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.