Historicity of the Gospels

The earliest account of the authorship of the Gospels is the one given by Papias of Hierapolis, which accords with the Orthodox account. The most widely asserted alternative is the Q theory: the reason the Q theory is preferred, is because it is seen as impossible the Gospels were written before the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem; the reason this is seen as impossible, is because they predict it. Now before we address the Q theory, let me explain to you why the Gospel of John seems so different from the synoptic Gospels: it is because the synoptic Gospels are written for a wide audience, including Catechumens (Christians who are not fully initiated), but the Gospel of John was written exclusively for the initiated--all Catechumens would be dismissed right after the Peace of God (and still are in many Orthodox parishes), and right before the credal confession (the final development of this Creed would be the Nicene Creed, but the first fourteen verses of the Gospel of John might well have been a record of one of the earlier ones); the priest or deacon then shouted (and still does in the Orthodox tradition), "The doors!" because a guard was sent to keep a look out in case anyone was coming by and to give the alarm; this was such a serious issue because the credal confession made it explicitly clear that Christ is God; to consider him the Messiah who rose from the dead did not technically warrant death in ancient Jewish society, but saying he's God certainly would; now the Synoptic Gospels, being privy to Catechumens and even the general public, preferred to merely imply (albeit quite strongly at times) that Christ is God, whereas the Gospel of John is written without such caution, being intended exclusively for the initiated; and now you know why the Gospel of John seems so different from the Synoptic Gospels. This is also why John 6 gives significant elaboration on the Eucharist, which is the central Christian Mystery partaken of after the Catechumens are dismissed; he explains its reality, a reality that scandalizes even the Apostles.

Now, let's address the Q theory: it holds that the synoptic Gospels cover a great deal of the same material, and therefore had a common source. First of all, it is actually a mark in their *favor* that they cover the same material, insofar as reliability goes, but here it is used against them; however, I will dispute the hypothesis based on this: the Gospels phrase many things differently, and it is altogether more plausible that they are just different people telling the same story, as opposed Sto one source being incorporated into three. Is there any good reason to believe the alternative to the Q Theory, the account by Papias? Yes, there is; first of all, the Four Gospels stand up to what they purport to be. The Gospel of John stands up to being by John, since it has personal details, most particularly Christ entrusting John with his mother; the alternative to believing this happened, would be to suggest the Gospel is not written by John, but by someone simply lying and claiming his name. One piece of evidence used to support this is John giving a different date for the Crucifixion, but in fact John doesn't: Leviticus 23:5 says Passover starts on the 14th day of the first month, which is the day the Passover Lamb is killed--Jewish time reckoning (as well as Orthodox Liturgical reckoning) gives the evening as the *start* of a day, meaning the Mystical Supper takes place on the fist day of Passover, and so does the Crucifixion, with Christ being entombed right before the end of the day. To cement the Gospels, however, the best source is the Gospel of Luke: it is written by the same author as Acts (in fact they were probably originally one work), who participated in Acts judging by the use of first-person plural later into the work. Now, why should we believe this author is who he indicates he is? Well, if the author were a fraud, why would attribute the work to Luke? He'd attribute it to someone who had a great deal of authority, yet he didn't. Secondly, the Gospel being Luke's coincides with its more detailed account that would come from women: Matthew and John are firsthand accounts, besides that they include what the disciples would have heard from those they knew, with the Gospel of Mark being entirely based on Mark's conversations with the Apostles about what they saw first-hand. Luke, on the other hand, would have to be an assembling of accounts, Luke goes and talks to different people about different things and weaves his Gospel out of them. So taking all this together, the Gospels are at least consistent with being authored by whom they are attributed to. What really puts the nail in coffin of the Q theory, is that it requires Mark to be the earliest Gospel other than Q, and to be the other common source used by Matthew and Luke, which is wrong: when Christ says it is not when goes in which defiles, but that which comes out, Mark 7:19 has the gloss explaining in saying this, Christ made all foods clean, something that was only universally accepted after the Council of Jerusalem; Matthew has no such gloss, indicating that it is the earliest Gospel, and predates the Council of Jerusalem. If Matthew were written after the Council of Jerusalem, and was using Mark as a source for this saying, surely it would have included this gloss. There is also another gloss, in Matthew 19:29 says those who leave mothers and brothers and wives and fathers and sisters and houses and fields for Christ's sake will receive a hundred times in the age to come; Mark 10: 29-30 says the same thing, but then adds a parenthetical gloss right after Christ says a hundredfold, saying "now" repeating what Christ just said, explaining "with persecutions", (as in you will lose these things in persecutions, maybe these things might even be doing the persecuting); then the parenthetical gloss ends, and Christ finishes "in age to come". Mark was clearly written after the persecution of Christians became intense, whereas Matthew was written before then. Rather than Matthew and Luke using Mark as a source, it makes more sense to say Mark used Matthew and Luke as sources (although I will add that I hold to Papias's account, and believe Mark to predate Luke, and Matthew were used as a source, it was secondary to Peter's testimony). Finally, Matthew was clearly written in Hebrew and translated (as Papias says), unlike the other Gospels, because it uses Hebrew syntax and tense; for instance, see the very Greek syntax of Mark 15:21: "And they compel passing a Simon [a passing Simon] of Cyrene, coming from country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, that [he might] carry the cross of his [Christ's]." This sort of syntax sounds natural in Greek (where inflection and declension almost completely determine grammatical relations), but in English or Aramaic, languages that rely heavily on syntax to express grammatical relations, it's chore to parse (and remember there was no punctuation, lowercase and uppercase, or even word spaces, in ancient times); Matthew 27:32, by contrast, reflects a Aramaic or Hebrew syntax: "Going forth and they found a man of Cyrene, named Simon: him they compelled to carry the cross of his [Christ's]." Here is another example, Mark 1:12: "And immediately the spirit him drives into the wilderness." Compare the Aramaic Matthew 4:1: "Then he, Jesus, was led into wilderness by the spirit." In Mark, the indirect object is adjacent to the object, which is quite normal in Greek, but generally not feasible in Aramaic or Hebrew.). Finally, Matthew was clearly written in Hebrew and translated (as Papias says), unlike the other Gospels, because it uses Hebrew syntax and tense; for instance, see the very Greek syntax of Mark 15:21: "And they compel passing a Simon [a passing Simon] of Cyrene, coming from country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, that [he might] carry the cross of his [Christ's]." This sort of syntax sounds natural in Greek (where inflection and declension almost completely determine grammatical relations), but in English or Aramaic, languages that rely heavily on syntax to express grammatical relations, it's chore to parse (and remember there was no punctuation, lowercase and uppercase, or even word spaces, in ancient times); Matthew 27:32, by contrast, reflects a Aramaic or Hebrew syntax: "Going forth and they found a man of Cyrene, named Simon: him they compelled to carry the cross of his [Christ's]." Here is another example, Mark 1:12: "And immediately the spirit him drives into the wilderness." Compare the Aramaic Matthew 4:1: "Then he, Jesus, was led into wilderness by the spirit." In Mark, the indirect object is adjacent to the object, which is quite normal in Greek, but generally not feasible in Aramaic or Hebrew.

Now, let's see if it's likely they were: Saint James, the Brother of the Lord, was attested to as an historical figure in Paul's Epistles and Acts, he is the first bishop of Jerusalem, and presides over the Council of Jerusalem. Josephus (who also describes him as Christ's Brother) is the earliest source attesting to his martyrdom. So it's fairly reasonable to believe that Saint James the Just existed. Did he die for a purely fabricated brother? Unlikely. But do the Gospels match up with what James and Paul and the Apostles thought of Christ? Judging by the Epistles of Paul, Christ's death and Resurrection were always a belief of the Orthodox Church, that was core. so it is safe to say James believed that about his brother (who appeared to him, according to Paul). Could this have all been a conspiracy, a lie that Christ ever existed (even though historians seem to have no difficulty believing Pythagoras and Buddha existed)? I really don't think so, because the assertion the Gospel of Matthew defends against is not that Christ didn't exist, but that his body was stolen from his tomb by his disciples (Matthew 28:15). Furthermore, if Christ were fabricated, it seems highly unlikely that the traditional witnesses of his empty tomb would be women, who were much more lowly regarded in Jewish society than in even Roman society, and it would bizarre to Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy member of the council, would be ascribed the honor of providing Christ with a tomb, when those were just the sort of people Christians were pitted against--it would seem more logical to vilify all members of the council, the same council that would later put Saint James the Just to death. Taken altogether, the most likely hypothesis to explain all this is that Christ was a real person and was really put to death. But...was he really Resurrected?

The explain Christ's Resurrection, three explanations are generally employed. 1. It was a myth about him that gained momentum with time. 2. It was fabricated outright. 3. It was a mass delusion.

1. This is pretty much disproved by the Resurrection by an integral belief in the earliest sources, among the core leaders of Christianity.
2. This is extremely unlikely, because Apostles had no material gain (in Paul's case, he explicitly refused any sort of material compensation, and did day labor to support himself as he ministered). They certainly had no sexual compensation. And they weren't looking to establish themselves as rulers of Israel, so they had no compensation power.
3. First off, know that we are not talking about one cult leader who is delusions and seeing things, we are talking about many Apostles (as well as hundreds of other people, according to Corinthians) who saw Christ and talked to him. This isn't just Paul or Peter being crazy and convincing other people to follow them. Second off, recall that all the Apostles were skeptical of reports Christ's Resurrection until they saw it with their own eyes (and Thomas was skeptical even then). These are very contrary to what you'd find with a cult build on a delusion, it's not built on man preaching a delusion, it's built on numerous people being convinced of something after witnessing it, and many of them highly skeptical. Thirdly, Paul was a man of great authority and probably status, who forfeited all that to become a Christian: he went from the highest status to the lowest, he even had Roman citizenship. He gave up everything and got stoned and whipped and so on. It stands to reason that his account of conversion was not fabricated, because it must have taken something pretty strong--but was he delusional?

It does not seem likely you could delude yourself out of your eyesight for three days, and then delude it back into focus when an Apostle places his hands on you (and the scales hindering his eyesight are material and visible). Fourthly, the tomb was actually empty (or else Matthew would be defending against the assertion that it wasn't, not that the body was stolen), which could only be explained either by a conspiracy on the part of the Apostles, or by Christ actually being Resurrected. But if it were a conspiracy on the part of the Apostles, surely *they* would be the ones to discover it, not women, since women were considered less than worthless as witnesses (Josephus says they are apt to lie out of hope for gain, or fear of punishment, and the Talmud says it is like asking a robber for testimony).

All this, taken together, while not proof positive of Christ, makes it quite reasonable to affirm him.