It is a characteristic of all who deny this and all other miracles, that they beg the whole question to begin with. They assume as an axiom that a miracle is impossible, or impossible to be proved by human testimony. Or, to put it more mildly, in the language of one of their number (Renan[1]), “neither men of the people nor men of the world are competent to prove it. Great precaution and a long habit of scientific research are requisite.” If these are sound axioms, it should be a matter of indifference who were the witnesses, or what their credibility or means of knowledge, since at the best they were but human, and it is not claimed that they were experts or savans after the modern skeptical school, although they might be expected to know whether one who walked with them, and to whose instructions they listened, and from whom they received their commission, were dead or alive.
It is also a comfortable assumption on their part that no one is a scholar who does not agree with their opinion, and many young men who would not be thought to be behind the times are misled by their confident boasting. “No modern theologian,” says Strauss,[2] “who is also a scholar, now considers any of the four Gospels to be the work of its pretended author, or in fact to be by an Apostle or colleague of an Apostle.” The logic of this is, that if any one does so consider them, he is not a scholar. The same kind of scholarship and habit of thinking that induced this wise conclusion brought him at last to the denial of the existence of a personal God or a future life. His experience is instructive, and shows the inevitable tendency of all reasoning that denies the possibility of a miracle or a divine revelation. Mill’s hard logic cannot well be resisted. “Once admit a God, and the production, by his direct volition, of an effect which in any case owed its origin to his creative will, is no more a purely arbitrary hypothesis to account for the past, but must be reckoned with as a serious possibility.” If, then, a miracle may occur, it may be proved[A] by human testimony, for the very motive or reason for its occurrence, or, at least the principal reason, must be its value as an attestation.
And the immense labor which the Tübingen school and every class of skeptics have bestowed in attempts to disprove the authorship of the Four Gospels, shows that they have not much confidence in their axioms after all. Why so anxious as to the witnesses, if it is immaterial who they are, or what they testify to? If a miracle cannot be proved by any evidence, why have they multiplied books to prove or disprove the authorship of the gospels?
The best evidence of which the subject admits, is all that is required in courts; and it is sufficient in matters of the highest concern, even in cases of life and death, that a fact be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The best evidence to Christ’s disciples of his resurrection, was that of their own senses. This evidence we cannot have. We are in the position, in some respects, of jurors, who must decide not from their own knowledge, but upon the testimony of others. We have not, however, the witnesses upon the stand, but only what may be regarded as their depositions, and it is made a question whether the writings produced are their depositions.
The question, then, in this stage is, who were the writers of the Four Gospels and the book of Acts? As to the latter, the writer claims to have written a former treatise, and it seems to be taken by both parties to the controversy, that the same person (whoever he was) wrote both books, so that any evidence of Luke’s authorship of the third Gospel, is evidence of his authorship of Acts, and vice versa. And the same is true in respect to the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle of John.
The best evidence as to the authorship of any of these books which the nature of the subject admits of, is from history and tradition, including in these terms quotations, citations, harmonies, commentaries, translations, and manuscripts.
There are two modes of presenting this evidence. One is to begin with their present acknowledged acceptance, and ascend the stream; the other is to strike tributaries, as near their source as we are able, and descend to the river. The latter will be adopted here in the first instance, and ultimately both modes of proof.
One hundred years from the crucifixion, churches had been established in all the cities and in many of the villages of the Roman Empire, from Cappadocia and Pontus on the east, to Gaul on the west, and Christians were very numerous. Tacitus describes those at Rome at the time of Nero’s barbarity, as “a great multitude,” and Pliny, in his letter to Trajan, cir. A.D. 110, affirms that the heathen temples were almost deserted, so that the sacred victims scarcely found any purchasers, and that the “superstition,” as he termed it, not only infected the cities, but had even spread into the villages, of Pontus and Bithynia (Gibbon, p. 576). Hence persons unacquainted with the subject might suppose that it would be easy to adduce abundant proof from writers of the first century, as to what memoirs of our Lord, if any, were in the churches at the time Pliny wrote his celebrated letter. Such, however, is not the fact.
There is no direct historical testimony known to be earlier than the first apology[3] of Justin Martyr to the Roman Emperor, cir. A.D. 139. There are certain fragments written by Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, which may be of an earlier date, but this is uncertain. There are also quotations apparently from the third and fourth Gospels, by Basilides,[4] the Gnostic heretic who flourished at Alexandria as early as A.D. 125. There is an epistle to the Philippian church, attributed to Polycarp which Dean Stanley thinks dates about A.D. 130. Its genuineness is not universally admitted. There is an epistle, conceded to be genuine, from the church at Rome to the church at Corinth, of the probable date of A.D. 95. There are epistles attributed by some to Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom, cir. A.D. 107, but their genuineness is controverted. There are in addition three other writings known as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Letter to Diognetus, and the Pastor Hermas. They are by unknown authors, and of uncertain date, but were probably written in the latter part of the first or the first part of the second century.
And these are all that have come down to us in any form from the first one hundred years after the crucifixion. That we have no more is easily explained. This period was one of intense activity and violent persecutions. Five (as some reckon them) of the ten general persecutions were within[5] this period. The first was under Nero, A.D. 64, the second under Domitian, A.D. 95, the third under Trajan, A.D. 100, the fourth under Antoninus the Philosopher, and the fifth under Severus, A.D. 127; and, as some of these continued several years, there was scarcely an intermission for three-quarters of a century. The horrible tortures and cruel deaths under Nero are well-known, and, under Domitian, forty thousand were supposed to have suffered martyrdom.
It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that so little has reached us from this early period. Christians were making history, not writing it, and of their writings the most perished. There were hundreds and thousands who well knew what memoirs of our Lord were accepted by the churches in this period, from whose lips no voice comes except in the volume of universal tradition.
[1] Renan’s Life of Jesus, p. 43.
[2] The Old Faith and the New (1874), p. 45.
[3] A.D. 138 or 139 is the date most usually assigned to this most important work, although some place it as late as A.D. 150. If his statement in it that “Christ was born 150 years ago” were to be taken strictly, it would make its date A.D. 146 or A.D. 144, according as we allow four or six years as the error for the beginning of the true Christian era; but he may have used the number in a general way. His martyrdom is variously stated at A.D. 165 and A.D. 167.
[4] That the quotations were by Basilides himself Matthew Arnold’s reasoning seems entirely satisfactory, and “no one” he says, “who had not a theory to serve would ever dream of doubting it.” Perhaps it may be permitted to regard Matthew Arnold as a “scholar;” and see Abbot’s “Fourth Gospel,” Boston (1880), p. 86. See also post, c. 5.
[5] Buck’s Theological Dictionary, and Vol. VII of M’Clintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia, p. 966.