An Embroidered Text?

Recently I watched the very interesting 2016 documentary entitled “Rome: Empire Without Limit with Mary Beard”.  Ms. Beard, a very readable British scholar, functioned as host and narrator.  Regarding Christ, Ms. Beard said, “one Jewish Rabbi had developed new ideas.  His name was Jesus. The Sayings of Jesus, as they were called, were only written down later.  But it’s clear enough that for the Jews he was preaching blasphemy.  And at the beginning at least, for the Romans he was just another troublemaker. However exactly the story went, he was arrested, put to trial, and sentenced to death Roman-style, by crucifixion.  The Romans must have thought “problem solved”, but it was only the start.

       “It was near here” [Ms. Beard said, standing on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem] that Jesus was crucified, probably on some charge of civil disobedience.  It’s very hard to know exactly what was going on because the story had been rewritten and reinterpreted and embroidered ever since.  But we can be fairly certain that the real Jesus was the leader of some small Jewish splinter group and that in the decades after his crucifixion he became, he was always reinvented as the founding symbol of a new religion which attracted followers more widely across the empire.  There weren’t to start with actually all that many of them and they believed a variety of different things that we wouldn’t recognize now as Christian.”

       I do not know if Ms. Beard (whose book S.P.Q.R. I heartily enjoyed) was the writer of such nonsense or whether she was simply reading a script written by another. I quote it at length only because it gives popular expression to what many people believe about the origin of the Christian Faith.  The whole thing cries out for a reply.

       But where to start? For one thing, history knows of no extant document called “The Sayings of Jesus”.  This might be a reference to the (in my view non-existent) hypothetical document scholars refer to as “Q” (German for Quelle, or “source”) which, they surmise, contained some of the sayings of Jesus.  But this betrays a hermeneutic of historical suspicion: why refer to a hypothetical document garbled in the documentary as “the Sayings of Jesus” when we have at hand four actual documents known as “the Gospels”?

       Ms. Beard’s narrative gives the impression that we have no historical account of the origins of the Christian movement and so are left with mere guesses and surmises.  Saying things like “it’s clear enough”, “however exactly the story went”, “probably on some charge”, “it’s very hard to know exactly what was going on”, “but we can be fairly certain”, “some small Jewish splinter group” all give the impression that the historian has practically nothing to go in trying to figure out Christian origins and is reduced to mere probabilities based on fragmentary clues.

       This notion is simply false and more than a little disingenuous.  From these phrases one would never guess that the historian had a sizable dossier of material from the Christians of the first century recording the ministry and words of Christ, including an impressive collection of letters written by their leaders and a detailed history of their movement’s first years— i.e. the four Gospels, the Epistles, and the Acts of the Apostles.  It is intellectually dishonest to ignore all this and effectively pretend that they did not exist.

       To give but one example:  to say “we can be fairly certain that the real Jesus was the leader of some small Jewish splinter group” is nonsensical.  In fact, the historian can be dead certain that Jesus was the leader of His own movement which experienced explosive growth beginning on the Day of Pentecost a month after His death.  It was as if Beard had never heard of “the Church”. 

       Another example: Beard says that Jesus “was crucified, probably on some charge of civil disobedience”.  “Probably?” All four Gospels are emphatic that Jesus was executed by the Romans for claiming to be the Messiah, which His enemies convinced the Romans meant that He was a threat to Rome through armed uprising.  No sane historian doubts this. One could describe an intended armed uprising against Rome as “a charge of civil disobedience”, but it would be a bit like describing the murders of Jack the Ripper as “public mischief”.  The intent of Ms. Beard’s words is clearly to cast suspicion and doubt upon the Church’s New Testament records.  This is not sober historical research, but anti-Christian propaganda.

       There’s more.  What are we to make of the statement that the Christians “believed a variety of different things that we wouldn’t recognize now as Christian”?— especially as no examples are cited.  Again the intent is clear: to discredit the Church and to give the impression that it has changed its message so much over the years that it retains no credibility.

       What are these “different things that we wouldn’t recognize now as Christian”?  In the absence of examples we cannot know for sure. But most probably the reference is to the Gnostic groups of the second century (the teachings of such men as Valentinus and Basilides).

       We must also probe further Ms. Beard’s assertion that the story of Christ “had been rewritten and reinterpreted and embroidered ever since”.  This gives the impression (as doubtless it was meant to do) that the story had been revised re-revised and written and rewritten and embroidered and changed and added to so many times that we can have little hope now of recovering the truth and knowing what actually happened during the ministry of Jesus.  Again, it is simply not so, as any historian or Bible scholar can attest.

       A few facts:  all three Synoptic Gospels were written around or before 70 A.D.  That is less than forty years after the events. John’s Gospel was written by the end of the first century (one scholar places it much earlier, in the mid-first century, along with the Synoptics).  This means that the Gospels record events mere decades after their occurrence which, historically speaking, provide a contemporary witness.

       Moreover, one early witness (Papias) writing in the early second century testified that Mark’s Gospel represents the notes Mark took listening to St. Peter in Rome in the sixth decade of the first century.  John in his Gospel explicitly and repeatedly claims to be an eye-witness to the events he records. 

Further, we know from the findings of textual criticism that the New Testament manuscripts we possess are essentially the same as their originals.  That is why Sir Frederic Kenyon (one the great authorities in the field of textual criticism) wrote, “The interval between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.”

       All of this means that there was no time for the original texts of the Gospels to have been “rewritten and reinterpreted and embroidered” and that there is no textual evidence that any such changes were made. A Biblical scholar or one skilled in textual criticism would know this.  But then most of Ms. Beard’s intended audience were neither Biblical scholars nor textual critics.

       None of this is intended as an attack on Mary Beard who (for all I know) wrote none of the words she uttered in the documentary.  But it is important that the view she articulated be answered.  The public should be made aware that the Gospels represent a reliable and contemporary account of Jesus and His ministry, written from within the community He founded and with access to the accounts of the apostolic eye-witnesses.  The public may still choose to reject and disbelieve our Lord’s words.  But there should not be any doubt that He said and did what the Gospels record.