were still living and active in the Church.
What all of this means is that the four New Testament Gospels were written early enough to contain accurate data relating to the teaching and activities of Jesus. Three of the four Gospels were written within the lifespan of many of Jesus’ original disciples. The Gospels were not written hundreds of years after the ministry of Jesus and the birth of the Church; they were written toward the end of the first generation. And the New Testament Gospels are not the oldest documents in the New Testament. Older writings, such as the letters of Paul (and probably James as well), contain quotations, allusions and echoes of the same material.
But what about the Jesus stories and teachings in the Qur’an that are distinctive to the Qur’an? Should we accept these materials as authentic and therefore historically reliable? And if the Qur’an’s version of the Jesus tradition contradicts the tradition of the New Testament Gospels, should the Qur’an’s version be preferred?
The first and most obvious problem with the Qur’an as a source for new stories and teachings that supposedly go back to Jesus is that the Qur’an was written 600 years after the ministry of Jesus. We don’t doubt that the Qur’an might give us some authentic thoughts and teachings of Muhammad. Several friends and supporters who had heard his teaching were still living after he died and were able to assemble his teaching and write out the Qur’an. The Qur’an was written in its final form only about one generation after the death of Muhammad (though the process of editing may have continued for another generation or two), just as the New Testament writings were written only about one generation after the death and resurrection of Jesus.12
But does this mean that the Qur’an is a reliable source for the historical Jesus, especially if in places it contradicts what is said in the first-century Christian Gospels? No, it does not. The problem is that the Qur’an was written more than half a millennium after the time of Jesus, some 550 years after the writing of the New Testament Gospels. No properly trained historian will opt for a source that that was written more than five hundred years after several older written sources.
We face the same problem with distinctive Jesus traditions in the rabbinic literature. Jesus appears in the Tosefta, which cannot be dated earlier than AD 300, or about 225 years after the New Testament Gospels were written. More traditions about Jesus appear in the two recensions of the Talmud. The Palestinian recension dates to about 450 AD, while the Babylonian dates to about AD 550. Historians and serious scholars find this material colorful, even entertaining, but they view it with suspicion as regards trustworthiness about Jesus. And why shouldn’t they? These compendia of Jewish law and lore were compiled hundreds of years after the time of Jesus and the New Testament Gospels. They are almost as far removed in time as the Qur’an. Historians make little use of rabbinic literature as historical sources in writing about the historical Jesus.
As we will see in a later chapter, almost all of the Qur’an’s distinctive Jesus tradition seems to have been derived from later times and places, such as Syria in the second and third centuries. The Jesus of the Qur’an seems to be very much colored by the type of asceticism that was taught in second- and third-century Syrian Christian circles, such as the Encratites. Some of the sources on which Muhammad relied are quite dubious, such as the Infancy Gospel stories (where, for example, Jesus gives life to birds made of mud) or the strange idea of Basilides (who said it was not Jesus who was crucified but some poor fellow who looked like Jesus). Some of Jesus’ alleged pronouncements in the Qur’an (e.g., where Jesus denies his divinity) reflect the debates and polemics that were part of Muhammad’s context in Arabia in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, not the context of Jesus and his contemporaries in first-century Israel. Indeed, the Jesus of the Qur’an is largely an imagination of a mid-seventh century religious community.13
For all of these reasons, very, very few historians make use of the Qur’an as a source for finding out what the historical Jesus said and did. We suspect this is why Muslim writer Reza Aslan in his recent book on Jesus makes no use of the Qur’an and early Islamic tradition.14 Having had some graduate education in a setting where he would have learned something about the work involved in doing historical Jesus research, Aslan would know that the Qur’an and rabbinic literature are not useful sources for such a purpose.
Although their assessments may differ, historians agree that our best sources for understanding what Jesus really said and did are the New Testament Gospels and some other early Christian and non-Christian writings. In the balance of the present chapter, we address three important questions that must be faced in the study of the New Testament Gospels. The first question asks if the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony, the second asks if the ancient manuscripts of the Gospels are reliable, and the third question asks if the Gospel manuscript record compares to that of the great classics from late antiquity.
Are the New Testament Gospels Based on Eyewitness Testimony?
Historians always want to know if the sources they have are based on eyewitness testimony. Also, especially in societies in which teaching tended to be preserved in oral form years before being written down, they want to know about customs relating to memorization, education, and expectations and practices relating to remembering, editing and passing on someone’s teaching. All of this is relevant for the Gospels.
In his recent book, popular writer Reza Aslan declares that not only are the Gospels not based on eyewitness testimony, they really are not historical documents. He says,
The [G]ospels are not, nor were they ever meant to be, historical documentation of Jesus’ life. They are not eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds, recorded by people who knew him. They are testimonies of faith composed by communities of faith and written many years after the events they describe. Simply put, the [G]ospels tell us about Jesus the Christ, not Jesus the man.15
This statement is highly dubious in almost everything it asserts. The Gospels certainly are historical documentation. If they were not, no one—including Aslan—would be in any position to say anything about the Jesus of history. The statement that the Gospels were “not eyewitness accounts…recorded by people who knew him” requires qualification. First of all, the Gospels of Matthew and John may well have been written by eyewitnesses or by persons acquainted with eyewitnesses. Secondly, although the apostle Peter did not himself compose the Gospel of Mark, early, credible tradition says the evangelist Mark made use of Peter’s reminiscences. Finally, almost all critics agree that the Gospels, especially the three Synoptic Gospels, heavily rely on very early material (such as Q), much of which likely originated with eyewitnesses.
Aslan’s final statement, that the “[G]ospels tell us about Jesus the Christ, not Jesus the man,” is little more than a gratuitous assertion. Some critics may agree with it, but many will not. Aslan’s book shows no acquaintance with the ablest and most recent scholarship concerned with the historiography of the New Testament Gospels. And in any event, if Aslan actually believed that the Gospels do not tell us about “Jesus the man,” how was he able to write a book about the historical Jesus?16
In recent years, there has been a considerable amount of work done in the fields of orality, memory, pedagogy and historiography in late antiquity. All of these fields are relevant when we consider the nature of the portraits of Jesus that the New Testament Gospels have given us. We can only touch on a few of the most significant contributions.
In 2003, James Dunn, Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, published his monumental Jesus Remembered,17 in which he argued that although the Jesus tradition in the early Christian community was a living tradition that could be adapted as the need and occasion required, the tradition as a whole was early, stable and reliable.
Dunn’s findings complemented Samuel Byrskog’s work, which focused on pedagogy (teaching youth) and the
