Peter L P Simpson - The Authenticity of the Gospels

T HE A UTHENTICITY OF
THE G OSPELS

T HE A UTHENTICITY OF
THE G OSPELS

Peter LP Simpson

2019 Peter LP Simpson

The Authenticity of the Gospels

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible. Copyright 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Materials from Copyright 2017, The Great Ethics of Aristotle, and Copyright 2017, Political Illiberalism. A Defense of Freedom, by Peter L P Simpson, are reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, a division of Informa plc

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931603

ISBN 978-1-400325429 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-400325436 (Hardbound)

ISBN 978-1-400325443 (eBook)

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A CKNOWLEDGEMENT

My sincere thanks to Rev. Randy Soto for guiding me in the study of the Gospels and in the Historical Critical Method as applied to them

And to both him and Dr. Marianne Siegmund for encouraging me to publish these results of my research and reflections

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.

(2 Peter 1.16)

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life

(1 John 1.1)

T he aim of this book is to confirm the long-standing historical tradition that the Gospels are the authentic documents of their traditional authors and accurately record, after the manner of eye witness memoirs, actual events, deeds, and sayings in the earthly life of Our Lord.

The book, however, does not so much confirm this claim by direct examination of the history within the Gospels (which would be a large project and has been done by others The main reason for such a procedure is that the wide acceptance of this method and of its presuppositions by most Biblical scholars (whether Catholic, Protestant, or unaligned) stands in the way of a fair assessment of the historicity of the Gospels. For the method calls into doubt, or rather denies, that the Gospels are authentic documents of their supposed authors.

Authenticity of historical records is integral to history as such, since it is only because we have authentic records that we can rely on them for learning the truth about history. If a supposed authentic record turns out not to be authentic, or not to have the author and date it claims to have, its historical value is thrown into doubt. The doubt can only be removed by showing that the true author and date (if they can be found) give the record the necessary historical reliability.

The historical critical method does not remove this doubt but, if anything, confirms it. If the historicity of the Gospels is to be maintained, the method must be countered, for if it is not countered the Gospels cannot be held to be authentic historical records. Countering the method is, surprisingly, easier to do than the wide acceptance of the method would lead one to suppose. A serious critical examination, from the point of view of both reason and fact, shows that the method, as typically deployed, lacks adequate foundation. Indeed, to the extent that the method is well founded, it proves the opposite of what it is taken to prove.

The historical critical method, if truth be told, is not historical in how it approaches the Gospel texts or in how it treats the historical evidence about their dating and authorship. It is not critical, or not sufficiently critical, in how it reads the texts, wherein it also displays a certain woodenness of literary analysis. Elements of the method have a place in Gospel reading and research, but historical and literary sense as well as the teachings of great theologians of the past require them to be used in ways very different from those standardly adopted.

This book is therefore both philosophical and historical. It is philosophical because the method and principles of the science of history, as of any science, are matters for philosophical examination and critique. Only if the science of history is properly understood can the question of the historicity of the Gospels, or of any text whether ancient or modern, be properly broached. The book is historical because the authenticity of any supposed historical document, which is central to the question of the reliability of the document and of the truth of what it says, must be assessed by reference to the historical evidence. Such evidence is properly extrinsic to the literary features of a text and cannot be judged by the methods of literary criticism alone, or at all in many cases.

The book divides into the following parts. In the first chapter, which will serve also as a more focused introduction, the existential nature of all history, whether as the human deeds themselves or also the human recording of those deeds, will be stated and defended. The historical critical method is not unaware of this existentiality (it regularly notes it in terms of what it calls the Sitz im Leben, or the life situation, of the Gospels), but fails to follow it properly.

In the second chapter the larger question of the method of history as such will be examined. The chapter will begin with discussion of the method followed by one of the more notable and more recent of writers on the Gospels and their history, namely John P. Meier in his A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Meiers method, which is an application of the historical critical method, will be found not to be a method of history. The chapter will proceed to an examination of the historical critical method proper: its parts, its presuppositions, its approach to history, its approach to literary analysis. All these elements of the method as the method is typically practiced will be critically examined and found to be wanting in philosophical, historical, and literary sense.

In the third chapter there will be discussion of the very limited role that literary analysis can properly play in settling historical questions, and particular instances of analysis of Gospel passages will be examined to prove the need not to transgress this limited role.

In the fourth chapter the historical evidence for the authenticity and authorship of the Gospels will be discussed. The dismissive treatment of this evidence by contemporary practitioners of the historical critical method will be examined and shown to be without philosophical warrant. The historical evidence will be reviewed in summary form and the conclusion that it should be accepted by any sound use of the historical method will be argued for against the doubts and denials and rejections of contemporary scholars.