Cold-Case Christianity

by J. Warner Wallace

  Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.40

  The accuracy of the account was more important to Mark than anything else; for all Mark knew, Jesus would return before there would be any need to write an ordered biography of sorts. Mark was in charge of the essential crime broadcast. As the years passed and the eyewitnesses aged, others made a more deliberate effort to place the narrative in its correct order. Papias seems to indicate that this was Matthew’s intent:

  Therefore Matthew put the logia in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language, but each person interpreted them as best he could.41

  Luke also seems to be doing something similar according to the introduction of his own gospel:

  It seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order. (Luke 1:3)

  Both Matthew and Luke appear to be writing with a much different intent than Mark. Their accounts are more robust and ordered. While Mark seems to be providing us with the initial “crime broadcast,” Matthew and Luke are more concerned about the “final report.”

  MARK APPEARS TO BE PROTECTING KEY PLAYERS

  We’ve already talked about how important it is to “hang on every word.” In my years as an investigator, there have been many times when a witness carefully chose his or her words to avoid dragging someone else into the case. This was particularly true when working gang cases. There were a number of times when a witness had the courage to come forward with information, but was less than forthcoming about the identity of others who might have seen something similar. Driven by the fear that these additional witnesses might be in a position of jeopardy, the witness would mention them in his or her account but refuse to specifically identify them. Most of the time the witnesses were simply trying to protect someone who they thought was defenseless and vulnerable.

  I experienced just the opposite in some of my cold-case investigations. When reinterviewing witnesses who spoke to investigators years earlier, I found that they were now willing to provide me with the identities of people whom they previously refused to identify. Sometimes this was because they developed some animosity toward these people over the years; this was especially true when boyfriends and girlfriends broke up and were eventually willing to talk about each other. Sometimes it was a matter of diminishing fear; when the suspect in a case died, it wasn’t unusual to have people come forward and identify themselves simply because they were no longer afraid to do so.

  Many careful readers of Mark’s gospel have observed that there are a number of unidentified people described in his account. These anonymous characters are often in key positions in the narrative, yet Mark chose to leave them unnamed. For example, Mark’s description of the activity in the garden of Gethsemane includes the report that “one of those who stood by [the arrest of Jesus] drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear” (Mark 14:47). Mark chose to leave both the attacker and the man attacked unnamed in his description, even though John identified both (Peter as the attacker and Malchus as the person being attacked) in his gospel account. Similarly, Mark failed to identify the woman who anointed Jesus at the home of Simon the leper (Mark 14:3–9), even though John told us that it was Mary (the sister of Martha), who poured the perfume on Jesus’s head.42 While skeptics have offered a number of explanations for these variations (arguing, for example, that they may simply be late embellishments in an effort to craft the growing mythology of the Gospels), something much simpler might be at work. If Mark, like some of the witnesses in my gang cases, was interested in protecting the identity of Peter (as Malchus’s attacker) and Mary (whose anointing may have been interpreted as a proclamation of Jesus’s kingly position as the Messiah), it makes sense that he might leave them unnamed so that the Jewish leadership would not be able to easily target them. In fact, Mark never even described Jesus’s raising of Mary’s brother, Lazarus. This also makes sense if Mark was trying to protect Lazarus’s identity in the earliest years of the Christian movement, given that the resurrection of Lazarus was of critical concern to the Jewish leaders and prompted them to search for Jesus in their plot to kill him. If Mark wrote his gospel early, while Mary, Lazarus, Peter, and Malchus were still alive, it is reasonable that Mark might have wanted to leave them unnamed or simply omit the accounts that included them in the first place.

  Scholars generally acknowledge John’s gospel as the final addition to the New Testament collection of gospel accounts. It was most likely written at a time when Peter, Malchus, and Mary were already dead. John, like some of the witnesses in my cold cases, had the liberty to identify these important people; they were no longer in harm’s way.

  THEY WERE EARLY ON THE TIMELINE

  Given these eleven pieces of circumstantial evidence, what reasonable inference can be drawn about the dating of the Gospels? First we’ve got to account for the suspicious absence of several key historical events in the New Testament record: the destruction of the temple, the siege of Jerusalem, and the deaths of Peter, Paul, and James. These omissions can be reasonably explained if the book of Acts (the biblical text that ought to describe these events) was written prior to AD 61–62. These events are missing from the accounts because they hadn’t happened yet.

  We know from the introductory lines of the book of Acts that Luke’s gospel was written prior to Acts, but we must use the remaining circumstantial evidence to try to determine how much prior. The fact that Paul echoed the description of Jesus that was offered by the gospel writers is certainly consistent with the fact that he was aware of the claims of the Gospels, and his quotations from Luke’s gospel in 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians reasonably confirm the early existence of Luke’s account, placing it well before AD 53–57. Paul was able to quote Luke’s gospel and refer to it as scripture because it was already written, circulating at this time, and broadly accepted. Paul’s readers recognized this to be true as they read Paul’s letters.

  Luke told us that he was gathering data from “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word” (Luke 1:2). As a result he either referred to or quoted directly from over five hundred verses that are found in either the gospel of Mark or the gospel of Matthew. It is reasonable to infer that these accounts were in existence prior to Luke’s investigation. If this is the case, Mark’s gospel would date much earlier than Luke’s, and can be sensibly placed in either the late 40s or very early 50s. This then explains some of the characteristics we see in Mark’s gospel. There appears to be a sense of urgency in the gospel, similar to the crime broadcasts that are made by responding officers, and Mark appears to be protecting key players in the account as if they were still alive at the time of his writing.

  Let’s place the evidence on the timeline to see where the gospel accounts are located relative to the life of Jesus:

  The reasonable inference from the circumstantial evidence is that the Gospels were written very early in history, at a time when the original eyewitnesses and gospel writers were still alive and could testify to what they had seen. This is why Mark was careful not to identify key players and Paul could reasonably point to five hundred living eyewitnesses who could still testify to their observations of Jesus’s resurrection. While skeptics would like to claim that the Gospels were written well after the alleged life of the apostles and much closer to the councils that affirmed them, the evidence indicates something quite different.

 
The circumstantial evidence supports an early dating for the Gospels. The gospel writers appear in history right where we would expect them to appear if they were, in fact, eyewitnesses. This early placement alone does not ensure that the Gospels are reliable accounts, but it keeps them “in the running” and becomes an important piece of circumstantial evidence, in and of itself, as we determine the reliability of the gospel writers.

  SO, WHY DO SOME CONTINUE TO DENY IT?

  Some are still skeptical of the early dating of the Gospels, in spite of the circumstantial evidence that supports such a conclusion. Many skeptics are quick to embrace alternative explanations that place the Gospels so late in history that they simply could not have been written by eyewitnesses. As with any process of abductive reasoning, we need to examine the alternative possibilities to see if any of them are reasonable (based on evidence). Let’s examine some of the reasons why skeptics like Ehrman, Vermes, and Waite claim that the Gospels were written either “forty years later,” “three generations after Jesus,” or in “the latter part of the second century.”

  THE AUTHORS OF THE GOSPELS ARE ANONYMOUS

  Some have argued that the Gospels are late because none of the authors specifically identifies himself in the accounts. This lack of identification is seen as evidence that the accounts were not actually written by anyone in the first century, but were falsely attributed to these authors much later in an effort to legitimize the forgeries.

  BUT …

  The Gospels are not the only ancient documents that fail to identify the author within the text of the manuscripts. Tacitus (the Roman senator and historian who lived from AD 56 to AD 117) wrote a history of the Roman Empire from the reign of Augustus Caesar to Nero entitled Annals. Tacitus was, in fact, present during much of this period of time, but failed to include himself in any of his descriptions or identify himself as the author. Like the Gospels, the Annals are written anonymously yet are attributed to Tacitus without reservation by historical scholars. Why? Because, like the Gospels, Tacitus’s authorship is supported by external evidence (such as the claims of other early writers who credited Tacitus with the work). The Gospels were also attributed to their traditional authors quite early in history (Papias, living in the late first century and early second century, is one such example).

  In fact, no one in antiquity ever attributed the Gospels to anyone other than the four traditionally accepted authors. That’s a powerful statement, in and of itself, especially considering the fact that early Christians consistently recognized, identified, and condemned the false writings of forgers who tried to credit false gospels to the apostolic eyewitnesses. The Traditions of Matthias (AD 110–160), for example, was identified as a forgery by early Christians and was eventually included in a list with other forgeries (including the gospels of Thomas and Peter) by Eusebius, the “Father of Church History.”

  One might also wonder why, if these gospel accounts were falsely attributed to the authors we accept today, the second- or third-century forgers would not have picked better pseudonyms (false attributions) than the people who were ultimately accredited with the writings. Why would they pick Mark or Luke when they could easily have chosen Peter, Andrew, or James? Mark and Luke appear nowhere in the gospel records as eyewitnesses, so why would early forgers choose these two men around which to build their lies when there were clearly better candidates available to legitimize their work?

  It’s not as if the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John have been discovered in some ancient collection under someone else’s name. The only copies we possess of these Gospels, regardless of antiquity or geographic location, are attributed to one of the four traditional authors. No early church leader has ever attributed these Gospels to anyone other than Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John. There is no alternative ancient tradition that claims, for example, that the gospel of Mark is actually written by anyone other than Mark.

  While it is possible that the Gospels were not written by the traditional first-century authors and were given these attributions only much later in history, it is not evidentially reasonable. If skeptics were willing to give the Gospels the same “benefit of the doubt” they are willing to give other ancient documents, the Gospels would easily pass the test of authorship.

  THE TEMPLE DESTRUCTION IS PREDICTED

  While the absence of any description of the temple’s destruction can reasonably be interpreted as a piece of circumstantial evidence supporting the early dating of the New Testament accounts, skeptics sometimes use this fact to make just the opposite case. Many have proposed that Jesus’s prediction related to the destruction was inserted to legitimize the text and make it appear that He had some prophetic power. If this was the case, the Gospels would clearly date to after the event (post AD 70), as the writers already knew the outcome before they cleverly inserted the prediction.

  BUT …

  This sort of skepticism is clearly rooted in the presupposition we described in chapter 1. If we begin from a position of philosophical naturalism (the presumption that nothing supernatural is possible), we have no choice but to describe the supernatural elements we find in the Gospels as lies. From a naturalistic perspective, prophetic claims are impossible. The skeptic, therefore, must find another explanation for Jesus’s prediction related to the temple; critics typically move the date of authorship beyond the date when the prophecy was fulfilled to avoid the appearance of supernatural confirmation. But as we described earlier, a fair examination of the evidence that supports supernaturalism must at least allow for the possibility of supernaturalism in the first place. The naturalistic bias of these critics prevents them from accepting any dating that precedes the destruction of the temple in AD 70 and forces them to ignore all the circumstantial evidence that supports the early dating.

  When explaining why the destruction of the temple itself was not included in the gospel record, skeptics have argued that the gospel writers intentionally omitted the fulfillment to make the accounts look like they were written early. But if this was the case, why were the gospel writers unafraid to describe the fulfillment of prophecy in other passages in the Gospels? Over and over again we see the fulfillment of Old Testament messianic prophecies that are attributed to Jesus in one manner or another. In addition to this, on several occasions Jesus predicted His own resurrection. The gospel writers readily described the fulfillment of these predictions in the resurrection accounts. Why would they be willing to describe this aspect of fulfilled prophecy, but shy away from discussing the destruction of the temple?

  In addition, Luke freely admitted that he was not an eyewitness to the events in his gospel. He told us from the onset that he was writing at some point well after the events actually occurred, working as a careful historian. Why not include the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple? There was no reason to be shy here. Other Old Testament authors wrote from a perspective that followed the events they described and were unafraid to say so. Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, for example, repeatedly reported on events that took place well before their written account; they often wrote that the conditions they were describing continued from the point of the event “to this day” (indicating the late point at which they were actually writing). Why wouldn’t Luke take a similar approach to the destruction of the temple, especially given the fact that he made no pretense about writing as a historian?

  While it is certainly possible that the Gospels were all written after the destruction of the temple, it is not evidentially reasonable. In fact, the primary motivation for denying the early authorship of the Gospels is simply the bias against supernaturalism that leads skeptics to redate the Scriptures to some point following the fulfillment of Jesus’s prophecy.

  THE ACCOUNTS ARE REPLETE WITH MIRACULOUS EVENTS

  Many critics have also pointed to the presence of the miraculous to make a case for late dating. Surely the miracles are works of fiction. If the gospel accounts
were written early, eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus would have exposed these miracles as fictitious, right? Much of this critical analysis comes from a literary discipline known as “form criticism.” Form critics attempt to classify portions of Scripture on the basis of their literary “type,” “pattern,” or “form.” Once these pieces are isolated within the larger narrative, form critics attempt to explain their origin. In the case of the Gospels, form critics have argued that the supernatural elements are different from those parts of the narrative that can be trusted as accurate history. They explain the “paradigms,”43 “sayings,”44 “miracle stories,”45 and “legends”46 as late additions inserted by local Christian communities to make a particular theological case or to present Jesus as something more than He was.

  BUT …

  By now you probably recognize that the presupposition of naturalism (and the bias against supernaturalism) is once again the impetus behind this criticism. The form critics of history (a movement that was most popular in the mid-twentieth century) simply rejected the possibility that any description of a miracle could be factually true. It turns out that it was the miraculous “content” of these passages, rather than their common literary style or form, that caused critics to identify the verses they thought should be removed or handled with suspicion. In fact, they often selected passages that were very different from one another in terms of their stylistic forms. Sometimes they identified passages that did not fit neatly into one of their categories (or appeared to be a blend of more than one literary form), and they often disagreed with one another about the identity of particular types of literary forms and passages. They did agree on one thing, however: passages that contain miraculous events were not to be taken seriously as part of the original narrative.