Faith on Trial (9 page)

The inclusion of personal thoughts and interpretation constituting opinion in the testimony of the apostle John does not diminish its value as evidence in a court of law under the Federal Rules of Evidence:

If the witness is not testifying as an expert, testimony in the form of an opinion is limited to one that is: (a) rationally based on the witness’s perception and (b) helpful to clearly understanding the witness’ testimony or to determining a fact in issue, and (c) not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge within the scope of Rule 702.
90

John’s testimony in the form of opinions or inferences is admissible so long as it is rationally linked to what he actually observed and is helpful to a further understanding of the issues to be resolved. His opinions often deal with cause and effect in connection with the Gospel events. Like the illuminated manuscripts of old, the written thoughts of John add color and perspective to the black-and-white sketches presented by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

In summary therefore, the legal nature of the authorship of the Gospels is presented to you, the jury, as follows:

First,
the Gospels of Matthew and John appear to have been written by eyewitnesses to the events.

Second,
the Gospel of Mark was written by or on behalf of or as an agent for Peter, an eyewitness. Federal Rule of Evidence 602 allows a witness to testify, even though that witness may not have knowledge in the
literal
sense.
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Statements made by Mark without evidence of any motive for misrepresentation, to the extent they are determined to be made as an interpreter or helper for Peter, will be treated as statements of Peter and would be permitted as evidence based on firsthand knowledge in a court of law.
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As discussed above, through analysis of the internal structure and form of the narrative, expert scholars over the years have supported the notion that Peter is the source of this Gospel.
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The relationship of Peter and Mark, as evidenced by other Christian and non-Christian historical writings, further corroborates the belief that Mark wrote his Gospel on behalf of Peter, as his agent. Under the common law, statements of a person acting as an agent for a principal, as determined by all aspects of the relationship, will be treated as the statements of the principal.
94
Courts have commonly upheld this idea and have determined that it is immaterial whether or not the declarant was expressly authorized to speak on behalf of his principal. It is sufficient that the statement accompanies conduct authorized by the principal.
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Consistent with this legal principle and the evidence of experts who have examined the internal structure and form of this Gospel, as presented above, the majority opinion of historians and biblical scholars for two thousand years has been that the Gospel of Mark was written by Mark at the direction or dictation of Peter. This Gospel then stands primarily as the testimony of an eyewitness, the apostle Peter.

Third,
it is fairly clear that at least large portions of the Gospel of Luke were written by someone other than an eyewitness. We have already established that as evidence these Gospels are all admissible for the jury’s consideration as ancient writings. Greenleaf has also noted, however, that if these Gospels were inquiries, gravely undertaken and pursued, by a person of competent intelligence, sagacity, and integrity, and they were undertaken at the request of a person in authority or by a desire to serve the public, then the results would be legally admissible evidence in a court of law, even if the report was voluntarily undertaken.
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Because of the careful, extremely detailed examination of the events reported, even if the Gospel of Luke were held out merely as the investigative work of a contemporary historian, it would be entitled to belief.
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Additionally, statements made by a person regarding personal history, even when the person who is the subject of the testimony is not a relative of the witness, will be admissible and will not be excluded by the hearsay rule so long as the witness was intimately associated with the subject of the report and would be likely to have accurate information concerning the matters involved.
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The Gospel of Luke also fulfills these latter criteria.

The Gospel of Luke, therefore, while not clearly eyewitness testimony, stands as a valid historical report or investigation, gravely undertaken by a witness who was intimately associated with the subject of the report. Because this Gospel corroborates the facts set forth in the other three Gospels, we are entitled to take it into consideration in our analysis and to review its overall credibility, including the competence and integrity of the reporter.

It is within the jury’s discretion to decide whether all of this evidence shows that the testimony of the Gospels of Mark and Luke constitute eyewitness reports. Most important, under the theory that the Gospel of Mark was written by Mark as an interpreter or helper for the apostle Peter, this Gospel may reasonably be determined by the jury to be, in fact, a third eyewitness account, that of the apostle Peter. Regardless, to the extent the Gospels of Mark and Luke support the testimony of the apostles John and Matthew, they become corroborative links in the chain of evidence. Even if you, the jury, determine that either of these two Gospels does not represent eyewitness testimony, they corroborate the testimony of those who were eyewitnesses with whom they were intimately related, and they record matters of public record and significant public interest.

To keep things in perspective, remember that one eyewitness is sufficient under the law, with convincing corroborating evidence, to support a murder conviction in the United States; the testimony of two eyewitnesses is difficult to overcome.

Finally, the Gospels contain stories, such as the birth of Jesus, that were not observed by the authors. The jury has the option of considering only those portions of the Gospels it believes to be based on firsthand knowledge.
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When a witness testifies partly to things he or she has actually seen or heard and partly from what was told by another, a practical compromise under the rules governing evidence is to admit the information based on firsthand knowledge and exclude the remaining testimony. Regarding the issues in our case, however, Matthew, John, and Peter (speaking through Mark) all purport to have actually observed the resurrection of Jesus.

In summary, evidence establishes that the Gospels were written by people who were actually alive at the time that Jesus lived, died, and came back to life, not by unknown writers many generations later. In this case sufficient evidence has been offered to present to the jury the Gospels of John, Matthew, and Mark as testimony based on personal knowledge of the events at issue in our case as described in those Gospels. The Gospel of Luke is presented to the jury as being an investigative report of events of public and historical importance, carefully prepared by a reporter at a time contemporaneous, or nearly contemporaneous, with the events that occurred. It is presented as a link in the chain of evidence that corroborates the testimony of the other three.

(Did Someone Copy?)

C
ertain passages in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are similar, giving rise to charges that they may have copied from one another to various extents. For that reason they are sometimes referred to as the “Synoptic” Gospels. (The Gospel of John is not included in this problem because it is so different from the three Synoptic Gospels.) So we will now subject these three witnesses to a critical cross-examination on this question because only that portion of a witness’s testimony which is original holds weight in a courtroom. The question is whether each of these three evangelists wrote what he saw, independent of the other two.

Some scholars who deny that these Gospels present original testimony of
three
different witnesses take the position that the Gospel of Mark was used as a basic outline by Matthew and Luke. At the start, however, note that the Gospel of Matthew is much more extensive than either Mark or Luke. Regardless, these critics also admit that each of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain many unique individual passages, and those are clearly not copied. These three Gospels also contain many discrepancies or inconsistencies, even in common passages. Common passages are portions of sentences, or sentences, or paragraphs that are similar in meaning, but the wording is not identical. For passages in common between Matthew and Luke that are not found in Mark, these critics further assert that a common source document, which has not been found, exists. This document has been labeled Q, for
Quelle
(German for “source”).

First, the theory that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were copied from Mark is challenged by some scholars who believe the first Gospel was composed by Matthew in Aramaic and the Gospel of Matthew was used as a kind of an outline by Mark and Luke.
1
This argument is also supported by a written statement of the early church father, Papias, that Matthew first compiled the “Logia” in Aramaic and everyone thereafter translated it.
2
Aramaic was probably the language most commonly used by Jesus and his apostles (although Romanization of the area also resulted in the familiarity of most people with Greek). Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius also appeared to believe Matthew’s Gospel came first.
3
The question of whether the Gospel of Mark or Matthew came first remains an open issue, however, and the answer is not critical to our case. The jury must now consider the
originality
of the testimony, not the priority of authorship.

The theories that Mark was copied by Matthew and Luke, that Matthew was copied by Mark and Luke, or that a Q source was used are controversial. After many decades of investigation, no Q source or any ancient reference to such a source has been found.
4
Scholars who believe the elusive Q source was used by Matthew, Mark, or Luke in the original creation of those Gospels hold that Q contains no narrative, only a collection of quotations or sayings of Jesus. This hypothesis states that the Q source existed long before the Gospels and that any narratives in the Gospels today were added generations later in an attempt to establish church doctrine.

But the early dating of the Gospel papyrus fragments discussed in the last chapter undermines speculation that a mere outline was used by the authors of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Recall that the Magdeline fragments, for example, contain not only quotations from Jesus, but also extensive narrative and statements from other people around Jesus. (See footnote 18 in chapter 3 for the text of the Magdeline fragments.) Furthermore, we have also learned that the fragments have been matched word for word with the third-century complete manuscripts of the various Gospels, good evidence that those manuscripts were already intact in the early part of the first century. There is therefore no need to speculate that the illusory Q document was a source. In order for a Q document to have been the sources of all three Gospels, it would have had to exist prior to the dates of the fragments (and, of course before the original manuscripts from which they came). In fact, Q would have necessarily had to have been written almost immediately upon the death of Jesus.

Keep in mind, however: The Q document has not yet been located and authenticated.

As to the assertion that the Synoptic Gospels were copied one from the other, a more straightforward response to this challenge is that the similarity among the three Gospels arose from the fact that all three derived from, or were based on, personal observation of the authors, including listening to the same oral teachings given by Jesus.
5
The accurate transmission of religious teachings was considered to be a sacred task by the Jews and early Christians. Memorization of oral teachings was traditional among Jews and had been for literally hundreds of years. In fact, some rabbis memorized the entire Old Testament. Scholars have also noted that many of the actual quotations of Jesus in the Gospels have a poetical structure, making them easy to memorize. Furthermore, many critical passages include slight discrepancies in the reporting between these Gospels, as one would expect from three witnesses observing and writing from different perspectives. In a courtroom slight discrepancies, reporting from different perspectives, do not diminish the testimony of a credible witness.

There are various scenarios under which similar passages in the writings of Matthew, Mark, and Luke could have occurred.

To begin with, scribes during that period were trained in shorthand writing; this was a required skill.
6
For example, a text written on leather and entirely in Greek shorthand has been found near the Dead Sea.
7
It dates from the early second century at the latest. Although difficult to decipher, it appears to be a Christian text because a monogram associated with references to Christ is included. Shorthand was apparently used as an everyday tool by both Jewish and Gentile writers of the period. Many scholars believe Matthew, as a customs or tax official in Galilee, would have had knowledge of this method, permitting him to preserve many of Jesus’ teachings verbatim.
8

Another explanation for the similarity in the three Gospels comes from scholars who have noted that the custom in the time of Jesus was to stereotype the forms in which religious teachings were presented. A modern comparison to this method of communication can be illustrated by the stereotypical manner in which a police report is given in court. The report is usually unadorned, conforming closely to the course of events at issue in the case, in order to preserve accuracy.
9
Similar narratives would be an expected result if this is a correct analysis. Any of the Gospel writers could have used this form of reporting.