"Are the Gospels Myth?"

My article for This Rock magazine bearing that title is now available online; it appeared in the March 2008 edition of TR:

January 11, 49 B.C. is one of the most famous dates in the history of ancient Rome, even of the ancient world. On that date Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River, committing himself and his followers to civil war. Few, if any, historians doubt that the event happened. On the other hand, numerous skeptics claim that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are myth and have no basis in historical fact. Yet, as historian Paul Merkley pointed out two decades ago in his article, "The Gospels as Historical Testimony," far less historical evidence exists for the crossing of the Rubicon than does for the events depicted in the Gospels:

There are no firsthand testimonies to Caesar's having crossed the Rubicon (wherever it was). Caesar himself makes no mention in his memoirs of crossing any river. Four historians belonging to the next two or three generations do mention a Rubicon River, and claim that Caesar crossed it. They are: Velleius Paterculus (c.19 B.C. – c.A.D. 30); Plutarch (c.A.D. 46-120); Suetonius (75-160); and Appian (second century). All of these evidently depended on the one published eyewitness account, that of Asinius Pollio (76 B.C.-c. A.D. 4) which account has disappeared without a trace. No manuscript copies for any of these secondary sources is to be found earlier than several hundred years after their composition. (The Evangelical Quarterly 58, 319-336)

Merkley observed that those skeptics who either scoff at the historical reliability of the Gospels or reject them outright as "myth" do so without much, if any, regard for the nature of history in general and the contents of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in particular.

The Distinctive Sign

So, are the four Gospels "myth"? Can they be trusted as historical records? If Christianity is about "having faith," do such questions really matter? The latter question is, I hope, easy to answer: Yes, it obviously matters very much if the narratives and discourses recorded by the four evangelists are about real people and historical events.

Read the entire article...

Comments

[LJ]

It's all about the Resurrection. Without it Christianity would be a foot-note in Jewish history, and if the Gospels survived, their historicity would only be a debate in some dry little corner of academe.

He is risen, Hallelujah, He is risen!

[Carl Olson]

Exactly right, LJ. Indeed, He is Risen!

[CPKS]

This reminds me of an amusing tutorial I once had with my philosophy tutor, who was (a) an expert on Plato and (b) well known for his atheist sympathies. One week I had to do an essay for him on the subject of a Socratic dialogue. I wrote my essay entirely in terms of what Plato taught and believed; whenever I quoted Socrates, I wrote something like "Plato's Socrates says..." or "Plato puts the following words in Socrates's mouth...".

As I read my essay to him, my tutor got increasingly fidgety, until he interrupted with annoyance: "You seem to be implying that Socrates was some kind of literary invention!"

"Yes - isn't that right?" I responded with mock innocence.

"Certainly not - for example, his existence was attested by Xenophon, who was a renowned ancient historian."

"Ah, yes, Xenophon did record one or two Socratic dialogues. But surely he was just using a well-established literary genre. After all, Hume was an extremely careful historian, but nobody thinks that his Dialogues were a verbatim report of two real, historical people."

My tutor was not amused. "But that's... absurd. Nobody has ever, ever questioned the historical existence of Socrates."

"Oh." My tone was light: "Yet apart from the very stylized dialogues of Plato and Xenophon, nobody has attested to it, so I find that strange. After all, there is far more widespread historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ, both from four different evangelists, at least two historians, and a very large oral tradition, with manuscripts dated to within sixty or seventy years of his death, and yet very many people question his historical existence."

After a brief internal struggle, my tutor shrugged and said "OK. I take your point. Carry on with your essay."

[Gibbons Burke]

Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ" answers this question compellingly and pretty well: No, the gospels are not myth.