Recently we encountered a rather common reaction by some connected to this ministry when presented with certain facts concerning the New Testament that challenged its "inerrancy" and "infallibility." When people are exposed to such information after "believing otherwise since childhood" they often are shaken and make decisions which are less than wise in an over-reaction to what they have learned. Conservativism is always the best course to take, but when confronted with facts that challenge one's belief system and expose much of it as error, these newly "frustrated skeptics" usually voice repeatedly and make sweeping statements to the fact that since the New Testament (NT) has been shown to contain numerous errors and inaccurate accounts of both historical facts that the New Testament should not be used "at all." In other words, they believe since it can be shown to much less than inerrant and infallible; it has no value any longer. Such I believe is not the right course to take even when confronted with many errors, additions, and deletions concerning the religion of Judaism (not to mention the inclusion of multiple accounts of paganism mixed in with Judaism and passed off as "normative" Christianity). Let me say again that we at Bet Emet believe that the New Testament CANNOT be ignored in its entirety due to a "biased agenda" on the part of the early Church in their attempt to replace the religion of Yeshua with one of their own making (which is our legacy today).
What are we to do with such charges, but more than that, with the others who lack adequate understanding, knowledge, and stability in this area who are swayed by other's comments and totally desire to do away completely with the New Testament instead of studying to correctly interpret it? How reliable is the New Testament? What should be the role played by the New Testament in the life of an "informed believer" who has been awakened to the hidden truths within the New Testament which only consistent scholarship will reveal? Instead of letting "the knowledge of the truth set them free," too often these new initiates to conflicting truths that expose much of the New Testament as fable respond in panic and "lose their faith" instead of interpreting such experience as God removing the error from their life in order to draw them closer to Him and allowing them, maybe for the first time in their lives, to worship Him in Spirit and in TRUTH. With this as the goal I wish in this article to reveal to the average Christians the role of the New Testament for his life after he has come to such knowledge of the unreliability of the New Testament and is convinced of this fact from multiple attestations from facts, language, and history.
The skeptic who wishes to dismiss the entire NT as a "pious fraud" misunderstands the purpose and historical origins of the NT texts. Although NT contradictions exist concerning both Yeshua and Paul (changes regarding both what they originally believed and taught), it does not discredit the historical basis of the NT record of the New Testament event which is only the "record" of the oral tradition concerning the events recorded. However, not all is as simple as that, for we know from narrative criticism that many NT events were invented to tell a story about Yeshua (in particular to pit him against his religion and his religion against him; thus creating the need for a new religion, as well as mixing within Judaism elements of paganism and mystery religions). Please request newsletter #2 of the series "Jewish Origins Of Christianity" where beyond a doubt I prove to you by factual as well as historical analysis that events recorded in the New Testament COULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED because they involve "issues" where are easily provable as inaccurate when considering the religion of Judaism. We can be certain of this because of inaccuracies in dates, historical events, and things said about Judaism which are entirely incorrect thus revealing a non-Jewish writer who got his facts incorrect (which no Jewish child would, let alone record as fact things which are not). But you see, because the average Christian knows little or nothings about Judaism, we read the accounts of the New Testament as if they are recorded FACTUALLY, when only a slight understanding of Judaism (the religion of Yeshua) will quickly show you that what is recorded as occurring to Yeshua could not have since it would require conditions to exist which never would or could. Read that newsletter and see for yourself.
Having understood the problem as stated above, when we are able to do so we should give the benefit of the doubt to those passages that seem historically or contextually probable within the New Testament as the New Testament is the chronicle of evens first possessed as "oral traditions" which were eventually written and recorded.
The problem seems to lie with an irrational "all or nothing" approach to the NT texts. When the debate over "all or nothing acceptance of the New Testament" is objectively viewed as representing only the extreme views of both sides of the ideological spectrum the result is often little more than a glimpse at the insecurity of the believer or the stubborn pride of the skeptic when encountering truths which challenge his belief system. What we need in modern Biblical scholarship and criticism is less dogmatism from both extremes and more understanding of current conservative mainstream biblical scholarship.
Josh McDowell [1976] feels that any biblical interpretation which deviates from Fundamentalist orthodoxy (and who is to determine that?) will result in a "slippery-slope" ending in agnosticism. I believe he is severely in error, for to agree with his stance means you uphold your church tradition over conflicting Biblical facts or truths which often correct your church. Such action discredits the Bible and God Himself. If you think of it, if your experience is to be the barometer of your "truth" you literally make God a liar when His Word contradicts your experience.
At the other extreme are a handful of dogmatic skeptics who, in their enthusiastic fantasy to bring the whole Bible crashing down around us, proceed to engage in poor exegesis and confused interpretation. Many of these "enlightened" skeptics would themselves benefit from "trips to the library" where they can spend years of investigative research to help them arrive at truths not quickly seen or understood.
Despite this charged atmosphere, we can still look critically at the NT and analyze those parts of it which are based in historical fact, and contrast them to those passages which seem contextually or historically improbable. Biblical scholars have many tools at their disposal to analyze the NT texts and to arrive at working hypotheses and conclusions. What is required to use these tools is an open mind and attention to detail; preconceived conclusions will only get in the way and hamper your search for truth. Simply said if Yeshua is portrayed differently in a passage from that of known fact or history, then that passage must be treated with greater suspicion.
For example, some passages portray Yeshua in ideological conflict with Pharisaic bystanders (Mt. 23:23-25). But many of Yeshua' own actions and teachings are uniquely Pharisaic in origin: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath".
Many scholars believe that Yeshua was a Pharisee himself. Therefore those passages which attempt to portray Pharisees fervently disagreeing with Yeshua are suspicious due to this problem of context and must be analyzed further in light of what Judaism both believed and taught. The answer to this problem of context may be a simple one, because with little reading and research, you can easily see that many times when Yeshua is challenged by Pharisees over the washing of hand, healing on the Sabbath, or eating on the Sabbath, or doing "work" on the Sabbath, enlightened research reveals that Judaism and the Pharisees NEVER, NEVER, NEVER held such positions that would lead to "supposed" conflicts with Yeshua. NEVER! These supposedly instances of conflict between Yeshua and the leaders of his religion are easily provable to be "inventions" of the Gentile church which would later try to lay the groundwork for having Yeshua being forced to reject his faith, thus paying the way for the creation of a new religion and Gentile faith (contemporary Christianity) to replace a Jewish faith which disowned Yeshua. It never happened. Perhaps the writer couldn't remember who it was that argued with Yeshua and so inserted the Pharisees into that portion of the text out of convenience instead of "Sadducees" which inquiry would suggest. This happens a lot in the New Testament. One quick example...Paul was carrying letters to arrest those of this new faith in Damascus (no less) as recorded in Acts as he persecuted the "elect.". One problem, a Pharisee NEVER had such a right or power of arrest, but only those working in league with the Chief Priest or Sadducees. So which was Paul....a Pharisee or Sadducees, for one thing is certain, Gamileal tells the Sadducees and Chief Priest to quit beating Peter and John and to let them alone........this is the stance of Phariseeism toward this Messianic Movement within Judaism. It was Paul who sided with and worked in league with the Sadducees because no Pharisee could or would understanding the extreme conflict between the two camps. So who is writing that Paul had always been a Pharisee..."a Pharisee of Pharisees?
An example of "narrative" that seems to conflict with fact and history is the story of Yeshua' arrest and trial. Pilate is introduced as a confused, yet sympathetic peace-maker in the focal crowd-scene prior to the demand for the release of Yeshua Barabbas. (Mk. 15; Lk. 23; Jn. 18) The narrative seems entirely made up for several reasons: "Barabbas" is Aramaic for "Son of God," a title thought to be Yeshua Christ's. Also, there was NEVER a custom of releasing prisoners on Passover or any Jewish holiday. Pilate's persona seems absurdly out of place from the bloodthirsty monster that Philo wrote emperor Augustus about. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment reserved for sedition but Yeshua seems to have been accused of blasphemy in the Synoptics (a purely Jewish religious offense). Rome didn't care if Yeshua had blasphemed God. They did it all the time themselves. There are reasonable explanations for this narrative appearing as it does, primarily that many early Christians were afraid to portray Rome as an antagonist to their movement for fear of persecution. By shifting the blame for Yeshua' death to the Jews (an already defeated people from the Jewish Revolt of 70 CE) Christian apologists could convince their pagan neighbors that they held no grudge against them. This narrative however began a long tradition of anti-Semitism that flourishes in the Gospel of John as the writer "lumps and dumps" all Jews as guilty of unbelief by calling them collectively as "the Jews." As the church gains secular power after Constantine's conversion (312 CE) Augustine writes that Jews are allowed to live in the Empire, but only in ghettos and with reduced rights as citizens. (City of God 18.46) After Yeshua was "declared to be God" by the Chalcedonian Definition (451 CE) Jews were accused of deicide (God-killers) and were persecuted until many resettled in Spain and in Moorish lands in North Africa.
Or the answer may be more involved in that the entire event never really occurred at all (for example Yeshua nullifying the Levitical Laws concerning clean and unclean foods in Mark 7 for to do so would have amounted to sin for him to violate the Law. If Yeshua only "says" what he hears the Father say, then how is it possible for him to say something different than the Torah which commands certain foods to be unclean and unfit for consumption. Creative fiction was a frequent tool of the Gentile church as they would put words in the mouth of the Pharisees and Yeshua as well. With some informed study these accounts in the New Testament which are at first understood to say one thing, will upon such study, say something quite different from what we read and the account in question quickly becomes a "non-issue." Such account were usually created to separate Yeshua from his faith, they necessitating the creation of a replacement religion. It is in this gray area that biblical scholars must operate. Never is there a time when a scholar decides to "throw out" the entire NT because of such contextual problems. For only by accurate interpretation and examination of the NT will we come to understand the dynamics involved that caused the Gentiles to follow "another Gospel" when warned not too, and only through "informed" study of the New Testament can we see how the Gentile fit into Israel before the artificial and total separation of "Jewish Christianity" from "Biblical Judaism" in the fourth century.
Also, there is never a time when a scholar takes the entire NT "prima facie". It is incorrect to argue that the entire NT is "divinely-inspired" or historically valid in every detail. Yet it is just this position that the average church member seems to believe. There are hundred and hundreds of errors and contradictions in the New Testament alone which the casual reader often overlooks. Send for my list of Biblical Contradictions to quickly understand that there is no such thing as "inerrancy" and "infallibility" to the Bibles we carry today. In their zeal to refute such attacks on the presumed "infallibility and inerrancy" of the Bible, average "unknowledgeable" Christians defend ferociously this biased fallacy of inerrancy. In the face of conflicting facts only heard but never studied for themselves they contend that the NT is completely reliable and unbiased in its entirety. As I have just pointed out, when the NT is seen in the proper context this pendulum swing is unwarranted and just as awkward as the radical skeptic's bias charge.
When we do critique the NT texts further we find that there were many "layers" of tradition and story piled atop the historical Yeshua. This dynamic process obscures the historical Yeshua from the later Christology that most contemporary Christians advocate which was created in the fourth century, but had no such previous foundation.
Today Christians and Jews disagree as to who this obscured historical Yeshua really was, but they do agree that the post-Easter Christ which is taught today is far different from the real wandering rabbi and Jewish peasant of first-century Palestine. That this very metamorphosis of Yeshua took place is the subject of this work and this ministry. I shall attempt to show that both the NT texts and the resultant portrayal of Yeshua have changed radically since the early first century when Yeshua lived. Not only has the Christian Church believed in "another Gospel," but they put their faith and trust in "another Yeshua" other than the historical Yeshua who actually lived. Having said that let me ask you this: "Don't you want the facts concerning the "real Yeshua" and don't you desire to have your faith placed in the truth concerning this Jewish Rabbi named Yeshua? If you do then please read on.
There are generally seven arguments for the integrity and veracity of the NT in general and the four canonical gospels in particular:
The apostles are never legendized and are portrayed as normal, human beings complete with the failures that such humanity entails. The apostles stood the most to gain from exaggerating their own exploits, but since they did not aggrandize themselves this argues against bias on their part. The texts themselves look and feel like narrative history, not a work of fiction. There is only one problem, the Bible we carry today is not the collection of documents used by Yeshua' church in the first century, but consist of Paul's writings along with Gentile renditions called "Gospels" created at the turn of the century. The "texts" considered Scripture by the early Yeshua Church can be found today, however, mainline Christianity have inherited a "Catholic Bible" and seem little interested in knowing differently. It never ceases to amaze me that since we use a "Catholic Bible," then why do we refuse to attend the Catholic Church? Lastly, by the way, those who determined which writings were to be in the "New Testament" prayed to Mary, prayed to the dead, believed in purgatory, gave money (indulgences) to buy out of punishment loved ones who previously perished, believed the wine and bread of the Eucharist (Lord's Supper) actually became the ACTUAL flesh and blood of Yeshua, etc. Need I go on? Does it not bother you that you cannot accept anything of which I just recorded, but yet we trust "their spirituality" in selecting a groups of writings that completely replaced the authority of Yeshua' Bible...the Torah and Tanakh?
Often when speaking with typical Christians I hear their argument that the apostles were themselves the gospel authors, and that their original writings are more or less exactly as we have them today. As we shall see, both of these premises are naive, unfounded, and haven't been taken seriously by biblical scholars for decades. Yet this is the mentality of the church and too many pastors. To expose these two fallacies, we must look closer at the origins of early Christianity as well as the evolution and historicity of the NT manuscripts.
The manuscripts of the NT were written in Greek. It is argued that there may have existed an Aramaic source for the Synoptic gospels, especially Mark's gospel, but the evidence is still inconclusive. The earliest incomplete texts of the NT (the Beatty papyri and the Bodmer papyri) date from the third century CE. Unfortunately these exist only as tiny fragments of various texts. Papyrus was in use prior to the fourth century and was a very perishable substance. Beginning in the fourth century, the more durable vellum, made from the scraped skin of goats and sheep, quickly replaced papyri as the preferred writing medium. The first complete manuscripts we have (the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus) date to the fourth century. These complete codices are also in Greek and their dates of composition have been well-established among biblical scholars and linguists. We have no original autographs, extant (existing) fragments or manuscripts which date to the first or second centuries and to the time of Christ. With respect to everything that we know about Yeshua, these manuscripts are our only authority and despite the 300-year gap between these two extant codices and the "real" Yeshua, they will have to suffice.
Before there existed any writings of Yeshua on papyri, stories about Yeshua were spoken orally between people and communities. If the earliest manuscripts began appearing around 50 CE as many scholars conclude, then the oral tradition, as it is known, preserved the deeds and activities of Yeshua for around 13 years prior to their eventual codification in written form. These "proto-gospels" were copied and reproduced well before the invention of the printing press and so they had to be copied by a scribe, line for line and word for word in a very time consuming and expensive process. In the centuries after Yeshua' death, most people could not afford to own a copy of a gospel themselves and those Christian communities that could afford a copy used only a single gospel that they read aloud to each other on the Sabbath. Since most communities did not own a copy of a gospel, they preserved the teachings and sayings of Yeshua by retelling these stories (oral traditions) to each other. Most of these communities preferred to use only their own gospel tradition and so a proliferation of gospel traditions arose.
It is important to realize that not everything which was preserved in the oral tradition automatically made its way into the written texts. By the end of the second century, early church fathers like Serapion and Irenaeus argued for the acceptance of only four gospels. Irenaeus was especially passionate for acceptance of only the four, but many other bishops and leaders disagreed. It was not at all clear in the second century which of the various forms of Christianity then in existence--Marcionian Paulinism, Montanism, Gnosticism, Soteriology, or Catholicism--could claim a superior criteria of legitimacy. Many early Church Fathers who led these Yeshua movements fought bitterly amongst themselves and each declared the others heretical. Also, each leader preferred his own oral and textual traditions. Papias seems to have been familiar with at least Mark, Matthew and John, but preferred the authority of the continuous and dynamic oral tradition that still circulated instead. Justin Martyr quotes frequently from the early gospels, but also from the oral tradition as well.
Marcion, a colorful church leader preferred his own edited version of Luke where he pulled out all references to the Jews and rejected all other gospels. (Marcion seems to have been aware of the charges of pagan critics like Celsus that the gospels were self-contradictory and so this may have influenced his drastic measure of relying only on Luke.) In one interesting case, a very popular writer named Tatian composed a gospel "harmony" that smoothed out the discrepancies that appeared in the gospels. The Syrian community used Tatian's harmony as their sole gospel until the fifth century. In the end however, Irenaeus' views won. In a now famous passage, Irenaeus declares the reason for choosing no more or fewer than the four gospels: "It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are, since there are four directions of the world in which we live, and there are four principal winds adv. Haer. 3.11.8)."
By the end of the second century, the first canon had taken shape (Marcion-the "heretic") and from then on the oral tradition slowly died out to be replaced by the authority of the written word.
Almost from the beginning this "Yeshua movement" was split among many different communities who each had their own ideas about who Yeshua was and what his teachings meant to them. Over time a "kerygma" emerged, a message "which is proclaimed" (the literal translation of kerygma from the Greek). But it wasn't always clear what this proclamation was in the decades immediately following Yeshua' death since each community enjoyed the freedom to interpret their stories about Yeshua for themselves as they saw fit. Bauer [1934] first realized that this diversity existed throughout the early communities and regions of the Yeshua movement.
Fredriksen [1988] describes these communities and how their diversity played an important role in formulating the kerygma: "Early Christians grouped together, preserving some of Yeshua' teachings and some stories about him, which became part of the substance of their preaching as they continued his mission to prepare Israel for the coming of the Kingdom of God. At the same time or very shortly thereafter, these oral teachings began to circulate orally in Greek as well as in Yeshua' native Aramaic. Eventually, some of Yeshua' sayings, now in Greek, were collected and written down in a document, now lost, which scholars designate "Q" (from the German Quelle, "source" which reportedly were a collection of the oral sayings of Yeshua). Meanwhile, other oral traditions--miracle stories, parables, legends, and so on--grew, circulated, and were collected in different forms by various Christian communities. NOTICE that up to now we are dealing with an oral tradition among the people concerning Yeshua. In the period around the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE) an anonymous Gentile Christians wrote some of these down. This person was not an author nor was he a historian--he did not deal directly and critically with his evidence. The writer was an evangelist, a sort of creative editor. He organized these stories into a sequence and shaped his inherited material into something resembling a historical narrative. The result was the Gospel of Mark."
This gospel, written around 70 CE, was the Original Mark. Original Mark was much shorter than Canonical Mark, the Mark which is in the Bible today. It did not contain Canonical Mark's 6:45-8:26 verses or the resurrection appendix of Mark 16:9-20.
Those extra passages not in the Original Mark were "interpolated "(or inserted) after 70 CE, but sometime prior to canonization in the fourth century. What may have happened was that a dominantcommunity took the gospel and incorporated their own oral traditions into it (this would be done often), with the result being passages 6:45 through 8:26. This provided them with a complete codified form of their own values along with the authority of the written gospel, all in one book. In the earliest versions of Mark and Q, Yeshua' resurrection account was not yet included. At some point in the second century however verses 16:9-20, the resurrection account, was included in order to harmonize it with the other gospels. This editorializing was common and acceptable practice in the ancient world.
There existed many different varieties of proto-gospels, each based on the local communities own oral tradition as it was preserved from the time of Yeshua. Although Q is the most famous of these early Sayings Sources (as Q is also called) it was not the only one. The Gospel of Thomas, for example, is based on a more primitive strata of Q; a strata that swapped stories about Yeshua before the apocalyptic expectations that came to be attributed to Yeshua and the "Son of Man" sayings found their way into the Q. In other words the Yeshua sayings--from oral tradition to the final canonized form that we have today--constantly evolved in a dynamic process which reflected the zeal and enthusiasm of the early Christians who preserved them. Robertson remarks on the reasons why it is difficult to separate the various Yeshua traditions from each other: "Within a hundred years from the date commonly assigned to the Crucifixion, there are Gentile traces of a Jesuist or Christ movement deriving from Jewry, and possessing a gospel or memoir as well as some of the Pauline and other epistles, both spurious and genuine; but the gospel then current seems to have contained some matter not preserved in the canonical four, and have lacked much that those contain."
I have heard and read Christians say that the "picture that emerges [from modern scholarship] is one of increasing authentication of the NT by a wide range of scholars."
Answer for yourself: Which picture emerges? Do we stop at a certain point along the evolutionary path of these traditions and say that "here" is where they become authentic?
Answer for yourself: Should we prefer instead to say that the furthest point in time away from the historical Yeshua (earliest record) is the more desirable picture?
Answer for yourself: Let me ask you this: Should we desire after all to obtain the most factual information and portrayal of Yeshua? Should we look at the time frame in which he lived long with its source materials rather than risk these interpolations and insertions of conflicting oral traditions concerning Yeshua that have been added by the Gentile Church from 100-500 C.E.? I hope you said the earlier time will give us a truer picture of Yeshua than when the accounts about him were altered and mixed with created fiction!
If the true "Christian's picture of Yeshua" is to be considered at all, we must first reconcile what we know about the dynamic evolution of the NT texts and determine where we draw the line on authoritativeness in time.
Typical Christian writers today would rather we ignore the evolutionary process of the texts and accept the canonical texts as they exits today (the New Testament) as if they were protected in a vacuum from the time of Christ (which they were not). Can we dare do this without problems which cause us to accept less than the truth? More than that, if we accept "less than the truth" often our conduct and behavior will be "less than the truth" as well.
What saddens me is that when Christians are informed of the "creative evolutionary process" which went into the creating of a contemporary Yeshua (which is 180 degrees opposite of the real Yeshua of history), they almost unanimously prefers this vacuum to an otherwise rational exegesis and understanding. In other words, too many will not repent of their erroneous beliefs and conduct when shown they are in error.
Answer for yourself: Does the truth matter? Does our obedience matter?
That the disciples' names are attached to two of the four gospels in no way indicates that they were the actual authors. The headings which read "The Gospel according to . . ." were second-century additions called "pseudepigraphia"--authorship by an anonymous person which is then attributed to a famous biblical character for authority. Pseudepigraphical works flourished in ancient Palestine from two centuries before Yeshua to around 300 CE after. The unknown Jewish and early Christian authors of pseudepigraphical works felt that, while they themselves had something important to say, their material might not be taken seriously unless it seemed to come from the pen of a famous person such as a disciple or a prophet. All four of the gospels are pseudepigraphical works and today we use the names "Matthew" or "John" merely as convenient labels for the work. It is particularly disturbing to see the multitude of uniformed Christians advocating disciple-authorship of John's and Matthew's gospels because this kind of propaganda clouds the real truth and damages the reputation of Christian apologetics.
Sellew [1991] reviews the modern perspective on the evolution of the Yeshua teachings which formed the four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Let's look closely at the earliest gospel upon which Matthew and Luke were based, the Gospel of Mark.
As we see from Mark's history, it is not so simple a matter as claiming that Canonical Mark in the fourth century contains an "underlying eyewitness account" of the events that occurred in first century Judea. The author of Original Mark had never even met Yeshua and probably wrote in Rome. Two chapters were interpolated in Augmented Mark (6:45-8:26) as well as the entire resurrection account of Yeshua (16:9-20). Two strata of the manuscript later and we end up with the gospel that we know today. Matthew and Luke are almost entirely based upon pre-canonical versions of Mark and the late stage of Q. These gospels could and did change over time (additions and deletions). Sometimes the changes were subtle, other times sweeping and even of a different genre as Kee states: "Justin Martyr (100-165 CE) relying on the testimony of Papias refers to the gospel of Mark as the "memoir" of Peter. . . . It must be acknowledged that the gospels as we have them today do not match the description that Justin Martyr offered for them in the middle of the second century A.D. The gospel of Mark is not a "memoir" of Peter, either in the sense that it recounts in a special way the associations of Peter with Yeshua or in the sense that Mark reports first-hand recollections about Yeshua. The material on which Mark drew passed through a long process of retelling and modification and interpretation, and it reflects less special interest in Peter than does Matthew's gospel."
Many seem to quickly gloss over the heavy dependence that Matthew and Luke have on Mark and Q (oral traditions that circulated in the first century) . They claim that "most of the NT documents were written with minimal influence between each other . . . they share some data, but show a very independent development path." In saying this they pay some tribute to the Synoptic problem--as the Luke/Matthew dependence on Q and Mark is called--but only in passing as if to hastily wave it aside. But, are we to believe that the gospels are creations with "very independent development?"
The Q material is present in nearly 200 verses in both Matthew and Luke. Also, out of Mark's 661 total verses all except thirty-one are paralleled or repeated in Luke and Matthew. Thus the assertion that the Synoptics exert "minimal influence on each other" can hardly be supported. Considering that Luke and Matthew were written anonymously much later than Yeshua and by Gentiles who did not know Yeshua personally, it can hardly be attested that they "constitute 5-8 independent witnesses to the base set of miracles." Merely retelling an older tale does not constitute being a witness to anything first hand.
Compounding the problem of which portions of the NT texts are authentic to the time of Yeshua is the grim fact that the texts changed so much over the centuries. As I stated earlier, scribes had to copy the texts from one scroll to another and text critics have found numerous errors, both intentional and unintentional, that have crept into each subsequent copy. The conservative scholars Westcott and Hort have listed over 250 suspected or rejected readings in the canonical gospels and Acts. Let me say I can excuse and forgive UNINTENTIONAL errors and changes because to err is human, but what I struggle with is the fact that what God originally intended I be taught and live out was altered by less than "holy men of old" who corrupted the revelation intended for me and you, thus creating a substitute revelation that served their flesh and their bigotry. That is a fact and in undeniable if only you will examine the evidence for yourself.
Enslin still speaks authoritatively to this point:
"Before an ancient writing can speak for itself, can tell of its author's outlook on life, and the situation that confronted him, we must have that writing in the form in which it was originally written. . . . during the centuries that elapsed between the time of composition and the appearance of our earliest manuscripts the writings had been frequently copied. As a result numerous changes had been made, both intentional and accidental. But not alone minute changes such as alteration in spelling or word order, but more drastic alterations occur. . . . Hence the question of "integrity" is of great importance.
By this is meant simply: Is the book as we possess it exactly the same as it was when it left the author's hand?" Sadly no.
If we are to explore the veracity of the texts in the manner in which they are currently interpreted by Christianity, then we must try to discover what the original author wanted to say. Even though the gospels (which purport to speak authoritatively on Yeshua) are not first-hand accounts of his deeds and activities, they were based in part on earlier traditions that were closer to the historical Yeshua. Our job should not be to ignore the problems of the texts as some seem to do, but to separate the later interpolations (insertions) from the earlier Yeshua traditions in order to study them more easily. We must not choose an "all or nothing" mentality or a "lump and dump" technique for our study of the documents.
Even this detailed analysis is no guarantee of authenticity of the gospels themselves as seen by the "scanty" use of the gospels "by the Christians even a hundred years after Yeshua' death" is "amazing," and "would appear to justify the view that when these gospels appeared they were by no means accorded universal acclaim." This should be a warning to the church today to be cautious in trusting all in the New Testament as "fact," thus all the more reason to study to show ourselves approved, thus verifying that we be in "the faith" and not practicing "another gospel."
Especially compounding the problem of individual gospel integrity was the formulation of the canon in the second century; first by an anti-Semitic heretic, and then the reaction to him by the Catholic Church from 180 C.E. to 390 C.E.. Once the emerging four gospels began to be considered as a cohesive unit and were circulated together, scribes who became used to seeing them together passively harmonized them when discrepancies were found. There is only one problem...conflicting oral traditions from different sources and communities were not always correct, and much of them were incorporated within written documents we have come to consider as valid "Scripture." The mixing of paganism and Judaism in oral traditions which were later written down by Gentiles were NEVER intended to be considered Scripture by God let along used as authority for our faith since we already possessed such in the Law and the Prophets as the early Jewish church and Yeshua attests.
The evolution of the Gospel of Mark, the earliest of the Synoptic gospels, was born with a real, historical Yeshua, the man who gave them life to begin with. After Yeshua' death, the stories and tales about him spread rapidly from community to community. Eventually some of these stories were written down or "codified" on scrolls of papyrus in a long lost work we now call Q. A few decades later our first gospel appears with a little more material added in order to fill in the gaps about Yeshua that the oral tradition did not contain. Throughout all of this process one pattern is clear: with each new strata a little bit more material was added in an "upside down pyramid" fashion. The earliest version of the Q lacked the "Son of man" and "kingdom of God" material that became a part of the later Q. In turn, the later Q, lacked the resurrection accounts of Yeshua that became a part of Augmented Mark. Augmented Mark lacks still more material that shows up in Matthew and Luke and so on. There is a tendency among conservative scholars today to gloss over this very real evolution of the texts and to pretend that the developed canon differs little, if at all, from the early stages of the Yeshua movement. Such is not true. This tendency is extremely short-sighted and leads only to confusion.
The question we should ask ourselves is "How authoritative are those extra passages in later gospels?"
Do we want to strive to get closer to the core of Q where the historical Yeshua resides? Or do we instead prefer the post-Easter interpretations of later anti-Semitic Gentile writers who developed a Christology on top of the historical Yeshua and Q source? You may not know it but our churches today are filled with the second option of a fictitious creation of a post-Easter Yeshua that never existed the way he is portrayed.
Several place an extraordinary emphasis on Yeshua' miracle accounts as evidence for the NT texts authenticity. They claim variously that "the very manner in which the miracles are recounted provide an argument for their authenticity" and that the earliest extra-biblical sources "never dispute the fact of his miracles." They argue that because Yeshua' miracles claims are modest in number as well as execution and that they exist in the core sayings of Q, that they render everything that Yeshua was later said to have done with "carte blanche" validity as well.
It is true that Mark's gospel, even from the early stages, places an emphasis on Yeshua' miracles. But this does not render all of the material that made its way into the canon during the next three centuries that purports to tell us something about Yeshua as equally valid.
There exists two modern-day misconceptions concerning the miracle accounts of ancient writers. The first misconception is prevalent in secular society and assumes that since we know today that miracles are impossible, then the ancients must have "made it up." The second misconception is that Yeshua' miracles indicate that he was a divine god and therefore we should take the NT and his teachings as more authoritative than other writings. Both misconceptions aggravate each other and each commit the fallacy of hindsight--the luxury to look back and impose on past societies, the knowledge that we take for granted now. These misconceptions fail to consider the cultural context of that period of time in history. If we entertain these misconceptions we risk losing sight of what the ancients really thought about their world and the place of miracles in it.
For the Hellenistic world as well as the Jewish one, miracles were not only possible, they were quite normal and expected from prophets and holy men. It was believed that various gods routinely intervened into the affairs of humankind for the purposes of changing history or to reveal their wishes. Mental illness wasn't understood as we know it now. A person who suffered from what we would now
call epilepsy, was thought by the ancients to be demonically possessed. Josephus tells us quite unequivocally that Jews inherited the "Wisdom of Solomon" and therefore were especially adept at miracle-working and cures. Jewish miracle-working was world-renowned. Josephus tells the story of how King Solomon himself told how to perform healings. Josephus describes Eleazar, an exorcist and one of those descendants of Solomon's techniques: "I have seen a certain man of my own country whose name was Eleazar, releasing people that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian . . . He put a ring that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell down immediately, he abjured him to return into him no more . . . when Eleazar would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby let the spectators know that [the demon] had left the man." ("Antiquities" 8.2.5)
It does not contextually follow that just because Yeshua performed miracles, he was considered divine and indeed we do not find this to be the case among the earliest of Christians. The assertion that "Yeshua' wide variety of miracles" were performed "on his own" authority, without including rain-making is just not true. Israel was full of Jewish miracle-workers, healers, and magicians that roamed ancient Palestine. Only the Egyptians were regarded higher than the Jews for their miracle and healing abilities. Yeshua' own miracles were well within the context of the period. Any wandering rabbi who was worth his salt would of had a full repertoire of miracles to work and perform among the villagers that he encountered. This is the proper context to view Yeshua' miracles in not, as some infer, as some sort of prerequisite for divinity. As Sanders [1993] points out: "It is difficult to discuss Yeshua' miracles historically, however, because convictions about what Christians believe or should believe interfere very strongly. . . . Yeshua' miracles are to be studied in the light of other miracles of his day, not in the context of the subsequent Christian doctrine that he was both human and divine. . . . The early Christians thought that Yeshua was the Messiah, the Son of God, "and" a miracle-worker. Interestingly early Christians pictured Yeshua as a "magician". In cave motifs depicting the raising up of Lazarus, Yeshua always holds a magic wand and is motioning with it when calling Lazarus out from the burial cave.
This had led many modern Christians to think that first-century Jews looked for a Messiah who performed miracles, and that Yeshua' contemporaries would conclude that a miracle-worker was the Messiah. This view is incorrect."
For many modern Christians, Yeshua' miracles are no longer seen in the historical context in which they occurred. They treat these miracle accounts as if they alone represent historical validity for all NT texts. There is no argument that from the earliest strata Yeshua is credited with performing many miracles. The argument is that these demonstrations by Yeshua somehow lend authenticity to the NT. When we consider the account of Eleazar's exorcism in "Antiquities", we do not consider Josephus' work to be either fraudulent or divinely-inspired. Josephus is merely a product of the context of his time; a time when many people believed that miracles, exorcisms, and healings occurred with regularity. We must also look at the NT in this same fashion rather than assign either more or less importance to Yeshua' miracle accounts than they were meant to be taken when written.
If the argument is to take on a characteristic that says that Yeshua' miracle-accounts indicate that he was the Messiah or a god, then we must immediately object to this as well. The questions of Yeshua' divinity did not even arise until the second century.
Historically, we have already seen how miracle-workers were not divine, but ordinary human beings. There was no expectation among the Jews for a Messiah who would perform miracles. The Messiah's role was be largely political since he was expected to restore the kingdoms of Israel by military force. Yeshua' own miracles were not seen by his contemporaries as evidence for divinity or the Messiah; miracles were seen within the context of their day as indicative of a well-learned rabbi or in Yeshua' case, a skilled magician.
Discussions of the historical origins of early Christianity have filled whole books. This article is not meant to substitute for the exhaustive research of others to which I owe much here. This article is meant only to rebut the overly simplistic argument of accepting the New Testament as if created infallible and inerrant in a "vacuum," as well as "discarding it" because it can be shown to have numerous inaccuracies and errors within it. To do either as an approach to our faith and the canonical texts of the NT is a gross error. Hopefully I have made it clear that modern biblical scholarship has moved away from such a false position of "infallibility and inerrancy" that uninformed pastors and their congregations may yet hold. Instead, those who desire to know realize that the NT evolved in a dynamic process throughout the many centuries leading up to their final canonization. It would not speak well of Christianity if its texts did not change during those formative years prior to canonization; only dogmas and ideologies are cut into stone. Dynamic, passionate movements require constant reflection and interpretation if they are to flower and grow.
Although we are not likely to ever get a clear picture of who the real historical Yeshua really was due to the layers of material that were later added, we can come pretty close through honest inquiry. A consensus of critical scholarship outlines for us the most realistic picture of Yeshua through purely form-critical means of inquiry. Although not authoritative by any means, it does represent most of the common elements that modern scholarship has come to accept in discovering who the historical Yeshua really was: "Yeshua appeared on the Palestinian scene as an itinerant teacher, probably self-taught, so there was deep resentment of his authoritative manner among the official religious leadership of Palestine. He held his central mission to be the announcement of the imminent coming of God's Kingdom, and he regarded his extraordinary powers of healing and exorcism as evidence that the powers of the Kingdom were already breaking into the present situation...It was through the false charge that he was a revolutionary that he was put to death by the Romans--a charge brought by the religious leaders whose authority his pronouncements seemed to threaten."
After that time the Jewish as well as Gentile post-Easter Christian community slowly arrived at an interpretation of what their Messiah's death meant to them. They disagreed. This took on various forms that are beyond the scope of this essay, but in 451 CE the Chalcedonian Definition finally transformed Yeshua into the divine god that most Christians are familiar with today. Despite these subsequent layers of interpolation, the upstart Jewish rabbi who changed the ancient world can still be extracted from those texts and appreciated within the proper context of history if so desired. I hope this article stimulates your thinking and your study. Let us not be so unkind to discard that corpus of literature that is so very valuable in our search for the historical Yeshua....the less than reliable New Testament that is far from inerrant and infallible. That being the case, it yet remains the most important resource we have if we try to discover the "Christ of history" and separate him from the "Christ of faith." Thus, to treat the New Testament with an "all or nothing" mentality only shows one's irrational approach to the NT texts.
My desire for you dear brother and sister in the Lord is not to let your insecurity caused by further study or stubborn pride and blindness to truth rob you of the quest for the historical Yeshua. If you desire to know more in order to be more please to God, please contact us at the bottom address.
Shalom.