Returning to the viability of the New Testament: Richard Bauckham
uses evidence within the gospels themselves to show that the gospel writers named
their eyewitness sources within the text to assure readers of their accounts’ authenticity. Mark, for example, says that the man who
helped Jesus carry his cross to Calvary “was the father of Alexander and Rufus”
(Mark 15:21). There is no reason for the
author to include such names unless the readers know or could have access to
them. Mark is saying, “Alexander and Rufus vouch for the truth of what I am
telling you, if you want you can go and ask them.”
Paul also appeals to readers to
check with living eyewitnesses if they want to establish the truth of what he
is saying about the events of Jesus’s life (1 Corinthians 15:1-6). Paul also refers to a body of five hundred
eyewitnesses who saw the risen Christ at once. You can’t write that in a
document designed for public reading unless there really were surviving
witnesses whose testimony agreed with and who could confirm what the author
said.
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were
recognized as authoritative eyewitness accounts almost immediately, and so we
have Irenaeus of Lyons in 160 A.D. declaring that there were four, and only
four, gospels. The widespread idea, promoted
by The Da Vinci Code, that the
Emperor Constantine –in the year 325 - determined the New Testament canon, casting
aside the earlier and supposedly more authentic Gnostic gospels, simply is not
true.