Is Christianity Different from All the Other Religions: Can It Be Verified? - Part 2

(extracted from our series “Was Jesus Christ a Liar, a Lunatic, a Legend, or God?”)

The late John Warwick Montgomery was a practicing trial lawyer both in England and America. He held many positions including Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University in Wisconsin. He is also the author of numerous books, including Evidence for Faith: Deciding the God Question.

(continued from Part 1)

Summarizing the Evidence

Dr. John Ankerberg: Alright, Dr. Montgomery, you’ve been talking about evidence. Summarize again, what was the evidence that we’re looking at?

Dr. John W. Montgomery: Yes. What we’ve been emphasizing is that Christianity differs from other religions in offering specific historical proof of its claims, and the historical proof has to do with Jesus Christ. According to primary source records, records that come from eyewitnesses, Jesus claimed to be no less than God and He demonstrated His deity by His resurrection from the dead.

And the documents in which these materials are contained turn out to be the best attested documents of the ancient world in the sense that there is the least textual alteration and damage to these documents across the centuries. We can get back virtually to the time of writing and we discover that these documents were in the condition in the first century in which we find them in the twentieth. It is simply not the case that as a result of translations or copyings we have lost our contact with what those documents originally said.

Sir Frederick Kenyon on the Manuscript Evidence

Dr. John Ankerberg: Somebody said that we’ve got now 24,000 different manuscripts that have come down to us concerning the New Testament. How does that compare with other documents such as Homer or other Greek documents?

Dr. John W. Montgomery: I can’t resist reading a quotation from the foremost authority in New Testament textual criticism in our time, Sir Frederick Kenyon. He was principal librarian in the British Museum, roughly the equivalent of our Librarian of Congress, and he wrote numerous books in this field. Back in 1933 he wrote a book entitled Recent Developments in the Textual Criticism of the Greek Bible, and he says on pages 74-76, “So far from the New Testament text being in an abnormally unsatisfactory state, it is far better attested than that of any other work of ancient literature. Its problems and difficulties arise not from the deficiency of evidence, but from an excess of it. In the case of no work of Greek or Latin literature do we possess manuscripts so plentiful in number or so near the date of composition.”

And then he goes on to make comparisons with other classical writers. For example, in general, the distance from the first complete texts that we have of a classical writer and the original writing ranges 900 to 1,000 years—900 to 1,000 years! We don’t know what happened during that period, and we simply assume that the document as we have it adequately represents the document as it was originally written. Whereas in the case of the New Testament, there are documents—that is to say, fragments, lectionary readings, quotations, and the like—that carry us from the complete texts that are immensely earlier than in the case of classical writings, right back on top of the original writings.

Could the Gospels Be Legend or Myth?

Dr. John Ankerberg: All right, talk to us again about when these things were written. Some people say, “Well, how do you know it’s not legend or myth, or it’s not the product of the church instead of the disciples?” In other words, talk to the point where they say it didn’t really come into existence until about two or three hundred years after Jesus was on the scene. What would you say to that?

Dr. John W. Montgomery: Well, it’s impossible to argue that way because we have the manuscript materials earlier than this. There was a liberal theologian by the name of Rudolph Bultmann who said that the writings of the New Testament are actually the product of second century Gnosticism, particularly the Gospel of John is such a product. A little difficulty arose, namely finding a fragment of the Gospel of John at the year 100. It is very difficult to be influenced by second century Gnosticism when the book’s already written.

Dating the New Testament Books

Dr. John Ankerberg: What are the dates for the books?

Dr. John W. Montgomery: The Synoptic Gospels, that is Matthew, Mark, and Luke, plus almost all of the rest of the New Testament, appeared before the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70. It’s fascinating to notice how even liberal scholars in our time have been forced to earlier dating like this on the basis of manuscript evidence. Thus, J. A. T. Robinson, “Honest to God Robinson” of the 1960s, before his death produced a work entitled Re-dating the New Testament. And in this work he said, “Every book of the New Testament was written before 70 by a baptized Jew.” He even included the Gospel of John. And in his posthumous book, he argues that the Gospel of John was the earliest of the Gospels.

Now, it certainly wasn’t, but this is an indication of how early the dating has to be placed now. And the same position was taken by William Foxwell Albright of Johns Hopkins University, the author of the most important general work on biblical archaeology in our country. He said that every single book of the New Testament was a product of people in direct contact with Jesus and before the fall of Jerusalem in 70.

Working Backward from the Book of Acts

Dr. John Ankerberg: Give us what scholarship is substantiating concerning the dates. Start with Luke and work your way back, on dates.

Dr. John W. Montgomery: In all probability, Mark’s gospel is the earliest. And it was used by Matthew as one of Matthew’s sources; also used by Luke as one of Luke’s sources. We have external evidence that shows us this early dating along the following lines. We know that Paul died in the Neronian persecution 64-65. Now, the book of Acts sets forth the biography of Paul, his missionary activities. But at the end of the book of Acts Paul has not yet died. So, it’s clear that the book was written before his death. Had he died, obviously the author would have mentioned it. Death is important in a biography, it ends it! So, 64-65.

Luke is Part I of Acts and is stated to be such. In the book of Acts the writer says, “The former treatise I presented to you, Theophilus.” That’s Luke. So, Luke was written prior to Acts. But Luke used Mark. Now, you’re moving back from 64-65, and Jesus died around the year 30. That places all of this stuff within a generation of the events themselves. Thirty-five years maximum.

Why a Thirty-Five Year Gap Matters

Dr. John Ankerberg: Why is that important?

Dr. John W. Montgomery: Well, I hate to admit this, but I graduated from high school around 35 years ago and I remember very clearly my high school graduation. Some of it I’d like to forget. And the fact that we have little difficulty in remembering events that are important to us 35 years ago means simply that the stuff that you get in the New Testament is an accurate memory of what Jesus said and did. And these writers claim that. They insist that they are presenting what we today would call the “straight scoop” about that man.

The Conclusion, and What It Requires

Dr. John Ankerberg: So we have accurate information, historical records, about a person called Jesus, substantiated by a multitude of documents that far outweighs any kind of support that you have in the classics. The time date for these books, the interval of transmission, is much shorter than what you have for the classics, and so what’s the conclusion on all of this?

Dr. John W. Montgomery: Conclusion is this: that you can know when you read the New Testament that what it says about Jesus is accurate. Now, if it should turn out that what these documents say is that Jesus was the God of the universe come down here to earth to deal with your personal spiritual problems, you’d better come to terms with Him. You have no choice. You’re facing reality and you’re going to have to deal with it. Nobody can come to you that way and remain in neutrality. You’re going to have to make some sort of decision about a person like that.