FREKE AND PETER

GANDY, The Laughing Jesus, 61

The title of this chapter, "Parallelomania," is drawn from Samuel Sandmel's

influential article in the Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962): 1-13. This
article dealt with scholars' desires to find parallels where none exist. We
borrow it for this chapter since it speaks to the same ongoing situation in
comparative studies.
 That makes Christianity unique among world religions is that it is
grounded in history. More specifically, the Christian faith rests on the
person of Jesus Christ as a real, historical man. The notion that God became
man in space-time history, that he lived among us, that he died on a Roman
cross and rose from the dead is the core of the Christian proclamation.
Indeed, one implication of the Incarnation-of God becoming man-is that the
Incarnation invites us and even requires us to examine its historical
credibility. The Gospels go to great lengths to speak to the where, who, and
when of Jesus' ministry. They practically beg the reader to check out the
data, to see if these things are so. To think that one can be a Christian
without embracing the historicity of Jesus Christ is pure fantasy.
Christianity is Christ. Without him, the Christian gospel has no meaning. Or
as Paul put it in his first letter to the Corinthians, "If Christ has not been
raised, then our preaching is futile and your faith is empty" (1 Cor. 15:14).

But there is a problem. The ideas of the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, and
the Resurrection might not be new with the Christian faith. Some claim to
find these concepts in pagan religions before the advent of Christianity. As
Freke and Gandy argue in their recent book, The Laughing Jesus, "The
Jesus story has all the hallmarks of a myth. The reason for this is quite
simple. It is a myth. Indeed, not only is it a myth, it is a Jewish version of a
Pagan myth!"1 These authors outline thirteen points of comparison between
the deities of mystery religions and Jesus Christ:

• His father is God, and his mother is a virgin girl.

• He is hailed by his followers as the saviour, God made flesh and Son
of God.

• He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on the twenty-fifth of

December in front of shepherds.

• He surrounds himself with twelve disciples.

 • He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites
of baptism.

• He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony.

• He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave

palm leaves to honour him.

• He attacks the religious authorities who set out to destroy him.

• He dies at Easter time as a sacrifice for the sins of the world,

sometimes through crucifixion.

• On the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to Heaven in
glory.

• His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days.

• His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread

and wine, which symbolize his body and blood.

• By symbolically sharing in the suffering and death of the Godman,

initiates of the mysteries believed they would also share in his spiritual
resurrection and know eternal life.2

These parallels, if genuine, suggest that Christianity is based on nothing

but thin air. But are they true parallels? Is Christianity just a myth, having
no historical foundation at all? Did Christianity rip off the tales of pagan
gods? In this chapter we cannot deal with all the issues, but we will offer a
framework for interpreting the data.

The idea that Christianity stole its basic content from pagan religions is
not new. It finds its roots in the "history of religions school," which
developed in the second half of the nineteenth century.3 By the mid-
twentieth century, this viewpoint had been largely debunked, even by
scholars who saw Christianity as a purely natural religion. But in recent
years, the notion that Christianity simply baptized pagan deities and applied
their characteristics to Jesus of Nazareth has found a new following. What
has caused this shift? How could the idea that there is nothing unique in
Christianity gain a footing today?

A combination of factors contributed to this resurgence. The postmodern

interest in spirituality, coupled with its increasing lack of historical
grounding, has been the main ingredient. But the icing on the cake is ready
access to unfiltered information via the Internet and the influential power of
this medium. The result is junk food for the mind-a pseudointellectual meal
that is as easy to swallow as it is devoid of substance.' One online article
posted at an influential anti-Christian site states:

After Osiris came many other virgin-born, resurrected savior gods:

Dionysus (Grecian), Krishna (Hindu), Mithra (Persian), Tammuz
(Sumerian-Babylonian).... Since Krishna allegedly lived centuries
before Jesus, this is sufficient reason to suspect that Jesus was merely a
counterfeit of Krishna and the other savior-gods who were worshiped
throughout the pagan world long before Jesus.'

Irresponsible statements of this sort can trouble Christians deeply. Such

statements do not go unchallenged, but because the Internet creates all
opinions equal, it is difficult to know where to look to find adequate
responses.

In this section we will note the faulty assumptions behind the alleged
parallels and then outline the nature of the mystery religions. Finally, we
will look at the two most commonly cited examples of Christianity's
borrowing from pagan religions-the Virgin Birth and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Much more could be said in this section, but this overview should
help the reader think through Christianity in relation to the ancient pagan
religions.

THE FAULTY ASSUMPTIONS BEHIND THE ALLEGED

PARALLELS

Five basic assumptions underlie parallel allegations:

 1. Parallels between Jesus Christ and pagan deities can be found in any
mystery religion.

2. Terms used of the Christian message just as naturally fit pagan

religions.

3. Parallels indicate wholesale dependency.

4. Fully developed mystery religions existed before the rise of

Christianity.

5. The purpose and nature of key events are the same in each of these
religions.

These assumptions overlap, but this may be a helpful way to think about the
methodological fallacies of those who claim that Jesus was just a mythical
god put in Jewish garb.

The Composite Fallacy

One of the fallacies regarding parallels between pagan deities and Jesus
Christ is that the pagan religions are often lumped together as though they
were one religion-and one that is virtually identical to Christianity in many
of its most important features. This is the composite fallacy. By combining
features from various mystery religions, a unified picture emerges that
shows strong parallels with the gospel. The only problem is, this unified
religion is artificial, a fabrication of the modern writer's imagination.

Albert Schweitzer, writing early in the twentieth century, observed,

"Almost all the popular writings fall into this kind of inaccuracy. They
manufacture out of the various fragments of information a kind of universal
Mystery-religion which never actually existed, least of all in Paul's day."6
Unfortunately, the composite fallacy has been repeated in modern times too.
Bruce Metzger reminds us that the form of a particular mystery cult would
be different from place to place, and from century to century.' If this is the
case within the same mystery religion, how much more would it be the case
for all mystery religions?
 To take one example among many, in his careful study of alleged
parallels with Christian baptism, Gunter Wagner concluded, "The mystery
religion par excellence has never existed, and quite certainly did not in the
first century A.D."8 Or consider the Christian doctrine of rebirth. After an
examination of the evidence, Ronald Nash declares:

We find that there was no pre-Christian doctrine of rebirth for the

Christians to borrow.... The claim that preChristian mysteries regarded
their initiation rites as a kind of rebirth is unsupported by any evidence
contemporary with such alleged practices. Instead, a view found in
much later texts is read back into earlier rites, which are then
interpreted quite speculatively as dramatic portrayals of the initiate's
"new birth." The belief that pre-Christian mysteries used rebirth as a
technical term is unsupported by even one single text.9

Thus, when Freke and Gandy suggest that the gods of the mystery cults
offered their followers "the chance to be born again through the rites of
baptism,"" they have committed the composite fallacy of reading such ideas
into the mystery religions as a whole. Examination of the thirteen alleged
parallels makes one justifiably suspicious that these authors have been a bit
too casual in fitting Christian elements into mystery religion data.

The Terminological Fallacy

Freke and Gandy assert: "Each mystery religion taught its own version of
the myth of the dying and resurrecting Godman, who was known by
different names in different places."11 Examination of the thirteen-point list
of parallels between Jesus Christ and pagan deities shows a conscious
pattern around the life of Christ that is stated in explicitly Christian terms.
This in itself should raise red caution flags that Christian vocabulary is
being manipulated. This improper redefining of terms to prove a point is the
terminological fallacy.

By way of analogy, suppose you go to a college football game. One team

suffers badly in the first two quarters and is down by twentyone points at
halftime. In the third quarter, however, the players make adjustments and
come back strong. Finally, late in the fourth quarter, they tie the game. With
less than a minute to go, they score a field goal and hold on to win. The
next day the local newspaper reports on the game. The writer adds a little
flair to his description when he says that the home team was "dying" in the
first half but was "resurrected" in the second half. The team went on to
"glory," which led to "salvation" for their fans. To think in such specifically
Christian terms might never have occurred to you before reading the article.
And upon reading it, you might consider the wording of the article a bit
cheesy. To use specifically Christian terminology to describe the mystery
religions strikes us as the same kind of thing.

Nash makes the insightful observation that "one frequently encounters

scholars who first use Christian terminology to describe pagan beliefs and
practices and then marvel at the awesome parallels they think they have
discovered."12 Bruce Metzger, the preeminent New Testament scholar and
emeritus professor at Princeton Seminary, summarized the parallels as
follows: "It goes without saying that alleged parallels which are discovered
by pursuing such methodology evaporate when they are confronted with the
original texts. In a word, one must beware of what have been called,
`parallels made plausible by selective description .">13

With reference to the use of language, Nash gives the example of the Isis-
Osiris myth. His statement is worth quoting in full.

The basic myth of the Isis cult concerned Osiris, her husband during
the earlier Egyptian and nonmystery stage of the religion. According to
the most common version of the myth, Osiris was murdered by his
brother who then sank the coffin containing Osiris's body into the Nile
river. Isis discovered the body and returned it to Egypt. But her
brother-in-law once again gained access to the body, this time
dismembering it into fourteen pieces which he scattered widely.
Following a long search, Isis recovered each part of the body. It is at
this point that the language used to describe what followed is crucial.
Sometimes those telling the story are satisfied to say that Osiris came
back to life, even though such language claims far more than the myth
allows. Some writers go even further and refer to the alleged
 "resurrection" of Osiris. One liberal scholar illustrates how biased
some writers are when they describe the pagan myth in Christian
language: "The dead body of Osiris floated in the Nile and he returned
to life, this being accomplished by a baptism in the waters of the Nile."

This biased and sloppy use of language suggests three misleading

analogies between Osiris and Christ: (1) a savior god dies and (2) then
experiences aresurrection accompanied by (3) water baptism. But the
alleged similarities, as well as the language used to describe them, turn
out to be fabrications of the modern scholar and are not part of the
original myth. Comparisons between the resurrection of Jesus and the
resuscitation of Osiris are greatly exaggerated. Not every version of
the myth has Osiris returning to life; in some he simply becomes king
of the underworld. Equally far-fetched are attempts to find an analogue
of Christian baptism in the Osiris myth. The fate of Osiris's coffin in
the Nile is as relevant to baptism as the sinking of Atlantis."

When it comes to parallels between Jesus Christ and pagan gods, too
often the terms used by modern writers come from specifically Christian
vocabulary, even though such terms have nothing to do with the pagan
religions. Such language reveals the prejudices of the modern writer more
than the substance of the ancient parallels.

The Dependency Fallacy

The dependency fallacy occurs when interpreters believe that Christianity

borrowed not only the form but also the substance of the mystery religions
and turned this into a new religion. But how one defines dependency is
absolutely crucial. Not only this, but the presence of parallels does not
necessarily indicate any kind of borrowing.

As noted above, the history of religions school launched the notion that
Christianity borrowed heavily from pagan religions. The core proposition of
this school is that Christianity is dependent for its content (stories and
important doctrines) on the Hellenistic mystery religions. Yet even when the
history of religions movement was most influential, not all liberal scholars
embraced this viewpoint. For example, Adolf von Harnack, the premier
liberal German historian of early Christianity during the first three decades
of the twentieth century, wrote:

We must reject the comparative mythology which finds a causal

connection between everything and everything else.... By such
methods one can turn Christ into a sun god in the twinkling of an eye,
or one can bring up the legends attending the birth of every
conceivable god, or one can catch all sorts of mythological doves to
keep company with the baptismal dove ... the wand of "comparative
religion" triumphantly eliminate(s) every spontaneous trait in any
religion."

The first thing to note is that dependence can be used in two ways.16
Was the origin of Christianity dependent on existing Greek philosophical
and religious ideas? That question hinges upon how one is using the word
"dependent." Nash argues that dependency can be weak or strong and that
the difference is a vital one. A strong dependency would mean that the idea
of Jesus as a dying and rising savior-god would never have occurred to
early believers if they had not become aware of it first in pagan thought. It
would be admitting that Paul and the other new Christians came to believe
that Christ was a resurrected God-man who made an atoning sacrifice for
the sins of the world because such notions were already part of pagan ideas.
Proving a strong dependency of Christianity on Greek thought would be
very damaging to those who hold to the general historicity of the Gospels.

A weak dependency may mean that the followers of Jesus used common
religious terminology to tell their story in a way understandable in the
Hebrew and Greek cultures, or they simply may have used language that
was coincidentally parallel to other religions, for reasons discussed below.
As Nash states, "The mere presence of parallels in thought and language
does not prove any dependence in the strong sense."17 Oxford University
historian Robin Lane Fox asserts that nearly all the supposed parallels
between pagan practices and Christianity are spurious." Fox challenges the
thesis that Christianity was "not so very novel in the pagan world."19 His
research led him to conclude that there is, in Leon McKenzie's words, only
"a marginal and weak connection between paganism and Christianity."20

Second, those who press for parallels and dependence often ignore the
universal similarity of human experiences that underlie specific cultural
forms. In his carefully researched article, "Methodology in the Study of the
Mystery Religions and Early Christianity," Metzger observed, "The
uniformity of human nature sometimes produces strikingly similar results in
similar situations where there can be no suspicion of any historical bridge
by which the tradition could have been mediated from one culture to the
other."21 For example, "The two facts that all human beings eat and that
most of them seek companionship with one another and with their god
account for a large percentage of similarities among the examples from
around the world."22 Metzger then quotes S. G. F. Brandon with regard to
the parallels between the Egyptian Osiris cult and Jesus Christ: "Any theory
of borrowing on the part of Christianity from the older faith is not to be
entertained, for not only can it not be substantiated on the extant evidence,
but it is also intrinsically most improbable."23

We might add that all religions, if they are to gain any converts, must
appeal to universal human needs and desires. Should we be surprised, then,
to discover parallels between Christianity and any other religion regarding
the offer of life after death, identification with the deity, initiation rites, or a
code of conduct? No, but in such cases, it can hardly be maintained that
parallels indicate dependence. As Walter Ktinneth argued in The Theology
of the Resurrection,

The fact that the theme of the dying and returning deity is a general
one in the history of religion, and that a transference of this theme is
possible, must not be made the occasion for speaking at once of
dependence, of influence, or indeed of identity of content. Rather, the
scientific task is not to overlook the essential differences in form,
content and ultimate tendency, and even in cases of apparent formal
analogy to work out the decisive difference of content.24
 Third, one has to take into account the accommodating language of the
early Christians. This seems to take at least two forms, language articulated
by a "missionary motive"25 and language motivated by a desire to be
accepted by the culture at large. The apostle Paul fits the first model; the
second-century writer Justin Martyr, the second.

Paul told the Corinthians, "I have become all things to all people, so that
by all means I may save some" (1 Cor. 9:22). Paul knew how to speak the
language that would best communicate to his particular audience. He did
this when he addressed the philosophers in Athens (Acts 17) and the
recently converted Christians in Thessalonica.26 The real question is,
"Does the fact that some New Testament writer knew of a pagan belief or
term prove that what he knew had a formative or genetic influence on his
own essential beliefs?"27 The language Paul used is meant to be a point of
departure-to show that Christianity is not in any of its essentials like the
pagan religions."

Justin Martyr (c. 100-165) was motivated by impulses that find their
antecedents in Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 B.C.-A.D. 50), the Jewish writer
who packaged Judaism in Greek philosophical terms. Does this mean that
Judaism was indebted to Greek philosophy? Hardly. But it does show the
lengths to which an ancient writer might go to make his religion winsome,
understandable, and palatable to outsiders.

Similarly, Justin Martyr came from a pagan home and was weaned on
Greek philosophy. "Justin was forced by his conversion to Christianity to
seek connection between his pagan, philosophical past and his Christian,
theological present. This biographical quest would come to expression as he
sought to mediate between the worlds of Greek and Christian thought."29
For example, Justin defends the Virgin Birth as follows: "And if we even
affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you
accept of Perseus."" Obviously, there is a sense in which Justin wants to
find commonality with other religions-in part, to lessen the attacks on
Christianity (since it was an illegal religion at this time) and, in part, to
present the gospel in a winsome manner, to show that it is not really
unreasonable to embrace it.
 It is true that Justin claimed that Satan had inspired the pagan religions to
imitate some aspects of Christianity, but even this is a far cry from claiming
that he saw the essential Christian proclamation duplicated in any other
religion. As J. Gresham Machen argued, "We should never forget that the
appeal of Justin Martyr and Origen to the pagan stories of divine begetting
is an argumentum ad hominem. `You hold,' Justin and Origen say in effect
to their pagan opponents, ,that the virgin birth of Christ is unbelievable;
well, is it any more unbelievable than the stories that you yourselves
believe?""'

Whether this kind of accommodation was the best approach in spreading

the gospel is a matter of debate. Tertullian (c. 160-c. 225), the North
African defender of orthodoxy, felt that it was inappropriate. "Justin's view
that philosophy is continuous with Christianity was emphatically not shared
by" Tertullian, who "regarded philosophy as folly and the source of
heresy."32

In sampling factors and nuances in regard to the issue of dependency, we

noted that the New Testament only borrows concepts and occasionally
wording from pagan religions for a variety of reasons. There was not a
strong dependency-that is, there is no evidence that the New Testament
writers were indebted to mystery religions for their essential message. We
also observed that parallels are not the same as dependency and that a
variety of reasons could produce similar parallels (not the least of which is
the human condition and the fact that all religions address many of the same
needs and desires).

We discussed accommodation as a motive to make the gospel palatable

and understandable. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul shows that he
accommodated his message for Gentile readers. Never was the gospel
altered by such accommodation, however. And in the second century, Justin
Martyr went so far as to concede certain parallels between Christianity and
pagan religions-most likely as a way to bridge the gap between his pagan
readers and the Christian faith. He did this in part because of his
background in Greek philosophy and in part to legitimize Christianity as a
religion that was not so different from other religions that it could not be
embraced. At the same time, a careful reading of Justin shows that at every
turn he sees the gospel as ultimately unique and thus superior to pagan
religions. While Justin sought to win converts by accommodation,
Tertullian sought to do so by showing the true distinctiveness of the
Christian faith. This very issue of assimilation versus distinctiveness is a
tension that evangelists and missionaries face even today.

The Chronological Fallacy

What is often overlooked when one considers parallels and dependence is

whether Palestinian Jews of the first century A.D. would have borrowed
essential beliefs from pagan cults. Remember that the church was at first
composed almost entirely of Jews. Two factors need to be considered. First,
there is so far no archaeological evidence today of mystery religions in
Palestine in the early part of the first century. Norman Anderson asserted,
"If borrowing there was by one religion from another, it seems clear which
way it went. There is no evidence whatever, that I know of, that the mystery
religions had any influence in Palestine in the early decades of the first
century."33 Second, the first-century Jewish mind-set loathed syncretism.
Unlike the Gentiles of this era, Jews refused to blend their religion with
other religions. Gentile religions were not exclusive; one could be a
follower of several different gods at one time. But Judaism was strictly
monotheistic, as was Christianity. As the gospel spread beyond the borders
of Israel, the apostles not only found themselves introducing people to the
strange idea of a man risen from the dead; they also came face-to-face with
a polytheistic culture. But they made no accommodation on this front.
Instead, John instructed his readers, "Little children, guard yourselves from
idols" (1 John 5:21), and Paul commended the Thessalonian church because
they had "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God" (1
Thess. 1:9). This was the Jewish and Christian mind-set.

The exclusivism extended to Jesus Christ. The apostles boldly

proclaimed salvation in Christ alone: "There is salvation in no one else, for
there is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must
be saved" (Acts 4:12). Even Paul, when addressing Greek philosophers in
Athens, did not accommodate his message to polytheism. "His spirit was
greatly upset because he saw the city was full of idols" (17:16). In his
proclamation, he identified God as the only God, and urged the Greeks to
repent of their polytheistic ways (vv. 23-31). Although acknowledging that
they were very religious, not once did he accommodate himself to the
notion that there were, in reality, many gods. As Nash suggests, "The
uncompromising monotheism and the exclusiveness that the early church
preached and practiced make the possibility of any pagan inroads ...
unlikely, if not impossible."34 This is a significant methodological issue
that cannot be overlooked: To argue that early Christianity borrowed
extensively from pagan religions looks more and more like unsubstantiated
wishful thinking."

If there are genuine parallels between Jesus Christ and pagan gods, when
and how did they come about? Several contemporary scholars do see
evidence of a dependent relationship between the mysteries and
Christianity, but it is for the most part a reversed dependency.

Essentially, there are three periods of comparison between Christianity

and the mystery religions:36 A.D. 1-200; 201-300; and 301500.

In the first period, the mystery religions were localized, having little
influence on mainstream religions. If there is any influence between
Christianity and the mystery religions, it must surely be in one direction:
Christianity influenced the cults. This is evident by the fact that Christianity
is essentially an anti-mystery religion. As such, its message would become
known, its documents made public, and its basis in history strongly
asserted. Further, since there is no evidence of syncretism in apostolic
Christianity, while the mystery religions from their very beginning display
syncretistic tendencies, the verdict has to be that Christianity influenced the
mystery religions, beginning in the first century, not vice versa. In the
second century, after the Christian faith had spread to all regions of the
Roman world, the mystery religions became more eclectic, softening harsh
elements, and consciously offering an alternative to Christianity. For
example, "In competing with Christianity, which promised eternal life to its
adherents, the cult of Cybele officially or unofficially raised the efficacy of
the blood bath from twenty years to eternity."37
 The second phase began in the third century. At this time the data come
into clearer focus. The mystery cults take on definite forms as they interact
and compete with Christianity. But the evidence that these same cults had
all these features prior to the rise of the Christian faith is nonexistent. Nash
observes:

Far too many writers on this subject use the available sources to form
the plausible reconstructions of the third-century mystery experience
and then uncritically reason back to what they think must have been
the earlier nature of the cults. We have plenty of information about the
mystery religions of the third century. But important differences exist
between these religions and earlier expressions of the mystery
experience (for which adequate information is extremely slim).38

The sources skeptics typically cite as evidence that pagan religions

influenced early Christian beliefs postdate the writings of the New
Testament. But the chronology is all wrong. Attis, Mithras, and the others
show evidence of a dependence upon Christianity."

However, beginning in the fourth century, the situation reverses itself:

Christianity began to adopt the terminology and modes of the mystery cults.
This is important to keep in mind, since the parallels that some skeptics use
are from later forms of Christianity. Thus, Freke and Gandy speak of
December 25 as a date that Christians took over from mystery religions in
celebration of the birth of Jesus. This, of course, is likely,40 but it is also
beside the point. Nowhere in the New Testament do we read that Jesus'
birth was on December 25. The use of this date was apparently picked to
assimilate the cults into the now-dominant religion of the Roman Empire,
Christianity. But that didn't officially occur until the fourth century.41 Thus,
we can readily admit that Christianity borrowed from the mystery religions,
but when Christianity did this was hundreds of years after it began. Such
borrowing has nothing to do with the core of the Christian proclamation.

The third stage of potential intersection between Christianity and the

mystery cults was in the fourth and fifth centuries. Although the mysteries
were dying out, they were able at this time to influence some of the modes
of worship and terminology of the Christian church. Catholics and
Protestants disagree over the appropriateness of such syncretism. But "the
crucial question is not what possible influence the dying mysteries may
have had on Christianity after A.D. 400 but what effect the emerging
mystery cults may have had on the New Testament in the first century."4z

Only after the rise of Christianity did mystery religions begin to look
suspiciously like the Christian faith. Once Christianity became known,
many of the mystery cults consciously adopted Christian ideas so that their
deities would be perceived to be on a par with Jesus. The shape of the
mystery religions prior to the rise of Christianity is vague, ambiguous, and
localized. Only by a huge stretch of the imagination, and by playing fast
and loose with the historical data, can one see them as having genuine
conceptual parallels to the Christian faith of the first century.

The Intentional Fallacy

Finally, when one examines the purpose and nature of the mystery
religions versus the purpose and nature of Christianity, huge differences
surface. We will discuss these issues in some detail when we examine the
virgin birth and the death and resurrection of Christ. Suffice it to say here
that Christianity has a linear view of history-history is going someplace.
But almost all mystery religions have a cyclical view of history linked to
the harvest-vegetation cycle. The Christian proclamation offered genuine
purpose in life, while the mystery religions looked at life as "a circular
movement leading nowhere."43

WHAT MYSTERY RELIGIONS HAVE IN COMMON

The religions in the ancient world had strange names. Some folks
worshiped a god named Mithra(s), others the deities of Osiris and Isis, and
still others worshiped Dionysus. What makes things more interesting is that
these religions borrowed heavily from each other. The same deity might end
up having multiple names. It is difficult to speak of common features of
these diverse religions because there were so many differences. Yet many
skeptics of Christianity claim to see common elements between the
mysteries and Christianity. The clear evidence is that this is not the case.
Rather, the mysteries share far greater commonality with each other than
they do with Christianity. In the Hellenistic" age, the common thread among
these religions was that they all had secret ceremonies, mysteries to all but
the initiated. These mysteries brought "salvation" to the participants. The
major mystery religions included the Greek worship of Dionysus and
Demeter and the later Eleusinian and Orphic mystery cults. In Phrygia
(modern central Turkey) arose the cult of Cybele and Attis. Egypt
contributed the cult of Isis and Osiris. From Palestine and Syria came the
mystery worship of Adonis and finally Mithraism,45 whose origin is
disputed.46 Strange names, strange places, and stranger deities. Do they
have anything to do with Christianity?

The mysteries (excluding Mithraism)4' had five characteristics in

common:

1. At the core of each mystery was the annual vegetation cycle in

which "life is renewed each spring and dies each fall. Followers of the
mystery cults found deep symbolic significance in the natural
processes of growth, death, decay, and rebirth."48

2. Each cult made "important use of secret ceremonies or mysteries,

often in connection with an initiation rite ... every mystery religion
also `imparted a "secret," a knowledge of the life of the deity and the
means of union with him."'49 This "knowledge" was always an
esoteric or secret teaching, unattainable by anyone outside the circle of
the cult.

3. The focus of the myth of each mystery was on the deity's victory
over something. This could be a return to life or conquest over his
enemies. "Implicit in the myth was the theme of redemption from
everything earthly and temporal. The secret meaning of the cult and its
accompanying myth was expressed in a `Sacramental drama"' that
appealed largely to the feelings of the initiates. Most importantly, the
vegetation cycle dictated this sense of "rebirth" and new life.50
 4. Doctrine and correct belief had little importance. Cults were
primarily concerned with the emotions." "Processions, fasting, a play,
acts of purification, blazing lights, and esoteric liturgies" stirred
emotional frenzy that brought one into union with the god.52

5. "The immediate goal of the initiates was a mystical experience that

led them to feel they had achieved union with their god.... Beyond this
quest for mystical union were two more ultimate goals: some kind of
redemption or salvation, and immortality.""

There are similarities to Christianity in these elements, but the

differences are greater. Both recognized the triumph of their deity as an
important aspect of the religion, and both placed an emphasis on salvation.
Such features are common to most religions. But what set Christianity apart
was (1) its insistence on historical credibility, which the mysteries didn't
even pretend to have, versus the "going nowhere" view of the vegetation
cycle; (2) Christian proclamation of the gospel as accessible to all people;
(3) its insistence on right belief instead of emotional frenzy; and (4) the
centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the coming
resurrection of be lievers. As Robin Lane Fox has noted, while the
mysteries "offered a myth of their god, Jews and Christians offered history;
the pagan mysteries conveyed a secret experience, whereas Jews and
Christians offered a `revelation' based on texts."54 Other differences could
be mentioned, such as the Christian faith's exclusiveness. Christians
proclaimed that there is only one legitimate path to God and salvation, Jesus
Christ. The mysteries were inclusive. Nothing prevented a believer in one
cult from following other mysteries as well.

The mystery religions had far more in common with each other than any
of them had with Christianity. Yet, the mystery cults took note of the
Christian movement and started to emulate it. Only after A.D. 100 did the
mysteries begin to look very much like Christianity, precisely because their
existence was threatened by this new religion. They had to compete to
survive.

CONCLUSION: CHRISTIANITY THE ANTIMYSTERY

 The alleged parallels between pagan gods and Jesus Christ do not argue
that the Christian proclamation was based on fiction. That some modern
authors continue to suggest that the gospel is based on myth is irresponsible
at best and intentionally deceptive at worst. When Nash wrote his book,
The Gospel and the Greeks (first published in 1992; second edition, 2003),
he had to justify flogging a horse that was already mortally wounded. He
gave the reason that, "even though specialists in biblical and classical
studies know how weak the old case for Christian dependence was, these
old arguments continue to circulate in the publications of scholars in such
other fields as history and philosophy."55 Remarkably, the ancient
statements about the mystery religions were systematically examined by
Christian August Lobeck in 1829. Bruce Metzger does not mince words in
assessing Lobeck's accomplishment of revealing the real nature of the
mystery religions: "A great deal of rubbish and pseudo-learning was swept
aside, and it became possible to discuss intelligently the rites and teachings
of the Mysteries."56 Perhaps it is time to get out the broom again.
Chapter 17
 THE VIRGIN BIRTH
OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT?
The notion that Jesus had no human father because he was the son
of God ... was originally a pagan notion.

-ROBERT J. MILLER, Born

Divine, 246

s the Virgin Birth unique to Christianity? Or were there other virgin

births in pagan literature, in Greek mythology, or in legendary accounts of
great leaders? The charge that Christianity borrowed the concept of a virgin
birth dates back to the second century. Justin Martyr, the first great
apologist for Christianity, answered a similar charge in his Dialogue with
Trypho, a Jew:

And Trypho answered, "The Scripture has not, `Behold, the virgin
shall conceive, and bear a son,' but, `Behold, the young woman shall
conceive, and bear a son,' and so on, as you quoted. But the whole
prophecy refers to Hezekiah, and it is proved that it was fulfilled in
him, according to the terms of this prophecy. Moreover, in the fables of
those who are called Greeks, it is written that Perseus was begotten of
Danae, who was a virgin; he who was called among them Zeus having
descended on her in the form of a golden shower. And you ought to
feel ashamed when you make assertions similar to theirs, and rather
[should] say that this Jesus was born man of men. And if you prove
from the Scriptures that He is the Christ, and that on account of having
led a life conformed to the law, and perfect, He deserved the honour of
being elected to be Christ, [it is well] ; but do not venture to tell
monstrous phenomena, lest you be convicted of talking foolishly like
the Greeks."'
 In this chapter we look at representative birth accounts that are compared
with the biblical accounts of Matthew and Luke. The standard defense of
the historicity of the Virgin Birth was written over sixty-five years ago by J.
Gresham Machen. It was scholarly, interacted with all the relevant material,
and was insightful. This powerful, sustained argument-a tome of over four
hundred dense pages-has never been adequately answered. We will
summarize some of the main points in Machen's The Virgin Birth of Christ.

THE VIRGIN BIRTHS OF PAGAN GODS

Besides birth accounts of pagan deities, skeptics also point to the stories
of miraculous births of Greco-Roman heroes like Perseus, Heracles, and
Romulus, or of deified kings Alexander the Great and the pharaohs, as
further evidence that pagan parallels are the source of the belief in the
virgin birth of Christ.

Perseus

In the Greek myth of Perseus, King Acrisius locked his daughter, Danae,
in an inaccessible tower in order to thwart the prophecy that her son would
kill his grandfather Acrisius. Although she was separated from any potential
suitor, Zeus, chief god of the Greek pantheon, was taken with the beauty of
this mortal woman and one night came to her as a shower of gold and
impregnated her. Her child was the Greek hero Perseus, the son of a divine
father and a (formerly) virgin human mother.'

Heracles

Heracles also was the product of a divine-human coupling. His mother,

Alcmene, was the daughter of the king of Tiryns. While she was betrothed
to Amphitryon, her brothers were killed in battle. She refused to
consummate the marriage until her brothers' deaths were avenged. Zeus
took advantage of her husband's absence and came to her in her husband's
likeness. As a result she conceived. When her husband returned, she
became pregnant by him as well. She bore twins-Heracles, the son of Zeus,
and Iphicles, the son of Amphitryon.'
Romulus

According to the Roman historian Livy, Rome's legendary founder

Romulus and his brother Remus were reputed to be sons of the god Mars.

But the Fates were resolved, as I suppose, upon the founding of this
great city, and the beginning of the mightiest of empires, next after that
of Heaven. The Vestal was ravished, and having given birth to twin
sons, named Mars as the father of her doubtful offspring, whether
actually so believing, or because it seemed less wrong if a god were
the author of her fault. But neither gods nor men protected the mother
herself or her babes from the king's cruelty; the priestess he ordered to
be manacled and cast into prison, the children to be committed to the
river. It happened by singular good fortune that the Tiber having
spread beyond its banks into stagnant pools afforded nowhere any
access to the regular channel of the river, and the men who brought the
twins were led to hope that being infants they might be drowned, no
matter how sluggish the stream. So they made swift to discharge the
king's command, by exposing the babes at the nearest point of the
overflow.4

From this desperate position, the twins were rescued by a she-wolf who
nursed them; a woodpecker watched over and fed them as well. The wolf
and the woodpecker are sacred to Mars, the twins' reputed father.

Alexander the Great

When we look at Alexander the Great, we have passed from legend to a

historical figure. Yet according to legend, Olympias, the mother of
Alexander the Great, conceived her son when Zeus, in the form of a
thunderbolt from the sky, struck and impregnated her just before she was
married to Philip of Macedon.'

The same thread connects all of these stories, yet the alleged parallels are
completely at odds with the biblical accounts of the virgin birth of Christ.
 The love of the gods for mortal women is the very point of the pagan
stories-the thing without which they could not possibly exist. To
mention any such thing in connection with the narratives in Matthew
and Luke is to do violence to the whole spirit of those narratives. The
truth is that when we read these narratives we are in a totally different
world from that which produced the pagan stories of the loves and
hates of the gods.'

Dionysus

The virgin birth of the pagan god Dionysus is attested only in post-
Christian sources. It is significant that it is indeed Christians who speak of
his virgin birth, but only several centuries after Christ. We noted earlier that
Justin Martyr, the second-century Christian apologist, referred to Perseus as
virgin born. Not all Christian writers were so casual in their language or in
their accommodation to pagan thought. Machen makes some astute
observations in this regard:

We have already seen that the application of the term "virgin" to pagan
mothers by Christian writers is in general to be viewed with suspicion,
since there was a tendency on the part of these writers to seek parallels
for Christian beliefs in pagan religion....

The use of the term "virgin" by Christian writers, and particularly by

Christian writers of such a late date, still remains open to the gravest
suspicion; it is all too likely to be due simply to the well-established
desire of such writers to find perverse imitations of Christian beliefs in
pagan religion. We really have no valid evidence whatever to show
that the term was actually used in the pagan worship of Dusares
[Dionysus] three centuries before the time when Epiphanius lived.
Furthermore, even if the term was used in the preChristian worship of
Dusares, that would not show at all that it was used in the sense in
which we use it and in which it was used by Matthew and Luke.... In
other words, the term "virgin," if it really was applied in pre-Christian
times to the mother of Dusares, meant, no doubt, almost the exact
 opposite of what that term means in the New Testament account of the
birth of our Lord!

THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNTS

The doctrine of the Virgin Birth was regarded as one of the fundamentals
of the faith during the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, a divisive era
in the North American church that began in the late nineteenth century but
generated its greatest explosions after World War I. This doctrine is in fact
explicitly mentioned only twice in the New Testament, in Matthew and in
Luke:

Now the birth of Jesus Christ happened this way. While his mother
Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, she was
found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph, her
husband to be, was a righteous man, and because he did not want to
disgrace her, he intended to divorce her privately. When he had
contemplated this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream
and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your
wife, because the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit."
(Matt. 1:18-20)

In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, the angel Gabriel was sent
by God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a
man whose name was Joseph, a descendant of David, and the virgin's
name was Mary. The angel came to her and said, "Greetings, favored
one, the Lord is with you!" But she was greatly troubled by his words
and began to wonder about the meaning of this greeting. So the angel
said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with
God! Listen: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and
you will name him Jesus... " Mary said to the angel, "How will this be,
since I have not had sexual relations with a man?" The angel replied,
 "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High
will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be holy; he
will be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:26-31, 34-35)

Comparing the biblical accounts with those of the surrounding pagan

religions, we find both points of contact and sharp contrasts. This is in fact
what we would expect to find. Throughout Scripture God accommodated
himself to human understanding, employing as points of contact familiar
concepts and then developing these points by pouring new meaning into
them. Throughout the ancient world, greatness was often associated with
physical generation by a god. Likewise the Old Testament, especially the
Greek translation known as the Septuagint (LXX), hinted at the possibility
of the Virgin Birth.' What is significant here is that Isaiah 7:14 is quoted by
Matthew in the sense that Mary was still a virgin when she conceived. The
LXX, which was produced before the birth of Jesus,9 clearly spoke of the
virgin. The idea of a virgin birth did not in any way have to derive from
pagan religions. New Testament writers already saw it in the Old
Testament. And as we noted earlier, the Judaism of Palestine in the first
century A.D. was virtually untouched by pagan influences. Thus there is
absolutely no reason to suspect that Matthew got this idea from pagan
sources.

Some have argued that the Virgin Birth is a later mythical addition since
it is mentioned only in two Gospels and is not spoken of by any other New
Testament authors. Over a century ago one biblical scholar answered this
objection with a very practical observation: If the Virgin Birth was common
knowledge among the apostolic community, the New Testament authors
"would have abstained from mentioning it for prudential reasons, lest they
should expose the mother of our Lord to scandal during her lifetime-such
scandals did in fact arise as soon as the virgin birth was declared."10 Hence
the apostles may have kept silent concerning the doctrine until after the
death of Mary.11

The question of the Virgin Birth in Matthew becomes even more acute
when we remember that first-century Judaism was radically monotheistic
and abhorred anything that smacked of paganism. It is inconceivable that a
Jew would incorporate any pagan mythological concept into his account,
especially a concept that would compromise YHWH's utter transcendence
and holiness.

It is generally agreed by conservative and most liberal biblical scholars

that the Gospels are mid- to late-first-century compositions and that they
rest upon earlier sources.

The early provenance of the account and its features made it

impossible to regard it as a mere legend. It was simply not possible for
a legend of this type to arise and gain adherence when Jesus' family
was still alive to squelch it if it were false. [Briggs] concluded that the
ultimate source of the account had to be Mary herself. At this point her
testimony had to be accepted or rejected. Since her character as
presented in the gospels was above reproach, her testimony had to be
taken at face value.12

In The Virgin Birth of Christ, Machen concurs with this assessment: "The
tradition of the virgin birth can easily be shown to have been in existence
only a few decades from the time when Jesus lived upon earth. In the case
of Jesus, therefore, we find a story of supernatural birth appearing at a time
when information concerning Jesus' life may be supposed still to have been
abundant."13

CONCLUSION
The pagan mythology ofvirgin births, which we have surveyed very
briefly, reveals sharp contrasts with the biblical accounts. Mythology offers
accounts of male deities taking physical form (sometimes human) and
impregnating a woman through physical contact. In these stories, the
women involved have some sort of sexual relations, so they are not virgins
in the strict meaning of the term. By contrast, Gospel accounts of the Virgin
Birth are decidedly non-sexual. Jesus is conceived by the creative power of
the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb. He is born of a woman without the seed of
man-or god.
 One of the premier New Testament scholars of the twentieth century,
Raymond Brown, observed:

Non-Jewish parallels have been found in the figures of world religions

(the births of the Buddha, Krishna, and the son of Zoroaster), in Greco-
Roman mythology, in the births of the pharaohs (with the god Amun-
Ra acting through the father) and in the marvelous births of emperors
and philosophers (Augustus, Plato, etc.). But these "parallels"
consistently involve a type of hieros gamos where a divine male, in
human or other form, impregnates a woman, either through normal
sexual intercourse or through some substitute form of penetration.
They are not really similar to the non-sexual virginal conception that is
at the core of the infancy narratives, a conception where there is no
male deity or element to impregnate Mary."

Brown's assessment is that "no search for parallels has given us a truly
satisfactory explanation of how early Christians happened upon the idea of
a virginal conception unless, of course, that is what really took place."15
Chapter 18
 OSIRIS, FRANKENSTEIN,
AND JESUS CHRIST
Jesus is the Pagan dying and resurrecting Godman under a new
name.

-TIMOTHY FREKE AND PETER

GANDY, The Laughing Jesus, 57

she apostle Paul reminded the Corinthians that the foundation - of

their faith was the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:3-8):

Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and ... he was
buried, and ... he was raised on the third day according to the
scriptures, and ... he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he
appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one
time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as
though to one born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also.

Paul insists that this is no myth. Not only does he relate the death and
resurrection of Christ to the Old Testament prophecies (twice Paul says
"according to the Scriptures"), but he also grounds his belief in history. He
lists the apostles, five hundred other believers, James (the brother of the
Lord), and himself as witnesses of the resurrected Christ. And he mentions
that "most of [them] are still alive." The resurrection of Christ was
verifiable by eyewitnesses. Paul reminds his readers of the fundamental
importance of belief in the reality of the Resurrection: "If Christ has not
been raised, then our preaching is futile and your faith is empty" (1 Cor.
15:14).

PAGAN "DYING-RISING" GOD MOTIF

 Did Paul and the other apostles weave the tale of a dying and rising God-
man on the loom of mystery religions? Some have said so. The idea of the
dying-rising god as a parallel to the Christian concept of the death and
resurrection of Christ was popularized by James Frazer in The Golden
Bough, first published in 1906. Edwin Yamauchi, a scholar known for his
extreme care and sober judgments with historical texts, has observed that,
although Frazer marshaled many parallels, the foundation was very fragile
and has been discredited by a host of scholars since his ideas were at the
height of their popularity in the 1960s.' We need to examine the data to see
whether the claims of Frazer-and others-have any substance.

We will briefly survey the three most influential myths of the mysteries-
Isis and Osiris, Cybele and Attis, and Tammuz (Adonis) -to see what they
say about a dying and rising god-man.

Isis and Osiris

Osiris was an ancient Egyptian god whose early mythology and worship
were not associated with the mysteries. The Hellenistic form of Osiris
worship developed into a mystery religion through innovations introduced
by Ptolemy I (c. 300 B.C.). These changes involved a synthesis of the older
Egyptian religion with Greek thought.' By the late first century, Plutarch
identifies Osiris as the Egyptian manifestation of the god the Greeks
identified as Dionysus.

Gary Habermas and Michael Licona summarize the Osiris myth thus:

Osiris was killed by his brother, chopped up into fourteen pieces and
scattered throughout Egypt. The goddess Isis collected and
reassembled his parts and brought him back to life. Unfortunately she
was only able to find thirteen pieces. Moreover, it is questionable
whether Osiris was brought back to life on earth or seen by others as
Jesus was. He was given status as god of the gloomy under world. So
the picture we get of Osiris is that of a guy who does not have all his
parts and who maintains a shadowy existence as god of the
mummies.... Osiris's return to life was not a resurrection, but a
zombification.3
 One of the fundamental differences between YHWH, the God of the
Jews, and the Egyptian gods is that YHWH was transcendent over nature,
rather than identified with it, while the Egyptian gods were identified with
the natural processes:

The Egyptian gods seem captive within their own manifestations. They
personify power but remain incomplete as personages. And yet these
vague and grandiose gods were not distant and intangible; the
Egyptians lived forever within the sphere of their activities.... [T] he
Egyptians explained the daily appearance of the sun as its birth; the
moon waned because it was the ailing eye of Horns. When barley was
made into beer and bread, it was Osiris-manifest in the grain-who died.
We shall meet such images at every turn, and we must not interpret
them as allegories for we cannot abstract a meaning from them without
falsifying the beliefs which they express.4

Henri Frankfort (see note 4) confirmed the identification of the gods with
nature and its manifestations, as set out by Plutarch, the late-first-century
biographer.' Plutarch warned his readers concerning the fables of the gods,
"Whenever you hear the traditional tales which the Egyptians tell about the
gods, their wanderings, dismemberments, and many experiences of this
sort.... you must not think that any of these tales actually happened in the
manner in which they are related."6

Regarding the Osiris myth, Metzger notes, "Whether this can rightly be
called a resurrection is questionable, especially since, according to Plutarch,
it was the pious desire of devotees to be buried in the same ground where,
according to local tradition, the body of Osiris was still lying."' Yamauchi
agrees:

It is a cardinal misconception to equate the Egyptian view of the

afterlife with the "resurrection" of Hebrew-Christian traditions. In
order to achieve immortality the Egyptian had to fulfill three
conditions: (1) His body had to be preserved, hence mummification.
(2) Nourishment had to be provided either by the actual offering of
daily bread and beer, or by the magical depiction of food on the walls
 of the tomb. (3) Magical spells had to be interred with the dead-
Pyramid Texts in the Old Kingdom, Coffin Texts in the Middle
Kingdom, and the Book of the Dead in the New Kingdom. Moreover,
the Egyptian did not rise from the dead; separate entities of his
personality such as his Ba and his Ka continued to hover about his
body."

Thus, to speak of Osiris as rising from the dead is a gross exaggeration.

The Osiris myth has more to do with Frankenstein and The Night of the
Living Dead than with Jesus.'

Cybele and Attis

While the Cybele and Attis myth exists in several forms, the core of each
is the same. The mother goddess Cybele loved Attis, a handsome shepherd
of Asia Minor. But Attis was unfaithful to his goddess lover, and in a
jealous rage she made him insane. In that insanity Attis castrated himself
and fled into the forest, where he bled to death. Cybele's overwhelming
grief brought death to the world, but she then returned Attis to life, which in
turn brought life back to the earth. Claims of "resurrection" in this myth are
vastly overstated.'o As J. Gresham Machen explains, "The myth contains no
account of a resurrection; all that Cybele is able to obtain is that the body of
Attis should be preserved, that his hair should continue to grow, and that his
little finger should move.""

In the mystery cult of Attis, the notion of Attis's "resurrection" is not

emphasized; rather his suffering and death are the focus. Evgueni
Tortchinov notes,

But the rite greatly stresses nothing else but suffering, death and the
rising of the god; here lies the central point of the rite. This point lies
in the very foundation of the cult of Attis itself and this point is the
main cause of its popularity. So here it is correct to agree with Frazer's
pointing out that myths have a secondary nature in comparison with
the rites: the myths were invented to explain the rites and habits of the
believers (Frazer, 1984, p. 327) ... but it seems to me better to add to
this opinion that the value of the rite itself was determined by its
 psychopractical aspect or intention, the purpose of which was the
cathartic feeling realized through experience of death-rebirth. The
psychopractical effect of the mystery rite was the magic power which
changed the lovely boy-shepherd, the lover of two sacred female
persons, into the Omnipotent Lord, Shepherd of Stars and the King of
the Space beyond the world.12

Early worshipers of Cybele acted out the Attis myth to guarantee a good
crop. It is only in the later Roman celebration, long after the establishment
and spread of Christianity, that the idea of resurrection even possibly
appears.13 At the earliest, Attis appears as a "resurrected" god after the
mid-second century A.D.14 The dependence of the Attis cult on
Christianity is thus a strong possibility.

Tammuz (Adonis)

Yamauchi notes that the evidence for two other major "dyingrising gods"
put forward by Frazer has been discredited. The resurrection interpretation
for the Mesopotamian Tammuz (Sumerian Dumuzi), who was supposedly
raised by the goddess InannaIshtar, had been read into the text in much the
same way as the assertion that Jesus kissed Mary Magdalene on the mouth
has been read into the Gospel of Philip. The end of the myth, both in the
Sumerian and Akkadian texts of "The Descent of Inanna (Ishtar)," was lost.
In 1960, ancient Mesopotamian religions expert Samuel Noah Kramer
published a newly translated poem, "The Death of Dumuzi," which revealed
that Inanna-Ishtar did not rescue Dumuzi from the underworld."

Later in the story's development, Tammuz was syncretistically identified

with the Phoenician Adonis, the handsome youth beloved by Aphrodite.
Jerome tells us that the second-century emperor Hadrian consecrated a
shrine of Tammuz-Adonis in the Bethlehem cave thought to be the
birthplace of Jesus. While the Adonis cult spread from its birthplace in
Byblos16 to the Greco-Roman world, the cult never attained influence and
was restricted to women. As with the texts of the other mysteries, there is
no hint of the resurrection in the early texts or images of Adonis. The four
surviving texts that do mention his resurrection are to be dated from the
second to fourth centuries.17

The tale of a dying and rising god-man in the mystery religions prior to
Christianity is itself a myth. According to Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox,
"Thinking pagans had worried more about the beginning of the world than
about its possible end. There was no question of a body being `resurrected':
the facts were obvious to anyone who opened a grave and saw bare bones.""
Nash sums up the evi dence about all these gods of the mystery religions
and their alleged resurrections:

Which mystery gods actually experienced a resurrection from the

dead? Certainly no early texts refer to any resurrection of Attis.
Attempts to link the worship of Adonis to a resurrection are equally
weak. Nor is the case for a resurrection of Osiris any stronger. After
Isis gathered together the pieces of Osiris's dismembered body, he
became "Lord of the Underworld." As Metzger comments, "Whether
this can be rightly called a resurrection is questionable, especially
since according to Plutarch, it was the pious desire of devotees to be
buried in the same ground where, according to local tradition, the body
of Osiris was still lying." One can speak, then, of a "resurrection" in
the stories of Osiris, Attis, and Adonis only in the most extended of
senses. And of course no claim can be made that Mithras was a dying
and rising god. French scholar Andre Boulanger concludes: "The
conception that the god dies and is resurrected in order to lead his
faithful to eternal life is represented in no Hellenistic mystery
religion."19

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION

The idea of resurrection was a hard sell in a Jewish culture, and an even
harder sell to the first-century Greco-Roman pagan culture. Although the
idea of physical, bodily resurrection was deeply rooted in Jewish thought,
the concept was tied inexorably to the final judgment at the end of time (cf.
Dan. 12:1-2). The idea of a bodily resurrection within time would have
been unthinkable to the Jew because it would not be associated in his mind
with the end-times event. Likewise, the pagan world did not expect a
resurrection. The GrecoRoman hope was escape from the body into the
spiritual world, immortality of the soul rather than bodily resurrection. The
theories that the resurrection was an idea incorporated into Christianity
from pagan sources simply have no factual substance.

The New Testament in at least two places suggests that paganism had no
concept of a resurrection. In Acts 17 Paul comes to Athens, the intellectual
center of Greek philosophy and religion. There, he preached to philosophers
at the Areopagus, men who were well informed on new philosophies and
religions and were ready to hear the latest juicy tidbit (v. 21). Paul
proclaimed the resurrection of Christ. But the philosophers scoffed (v. 32),
presumably because such an idea was unheard of.

It is of course quite possible that, when people in the wider world

heard what the early Christians were saying, they attempted to fit the
strange message into the worldview of cults they already knew. But the
evidence suggests that they were more likely to be puzzled, or to
mock. When Paul preached in Athens, nobody said, "Ah, yes, a new
version of Osiris and such like." The Homeric assumption remained in
force. Whatever the gods-or the crops might do, humans did not rise
again from the dead.20

In the fourth chapter of 1 Thessalonians, Paul answers questions about

the resurrection of the Christian dead. But he begins with a mild rebuke: he
reminds them not to "grieve like the rest who have no hope" (v. 13). Paul
had preached the resurrection of the dead when he was in Thessalonica (see
1 Thess. 1:10), but the Thessalonian believers now were acting like they
didn't fully believe it. "The rest who have no hope" were their pagan
neighbors. But the believers once had been idol-worshipers themselves (1
Thess. 1:9). They knew the pagan religions offered no real promise. These
religions could give no hope because they did not teach a resurrection from
the dead. Immortality of the soul was one thing, but resurrection of the body
was a concept foreign to paganism.
 As N. T. Wright put it, "Nobody actually expected the mummies to get
up, walk about and resume normal living; nobody in that world would have
wanted such a thing, either. That which Homer and others meant by
resurrection was not affirmed by the devotees of Osiris or their cousins
elsewhere."21 Part of the uniqueness of Christianity is its insistence on the
bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ and on the future bodily resurrection of
believers in Christ. The reuniting of the soul with the body-a new,
permanent body-is unheard of in the ancient mystery religions.

Ronald Nash's study on the mystery religions shows the contrast between
them and Christianity. He notes six points of contrast between the death and
resurrection of the savior-gods of the mysteries and the death and
resurrection of Christ.

1. "None of the so-called savior-gods died for someone else. The

notion of the Son of God dying in place of His creatures is unique to
Christianity."22

2. "Only Jesus died for sin.... As Wagner observes, to none of the

pagan gods `has the intention of helping men been attributed. The sort
of death that they died is quite different 11123 (hunting accident, self-
emascuation, etc.).

3. "Jesus died once and for all (Heb. 7:27; 9:25-28; 10:10-14). In
contrast, the mystery gods were vegetation deities whose repeated
death and resuscitation depict the annual cycle of nature."24

4. "Jesus' death was an actual event in history. The death of the god
described in the pagan cults is a mythical drama with no historical ties;
its continued rehearsal celebrates the recurring death and rebirth of
nature. The incontestable fact that the early church believed that its
proclamation of Jesus' death and resurrection was grounded upon what
actually happened in history makes absurd any attempt to derive this
belief from the mythical, nonhistorical stories of the pagan cults."25

5. "Unlike the mystery gods, Jesus died voluntarily. Nothing like the
voluntary death of Jesus can be found in the mystery Cults."26
 6. "And finally, Jesus' death was not a defeat but a triumph.
Christianity stands entirely apart from the pagan mysteries in that its
report of Jesus' death is a message of triumph. Even as Jesus was
experiencing the pain and humiliation of the cross, He was the victor.
The New Testament's mood of exultation contrasts sharply with that of
the mystery religions, whose followers wept and mourned for the
terrible fate that overtook their gods."27

Walter Kunneth offers a fitting summary: "It is superficial and unfounded

to say that the study of the history of religion has shown the dependence of
the resurrection of Jesus on mythology. On the contrary, it is precisely the
comparison with the history of religion that gives rise to the strongest
objections to any kind of mythifying of the resurrection of Jesus."28
Conclusion
THE REAL JESUS

.n the 1970s, the Ford Motor Company grabbed the attention of -

commercial viewers with the catchphrase, "The closer you look, the better
we look." We can't comment on the veracity of such a statement about
automobiles, but we have been driving toward a similar sentiment in this
book: The closer you look, the better Jesus looks.

As we have taken a closer look at the historical person of Jesus, we've

seen that:

• The Gospels are historically credible witnesses to the person, words,

and deeds of Jesus Christ. What the evangelists wrote was based on a
strong oral tradition that had continuity with the earliest eyewitness
testimony. In essence, the gospel did not change from its first oral
proclamation to its last written production.

• The original documents of the New Testament have been lost, but
their contents have been faithfully preserved in thousands of copies.
Today we are certain of about 99 percent of the original wording. In no
place is the deity of Christ or his bodily resurrection called into
question by textual variants. Although much of the wording of the text
has undergone change over the centuries, the core truth-claims of
Christianity have remained intact.

• The ancient church exercised careful scrutiny and sober judgment in

determining which books belonged in the New Testament. They
showed deep concern for authenticity-authentic authorship, history,
and theology. And although the church wrestled with some of the
books for centuries, a substantial core of books was accepted in the
beginning. There is no evidence that the early church had to sort
through various gospels to find the ones that agreed with the Christian
community at large. Rather, the earliest Gospels prevailed precisely
 because they were written early, they were written by reliable
eyewitnesses and/or historians, and they were not given to flights of
fancy.

• The view that the divinity of Christ was invented in the fourth
century is historically naive. From the time that the New Testament
was penned through the centuries that followed, the evidence is
overwhelming that Jesus was consistently viewed as more than a man
by his followers. Even the enemies of Christianity recognized that the
early Christians worshiped Jesus Christ as deity.

• The Christian message did not plagiarize the writings of pagan

religions. There is no substantiated connection between belief in the
virgin birth and resurrection of Christ with the cults of Osiris,
Dionysus, or Mithra. Alleged parallels between earlier religions and
Christianity are not sustainable when the evidence is fairly examined.

In short, all of the evidence points to the biblical Jesus as the real Jesus.

At the same time, none of this suggests that we have proved the historical
veracity of the Christian faith. After all, the events of history cannot be
tested repeatedly in a controlled environment with consistently identical
results. But when evidence that is strong and pervasive can be adduced, past
events can be reasonably deemed probable. An ounce of evidence is worth a
pound of presumption. But in this case, we have much more than an ounce
of evidence! Indeed, probability is very much on the side of the Christian
message.

We avoid two dangerous extremes when we ground our understanding of

Jesus in probability. On the one hand, we avoid the unrealistic demand for
historical certainty. If the evidence for the historicity of Christianity could
be interpreted with 100 percent certainty, there would be no need for faith.
And make no mistake: belief in the biblical Christ requires a step of faith.
But a step is nowhere near a leap.

On the other hand, we avoid the foolish notion that all interpretations of
Jesus are created equal. We would do well to remember that virtually every
wrongheaded view of Jesus is based on a possible understanding of the
ancient data. But such views have never been shown to be probable.
Although speculation based on thin air and charges of conspiracy make for
a good suspense novel, it has nothing to do with real history. Responsible
historians and fiction writers may breathe the same air, but they do not
share the same respect for historical evidence.

In the twenty-first-century world, many postmodernists claim to be

evenhanded and open-minded. They loathe dogmatic convictions. But the
irony is that they often become arrogant about their skepticism, about
seeing all possibilities as equal. Postmodern skepticism is the new dogma,
and it is not one that has much regard for historical probabilities.

So why all the present fuss about the historical Jesus? More specifically,
why are so many people infatuated with reinterpretations of his life? Little
attention is given to the scriptural portrait of Christ. However, when a new
perspective on him-one that is decidedly out of sync with the Bible-is
unveiled, it draws a crowd.

But why isn't society interested in reinventions of other major religious

figures? Why not Muhammed, Buddha, Moses, or Confucius? Why Jesus?
In a word, accountability. People in the civilized, Western world usually
know something about Jesus and the gospel message, and their interest in
him rises whenever a new theory comes along that can ease their
consciences. People gravitate toward a tame Jesus-a Jesus who can be
controlled, a Jesus who is nonthreatening, a Jesus who values what they
value and does not demand anything of them at all. In other words, a Jesus
who is not Lord and Savior. Frankly, it's hard to escape the feeling that our
culture has taken Jesus' question "Who do you say that I am?" and changed
it to "Who do you want me to be?" But the real Jesus doesn't ask that
question; the real Jesus is not so tame.

In C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, the main character through the

seven volumes is one named Aslan-a lion. He appropriately symbolizes
Jesus Christ. Human children from another world in another dimension
somehow come into the land of Narnia and learn about Aslan from some
talking animals. Their introduction to Aslan sums up the power and majesty
of Jesus Christ. One of the children, upon learning that Aslan is a lion,
wants to know more:

"Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's
anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking
they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you?
Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."'

The real Jesus is far from safe. We seem to know that instinctively. It's
why we keep our distance. But something strange happens when we
approach him fearfully and humbly in the words of Scripture. We hear the
ring of authenticity in his voice. We witness the genuine authority in his
actions. So we take a closer look.' And we see that he is good.

We want to hear from you. Please send your comments about this book to
us in care of [email protected]. Thank you.
 ENDNOTES
INTRODUCTION: REINVENTING JESUS?

1. A quick survey of life-of-Jesus studies over the past two centuries

appears in N. T. Wright, Who Was Jesus? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1993), 1-18.

2. Luke Timothy Johnson, quoted in David van Biema, "The Gospel

Truth," Time, April 8, 1996: 57.

3. A few related topics do not fit the narrow purpose of this volume
and so have not received much attention. Topics that have been treated
on an easily understood level include (1) historical evidence for the
Resurrection, Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for
the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004); (2) the
relationship of Mary Magdalene to Jesus, Darrell L. Bock, Breaking
the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone's Asking, rev.
ed. (Nashville: Nelson, 2006); and Ben Witherington III, The Gospel
Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Da Vinci
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004); and (3) the so-called
"missing" gospels, Darrell L. Bock, The Missing Gospels: Unearthing
the Truth About Alternative Christianities (Nashville: Nelson, 2006).
We commend these works to you.
CHAPTER 1: THE GOSPEL BEHIND THE GOSPELS

1. The complete bibliography for this answer is too large to include in

a single endnote. The following is a select list of works undermining
radical skepticism in historical Jesus studies: (1) exposes of faddish
quests for the historical Jesus: Philip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels: How
the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001); Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest
for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996); (2) methods for studying the
historical Jesus: Darrell L. Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus: A
Guide to Sources and Methods (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002); (3)
general works related to the historical Jesus: Paul Barnett, Jesus and
the Logic of History, New Studies in Biblical Theology, ed. D. A.
Carson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Cambridge, Leicester: Apollos,
1997); Gregory A. Boyd, Cynic Sage or Son of God? Recovering the
Real Jesus in an Age of Revisionist Replies (Wheaton: Victor, 1995);
C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The
Incarnational Narrative as History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); Gary R.
Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of
Christ (Joplin, MO: College, 1996); Michael J. Wilkins and J. P.
Moreland, eds., Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the
Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995); Ben Witherington
III, The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth, 2d ed.
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997); (4) Christology of the
early church: Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and
Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998);
Martin Hengel, Studies in Early Christology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark,
1995); (5) Jesus' self-understanding: Ben Witherington III, The
Christology of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); (6) Jesus traditions
before the Gospels: Paul Barnett, The Birth of Christianity: The First
Twenty Years (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); James D. G. Dunn, A
New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus
Missed (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005); (7) reliability of the Gospels:
Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987); (8) miracles of Jesus: Graham H.
Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker: A Historical and Theological
Study (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999); (9) trial of Jesus
before Jewish leadership: Darrell L. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation
in Judaism and the Jewish Examination of Jesus (Tubingen: Mohr,
1998); (10) resurrection of Jesus: William Lane Craig, Assessing the
New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of
Jesus (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1989); Gary R. Habermas and Michael
R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection ofJesus (Grand Rapids:
Kregel, 2004); Grant R. Osborne, The Resurrection Narratives: A
Redactional Study (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984); and N. T. Wright, The
Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).
2. Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a
Mythical Christ? (Ottawa: Age of Reason, 1999), 229.
3. Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five
Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York:
Macmillan, 1993), 4.

4. It is sometimes alleged by fringe scholarship that Jesus did not

really exist because if he had, Paul would have commented more on
his life, quoted more of his sayings, and made other references relating
to him. Such allegations miss two important pieces of data. First, Paul
does allude to quite a few of Jesus' sayings, some of which are not
even found in the Gospels (see esp. David Wenham) Paul: Follower of
Jesus or Founder of Christianity? [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995]).
Second, that he does not speak very often about the life of Jesus no
doubt is due to the fact that he was not an eyewitness to Jesus' life.
Birger Gerhardsson in Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and
Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, rev.
ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans) 1998) notes that since Paul was an
eyewitness to the resurrected Christ, this is what he focuses on (see
chap. 15: "The Evidence of Paul)" 262-323). Since his apostolic
commission came later than that of the original apostles, he had to rely
on their testimony about the words and deeds of Jesus. But he could
say authoritatively that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead, since he
met the ascended Lord on the road to Damascus. Yet, even here, Paul
speaks more of the life of Jesus than is sometimes recognized.
Wenham, Paul, discusses this matter throughout.
5. See John W. Mauck, Paul on Trial: The Book of Acts as a Defense
of Christianity (Nashville: Nelson, 2001).

6. J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia:

Westminster, 1976), 16.

7. Ibid., 25 (emphasis added).

8. For more on the dating of the Synoptic Gospels, see D. A. Carson

and Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament, 2d ed.
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005).

9. Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The
Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (San Francisco:
 HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 6.

10. This is not the standard definition of form criticism. Taylor was
writing in 1933 when the shape of form criticism was far more
skeptical about the historical Jesus than it is today. Form criticism is
the study of identifiable literary forms to which the stories about Jesus
belong. That these stories circulated in such forms during the oral
period is quite likely. See Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus, 181-87.
Bock notes that as a literary tool, form criticism is helpful, but it has
little to say in the verifying of the historicity of the material (ibid.,
187).

11. Vincent Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition (London:

Macmillan, 1933), 41-43.

CHAPTER 2: ORAL TRADITION AND A MEMORIZING CULTURE

1. John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What

Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 47-93.

2. This is the fundamental premise in Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover,

and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic
Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993), and stated explicitly on
page 4 of The Five Gospels.

3. Remarkably, even Crossan agrees with N. T. Wright that the sayings

of Jesus were most likely repeated multiple times: "The overwhelm ing
probability is that most of what Jesus said, he said not twice but two
hundred times with (of course) a myriad of local variations" (Crossan,
Birth, 49, quoting N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of
God [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992], 423). Yet, Crossan does not seem
to think that this made much of an impact on the apostolic
proclamation of the gospel.
4. Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and
Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, with
Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity (both volumes now
together under one cover) rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).
5. Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, 134-35.

6. The basis for this approach to quoting sources can be found in

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War 1.22.1.

7. For a popular treatment of this subject, see Darrell L. Bock, "The

Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex?" in Jesus
Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus, ed.
Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1995), 73-99.

8. Several of these rabbis lived before the time of Christ, showing

continuity with rabbinic education before and after the time of Christ.

9. Crossan argues that the best test for determining what stands behind
the Gospels is "the intersection of memory, orality, and literacy from
oral fieldworkers operating inductively, or from social psychologists
operating experimentally" (Birth, 58). That this approach is restricted
entirely to the modern era does not seem to matter to Crossan. And yet,
when Gerhardsson's Memory and Manuscript first appeared in 1961,
Jacob Neusner criticized the book for lacking genuine firstcentury
parallels to the Gospels. In the revised version of 1998, Neusner took
the opportunity to recant of his "uncompromising and unappreciative,
indeed dismissive" review (in his foreword to Memory and
Manuscript, xxv). Neusner discusses "why Gerhardsson was denied a
hearing" (ibid.). Since the rabbinic materials were later than the New
Testament, scholars simply rejected Gerhardsson's argument as
irrelevant. The Mishnah, the earliest of the rabbinic sources, was
codified in about 200, although it went back to oral sources that were,
in many cases, from before the time of Christ. Of course, we have no
earlier materials from the Jewish side of things, so at least Gerhardsson
was using the best available parallels, chronologically speaking. Yet,
Crossan uses modern parallels, assuming that this is the scientifically
proper approach. More conservative scholars are held to a significantly
higher standard.
10. Contrasting this, Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, at least
begins with very close parallels in the following respects: (1) Jewish,
(2) rabbis' relation to disciples, (3) ancient, (4) a culture that focused
on memorization. Remarkably, there are two major differences that
favor the retention of material by Jesus' disciples over that of rabbis'
disciples: community reinforcement of memory, and eyewitnesses to
certain events.

11. Kenneth E. Bailey's essays and his earlier books were hardly
noticed by scholars until N. T. Wright and J. D. G. Dunn discussed
them. See Bailey's essays, "Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the
Synoptic Gospels," Asia Journal of Theology 5 (1991): 34-54; and
"Middle Eastern Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels," Expository
Times 106 (1995): 363-67, and his books, notably Poet and Peasant
and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the
Parables of Luke, combined ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans) 1983). See
N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress)
1996), 133-37; and James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 206-10.

12. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 210.

13. Bock, "Words of Jesus in the Gospels," 73-99.

14. Ibid., 77.

15. Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, 123.

16. James D. G. Dunn, A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest

for the Historical Jesus Missed (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 35-36.

17. Bock, "Words of Jesus in the Gospels," 79. See pages 79-81. He
quotes with approbation Rainer Riesner's quip about ancient Jewish
society as a "culture of memory" ("Gedachtniskulturen"). See page 80.
The original wording can be found in Rainer Riesner, "Judische
Elemen- tarbildung and Evangelieniiberlieferung," in Gospel
Perspectives: Studies of History and Tradition in the Four Gospels, ed.
R. T. France and David Wenham (Sheffield, England: JSOT, 1980),
1:218. For the entire essay, see pages 209-23.
 18. Paul Barnett, The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 113-14; see also Gerhardsson,
Memory and Manuscript, 136-56.

19. This point is argued in Barnett, Birth of Christianity, 114; H.

Schiir- mann, Traditiongeschichtlichte Untersuchungen (Dusseldorf:
Patmos, 1968), 39-45; and many others. It is even admitted by
Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, 195, as a possibility, even
though Gerhardsson is the champion of a strong oral tradition.

20. Barnett, Birth of Christianity, 114.

CHAPTER 3: AN ECCENTRIC JESUS AND THE CRITERIA OF AUTHENTICITY

1. Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five
Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York:
Macmillan, 1993), 29.

2. Ibid., 31.

3. Darrell L. Bock, "The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or

Me- morex?" in Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the
Historical Jesus, ed. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 91.

4. So Heinrich Schlier, "dµrjv," in Theological Dictionary of the New

Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 1:335, though Schlier breaks this down into
three categories.

5. Ibid., 338.

6. Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels, 36.
Actually, three different definitions are used in The Five Gospels, 36-
37. To the degree that these actually mean different things, the Jesus
Seminar's fellows were voting within unclear, amorphous categories.
The three definitions of gray are as follows: (1) "I would not include
this item in the database, but I might make use of some of the content
in determining who Jesus was"; (2) "Jesus did not say this, but the
ideas contained in it are close to his own"; (3) "Well, maybe." These
seem to be three different definitions for "gray."
7. Regarding the system of voting, the Jesus Seminar notes that "black
votes in particular could readily pull an average down, as students
know who have one `F' along with several A's. Yet this shortcoming
seemed consonant with the methodological skepticism that was a
working principle of the Seminar: when in sufficient doubt, leave it
out" (Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels, 37). In
addition to the shortcoming admitted here, it may be noted that at least
one member of the Jesus Seminar, Robert Price, did not believe that
Jesus even existed! Although he is not listed in the Five Gospels roster
of scholars who worked on the words of Jesus, he is listed in a later
volume, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of
Jesus, by Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 540. The criteria, coloring system, and
rationale are quite similar to that of the first volume, except for one
notable difference: instead of "this shortcoming," we now read "this
feature" (Funk and Jesus Seminar, Acts of Jesus, 37 [emphasis added]
). Does this mean that it is not a shortcoming to have a member whose
pockets are filled only with black beads?

8. C. F. D. Moule, "The `Son of Man': Some of the Facts," New

Testament Studies 41 (1995): 278.

9. Bock, "Words of Jesus in the Gospels," 91.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., 92. Some would distinguish multiple sources from multiple
forms, treating each as a separate criterion (so Robert H. Stein, "The
`Criteria' for Authenticity," in Gospel Perspectives: Studies of History
and Tradition in the Four Gospels, ed. R. T. France and David Wenham
[Sheffield, England: JSOT, 1980], 1:229-33).

12. Bock, "Words of Jesus in the Gospels," 92.

13. See discussion in Scot McKnight, "Who Is Jesus? An Introduction
to Jesus Studies," in Jesus Under Fire, 66 (whole essay on 51-72).

14. Bock, "Words of Jesus in the Gospels," 92.

15. Ibid., 92-93.

16. Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels, 5.

17. As evidence of this, one could consult the many comments on this
text in the patristic writers. They struggled with how the theanthropic
person-the God-man-could have limited knowledge of the future.

18. Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels, 114.

19. C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint Mark

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 17.

20. Josephus (Antiquities 4.8.15 §219) says that women were

disqualified because of their inherent "vanity and rashness." It is said
in mKet 1.6-9; Sifre Dent. 190; ySot 6.4, 21a that the testimony of a
hundred women was worth no more than the testimony of one man.
Tal Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine: An Inquiry into
Image and Status (T(ibingen: Mohr, 1995), 163-66, summarizes her
research on the matter: "We may conclude that the specific law
disqualifying women as witnesses was formulated as a general
halakhic principle, just as in other matters such as punishments, but
that many exceptions arose from actual custom and practice. During a
normal trial in court, women's testimony was not sought out and was
in fact avoided whenever possible because `no man wants his wife to
degrade herself in court' (bKet. 74b), but testimony which could not
otherwise be obtained was by all means accepted" (ibid., 165).

21. The Jesus Seminar places the statements about Jesus' baptism in
red letters in the Acts of Jesus.

22. Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels, 5.

23. Ibid.
 24. But see Paul Barnett, The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty
Years (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 57. He notes Paul's
intersections with the person of Jesus.

25. McKnight, "Who Is Jesus?" 61.

26. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

2003), 254.
CHAPTER 4: CAN WE TRUST THE NEW TESTAMENT?

1. Recently, some scholars have argued that the primary goal of New
Testament textual criticism must be something other than seeking to
determine the wording of the original. This is a shift from the objective
that has held sway for centuries. For a brief critique, see Moises Silva,
"Response," in Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism, ed.
David Alan Black (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 149.

2. We are not arguing here for what is often called the "doctrine of
preservation." Rather, our point is simply that the historical data show
that the New Testament has been preserved over the centuries. Without
turning such a fact into a doctrine, the evidence is still significant. For
more information, see Daniel B. Wallace, "Inspiration, Preservation,
and New Testament Textual Criticism," Grace Theological Journal 12
(1991): 21-51.

3. Bruce M. Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1981), 53; and J. Harold Greenlee, Introduction to
New Testament Textual Criticism, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 1995), 134 n. 2.

4. E. C. Colwell, "Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of

P45, P66, P75," in Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the
New Testament, New Testament Tools and Studies 9, ed. Bruce M.
Metzger (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), 115-16.

5. See Kim Haines-Eitzen, "Girls Trained in Beautiful Writing: Female

Scribes in Roman Antiquity and Early Christianity," Journal of Early
Christian Studies 6.4 (1998): 629-46; and idem, Women and Early
Christian Literature: Gender, Asceticism, and the Transmission of
Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

6. The example from Codex W is based on personal examination.

7. See the discussions in Gordon D. Fee, "The Use of the Definite

Article with Personal Names in the Gospel of John," New Testament
Studies 17 (1970-71): 168-83; J. Heimerdinger and S. Levinsohn, "The
Use of the Definite Article before Names of People in the Greek Text
of Acts with Particular Reference to Codex Bezae," Filologia
Neotesta- mentaria 5.9 (1992): 15-44; Steve Janssen, "The Greek
Article with Proper Names in Matthew: Traditional Grammar and
Discourse Perspectives" (Th.M. thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary,
2003).
8. Transpositions help scholars determine how much text a scribe is
holding in memory before he or she writes it down. As we noted, the
scribe of P75 seems to have copied one or two letters at a time. His
transpositions would involve just a couple of letters, resulting in
nonsense wording. Other scribes copied out as many as eight or nine
words at a time (such as are found in Codex Bezae, a fifth-century
manuscript housed at Cambridge University), resulting in more
extensive transpositions and accidental omissions.

9. Or, more technically, the pronouns and third person singular endings
in the verbs.

10. See Gordon D. Fee, "Modern Textual Criticism and the Synoptic
Problem: On the Problem of Harmonization in the Gospels," in Studies
in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism, by
Eldon J. Epp and Gordon D. Fee (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993),
174-82. Even some advocates of what is called the "majority text"
acknowledge that there are harmonizations in their preferred text-form.
See Willem Franciscus Wisselink, Assimilation as a Criterion for the
Establishment of the Text: A Comparative Study on the Basis of
Passages from Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Kampen:
Uitgeversmaatschap- pij J. H. Kok, 1989), 87-90.
11. Robert W. Funk, RoyW. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five
Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York:
Macmillan, 1993), 5-6.

12. Some might even object that three of these examples are not
viable. In The Greek New Testament, 4th rev. ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelge- sellschaft, 1994), the texts of Romans 5:1; 1 John 1:4; and
Mark 16:8 (i.e., without the longer ending) are regarded as "certain."
That is, the editors have no doubt as to what the original wording is. In
each of these instances, we agree with their textual decision, but our
degree of certainty may not be as high.

13. For a helpful discussion of the issues, see the "tc" note at Romans
5:1 in the NET Bible.
14. See, for example, Galatians 4:19: "My children-I am again
undergoing birth pains until Christ is formed in you!"

15. For a recent discussion on this problem, see J. A. D. Weima, "`But

We Became Infants Among You': The Case for NHIZIOI in 1
Thessalonians 2.7," New Testament Studies 46 (2000): 547-64; and T.
B. Sailors, "Wedding Textual and Rhetorical Criticism to Understand
the Text of 1 Thessalonians 2.7," Journal for the Study of the New
Testament 80 (2000): 81-98.

16. For discussion, see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on

the Greek New Testament, 2d ed. (Stuttgart: German Bible Society,
1994), 639.

17. There are only two places in the New Testament where the text is
uncertain to such a degree-Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11. The next
largest viable textual variant involves two verses.

18. For a discussion, see Metzger, Textual Commentary, 102-7; NET

Bible "tc" note on Mark 16:8; N. Clayton Croy, The Mutilation of
Mark's Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003); and Kelly R. Iverson, "A
Further Word on Final Fdp (Mark 16:8)," Catholic Biblical Quarterly
68 (2006): 79-94.
 CHAPTER 5: MYTHS ABOUT MANUSCRIPTS

1. The dates and other relevant data of all known manuscripts are
catalogued in Kurt Aland, Kurzgefasste Liste der Griechischen
Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, 2d rev. and exp. ed. (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1994).

2. For example, the KJV finds its descendants in the Revised Version
(1881-85), the American Standard Version (1901), the Revised
Standard Version (1952), the New American Standard Version (1960),
and the New Revised Standard Version (1989). These are all conscious
and deliberate revisions of the KJv-a translation that, itself, stands in
the tradition of Tyndale's translation. Translations that are not revisions
of earlier versions include the New International Version, the New
English Bible, and the New English Translation.

3. This is because in the ninth and eleventh centuries conscious and

intentional editing took place. See T. J. Ralston, "The Majority Text
and Byzantine Texttype Development: The Significance of a
NonParametric Method of Data Analysis for the Exploration
ofManuscript Traditions" (Ph.D. dissertation, Dallas Theological
Seminary, 1994), 282-90, 93-98, 233-41, 244-68.
4. Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal
Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1998).

5. Earl Doherty, Challenging the Verdict (Ottawa: Age of Reason,

2001), 37.

6. Ibid., 39.

7. Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five
Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York:
Macmillan, 1993), 6.

8. This chart was inspired by the comparisons made in F. F. Bruce, The

New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? 6th ed. (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981), 11.
Thanks are due to Greg Sapaugh for his work on updating the data
found in Bruce, The New Testament Documents. Sapaugh's work was
a term paper for the doctoral course "Advanced New Testament
Textual Criticism," at Dallas Seminary, fall 2005, taughtby Daniel B.
Wallace. Our statistics are largely based on Sapaugh's study. The
number of manuscripts for these ancient authors-including the New
Testament-is growing substantially since Bruce reported on the matter
in 1981. His data were as follows:

9. There are two fragments from the first century. The earliest
substantial text of Thucydides is from the tenth century.

10. This number may be a bit generous, but not all of the libraries that
house ancient manuscripts have been carefully sifted. A few unknown
copies may lurk in the shadows.

11. Homer was the earliest and most popular author of the ancient
Greek world. Even with a nine-hundred year head start, the Iliad and
the Odyssey couldn't catch up with the New Testament. Yet
manuscripts of Homer are more plentiful than the average classical
Greek author's by a hundredfold.

12. Doherty, Challenging the Verdict, 38.

13. Jacob Burckhardt, The Age of Constantine the Great (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1949), 244.

14. See ibid., 244-68. Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New
Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1987), 106-8, gives illustrations of how the Christian
Scriptures were systematically rounded up and destroyed.

15. Eusebius Life of Constantine 4.36. See discussion in Bruce M.

Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its
Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 15-16.

One indication of the success of Diocletian's persecution is

found in a late-fourth-century or early-fifth-century Gospels
manuscript, Codex Washingtonianus. The text is a patchwork
compilation from four different text-forms, each coming from a
different region of the Mediterranean world. The original editor,
Henry Sanders, offered the plausible suggestion that the
manuscript was put together from fragments of other Gospel
manuscripts that, in turn, had become mutilated because of the
Diocletian persecution. See Sanders's fascinating and plausible
historical reconstruction in Facsimile of the Washington
Manuscript of the Four Gospels in the Freer Collection, with an
Introduction by Henry A. Sanders (Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan, 1912).

16. At the same time, we must not forget that in the decades prior to
the reign of Diocletian, Christians enjoyed some immunity from perse
cution even though the religion was not legal. But all this changed in
303.
17. Many Greek Orthodox monasteries include manuscripts of
classical texts, giving eloquent testimony to the fact that the scribes
copied not only the Scriptures but other Greek literature as well. For
example, the monasteries on Mount Athos have more than twenty
thousand manuscripts: "Most monasteries ... have rich and important
collections of medieval and later manuscripts. The majority of these
are liturgical, biblical or patristic texts .... but an important minority are
of ancient pagan literature" (Graham Speake) Mount Athos: Renewal
in Paradise [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002], 8). In
reality, the number of classical texts is almost equal to New Testament
manuscripts, about 5 percent of the total (ibid.) 248; see also the data
listed in Aland, Kurzgefasste Liste, 441-52). See also S. Rudberg, "Les
Manuscrits a contenu profane du Mont-Athos," Eranos 54 (1956): 174-
85. When the Turks invaded Constantinople in 1453, the scribes fled
with their manuscripts into Western Europe, thus providing the textual
catalyst for both the Reformation and Renaissance (G. R. Potter) ed.,
The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 1: The Renaissance 1493-
1520 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961], 71) 192). Five
years later, the first Greek course in Western Europe was offered at the
University of Paris.

18. As if to anticipate Doherty's objections, Bruce (New

TestamentDocu- ments, 10) offers the following arguments:

The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much

greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors,
the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning. And if
the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their
authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt. It is
a curious fact that historians have often been much readier to trust
the New Testament records than have many theologians.
Somehow or other, there are people who regard a "sacred book"
as ipso facto under suspicion, and demand much more
corroborative evidence for such a work than they would for an
ordinary secular or pagan writing. From the viewpoint of the
historian, the same standards must be applied to both. But we do
not quarrel with those who want more evidence for the New
Testament than for other writings; firstly, because the universal
claims which the New Testament makes upon mankind are so
absolute; and secondly, because in point of fact there is much
more evidence for the New Testament than for other ancient
writings of comparable date.
CHAPTER 6: AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES
1. Martin Hengel, Studies in Early Christology (Edinburgh: T & T
Clark, 1995), 57-58, makes a similar statement about the parallel
dangers from "an uncritical, sterile apologetic fundamentalism" and
"from no less sterile `critical ignorance"' of radical liberalism. At
bottom, the approaches are the same; the only differences are the
presuppositions.

A good illustration of radical liberalism's critical ignorance

about, and abuse of, textual criticism can be found in Timothy
Freke and Peter Gandy's book, The Jesus Mysteries: Was the
"Original Jesus" a Pagan God? (New York: Three Rivers, 2001),
145. The authors rely on chapter 4, "How Reliable Are the
Manuscripts of the Gospels?" of Graham Stanton's The Gospel
Truth? New Light on Jesus and the Gospels (Valley Forge, PA:
Trinity, 1995), 33-48. First, they quote the pagan Celsus's
complaint (as recorded in Stanton, Gospel Truth? 35) that
Christians had deliberately tampered with the text of the New
Testament. Their comment on Celsus's complaint is that "modern
scholars have found that he was right. A careful study of over
3,000 early manuscripts has shown how scribes made many
changes" (Freke and Gandy, Jesus Mysteries, 145). The lone
documentation for this assertion is Stanton's Gospel Truth, 35.
But Stanton mentions nothing about three thousand manuscripts
on this page-and in fact there are nowhere close to three thousand
early manuscripts for the New Testament, let alone any other
ancient literature! Indeed, Stanton himself does not agree with
this assessment. Stanton goes on to quote Origen's response to
Celsus that such alterations were made only by heretics. This
quotation and Stanton's subsequent discussion are conveniently
left out of Freke and Gandy's treatment. Freke and Gandy's
selective quoting of the data seems to be driven by the results the
authors wish to achieve, rather than by an honest pursuit of truth.
In the next paragraph, they note that "scholars also know that
whole sections of the gospels were added later." They give the
same example we mentioned in chapter 5-Mark 16:9-20. By
"whole sections" apparently they mean one or two verses-and
verses that have been excised from modern translations. There is
 only one other large block of material that has affected modern
translations of the New Testament, the story of the woman caught
in adultery (John 7:538:11). While this passage is a favorite of
many Christians, whether it is authentic makes no doctrinal
difference. Yet, Freke and Gandy clearly give the impression that
we simply cannot trust anything about these manuscripts, that
skepticism must rule.

The reality is that they have not represented Stanton's

treatment, the works of other scholars, or the evidence with
anything that remotely resembles an honest appraisal. The most
charitable verdict is that such works as Freke and Gandy's are
sloppy and irresponsible.

The same kind of irresponsible use of sources and results-

driven approach can be found in a host of "KIV only" literature.
One of the most blatant offenders is G. A. Riplinger, New Age
Bible Versions (Shelbyville, TN: Bible & Literature Missionary
Foundation, 1993). See James White, "Why Respond to Gail
Riplinger?" at bible.org/ page. asp?page-id= 664.

2. The official clearinghouse of Greek New Testament manuscript

identifications, the Institut fur neutestamentliche Textforschung
(Institute for New Testament Textual Research) in Munster, Germany,
catalogs the manuscripts, assigning them each a new number. The
updated catalog can be downloaded from the institute's Web site as a
pdf file at uni-muenster.de/NTTextforschung/KgL_Aktualisierung.pdf.

3. A few more manuscripts will be added soon, all discovered by the

Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. See csntm.org.

4. Not all agree with this dating, however. Most recently, see Brent
Nongbri, "The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the
Dating of the Fourth Gospel," Harvard Theological Review 98.1
(January 2005): 23-48; cf. also A. Schmidt, "Zwei Anmerkungen zu P.
Ryl. III 457," Archiv fur Papyrusfo rschung 35 (1989) :11-12.
However, this position seems to be way too skeptical of the usual
dating of this fragment. C. H. Roberts (the man who discovered the
fragment in the 1930s) gave evidence that the closest datable
manuscript to p52 was P. Fayyum 110 (A.D. 94). Leading
paleographers have placed p52 in the first half of the second century,
among them Frederic G. Kenyon, W. Schubart, Harold I. Bell, Adolf
Deissman, Ulrich Wilcken, W. H. P. Hatch, Kurt Aland, and E. G.
Turner.
5. These manuscripts include P52 (100-150), p91,114 (second
century), P66 (c. 175-225), P46, p64167 (c. 200), P77, 0189 (second or
third century), P98 (second century [?]).

These nine manuscripts are the extent of those that the Institut
fur neutestamentliche Textforschung has identified as possibly or
definitely from the second century. In addition to these, there are
a few other candidates. Philip W. Comfort and David P. Barrett,
The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts
(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 2001) argue for at least half a dozen other
manuscripts as possibly from the second century. Comfort and
Barrett's method, however, is generally to take the earliest date
possible. Nevertheless, the date they suggest for P4 (second
century) is probably correct in light of some recent work done by
T. C. Skeat of the British Library; and the date they offer for P32
(late second century) has a lot going for it.

6. The analogy breaks down, however, at a crucial point: in each new

generation of a family, there is always a 50 percent mixture from a
foreign element-the marriage partner. Although manuscripts showed
mixture, they didn't have this kind of rapid and significant addition to
the mixture in every succeeding generation.

7. Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New

Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed.
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 91.

8. See Gordon D. Fee, "P66 P75 and Origen: The Myth of Early
Textual Recension in Alexandria," in New Dimensions in New
Testament Study, ed. R. N. Longenecker and M. C. Tenney (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 19-45; and C. L. Porter, "An Evaluation of
the Textual Variation Between Pap75 and Codex Vaticanus in the Text
of John," in Studies in the History and Text of the New Testament in
Honor of Kenneth Willis Clark, Studies and Documents 29, ed. Boyd
L. Daniels and M. Jack Suggs (Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press, 1967), 71-80.
9. For example, in 1 Timothy 3:16, the original Greek text almost
surely read, "who was manifest in the flesh." All but one of the Latin
manuscripts have "which" for "who"; none have "God." Later Greek
manuscripts have "God was manifest in the flesh." The difference
between "who" (OC) and "God" (OC) is just two horizontal strokes in
the letters in the Greek manuscripts. But the Latin words "which"
(quod) and Latin "God" (Deus) are quite different. It is evident that the
Latin manuscripts originated by copying a Greek text that had "who"
instead of "God."

10. Bruce M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament:

Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations (Oxford: Clarendon,
1977), 293, 334.

11. Metzger and Ehrman, Text of the New Testament, 276-77.

12. Ibid., 96-98.

13. Ibid., 126.

14. No complete count has been made, but judging from data supplied
for the Latin Fathers alone, it is safe to say that there are well over one
million quotations of the New Testament by the Fathers. By 1920,
about seven hundred thousand quotations of the Bible by the Latin
Fathers had been compiled by Father Joseph Denk. The Vetus Latina
Institute in Beuron, Germany, has continued the work, almost doubling
the number of quotations and allusions. See J. Lionel North, "The Use
of the Latin Fathers for New Testament Textual Criticism," in The Text
of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status
Quaestionis (A Volume in Honor of Bruce M. Metzger), ed. Bart D.
Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994),
210n. 6.
 15. See the essays by Gordon D. Fee in Studies in the Theory and
Method of New Testament Textual Criticism, ed. Eldon J. Epp and
Gordon D. Fee (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 299-359; and
Gordon D. Fee, "The Use of the Greek Fathers for New Testament
Textual Criticism," in Contemporary Research, 191-207.
16. See Bruce M. Metzger, "The Practice of Textual Criticism Among
the Church Fathers," in New Testament Studies: Philological,
Versional, and Patristic, New Testament Tools and Studies 10 (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1980), 189-97; and idem, "St. Jerome's Explicit References
to Variant Readings in Manuscripts of the New Testament," in New
Testament Studies, 199-210.

17. Fee, "Use of the Greek Fathers," 191.

CHAPTER 7: THE METHODS OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM

1. For a discussion of the Byzantine text-type and its place in textual

criticism, see Daniel B. Wallace, "The Majority Text Theory: History,
Methods and Critique," in The Text of the New Testament in
Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis (A Volume
in Honor of Bruce M. Metzger), ed. Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W.
Holmes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 297-320.

2. Since a large number of Wallaces immigrated to the United States

from Germany, after moving to Germany from Scotland or Ireland,
this is entirely plausible.

3. David C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1. The errors in the text and the
displaced lines were intentional on Parker's part.

4. These guidelines are not applied mechanically. That is, other

considerations are brought to bear on the problem. In particular, if a
reading could have been created unintentionally, the canons of shorter
and harder generally do not apply. The reason this is the case is that the
bulk of unintentional readings will be harder (to the point that many
are nonsense readings!). Many shorter readings are caused by writing
once what should have been written twice (known as haplography), or
they can be caused by such factors as scribal fatigue. Thus,
unintentional possibilities need to be dispensed with before any level
of certainty can be offered on the basis of shorter or harder readings.
5. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, part 1, The Fellowship of
the Ring (New York: Ballantine, 1954), 233.

6. The translation "who was revealed in the flesh" is a literal rendering.

Most modern versions render the pronoun as "he."

7. For an exception to this rule, see Matthew 27:16-17 and the "tc"
note in the NET Bible on "Jesus Barabbas."

8. See James M. Hamilton Jr., "He Is with You and He Will Be in You"
(Ph.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2003), 213-20.

9. Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How

Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2003),
70.

10. Ibid. (emphasis added).

11. Darrell L. Bock, Luke 1:1-9:50, Baker Exegetical Commentary on

the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 1:118.

12. Price, Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, 70.

13. Ibid., 22.

14. Vaticanus ends in the middle of Hebrews 9:14 at the bottom of its
final leaf with these words: aµooµov TO OEO), KaOa. The last four
letters are the first half of a word; by themselves, they mean nothing.
The whole word is Ka9apLEi ("purifies"), but the rest of the
manuscript is missing. Applying Price's approach, we should say that
the scribe of Vaticanus did not know that there was anything more to
Hebrews and that he meant to end it on a nonsensical term. Of course,
no scholar suggests such a loony thing because the real reason is too
obvious: the last leaves of this codex were lost.
CHAPTER 8: IS WHAT WE HAVE Now WHAT THEY WROTE THEN?

1. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code: A Novel (New York: Doubleday,

2003), 231. Equally irresponsible statements can be found. For
example, Frank Zindler, writing in the American Atheists magazine in
1986 ("The Real Bible: Who's Got It?" at atheists.org/christianity/
realbible [accessed October 2005]), said:

Concerning the preferred text of the Greek Bible, readers may

wonder just who decides-and how-what the preferred readings
should be? Space does not permit a discussion of the scientific
(and sometimes very un-scientific) principles involved. We can
only observe that it is both laughable and sad to see the more
intelligent fundamentalists diligently learning Greek in order to
"read God's word in the original tongue." Little do they suspect,
while staring at the nearly footnote-free pages of their Westcott-
Hort Greek testaments, the thousands of scientific and not-so-
scientific decisions underlying what they see-or don't see-on each
page.
There is much wrongheadedness in this statement. It is by no
means only fundamentalists who are studying the Greek New
Testament. The Institut fur neutestamentliche Textforschung in
Munster, Germany, is anything but a fundamentalist institute. Yet
it is the epicenter of New Testament textual criticism and is
responsible for the highly touted Nestle-Aland, Novum
Testamentum Graece (a Greek New Testament now in its twenty-
seventh edition that has well over a century of scholarship behind
it). Of the four doctoral courses on New Testament textual
criticism taught in the United States, not one of them is taught at a
fundamentalist school.

It is true that textual criticism is both a science and an art.

Sometimes scholars need to employ creative thinking to make
decisions about what the internal evidence suggests. This does not
in any sense, however, suggest that their decisions have no basis
in good historical research principles. But the appellation science
is sometimes applied to historical studies only with disdain
 (especially by those who think of science as what takes place only
in a pristine lab). Historians cannot verify their views in a test
tube that produces the same results time after time. With history,
we are dealing with partial data and human activity. The
determinations of good historical research may not be as certain
as those of some of the hard sciences, but this does not mean that
everything is up for grabs.

Furthermore, to suggest that the "footnote-free" Westcott-Hort

text is still used is misleading. That text was printed in 1881 and
has been out of print for decades. It is occasionally reprinted but
is hard to find. We know of no school that uses the Westcott-Hort
"footnotefree" text today. Most seminaries use one of two Greek
New Testaments, both of which contain notes in the apparatus on
thousands of textual variants. Whatever Zindler is critiquing, it is
not part of the real world of today.
Finally, as we noted earlier, when one looks at the actual details
of the textual problems, the vast majority are so trivial as to not
even be translatable, while the meaningful and viable variants
constitute only about 1 percent of the text. And even for this
category, most scholars would say that 1 percent uncertainty is an
overstatement. (The majority of New Testament scholars would
say that the meaningful and viable variants constitute a small
fraction of 1 percent of the text.) As we have said many times
throughout this section, the dogma of absolute skepticism is
unjustified in the field of textual criticism (just as the dogma of
absolute certainty is).

2. F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

6th ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 1981), 11.

3. Miroslav Marcovich, Patristic Textual Criticism, part 1 (Atlanta:

Scholars Press, 1994), ix.

4. Ibid.
5. There are two places in the New Testament where conjecture has
perhaps been needed. In Acts 16:12 the standard critical Greek text
gives a reading that is not found in any Greek manuscripts. But even
here, some members of the UBS committee rejected the conjecture,
arguing that certain manuscripts had the original reading. The
difference between the two readings is only one letter. (See discussion
in Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New
Testament, 2d ed. [Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994], 393-
95; NET Bible "tc" note on Acts 16:12.) Also, in Revelation 21:17 the
standard Greek text follows a conjecture that Westcott and Hort
originally put forth, though the textual problem is not listed in either
the UBS text or the Nestle-Aland text. This conjecture is a mere
spelling variant that changes no meaning in the text.
6. Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An
Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of
Modern Textual Criticism, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989),
296 (emphasis added).

7. Ibid., 281.

8. Ibid., 280.

9. See G. D. Kilpatrick, "Conjectural Emendation in the New

Testament," in New Testament Textual Criticism, ed. E. J. Epp and G.
D. Fee (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 349-60. For a specific treatment on
conjecture, in which the author rejects it outright, see D. A. Black,
"Conjectural Emendations in the Gospel of Matthew," Novum
Testamentum 31 (1989):1-15. On the other hand, on rare occasions a
New Testament scholar will put forth a conjecture. But such proposals
are few and far between and are self-consciously uphill battles. See,
for example, J. Strugnell, "A Plea for Conjectural Emendation in the
New Testament," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 36 (1974): 543-58.

10. For example, there are five known early copies of the Gettysburg
Address. The two most authoritative copies were made by Lincoln's
private secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay. They do not agree
completely with each other. But there is no need for conjecture.
11. See Earl Doherty, Challenging the Verdict (Ottawa: Age of Reason,
2001), 39. He argues:

During formative periods, changes in theology as well as

traditions about events which lay at the inception of the
movement may be very significant. We have nothing in the
Gospels which casts a clear light on that early evolution or
provides us with a guarantee that the surviving texts are a reliable
picture of the beginnings of the faith.

In fact, the one indicator we do have points precisely in the

opposite direction. The later gospels dependent on the earlier
Mark show many instances of change, alteration and evolution of
ideas.

To say that we cannot know anything that the original authors

of the Gospels wrote, one must argue either that scribes
introduced changes in Matthew and Luke that radically departed
from Mark or that the manuscripts were terribly corrupted almost
immediately by a radical harmonization. In answer to the former,
we should note that neither Matthew nor Luke intended to
duplicate Mark, so we should expect some differences. They felt
free to shape the material as they saw fit. This is not the same as
saying that they invented stories about Jesus; rather, they edited
their sources for their own audiences. Still, if anything, Matthew
and Luke more likely would be charged with plagiarism (a
practice that was not an ethical issue in ancient literature) than
with significantly changing the text.
What about the idea that harmonization of the manuscripts took
place almost at the outset, rendering the original wording
unknowable? If such were the case, we would hardly be able to
distinguish among the Synoptic Gospels. The fact is that
harmonization was a scribal tendency that increased over time, as
we can see from later manuscripts. That the earliest manuscripts
of the Gospels show the same differences among the Gospels
suggests that the scribes in the earliest period copied them with
relative accuracy.
12. Bart D. Ehrman's recent book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind
Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 109-12, discusses the role that Bengel
played in the history of textual criticism. He gives Bengel high praise
as a scholar: he was an "extremely careful interpreter of the biblical
text" (ibid., 109); "Bengel studied everything intensely" (ibid., 111).
Ehrman speaks about Bengel's breakthroughs in textual criticism
(ibid., 111-12) but does not mention that Bengel was the first important
scholar to articulate the doctrine of the orthodoxy of the variants. This
is a curious omission because Ehrman is well aware of this fact, for in
Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New
Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed.
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), which
appeared just months before Misquoting Jesus, the authors note that
Bengel collected the available manuscripts, and early translations.
"After extended study, he came to the conclusions that the variant
readings were fewer in number than might have been expected and that
they did not shake any article of evangelic doctrine" (158). On the
other hand, Ehrman mentions J. J. Wettstein, a contemporary of
Bengel, who, at age twenty, assumed that these variants "can have no
weakening effect on the trustworthiness or integrity of the Scriptures"
(Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 112). Years later, after careful study of the
text, Wettstein changed his views after he "began thinking seriously
about his own theological convictions" (ibid., 114). One is tempted to
think that Ehrman may see a parallel between himself and Wettstein.
Like Wettstein, Ehrman started out as an evangelical when in college
but changed his views on the text and theology in his more mature
years (see Misquoting Jesus, 1-15, where Ehrman chronicles his own
spiritual journey). But the model that Bengel supplies-a sober scholar
who arrives at quite different conclusions-is quietly passed over.
13. See D. A. Carson, The King James Version Debate: A Plea for
Realism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 56, 65.

14. Kenneth W. Clark, "Textual Criticism and Doctrine," Studio

Paulina: In Honorem Johannis de Zwaan (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn,
1953), 52-65; and idem, "The Theological Relevance of Textual
Variation in Current Criticism of the Greek New Testament," Journal
of Biblical Literature 85 (1966): 1-16.

15. In Bart D. Ehrman's provocative book, The Orthodox Corruption

of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the
Text of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993),
the author attempts to show that early "orthodox" Christians
sometimes corrupted the original text of the New Testament by making
it conform more explicitly to orthodoxy. But he is not arguing that the
original New Testament taught anything substantially different from
these scribally adjusted texts.

Nevertheless, his case is frequently overstated in especially one

of two ways: either his interpretation of the original text or his
textual basis is a bit strained. For critiques of Ehrman's work, see
especially Gordon D. Fee's review in Critical Review of Books in
Religion 8 (1995): 203-6; Bruce M. Metzger's review in Princeton
Seminary Bulletin 15.2 (1994): 210-12; J. Neville Birdsall's
review in Theology 97.780 (November-December 1994): 460-62.
Ehrman's more recent, popular work, Misquoting Jesus, which to
some degree is based on Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, is far
more provocative and somewhat misleading. See the discussion
below.
16. The very title of this book, Misquoting Jesus, is a misnomer.
Almost none of the variants that Ehrman discusses involve sayings by
Jesus.

17. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 15. Apparently he does not count the
several books written by "KJV only" advocates or the books that
interact with them. It seems that Ehrman means that his is the first
book on the general discipline of New Testament textual criticism
written by a bona fide textual critic for a lay readership. This is most
likely true.

18. Ibid., 208.

19. Ibid. These passages are especially discussed in chapters 5 and 6 of

his book. Matthew 24:36 is mentioned five times in the book.
20. In the Greek text, if "nor the Son" is not authentic, then the
preceding phrase can easily be translated "not even the angels in
heaven" as in the NET Bible.

21. S.C. E. Legg, Novum Testamentum Graecesecundum Textum

Westcotto- Hortianum: Euangelium secundum Marcum (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1935) lists only Codex X (a tenth-century Gospels
manuscript) and one Vulgate manuscript for the omission. Nestle-
Aland27 adds to this pc (or pauci, "a few others"), but does not specify
what they are.

22. See the discussion in the NET Bible's note on this verse.

23. When discussing Wettstein's views of the New Testament text,

Ehrman argues that "as Wettstein continued his investigations, he
found other passages typically used to affirm the doctrine of the
divinity of Christ that in fact represented textual problems; when these
problems are resolved on text-critical grounds, in most instances
references to Jesus' divinity are taken away" (Misquoting Jesus, 113)
emphasis added). He adds that "Wettstein began thinking seriously
about his own theological convictions, and became attuned to the
problem that the New Testament rarely, if ever, actually calls Jesus
God" (ibid.) 114, emphasis added). But these statements are
misleading. Nowhere does Ehrman represent this conclusion as only
Wettstein's; he seems to embrace such opinions himself (and
confirmed this on NPR's Diane Rehm Show on December 8, 2005).
See discussion of early manuscript testimony to the deity of Christ in
chapter 8.
24. For example, in Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Ehrman devotes
five pages to the textual problem in John 1:18. He forcefully argues
that "only Son" must surely be the original reading (81):

The more common expedient for those who opt for [o]
µovoyEV~s OEOc, but who recognize that its rendering as "the
unique God" is virtually impossible in a Johannine context, is to
understand the adjective substantivally, and to construe the entire
second half of John 1:18 as a series of appositions, so that rather
than reading "the unique God who is in the bosom of the Father,"
the text should be rendered "the unique one, who is also God,
who is in the bosom of the Father." There is something attractive
about the proposal. It explains what the text might have meant to
a Johannine reader and thereby allows for the text of the generally
superior textual witnesses. Nonetheless, the solution is entirely
implausible.

... It is true that µovoyEVrjs can elsewhere be used as a

substantive (= the unique one, as in v. 14); all adjectives can. But
the proponents of this view have failed to consider that it is never
used in this way when it is immediately followed by a noun that
agrees with it in gender, number, and case. Indeed one must here
press the syntactical point: when is an adjective ever used
substantivally when it immediately precedes a noun of the same
inflection? No Greek reader would construe such a construction
as a string of substantives, and no Greek writer would create such
an inconcinnity. To the best of my knowledge, no one has cited
anything analogous outside of this passage.

The result is that taking the term µovoyEV~s OE63 as two

substantives standing in apposition makes for a nearly impossible
syntax, whereas construing their relationship as adjectivenoun
creates an impossible sense.

Ehrman's grammatical argument is difficult to explain briefly.

In Greek, words are inflected for various grammatical features.
For example, an adjective maybe singular or plural; masculine,
feminine, or neuter; and in the nominative, genitive, dative, or
accusative case. The combination of these features means that a
given adjective can have as many as twenty-four different forms.
When it has concord with a noun that follows, this means that it
agrees with that noun in number, gender, and case. At the same
time, Greek adjectives (like English adjectives) can function
substantivally-that is, like a noun. Thus, when we read "blessed
are the poor," the adjective poor functions like a noun in that it
does not modify any noun but takes the place of a noun. It is like
saying "blessed are the poor people," even though "people" is not
in the text.
Ehrman's grammatical point is that never in the New Testament
does an adjective that has concord with a noun that follows it ever
function substantivally. The problem is, this absolutizing of the
grammatical situation is incorrect. There are, indeed, examples in
which an adjective juxtaposed to a noun of the same grammatical
concord is not functioning adjectivally but substantivally. Scores
of texts can be mentioned (e.g.) John 6:70; Rom. 1:30; Gal 3:9;
Eph. 2:20; 1 Tim. 1:9; 1 Peter 1:1; 2 Peter 2:5). The 2 Peter text is
instructive. Literally, it reads: "and if he did not spare the ancient
world, but did protect an eighth, Noah, a herald of righteousness,
when he brought a flood on an ungodly world." The adjective
translated "eighth" has to be substantival rather than modify
"Noah"; it meets all the qualifications that Ehrman says can only
indicate one thing, and yet if we followed Ehrman's grammatical
rule, the meaning here would be "an eighth Noah," as though
there were seven other Noahs on the ark! If the construction that
Ehrman says is "never used this way" is found in several
examples in the New Testament, then what are we to make of
John 1:18? A critique of Ehrman's treatment of verse 18 by
Daniel B. Wallace was posted on the www.bible.org Web site
several years ago and has influenced the wording of the NET
Bible in verse 18. But either because it has not been noticed or
has simply been ignored, Ehrman continues to make his claims
that µovoyEv~c OE63 must mean "the unique God."
Now, if the adjective "unique" in John 1:18 does not have to
modify "God," is there any other evidence that it acts
substantivally here? In particular, are there sufficient contextual
clues that µovoyEVrjs is in fact functioning as a noun? Ehrman
has already provided both of them: (1) in John, it is unthinkable
that the Word could become the unique God in 1:18 (in which he
alone, and not the Father, is claimed to have divine status) only to
have that status removed repeatedly throughout the rest of the
Gospel. Thus, assuming that µovoyEP1 3 OE63 is authentic, we
are in fact driven to the sense that Ehrman regards as
grammatically implausible but contextually necessary: "the
unique one, himself God ..: ; (2) that kovoyEVrjs is already used
in verse 14 as a substantive becomes the strongest contextual
argument for seeing its substantival function repeated four verses
later. Immediately after Ehrman admits that this adjective can be
used substantivally and is so used in verse 14, he makes his
grammatical argument, which is intended to lay the gauntlet down
or to shut the coffin lid (choose your cliche on the force of the
connection with v. 14). But if the grammatical argument won't cut
it, then the substantival use of kovoyEPl 3 in verse 14 should
stand as an important contextual clue. Indeed, in light of the well-
worn usage in biblical Greek, we would almost expect
RovoyEVrjs to be used substantivally and with the implication of
sonship in 1:18. Thus, not only is the textual evidence strong for
the wording µovoyEvi c OE63 here, but the linguistic evidence is
strong that the meaning of this phrase is "the unique one, himself
God."

These arguments were posted on bible.org some years ago,

available to all. In addition, a student at Dallas Seminary wrote
his master's thesis as a critique of Ehrman's Orthodox Corruption
of Scripture, and included many more examples (Stratton
Ladewig, "An Examination of the Orthodoxy of the Variants in
Light of Bart Ehrman's The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture"
[Th.M. thesis, Dallas Seminary) 2000). He corresponded with
Ehrman about his work, so there is no reason why Ehrman would
be unaware of it. Yet, Ehrman still maintains that if µovoy . v1 c
OE63 is read, it must mean "the unique God" (Misquoting Jesus,
161-62), even though substantial arguments were brought forth
that the phrase should more properly be rendered "the unique one,
himself God," as is found in the NET Bible. In the least, the
strongest proof texts that Ehrman puts forth seem to lack either
sufficient textual base or involve unwarranted interpretations.
Although most of Misquoting Jesus is a decent lay introduction to
the field of New Testament textual criticism, chapters 5 and 6 take
the book one step further, especially giving the lay reader the
clear impression that our Bibles today are quite untrustworthy as
spiritual guides.
25. Peter Ruckman is perhaps the most extreme "KJV only" advocate,
going so far as to argue that even the Greek and Hebrew text need to
be corrected by the KJV! See Peter Ruckman, The Christian's
Handbook of Manuscript Evidence (Pensacola, FL: Pensacola Bible
Institute, 1970), 115-38; and idem, Problem Texts (Pensacola, FL:
Pensacola Bible Institute, 1980), 46-48.

26. Not only has he influenced many laymen, but David Otis Fuller,
ed., dedicated the book, Counterfeit or Genuine[:] Mark 16? John 8?
2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Grand Rapids International) 1978), to "Jasper
James Ray, Missionary Scholar of Junction City, Oregon, whose book,
God Wrote Only One Bible [(Junction City) OR: Eye Opener, 1955),
v], moved me to begin this fascinating faith-inspiring study."

27. Ray, God Wrote Only One Bible.

28. Ibid., ii, 1, 32, 101, 122. For example, early in the book he likens
modern translations to poison: "Put poison anywhere in the blood
stream and the whole becomes poisoned. Just so with the Word of
God. When words are added or subtracted, Bible inspiration is
destroyed, and the spiritual blood stream is poisoned" (ibid.) 9).

29. Fuller, Counterfeit or Genuine, 10.

30. Ibid., 9.

31. From a personal conversation with Herrick.

32. Zindler, "The Real Bible: Who's Got It?"

33. See, for example, 1 Timothy 3:16 and the "tc" note in the NET
Bible. This verse was touched on in an earlier chapter.

34. See Mark 9:29 (and especially the "tc" note) in the NET Bible for
one of these, as well as 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.
35. See, e.g., Carson, King James Version Debate, 65-66.
36. Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood,
Holy Grail, American Version (New York: Dell, 1983), 368-69.

37. The dates and other relevant data of all known manuscripts are
catalogued in Kurt Aland, Kurzgefasste Liste der Griechischen
Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, 2d rev. and exp. ed. (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1994). There are thirty-five papyri from before the
fourth century and another nine that are either from the third or fourth
century. In addition, there are three uncial manuscripts from prior to
the fourth century and two others that are either from the third or
fourth century. Since the publication of this volume, a few more
manuscripts have been discovered that are early, at least ten papyri and
one uncial manuscript, bringing the total number of definitely pre-
fourth-century Greek New Testament manuscripts to at least forty-
eight and as many as fifty-nine. Keep in mind that the Kurzgefasste
Liste only catalogs Greek New Testament manuscripts. It does not
include the early versions or the pre-fourth-centurypatristic writers.

38. The other important uncial manuscript from the fourth century is
Codex Sinaiticus. This is the oldest complete New Testament by five
centuries. Both Sinaiticus and Vaticanus belong to the Alexandrian
text-type. Yet they have a sufficient number of differences that it is
impossible for them to have been copied from the same immediate
ancestor. Some scholars believe that their common ancestor must be
about ten generations removed, putting it very early in the second
century. In the least, if these two documents were among the fifty
Bibles that Constantine commissioned (as some believe), that
commission did not extend to manipulation of the text. Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus are too different to allow for the notion that Constantine's
commission "enabled the custodians of orthodoxy to revise, edit, and
rewrite their material as they saw fit, in accordance with their tenets"
as Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln allege (Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 368).
These authors have capitalized on one fact in history (the
commissioning of the production of fifty Bibles by Constantine) and
have then read into it things that are not there. Ironically, their belief
that "The New Testament as it exists today is essentially a product of
fourth-century editors and writers" (ibid., 369) describes the King
James Bible and the Greek text it used more than the text that stands
behind modern translations. Those used by modern translations go
back substantially to the original text. Yet, even here, we have noted
that there are no fundamental differences in doctrine between the KJv
and most modern translations and that over time the New Testament
text grew by only about 2 percent.
39. A good guide on the more meaningful and viable variants in the
New Testament is the textual apparatus of the Nestle-Aland, Novum
Testamentum Graece, 27th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft,
1993). This is the standard Greek New Testament used today. It lists no
variants of anykind for John 1:1, two variants in John 20:28 ("and" at
the beginning of the verse versus no conjunction) and "Thomas
answered" versus "Thomas said"), no manuscript deviations in
Romans 9:5, and four minor variants in Hebrews 1:8, all of which
come after the affirmation of Jesus as God.

CHAPTER 9: THE RANGE OF THE CANON

1. This argument to include the Gospel ofThomas is implicit in Robert

W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels:
The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan,
1993). The fifth gospel in this volume is the Gospel of Thomas. We
have said that the Jesus Seminar assigned red letters to the words that
they believed Jesus actually spoke, pink letters when an idea was
thought to go back to Jesus, gray if the words (and thought) probably
did not go back to Jesus, and black if the words (and thought)
definitely did not go back to Jesus. Remarkably, there are more red and
pink sayings in Thomas than there are in John (no red sayings and only
one pink saying in John versus one red saying and thirty-five pink
sayings in Thomas). The impression that the Jesus Seminar conveys is
that Thomas is a more authentic witness to the life of Jesus than is
John.

2. Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin,

Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 282.
3. William Barclay, The Making of the Bible (London: Lutterworth,
1961), 78.
4. Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 287.

5. Dan Burstein, Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the

Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code (New York: CDS Books, 2004),
116.

6. Even the Syrian church accepted all but 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude,
and Revelation no later than the early part of the fifth century
(Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 219).

7. Most likely, this was due to the influence of the Trullan Synod
(69192), which "sanctioned implicitly, so far as the list of Biblical
books is concerned, quite incongruous and contradictory opinions"
(ibid., 216). Such confusion over the minor books of the New
Testament continued for a long time.

8. The closest we come to one is the Council of Trent's declaration in

1546 as to what constituted the canon, but this applied only to the
Roman Catholic Church, not the Protestant or Eastern Orthodox.

9. See Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 271, for discussion. This
proposal was added to Martin Luther King Jr. 's book, Why We Can't
Wait (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 77-100.

10. Paul Maier, "Chronology," in Dictionary of the Later New

Testament and Its Developments, ed. Ralph P. Martin and Peter H.
Davids (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 193.

11. D. F. Wright, "Docetism," in Dictionary of the Later New

Testament, 307.

12. D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New

Testament, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 732.

13. Barbara Aland helped develop the argument that Marcion's

theology was close to Gnosticism in her article, "Versuch einer neuen
Interpretation," Zeitschrift fur Theologie unde Kirche 70 (1973): 420-
47.
14. According to Irenaeus, Marcion was influenced by the Gnostic
teacher Cerdo (Irenaeus Adversus Haereses ["Against Heresies"]
1.27.1-3). Further, Marcion was excommunicated from his church in
Rome in 144. Valentinus, one of the early Gnostics, was in Rome at
this time promoting his views.

15. At the same time, it should be acknowledged that Marcion used

only Luke's Gospel, when Gnostics preferred John's Gospel for their
own purposes. Marcion's preference for Luke, calling it "the Gospel,"
was most likely due to Luke's association with Paul. But this raises
two other questions: First, why didn't Marcion list works like the Acts
of John, a document that is most likely not Gnostic but simply docetic
(J. K. Elliott, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament, rev. ed. [reprint,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1999], 306), or the Gospel of the Adversaries of
the Law and the Prophets (ibid., 24)? Second, why didn't Marcion list
other works about or allegedly by Paul-such as the Acts of Paul, 3
Corinthians, the letter to the Laodiceans, the six letters to Seneca, or
the Apocalypse of Paul? Again, the natural inference is that these
books were either not yet in existence or, if they existed, were not
considered credible because of their recent production.
16. See discussion in Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 193-94.

17. In addition to the principal manuscript, named after the man who
discovered it (Ludovico Antonio Muratori) and published it in 1740,
four other manuscripts of this canon list have been located (ibid.) 192-
93).

18. See ibid., 194-99.

19. Text in ibid., 307.

20. See ibid., 199-201.

21. Ibid., 254.

22. Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History 3.25, trans. Kirsopp Lake,

Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press)
1925), 1.257.
23. Carson and Moo, Introduction to the New Testament, 734.

24. Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 287.

25. There was, however, strong external pressure, especially during the
Diocletian persecutions, on the church's view of the canon.

26. Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 287-88.

CHAPTER 10: WHAT DID THE ANCIENT CHURCH THINK OF

FORGERIES?

1. Ignatius Magnesians 13:1, in The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts

and English Translations, ed. and rev. Michael W. Holmes (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1999). All quotations from the Apostolic Fathers are
from this edition unless noted otherwise.
2. Ignatius Trallians 3.3. Ignatius Romans 4.3, is similar: "I do not give
you orders like Peter and Paul: they were apostles, I am a convict." For
other references to the apostles' authority, see I Clement 42.1; Polycarp
Epistle to the Philippians 3.2; Ignatius Epistle to the Ephesians 11.2;
Ignatius Trallians 2.2; 7.1; 12.2; Ignatius Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8.1;
the anonymous Epistle to Diognetus 11.6.

3. D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New

Testament, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 338-40, list other
motives as well. But at bottom, almost all of these seem to include a
desire for authority for one's views by claiming that the book was
written by an apostle or some other leader of the early church.

4. Werner Georg Kummel, Introduction to the New Testament, rev.

English ed., trans. Howard Clark Kee (Nashville: Abingdon, 1975),
363, assumes that this was the impulse that drove much of the New
Testament writings: "The only thing that is clear in relation to the
pseudepigraphic material we encounter is that `the decisive
presupposition for pseudepigraphic writing in the New Testament [is
represented by] the establishment of the apostolic as the norm' (cf.
Eph. 2:20), so that literary fiction `brings into play the authority' of an
apostle." Whether or not this literary fiction is actually found in the
New Testament is a different question, but Kummel has identified
what would have prompted it.

5. Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus
Christ (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), 48-53,
argues that the Gospels were not anonymous but, from the beginning,
had the titles "the Gospel according Matthew," etc. Most New
Testament scholars, however, have not accepted his view. For a
balanced discussion, see Carson and Moo, Introduction to the New
Testament, 140-42.

6. Papias, The Fragments of Papias 3.15.

7. See Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction, 4th ed. (Downers

Grove) IL: InterVarsityPress, 1990), 85.
8. A similar motive to that of Irenaeus seems to have driven
Augustine. In his De doctrina Christiana ("On Christian Learning")
2.13, he lists the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, but the
order is unusual: He puts James at the end of the general letters, so as
to give Peter first place!

9. Stevan L. Davies, The New Testament: A Contemporary

Introduction (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 191.

10. It is an overstatement to say that this was not written to Hebrews.

The "letter" has all the earmarks of being written to Jewish Christians
who were sitting on the fence between Christianity and Judaism. Just
because they were Jewish Christians does not mean they were not
"Hebrews."

11. See, for example, Ben Witherington III, "The Influence of

Galatians on Hebrews," New Testament Studies 37 (1991): 146-52.

12. There are two scholarly exceptions to this today: Eta Linnemann,
"Wideraufnahme-Prozess in Sachen des Hebraerbriefes," Fundamen-
tum 21 (2000): 101-12; 22 (2001): 52-65, 88-110; and David Alan
Black, "On the Pauline Authorship of Hebrews," Faith and Mission
16.2 (1999): 32-51; 16.3 (1999): 78-86. One of the arguments is that
the vocabulary of Hebrews is more similar to Paul's letters than to
anything else in the New Testament. We could just as well say that 1
Peter was also written by Paul since its vocabulary is every bit as
"Pauline" as that of Hebrews!

13. William Barclay, The Making of the Bible (London: Lutterworth,

1961), 78.

14. Carson and Moo, Introduction to the New Testament, 701.

15. Ibid., 706-7.

16. We have discussed these criteria in the first chapter in this section.

17. But see Robert Picirilli, "Allusions to 2 Peter in the Apostolic

Fathers," journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (1988): 57-83.

18. Jerome Epistle to Hedibia 120.

19. Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 3.1.

20. As quoted by Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 6.12, trans. Kirsopp

Lake, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1925), 2.41.
21. As quoted in Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament:
Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987),
307.

22. Ibid.

23. Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 3.25, Loeb Classical Library,

1.257-59.

24. Carson and Moo, Introduction to the New Testament, 343.

25. E. Earle Ellis, The Making of the New Testament Documents

(Leiden: Brill, 1999), 324. For an excellent discussion of the problem
of pseudepigraphy and the canon that expands on this point, see
Carson and Moo, Introduction to the New Testament, 337-50.

26. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries: Was the
"Original Jesus" a Pagan God? (New York: Three Rivers, 2001), 224;
cite Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 13, in an endnote (311 n.
105) to back up their contention that "in the first four centuries every
single document was at some time or other branded as either heretical
or forged!" But that is not what Metzger says. He is citing a late
seventeenth-century Irish author, one John Toland, who created a
scandal when he made such a proclamation. The clear impression one
gets when reading Metzger on this point is one of incredulity at, not
agreement with, Toland's viewpoint. If Freke and Gandy are so
careless in handling a modern author whose writings are well known
and accessible, should we really trust them to handle ancient authors?

27. On local and temporary canons, see Metzger, Canon of the New
Testament, 165-89.

CHAPTER 11: WHAT DID THE ANCIENT FORGERS THINK OF CHRIST?

1. Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin,

Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 165.

2. Ibid. Metzger cites both Jerome and Augustine on this point.

3. Ibid., 166.

4. Ibid., 166-67.

5. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code: A Novel (New York: Doubleday,

2003), 244.
6. Even in the Gospel of the Ebionites, composed by someone in a
Jewish-Christian sect that emphasized the humanity of Christ and
downplayed his divinity, we are told that Jesus "is not begotten by God
the Father but created like one of the archangels, being greater than
they." (The Gospel of the Ebionites is known only from quotations in
patristic authors. This quotation is from Epiphanius, as translated in J.
K. Elliott, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of
Apocryphal Literature in an English Translation, based on M. R.
James, rev. ed. [reprint ed., Oxford: Clarendon, 1999], 6). Remarkably,
even though the Ebionites thought of Jesus as a human prophet, they
nevertheless could speak of him as greater than any angel.

7. The difficulty in determining an exact number is that some of the

gospels are known only by name or from allusions. Church Fathers
may refer to the same books by different names. Some fragments may
be portions of the very gospels that these patristic writers speak of.
Also, a fragment might simply be one person's allusions to the gospel
narratives, rather than a full-blown apocryphal gospel. To get a sense
of how many apocryphal gospels there may have been, see Elliott, The
Apocryphal New Testament. He lists ten lost gospels that are
mentioned by name in the patristic writers, six fairly early infancy
gospels, and five "gospels of the ministry and passion."

In addition, he mentions five other infancy gospels that "are in

general far removed from the earlier apocryphal material" (ibid.,
118), as well as a few fragments of Coptic narratives, some of
which may belong to other lost gospels. This brings the total to
about thirty or so apocryphal gospels. In addition, there are "the
Pilate Cycles," books that can only loosely be called gospels. This
includes twelve different books. More than forty gospels are thus
mentioned in The Apocryphal New Testament. There may indeed
be others, but most of them appeared so late that they had little
impact. There maybe fewer apocryphal gospels than forty if the
same books were given different names by patristic writers or if
some fragments are from the same book. It is quite impossible to
speak definitively, as Dan Brown has done, of "more than eighty
gospels," let alone to suggest that all such gospels were on the
docket for canonical consideration.
8. Ibid., 47.

9. Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, eds., New Testament

Apocrypha, vol. 1, Gospels and Related Writings (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1963), 401, note:
 Perhaps infancy gospels were written by Gnostics at an early
date. Certainly such material did not originate with them. But in
order to be able to derive their speculations from Jesus Himself,
theyneeded as a framework a setting in His life which could be
lifted into the older gospel tradition, but without being controlled
by its content. Besides the resurrection appearances during the
forty days, there was available the whole childhood of Jesus left
untouched by the older Gospels. We have seen how fruitful in this
respect were the themes of Jesus at the age of twelve in the
temple and of his education. What they now required, however,
was a child Jesus who was only a child in appearance, but had in
fact no need of development, since He possessed the full
revelation in its entirety, and already had unlimited power to
perform miracles.

10. Elliott, Apocryphal New Testament, 47.

11. Protevangelium 8.1; quotations from Hennecke and

Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 1:378.

12. Quotations from Hennecke and Schneemelcher, New Testament

Apocrypha, 1:393.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., 1:394.

15. Ibid., 1:395.

16. Ibid., 1:400-401 (from Arabic Infancy Gospel and the Paris
manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas).

17. Ibid., 1:409 (from Arabic Infancy Gospel 40).

18. Ibid., 1:412 (Pseudo-Matthew 22.1).

19. There was "the tendency to Docetism behind all the legends of the
infancy" (ibid., 1:401).
20. So, for example, Pseudo-Matthew 18.2: "Have no fear, and do not
think that I am a child; for I have always been and even now am
perfect .. " (ibid., 1:410).
21. Brown, Da Vinci Code, 234.

22. One of the problems with identification is the problem of

definition. In 1966 a highly publicized conference of scholars met in
Messina to define Gnosticism. Unfortunately, at the end of the
conference, there was still no consensus. The problem is generally that
the looser the definition, the earlier we can date Gnosticism; the tighter
the definition, the later we must date the origins of Gnosticism. If one
wants to think of pre-Christian Gnostics, he has to define Gnosticism
in such a loose way that it simply doesn't look like the Gnosticism that
arose in the second century. But if a tighter definition is assumed, then
there is no evidence that Gnosticism came into existence until after the
rise of Christianity. For an excellent discussion about the problems of
definition and date, see Edwin M. Yamauchi, PreChristian Gnosticism:
A Survey o f the Proposed Evidences, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker,
1983), 13-28. We will assume a tighter definition for Gnosticism in
this book, with later origins.

23. D. M. Scholer, "Gnosticism," in Dictionary of the Later New

Testament and Its Developments, ed. Ralph P. Martin and Peter H.
Davids (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 401.

24. Ibid.

25. Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An

Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2000), 186.

26. The infancy gospels were influenced by Gnosticism. Although they

are fundamentally narrative gospels, their superman-like
embellishments reveal a strong antipathy for the Incarnation. For the
most part the Gnostic gospels portray conversations between Jesus and
his disciples after his resurrection from the dead. This may be due to
the emphasis in these gospels on secrecy, for Jesus' public ministry
occurred only prior to his crucifixion.
27. Elliott, Apocryphal New Testament, 124.

28. Ibid.

29. Salome is even featured as much as Mary Magdalene in the Gospel

of Thomas.
30. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The
Secret Teachings of the Original Christians (New York: Three Rivers,
2001), 95, quote from the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, 2.3.63-64, that "
[Jesus] loved [Mary] more than the other disciples, and often used to
kiss her on the lips." Freke and Gandy use this text as evidence that
Jesus and Mary were married.

But there are a few problems with their conclusion. First, this
gospel is late. It is probably a second-century gospel, even though
the earliest copy comes from much later (Hennecke and
Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 1.276, 278). Second,
it is a Gnostic gospel, which means that it discouraged marriage.
As James Robinson, one of the world's leading Nag Hammadi
experts, noted, "If one reads the entire Gospel of Philip it
becomes clear that the writer disdains physical sex as beastly,
literally comparing it to animals" (an interview with James
Robinson, quoted in Dan Burstein, Secrets of the Code: The
Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code
[New York: CDS Books, 2004], 99). To see Jesus and Mary as an
item in this gospel is reading things between the lines that simply
are not there.

Third, the line about Jesus kissing Mary on the lips is not in
any known manuscripts! The Coptic text reads that Jesus "kissed
her often on her ." There is a lacuna, a gap, at exactly the point in
dispute. Where, exactly, did Jesus kiss Mary? On the mouth, on
the head, on the cheek, on the hands, on the feet? We are not told,
but Freke and Gandy have filled in the blanks without so much as
a footnote explaining that this is only their guess. This is
misleading at best and certainly not in line with the Gnostic
ascetic worldview. Their best guess and inferences do not take
 into consideration the nature of this "gospel." Again, Robinson
notes that "too much has been made out of this kiss. It was also
called the Kiss of Peace, somewhat analogous to a modern church
service where they ask you to shake hands with everybody and
say, `May the peace of Christ be with you."' He concludes with a
sober observation: "I think the only relevant text for historical
information about Mary Magdalene is the New Testament, and it
does not go beyond saying that she was one of the circle of
women who accompanied the wandering Jesus and his male
followers.... No doubt the New Testament gives an accurate
protrayal [sic] of all of these Marys" (ibid.).
To argue that Mary was married to Jesus makes about as much
sense as arguing that Salome was married to Jesus. In the Gospel
of Thomas 61, Salome says to the Lord, "You have mounted my
bed and eaten from my table" (Elliott, Apocryphal New
Testament, 143). But this can hardly be a reference to sexual
intimacy. For one thing, the Coptic word for "bed" has been
translated as "couch" or "bench" as well (as in other translations
of this saying elsewhere). For another, in the immediate context,
Jesus had just spoken of two resting on a couch. "Two on a couch
probably refers to a dinner party or symposium ... Jesus is here [in
Salome's words] represented as an intruder at a dinner party"
(Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The
Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus [New
York: Macmillan, 1993], 507). Finally, the whole of this gospel
discourages marriage and sexual intimacy.

But if we wanted to take this one statement and strip it from its
immediate and broader context, it would be possible to suggest
that Jesus and Salome were married. This is precisely how many
take the kiss in the Gospel of Philip.

31. For example, the Gospel of the Egyptians "was accepted as

canonical in Egypt" (see Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 171).
Metzger discusses all such books in his brief chapter, "Books of
Temporary and Local Canonicity: Apocryphal Literature" (165-89).
32. Jacob Burckhardt, The Age of Constantine the Great (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1949), 244.

33. The pogrom is described vividly in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical

History 8.2.4. See also Burckhardt, Age of Constantine, 244-68.
Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 106-8, gives illustrations of
how the Christian Scriptures were systematically rounded up and
destroyed.

34. Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 106-7.

35. Ibid., 107 n. 74.

36. Ibid., 167.

37. Ben Witherington III, The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About
Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci (Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 2004), 33.
38. All quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from the translation
in Elliott, Apocryphal New Testament, 135-47, unless otherwise noted.

39. Gospel of Thomas 13.

40. Elliott, Apocryphal New Testament, 150, notes that "most scholars
date its composition to the second half of the second century," while
Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 172n. 18, notes that a couple of
scholars date it to the first half of the second century.

41. Gospel of Peter 10.38-39 (translation in Elliott, Apocryphal New

Testament, 156).

42. Gospel of Mary 8.18-19. All quotations of this gospel are from
Esther A. de Boer, The Gospel of Mary: Beyond a Gnostic and a
Biblical Mary Magdalene (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 19.

43. de Boer, Gospel of Mary, 21.

44. Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, 177 (citing Acts of John
§93).

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid., 173.

CHAPTER 12: DIVINE PORTRAITS

1. For a concise defense of the philosophical coherence of the

Incarnation-God entering the time-space world as a man-see J. P.
Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a
Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003),
597-614. For a book-length treatment, see Thomas V. Morris, The
Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986).

2. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code: A Novel (New York: Doubleday,

2003), 233.

3. Historic Christianity affirms that since the time of the Incarnation,

Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man forever united in one person. A
concise, accessible survey of the church's historic understanding of
Christ as the God-man is found in John D. Hannah, Our Legacy: The
History of Christian Doctrine (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2001),
109-46.
4. Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in
the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 10.

5. Ibid., 10-11.

6. Two helpful, accessible resources on this front are Craig L.

Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey
(Nashville: Broadman & Holman) 1997); and Darrell L. Bock, Jesus
According to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels (Grand
Rapids: Baker) 2002).

7. For a helpful listing of commentaries on New Testament books,

including the four Gospels, see John Glynn, Commentary and
Reference Survey: A Comprehensive Guide to Biblical and
Theological Sources (Grand Rapids: Kregel) 2003). For books
discussing Gospels and other New Testament texts that support the
deity of Christ, see Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski,
tentatively titled Holes in God's Hands (Grand Rapids: Kregel)
forthcoming); Murray J. Harris, Three Crucial Questions About Jesus
(Grand Rapids: Baker) 1994); and Robert L. Reymond, Jesus, Divine
Messiah: The New and Old Testament Witness (Fearn) Scotland:
Christian Focus, 2003).

8. A few manuscripts, including one very important manuscript, Codex

Sinaiticus, lack "Son of God" here. But other equally important
witnesses have it, along with the rest of the witnesses in all three major
textual traditions. The external evidence thus argues for the
authenticity of the words. Internally, although the shorter reading is
normally to be preferred, this rule cannot be applied mechanically. In
cases where accidental omission is likely, the shorter reading canon is
invalid. In this instance, there is a good likelihood that the words were
omitted by accident in some witnesses: the last four words of verse 1,
in uncial script, would have been written as two-letter contractions
(known as nomina sacra), each ending in upsilon. With all the
successive upsilons, an accidental deletion is likely. Even though
Sinaiticus is in general one of the best New Testament manuscripts, its
testimony is not quite as preeminent in this situation. There are several
other instances in which it breaks up chains of genitives ending in
upsilon (e.g.) Acts 28:31; Col. 2:2; Heb. 12:2; Rev. 12:14; 15:7; 22:1),
showing that there is a significantly higher possibility of accidental
scribal omission in a case like this. The first corrector of Sinaiticus
added "Son of God," suggesting that the omission was simply an
oversight. In light of the external and internal evidence, the original
text of Mark 1:1 most likely included "Son of God."
9. The centurion is the first human in Mark's narrative to testify that
Jesus was the Son of God. This is not to say, however, that the
centurion was the first convert to Christianity. In all likelihood, the
centurion didn't grasp the theological significance of what he was
saying but was overwhelmed by the unique circumstance at Calvary
(e.g., the unnatural darkness and Jesus' triumphant cry as he breathed
his last) and recognized that Jesus was an extraordinary man with an
extraordinary relationship to God. Nonetheless, it's clear that Mark
intends his readers to understand this climactic confession as a
reference to Jesus as the unique Son of God (cf. Mark 1:1, 11; 3:11;
5:7; 9:7; 12:6; 13:32; 14:61-62).

10. Luke stresses another unique aspect of Jesus' identity through the
use of an additional inclusio. In both Luke 4:21 and 24:44, Jesus
himself declares that he fulfills messianic prophecy. In the latter text,
Jesus stresses that he fulfills the totality of the Old Testament writings
("the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms"). In other words,
Jesus claims to be the main character in the story line of the Hebrew
Scriptures. Luke's inclusio invites the reader to view Jesus' life in light
of that claim.

11. To the contrary, Luke makes clear that the category of "prophet"
alone was too confining for Jesus. Whereas John the Baptist-prophet
par excellence (Luke 7:26-27) and the greatest man ever born (v.
28)was called "prophet of the Most High" (1:76), Jesus surpassed him
as "Son of the Most High" (v. 32). In both the proclamation of heaven
and the admission of John, Jesus was superior.

12. Although most scholars date John's Gospel in the 90s, a small but
growing number see it as written in the 60s. Four reasons are given for
the earlier date: (1) The literary dualisms (e.g., light vs. darkness) in
John, which had seemed to suggest a late Hellenistic influence, were
discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran (variously dated from
225 B.C. to A.D. 68). This shows that John's Gospel could be both
early and written by a Jew. (2) The date of P52, a fragmentary copy of
John's Gospel and the earliest of all New Testament manuscripts,
suggests an earlier date for the Gospel. Although some scholars have
recently argued that the fragment should be dated later, the majority
see it as copied between 100 and 150. Some even date it as early as the
90s. If P52 was produced in Egypt, then it suggests an earlier date for
John since sufficient time was needed for the Gospel (originally
penned in modern-day Turkey) to circulate to the Nile region. (3) The
fact that the fall of Jerusalem is not mentioned in John has been taken
to mean that it had not yet fallen. So momentous was the destruction of
the temple and the fall of Jerusalem to any Jew that it surely would
have been mentioned in the Gospels if it had already occurred. (4)
Corroborating evidence for the third point is that in John 5:2 the author
says that the pool of Bethesda is in Jerusalem. But since that pool was
destroyed in A.D. 70, this note would seem to have been written prior
to the Jewish war with Rome. See Daniel B. Wallace, "John 5, 2 and
the Date of the Fourth Gospel," Biblica 71 (1990): 177-205.
13. Any translation of John 1 testifies to the belief in the first century
that Jesus was much more than a mere man. On the grammar and
translation of John 1:1, see Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New
Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker)
1992), 51-71; and Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the
Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan) 1996), 256-70.

14. R. T. France, "The Worship of Jesus: A Neglected Factor in

Christological Debate?" Vox Evangelica 12 (1981): 25.

15. W. L. Schutter, "A Continuing Crisis for Incarnational Doctrine,"

Reformed Review 32.2 (1979): 85.

16. For a fascinating look at the historicity and theology of Jesus'

miracles, see Graham H. Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker: A
Historical and Theological Study (Downers Grove) IL: InterVarsity
Press, 1999).

17. Mark 2:7 is not like 2 Samuel 12:13, where Nathan announces
God's forgiveness of David. Jesus doesn't merely announce forgiveness
of the paralytic; he applies it. Of course, the latter is a divine
prerogative. See C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint
Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 99.
18. A point often made, sometimes as a historical criticism of Mark's
account, e.g., S. G. F. Brandon, The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth (New
York: Stein and Day, 1968), 89-90.
19. So Darrell L. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation in Judaism: The
Charge Against Jesus in Mark 14:53-65 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000),
230-31. We are indebted to Bock's research throughout this discussion.

20. Bock, Jesus According to Scripture, 345-46.

21. See a summary of such figures in Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation,

234-35.

22. So precarious was his duty that one later Jewish source (possibly
reflecting second temple tradition) says the high priest celebrated with
friends if he survived the trip into the Holy of Holies: "And he made a
feast for his friends because he had come forth safely from the
Sanctuary" (Yoma 7.4 [Mishnah]). Translation taken from Philip
Blackman, Mishnayoth: Pointed Hebrew Text, English Translation,
Introductions, Notes Supplement, Appendix, Addenda, Corrigenda, 2d
ed., rev., corrected, enlarged, 7 vols. (Gateshead: Judaica) 1977).

23. This claim would be especially shocking in light of the fact that, in
Jewish thinking, the heavenly temple was the pattern for the earthly
one. See Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 3.181-87.

24. As Bock has put it, Jesus' claim "would be worse, in the
leadership's view, than claiming the right to be able to walk into the
Holy of Holies in the temple and live there!" Jesus According to
Scripture, 375.

25. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation, 204-5.

26. Martin Hengel, Studies in Early Christology (Edinburgh: T & T

Clark), 155.

27. We can be confident that Mark 14:53-65 captures the historical gist
of Jesus' sayings, as well as the setting in which they were uttered. See
Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation, 209-33.

28. Bauckham, God Crucified, viii.

CHAPTER 13: SUPREME DEVOTION
1. Not only were there companions with Paul who witnessed what
happened to him, but he also had the physical proof: he was blinded
temporarily. That this blinding was not psychosomatic was obvious
three days later, when "something like scales fell from [Paul's] eyes"
(Acts 9:18) after a follower of Jesus placed his hands on him.

2. Romans 10:11 is quoting Isaiah 28:16, a passage that Paul had

quoted in 9:33 to refer to Christ. In verse 32, the apostle says that
Israel has "stumbled over the stumbling stone," an obvious reference to
Christ. This is followed by the quotation of Isaiah 28:16 mixed with
8:14, to the effect that belief in Christ is belief in "the stone."

3. For more discussion on the meaning of Lord as YHWH in Romans

10:9, see Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An
Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1996), 187-88.

4. Not all scholars agree with this assessment, though it is the

predominant and most likely interpretation. For a detailed discussion,
see Ralph P. Martin, A Hymn of Christ: Philippians 2:5-11 in Recent
Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship, rev. ed.
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 24-41.

5. On this word, see J. H. Moulton and George Milligan, Vocabulary of

the Greek Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans) 1930), 417; Peter T.
O'Brien, Commentary on Philippians, New International Greek
Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans) 1991), 206-7; and David H.
Wallace, "A Note on Morphe," Theologische Zeitschrift 22 (1966): 19-
25.

6. Moulton and Milligan, Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, 417;

O'Brien, Commentary on Philippians, 206-7; and Wallace, "A Note on
Morphe," 19-25.

7. Cf. Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and

Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998),
51-53.
8. O'Brien, Commentary on Philippians, 241.

9. For a discussion on the hymnic nature of Colossians 1:15-20, see

Peter T. O'Brien, Colossians, Philemon, Word Biblical Commentary 44
(Waco) TX: Word, 1982), 32-37.
10. Bauckham, God Crucified, 10-11.

11. Titus 2:13 is one of the clearest texts in the New Testament to
affirm the deity of Christ, for it speaks of him as "our great God and
Savior." We have not listed it in the section on Paul because some
scholars dispute whether Paul wrote this letter. (For a defense of Paul's
authorship of Titus, see D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, An
Introduction to the New Testament, 2d ed. [Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2005]; and William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, Word Biblical
Commentary 46 [Nashville: Nelson, 2000]). Nevertheless, even if Paul
did not write Titus, it still would have been written in the first century.
And the Greek is unequivocal that the verse explicitly speaks of Christ
as God. Cf. Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use
of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 173-85;
Wallace, Exegetical Syntax, 270-90; and Daniel B. Wallace, Granville
Sharp's Canon and Its Kin (Bern: Peter Lang, forthcoming).

12. See discussion of Hebrews's authorship in chapter 10. The book of

Hebrews is anonymous, and no one knows who wrote it. However, the
author was a contemporary of the apostle Paul's protege Timothy (Heb.
13:23), placing Hebrews in the first century.

13. On the suggested alternate translation "Your throne is God," see

Harris, Jesus as God, 205-27; and Wallace, Exegetical Syntax, 59. This
translation has very little to commend it. But even if we accepted it, it
would in context elevate Jesus above all angels (note the contrast
between the angels as God's servants who minister to us, vv. 7, 14, and
the Son, who rules over angels and human beings, vv. 8-10).

14. Cf. the statement in the Mishnah (the Jewish document that
codified conduct, written c. A.D. 200 but based on much earlier oral
testimony) to this effect, m. Sanhedrin 7.5.
 CHAPTER 14: FROM THE PENS OF FATHERS AND FOES

1. For helpful surveys and evaluations of noncanonical references to

Christ, see Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence
for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College, 1996); Murray J. Harris,
Three Crucial Questions About Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994);
and Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An
Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2000).
2. Concluding his discussion of ancient non-Christian sources for
Jesus, Habermas, Historical Jesus, 224, notes that "it is quite
extraordinary that we could provide a broad outline of most of the
major facts of Jesus' life from `secular' history alone."

3. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament, 14, notes that
although the question of Jesus' historicity is important to Christian
faith, "the theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a
scholarly question." The nonexistence hypothesis is almost universally
rejected by scholars as anemic and odd.

4. A point made by Habermas, Historical Jesus, 241-42.

5. Lucian, The Passing of Peregrinus, trans. A. M. Harmon, Loeb

Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936),
11 (5.13).

6. Ibid., 13 (5.15).

7. Celsus, On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians,

trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987),
116.

8. Ibid., 77-78.

9. Pliny Letters and Panegyricus, trans. Betty Radice, Loeb Classical

Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), 10.96
(2.287).
10. Ibid., 2.288-89.

11. Ibid., 2.289.

12. For an enlightening and sobering look at the cost of devotion to

Jesus in first-century culture, see Larry W. Hurtado, How on Earth Did
Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions About Earliest Devotion to
Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 56-82.

13. Especially in its newer form, Middle Platonism. The earlyfirst-

century Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo illustrates Middle
Platonism's attraction to educated Jews throughout the Greco-Roman
world.

14. C. E. Arnold, "Syncretism," in Dictionary of the Later New

Testament and Its Developments, ed. Ralph P. Martin and Peter H.
Davids (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 1149-50.
15. The Alexandrian historian Basilides, writing 130-150, asserts that
it was actually Simon of Cyrene who was crucified instead of Christ
(cited in Irenaeus Against Heresies 1.24.4).

16. Ignatius Letter to the Smyrnaeans 5.2.

17. While the normative understanding of Jesus in the early church

involved recognition of his deity, there were small enclaves that
insisted that he was only human. Beginning in the late first century and
continuing through the early third, the Ebionites, a Jewish Christian
sect, viewed Jesus as merely a human prophet born of Mary and
Joseph.

In the late second century, a teaching arose among Gentile

Christians known as Dynamic Monarchianism. This view insisted
that Jesus was just a man but one upon whom the power
(dunamis) of God had come in a special way. These adoptionists
were a small and unrepresentative group within Gentile
Christianity. They were most likely from a philosophical
background that saw matter as inherently evil, and thus they
found the idea repugnant that God himself would take up a
 fleshlybody (J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed.
[New York: Harper & Row, 1978], 116). Later, in mid-third-
century Rome, adoptionism was revived briefly before it was
condemned at the Synod of Antioch in 268.

Thus, the idea that Jesus was just a man was a minor view that
cropped up from time to time within the ancient church as an
alternative to the prevailing Christian belief. It had minimal
impact and was roundly rejected by the larger Christian
community.

18. 1 Clement 16.2.

19. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 91.

20. 1 Clement 32.4; 38.4; 43.6; 58.2; 63.3; 65.2.

21. 1 Clement 58.2.

22. 2 Clement 1.1.

23. 1 Clement 22.1.

24. Epistle of Barnabas 6.12.

25. Ibid., 5.5; 12.7.

26. Ignatius Magnesians 6.1.

27. Ignatius Epistle to the Ephesians 3.2.

28. Ibid., 18.2.

29. Ibid., 19.3. Some translations have "appeared in human form."
However, the verb ~avE poo [phaneroo] in this text is better rendered
"make known," "reveal." See W. Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of
the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3d ed., rev.
and ed. F. W. Danker, trans. W. F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, and F. W.
Danker (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000),
1048. Though the verb can be translated "appear," its meaning should
not be confused with an appearance that does not correspond to reality
or that merely seems to reflect reality.

30. Ignatius Epistle to the Ephesians 7.2.

31. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 92.

32. Those who attacked the faith from outside were primarily Jews,
pagan philosophers, and Roman authorities. The internal attacks that
were ultimately judged to be heretical included the teachings of
Marcion, a radically anti-Jewish teacher who saw the God of the Old
Testament as evil and different from the God of the New Testament;
Montanism, a visionary Christian sect that saw a continuing of
prophecy and revelation that conceptually challenged the finality of
apostolic revelation; and Dynamic Monarchianism (adoptionism) and
Modalistic Monarchianism, which denied the Trinity by seeing the
persons as modes of divine self-revelation rather than expressions of
true eternal distinctions within the Godhead.

33. Justin Martyr First Apology 1.63, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers

(hereafter cited as ANF), ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson)
10 vols. (1885-1887; reprint) Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 1.228:
"For the sake of proving that Jesus the Christ is the Son of God ... ,
being of old [i.e., during the Old Testament era] the Word, [who] ...
sometimes [appeared] in the form of fire, and sometimes in the
likeness of angels."

34. Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho 61, ANF, 1.227.

35. Ibid., 62, 1.228.

36. Ibid., 63, 1.229.

37. Irenaeus Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, chap. 47.

38. Irenaeus Against Heresies 3, ANF, 1.443.

39. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 147.
40. Hippolytus Against the Heresy of One Noetus 15, ANF, 5.229.

41. Ibid., 4, ANF, 5.225.

42. Ibid., 17, ANF, 5.230.

43. Ibid. Translation by Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 149.

44. Tertullian Against Praxeas 8, ANF, 3.603.

45. Ibid., 26, ANF, 3.622.

46. Tertullian Against All Heresies 4, ANF, 3.652.

47. Ibid.

48. Tertullian Against Praxeas 27, ANF, 3.624.

49. Clement of Alexandria Exhortation to the Heathen 11, ANF, 2.203.

50. Ibid., 1, ANF, 2.173.

51. Origen De Principis 1.2.4, ANF, 4.247.

CHAPTER 15: SIMPLY DIVINE?

1. The Arian slogan rhymed in Greek: en pote hote ouk en ("there was
[a time] when he was not").

2. Philostorgius, The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen: Comprising a

History of the Church from A.D. 324 to A.D. 440, and The
Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius, trans. Edward Walford
(London: Bohn, 1855), 2.2.

3. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (New York:

Scribners, 1882), 3.371.
4. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, chap. 15, in The Nicene and Post
Nicene Fathers (hereafter cited as NPNF), 2d series, ed. Philip Schaff
and Henry Wace (New York: Christian Literature, 1890), 1.792.

5. Rufinus of Aquileia, Historic Ecclesiastics (Excerpt on the First

Council of Nicaea) 10.4, at http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/rufinus-
he.html (accessed March 2006).

6. Theodoret The Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret 1.6, NPNF, 3.67.

7. The number of bishops at the Council of Nicea is unclear in the

ancient records. Schaff states, "This [318] is the usual estimate, resting
on the authority of Athanasius, Basil (Ep. 114; Opera, t. iii. p. 207, ed.
Bened.), Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret; whence the council is
sometimes called the Assembly of the Three Hundred and Eighteen.
Other data reduce the number to three hundred, or to two hundred and
seventy, or two hundred and fifty, or two hundred and eighteen; while
later tradition swells it to two thousand or more" (History of the
Christian Church, 3.205). According to ancient writers, "the number of
bishops exceeded two hundred and fifty" (Eusebius Life of
Constantine 3.12, in NPNF, 1.789), and went up to three hundred
eighteen (Theodoret The Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret 1.6,
NPNF, 3.67; Socrates Scholasticus The Ecclesiastical History 1.8,
NPNF, 2.30). Socrates sometimes rounds the number up to three
hundred and twenty, but is careful when quoting sources to reproduce
the number of the bishops at Nicea as three hundred eighteen.
Some historians have doubted the accuracy of the number three
hundred eighteen since it corresponds to the number of Abraham's
troops reported in Genesis 14:14 when he defeated Kedorlaomer and
the other kings who were his allies, yet there are a significant number
who see no reason to doubt the traditional figure of three hundred
eighteen, despite the coincidence with Genesis.

8. Justo Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, vol. 1, From the

Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon, rev. ed. (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1992), 266-67.
9. Roger E. Olson, The Story of Christian Theology (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 153-54.

10. See Eusebius Life of Constantine 3.12, in NPNF, 1.791.

11. Translation by J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed.

(New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 232. The version of the Nicene
Creed used today is an expansion of the creed by the Council of
Constantinople in 381. Material added has to do with the full equality
of the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son.

12. Two generations earlier, the heretic Paul of Samosata had used the
term to suggest that the Father and Son were the same person-not just
identical in substance. The Nicene Creed did not at all mean this, but
the guilt by allusion to Paul of Samosata was enough to make some of
the bishops nervous about the wording.

13. For an engaging narrative on the Council of Nicea and the

historical context in which it occurred, see Olson, Story of Christian
Theology, 141-60; and Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive
Moments in the History of Christianity, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker,
2000), 47-64.
CHAPTER 16: PARALLELOMANIA
1. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Laughing Jesus: Religious
Lies and Gnostic Wisdom (New York: Harmony, 2005), 55.

2. Ibid., 56-57.

3. As far back as the 1840s, Bruno Bauer began to publish views that
the story of Jesus was rooted in myth. Bauer's greatest influence was
on one of his students, Karl Marx, who promoted the view that Jesus
never existed. This view eventually became part of communist dogma.
See Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 8-10.

4. Probably the best accessible introduction to the subject is Ronald H.

Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 2d ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ:
Presbyterian and Reformed) 2003). Nash addresses the relationship of
Christianity to Hellenistic philosophy, mystery religions, and
Gnosticism.

5. "Is Jesus a Counterfeit?" at infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/

1994/3/3front94 (accessed August 2005).

6. Albert Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, trans. W. Montgomery

(London: Adam and Charles Black, 1912), 192 (emphasis added).

7. Bruce M. Metzger, ed., Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan,

Jewish, and Christian, New Testament Tools and Studies 8 (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans) 1968), 6-7.

8. Gunter Wagner, Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries

(Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd) 1967), 268.

9. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 167.

10. Freke and Gandy, Laughing Jesus, 56.

11. Ibid., 55.

12. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 116.

13. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 9.

14. Ronald Nash, "Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan

Religions?" at equip.org/free/DB109 (accessed August 2005).
Essentially the same statement is made in Nash, Gospel and the
Greeks, 127-28.
15. Adolf von Harnack, Wissenschaft and Leben, 2 vols. (Giessen,
Germany: Topelmann, 1911), 2:191, translated and quoted by Nash,
Gospel and the Greeks, 108-9.

16. The substance of this point is from Nash, Gospel and the Greeks,
8-9, where it is discussed in greater detail.

17. Ibid., 10.

18. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987),
22:

Many of ... [the] details [i.e., of pagan religions and culture]

were set in Christian contexts which changed their meaning
entirely. Other details merely belonged in contexts which nobody
wished to make Christian. They were part of the "neutral
technology of life" and it would be as unreal to expect them to
change "as to expect modern man to Christianize the design of an
automobile or to produce a Marxist wristwatch."

19. Ibid., 21.

20. Leon McKenzie, Pagan Resurrection Myths and the Resurrection

of Jesus (Charlottesville, VA: Bookwrights, 1997), 46.

21. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 10-11.

22. Ibid., 11 n. 1.
23. Ibid. Brandon also made this statement in his article "The Ritual
Perpetuation of the Past," Numen 6 (1959): 128.

24. Walter Kiinneth, The Theology of the Resurrection (London: SCM,

1965), 59.

25. See Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 251-52.

26. See especially Karl Paul Donfried, "The Cults of Thessalonica and
the Thessalonian Correspondence," in Donfried's book, Paul,
Thessalonica, and Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002),
21-48.

27. The wording of this question is from Nash, Gospel and the Greeks,
251.

28. Donfried ("Cults of Thessalonica and the Thessalonian

Correspondence," 31) notes, for example, that one should not overlook
the obvious parallels between the following texts and the mystery
cults: 1 Thess. 5.5-7 with its reference to darkness and drunkenness; 1
Thess. 5.19-22 where Paul explicitly urges his hearers not "to quench"
the Spirit but "to test" it. Quite clearly the apostle does not wish the
gift of the Spirit to be confused with the excesses of the Dionysiac
mysteries; for Paul the Spirit does not lead to "Bacchic frenzies" but to
joy precisely in the context of suffering.
29. Richard Plantinga, "God So Loved the World: Theological
Reflections on Religious Plurality in the History of Christianity," in
Biblical Faith and Other Religions: An Evangelical Assessment, ed.
David W. Baker (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004), 108.

30. Justin Martyr, First Apology, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed.

Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 10 vols. (1885-1887; reprint,
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 1:22.

31. J. Gresham Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ (reprint; Grand

Rapids: Baker, 1975), 330.
32. Plantinga, "God So Loved the World," 109. See Plantinga's sober
conclusions about accommodation with pluralism on pages 133-37.

33. Norman Anderson, Christianity and World Religions (Downers

Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984), 53-54. Cf. also Metzger,
Historical and Literary Studies, 8: "Unlike other countries bordering
the Mediterranean Sea, Palestine has been extremely barren in yielding
archaeological remains of the paraphernalia and places of worship
connected with the Mysteries." He details the earliest artifacts that had
been found, all from the early second century A.D.

34. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 157.

35. Metzger (Historical and Literary Studies, 7) also makes this point:

Another methodological consideration, often overlooked by

scholars who are better acquainted with Hellenistic culture than
with Jewish, is involved in the circumstance that the early
Palestinian Church was composed of Christians from a Jewish
background, whose generally strict monotheism and traditional
intolerance of syncretism must have militated against wholesale
borrowing from pagan cults.
Regarding the contribution of Paul to theological formulation, Metzger
writes,

Psychologically it is quite inconceivable that the Judaizers,

who attacked Paul with unmeasured ferocity for what they
considered his liberalism concerning the relation of Gentile
converts to the Mosaic Law, should nevertheless have acquiesced
in what some have described as Paul's thoroughgoing
contamination of the central doctrines and sacraments of the
Christian religion. Furthermore, with regard to Paul himself,
scholars are coming once again to acknowledge that the Apostle's
prevailing set of mind was rabbinically oriented, and that his
newly-found Christian faith ran in molds previously formed at the
feet of Gamaliel.
36. So Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 117-20. This section is based on
his summary.

37. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 11.

38. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 118.

39. Ibid., 133, 137; and Edwin M. Yamauchi, "Easter: Myth,

Hallucination, or History?" Christianity Today 18.12 (March 15,
1974): 5.

40. Freke and Gandy commit both the composite fallacy and a form of
the chronological fallacy in this assertion, for it was by no means all
mystery religions that celebrated December 25. Rather, the Mithraic
celebration of the sun-god occurred on this date. And to uncritically
imply that December 25 was part of the original Christian
proclamation is simply irresponsible and misleading (Metzger,
Historical and Literary Studies, 23).

41. The date of December 25 was apparently first suggested as the day
of Christ's birth by Hippolytus (165-235), about two hundred years
after the birth of Christ. It did not achieve official status until 386
when Chrysostom declared that it was correct. It should be noted that a
midwinter date for the birth of Jesus is likely, and the Eastern church
has traditionally celebrated January 6 as Christ's birthdate. Cf. Harold
W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1977), 25-26.
42. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 120.

43. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 23.

44. The terms Hellenistic and Hellenism in a restricted sense refer to

the period beginning with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.
to the conquest of Cleopatra's Egypt in 30 B.C., but they are used more
generally to refer to the period that extends through the demise of the
Roman Empire. This period was characterized by a unified
government (Rome), a common language (Koine Greek), and a
cosmopolitan culture in the Mediterranean basin with a Roman
identity. The Hellenistic age was one of syncretism par excellence.
Cultural and religious thought from Greece, Asia Minor, the Fertile
Crescent, Persia, India, Palestine, and Egypt intermingled and
morphed into innumerable individual expressions.

45. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 105-6.

46. David Ulansey, Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1989). Popular expositions of Mithraism,
such as are found online, often posit the "copycat thesis," pointing to
Mithraism as a pre-Christian religion that incorporates a virgin birth, a
death and resurrection, and even a celebration of the god's birth on
December 25. These proponents enlist the ancient nature of the
religion- e.g., Mithra worship in Persia antedates Christianity by
centuries.

While authorities of the nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries have posited a continuum between the Persian deity
Mithra and Mithraism as a Roman mystery religion,
contemporary scholars assert that no such continuity exists.
Rather, the recent assessment recognizes that Roman Mithraism
arose as a mystery religion during the first century B.C. in Asia
Minor. From there it spread throughout the empire to become one
of the most successful mystery religions of late antiquity. Eliade
notes, "When the Mysteries of Mithra are discussed, it appears
inevitable to quote Ernest Renan's famous sentence: `If
Christianity had been halted in its growth by some mortal illness,
the world would have been Mithraist"' (Mircea Eliade, A History
of Religious Ideas, trans. Willard R. Trask [Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1982], 2:326).
Eliade and others suggest that this is a vast overstatement.
Although Mithraism was widespread and espoused a developed
ethical standard, it was almost exclusively a religion of the
soldiers and did not admit women to its membership. It would
thus not appeal to the masses, women, or slaves.
 Despite the claims of obvious and profound parallels between
Christianity and Mithraism, when one looks at the evidence an
entirely different picture emerges. First, Mithra was not thought
of as virgin born in the most ancient myths; rather, he arose
spontaneously from a rock in a cave (Edwin Yamauchi, Persia and
the Bible [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990], 498).

Second, "Mithra is the only god who does not suffer the same
tragic destiny as the gods of the other mysteries, so we may
conclude that the scenario of Mithraic initiation did not include
ordeals suggesting death and resurrection" (Eliade) History of
Religious Ideas, 2:324).

Third, the Mithraic concept of history is linear as opposed to

the circular concept of the other mysteries. While the other
mysteries were centered on the vegetation cycle (Nash, Gospel
and the Greeks, 136), Mithraism was an astral religion filled with
cosmic symbolism (Ulansey, Mithraic Mysteries, 46-66; Payam
Nabarz) The Mysteries of Mithras [Rochester, VT: Inner
Traditions, 2005], 24, 145; and Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible,
498).

Fourth, Roman Mithraism as a mystery religion apparently

arose in the region of Tarsus in Asia Minor during the first
century B.C. There is no evidence that the characteristic features
of Mithras are in evidence before A.D. 100-several decades after
the founding of Christianity (Walter Burkert) Ancient Mystery
Religions [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987], 7).

47. See previous note for discussion.

48. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 113.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid., 113-14.

51. Ibid., 114.
52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Fox, Pagans and Christians, 94.

55. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 2.

56. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 1.

CHAPTER 17: THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT?

1. Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho 67, in The Ante-Nicene

Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 10 vols. (1885-
1887; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 1:231. For easy access,
see ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anfOl-48.htm#P4043-787325.

2. Michael Grant and John Hazel, Who's Who in Classical Mythology

(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973; reprint, New York:
Routledge, 1994), 101. Cf. "Danae in Greek Mythology,"
Mythography, at loggia.com/myth/danae.html (accessed August 2005).

3. Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 on CD-ROM, s.v. "Amphitryon."

4. Livy History of Rome 1.4, trans. O. Foster, Loeb Classical Library

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 17, 19 (emphasis
added).

5. Plutarch, Life of Alexander. Cf. Plutarch's Lives, trans. Bernadotte

Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (New York: Putnam, 1919), 7:225, 227.

6. J. Gresham Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ (reprint, Grand

Rapids: Baker, 1975), 338-39.

7. Ibid., 347-48.

8. It is beyond our purpose here to debate whether lalmah in Isaiah

7:14 means "virgin" or "young woman." The LXX translated the
Hebrew ,almah as parthenos, which means "virgin." See note in the
NET Bible at Isaiah 7:14.

9. The LXX was not produced all at one time, but even the last
portions were translated well over a century before the birth of Jesus.

10. C. A. Briggs, "The Virgin Birth of Our Lord," American Journal of

Theology 12 (1908): 190. "The Jews asserted that Jesus' father was
Ben Pandera. This is evidently a fiction based on Ben Parthena, son of
the virgin, and implies the Christian doctrine which it antagonizes."
See The Gospel According to the Jews, Called Toldoth Jesu (London:
R. Carlile, 1823) for the account.
11. See M. James Sawyer, Charles Augustus Briggs and Tensions in
Late Nineteenth Century American Theology (Lewiston, NY: Mellen
University Press, 1994), 102-8, for an extended discussion of Briggs's
defense of the Virgin Birth.

12. Ibid., 106.

13. Machen, Virgin Birth of Christ, 342.

14. Raymond E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily

Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist, 1973), 62.

15. Ibid., 65.

CHAPTER 18: OSIRIS, FRANKENSTEIN, AND JESUS CHRIST

1. Edwin M. Yamauchi, "Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?"

Christianity Today 18.12 (March 15, 1974): 4. This very helpful and
widely circulated article originally appeared in Christianity Today
(March 15, 1974): 4-7, and (March 29, 1974): 12-16. It is at leaderu
.com/everystudent/easter/articles/yama.

2. Ronald H. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 2d ed. (Phillipsburg,

NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2003), 126.
3. Gary Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the
Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004), 91.

4. Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion (Mineola, NY: Dover,

1948), 28.

5. Plutarch Moralia, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, Loeb Classical Library

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 5:32. Available at
penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/ Isis-
and-Osiris*/A (accessed August 2005).

6. Ibid., 5.11.

7. Bruce M. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish,

and Christian, New Testament Tools and Studies 8 (Grand Rapids:
Eerd- mans, 1968), 20.

8. Yamauchi, "Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?" 5.

9. Except, of course, for one crucial difference: Frankenstein was
assembled from human body parts, while Osiris was strictly a god. The
ancient world knew nothing of the final resurrection of a man apart
from the resurrection of Jesus.

10. See Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 128-29.

11. J. Gresham Machen, The Origin of Paul's Religion (reprint, Grand

Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 228.

12. Evgueni A. Tortchinov, "Cybele, Attis, and the Mysteries of the

'Suffering Gods': A Transpersonalistic Interpretation," at etor.hl.ru/tor-
paper (accessed August 2005).

13. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 130-31.

14. Yamauchi, "Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?" part 1, p. 5.

See P. Lambrechts, "Les Fetes `phrygiennes' de Cybele et d' Attis,"
Bulletin de l'lnstitutHistorique Belge de Rome 27.1 (1952): 141-70.
15. Edwin M. Yamauchi, "Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?" 5.
See also Edwin Yamauchi, "Tammuz and the Bible," Journal of
Biblical Literature 84 (1965): 283-90.

16. About twenty miles north of Beirut.

17. Yamauchi, "Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?" 5.

18. Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987),
265.

19. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 160-61.

20. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis:

Fortress) 2003), 81.

21. Ibid., 80-81.

22. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 160.

23. Ibid., 160-61.

24. Ibid., 161.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid. Cf. also Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 18: "In all
of the Mysteries which tell of a dying deity, the god dies by
compulsion and not by choice, sometimes in bitterness and despair,
never in selfgiving love. But according to the New Testament, God's
purpose of redeeming-love was the free divine motive for the death of
Jesus, who accepted with equal freedom that motive as his own."
27. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 161.

28. Walter Kiinneth, The Theology of the Resurrection (London: SCM,

1965), 58.

CONCLUSION: THE REAL JESUS

1. C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, vol. 1, The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe (New York: Collier, 1970), 75-76.

2. For those interested in finding out more about Jesus Christ, we

recommend the Web site www.bible.org. For starters, go to the section
called "Finding God." As well, a new translation of the Bible, the NET
Bible, is available for free download at this Web site.
 FURTHER READING

Te recommend starting with resources marked by an asterisk

(*).
PART 1: I BELIEVE IN YESTERDAY
Barnett, Paul. The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.

* . Is the New Testament Reliable? 2d ed. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity

Press, 2004.

. Jesus and the Logic of History. New Studies in Biblical Theology. Edited
by D. A. Carson. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Cambridge, England:
Apollos, 1997.

Blomberg, Craig. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. Downers

Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987.

* Making Sense of the New Testament: Three Crucial Questions. Grand

Rapids: Baker, 2004.

*Bock, Darrell L. Can I Trust the Bible? Defending the Bible's Reliability.
Norcross, GA: Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, 2001.

"The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex?" In Jesus

Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus. Edited by
Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland, 73-99. Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1995.

*Bruce, F. F. The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? 6th ed.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981.

Dunn, James D. G. A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the
Historical Jesus Missed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005.

Stein, Robert H. Studying the Synoptic Gospels: Origin and Interpretation.

Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001.
PART 2: POLITICALLY CORRUPT? THE TAINTING OF ANCIENT
NEW TESTAMENT TEXTS

Bruce, F. F. The Books and the Parchments. 5th ed. London: Marshall
Pickering, 1991.

Fee, G. D. "The Textual Criticism of the New Testament." In The

Expositor's Bible Commentary. Edited by F. E. Gabelein. 1:419-33. Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1979.

Metzger, Bruce M., and Bart D. Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament:
Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. 4th ed. New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

*Patzia, Arthur G. The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection,

Text, and Canon. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995.

*Wegner, Paul D. The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and
Development of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999.

PART 3: DID THE EARLY CHURCH MUZZLE THE CANON?

*Bock, Darrell L. The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth About

Alternative Christianities. Nashville: Nelson, 2006.

Bruce, F. F. The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,

1988.

* . The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? 6th ed. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981.

Carson, D. A., and Douglas J. Moo. An Introduction to the New Testament.

2d ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005.

*Green, Michael. The Books the Church Suppressed: Fiction and Truth in
The Da Vinci Code. Oxford: Monarch; Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2006.
Metzger, Bruce M. The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin,
Development, and Significance. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987.

*Patzia, Arthur G. The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection,

Text, and Canon. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995.

*Wegner, Paul D. The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and
Development of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999.

PART 4: THE DIVINITY OF JESUS: EARLY TRADITION OR LATE

SUPERSTITION?

*Allison, C. FitzSimons. The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of

Christian Orthodoxy. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1994.

Bauckham, Richard. God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the

New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

*Bowman, Robert M., Jr., and J. Ed Komoszewski. Holes in God's Hands:

Knowing Jesus as Your Lord and Your God. Grand Rapids: Kregel,
forthcoming.

Brown, Harold O. J. Heresies: The Image of Christ in the Mirror of Heresy

and Orthodoxy from the Apostles to the Present. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1984.

*Habermas, Gary R. The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of
Christ. Joplin, MO: College, 1996.

*Harris, Murray J. Three Crucial Questions About Jesus. Grand Rapids:

Baker, 1994.

Hurtado, Larry W. At the Origins of Christian Worship: The Context and

Character of Earliest Christian Devotion. Carlisle, PA: Paternoster, 1999.
Reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.

How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions About

Earliest Devotion to Jesus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.
Kelly, J. N. D. Early Christian Doctrines. Rev. ed. New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1978.

Van Voorst, Robert E. Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to

the Ancient Evidence. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.

PART 5: STEALING THUNDER: DID CHRISTIANITY RIP OFF

MYTHICAL GODS?

Fox, Robin Lane. Pagans and Christians. New York: Knopf, 1987.

*Habermas, Gary R., and Michael R. Licona. The Case for the Resurrection
of Jesus. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004.

Machen, J. Gresham. The Virgin Birth of Christ. New York: Harper;

London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1930.

*Nash, Ronald H. The Gospel and the Greeks. 2d ed. Phillipsburg, NJ:
Presbyterian and Reformed, 2003.

Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis: Fortress,

2003.

Yamauchi, Edwin M. Persia and the Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990.
SCRIPTURE INDEX
SUBJECT INDEX
 Table of Contents
Chapter 3
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Recovering the Wording of the Original New Testament Text, Part 7
Chapter 13
Acknowledgments / 13 /
Introduction: Reinventing Jesus? / 15 /
PART 1: I BELIEVE IN YESTERDAY
1. The Gospel Behind the Gospels / 21 /
2. Oral Tradition and a Memorizing Culture / 33 /
3. An Eccentric Jesus and the Criteria of Authenticity / 39 /
PART 2: POLITICALLY CORRUPT? THE TAINTING OF ANCIENT
NEW TESTAMENT TEXTS
4. Can We Trust the New Testament? The Quantity and Quality of Textual
Variants / 53 /
5. Myths About Manuscripts / 65 /
6. An Embarrassment of Riches: Recovering the Wording of the Original
New Testament Text, Part 1 /75
7. The Methods of Textual Criticism: Recovering the Wording of the
Original New Testament Text, Part
8. Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then? 11031
PART 3: DID THE EARLY CHURCH MUZZLE THE CANON?
9. The Range of the Canon / 121 /
10. What Did the Ancient Church Think of Forgeries? / 135 /
11. What Did the Ancient Forgers Think of Christ? / 151 /
PART 4: THE DIVINITY OF JESUS: EARLY TRADITION OR LATE
SUPERSTITION?
12. Divine Portraits: Jesus in the Gospels / 169 /
13. Supreme Devotion: Jesus in the Larger New Testament / 181 /
14. From the Pens of Fathers and Foes: Jesus Outside the New Testament /
195 /
15. Simply Divine? The Real Issue at Nicea / 207 /
PART 5: STEALING THUNDER: DID CHRISTIANITY RIP OFF
MYTHICAL GODS?
16. Parallelomania: Supposed Links Between Christianity and Pagan
Religions / 219 /
17. The Virgin Birth of Alexander the Great? / 239 /
18. Osiris, Frankenstein, and Jesus Christ / 249 /
Conclusion: The Real Jesus / 259 /
Endnotes / 263 /
Further Reading / 329 /
Scripture Index / 333 /
Subject Index / 337 /