Eyewitnesses… Did the early Christians care?

So, setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days. And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together.

Luke used the 1st person pronoun “we” in the book of Acts for those parts of the accounts that he was actually there for.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John says in effect, this is true because I saw Jesus – I knew the man and I know Him as God.

This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true. Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

Again, John tells why we should believe him. He was actually there. His testimony is eyewitness testimony.

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.  Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Paul may not have been an eyewitness to the life of Jesus during his ministry, but he considered the testimony of those who knew him and witnessed the resurrected Jesus critical.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—   the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

John again says “I know this is true, because I was there.  I saw and that is what I teach you.”

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

Peter says in effect, “I was there with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.  I heard the voice that spoke from the clouds.  My testimony is that of an eyewitness.”

Okay, so the early church had opportunity to examine eyewitnesses.   If they did not care, then such opportunities would have been wasted.  Is there real evidence to support that the early believers actually did take advantage of such a valuable asset?  As it happens, we do have a quote from just such a believer, a man by the name of Papias.  We have bits of testimony preserved for a series of the disciples of the Apostle John.  (See Figure 2) Irenaeus, an early Christian leader quoted Papias, a bishop (pastor) in what is Turkey today, in his own book.  Irenaeus describe Papias this way: “Now testimony is borne to these things in writing by Papias, an ancient man, who was a hearer of John, and a friend of Polycarp, in the fourth of his books; for five books were composed by him.”

This quote helps to explain how the early church viewed eyewitness testimony:

“I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.” http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/papias.html

This sounds like the report of a man who was very careful to learn and transmit eyewitness testimony.  He had the advantage of meeting and listening to not just one version but the testimony of multiple eyewitnesses.

Figure 2.  Timeline that shows the lifetimes of some of the apostles and some of the next generation of disciples, known as the “apostolic fathers”.  All but John died as martyrs. The quote given from Papias originated sometime during the darker orange bar with his name. Irenaeus preserved Papias’ writings in his own writings.

Over the last few years, popular writers and skeptics have presented the case that the New Testament books were selected late. They were simply the ones selected from many contenders. This makes for catchy writing that confuses those who don’t know better and aren’t willing to dig in.  As Figure 1 shows, the apocryphal and pseudepigraph books are all 2nd century books. The NT books are decidedly earlier.  We do have a few other early Christian writings (Figure 3). Why were they not included? A Christian perspective is that the Holy Spirit was guiding the early church in its selection. We do recognize the basic criteria. An essential element had to be a connection to the apostles or to the human brothers of Jesus that became leaders in the early church. The other early books just did not have the confirmation as connected to the apostles. The early church recognized the importance of the apostles as eyewitnesses to Jesus. The NT epistles, the letters from Paul, Peter and John all express concern about false teachers. The authority of the apostles was based on their personal experience with Jesus. Paul noted that he was one “untimely born”, in that his personal experience came after the resurrection. He was nevertheless recognized as a valid apostle based on that personal experience. He also confirmed his experiences with the other apostles (Gal. 1:18-19).

God chose to use humans in the process of selecting the books of the NT and the path was probably not as simple and elegant as some people expect. We don’t know what all information the early church leaders had at hand to help them in their process. It is true that some books were slower to be generally accepted than others. That was because the church examined them very carefully. They wanted to know that the connection to the real Jesus was valid. Books were written over a scattered area and were not available immediately. They couldn’t be quickly downloaded as Kindle books. It took some time for some to spread and to be tested and verified.  Even so, the basics of the gospels and the letters of Paul were accepted very quickly. Dr Timothy Jones in his excellent book, Misquoting Truth, summarizes the situation this way:

“At least as early as the 2nd century, there were 20 or so books that were never questioned, and these are the writings that reflect the most essential truths about Jesus.”

Figure 3.   Early Christian documents. Several of the books such as I Clement and the writings of Polycarp are good books but were never viewed as authoritative.  The Gospel of Barnabas was probably written on the late end of the bar given.  No one considers this to have been written by the real Barnabas and it probably should be classified as a Pseudepigraph.  The other books were useful but never considered scripture.

The early church had to decide which books were to be among the books used and trusted.  Those that measured up were part of the canon, a word derived from a measuring reed. What if something didn’t really measure up? The early church looked for the connection to the apostles, bud did they just ignore those that they not really written by the authors that they claimed to be? Figure 1 shows a large number of writings that claimed to be what they are not. Presumably most were written in the name of the early leaders of the church in order to have their ideas accepted. An account be the Apostle Peter is more likely to be accepted than a writing by Leon Nobodyknowsme from Miletus. If the early Christians took the authorship issue seriously, then we should expect that they rejected books that were falsely attributed. Lying is called sin in the Bible and that is just what such a writer would be doing.

Let’s look at some examples that we know of. We get a snapshot of the process in a fragment of text known as the Muratorian fragment, written about 170-180 AD. It contains a list of books that the church accepted, disputed and rejected. The text about one entitled “The Shepherd of Hermes” is interesting and gives a window into the thinking. Here is what it says,

“Hermas composed The Shepherd quite recently- in our times, in the city of Rome, while his brother, Pius the overseer served as overseer of the city of Rome. So while it should indeed be read, it cannot be read publicly for the people of the church- it is counted neither among the Prophets (for their number has been completed) nor among the Apostles (for it is after their time)”

The book is an allegory that was apparently widely distributed and popular in the early church.  No one considered it bad but the book could not be considered part of the canon. It could be useful, but it was written too late to be canonical.  It had no direct link to apostles. It did not have the authority for the whole church. Notice that the Shepherd of Hermes was not a pseudepigraph. It was anonymous. No one lied by claiming to be an apostle or any other famous believer.

What about those who claimed to be someone else? How did the early church deal with them?  We have. a window here too.  Serapion, the pastor or bishop of Antioch, around 200 AD was asked to evaluate the book, “The Gospel of Peter”. Here is what he wrote back:

“For we, brethren, receive both Peter and the rest of the apostles as Christ Himself. But those writings which are falsely inscribed with their name, we as experienced persons reject, knowing that no such writings have been handed down to us.” http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/serapion.html

Serapion went on to say that he would personally visit the church to make sure they followed his directions. This snapshot shows that the early church took the authorship of the writings that became the New Testament very seriously. If they felt there was reason to question, they argued against including such books in the canon.