11. The Fact of Revelation: Historical Testimonies
20. Revelation: Old and New
“In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb 1:1–2). The beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews stresses both the essential unity of the Old and New Testaments—their author is God—and the difference in quality between God’s messengers: first the prophets, and finally his own Son.
In the New Testament, the Old is presented as preparation for this ultimate revelation. The religion of Israel was ordained to become the Christian religion. Although it also came from God, it should give way to the latter with our Lord’s coming in the fullness of time.
There is no need to dwell on how the religion of Israel was of divine origin, not a discovery of man or a result of the evolution of the religious ideas and practices of a certain people, more or less under the influence of their neighbors. Therefore, we will go directly to Jesus’ times.
First, we will consider what historical records say about Jesus.
21. The Testimony of the Gospels Concerning Jesus
The writings that give us the most information about Jesus are the four Gospels. In this chapter, we will not take into account their exceptional importance as divinely inspired writings. Let us assume the viewpoint of a person who has never heard about Christianity who is, at the same time, totally free from religious prejudices. Let us study the Gospels as if they were merely historical documents. From this perspective, our main questions will be: Did the events narrated in the Gospel really happen? Is the alleged historical background of these events so obscured by legends and additions that they are almost unrecognizable, and we cannot know to what extent they are accurate?
21a) Transmission of the Text of the Gospels
How have these four literary documents reached us?
There are more than 4,000 fragments of manuscripts written in Greek, the original language of the four standing narrations. Many of them are in excellent condition and date back to the fourth century. Quotations included in other early Christian literary sources, such as liturgical texts and writings of the Fathers, render evidence of the existence of the Gospels in the second and third centuries.
Papyrus fragments offer further evidence. Some of them are of considerable length. One of them, dating from about a.d. 200, contains almost the entire first 14 chapters of St. John’s Gospel. Another short fragment from before a.d. 150 proves that the Gospel of John (the latest of the four) already existed at that time.
This evidence has refuted the theories of some nineteenth-century rationalists who claimed that the Gospels were written so late that they cannot claim the slightest historical value.
Textual criticism, by comparing the oldest and best copies, has proven that the transmission of the original text is extraordinarily faithful. It has been pointed out that the number of variations found in the extant texts exceeds the total number of words contained in the Gospels. Most, however, are just spelling variants, changes in the order of words, or copyist’s errors that are often quite easy to detect. There are extremely few significant variations, and they do not diminish in the least the correctness of the text that has reached us.
21b) Date of Composition
(1) Synoptic Gospels The composition date of the Acts of the Apostles is usually taken as a reference to date the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Acts ends abruptly before St. Paul’s release from captivity in Rome, which was in approximately a.d. 62, as we gather from his epistles. Acts must have been completed before that year. The Gospel of Luke is an earlier work, since it is mentioned in Acts, and was probably written between a.d. 60 and 62. St. Mark’s Gospel is even older, written perhaps between a.d. 50 and 60. The earliest of the synoptics seems to be the Aramaic version of St. Matthew’s Gospel, which is not extant (only the later Greek version has reached us.). Thus, the three synoptic Gospels were written well before Jerusalem’s destruction in a.d. 70.
(2) The Fourth Gospel The Gospel of St. John is very different from the other three; it presupposes their existence. It was not written to substitute for them (theory of supplantation), but to complete them.
Its author shows great familiarity with the places and dates of the events narrated. He thinks like a Jew and introduces himself as “the disciple whom the Lord loved” (cf. Jn 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20). Tradition dates this Gospel to the end of the first century and identifies this disciple as St. John. Only his great authority would explain why the early Christians accepted an account that was so different from those already known and well established.
21c) The Authors of the Gospels
The tradition attributing the authorship of the Gospels to Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is very old. We have the witness of Papias, who wrote in about a.d. 130, and of the so-called Muratori fragment from approximately a.d. 200. Internal analysis of the Gospels’ texts also supports this attribution. Many personality traits of each of the Evangelists are revealed.
It should be noted that two of the Evangelists were disciples of Jesus and eyewitnesses of the events they narrate (the apostles Matthew and John), while the other two were disciples of the apostles.
21d) The Writing of the Gospels
The Gospel texts seem to be the result of an earlier pre-literary development.1 The synoptic authors would not have freely written down their memoirs. Rather, they would have made use of existing short narratives already incorporated into Tradition. These narratives were used in the primitive Christian community in preaching, catechesis, and liturgy to expound Jesus’ deeds and words.
The Gospel text reveals the existence of a previous oral tradition. There are graphic comparisons, witty aphorisms, and short, easy-to-remember stories. The style is concise with rhythmic expositions and repetitions. Passages are summarily linked by words that do not imply a chronological sequence.
From this, some authors deduce that the Evangelists merely gathered the legends that had developed. If this were the case, their accounts would not allow us to know the real Christ—what they call the historical Christ—but rather a literary figure whom they call the Christ of faith. It would be impossible to recognize the historical Christ in the Gospels, and we could only theorize about him. Even so, this does not seem to bother these authors; within their immanentistic framework, it does not matter who Jesus actually was, only who we think he was or who the early Christians thought he was.
21e) Jesus and the Historical Truth of the Gospels
The thesis that the Gospels reflect only the image of the Christ of faith is unacceptable. Legends take time to develop. The Gospels’ date of composition is too close to Jesus’ death to allow sufficient time for the formation and spreading of a legend. Moreover, many of his disciples were still alive when the Gospels were written.
If the Gospels talk of Christ with faith, that faith is based on historical facts, not on myths. Further, if the Evangelists respected some already widespread formulas when they wrote about what they themselves had witnessed or knew through first-hand testimonies, they did not do so as mere compilers of anecdotes. Rather, they did so intentionally to reinforce the prior and true catechesis by insisting on the same formulas.
The Evangelists were not trying to write a chronologically arranged biography, packed with details of our Lord’s life that would satisfy our curiosity. Nonetheless, they recorded historical facts and announced that this was precisely their purpose. This is shown, for example, in the prologue of St. Luke’s Gospel, in the abundance of data on places and times found here and there in a completely unaffected manner, and in the occasional and apparently frivolous mention of trivial circumstances that are consigned simply because they are remembered.
The Gospels were not invented by self-deluding exaltation in order to create a myth. On the contrary, their historical truth is the foundation of the faith of the early Christians. The Evangelists do not sidestep even the most arcane events that they themselves could not understand. They did not conceal the weaknesses of the apostles, not even those of St. Peter, the first witness of Christ’s Resurrection, whom the early Christians must have venerated greatly.
We can add to this the Evangelists’ exact knowledge of the political and social atmosphere in Palestine, of the existence and the characteristics of the different Jewish parties, and of their daily life, their customs and traditions. After the destruction of Jerusalem, that way of life disappeared.
Besides, the Gospels do not reflect the situation of the Christian community at the time of their composition. They even fail to mention some doctrinal points that, as we gather from Acts and the epistles of St. Paul, were hot topics at that time. The Gospels speak only of the period in which Jesus lived—an additional proof of the Evangelists’ extraordinary fidelity to Tradition.
22. The Testimony of the Acts of the Apostles
The Acts of the Apostles also exposes a very clear intention to be faithful to history; this intention is, perhaps, even clearer here than in the Gospels. It can be seen in the use of Aramaic terms and archaisms in the first chapters, which recount the earliest events, such as the speeches of St. Peter.
In this book, we can see that apostolic preaching was aimed at showing, first of all, that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. He is often called “the Lord.” The early Christian community based its faith on the truth of the events it came to know and had to transmit. The apostles, chosen to be witnesses of Christ, immediately took care of filling the vacancy left by Judas, and the one elected was also a witness to all that happened among them since the beginning.
23. The Testimony of St Paul
There are few concrete details about the life of Jesus reported in the writings of St. Paul, but they sufficiently show that he knew Jesus’ life and based his faith on it. St Paul’s faith is founded on the existence of a real person. The postulation that he is concerned chiefly with the Lord Christ and does not care about Jesus of Nazareth is groundless.
It is highly revealing that St. Paul—a faithful Jew, but with a Hellenistic background, who waged a lifelong struggle to extricate Christianity from the observances and practices of the Jewish law—had the same faith in Christ as the early Judeo-Christian community at Jerusalem. Had his faith been the result of an evolving myth, it could not possibly have led to the same outcome under such antipodal influences. The only explanation is that in both St. Paul and the early Christians’ cases, the faith in Christ was founded on the same historical facts, understood in the same manner.
24. Extra-Biblical Testimonies Concerning Jesus
There are also some extra-biblical pieces of information about Jesus that have reached us.
First, we have the Apocryphal Gospels, which often borrow from the canonical ones. Still, in themselves they offer no guarantee of the authenticity of their affirmations, even the most plausible ones.
The Jewish Talmud devotes little attention to this period, seldom mentioning Jesus. When it does, it always tries to tarnish his image. Even so, some of its attestations confirm the Gospels’ narrative regarding Jesus’ preaching, Passion, and death.
Flavius Josephus was a well-known Jewish historian who settled in Rome. In his Jewish Antiquities (written about a.d. 93) he talks about “James, the brother of Jesus whom they call the Christ.” There are other very clear passages about Jesus, both in this work and in his Jewish Wars, but their authenticity is doubtful. His works seem to contain an original nucleus that was later corrupted by a copyist’s additions. This could have happened by incorporating some scholar’s gloss or footnote into the text.
Some pagan witnesses refer more or less directly to Jesus. Around a.d. 116, Tacitus mentions Christ and his death in his Annals in connection with Nero’s persecution of a.d. 64. Suetonius makes several allusions to Christ in his Lives of the Caesars, written around a.d. 120. Lastly, Pliny the Younger, Governor of Bytinia in Asia Minor, mentions “those who worship Christ as God” in a letter written to Trajan in a.d. 112.
Footnote:
1. Cf. CCC, 126.
“In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb 1:1–2). The beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews stresses both the essential unity of the Old and New Testaments—their author is God—and the difference in quality between God’s messengers: first the prophets, and finally his own Son.
In the New Testament, the Old is presented as preparation for this ultimate revelation. The religion of Israel was ordained to become the Christian religion. Although it also came from God, it should give way to the latter with our Lord’s coming in the fullness of time.
There is no need to dwell on how the religion of Israel was of divine origin, not a discovery of man or a result of the evolution of the religious ideas and practices of a certain people, more or less under the influence of their neighbors. Therefore, we will go directly to Jesus’ times.
First, we will consider what historical records say about Jesus.
21. The Testimony of the Gospels Concerning Jesus
The writings that give us the most information about Jesus are the four Gospels. In this chapter, we will not take into account their exceptional importance as divinely inspired writings. Let us assume the viewpoint of a person who has never heard about Christianity who is, at the same time, totally free from religious prejudices. Let us study the Gospels as if they were merely historical documents. From this perspective, our main questions will be: Did the events narrated in the Gospel really happen? Is the alleged historical background of these events so obscured by legends and additions that they are almost unrecognizable, and we cannot know to what extent they are accurate?
21a) Transmission of the Text of the Gospels
How have these four literary documents reached us?
There are more than 4,000 fragments of manuscripts written in Greek, the original language of the four standing narrations. Many of them are in excellent condition and date back to the fourth century. Quotations included in other early Christian literary sources, such as liturgical texts and writings of the Fathers, render evidence of the existence of the Gospels in the second and third centuries.
Papyrus fragments offer further evidence. Some of them are of considerable length. One of them, dating from about a.d. 200, contains almost the entire first 14 chapters of St. John’s Gospel. Another short fragment from before a.d. 150 proves that the Gospel of John (the latest of the four) already existed at that time.
This evidence has refuted the theories of some nineteenth-century rationalists who claimed that the Gospels were written so late that they cannot claim the slightest historical value.
Textual criticism, by comparing the oldest and best copies, has proven that the transmission of the original text is extraordinarily faithful. It has been pointed out that the number of variations found in the extant texts exceeds the total number of words contained in the Gospels. Most, however, are just spelling variants, changes in the order of words, or copyist’s errors that are often quite easy to detect. There are extremely few significant variations, and they do not diminish in the least the correctness of the text that has reached us.
21b) Date of Composition
(1) Synoptic Gospels The composition date of the Acts of the Apostles is usually taken as a reference to date the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Acts ends abruptly before St. Paul’s release from captivity in Rome, which was in approximately a.d. 62, as we gather from his epistles. Acts must have been completed before that year. The Gospel of Luke is an earlier work, since it is mentioned in Acts, and was probably written between a.d. 60 and 62. St. Mark’s Gospel is even older, written perhaps between a.d. 50 and 60. The earliest of the synoptics seems to be the Aramaic version of St. Matthew’s Gospel, which is not extant (only the later Greek version has reached us.). Thus, the three synoptic Gospels were written well before Jerusalem’s destruction in a.d. 70.
(2) The Fourth Gospel The Gospel of St. John is very different from the other three; it presupposes their existence. It was not written to substitute for them (theory of supplantation), but to complete them.
Its author shows great familiarity with the places and dates of the events narrated. He thinks like a Jew and introduces himself as “the disciple whom the Lord loved” (cf. Jn 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20). Tradition dates this Gospel to the end of the first century and identifies this disciple as St. John. Only his great authority would explain why the early Christians accepted an account that was so different from those already known and well established.
21c) The Authors of the Gospels
The tradition attributing the authorship of the Gospels to Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is very old. We have the witness of Papias, who wrote in about a.d. 130, and of the so-called Muratori fragment from approximately a.d. 200. Internal analysis of the Gospels’ texts also supports this attribution. Many personality traits of each of the Evangelists are revealed.
It should be noted that two of the Evangelists were disciples of Jesus and eyewitnesses of the events they narrate (the apostles Matthew and John), while the other two were disciples of the apostles.
21d) The Writing of the Gospels
The Gospel texts seem to be the result of an earlier pre-literary development.1 The synoptic authors would not have freely written down their memoirs. Rather, they would have made use of existing short narratives already incorporated into Tradition. These narratives were used in the primitive Christian community in preaching, catechesis, and liturgy to expound Jesus’ deeds and words.
The Gospel text reveals the existence of a previous oral tradition. There are graphic comparisons, witty aphorisms, and short, easy-to-remember stories. The style is concise with rhythmic expositions and repetitions. Passages are summarily linked by words that do not imply a chronological sequence.
From this, some authors deduce that the Evangelists merely gathered the legends that had developed. If this were the case, their accounts would not allow us to know the real Christ—what they call the historical Christ—but rather a literary figure whom they call the Christ of faith. It would be impossible to recognize the historical Christ in the Gospels, and we could only theorize about him. Even so, this does not seem to bother these authors; within their immanentistic framework, it does not matter who Jesus actually was, only who we think he was or who the early Christians thought he was.
21e) Jesus and the Historical Truth of the Gospels
The thesis that the Gospels reflect only the image of the Christ of faith is unacceptable. Legends take time to develop. The Gospels’ date of composition is too close to Jesus’ death to allow sufficient time for the formation and spreading of a legend. Moreover, many of his disciples were still alive when the Gospels were written.
If the Gospels talk of Christ with faith, that faith is based on historical facts, not on myths. Further, if the Evangelists respected some already widespread formulas when they wrote about what they themselves had witnessed or knew through first-hand testimonies, they did not do so as mere compilers of anecdotes. Rather, they did so intentionally to reinforce the prior and true catechesis by insisting on the same formulas.
The Evangelists were not trying to write a chronologically arranged biography, packed with details of our Lord’s life that would satisfy our curiosity. Nonetheless, they recorded historical facts and announced that this was precisely their purpose. This is shown, for example, in the prologue of St. Luke’s Gospel, in the abundance of data on places and times found here and there in a completely unaffected manner, and in the occasional and apparently frivolous mention of trivial circumstances that are consigned simply because they are remembered.
The Gospels were not invented by self-deluding exaltation in order to create a myth. On the contrary, their historical truth is the foundation of the faith of the early Christians. The Evangelists do not sidestep even the most arcane events that they themselves could not understand. They did not conceal the weaknesses of the apostles, not even those of St. Peter, the first witness of Christ’s Resurrection, whom the early Christians must have venerated greatly.
We can add to this the Evangelists’ exact knowledge of the political and social atmosphere in Palestine, of the existence and the characteristics of the different Jewish parties, and of their daily life, their customs and traditions. After the destruction of Jerusalem, that way of life disappeared.
Besides, the Gospels do not reflect the situation of the Christian community at the time of their composition. They even fail to mention some doctrinal points that, as we gather from Acts and the epistles of St. Paul, were hot topics at that time. The Gospels speak only of the period in which Jesus lived—an additional proof of the Evangelists’ extraordinary fidelity to Tradition.
22. The Testimony of the Acts of the Apostles
The Acts of the Apostles also exposes a very clear intention to be faithful to history; this intention is, perhaps, even clearer here than in the Gospels. It can be seen in the use of Aramaic terms and archaisms in the first chapters, which recount the earliest events, such as the speeches of St. Peter.
In this book, we can see that apostolic preaching was aimed at showing, first of all, that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. He is often called “the Lord.” The early Christian community based its faith on the truth of the events it came to know and had to transmit. The apostles, chosen to be witnesses of Christ, immediately took care of filling the vacancy left by Judas, and the one elected was also a witness to all that happened among them since the beginning.
23. The Testimony of St Paul
There are few concrete details about the life of Jesus reported in the writings of St. Paul, but they sufficiently show that he knew Jesus’ life and based his faith on it. St Paul’s faith is founded on the existence of a real person. The postulation that he is concerned chiefly with the Lord Christ and does not care about Jesus of Nazareth is groundless.
It is highly revealing that St. Paul—a faithful Jew, but with a Hellenistic background, who waged a lifelong struggle to extricate Christianity from the observances and practices of the Jewish law—had the same faith in Christ as the early Judeo-Christian community at Jerusalem. Had his faith been the result of an evolving myth, it could not possibly have led to the same outcome under such antipodal influences. The only explanation is that in both St. Paul and the early Christians’ cases, the faith in Christ was founded on the same historical facts, understood in the same manner.
24. Extra-Biblical Testimonies Concerning Jesus
There are also some extra-biblical pieces of information about Jesus that have reached us.
First, we have the Apocryphal Gospels, which often borrow from the canonical ones. Still, in themselves they offer no guarantee of the authenticity of their affirmations, even the most plausible ones.
The Jewish Talmud devotes little attention to this period, seldom mentioning Jesus. When it does, it always tries to tarnish his image. Even so, some of its attestations confirm the Gospels’ narrative regarding Jesus’ preaching, Passion, and death.
Flavius Josephus was a well-known Jewish historian who settled in Rome. In his Jewish Antiquities (written about a.d. 93) he talks about “James, the brother of Jesus whom they call the Christ.” There are other very clear passages about Jesus, both in this work and in his Jewish Wars, but their authenticity is doubtful. His works seem to contain an original nucleus that was later corrupted by a copyist’s additions. This could have happened by incorporating some scholar’s gloss or footnote into the text.
Some pagan witnesses refer more or less directly to Jesus. Around a.d. 116, Tacitus mentions Christ and his death in his Annals in connection with Nero’s persecution of a.d. 64. Suetonius makes several allusions to Christ in his Lives of the Caesars, written around a.d. 120. Lastly, Pliny the Younger, Governor of Bytinia in Asia Minor, mentions “those who worship Christ as God” in a letter written to Trajan in a.d. 112.
Footnote:
1. Cf. CCC, 126.