Science Refutes Doubting Theologians

In this Easter week, Jesus is on the cover of all three newsmagazines - Time, Newsweek and U.S. News - with stories largely debunking the accuracy of the Gospels.

The so-called scholars of the Jesus Seminar “had to throw out the Evangelists’ testimony on the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Sermon on the Mount” and even the charges that Judas betrayed his master, according to Time.

Some “felt (Judas) was a literary device.”

Robert Funk, leader of the Jesus Seminar, tells U.S. News his aim is to “set Jesus free” from the “scriptural and creedal prisons in which we have entombed him.”

The group, which includes 50 religion professors, has concluded that only 18 percent of the words attributed to Jesus, and even fewer of his deeds, are authentic.

Dozens of books have been written in the last decade in a “quest for the historical Jesus.” Most argue that the Gospel stories of the empty tomb and resurrection are unreliable because they were written by followers proclaiming the divinity of Jesus at least 40 years after his death by people who were not eyewitnesses.

There are two fundamental holes in this thesis.

First, what kind of powerful event could have transformed the disciples of Jesus from frightened men who fled at the crucifixion, into passionate believers who proclaimed the “good news,” or Gospel, in the face of persecution and ultimate martyrdom?

The answer is, the resurrection of Jesus, which they personally witnessed - the event that 1.5 billion people celebrate on Easter.

Second, there is fresh scientific evidence that the Gospels could have been written by eyewitnesses. It was first reported in The Times of London by Matthew D’Ancona on Christmas Eve, 1994:

“A papyrus believed to be the oldest extant fragment of the New Testament has been found in an Oxford library. It provides the first material evidence that the Gospel according to St. Matthew is an eyewitness account written by contemporaries of Christ.”

The discovery was made by a German scholar, Carsten Thiede, who studied three scraps of papyrus no larger than postage stamps long ignored in a display case at Magdalen College, Oxford, the gift of a British chaplain who bought them in Egypt in 1901.

They are clearly fragments of the 26th Chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, written in Greek, with such quotes of Jesus as, “You will all fall away from me tonight, for the scripture says …”

For decades, experts thought this scripture was written about A.D. 200, which would make it about the age of 37 other New Testament papyruses. However, in a new book released this week by Thiede and D’Ancona, “Eyewitness to Jesus,” Thiede concludes the Magdalen Papyrus is datable to A.D. 66 or earlier, based on several forms of physical evidence:

The style of handwriting is like that found only in other papyrus fragments that can be positively dated before A.D. 70. One manuscript found with the Dead Sea Scrolls is a fragment of the Gospel of Mark. It had to be written before A.D. 68, when the Tenth Roman Legion invaded the area and the Qumran caves were abandoned. Another identical Egyptian handwriting has a date of A.D. 65-66.

One similarity is that the letters almost touch one another, a practice that was “almost completely abandoned in second-and third-century Bible manuscripts,” the book reports.

The Magdalen Papyrus was written on both sides. This “codex” could not be the original Gospel of Matthew written much earlier on a scroll, with writing only on one side. Rather, it was a more modern and compact way for Christians to copy texts to be sent across the Roman Empire.

For these reasons, the authors believe the first readers of Matthew “may have heard the very words which the Nazarene preacher spoke during His ministry, may have listened to the parables.”

What is heartening about “Eyewitness to Jesus” is that hard-nosed science can be used to refute theologians inclined to doubt the veracity of the Gospels.

As the authors write, “For centuries, science has often seemed the enemy of faith. Galileo was condemned by the church as a heretic.”

Yet in this case, they write, “Empirical science may prove to be the handmaiden of faith rather than its archenemy.”