Preparing a Defence

Two years ago the Mail on Sunday issued a world exclusive on the “greatest archeological discovery of all time” – the gospel of Judas. It was around the time that the film of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was released, and public debate was alive with speculation about whether or not we have the right books in the New Testament.

The gospel of Judas is of course a load of rubbish and The Da Vinci Code a compilation of historical blunders, but wouldn’t it be good if we believers were able to explain this authoritatively and clearly to our peers?

On Saturday 11th Oct Tyndale House, a Biblical studies centre for evangelical scholars, hosted an event featuring two gifted evangelical theologians – both academics at the University of Cambridge.
The event took place as a feature of the Tyndale House society Theology For All, which aims to equip evangelicals like you and me, who may not have much knowledge of Greek or early church history (apologies if you do), to be in a position to defend the trustworthiness of God’s word so that we will be prepared to “make a defence to anyone who asks [us] for a reason for the hope that is in [us]” (1 Pet 3.15).

Two hot topics were under discussion: the “other gospels” (sometimes known as the Gnostic gospels) and the issue of textual variations in Biblical manuscripts (with particular reference Codex Sinaiticus in the wake of its recent publication online).
Simon Gathercole, a lecturer in the New Testament and author of recently-published commentary The Gospel of Judas (OUP, 2007), led us through the gospels of Thomas, Mary and Judas, neatly demonstrating that they are operating in a “different theological universe” and leaving us in no doubt as to why they never made their way into the New Testament.

These gospels would, it must be said, make great comedy sketches and it is rather surprising that Monty Python never got their hands on them. But the very thought of any of them being used to challenge the orthodox canon is faintly ridiculous. Employing the gospel of Judas, for example, as a weapon against the authenticity of the four Gospels would be a bit like throwing a tomato at a tank.

But people are easily influenced and a “tomato” in the hands of a journalist can be a dangerous thing. It seems right that we should equip ourselves to fight for God’s truth at all levels of discussion, from public high-profile debate to bus-stop evangelism.

Simon Gathercole explains that there are two broad reasons that we should be happy to throw the “other gospels” in the proverbial bin (unfortunately there are now too many copies for the literal bin to be an option). First, they are operating in a “different theological universe”.

There is no resurrection of the body for Christians in the gospel of Judas (contrary to Paul’s detailed description of our promised bodily resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15) but just “their souls will be made alive and will be raised up”. This theme is echoed in the gospel of Mary and was a common idea in first century Greek thought.

Alarmingly, both the gospels of Thomas and Judas essentially dismiss the Old Testament as irrelevant now that Christ is here. In a sense this is not surprising, given that they both set out explicitly to challenge the accounts of the four canonical Gospels which would have been well-known for their Old Testament alignment.

What is more, there is no hint of God’s love in any of these texts. Does this tell us something in itself? Are these writers talking about the same God, let alone the same historical events?

Simon Gathercole also draws our attention to the fact that all three of these texts are explicitly “secret” accounts. They are supposed to be what “really happened” while no one else was looking. In this way they may have more in common with the Islamic account of how Mohammad received his revelation in a secret cave. By contrast, the apostle John is keen to invite external verification of his account when he records these words of Jesus: “I have said nothing in secret’” (John 18.20).

While these theological bombshells may say enough to those who already believe the Bible, those who are not yet Christians might need to be pointed to what Simon Gathercole calls the “historical factors” – the second reason to make ready the proverbial bin.

When these gospels were written, it is likely that the eye-witnesses were all dead. The gospel of Mary was probably the first of the three, written in the first half of the second century, while Thomas’s came after in around AD 140 and that of that of Judas after that in around AD 160.

What this means is that the writers could have said what they liked and no one would have been able to draw from personal memory to refute them. If the gospel of Thomas had been written in AD 60, there would have been dozens (perhaps even hundreds) of people who would have been able to say “mate, did you fall off your donkey and bump your head?”. But unlike Matthew, Mark, Luke and John who were writing within 60 years of Jesus’ death, the writers of the Gnostic gospels were not accountable to eye witnesses when they wrote their version of events.

So what then? So when Richard Dawkins states, apparently in complete ignorance of any Biblical scholarship or early church history, that “the four gospels that made it into the official canon were chosen, more or less arbitrarily, out of a larger sample of at least a dozen including the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Nicodemus, Philip, Bartholomew and Mary Magdalen”, we can say – “absolute tosh”. And when Dan Brown writes through his character Lee Teabing that “the earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up and burned” we can say – “there are eleven year-olds who know more about church history than you”.

On a slightly different topic Dr Dirk Jongkind, a world expert in Biblical textual analysis, spoke at length about the issue of variations between Bible manuscripts not only explaining that such variations need not threaten the reliability of God’s Word, but suggesting that if anything they should give us extra confidence.

He was keen to use the renewed public debate around “Codex Sinaiticus” to illustrate his point, having completed a PhD thesis on this subject.

Codex Sinaiticus is the earliest known complete manuscript of the Bible as we know it, containing both the Old and New Testaments. It was discovered in Egypt 160 years ago so has been in circulation for quite some time but is now due to be made available online.

Last week the BBC journalist Roger Bolton used it as a peg to suggest that “the Bible is the word of man, not God”, claiming that Codex Sinaiticus “does not mention the ascension of Jesus into heaven, and omit[s] key references to the resurrection”.

Dr Dirk Jongkind, however, makes light work of this claim. The only resurrection passage that is missing from Codex Sinaiticus is the long ending to Mark’s Gospel (16:9-20) which is generally thought not to be part of Mark’s original gospel anyway. All other Gospels and epistles are almost untouched in this respect. Embarrassingly for Roger Bolton’s thesis the ascension itself is of course there in Acts (2:33-35), along with most other references to the resurrection scattered throughout the New Testament.

One wonders why the BBC is prepared to broadcast such careless journalism and whether standards may have slipped in recent years.

There is more to textual analysis than Roger Bolton’s understanding of Codex Sinaiticus, however, and it is true that we are often faced with a more general question about variations between manuscripts.

Dirk Jongkind essentially has three things to say to encourage us: first, that it is very rare to find variations which threaten the beliefs of the church in any way (because most are accidental copying errors); second that the vast majority of these variations have been plainly visible and openly discussed since the 2nd century AD; and third that when we think of textual variation we should “think of a watch”.
Why think of a watch? Because it offers a possible clue as to what God’s purpose was in giving us some minor variations in the manuscripts.

Imagine we were all gathered in a room, a massive room full of Christians, and we had one watch with which to tell the time. There would be no disagreement, we would have one time. But would it be the right time?

Imagine now that we had ten watches all showing slightly different times, but varying only by a matter of seconds. We would still know the time, as near as makes no difference, and what’s more we would have the assurance that the likelihood of them all being wrong is minimal. Yes, we would have ten slightly different times, but would that make a difference to the daily schedule? As Dirk Jongkind so aptly put it, we’d still turn up to lunch on time.

It is like this with the textual variations in the manuscripts, explains Dr Jongkind. They all say the same thing, essentially, and so we “know the time”. There may be some theologically insignificant variations, and this is why we find the odd footnote in our Bibles telling us for example that “Gerasenes” could be spelt “Gadarenes” (Mark 5:1), but while some might like to discuss these further others may prefer to accept and ignore them.

It’s great to know that we have academics like Dirk and Simon doing all the hard work behind the scenes to prepare us for battle, but it’s even better to know that God has, by his grace, given us robust and logical reasons to stand by his truth. After all, His written word has been under scrutiny from the best minds that Man can muster for nearly 2000 years and it stands like a rock, battle-hardened and totally unscathed.

Mark Dever, Pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington DC.

Mark received his doctorate in ecclesiastical theology from Cambridge University. He has authored several books including Richard Sibbes (a historical study) and Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (www.9marks.org). He has also edited a collection of historic Baptist documents on ecclesiology entitled Polity: Biblical Arguments on How to Conduct Church Life, and Leadership:The Deliberate Church – Building Biblically in a Haphazard Age, (co-authored by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander).

• Opening Devotions (mp3)

• Lessons from the Past (mp3)
What lessons should today’s Church learn from this past, particularly the Puritans.

• Lessons for the Present (mp3)
Building biblically faithful churches today.

• Looking to the Future (mp3)
Given the new issues now facing Christians in the West which may put pressure on Churches not to stand against the tide – how can good theology help us?’

(Our thanks to Christ Church Mayfair, for hosting us all and for making these recordings.)

Saturday 30th September 2006 10.00 am – 4.00 pm

10.30 – The Middle East and the theologians: response to what is happening there.- Stephen Sizer (vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water who has written several books, the most recent being “Christian Zionism: road map to Armageddon?”, IVP 2004).

11.30 – Coffee

12.00 – Tolerance and Society- John Coffey (Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Leicester, who has recently written on “Persecution and toleration in Protestant England”, Longman 2000)

1.00 – Lunch

2.00 – Mission in a Post-Christian Society- David Smith (Lecturer in Urban Mission and World Christianity, at the International Christian College, Glasgow; his interests and publications focus on the future of mission in relation to religious pluralism)

3.00 – Coffee

3.30 – Engaging with Islam- Ida Glaser (Senior Teaching and Research Fellow, Edinburgh Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies; her research interests include comparative theology, missiology and the biblical theology of religions)