Subject: Authorship of NT documents
Central Theme: Three criteria for determining authorship of documents
Objective/Rationale: Every Christian can learn to defend the authorship of the NT
documents by learning about the three WAYS experts date documents
Way #1: Internal evidence of attribution
Way #2: External evidence of attribution
Way #3: Internal evidence of content
Slide 1
The title of this teaching is, “Authority and Authenticity” and our question for the day is,
“How do we know that the people who it is claimed wrote the New Testament, actually
wrote it?” This is an important question because one of the main ways people try to
undermine the authority of the Bible is by claiming they were not written by the people
whose names are on the books.
Why is it important for us to know that Matthew really wrote Matthew, that Paul really
wrote Romans, Galatians?
If that is true, then our basis for trust in these documents can be seriously impaired. No
one trusts a forger.
Slide 2
On 2nd slide see list – italics = questioned; Hebrews special case, anon. but see 1/2 NT
We won’t have time here to deal with defending all of these, but I want to lay out a few
general principles for how authorship of an ancient document is determined by secular
historians, and then we’ll look at some sample arguments about one of these books, and
make some comparisons.
Start by setting a control by picking a secular doc from ancient world – do that, intro one
of the greatest historians of anc Rome
Slide 3
LCaes!
Slide 4
Tacitus was a Roman hist lived from around 55 to 117 AD, and he’s considered to be the
most accurate of Roman historians. He wrote several works but he is best known for two
historical works called the Annals and the Histories, which together cover several years
of Roman history in the first century. Tacitus even mentions Jesus in one of his books,
which is very interesting on its own.
For this lesson we’re going to take a close look at one of his works, the Annals. We do
not have ALL of the books of the Annals, some have been lost, but the ones we have
cover Roman history from the Emperor Tiberius (around the time of Jesus) to Claudius
(around the 40s-50s AD) up through Nero’s reign in the 60s. I choose the Annals because
all modern historians agree that Tacitus wrote it. Now that says that if the evidence for
the Annals is good enough to say Tacitus wrote it, then a document with better evidence
should have no questions about its authorship.
Slide 5, Slide 6
Second, Matthew. Third GThom – control, no one thinks Thom author
Slide 7
Way #1: Internal evidence of attribution
Set stage with modern work – LS – who wrote C4C?
How do we know who wrote – names – same for ancient doc: first thing we look at is, whose
name is on it?
what might cause doubt? Secret warehouse at publishers, bunch of copies of C4C that
looked like this:
Slide 8
If old enough, MIGHT raise doubts. But there are no copies of c4c by ET, all of them say
LS.
Slide 9
When we look at our documents – T, M, Th – they all stack up as equal. Every copy of Annals
says, at beginning, “The Annals of Tacitus” – Matthew, “TGaM”.
Now that’s pretty straightforward, but I want to make one imp point from this. You’ll often hear it
said, “The gospels are anonymous” – no one’s name is on them. False. Name of Matthew, and
other gosp writers and NT docs, appears at beginning of every copy we have from ancient times.
If we found a copy of Matthew with no name, or someone else’s name, there might be some
reason to question whether Matt was author. As it is, ev for Matt is as good on this point as it is
for Tacitus Ann. And here’s an imp point: Nowhere else in Ann does it ever again say that he Tac
the author. Just at the beginning. If that evid is good for Tacitus, good for Matt.
Now of course that’s not all there is to it. We have to admit that same is true for Thom So we
need to look deeper to see whether this positive evidence bears out. So let’s look at 2 nd line of
evidence.
Slide 10
Way #2: External evidence of attribution
Strobel editor says he didn’t write c4c – but all evidence is clear
Slide 11
Let’s look at how our three ancient documents stack up. The Annals were probably
published in 116 AD. The first mention we have of Tacitus writing anything, by name,
comes from the third century – between 200 and 300 AD, 100 years or more later. A
Christian writer named Tertullian gives Tacitus credit not for the Annals, but for his other
historical work, the Histories.
As the years pass there are a number of signs that different writers knew of Tacitus or
read his work, but we do not get a clear indication that he wrote the Annals from any of
these. Some do refer to the Histories, the other work, but not the Annals. Around 400 AD
author named Sulpicius has clearly used the Annals as a source, but he does not name
Tacitus as the author. About the same time, a church writer named Jerome says that
Tacitus wrote a history of the Caesars in 30 books – that happens to match perfectly a
desc of the Annals and the Histories. So it is not until 400 AD, about 300 years later, that
we have an external affirmation that Tacitus wrote Annals – and it isn’t a direct
confirmation, as in saying, “Tacitus wrote this.”
Slide 12
What about Matthew? All evidence is clear: Starting in the early second century with a
church author named Papias, there is unanimous testimony that Matthew wrote Matthew.
After that we have numerous writers and commentators of the church who take
Matthew’s authorship of Matthew for granted.
Slide 13
When we come to Thomas, though, things change. Several church writers – not many -mention GThom, and their view is unanimous that it is a forgery. So on our chart, here is
how things stack up
Slide 14
(sum)
Let me stop here and make a point of comparison. A lot of people doubt Matthew wrote
Matthew. No one doubts that Tacitus wrote Annals. The first copies of Matthew we have
come from the third century, about 150 years after he wrote, and they all from then on
say he wrote it. The first copies of Annals we have come from about the 11th century,
1000 years after Tacitus wrote. All do say he wrote it.
We have hundreds of copies of Matthew from the third through the tenth century with his
name on it. We have less than half a dozen copies of the Annals from that same period.
The first mention we have from an outside writer of Matt writing his gospel comes from a
quote made in the fourth century, of Papias, who wrote in the early 2nd century – less than
100 years after Matt wrote. It was 300 years before we could find a writer, Jerome, whose
words indicated that Tacitus wrote the Annals. Who superior?
If the Gospels are treated consistently, there will be no question at all about who wrote
them.
Slide 15
Way #3: Internal evidence of content
New book by LS – no, not really. Why would we think not his? Know what he writes –
popular but serious books on apol. This would not be like LS. And we can often look at
things like content, subject matter, and writing style and say, “this person could not be the
author”.
Crazy example: If we read in the Annals of Tacitus that Emperor Nero of first century
Rome opened a refrigerator, took out a burrito, and stuck it in the microwave oven, we
have some cause to doubt a second-century author like Tacitus was responsible for that
material! On the other hand, Tacitus was a government official of Rome, and we would
expect from this that he would sound educated. He would not have a work full of spelling
errors; he would get governmental terms right (but maybe not, say, farming terms, not a
farmer). In other words, it would SOUND like someone like Tacitus wrote this stuff.
Slide 16
Now on that point, there’s a caveat that will apply not to any work we will look at today,
but which comes into play sometimes in works like Colossians and the Pastorals, and that
is, that in the ancient world, people often made use of scribes to write things down for
them. Writing wasn’t a simple matter of whipping out pen and paper back then; it was
hard work, and sometimes, even if you were literate, you just didn’t feel like doing the
work. Or sometimes, you weren’t able to. For example, the Pastoral letters are often said
to be in a different style than Paul writes elsewhere. That’s disputable, but we should note
that Paul says in these letters that he is writing from prison. Now if he’s in chains (hands
up) how’s he writing? It’s quite probable that he had someone write the letters for him in
this case, and then “signed off” on them after he looked them over. In the case of the
Pastorals, a good case can be made that Luke wrote them.
But the point I want to make from this is: Style of writing can be a positive indicator of
authorship, but it is NOT always good as a negative indication of who was behind the
material. Indeed, though I made that joke about LS earlier, theoretically, it isn’t
impossible that LS gets his kicks on the side writing juvenile horror fiction. As it
happens, I’m a good example of why this sort of test doesn’t always work. I write articles
and books on serious matters of apologetics. I use the works of people with more letters
after their name than this sentence. But on the side, I also do this:
Slide 17
I write and draw my own anthropomorphic web comics. Maybe LS could also write
juvenile horror stories if he wanted to. We just can’t make snap judgments because
people are not robots and don’t always write and act the same way all the time. (book of
Is – 2-3 authors -- upbeat vs gloomy)
Slide 18
Now let’s see how our documents stack up when it comes to this kind of evidence. I
have a plus sign by Tacitus. There is no dispute about his work; everyone agrees that it
sounds and reads like someone like Tacitus.
When it comes to Matthew, though, you see I have a question mark. That’s because this
is where critics have raised a lot of questions about whether Matthew could have
authored his Gospel. What we’ll do next is take a look at some of the objections that have
been made to Matthew’s authorship. Some of these, I have to warn you, will seem very
silly. But they are also the best that critics of the Bible can come up with.
Slide 19
Matthew’s gospel has “burrito” problems. In other words, he says things that it is
assumed the historical Matthew who walked with Jesus would not have known. The
majority of these are things that it is presumed Matthew could not say because he’d be
dead. Matthew walked with Jesus as late as the 30s AD, and people then usually lived to
be no more than 35 or 40. So if Matthew’s Gospel shows knowledge of things say, past
65-70 AD, it is argued that Matthew himself could not have written it.
Knowledge of the war against Rome. Critics cite several passages in Matthew such as
Matthew 24, as betraying knowledge of the Roman War in 70 AD.
Well, in essence there is nothing to the critical objections here except that they beg the
question of whether Jesus was able to predict the future accurately. Now if you begin
with that assumption, that no one can do miracles or make predictions of the future, then
you haven’t considered the evidence but dismissed it based on what you already believe.
But if that doesn’t move you, let me make another point. For Jesus to predict the
destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 33 AD would be like someone predicting
after 2001 that we’d someday go to war against Iraq. It wasn’t that hard to conclude. In
fact, the Jewish historian Josephus records an example of another prophet who predicted
the Roman invasion about 10 years before it happened, and it wasn’t any harder or easier
to see the war coming then.
Some wars aren’t hard to see coming. In 1847 an America politician named John
Calhoun said that if a certain law about slavery was passed, it would cause “political
revolution, anarchy, and civil war.” The Civil War started 14 years later. But no one
thinks that Calhoun’s words were actually written in 1870.
References "to this day." In verses 27:8 (That is why that field even today is called the
Field of Blood.) and 28:15 , Matthew refers to things happening in 30 AD that are still as
they are "to this day”.
But how long can we wait before saying "to this day"? Would not 30 years (a 60 date for
Matthew) be sufficient? Or 35 (a 65 date)? In 1977 the US gave the Panama Canal to
Panama. Can we say that Panama owns the canal “even to this day”? There’s not an
objective standard for the use of the phrase established, so this is groundless. I’ll go
further: It’s a nitpick.
Matthew reflects Judaism of the time after 70. Several elements; just one:
The Matthean emphasis on the Pharisees, as found in Matthew 23. The Pharisees were
the dominant group in Judaism after 70 AD, so it is argued that since Matthew mentions
the Pharisees so much, he reflects a time after 70 and so once again is beyond the lifespan
of a historical Matthew. Well, the Saducees are mentioned 7 times in Matthew, which is
as many times as in the rest of the NT documents together, and they lost power after 70
AD. Taking that into account, you’d have to argue that Matthew's treatment of Judaism
on this point reflects a time BEFORE 70! Beyond this, one might also ask how the critics
know that this would constitute "excessive" reference to the Pharisees for a pre-70
document if they don't have a pre-70 document to make a comparison to! In other words,
how many times should Matthew mention the Pharisees if the critics are right? Is there a
cutoff point? Is it like, mention them 5 times, he can be before 70, but 6 times, he’s after
70?
Slide 20
Now let’s round this off with a look at how Thomas doesn this test of internal evidence.
fail, badly. mostly sayings of Jesus. The problem is that the Jesus of these documents
does not sound like a Jesus who preached in first century Jewish Palestine. There ARE
sayings that are much the same or similar to the ones in the canonical Gospels, and it can
be explained that they are taken from there. But other sayings don’t sound right for the
historical Jesus under any scenario. Thomas:
7 Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human.
And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."
22 …Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner
like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you
make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female
be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in
place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."
114 Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life."
Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living
spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the
kingdom of Heaven."
These kinds of sayings would have made no sense in first century Jewish Palestine – they
are “burrito” sayings. Where they do make sense is in the mouth of Jesus as re-envisioned
by a much later group called the Gnostics. They were kind of like the New Age people of
their day. These sayings give us our hint that GThom isn’t from an authentic witness to
the life of Jesus.
After all that, all I can say is, “huh?” This doesn’t sound like Jesus, it sounds like a
character from Dragonball Z!
Slide 21
Conclude, questions?