A Great Injustice to the New Testament
By Jerry Newcombe
5/4/11

         There’s a terrible injustice that’s being done to the best attested book of antiquity, the New Testament.
         If the same principles of scrutiny were applied to the writings of Cicero, Caesar, and Marcus Aurelius, we would reject virtually all of them as hopelessly unreliable.
         Essentially, the collection of 27 books known as the New Testament lately is being lied about as being fraudulent, as lacking integrity and authenticity. But that’s based on some unproven assumptions, not actual facts or manuscript or archaeological evidence.
         In reality, the accusers---for example, liberal Bible scholars who teach at major universities and appear on network television specials---begin with the premise that miracles are not possible. Based on that unproven construct, they then theorize to debunk the New Testament. There are many just as qualified conservative      Bible scholars and historians who don’t buy these theories.
         Much of the conflict centers around when the New Testament was written.
         Most of the liberal scholars assert as fact that the Gospels we have in the Bible were written so late that they do not reflect personal memory. They couldn’t, since they were supposedly written so late after the events that the reported evangelists would have already died by then. So it’s not personal memory found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
         Why do these liberal scholars hold this theory?
         Because the fall of Jerusalem was predicted so accurately in the first three Gospels by Jesus that these documents had to have been written after that event---AD 70. Forty years removed from the time of Jesus, in their opinion. By then, many of them would have already died.
         But wait. What if there is a God (the New Testament surely assumes there is), and what if that God and His Son, Jesus Christ (clearly the central figure of the New Testament), could do miracles and did know the future?
         Then Jesus could perform the miracle of predicting what would happen in the future, i.e., the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. Predictions so stunningly accurate that to the modern miracle-denying Bible scholar, these writings had to have been written before AD 70. (See Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21.)
         The first great historian of the Christian Church was Eusebius of the 4th century, who wrote the first complete history of the Church. He marveled at how Jesus was able to predict the fall of Jerusalem with such accuracy. He said, “If any one compares the words of our Saviour with the other accounts of the historian [Josephus] concerning the whole war, how can one fail to wonder, and to admit that the foreknowledge and the prophecy of our Saviour were truly divine and marvelously strange.” Here is an important ancient source recognizing the miraculous nature of Christ, who could predict the future. The modern scholar doesn’t buy it because he knows miracles (including predictive prophecy) cannot happen.
        But even if a modern scholar thinks there is no such thing as a miracle, it’s interesting to note that in the first century, the temple authorities indirectly acknowledged that Jesus was doing miracles---only they said He was doing them by the power of the devil.
        Dr. Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University and  author of In the Fullness of Time, has reproduced what was essentially the arrest warrant for Jesus of Nazareth (listed here as Yeshu Hannozri) while He was on earth:

Wanted: Yeshu Hannozri
He shall be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed
Israel to apostasy…Anyone who knows where he is, let him
declare it to the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. (This is based on the
Sanhedrin 43a of the Babylonian Talmud.)
So here we have a source traced back to the first century providing attestation from a hostile source that Jesus Christ did supernatural works (attributed to demonic, not divine, power). Would it be so hard to picture Jesus predicting the future---something only God can do (with accuracy)?
         Because of the late-dating of the Gospels held by these liberal scholars, then all of a sudden virtually everything else in the New Testament becomes suspect---including the writing of James, Peter, John, and half of Paul’s letters.
         Next thing you know, an iconoclastic scholar and former Christian, like Dr. Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina, ends up saying that the vast majority of the documents of the New Testament are deliberate forgeries.
         But what if we approach the dating issue like historians---not treating the New Testament as guilty until proven innocent?
         Scholars tell us that Mark’s Gospel was written first. Matthew and Luke clearly had access to and incorporated major portions of Mark’s Gospel in theirs. An early Church Father, Pappias, tells us that Mark was based on Peter’s remembrances.
         Luke is the physician who accompanied Paul on some of his missionary travels. He wrote at least two books in the New Testament, the Gospel According to Luke and Acts. They are Part I and Part II of his writings. Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome.
         The great fire of Rome has not yet happened. Paul has not yet been executed. By the time Acts (Part II of Luke) ends, Paul is still alive. He died around 65 or 66 AD. Certainly no later than 68, when Nero was deposed. That would be true of Peter also, since tradition holds that these two pillars of the first century Church were both executed in Rome under Nero. (Paul, a Roman citizen was beheaded; Peter was crucified---upside down, by his choice).
         In 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul quotes Luke’s Gospel as “Scripture.” That means that already Luke’s Gospel (and, therefore, Mark’s) was circulating before Paul’s death.
         I recognize that because of stylistic concerns, some modern scholars (including Ehrman) allege that Paul didn’t write 1 Timothy. But again this is based on assumptions, not actual evidence.
         As to Matthew’s Gospel, Paul Maier notes that the evangelist repeatedly refers to prophecies Jesus fulfilled. Over and over, Matthew will say how a certain event happened, thus fulfilling what the prophets had foretold.
         Dr. Maier told me, “Can you imagine that if Matthew had been written after the fall of Jerusalem? Wild horses couldn’t have prevented Matthew from saying, ‘And Jesus’ prediction was fulfilled when Jerusalem was destroyed.’ He doesn’t say that, and that’s very unlike Matthew.”
         That leaves John’s Gospel. Early Church Father Polycarp was John’s direct disciple, and he says that John probably wrote his Gospel in the last decade of the first century.
         Even though John was old by then, he recalls the incredible events he personally witnessed as a young man. Events that changed everyone’s life. He spent three years in the public ministry of Jesus.
         With the exception of John---who tradition tells us was boiled in hot oil for not denying Christ, yet it didn’t kill him---virtually everyone involved in the Acts Church, including those who wrote the books of the New Testament, died a martyr’s death.
         They could have saved their skin if they denied Christ. But how could they deny what they themselves saw and heard? They chose faithfulness to Christ, even though it meant a horrible death. In many cases, those deaths were in the arena, with cheering and jeering crowds.
         Dr. Sam Lamerson, professor at Knox Theological Seminary, put it all in perspective:
Those people who died did so knowing that it was going to be painful, knowing that it was going to be embarrassing, knowing that it was going to be terror-filled, and yet they did it anyway as a direct result of the fact that they believed that Jesus Christ was God. And they lived in the 1st century, and we live in the 21st century. And it seems to me that it is the height of arrogance for us to say in the 21st century, “You, all you people who died, you were just foolish, you just didn’t know any better. And, we scholars, we know a lot better than you do.”
….It seems to me, almost absurd to think, that we, in the 21st century can sit in judgment on eyewitnesses who actually saw what it was that Jesus did and said and say, “Well, sorry Matthew, you may have been there, but I’m from the 21st century. I know that didn’t happen.”
The apostles’ testimony is sealed in blood.
         Ironically, the very iconoclastic scholars who reject most of the New Testament as supposedly unreliable accept Paul’s letter to the Romans as authentic.
         Yet if we only had the book of Romans, we would still have the main points of the New Testament teaching needed for salvation: above all, that Jesus Christ is the divine Savior who died for sinners and rose from the dead.
         Meanwhile, to reject the bulk of the New Testament because of the anti-miraculous assumptions is to allow one’s bias to cloud one’s judgment. This approach is along the lines of: “My mind is already made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.”
         These scholars judge Jesus. But in the end, it is Jesus who will judge us all, including the iconoclastic Jesus-scholars.
 
 

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Jerry Newcombe is the senior producer and host of The Coral Ridge Hour. He has also written or co-written 21 books, including The Book That Made America: How the Bible Formed Our Nation. Jerry co-wrote (with Dr. Peter Lillback) the bestselling, George Washington's Sacred Fire. He hosts the website www.jerrynewcombe.com.