CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT HISTORICAL BASIS.
1. No one of the four gospels is mentioned in any other part of the New Testament. [This assuredly would not have been the case had they been the oldest, and the foundation on which the whole was built.]
2. No work of art of any kind has ever been discovered, no painting or engraving, no sculpture or other relic of antiquity which may be looked upon as furnishing additional evidence of the existence of those gospels, and which was executed earlier than the latter part of the second century. Even the explorations of the Christian catacombs failed to bring to light any evidence of that character.
3. The four gospels were written in Greek, and there was no translation of them into other languages earlier than the third century.
4. No manuscript of the gospels are in existence dating further back than the fourth century. Of that century, or the next, there are three or four, and some twenty or thirty, more than a thousand years old.
5. No autograph manuscript of any of the gospels has ever been known, so far as there is any authentic record, nor has any credible witness ever claimed to have seen such a manuscript. No one has ever claimed to have seen such a manuscript of either of the four gospels in the hand-writing of Luke, Mark, Matthew, or John. If the autograph manuscripts had ever existed they would have been preserved among the most sacred relics of the church.
6. During the first two centuries tradition was esteemed of more value and better evidence of the gospel history, than any written books or manuscripts.
7. The dialect in which the New Testament books were written, a sort of Hebraistic Greek, has been considered evidence of their antiquity. But this dialect prevailed three centuries after Christ, and was in full use during the second century. The same or similar Hebraisms abound in the apocryphal gospels of that age.
8. The canonical gospels were selected by the bishops from a large number then in circulation.
In taking a general review of the first hundred and seventy years of the Christian religion the first thing that strikes the mind is the dearth of material from which to construct a reliable history. It is seen at once how much must rest upon probability in its different degrees—how much must be relegated to the province of speculation. The works of the only church historian who wrote during that period, lost or destroyed the few fragments that are left being of comparatively no value—the writings of Porphyry and others who wrote against Christianity, and those of the heretic Christians, all destroyed—there remain only the works of some of the orthodox fathers, and the text of those in a mutilated and corrupted condition.
Such is the material at the hands of the historian. Of course he cannot rely implicitly upon the unsupported assertion of any such writer for the truth of any historical fact whatever. In every instance he is obliged to scrutinize carefully, and endeavor to ascertain whether any ulterior motives may have prompted whatever statement may be under consideration. If he can find none, and the fact stands uncontradicted by other writers, it is cautiously accepted. Under such circumstances progress is slow and uncertain. The most that any writer can hope to accomplish is to place in proper shape what is already known, and to establish here and there a landmark for the benefit of subsequent historians.
In conclusion, as the result of this investigation, it may be repeated that no evidence is found of the existence in the first century of either of the following doctrines: the immaculate conception—the miracles of Christ—the material resurrection. No one of these gospels is found in the epistles of the New Testament, nor have we been able to find them in other writings of the first century.
As to the four gospels, in coming to the conclusion that they were not written in the first century, we have but recorded the conviction of the most advanced scholars of the present day, irrespective of their religious views in other respects; with whom as now presented, is, How early in the second century were they composed? Discarding as inventions of the second century, having no historical foundation, the three doctrines above named, and much else which must necessarily stand or fall with them, what remains of the Christian religion? (C. B. Waite, “History of the Christian Religion to the year 200.”)