Eyewitness to Jesus, pt 2

To continue my summary of Eyewitness to Jesus,

11. There is another fragment in Paris, containing parts of six chapters of St. Luke. After much argument, it has been decided that the Paris fragment was written by the same scribe or by a scribe from the same school as the Magdalen fragment. Thus the Gospel of Luke and Matthew are both of the same, early, date.

12. The Magdalen fragment is a codex not a scroll. In other words, it is an ancient book, with writing on both sides. Traditionally, any codex was automatically assumed to be after 250 or 300 AD. However, Martial wrote an epigram 1.2 describing the codex. That epigram was written in AD 84-86. Thus, codexes have been around since the middle of the first century.

13. The Roman Postal Service (RPS) was very effecient if you were part of the nobility or the public service. Letters could go from Corinth, Greece Puteoli, Italy in five days, and from Rome to Alexandria in three in good weather. Thessaloniki, Greece to Ascalon, Palestine in 12 days was also normal. I'm told that would be impressive, even today. In fact, since many Christians travled on the public roads for business, they could have carried the Gospel with them. Thus, once the Gospels were written they could have spread rapidly.

14. Examining the writing of the Dead Sea Scrolls and comparing it to the Magdalen manuscript, shows that both are from the time period. Since Qumran was destroyed in AD 68, the Matthew fragments must date from that time.

15. Documents from Masada, AD 73/74, also match the Magdalen script.

16. The Oxyrhychus Papyri also matches the Magdalen script. It is a legal document, signed and dated by four people. The date is the 12th year of Nero, which is AD 65/66.

17. Theide and D'Ancona list six evidence for the Hellenization of Jesus.
1. Matthew 13:55 calls Jesus a carpenter, tecton, which should be translated builder. This implies that He and Joseph may have helped build Sepphoris, a very Greek city with a Grecian theater.
2. In Mark 7:24-30, the Syro-Phonecian woman is described as Greek-speaking. That means that Jesus held his conversation with her in Greek. He was not limited to Aramaic, but was at least bilinqual.
3. In Mark 12:13-17, Jesus's discussion of taxes and Caesar's coins is only understandable in Greek. It can't be translated into Aramaic effectively. The coin itself of course was in Latin or Greek.
4. Jesus uses the words hyokrises and hypkritai. Both words mean actor in Greek. Jesus uses the words in new ways, but uses familar Greek words.
5. Jesus and Mary Magdalene hold their conversation in Greek until He calls her by name. Then she switches to Aramaic.
6. In Acts 26:14, Jesus quotes, or alludes to, a Greek play when speaking to Saul on the Damascus road.

18. In Luke 1:1-2, Luke refers to those who had written the previous Gospels as eyewitnesses and hyperetai. Hyperetai is translated ministers of the word or helpers. This is often used as the helpers, attendents, or servants in synogogues or attendants of kings or magistrates. In this case these are God's helpers who spread God's Good News.

19. Mark is called "The Hypertai" in Acts 13:5 when he goes on Paul's first missionary journey. This may imply that Mark had already written his Gospel by this point.

20. Secretaries in Rome were known to compose letters from mere notes or from separate draft paragraphs. However, they were still considered to have the authority of the author [ancient ghost writing]. Many of Paul's letters seem to have been written this way, with Paul signing the end of the letter.

21. Tertius is called a tachygraphos which means he wrote in shorthand.

22. As a tax collector, Matthew also would have been capable of using shorthand.

23. A sidenote is that Ezra is called a tachys in the Septuagint, which makes it a familiar word to the 1st century Jews.

24. In the Magdalen fragment, the following two verses have an interesting variation. See if you notice it in the verses below.

Matthew 26:22 And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Ld, is it I? 31 Then saith Js unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.

The abbreviated forms of two words are called nomina sacra or sacred names.

25. Abbreviations are common and systematic in Greek writing. However, the nomina sacra not only are abbreviations, but also indications that the word abbreviated refers to God.

26. Sacred names were common among the Jews (YHWH) but the early Christians were uncomfortable using them for Jesus out of respect for their Jewish brethren. After AD 62, when the Jews killed James the brother of Jesus, the split between the church and the Jews began. At that time the Christian scribes burned their bridges behind them and used the sacred names for Jesus and every reference to Him. This was a theological statement.

27. This split between the Church and Jews also was the time the church switched from scrolls (the Jewish preference) to codex (the Roman/Greek preference).

28. Colin Roberts argued that the sacred names was too systematic and too widespread to have started anywhere than in the church in Jerusalem. That means that it must have happened before AD66 when the Jewish revolt began.

Conclusion: While there is much in the book Eyewitness to Jesus, the core is this: many skeptics have tried to date the original Gospels as late, late enough that the facts of the story may not be accurate, late enough that miraculous events had been added to the story, late enough that a sincere teacher had been turned into the divine Messiah. The evidence from the Magdalen fragment is that the Gospels are not late, but early. By AD 60-75, not only had Matthew been written, but it had been copied repeatedly, transferrred from scroll to codex, had the sacred names abbreviated, and carried to Egypt. The same seems to be true for Luke. Mark had been written, copied, and transported to Qumran by AD 66. Thus the Gospels were written less than 30 years after the Crucifixion. Perhaps, even within 10 years of the Crucifixion. In that amount of time, no additional stories would have been added, and if they had, too many people were around who would have corrected the errors. The Gospels were written by Eyewitnesses of Jesus and written during a time when many other eyewitnesses were around. We can trust the Gospels to give us an accurate description of the Life of Jesus.

Eyewitness to Jesus

For Christmas my Mom gave me my own copy of a book I had borrowed from the library more than once. Last week I finished going through the book, Eyewitness to Jesus, with my pen in hand. I'm sharing my basic notes with you now, and will try to turn it into a flowing article later. These are the things that stood out to me.

The book is written by a scholar, Carsten Thiede, and a reporter, Matthew D'Ancona. Cartsen Thiede is a papyrologist who has redated a number of fragments of various Gospels much earlier than ever before. In the midst of his discussion, I learned a lot about the Gospel writers.

1. Matthew 10:23 points to a early date for Matthew. Matthew describes the Jesus fleeing from Jerusalem, but does not mention Pella which was a major destination for fleeing Jews in AD 66. If the Gospel was written later than that year, Pella would probably have been mentioned. [I think this has some flaws since Matthew is quoting Jesus and couldn't change the quote just because history added to his understanding of what would happen. However, he could have added a parenthetical note about Pella -- authors often did something like that.

2. I Corinthians is one of the oldest books of the Bible everyone agrees. I Corinthians 8:6 is a quote of an even older doctrine which states that Jesus is God. Jesus' divinity was not added after decades when the eyewitnesses had died.

3. Scrolls came with tags indicating what was inside the scroll -- like the title on the spine of a book. The first Gospel would have been called "The Gospel". When the second one was written, both Gospels would need labelled. If the church had been unclear who the authors were, there would have been a variety of labels on the Gospels. Instead, "Mark's Gospel" and "Matthew's Gospel" have always only been called that. Thus, the church, from the beginning, identified the four Gospel authors just as they do now.

4. Matthew was no just a "tax collector" he was a telones who was an official in charge of a customs station. Capernaum's customs station was a major border crossing, charging taxes on jisherman and good traveling along the Via Maris from Damascus to the Mediteranean and back. This indicates a man of high position, lots of money, fluency in language, and competent at shorthand.

5. Qumran scrap 7Q5 has twenty letters in five lines. One set of letters is nu/nu/eta/sigma. This is a strange combination of letters. Jose O'Callaghan noticed that the only Septuagint book that has that combination is I Macabees 11:67 in the word Gennesar which refers to the Sea of Galilee. Elsewhere it is always referred to as Chenereth or Chenara. The only other Greek work with that word is Mark 6:52-53. Of course, Mark wasn't written yet in AD 68 or at least it couldn't have been in Qumran. That was the conventional wisdom. O'Callaghan ignored the conventional wisdom and identified as these verses from Mark 52

For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened. 53 And when they had passed over, they came into the land of Gennesaret, and drew to the shore.

6. There are three problems with identifying 7Q5 as Mark 6:52-53 but Carsten Thiede responds to all three, making the identification more likely. That makes the date of the writing of Mark at least before AD 68 but possibly as early as AD 50.

7. Now to the Magdalen fragments. Here are the words from that manuscript

...poured it on his head, as he sat at meat. But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying,...Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought...Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, And said unto them, What will ye give me,...And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I? And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish,...saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written,...I will go before you into Galilee. Peter answered and said unto him,

These are all from Matthew 26.

8. Some have suggested Magdalen is from Q, the alleged collection of quotations that supposedly preceded the Gospels. However, this is a story, not just quotations.

9. Others have suggested Magdalen only describes the passion week. However, Barcelona has sister fragments from the same book with verses from Matthew 3 and 5.

10. Variants in a document from the accepted text of the New Testament can indicate a misidentification, a problem with the fragment, or evidence that it is even older than our accepted texts. Traditionally 26:22 ends with legein auto heis hekastos or

And very saddened every single one of them said to him

. Magdalen ends with hekastos auton which reads

And very saddened, each of them said.

The difference isn't obvious in English but the traditional reading implies that the disciples took turns asking if it was them. The Magdalen reading says that they were all asking simultaneously. The Magdalen version sounds more original actually.


I'll continue this tomorrow night, Lord willing. Stay tuned.