Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith / Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity

by Robert Patterson

Here, then, we have the books of the New Testament at the Council of Nice well known to the whole world; and the Council, so far from giving any authority to them, bowing to theirs—both Arian and Orthodox with one consent acknowledging that the whole Christian world received them as the writings of the apostles of Christ. There were venerable men of fourscore and ten at that Council; if these books had been first introduced in their lifetime, they must have known it. There were men there whose parents had heard the Scriptures read in church from their childhood, and so could not be imposed upon with a new Bible. The New Testament could not be less than three generations old, else one or other of the disputants would have exposed the novelty of its introduction, from his own information. The Council of Nice, then, did not make the New Testament. It was a book well known, ancient, and of undoubted authority among all Christians, ages before that Council. The existence of the New Testament Scriptures, then, ages before the Council of Nice, is a great fact.

We next take up the assertions, propounded with a show of learning, that the books of the New Testament, and especially the Gospels, were not in use, and were not known till the third century; that they are not the productions of contemporary writers; that the alleged ocular testimony or proximity in point of time of the sacred historians to the events recorded is mere assumption, originating in the titles which Biblical books bear in our canon; that we stand here (in the gospel history), upon purely mythical and poetical ground; and that the Gospels and Epistles are a gradually formed collection of myths, having little or no historic reality. So Strauss, Eichorn, De Wette, and their disciples here, attempt to set aside the New Testament. In plain English, it is a collection of forgeries.

These assertions are absurd. In the hundred years between the death of the apostles, and the beginning of the third century, there was not time to form a mythology. The times of Trajan's persecution, and that of the philosophic Aurelius, and the busy bustling age of Severus, were not the times for such a business. Bigoted Jews would not, and could not, have made such a character as Jesus of Nazareth; and the philosophers of that day, Celsus and Porphyry, for instance, hated it when presented to them as heartily as either Strauss or Paine. There were not wanting thousands of enemies, able and willing, to expose such a forgery.

The aspect and character of the gospel narrative are totally unlike those of mythologies. Hear the verdict of one who confessedly stands at the head of the roll of oriental historians: "In no single respect—if we except the fact that it is miraculous—has that story a mythical character. It is a single story, told without variations; whereas myths are fluctuating and multiform: it is blended inextricably with the civil history of the times, which it everywhere reports with extraordinary accuracy; whereas myths distort or supersede civil history: it is full of prosaic detail, which myths studiously eschew: it abounds with practical instruction of the simplest and purest kind; whereas myths teach by allegory. Even in its miraculous element it stands to some extent in contrast with all mythologies, where the marvelous has ever a predominant character of grotesqueness which is absent from New Testament miracles. (This Strauss himself admits, Leben Jesu, 1-67.) Simple earnestness, fidelity, painstaking accuracy, pure love of truth, are the most patent characteristics of the New Testament writers, who evidently deal with facts, not with fancies, and are employed in relating a history, not in developing an idea. They write that 'we may know the certainty of the things which are most surely believed' in their day. They 'bear record of what they have seen and heard.' I know not how stronger words could have been used to prevent the notion of that plastic, growing myth which Strauss conceives to have been in apostolic times."[69]

The character of Christ exhibited in the Gospels is the contrary of that of the heroes of mythology; as contrary as holiness is to sin. The invention of such a character by any man, or by the wisest set of men who ever lived, would have been a miracle nearly as great as the existence of such a person. When the character of Christ was presented to the wisest men of the Greeks, and Romans, and Hebrews, so far from admiring him as a hero, they crucified him as an impostor, and persecuted the preachers of his gospel. There was nothing mythical in the ten persecutions; these at least were hard historical facts. Every line of examination of time, place, and circumstances proves the falsehood of the mythical theory, and establishes the truth of the gospel history.

The authenticity of the gospel history, and of the Apostolic Epistles is confirmed by the testimony of their enemies. It is a well-authenticated and undeniable fact, that, in the close of the second century, Celsus, an Epicurean philosopher, wrote a work against Christianity, entitled, "The Word of Truth," in which he quotes passages from the New Testament, and so many of them, that from the fragments of his work which remain, we could gather all the principal facts of the birth, teaching, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, if the New Testament should be lost. If Paine quotes the New Testament to ridicule it, no man can deny that such a book was in existence at the time he wrote. If he takes the pains to write a book to confute it, it is self-evident that it is in circulation, and possessed of influence. So Celsus' attempt to reply to the Gospels, and his quotations from them, are conclusive proofs that these books were generally circulated and believed, and held to be of authority at the time he wrote. Further, he shows every disposition to present every argument which could possibly damage the Christian cause. In fact, our modern Infidels have done little more than serve up his old objections. Now nothing could have served his purpose better than to prove that the records of the history of Christ were forgeries of a late date. This would have saved him all further trouble, and settled the fate of Christianity conclusively. He had every opportunity of ascertaining the fact, living, as he did, so near the times and scenes of the gospel history, and surrounded by heretics and false Christians, who would gladly have given him every information. But he never once intimates the least suspicion of such a thing—never questions the Gospels as books of history—nor denies the miracles recorded in them, but attributes them to magic.[70] Here, then, we have testimony as acceptable to an Infidel as that of Strauss or Voltaire—in fact, utterly undeniable by any man of common sense—that the New Testament was well known and generally received by Christians as authoritative, when Celsus wrote his reply to it, in the end of the second century. If it was a forgery, it was undoubtedly a forgery of old standing, if he could not detect it.

But we will go back a step farther, and prove the antiquity of the New Testament by the testimony of another enemy, two generations older than Celsus. The celebrated heretic, Marcion, lived in the beginning of the second century, when he had the best opportunity of discovering a forgery in the writings of the New Testament, if any such existed; he was excommunicated by the Church, and being greatly enraged thereat, had every disposition to say the worst he could about it. He traveled all the way from Sinope on the Black Sea, to Rome, and through Galatia, Bithynia, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, the countries where the apostles preached, and the churches to which they wrote, but never found any one to suggest the idea of a forgery to him. He affirmed that the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle to the Hebrews, those of James and Peter, and the whole of the Old Testament, were books only for Jews, and published a new and altered edition of the Gospel of Luke, and ten Epistles of Paul, for the use of his sect.[71] We have thus the most undoubted evidence, even the testimony of an enemy, that these books were in existence, and generally received as apostolical and authoritative by Christians, at the beginning of the second century, or within twenty years of the last of the apostles, and by the churches to which they had preached and written.

The only remaining conceivable cavil against the genuineness of the books of the New Testament is: "That they bear internal evidence of being collections of fragments written by different persons—and are probably merely traditions committed to writing by various unknown writers, and afterward collected and issued to the churches under the names of the apostles, for the sake of greater authority." This theory being received as gospel by several learned men, has furnished matter for lengthy discussions as to the sources of the four Gospels. Translated into English, it amounts to this, that Brown, Smith, and Jones wrote out a number of essays and anecdotes, and persuaded the churches of Ephesus, Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, and the rest, to receive them as the writings of their ministers, who had lived for years, or were then living, among them; and on the strength of that notion of their being the writings of the apostles, to govern their whole lives by these essays, and lay down their lives and peril their souls' salvation on the truth of these anecdotes. As though they could not tell whether such documents were forgeries or not!

It is almost incredible how ignorant dreaming book-worms are of the common business of life. Most of my readers will laugh at the idea of a serious answer to such a quibble. Nevertheless, for the sake of those whose inexperience may be abused by the authority of learned names, I will show them that the primitive Christians, supposing them able to read, could know whether their ministers did really write the books and letters which they received from them.