Faith on Trial (24 page)

10. John Noble Wilford, “Wary Astronomers Ponder an Accelerating Universe,”
The New York Times,
March 3, 1998, B11.

Chapter Two

1. Philip Wesley Comfort, ed.,
The Origin of the Bible
(Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 1992), 181, 195.

2. Ibid., 183.

3. Ibid., 180, 190–91.

4. Bruce Manning Metzger,
The Text of the New Testament
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 34; also see: F. F. Bruce,
The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
5th rev. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 16–17.

5. In legal terminology “hearsay” is an oral statement or a written assertion (and sometimes conduct) other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. See Federal Rule of Evidence 801.

6. Federal Rule of Evidence 803 (16).

7. Federal Rule of Evidence 901(b)(8).

8.
Compton v. Davis Oil Co.,
607 F. Supp. 1221, 1229 (Dist. of Wyoming, 1985).

9. “The Epistle of Ignatius to the Tarsians,” in
The Ante-Nicene Fathers,
vol. 1, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1986), 107.

10. Seutonius, “Suet. Vita Claudii, xxv.4,” in
Documents of the Christian Church,
2nd ed., selected and ed. Henry Bettenson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 2. Also see: A. N. Wilson,
Paul: The Mind of the Apostle
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 94–106.

11. Paul Wilson,
The Mind of the Apostle,
99–100.

12. Tacitus, “Annales, xv.44. The Neronian Persecution,” in Bettenson,
Documents of the Christian Church,
2.

13. Ibid.

14. Pliny (the Younger), “Plin. Epp.x (Ad. Traj.), xcvi,” in Bettenson,
Documents of the Christian Church,
3.

15. Ibid.

16. George F. Jowett,
The Drama of the Lost Disciples
(London: Covenant Publishing Co., 1970).

17. Metzger,
The Text of the New Testament,
18.

18. Ibid., 29.

19.
Threadgill v. Armstrong World Industries,
928 F.2d 1366, 1375 (3rd Cir., 1991).

20.
Pettingell v. Boynton,
139 Mass. 244, 29 N.E. 655 (1885);
Bell v. Brewster,
44 Ohio 690, 10 N.E. 679 (1887).

21.
Weinstein’s Federal Evidence: Commentary on Rules of Evidence for the United States Courts,
2nd ed. (1998), vol. 5, Section 901.10(2)(a).

22. Federal Rule of Evidence 803 (16). Also see
Weinstein’s Federal Evidence,
vol. 5, section 803(21)(2); Strong,
McCormick on Evidence,
vol. 2, section 323.

23. Gary Kinder,
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998) is an interesting nonfiction account of this tragedy.

24.
Columbus-America Discovery Group, Inc. v. The Unidentified, Wrecked and Abandoned Sailing Vessel,
742 F.Supp. 1327 (E.D. Va. 1990); rev’d. on other grounds, 974 F.2d 450 (4th Cir. 1992). Also see:
George v. The Celotex Corporation,
914 F.2d 26 (2nd. Cir. 1990) where the Court permitted introduction of a report over twenty years old under the ancient documents exception, to show the state of the art with respect to knowledge in the asbestos industry as to the safety of a particular level of contamination.

25.
Weinstein’s Federal Evidence,
vol. 5, Section 803.21(3).

26. See generally: Joseph A. Wickes, “Ancient Documents and Hearsay,” 8
Tex. L. Rev.
451, 473 (1930).

27. Federal Rule of Evidence 803 (16), 901 (b)8;
Threadgill v. Armstrong World Industries, Inc.,
928 F.2d 1366 (3rd Cir. 1991).

28. Federal Rule of Evidence 1003.

29. Federal Rule of Evidence 1004.

30. Strong,
McCormick on Evidence,
at Section 223, 47. The preferable and majority view is that satisfaction of the ancient document exception authenticates an ancient copy of an original writing.

31. Metzger,
The Text of the New Testament,
19.

32. Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix,
A General Introduction to the Bible
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 466.

33.Ibid., 475.

34.Ibid., 474; quoting Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hart,
The New Testament in the Original Greek;
Benjamin B. Warfield,
An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Bible
(London: 1886), 13–14.

35. Bruce,
The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?,
19.

36. Frederick G. Kenyon,
Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), 23; also see Comfort,
The Origin of the Bible,
182.

37. Comfort,
The Origin of the Bible,
200.

38. Conclusion of Philip Comfort in
The Origin of the Bible,
199–204.

39. The Allepo Codex is held today in the Israel Museum, in a wing of the museum called the Shrine of the Book.

40. Charles Pellegrino,
Return to Sodom and Gomorrah
(New York: Avon Books, 1994), 324.

41. Ibid.

42. Simon Greenleaf,
The Testimony of the Evangelists
(Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1995), 18. (Original publication was in 1874.)

Chapter Three

1. Federal Rule of Evidence 602.

2.
Weinstein’s Federal Evidence
, vol. 3, Section 602.03(1)a). Advisory Committee Notes on the 2011 Amendment of Rule 602 state that the amendment is stylistic only, with no intent to change any result in any ruling on evidence admissibility.

3.
Kansas City Power & Light Co. v. Ford Motor Credit Co.
, 995 F.2d 1422, 1432 (8th Cir. 1993).

4.
Folio Impressions, Inc. v. Byer California,
752 F.Supp. 583, 586–587 (S.D.N.Y. 1990), aff’d. 937 F.2d 759 (2nd Cir. 1991).

5.
United States v. Quezada
, 754 F.2d 1190, 1195–1196 (5th Cir. 1985).

6.
Senecal v. Drolette
, 304 N.Y. 446, 108 N.E. 2d 602 (Court of Appeals, New York, 1952).

7. Leading proponents of this theory include Dr. Albert Schweitzer, E. P. Sanders, and Burton Mack, as well as the fellows of the Jesus Seminar, including Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crosson.

8. James H. Charlesworth,
Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls
(New York: Doubleday, 1992), xxxiii. This test has confirmed the archeological, historical, and paleographical methods of assigning dates to the scrolls.

9. Flavius Josephus, “Wars of the Jews,” book 5, chap. 11, (1), in
The Complete Works of Josephus
, trans. William Whiston, A.M. (Grand Rapdis: Kregel Publications, 1981), 565.

10. Flavius Josephus, “Wars of the Jews,” book 5, chap. 12, (3), in
The Complete Works of Josephus,
568.

11. Tacitus “Annales. Xv.44,” in Bettenson,
Documents of the Christian Church
,
2.

12. Flavius Josephus, “Antiquities of the Jews,” bk. 20, chap. 9, in
The Complete Works of Josephus
, 423.

13. John A. T. Robinson,
Redating the New Testament
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 103.

14. Ibid., 104.

15. Ibid., 311.

16. A front-page story on December 24, 1994, in the
London Times
and a BBC radio national news bulletin on the same day broke the story, sparking a firestorm of controversy among scholars defending the established second-century dating of the fragments. In particular, there was outrage over the publication of this news first in the general press rather than in an academic forum. However, a complete, thorough, detailed explanation of the early first-century redating of the Magdalen fragments is set forth in a subsequent book answering these critics and written by Carsten Peter Thiede and Matthew D’Ancona,
Eyewitness to Jesus
(New York: Doubleday, 1996).

17. Ibid., 27.

18. Ibid., 56–57. The fact that these early dated fragments also include narrative portions of the Gospel of Matthew and quotations from persons other than Jesus also significantly undermines a similar theory of many biblical scholars that the entire Gospel was written at a much later period of time based on a few “sayings” or quotations from Jesus (but without any narration or quotations from others) which had been preserved through the years from the first century
ad.
The full text of both sides of each of the Magdalen fragments, translated into English and reprinted by Thiede is as follows:

Fragment 1: “poured it on his head as he was at table. When the disciples saw this, they said indignantly”

Fragment 2: “Jesus noticed this and said, ‘Why are you upsetting this woman? What she has done for me . . .’”

Fragment 3: “Then one of the twelve, the man called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What are you prepared to give me . . .’”

>Fragment 3: “They were greatly distressed and started asking him in turn, ‘Not me, Lord, surely?’ He answered, ‘Someone who has dipped his hand into the dish with me . . .’”

Fragment 1: “Jesus said to them, ‘You will all fall away from me tonight, for the scripture says . . .’”

Fragment 2: “I shall go ahead of you to Galilee. At this, Peter said to him”

Translations are as quoted in the New Jerusalem Bible; Thiede and D’Ancona,
Eyewitness to Jesus,
56.

19. Thiede and D’Ancona,
Eyewitness to Jesus
,
64–65.

20. Ibid., 71.

21. Geisler and Nix,
A General Introduction to the Bible
, 352.

22. In Thiede and D’Ancona,
Eyewitness to Jesus
,
Thiede has also credited earlier recognition of the similarities between these two sets of early dated fragments to Peter Weignadt and Kurt Aland in reports written in 1966.

23. Thiede and D’Ancona,
Eyewitness to Jesus
,
119.

24. Ibid., 68–70.

25. Ibid., 70.

26. Ibid., 124.

27. Ibid., 35.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid., 60–61.

30. It has also been reported that nineteen small fragments of the Gospel of Mark found among the Dead Sea Scrolls have been identified and assigned a date of around
ad
50 by Professor Jose O’Callaghan, of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. See William S. McBirnie,
Search for the Twelve Apostles
(Carol Stream, IL: Living Books, Tyndale House, 1989), 251.

31. Thiede and D’Ancona,
Eyewitness to Jesus
, 111.

32. Ibid., 109.

33. Ibid., 36–46. But, for a competing viewpoint also see
Biblical Archealogy
online: bib-arch.org/online-exclusives/dead-sea-scrolls-13.asp.

34. As noted in Thiede and D’Ancona,
Eyewitness to Jesus
, 36.

35. As quoted in Thiede and D’Ancona,
Eyewitness to Jesus
, 32.

36. Thiede and D’Ancona,
Eyewitness to Jesus
, 17–18.

37. Robinson,
Redating the New Testament
, 254–311.

38. Ian Wilson,
Jesus: The Evidence
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 93–94.

39. Ibid., 93.

40. Jack Finegan,
The Archeology of the New Testament
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 193. In fact, the
entire
temple complex, including many other buildings surrounding the temple, was not completed until approximately thirty years later.

41.
Origins of the Bible
,
72; also see Raymond E. Brown,
An Introduction to the New Testament
(New York: Doubleday, 1997), 368.

42. Brown,
An Introduction to the New Testament
, 368.

43. Robinson,
Redating the New Testament,
307.

44. Compilation of Scripture taken from Josh McDowell,
Evidence That Demands a Verdict
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1979), 8–9. A good general reference guide is McDowell’s,
The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999).

45. Bruce,
The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?,
16–17.

46. Metzger,
The Text of the New Testament
, 34.

47. Greenleaf,
The Testimony of the Evangelists
, 18.

48. See
Did Jesus Rise from the Dead: The Resurrection Debate
, ed. Terry L. Miethe (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 23, 55, 86; also see Bruce,
The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?,
76.

49. See Robinson,
Redating of the New Testament
, 96.

50. Bruce A. Metzger,
The Canon of the New Testament
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); also see Comfort,
The Origin of the Bible
, 69.

51. Gary R. Habermas,
Ancient Evidence for the Life of Jesus
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 141.

52. Comfort,
The Origin of the Bible
, 71. Philip Comfort reports that a writing known as the
Gospel of Truth
,
probably written by Valentinus, refers to the Gospels, Acts, letters of Paul, Hebrews, and the book of Revelation, treating them as authoritative and indicating that a compilation was in existence at that time.

53. “Fragments of Papias,” in Coxe,
The Ante-Nicene Fathers
,
vol. 1, 155. Five writings of Papias are preserved by other ancient writers, and these are referred to as the
Oracles of the Lord
.

54. Brown,
An Introduction to the New Testament
, 212, n 91.

55. Irenaeus, “Adversus haereses, III. I.i ” (preserved in Euseb. H.E. V.8); in Bettenson,
Documents of the Christian Church
,
28.