Historical veracity!

This is the 2nd of three essays for this term's course. I know that there are one or two of you out there who like a bit of theology, so enjoy. Bear in mind that I haven't been at it for long, and be kind when you comment. This one's a little more reference heavy, sorry about that. Such are academic essays.

How close were the authors of the synoptic gospels to the eyewitness tradition of Jesus’ life and teaching?

‘Many have undertaken to compile a narrative of things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses have delivered them to us’ (Lk 1.1-2).  So opens Luke’s gospel, third in the canon of the synoptic gospels. In order to establish the veracity of Luke’s claims, how close he was to the sources and to what extent our conclusions can be applied to all three synoptic gospels, I am going to examine a historically held position contrary to Luke’s assertion, and then look at all three gospels to establish that, in all likelihood, the authors of the synoptic gospels were sufficiently close to the eyewitness traditions of Jesus’ life that they can be usefully used as truthful, historical testimony.

            As I will show later, the early church associated the gospels  with eyewitness testimony, but in the early twentieth century, form criticism began to examine the nature of how those accounts were transmitted to the gospel writers. Form critics such as K.L Schmidt, Martin Debelius and Rudolph Bultmann based their work on the studies of German folklore and believed that the gospels were written between 70 and 100 AD after an ‘oral period’ of anonymous circulation when individual traditions or ‘forms’ evolved and changed (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 75). This does not take account of the fact that many original eyewitnesses would still have been alive to see written gospels and to correct any errors. Although the gospel writers were unlikely to be concerned with historical accuracy in the modernist sense, there are many people specifically named in all of the gospels whose stories could have been checked. As Taylor puts it, “if the Form-Critics are right, the disciples must have been translated to heaven immediately after the resurrection.” (Vincent Taylor, The formation of the gospel tradition, 41).

While there is not scope in this brief assignment to fully address the ‘synoptic problem’ of how they came to have so much shared content, some discussion is necessary. A commonly held, although not undisputed view, is that Mark was written first, in the mid to late 60s AD (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 218), and was the source of the Markan material in Matthew and Luke (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 66 and Gooder, P, Timelines: The Gospel of Mark, an introduction).  Furthermore, there is good evidence to support the view that Mark was Peter the apostle’s scribe in Rome. Bishop Papias is quoted by Eusebius in the early second century as saying “Mark, became Peter’s interpreter, and wrote down accurately, but not in order, all that he remembered” (Eusebius, 114). Moreover, there are structural clues in the gospels: Mark is much shorter, supporting the hypothesis that Matthew and Luke added their own separately-sourced material, and yet many of the individual stories are longer in Mark, supporting the hypothesis that Matthew and Luke edited the material.  Other evidence (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 66) supports the widely, though certainly not universally accepted view that it is reasonable that Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels using, and therefore after, Mark, and that Mark’s gospel was based directly on the eyewitness testimony of one of the primary participants in Jesus’ life and teaching. If this is true, then all of one gospel and a significant portion of the two other synoptic gospels were written from first hand accounts.

            Yet more evidence that Mark dates to earlier than the Form Critics believed is Mark’s inclusion of Jesus’ prophecy that the temple will be torn down (Mk 13.2), an act which we know occurred in 70AD. Scholars are divided as to whether it was written before this event, as prophecy, or after it, as reaction, but in either case date the writing of Mark to within just a few years of 70AD (Gooder, P, Timelines: The Gospel of Mark, an introduction).

            If then we accept that Mark was written between 67 and 73 AD, what of the other Gospels? Assuming Markan priority, Matthew and Luke must have been written afterwards, fixing the earliest date in the ranges. Many scholars date Matthew to the Jamnian council of c. 90AD, but some argue for an earlier date (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 236), and in terms of Luke, Paula Gooder tells us that ‘the vast majority of scholars make it 80-90 AD’ (Gooder, P, Timelines: Gospel of Luke). With dates for Matthew and Luke’s gospels established within 40 and 60 years of Jesus crucifixion, we can see that it is quite feasible for the authors to have collected eyewitness testimony in the years prior to setting their gospels down.

            Having looked at the time of Matthew and Luke, what can be said of the authors’ access to eyewitness traditions? The traditional view is that Matthew was written by the apostle Matthew, featured in that gospel. Certainly the gospel was associated with having been written by a Matthew from at least the 2^nd century (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 235), although whether or not that Matthew was the apostle is unclear (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 236). That said, Paula Gooder says that ‘it is probably sensible to associate that Matthew (i.e., the Matthew of the titular author) with the Mathew of Mathew’s Gospel’ (Gooder, P, Luke’s Gospel, Timelines). In that case, Matthew’s gospel contains not only second-hand eyewitness accounts, but is based also upon the first-hand eyewitness testimony of one of Jesus’ close circle of 12.

            We know from Colossians that Luke, the author of Luke’s gospel as well as the book of Acts, was a gentile physician and travelling companion of Paul (Col 4.14). What person could have had better opportunity to gather eyewitness accounts, travelling the length and breadth of the early Christian world? Visiting churches all around the Mediterranean must have exposed Luke to many of the tradents.

            Even if Matthew the apostle was not the author of Matthew, the presence of the Markan material, as in Luke’s gospel, indicates the practice of those authors of using eyewitness testimony. This is certainly not unusual. Recently, scholars such as Byrksog, Dunn and Bauckham have established that ancient historians placed the highest value on eyewitness accounts from participants in the events. Bishop Papias in his 2^nd century work writes that he preferred recent 1^st or second hand oral testimony from eyewitnesses for he ‘did not think that information from books would help (him) as much as the word of a living, surviving voice’ (Eusebius, 112. italics mine). According to Byrksog, Graeco-Roman historians only regarded historical writing as valid if it was written within a generation of events, and they saw eyewitness testimony as crucial (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 84), an approach very similar to modern oral history and one that fits entirely well with Luke’s claim at the beginning of his gospel.

            To conclude, the synoptic gospels were written within sufficient time of the events that they relate, and by authors with sufficient access to main protagonists and at a time when the standard for historical writing was such that they are likely to be very close to the traditions of Jesus’ life and teaching, despite their differing treatments of that material.

Bibliography, for any who are interested.

Bauckham, R. (2006) The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony.  Eerdmans Publishing Company

Taylor, V (1933) The formation of the gospel tradition. Macmillan

Eusebius (translated 2007, Paul L Maier) The Church History. Kregel Publications

Wenham, D & Walton, S (2011) Exploring the New Testament Volume 1 (Gospels and Acts) (2^nd edition).  SPCK Publishing

Gooder, P (date unknown) Timelines DVD (Various sections) St John’s Nottingham.

(DVD accessed online at http://stjt.org.uk/NT_and_OT/NT/ )