2. The gospel accounts of the resurrection appearances are fundamentally reliable historically. Three basic reasons support this conclusion.
a) There was insufficient time for legend to arise. Ever since D. F. Strauss first propounded his theory that the gospel accounts of the resurrection are mere legends, the greatest difficulty for this theory has been that the time between the events and the writing of the gospels was too short to allow legend to substantially accrue. Julius Müller’s critique of Strauss has never been answered:
Most decidedly must a considerable interval of time be required for such a complete transformation of a whole history by popular tradition, when the series of legends are formed in the same territory where the heroes actually lived and wrought. Here one cannot imagine how such a series of legends could arise in an historical age, obtain universal respect, and supplant the historical recollection of the true character and connexion of their heroes’ lives in the minds of the community, if eyewitnesses were still at hand, who could be questioned respecting the truth of the recorded marvels. Hence, legendary fiction, as it likes not the clear present time, but prefers the mysterious gloom of grey antiquity, is wont to seek a remoteness of age, along with that of space, and to remove its boldest and more rare and wonderful creations into a very remote and unknown land.7
A. N. Sherwin-White has urged the same consideration.8 Professor Sherwin-White is an eminent historian of Roman times, the era contemporaneous with Jesus. He is not a theologian; he is a professional historian. He chides New Testament critics for not realizing what invaluable historical documents the New Testament books are, especially in comparison with the sources for Roman history with which he must work. He states that the sources for Roman and Greek history are usually biased and removed at least one or two generations or even centuries from the events they relate. Yet, he says, historians are still able to reconstruct with confidence what really happened. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he comments that for these stories to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be “unbelievable”; more generations are needed.9 The writings of the Greek historian Herodotus enable us to test the rate at which legend accumulates; the tests show that even the span of two generations is too short to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical fact.10 Müller challenged scholars of his day to find even one historical example where in thirty years a great series of legends, the most prominent elements of which are fictitious, have accumulated around an important historical individual and become firmly fixed in general belief.11 His challenge has never been met. The time span necessary for significant accrual of legend concerning the events of the gospels would place us in the second century A.D., just the time in fact when the legendary apocryphal gospels were born. These are the legendary accounts sought by the critics.
This would be enough to insure the basic historical reliability of the gospel accounts, but we can go still further. Although most New Testament critics claim that the gospels were written after A.D. 70, that assertion, states Cambridge University’s John A. T. Robinson, is largely the result of scholarly laziness, the tyranny of unexamined presuppositions, and almost willful blindness on the part of the critics.12 Most critics date the writing of Mark around A.D. 70 because the Christian theology in it is quite developed and Jesus’ predictions of the destruction of Jerusalem (Mark 13) show that the event was at hand. Luke must have been written after A.D. 70 because he probably used Mark’s gospel as one of his sources and Jesus’ “predictions” of Jerusalem’s destruction look back on that event. The value of those arguments, however, hinges on certain assumptions:
(1) With regard to Mark, the first argument assumes that “the Christian theology” was not in fact Jesus’ own. To say it is “developed” assumes that it was once “primitive.” Actually the argument cuts both ways: one could argue that because Mark was written early, the theology is not “developed,” but truly characteristic of what Jesus taught.
(2) The second argument assumes that Jesus did not have divine power to predict the future as the gospels state He did. In other words, the argument assumes in advance that Jesus was merely human. But if He really was the Son of God, as the gospels state, then He could have prophesied the future.
(3) With regard to the arguments for a post-70 date for Luke, the first assumes Mark was not written before A.D. 70. But that assumption is itself founded on mere assumptions. The whole thing is like a house of cards. At face value, it makes more sense to say Mark was written before A.D. 70, for it seems unbelievable that Mark (whom critics agree was the John Mark mentioned in Acts) would wait thirty to forty years to write down his gospel. Is it really plausible to think that Mark would wait decades before writing his brief gospel, which would be so valuable in sharing and leaving with newly established churches as the gospel preachers went about teaching and preaching?
(4) The second argument against an early date for Luke assumes again that Jesus did not have supernatural power to foresee the future. And really, even on a purely humanistic account of the matter, there is no reason those predictions could not have been given before A.D. 70.13 Prophets often predicted Jerusalem’s destruction as a sign of God’s judgment, and Jesus’ predictions may have concerned its destruction at the end of the world, not A.D. 70. As a matter of fact, Jesus’ prophecies are actually evidence that the gospels were written before A.D. 70, for Luke never casts the Romans in the role of enemies in his writings. In the predictions, Jerusalem is destroyed by her enemies. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70, Luke must have written before that event. If he wrote afterwards, he could not have portrayed the Romans only as friends. Besides that, we have Josephus’s descriptions of the sacking of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and many of the striking peculiarities of the city’s destruction are absent from the prophecies. But if the “prophecies” had been written after the event, then those peculiarities would surely have been included. So really the argument from Jesus’ predictions supports a pre-70 dating of the gospels.
In any case, it is very apparent that the arguments for a post-70 date of the gospels hang together on certain unproved assumptions. If one goes, they all go. No wonder Robinson can compare the current arguments for the dating of the gospels to a line of drunks reeling arm in arm down the street.14
Actually several lines of solid evidence point to a date for Luke-Acts before A.D. 64.15
(a) There is no mention of events that happened between A.D. 60 and 70. Luke centers much attention on the events that took place in Jerusalem, but he mentions nowhere in Acts the destruction of the city in A.D. 70. That is quite significant, considering what a catastrophe the destruction of the holy city was for both Jews and Christians at that time. A second event noticeably absent is the Roman Emperor Nero’s terrible persecution of the Christians in Rome. From the Roman historian Tacitus we learn that Nero covered the Christians with tar, crucified them, and used them as torches to light up Rome at night. Others were clothed in skins of wild animals and thrown to starving dogs. It is unbelievable that Luke could gloss over that horrible persecution in silence. Still a third event not mentioned is the murder of Jesus’ brother James, who was leader of the Christians in Jerusalem at the time. Since Luke records the martyrdom of Stephen and the martyrdom of James the son of Zebedee, it is unlikely that he would fail to relate the death of James, the brother of Jesus, who was much more prominent.