Jesus Christ: Expert Actor or God Himself?-Part 2

By: Dr. John Ankerberg; ©2001

Critics claim we can’t trust the Gospel accounts about Jesus because they contain merely “legends” about what He said and did. Is there any evidence to counter that claim? Dr. Ankerberg gives examples from well-known scholars who dispute those notions.

Jesus Christ: Expert Actor or God Himself?-Part 2

Now, you probably realize Acts is the second book that Luke wrote, right? Luke says in Acts 1:1: “In my former book, O Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach.” So if Acts is 62 A.D. and the former book is the Gospel of Luke, we’ve got to have the Gospel of Luke earlier than the book of Acts. Now, how early do we put it? Well, schol­ars say that probably we should put Luke right about 58 A.D.

But now scholars say that Matthew came before Luke and so we’ve got to make that earlier. So we have Acts at 62 A.D. and Luke now is 58 A.D. A lot of the scholars are putting Matthew right around 50 A.D. Remember, Jesus died about 30/33 A.D.

And then if you put Matthew at 50 A.D., 90 percent of the scholars say that Matthew and Luke borrowed some information from Mark. So Mark’s got to be the first one. So if Matthew’s at 50 A.D., we’ve got to put the writing of Mark earlier than that so he could borrow.

How early do they put Mark? Well, William F. Albright said that in his opinion Mark should be put at 45 A.D. And then the skeptical scholar, John A. T. Robinson at Cam­bridge, said that in his opinion it ought to be put as early as 40 A.D. Estrada and White, two textual critics that have worked on the Dead Sea Scroll materials, have just come out with a book about Father O’Callahan in Spain who has been examining the Dead Sea Scrolls. Father O’Callahan found in the Dead Sea Scrolls some papyri that have been dated at 50 A.D. And lo and behold, he was examining some words scholars had dated at 50 A.D., but didn’t know where they had come from. And as he was looking at these words, some passages from the book of Mark came to his mind and he says, “Could it be?” So he put the verses up on the screen and measured and counted the word and letter sequence of the words in Mark and compared them with the words in the manuscripts. He concluded that this was somehow a copy of the book of Mark. He believed it was put into one of the caves at Qumran, Cave 7, and stored with other Jewish material, all of which was dated 50 A.D.

The New York Times blew a gasket when they saw that because they said this would crush the entire world of scholarship concerning the New Testament. They all have Mark written by some imaginary character 200 years down the pike. His name wasn’t even Mark. He didn’t even know Jesus. He wasn’t an eyewitness. But now, all of a sudden you’ve got a copy dated at 50 A.D. They don’t know what to do with it. All I want to show you is that scholarship today is dating these books back in time. But what happens when they do that?

The fellows that worked on Homer’s Iliad found out that it takes about 150 years for legend to creep up. You have to have a period of time. If you have the New Testament documents, Mark, coming out at 40 A.D. according to Albright and A. T. Robinson, and Jesus died about 33, you’ve got only seven years. You don’t have enough time for myth to grow in seven years because the eyewitnesses were still alive. These books would not have come down to us, they would not have been passed on, they would not have been accepted if the stuff was phony. So the early dating of these books tells me that we have accurate, historical information and that the eyewitnesses are telling us the direct truth.

Now, there’s another way to check them besides the dating. You can check them archaeologically. There was a fellow at the school of Tubingen in Germany by the name of Sir William Ramsey who was a skeptic. He didn’t even believe that Luke was an eyewit­ness of what he was writing about. But he went to the Holy Land to do the digs and brought along his assumption of higher criticism. But as he kept on turning over the sand he started seeing the stuff that he was unearthing. He discovered that what Luke said was right and what he had originally assumed wasn’t right. And it finally got to the point where he started trusting Luke. If Luke said it, even though they hadn’t found it yet, he went with Luke. Now, let me tell you why.

Think back to the 60s when we used certain language that we don’t use today. Remem­ber the kids used “cool” and “groovy” and stuff like that? Well, people don’t use those words today. So if you found a book with the words “cool” and “groovy,” etc., in it, you would conclude that it was not written in the 90s, it was probably written in the 60s. Okay? Same thing with Ramsey. He found that Luke used words to describe governors and kings in the book of Acts that nobody else knew about. But when they dug up the stones that were dated about 30 to 50 A.D., they found out that those stones used the same language that Luke used. So all of a sudden Ramsey got the idea, Luke couldn’t have lived 200 years later, because people didn’t use those words then; they only used those words in 50 A.D. The only way Luke could know that would be if he actually lived in 50 A.D. That’s what archaeology tells us.

Not only that, but listen to this: Ramsey checked out Luke when he cited 32 different countries, 54 different cities, nine islands, several rulers, and you know what he found out about Luke? In all of that data, he never made one mistake!

So, Ramsey said, “Luke is not only a historian, but he is a historian of the first rank. He should be placed with the very greatest of historians because he was careful in document­ing, in the language of his day, exactly what took place.” That’s what Ramsey concluded. You can find out how Ramsey got converted to Christianity by looking at Luke in Ramsey’s book St. Paul, the Traveler, which is in many stores.

So we have accurate information because of the early dating; we have eyewitnesses that claim to be on the scene, and we find out that archaeology confirms the accuracy of the writers. We’ve discovered that the manuscripts go right back to the time of the Apostles themselves. All of this tells us we have accurate information.

But then let me talk about another area that you’ve heard about. Some people have said, “You can’t trust your New Testament documents because they were written at a time when the scribes wrote on papyri that would disappear. Shortly after they were written, they had to copy them and we have copies and copies of copies that have come down to us. Now the fact is, we know from the area of textual criticism that there were errors made. How do we know that we actually have what the disciples wrote?”

This is a good question and I’d like to give you a little history lesson. If you’re going to throw out the New Testament documents, you’re going to have to throw out all of ancient history. Did you hear what I just said? You’re going to have to throw out Aristotle, Plato, Thucydides, Homer, the classics. Throw them all out. On what basis?

Do you know when Plato wrote his book? Plato wrote sometime between 427 and 347 B.C. Let’s say that you’re Plato at about 350 B.C. and you have written on the papyri, the parchments, and it starts coming down through the years. When is it that the museums have dated the first copy that survived from the time that Plato wrote? The first copy that survived is dated at 900 A.D. That means that from 900 A.D. back to zero and then up to 350 B.C. you have a 1,250-year span of time where you have no documents whatsoever.

Okay? At least a 1,200-year gap between the first manuscript that Plato wrote until we get to those which now exist in the museums. Keep that in mind.

How about for Aristotle? He wrote about 384 to 322 A.D. The manuscript we have of Aristotle is dated at 1100 A.D. So, we have a 1,400 year time span for his writings.

Thucydides wrote about 496 to 406 B.C. We have his surviving first manuscripts dated at about 1000 A.D., for a 1,400 year time span.

Sophocles wrote about 496 to 406 A.D. Earliest surviving manuscript is dated about 1000 A.D., for a 1,400 year time span. We have nothing between those times.

Now, how do we know that during that 1,400 year period somebody didn’t change what Plato said? How do we know that they didn’t change what Aristotle said? It’s just amazing to me that the people in the classics think, even though they’ve got a 1,400 year time span between the originals and the last surviving copies, that they have no doubt that the writ­ings that we have right now are essentially what Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, and all these men wrote.

Now let’s take that over into the biblical world. How long is the time span between the time that the Apostles wrote and the earliest manuscripts that actually survived?

Well, the John Ryland’s Papyri was found in Egypt. It was composed in Asia Minor so the fact is that these manuscripts had to travel down to Egypt to get there. When did the scholars date them? The five verses from the Gospel of John are dated at 117 A.D. Now, if John wrote about 80 A.D., you’ve got about 37 years in there in terms of a gap. Thirty-seven years.

The Bodmer Papyri are dated at about 175 to 225 A.D. They contain most of Luke and John. They’re the earliest known copies of Luke that we’ve got.

The Chester Beatty Papyri were dated at 250 A.D. They consist of three codices that contain most of the New Testament.

Major manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus are dated at 325 A.D., Codex Sinaiticus, 350 A.D. Now, why do I say that? If you actually have a manuscript sitting in the museum right now that’s dated at 117 A.D. and it was actually supposed to be written at around 75 to 80 A.D., that means there’s 37 years between the time that the Apostle John actually originally wrote it and the first copy that has survived. Thirty seven years versus 1,400 years! And they’re saying our stuff is bad! The Bodmer Papyri, if it is dated at 175 and Luke and John came out around 70 to 80 A.D., then you’ve got a 95-year period of time in be­tween. For the Chester Beatty Papyri we have only a 180-year gap. So, here we have the whole New Testament 180 years after it was written. Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus have a 255-year gap. But again, here we have the entire New Testament spread out before us.

Now, do you smell a rat? If critics are going to say our stuff is not accurate because there’s such a long time period between the time the guys wrote it and the fact of the first manuscripts that have come down to us, if you’re going to say our time, 35 to 200 years, is long, then what are you going to do with Plato at 1,400 years? You see why I say, if you’re going to throw out our stuff, you’ve got to throw out all of ancient history?

For more information:

“If Jesus Wasn’t God, Then He Deserved an Oscar”:

https://www.jashow.org/articles/apologetics-2/proof-for-jesus/if-jesus-wasnt-god-then-he-deserved-an-oscar/

Read Part 3