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December 10th 2009

HOW THE ROOTS OF AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH CAN LIE IN THE

GOSPELS

By David Braine

I. Scripture, tradition, and the idea of an apostolic teaching ministry: Problems when
one delves into the historical roots of authority

Both in the first century and in the age of the councils, Christianity was understood to
be a religion of Revelation. It was not just that God had acted in history, but that one of these
actions was to tell us what he had done, to interpret his action for us through prophets and
apostles, giving us revealed teaching as to what he had done—teaching to be believed as truth
given by God and not as the mere opinion or speculative construction of man.
Secondly, both in the first century and in the age of the councils, the Church was
understood to be one communion, constituted by Christ to remain a witness to him until he
returned again in glory, one communion founded upon the teaching of the apostles and
prophets.
However, in two particular respects, the situation in the age of the councils differed
markedly from that in the first century—firstly, in the acceptance of New Testament
scriptures as scriptures given and inspired by God in the same sense as the Hebrew scriptures,
and secondly, in the existence of the territorial episcopate as a structured group, some
churches and their bishops carrying more authority than others, and the acceptance of this
episcopate as having an authoritative role in declaring what belonged to Christian doctrine
and what was alien to it.
This is the background within which we have to consider the character of the
authority of the Church as hierarchically organized and the scriptures within it.

II. Christian doctrine in the age of the first councils and how it stood in the first century

Encapsulated in the teaching of the first six councils is the insistence that Jesus of
Nazareth, born of Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, truly man, is appropriately worshiped
with the worship due to the one true God. The same person, Jesus, who as man prayed to his
divine Father, is God from God, true God from true God.
Although aspects of this teaching were disputed for over six centuries, sometimes to
make Jesus less than divine and sometimes to compromise his true humanity or his
possession of a genuinely human intellect and will, I argue that this is visibly the same
teaching as is presented in the gospels, in the epistles attributed to Paul, in Hebrews, and in
the first epistles of John and of Peter.
This has often been obscured to some scholars who have imagined that the early
Church could have entertained what has been called an exaltation Christology. According to
this, the person Jesus of Nazareth had no existence until he was conceived in the womb of
Mary, and after his ministry, death, and resurrection was exalted so that, in St. Paul's words in
Philippians 2:9-11, "God exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every
name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Yet,
for a Jew there was only one name which is above every name, namely the name Yahweh,
the name so sacred that Jews did not utter it when reading scripture aloud, reading the
Hebrew word adonai, translated Kurios in Greek and appearing as “LORD” in most standard
versions. It was only to Yahweh that it was or could be appropriate that every knee should
bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, or every tongue confess him as Lord.
Accordingly, it is inconceivable that St. Paul or the Synoptics can have conceived of Jesus as
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having no existence or activity before his conception, being during his earthly life only as a
man, and then being exalted because of his role as God's chosen and anointed in such a way
as to be worshiped in the way appropriate to Yahweh alone. Indeed, 1 Corinthians 8:5-6, in
repudiation of any doctrine that there might be many Gods and many Lords, speaks of "God
the Father from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ
through whom are all things and through whom we exist." Colossians 1:15-17 tells us that the
beloved Son "is the image of the invisible God, the First-born of all creation, since in him, all
things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. ... all things were created
through him and for him, he is before all things, and in him, all things hold together."
True, Raymond Brown in his The Community of St John the Beloved Disciple tells us
that there is no hint of Jesus' preexistence in Matthew or Luke, and the same would apply to
Mark. Brown also makes the implausible suggestions that the Corinthians passage might be
referring to Jesus as the one through whom the new creation exists, and that the Colossians
passage might be referring to Jesus' role as the first to rise from the dead. He is right to think
of the Philippians passage as envisaging Jesus in the role of the second Adam, “Not thinking
of equality with God as something to be snatched at” in the manner of the first Adam, but
wrong in thinking that the passage therefore need not imply Jesus' preexistence.1 On the
contrary, the idea of Jesus emptying himself depends upon thinking of his choosing to come
in the form of a slave instead of the glory natural to him in his divinity as a humiliation and
as man consenting to remain in that humble state until the time of his glorification.
We have to bear in mind that such affirmation of Jesus Christ as the Son of God was
made in the full face of the Roman and Greek world, and with the implication of divine
honors, such as Philippians speaks of. But to any Jew, the idea that beside the worship of
Yahweh, whose name alone is above every name so that at the name of Yahweh every knee
shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, there should be bestowed on Jesus also
a name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus also every knee shall bow in heaven
and on earth and under the earth, albeit to the glory of God the Father, would have constituted
a blatant violation of the first commandment. So, it seemed to the Jews as portrayed in all
four gospels, so it appeared to Trypho in dialogue with St. Justin Martyr, and so it has
appeared to every Jew over the ages as well as to every Muslim.
J.A.T. Robinson, in his book The Priority of John, gives a most eloquent exposition of
how Jesus was Son of God only in a functional and ethical sense, Son of God by how he
came into the world in the womb of Mary and by his calling, role, ministry, death, and
exaltation.2 But this still will not do. It is not metaphysics but logic which makes the
inadequacy of such functional explanations of Jesus' person plain. The idea that Jesus could
have the moral attributes of God without the metaphysical attributes arises from a very
uncritical philosophical theology, by which I mean not a part of philosophy, but a theology
which has been properly thought through. For being good in the sense that God is good,
being the express image of God and his love, is not a matter of human virtue, but inseparable
from the being of God itself. And the wisdom of God with whom 1 Corinthians, Colossians,
and the Gospel of John identify Jesus was at work in all the ages of creation before Jesus'
conception—as would be plain to any reader of Proverbs or the book of Wisdom, the latter, it
seems, plainly underlying the argument of Romans 1.
The affirmation of Jesus as Son of God comes, I shall argue, from the earliest strata of
Christian tradition. The same charges of blasphemy and of making claim to the prerogatives
of God, and the accusation of claiming to be the Messiah and so King of the Jews, appear in
the Synoptics as much as in John. Yet, the Synoptics and Paul are content to announce and
proclaim this truth that Jesus is Son of God without any attempt to explain how this might be
so, beyond St. Paul's speaking of him as the wisdom and power of God. And Colossians,
Ephesians, and Hebrews take us no further.

1 The Community of St John the Beloved Disciple, pp. 45-46.

2 The Priority of John, pp. 379-397
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It is indeed only in St. John that we find strong evidence of an awareness firstly of the
difficulties which Jews and any true monotheist is liable to find in the assertion of Jesus
being Son of God, and secondly of the difficulties for any Jew in the conception that the
vocation of the Messiah might be one of suffering, humiliation, and even death—exactly the
two difficulties dwelt upon in the dialogue of Justin with Trypho the Jew around 150 AD It is
as if only St. John felt the need to provide some reflection on these difficulties.
In relation to Jesus' divinity, John follows through the logic of the Mishnah which,
commenting on the Passover Haggadah, tells us: "Not through an angel, and not through a
seraph, and not through a messenger, but the Holy One in His glory and Himself; as it is
written (in Exodus 12:12), For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and I will
smite all the firstborn, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment, I the
Lord. ... For I will pass through Egypt—this means, I and not an angel; and I will smite all
the firstborn—this means, I and not a seraph; and I will execute judgment—this means, I and
not the messenger; I the Lord—this means, I AM and no other."3
John uses a midrashic blend of ideas from the Torah, Isaiah, and the Wisdom
literature to show how, when God sends a redeemer, it is he himself and not another that
comes, so intimate is the unity of Father and Son, and of Father, Son, and Spirit, so that the
kingship of Jesus does not take away from but consummates the realization of the kingship of
God. Unsurprisingly then, we find in St. John unmistakable affirmations of Jesus'
preexistence, fitting with the presentations of Corinthians, Colossians, Ephesians, Hebrews,
and the Apocalypse.
It is logic, not metaphysics, which leads directly equally from the Synoptics to John,
and from John to St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, and the doctrine of the first six councils.
It is Athanasius who is most explicit in argument, firstly against the Arians, that if
Jesus and the Father are not one God, then Christianity has become polytheistic with one first
God and then another second God (and later in discussions of the Holy Spirit, that if Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit are not one God, then Christianity would have become tri-theistic). It is
for this reason that, in considering Athanasius and Nicaea, it is better to translate ousia by the
word “being” than by the words “essence” or “nature,” as if in the Trinity we might have
three Gods each of the same nature, rather than one God in one and the same being. In
considering Augustine's exposition, one has to remember that he had only the one word
essentia to do the job of the two words “being” and “essence,” the latter “essence” so often
corresponding more to the English idea of nature than of being. Accordingly, the doctrine of
the Trinity for Athanasius is a consequence of an insistence on monotheism. After that has
been insisted upon, the next requirement is to preserve the distinction of the persons within
the Trinity, first of all so that Jesus, distinct from the Father, could in a truly human nature do
what he did for mankind's salvation, and as man pray to the Father and offer himself doing
what his Father's love for man required.
Thus, without the secure recognition of just these four gospels and the picture filled
out by the rest of the New Testament and Old, and without the firm teaching of the first six
councils, the central essentials of Christian doctrine would seem presented to us as matters of
opinion, not divine revelation. Therefore, if Christianity is indeed a religion of Revelation, it
must be by the same certainty that we believe what the councils taught, accept the
truthfulness of the gospels, and accept these as witness to the word taught by the apostles,
rejecting any divide between the faith embodied in St. John's Gospel and the faith of the
apostles. Yet none of these would have any authority as embodying revealed teaching from
God if they did not have the authority of Jesus underlying them, rooted in Jesus’ self-
understanding, the self-understanding to which St. John of all the writers in the New
Testament provides us the most intimate clue, a self-understanding in accord with
faithfulness to the Shema, “The LORD our God is one Lord, and you shall love the LORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” None of the
councils, the gospels, the teaching of the apostles, and Jesus’ self-understanding, can be

3 David Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (Athlone Press, London, 1956), p. 326.
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separated without our faith becoming a matter of human speculative construction, not of
divine Revelation.
We have here what might seem to be a paradox. Our certainty as to the standing of the
gospels depends upon the witness of the later Church, and our certainty in Jesus' authority
and intentions for the Church depends upon the gospels taken in the context of the rest of the
New Testament and the Hebrew scriptures, as understood by the Church. Yet the authority of
the gospels, New Testament, and Church all alike depend on the authority of Jesus and the
apostles, so that we seem to have a system built on a circle.
At this stage, we have to consider that what is believed as taught by God is believed
upon faith, and we have been given to understand in such a way that history and reason
provide sufficient signs of the truth of faith for this faith to be believed with certainty without
violating the human intellect, but at the same time in such a way as not to compel faith in any
deductive manner. Therefore, the gospels have a double role. Firstly, within the context of
faith, they constitute the central part of the inspired written word given us through God's
providence to secure the integral preservation of faith over the ages. Secondly, they constitute
the central witness to the key events which in the context of what preceded and followed
constitute the chief climactic signs of the truth of faith. In this second connection, they hold a
crucial position inasmuch as the credibility of faith, the possibility of accepting it without
violating the human intellect, depends upon the reasonableness of considering the gospels
truthful witness to the mind and work of Jesus.

III. Two novelties in the later Church by comparison with the Church of the first
century

I spoke of the Church of the age of the early councils as holding two novelties by
comparison with the Church of the first century, firstly, acceptance of New Testament
scriptures as inspired scriptures, given and inspired by God in the same sense as the Hebrew
scriptures, and secondly acceptance of the territorial episcopate as a structured group as
having an authoritative role in declaring what belonged to Christian doctrine and what was
alien to it.
Let us consider these two relative novelties each in turn, beginning by considering the
scriptures.

A. A parallel between the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament

There is a striking parallelism between the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament.
In the case of the Hebrew scriptures, there was a kernel of fundamental works, including
firstly what Jews referred to as the Law and the Prophets, comprising a Tetrateuch of
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, a Deuteronomic history extending from
Deuteronomy through Joshua and Judges, to Samuel and Kings, together with the works
associated with Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and twelve lesser prophets, all established by about
400 BC, except that the different parts of Zechariah and Malachi arranged and Jonah with its
understanding of salvation as extending to the Gentiles may have been composed somewhat
later before the resulting twelve were grouped in one scroll, making them form the fourth
scroll of the prophets, the prophets not being taken in chronological order, but Jeremiah
taking the place of privilege. Along with these, the Hebrew scriptures included secondly a
penumbra of other works whose identity only became effectively fixed at a later time around
160 BC, referred to as the Writings and including the Psalms, Wisdom literature, Ezra and
Nehemiah, and in the three last places, with Daniel, completed about 165 BC, and the Book
of the Chronicles (canonically one book, artificially divided into two scrolls, the division
perpetuated with the Christian codices), with an eschatological perspective lacking to Ezra
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and Nehemiah,4 placed last in the standard Ben Asher Babylonian School text. Perhaps only
Ecclesiastes, Esther, the Song of Songs, and Daniel were composed after Chronicles. And at
roughly the same later time, these texts became sacred, to be established and religiously most
exactly copied and preserved—so that even though questions as to what was in the inspired
canon continued until 500 AD, none of this questioning led to any change in the position as it
stood in 160 BC.
In the case of the New Testament, again there was firstly a kernel of fundamental
works in this case established by 200 AD at the latest, namely the gospels, Acts, the Epistles
of Paul, I Peter, I John, and James, and secondly a penumbra of other works whose identity
became stable only later around 350 AD, with James, II Peter, II and III John, and Jude,
accepted only slowly, and Hebrews, never doubted in the east, was long questioned in the
west, while the Apocalypse of John, never doubted in the west, was long questioned in the
east; along with these, Christians came to treat as scripture various books and parts of books
still piously received by Jews, viz. I and II Maccabees (giving foundation to the feast of
Dedication, Chanukah), Sirach known in Latin as Ecclesiasticus (recognized as useful for
pious reading at Jamnia), Tobit, Judith, the book of Wisdom (respected by Nachmanides),
and sundry parts of the Greek versions of Esther and Daniel. And again by 350 AD, these
texts had become sacred, to be established and religiously copied and preserved—so that no
questioning substantially changed the Christian position as it stood in 350 AD, until questions
revived after 1600 AD amongst Protestants.
Accordingly, the idea that the essence of the teaching of God as delivered to mankind,
what we make might call his Word or Revelation including his own interpretation of his
deeds in creation and salvation history, was given to mankind in the form of written texts is
mistaken both in regard to the Revelation to the Jews and in regard to the Revelation to all
peoples in Christ Jesus.
Rather, first there was an instruction given to the Jews over a great many ages first as
to the existence, transcendent uniqueness, immediacy or immanent presence, power, and
holiness of God, second as to how mankind ought to live and how they should avoid things
incompatible with a true love of God and their neighbor, and third as to the calling of
Abraham, the formation of the Jewish people, the establishment of the temple worship in
Jerusalem, the expectation of a Messiah to right all things, and the universal vocation of the
Jews to provide a light for all nations. This instruction gained an expression in the Hebrew
scriptures, but included further traditions such as are reflected in the feast of Chanakah and
traditions as to how the scriptures were to be faithfully copied and preserved, as well as the
reaching of clarity as to the resurrection, prayer for the dead, angels, and the expectation of
the messiah, a clarity reached under the influence of Zoroastrianism and expressed in the 13
principles of Moses Mamondes in the twelfth century AD.
Secondly, there was the word of the gospel, and the historical coming, ministry, death,
and resurrection of Jesus, with the committing to the Church founded on the apostles and
prophets of the mission to extend the gospel to all nations, gaining expression in the New
Testament, taken together with an extended Old Testament.
Accordingly, in each case what comes first is the Word or Revelation from God,
secondly the community and its tradition constituted by this Word or Revelation, and only
thirdly scriptures as embodying the kernel of this tradition. In each case, it is believed that
God has given the community by whatever means he has provided the capacity and authority
to recognise, fix, and declare what belongs to the respective scriptures and what does not, and
this process goes on over an appreciable period before finality is achieved. In each case, the
community is believed because of the Word or Revelation constituting it, and the scriptures
concerned are believed on the testimony of the community called and formed by God.

4 Chronicles does not conceive of the re-establishment of Jerusalem as having been completed with the work of
Ezra and Nehemiah, but looks to the regathering of all the exiles, p. 11, Vol. 1, 1 & 2 Chronicles, William
Johnstone, Sheffield Academic Press, 1997.
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The scriptures in each case have a double importance, one as providing a chief part,
although not the whole, of the evidence of signs that God has indeed revealed himself, and
secondly as being considered the inspired and inerrant written Word given by God.
The second of these things is not my present concern, although it does give rise to
peculiar difficulty. When I became a Catholic, the profession of faith I made extended to
many particular specified doctrines, capped by a seemingly catch-all phrase, viz. “anything
taught by the unanimous consent of the Fathers.” Yet the only doctrine which is
conspicuously taught by the unanimous consent of the Fathers seems to be that of the
inspiration and inerrancy of scripture, more unanimously indeed than some of the doctrines
explicitly specified in the profession of faith asked of me. Yet these doctrines of the
inspiration and inerrancy of scripture, the second an evident corollary of the first, have
always seemed to me the most difficult doctrines of all, the difficulties of the others seeming
often to lie in our common philosophical presumptions rather than in theology. For instance,
it was ultimately the mistaken interpretation of the doctrine of inerrancy which constituted
the crux of the difficulty with Galileo and so in many other cases. Inerrancy is also a doctrine
which was felt to give rise to difficulties as early as the second century, and which
accordingly has been interpreted in many different ways. I believe that the pattern I have
outlined above is very helpful for considering how we may be able to understand this
doctrine and apply it with a sense of proportion and an eye to the significance and certainty
which the human authors or compilers in writing intended to be accorded to the different
elements and aspects of what they wrote, rather than with a false literalism—but to go into
this belongs to another paper.
Let me now return to consider the significance of my original statement that in the
case of both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament, the community is believed
because of the Word or Revelation constituting it, and the scriptures concerned are believed
on the testimony of the community recognizing them as having been providentially given for
the long term safeguarding of the faith and inspiration and building up of the faithful. Yet the
apostles and their companions preached the Word efficaciously before any of the New
Testament books were written, and for a long period before all were generally recognized.
My concern is particularly with the New Testament where as I remarked earlier we
have a process of recognition and of settling how one should identify the authoritative text
which took until at least around 350 AD. Yet which books belong to inspired scripture and
which do not is certainly a part of the corpus of Christian doctrine. It follows that one must
exercise a certain care in explaining in what way what is called the deposit of faith was given
in the period of the apostles.
I said that the scriptures concerned are believed on the testimony of the community,
meaning in the case of the New Testament that they are received as to be believed on the
testimony of the Church. Yet this now takes us back to the question of the identity of the
Church and its relevant organs of authority.

B. The second novelty: The acceptance of the territorial episcopate as a structured

group as having a key authority
In a certain sense, this is a question on which Christians in general are still reflecting
in the course of the process of ecumenical dialogue and debate. However, from the Roman
Catholic standpoint, the matter seems to be somewhat clearer, namely that the kernel of the
Church is the community of those in communion with the Church presided over by the
Bishop of Rome, and the ultimate organ of authority is the Bishop of Rome and the bishops
in communion with him.
Yet even here we have something which is not often noted, namely that the
continuance of the Petrine ministry is associated with a particular church, the church of the
city of Rome, so that for instance one should rule out of court any idea that the Church
universal could as it were uproot the Petrine ministry and declare, for instance, that from now
on the Petrine ministry belongs to the Bishops of Avignon, or to Constantine's new town
Constantinople, or to Moscow the Tsars' supposed third Rome, or in some other imagined
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world Berlin, Washington, or Beijing. The implication of this is that the recognition of the
tying of the Petrine ministry to the Church to the city of Rome is correlative with the
acceptance of the territorialisation of the episcopate, that is the acceptance that a bishop
should be of some particular town, city, or region, rather than that it should be the norm for
there to be itinerant bishops each associated with no particular place.
Now, if we view the matter historically, it is fair to say that the idea of special
authority being associated with the Church of the city of Rome is older than the idea of
patriarchal authority. As we examine the history of the Church we find the word “patriarch”
used rather as a title of honor in regard to more revered and respected bishops and not only
the bishops of particular sees, somewhat as before 70 AD the title of “rabbi” was used
honorifically rather than as signaling a particular official rank. One may reasonably say that
it was only as by-product of Constantine's creation of a new capital Constantinople for the
Roman Empire in the East that the title patriarch came to gain formal significance, and much
of the strife in the Church over the period since 325 AD can be traced to the artificiality of
the situation of Constantinople from a doctrinal point of view. For from the point of view of
having a tradition coming from the apostles only the sees of Antioch and Alexandria had any
special status alongside Rome. Meantime, Jerusalem retained a primacy of honor but not
authority because the tradition of the Church in Jerusalem had been subject to a complete
discontinuity when the emperor Hadrian excluded all Jews from Jerusalem; so that whereas
before 135 AD all the bishops of Jerusalem had been circumcised Jews, largely serving other
circumcised Jews, after 135 AD the bishops of Jerusalem were all uncircumcised Gentiles
serving other uncircumcised Gentiles, the Hebrew Christians of Jerusalem being scattered
through the world. As to the inheritance of the teaching stemming from John the Evangelist at
Ephesus, as witnessed to by the bishops of Asia Minor, this was represented by the influence
of Johannine teaching throughout the whole Christian world rather than by the tradition of
any particular see.
By the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the territorialisation of the
episcopate had taken the concrete form which it retains amongst episcopally ordered churches
today, involving a differentiation between bishops and other priests.
Whether the distinction between bishops and other priests is one of Church law, or
divine institution was still disputed in the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the
Reformation, although in the practice of the Church from the second century it is clear that
only bishops were conceived of as successors of the apostles in the role of having ultimate
authority in the guardianship and discipline of the Church. The collegial character of the
episcopate according to which individual bishops hold this authority within the context of
communion with one another and in the communion with the Bishop of Rome, and all
bishops in communion with Rome have responsibility in collegiality with the Bishop of
Rome for the care of the universal Church, are things first clearly expressed only in the
Second Vatican Council although long implicit in the practice of the Church.
The first epistle of Clement refers to the apostles having provided as it were in a
codicil that those they appoint as presbyters should themselves appoint successors, and the
epistles to Titus and Timothy present examples of an apostle appointing representatives to
exercise his authority in governance and in guarding the faith.
The timing of the emergence of the role of presiding presbyter in each polis, city, or
region is disputed amongst scholars, but from the point of view of historical evidence it is a
possible opinion that this role was established by the apostles from the first, and certainly
from the time of Ignatius onwards in the writings the title bishop was reserved to such
presiding presbyters. The main question, as to how soon there were such presiding presbyters
or bishops, is distinct from the two subsidiary questions as to how they were selected and
appointed and how they were ordained.
The church in Jerusalem is the first that presents itself as having such a presiding
presbyter or bishop, first James, and then Simeon son of Clopas brother of Joseph. The
Christian community at Alexandria seems to have been predominantly Jewish, and had a
similarly monarchical system, albeit that it seems that a college of 12 presbyters chose and
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consecrated the bishop until this system of election and consecration was suppressed by
Alexander, Athanasius' predecessor, in favor of episcopal ordination. This system of
presbyteral consecration seems surprising in the light of Clement of Alexandria's remark, “A
priest lays on hands, but does not ordain,”5 but some have presumed that this college of 12
was a college of select presbyters with special authority for choosing the bishop, like a
college of canons or cardinals, since the number of presbyters in Egypt was far greater than
12 at least from the time of Heraclas (232-48 AD) onwards. The evidence of the succession
in Alexandria has been disparaged as not recorded except at second hand until the fourth
century, but wherever we can check upon Eusebius he seems reliable in his citations, and we
have good reason for supposing that he was drawing upon the writings of Julius Africanus,
writing about 221 AD when Heraclas was teaching in Alexandria firstly as assistant to Origen
and then as head of the Catechetical school, and Julius Africanus seems to have had a critical
mind in respect of traditions concerning the early church and scriptural writings. Therefore,
we should regard the tradition in respect to Mark's having initiated a succession of Church
leaders, later distinguished under the label bishops, as fairly reliable. His having gone to
Alexandria at some point is supported by the separate tradition that, when he went from
Rome to Alexandria, his gospel was published there also.
In Antioch, a episcopal system is clearly established by the time of Ignatius, that is
before 110 AD, and if tradition is to be believed from the time of the apostles. And what
evidence we have suggests the establishment of the same system in Asia Minor by 100 AD.
The greatest controversy has concerned the see of Rome, where although a succession
of names is given as the succession of the successors of Peter, those who testify to it seem
much more anxious about the faithfulness of the Church of Rome in maintaining apostolic
doctrine, that is the faithfulness of the Church in Rome, than in the monarchical character of
its organization. Around 175 AD, Hegesippus says that he has established the succession in
Rome down to Anicetus, whom we meet in Eusebius as in discussion on the question of the
date of the celebration of Easter with Polycarp, to be succeeded in order by Soter, and
Eleutherus. And Irenaeus details the same succession with the apostles Peter and Paul
handing over to Linus followed by Anacletus, Clement, Evarestus, Alexandra, Sixtus, the
sixth after the apostles, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius, Anicetus, Soter, and Eleutherus.
Whatever the situation in regard to these questions, it is clear that there is no evidence
of the doctrine of a territorial episcopate in the New Testament. Tertullian (about 155-230
AD) mentions as apostolic thrones or cathedrae Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, and
Ephesus, all as places where authentic apostolic writings are read, then mentions Rome as
preeminent as the place where Peter ordained Clement and where Peter and Paul were
martyred and, he supposes, John to have been plunged in boiling oil before being exiled to
Patmos. He has particular interest in Rome because it was with Rome that his own Church at
Carthage in Africa had connection. However, all his traditions in these matters are at least
third hand, and so he is important mainly as a witness along with the later Cyprian to the
firmness with which by 200 AD the idea of a fellowship of apostolic cathedrae had become
established.

VI. A suggestion as to the character of the process of the Church's reflecting upon what
gave her apostolicity, in the sense of authority as a witness to Revelation

By God's providence, we have the scriptures, but it is only in virtue of accepting the
authority of the Church in teaching that these scriptures have special status, that it can
coherently be held that either the whole or the kernel of Christian faith is contained in these
scriptures. Now the teaching that either the whole or the kernel of Christian faith is contained
in these scriptures is certainly not contained in these scriptures, and in regard to the New

5 "Strom.", VI, xiii, cvi; cf. "Const. Apost.", II, viii, 36. (cheirothetei ou cheirotonei) "Didasc. Syr.", IV; III, 10,
11, 20; Cornelius, "Ad Fabianum" in Euseb., "Hist. Eccl.", VI, xliii
 9

Testament is not traceable until the fourth century. And again there are teachings concerning
the identity of the Church as a body teaching with authority from God which are not clearly
established until the late second century at the earliest, these things affecting the identity of
the Church include the authority of a territorialized episcopate in which certain centers of
tradition have an essential role. However, each of these things is essential to our receiving the
doctrines of the divinity of Jesus, at the same time as his full humanity, human soul, mind,
and will, and the distinctness and divinity of the Holy Spirit, to name some things which were
still being caviled at and disputed in the period of the first six Ecumenical Councils.
Accordingly the authority of these councils as teaching things revealed by God, and not
merely the speculations of man, the authority of a territorialized episcopate in which certain
centers of tradition, preeminently Rome, have an essential role, and the inspiration and
authority of scripture, stand or fall together with the givenness of tradition as to God given
through the Jews, and the divinity and resurrection of Jesus as the the chief things revealed by
God.
Therefore, it cannot be right to say that the whole of what is required for Christian
faith is contained in the scriptures. However, it is an attractive view to say the following.
Firstly, the Christian faith is not a set of discrete independent doctrines, but an integrated
whole in such a way that properly understood none of the basic doctrines can coherently
stand without the others. Secondly, these basic doctrines are contained in scripture. And
thirdly, they are so contained in scripture that scripture limits what questions we need to look
to tradition or the teaching magisterium of the latter Church for an answer. Here, firstly,
scripture portrays the person and work of Jesus as given with a gospel or authoritative
tradition constituting Word or Revelation of God to be proclaimed to mankind, and it
portrays the Church as constituted and sent by God as one community of faith and love to
witness to and continue this proclamation. Therefore, we must be able to ask of the history of
tradition what the identity of this Church is and how the deposit of faith continues to be
integrally proclaimed throughout time.

V. The links in the chain: The later Church cannot have any authority if it is not rooted
in the earlier Church, and this can have no authority if it is not rooted in the authority
of the apostolic witness, and this can have no authority if it is not rooted in Jesus'
knowledge and teaching

Of all these links, the most problematic are the last, by which the Church's teaching is
linked to the self-understanding of Jesus himself, of which the four gospels provide our only
direct evidence. It is failure to make this last link, turning as it does on the general lines of the
results of whatever gospel criticism which a person takes to be the most reasonable, which
led the greater number of those of my Church of England contemporaries in Oxford in the
early 1960s who did theology at Oxford as their first degree to give up any plans or hopes of
ordination, and in some cases to give up any kind of Christian faith. Others seemed to
suppose that the doctrines of the Church or of the Holy Spirit could do all the work of
transforming what might otherwise seem later human construction and speculation into
divine revelation. But it never seemed either to me or to these friends who abandoned their
vocations how this gambit worked, since certainty that the Holy Spirit would guide the
Church itself rested on our knowing that Christ intended a Church and promised it guidance.
Therefore, the question as to what view it is reasonable to take from modern study of the New
Testament and the gospels in particular remains of crucial importance to the reasonableness
of faith. And faith has to be reasonable for people coming to it not to be violating their
intellects, and it has to be reasonable for people holding it to be able to reflect upon it with
proper freedom.
Let us now consider the problems presented by modern Biblical criticism.
 10

VI. The commonly received view of the emergence of the scriptures and Church
structures we find later

From the 1950s to the present, the predominant view amongst scholars has viewed St.
Mark's Gospel as taking its present form in the 60s AD, with a preference for the period 67-
69 AD, St. Matthew's Gospel as close to 90 AD, St. Luke with the Book of Acts as sometime
between 75 and 85 AD, while St. John's Gospel has been placed in the 90s AD.
Although Irenaeus envisaged St. Matthew and St. Luke as written before St. Mark, it
does not seem that these dates would as such have presented any particular difficulty in the
thinking of the church of the time of Irenaeus, and Irenaeus and later writers always assigned
the final form of St. John to John's extreme old age, taken to be close to 100 AD. What
mattered for the thinking of the Church of that time was that all four gospels should have
been written by faithful eye witnesses or by those in touch with faithful eye witnesses.
However, modern critics have tended to assume that the later the date at which a
particular gospel was written the more one should take it that, not just its overall plan and
emphasis, but also its substantial content was shaped to the needs of the particular
communities within which it was to be read. Richard Bauckham has countered this by
arguing that Luke, Matthew, and John were written for a world-wide or at least
Mediterranean-wide audience, rather than just for particular communities.6 However, he
takes this suggestion to go with a date late in the first century, making it difficult for Matthew
and Luke to be composed without the later knowing of the earlier, which is most implausible,
and still allows much room for the hypothesis of a large evolution in Christology, compatible
with the skeptics' suggestion that high Christology is the product of a human speculative
construction, commonly ascribed to St. Paul (the thinking of the Johannine literature and
Hebrews supposedly coming much later), rather than secured on the authority of Jesus. Yet
unless we are assured on Jesus' authority of his promise of the Spirit to guide the Church
reliably and at the same time assured as to how the Church so guided is to be identified, we
have only human opinion, not revealed teaching.
However, I shall now give reason for thinking that the popular late datings are highly
questionable, the arguments for them built upon sand, and some reasons, though not proof,
for much earlier datings. In my view, both the internal and the external evidence for such late
datings is weak, and it would appear that all the material in the gospels reflects the context
within which Jesus himself lived, namely, of the active disputes between Jewish schools from
20-50 AD, and the Church's understanding in that period rather than that of any later time.
As to how early the Gospels were written on parchment, rather than papyrus roll, there is no
solid reason for making this as late as the end of the century, since in Martial's time it appears
that there was already a trade in parchment books.
Let me consider each Gospel in turn.

A. St. Mark
To me, as to others, it seems clear that St. Mark was written before and used by the
authors of our St. Matthew and St. Luke,7 so that the question of the dating of St. Mark

6 The Gospels for All Christians, ed. R. Bauckham, T&T Clark, 1998, in his own first chapter.
7 Since it appears that Luke simply incorporated great blocks of Mark’s text (with editorial changes and
sometimes omitting pieces of narratives of which he preferred other sources or presenting accounts of somewhat
similar episodes), one’s initial hypothesis is naturally that he might treat other sources, such as Q, in the same
way. By contrast, St. Matthew’s Gospel appears to organized into blocks of different kinds of material for
catechetical purposes, for instance, chapters 5-7 being balanced by chapters 23-25, selecting appropriate sayings
from Q without respect to their order within Q itself, as they dovetailed with sayings from other sources, fitting
them into a much more radically edited Mark. Both writers are commonly presumed to have had some
maximum length set by considerations of scroll length.
The hypothesis that Luke preserved Q in its original order and with relatively editorial change, whereas
Matthew very considerably altered it so as to fit his catechetical structure, fits the facts as presented by Vincent
Taylor (‘The Order of Q’, JTS, 1953, and ‘The Original Order of Q’, in New Testament Essays: Studies in
Memory of Thomas William Manson 1893-1958, Ed. A.J.B. Higgins, Manchester U P, 1959, pp. 246-69) and
 11

becomes crucial. Here the external evidence becomes weak because Irenaeus's account seems
to derive from a tradition that Mark was published after a departure of Peter from Rome, 8
which need not mean after his death, and in any case Clement gives a different and quite
independent account coming from within a Church which reckoned Mark as one of its
originators. And, even on the assumption that St. Mark relied upon the teaching of St. Peter in
Rome as one of his chief sources, we know so little of when St. Peter was in Rome that this
would still leave the dating of St. Mark a matter of speculation. Hence, from the point of view
of the external evidence, if Peter had periods of teaching in Rome either in the period 46-48
AD or the period 54-57 AD, St. Mark might be supposed to have been written either around
49 AD or any time between 55 and 57 AD, either of which would be compatible with his
having published his gospel in Alexandria as well as Rome well before 61 AD—the time
given by Eusebuis, presumably following Julius Africanus, for his ceasing to be head of the
Church in Alexandria, before returning to Rome to be with Paul (2 Timothy) and Peter (1
Peter). (No argument about Peter's visits to Rome should be based on the apocryphal legend
that Peter went to Rome to confute Simon Magus. It is noteworthy that Justin never makes
any connection between the visits by Peter and Simon Magus to Rome.9)
Let me consider the arguments of Vincent Taylor10 and Martin Hengel11 for dating
Mark later, apart from their appeal to the external evidence. Standard commentaries offer no
further arguments.
Firstly, Taylor and Hengel share the common presumption that Mark's apocalyptic
chapter 13 was written with the situation in 64-66 or 67-69 AD in view. However, it fits far
better with the aftermath of Caligula's attempt, foiled by his death, to install Emperor worship
in the temple, a connection Vincent Taylor disparages. The assumption that the anticipated
persecution and suffering, or the deaths of the sons of Zebedee, could not have been
grounded in Jesus' own words, or that such anticipations would be surprising in the 40s seems
to have no warrant at all.
Secondly, they take the view that the ideas of worldwide mission and of the freedom
of the Gentiles from kosher laws could not come from Jesus himself, or from any period
before the Pauline mission had had extensive influence. But this ignores the likelihood of an
early general spread of the gospel to all the areas mentioned in Act 2, augmented by the
movement of the Hellenists from Jerusalem throughout Judea and Samaria, to Phoenicia,
Cyprus, and Antioch, expelled after the killing of Stephen in 33 or 36 AD, and also assumes
that Acts 10 is unhistorical or chronologically misplaced. These arguments are in any case
compatible with any date after 45 AD, when the Pauline mission had already taken a crucial
turn, besides depending on the groundless assumption that they do not come from Jesus
himself.

confirmed in the discussions in Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The priority of Mark and the ‘Q’ Source in Luke,”
Perspective [Pittsburgh Theological Seminary] 11, 1970, pp.131-170, reprinted in To Advance the Gospel: New
Testament Studies, 1981 Crossroad, New York, Synoptic Problem, Frans Neirynck, pp. 587-595, New Jerome
Biblical Commentary, Catholic University of Leuven, 1990, and Patrick J. Hartin, James and the Q sayings of
Jesus, 1991, JSOT Press, Sheffield. The fertility of this general hypothesis and the relative ease with which the
bulk of Q can be reconstructed on this hypothesis makes three the rival hypotheses of (1) Griesbach, William
Farmer, Bernard Orchard et al. that the gospels were written in the order Matthew, Luke, Mark with Mark being
framed from what was shared between Matthew and Luke, of (2) Austin Farrer and Michael Goulder that
Matthew developed Mark and Luke came after, and of (3) the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research formed
by R.L. Lindsey, David Flusser, and others, with a more elaborate account giving Hebrew documents priority
over Greek and Luke priority over Mark, much less attractive.
8 Irenaeus assumes what may well have been a well-grounded tradition that Peter and Paul were martyred at
approximately the same time, and so probably draws upon a source which spoke of Mark's gospel as written
after Peter's departure from Rome (which, from Ephraem's commentary on the Diatessaron, could be understood
in terms of some leaving of Rome, rather than his ultimate death).
9 Justin probably draws on Roman tradition in saying that Simon Magus about whom he should have known
since Simon like Menander were notorious fellow Samaritans (he probably mentions the inscription which he
misinterprets only for apologetic purposes).
10 The Gospel according to St Mark, Macmillan 1953, pp. 31-2.
11 Studies in the Gospel of Mark, trans., 1985, SCM, pp. 12-28.
 12

Thirdly, Hengel's idea that the idea of a bios or Life of Jesus would have been foreign
to the church in Rome in the late 40s AD because the earliest stages of Christianity were
dominated by an eschatological expectation making anything other than urgent proclamation
by word of mouth quite inappropriate is quite unsubstantiated—rather the main reticence in
writing would seem to have stemmed from the idea associated with the Sages of Israel and
continued in rabbinic after 70 AD that memory within the context of the oral tradition of a
community was more reliable than reliance on writings. Both Papias and Irenaeus witness to
the same idea.
Fourthly, while Taylor follows B.H. Streeter in regarding Mark as independent of Q,
Hengel thinks that the sayings traditions preceded Mark and had undergone some
development before Mark wrote, so that Mark might sometimes provide earlier witness to
such sayings tradition.12 However, Hengel’s own argument on the importance of the Greek-
speaking Jewish community in Jerusalem from the first days of the Church13 provides reason
for anticipating records of the sayings of Jesus in Greek in the early 30's AD, to be made
known elsewhere after 33 AD. Accordingly, even if some verses of Mark did reflect some
early version of the hypothetical Q, this would not provide any restriction on the date of
Mark.
Accordingly, internal argument leaves the question of the date of Mark entirely open,
except that the passage in chapter 13 speaking of “the abomination of desolation being in a
place where he ought not to be (let the reader understand)” in itself gives a strong reason for
preferring a date as close to 41 AD as other evidence will allow. And in view of the emphasis
on Jesus being the Son of God, not only with healing powers, but with powers over the storm
and the ability to raise from the dead, and even as he died on the cross recognised by a
Roman centurion as the Son of God, strongly suggests that Mark is offering a gospel which
runs rival to any good news associated with the benevolence of any earthly emperor, and a
particular challenge to the Imperial cult. Here I find Graham Stanton's arguments in his Jesus
and Gospel published in 2004 (CUP) particularly strong. Therefore, the nearer one can bring
St. Mark's Gospel to the period of Caligula's attempt to set up emperor worship in the temple,
the more intelligibility it gives to Mark's emphasis on Jesus as being Son of God as well as to
the reference to setting up emperor worship in the temple. Parallel argument suggests an early
date for II Thessalonians.
Therefore, to me it is the internal evidence for the earlier dating of Mark which is the
strongest. Moreover, an early date fits well with the external evidence provided by Roman
tradition which gives St. Peter over two decades of connection with Rome before his
martyrdom, evidence probably based in Roman archives even though these are only traceable
in written form in fourth century writings, a tradition independent of any ideas of a
confrontation between Peter and Simon Magus in Rome. Peter's martyrdom was sometime
between 64 and 67 AD, probably nearer 67 since apocryphal tradition makes his death later
than and independent of the large-scale persecution of 64 AD. Herod Agrippa I beheaded
James brother of John and imprisoned Peter sometime between 41 and 44 AD, and so the
time of Peter's leaving Jerusalem must lie between these dates, although Mark cannot have
joined him until after leaving Paul and Barnabas in 46 AD. And, if Claudius did indeed
exclude all Jews from Rome between 49 and 54 AD, apparently because of divisions amongst
them, divisions which Suetonius attributes to one “Chrestos,” neither Peter nor Mark can
have been in Rome between 49 and 54 AD.
The situation of Mark has relevance to the situations of Matthew and Luke.

B. St. Matthew
The view that Mark may date to 47-49 or 54-57 AD has the advantage that it would
allow us to place our very rabbinic Matthew in Alexandria in the 50's AD, which lets us make

12 Hengel, op. cit., p. 12 and n. 75a, p. 126.

13 Between Jesus and Paul (Trans.), SCM 1983, pp. 6-9, 11-118, 26f.-8, referring to the conjecture of T. Boman
and L. Goppelt (see n.159 on p. 156).
 13

sense of many features of Matthew which are utterly puzzling within any setting after 70
AD.14 Indeed, it is utterly mysterious to me how scholars can envisage Jesus giving
instructions to pay the temple tax according to an argument which depends on its still being
the temple of God, at any time after 70 AD, since after that time the so-called temple-tax
went to the support of Vespasian's temple to Jupiter built on the Jewish temple site. Likewise,
the saying “the scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; therefore practice and observe
whatever they tell you, but not what they do, for they preach but do not practice” would be
out of place to repeat after 70 AD. Moreover, other puzzling sayings, such as “go nowhere
amongst the gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of
the house of Israel” (10:5), “you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the
Son of Man comes” (10:23), and “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”
(15:24), would seem to have no place in any setting after the crisis of 70 AD. And every
subject of rabbinic controversy to which Matthew adverts was one which was alive at the
time of Jesus' ministry, and none have any special connection with the period after 70 AD
and the disputes of Jamnia, rather than to some earlier time.
The idea that our St. Matthew was composed amongst the Greek-using Jews of
Alexandria in the 50s AD has many attractions. The date would explain the fact as C.H. Dodd
observes that, despite the gulf of difference between Paul's style and that of Matthew's
Gospel, Paul and Matthew are amazingly close in their treatment of ethical and eschatological
themes, and also of the Church and Church order, as well as in their criticisms of the
Pharisees, criticisms precisely the same as those that one meets with in the Mishnah.15 All
these are traditions which Paul would have picked up in Antioch derived from the Jerusalem
church, and which Matthew could have gained in Alexandria from the same Jerusalem root—
both embody an approach natural to a person of Jewish Christian background of a Pharisaic
or rabbinic kind.16 An Alexandrian origin would also be consonant with his having access to
a collection of the sayings of Jesus emanating from the Greek speaking Christian Jews of
Jerusalem in a recension different from the recension available to Luke in Caesarea. 17 Its
being written in Alexandria would be consonant with his writing within a setting of Greek
speaking Jews with close loyalty to rabbinic tradition and in close touch with Jerusalem, as
well as consonant with the prominence given to Jesus' coming from Egypt, which the gospel
associates with the prophecy “out of Egypt, I have called my son.” There is further economy
in supposing our St. Matthew to have been written in Alexandria, because it is to Alexandria
that tradition says that Mark took his gospel.18 Moreover, the favorite supposition of many
scholars that it was written in Antioch is very inconvenient, firstly because the gospel shows
so little trace of the influence of Paul, quite unlike, for instance, the epistles of Ignatius, and
secondly because, if written at Antioch, it is difficult to understand how there could be so
little influence either of Luke upon Matthew or Matthew upon Luke, whichever was written
first. Also, its being written in Alexandria places it in a sufficiently external relation to
Jerusalem eyewitnesses to explain the extreme economy of the post-resurrection narrative
and the insignificance of James the brother of the Lord, appearing only as one of the sons of
Mary, mother of James and Joseph, as if James was no more significant than this Joseph, an

14 I note that my reasons for associating Matthew with Alexandria have very little connection with those of
S.G.F. Brandon, The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church (1951, 1957, SPECK, London) and Sjef Van
Tilborg, The Jewish Leaders in Matthew (Brill, Leiden, 1972), both of whom assume a late date for Matthew.
15 Chapter IV, David Flusser, Jewish Sources In Early Christianity. ISBN 965-05-0466-4.
16 New Testament Studies, 1953, C. H. Dodd, Number 3, 'Matthew and Paul' (1947), pp. 53-66.
17 There are other possibilities but they are based on pure speculation. Thus, it seems clear that Peter traveled
widely to Corinth and to Pontius and Bythinia as well as to Rome, and so Edmundson's speculation that
Barnabas introduced Clement to him in Rome around 55 AD is perfectly plausible but still nothing more than
speculation—there is no obstacle to supposing Peter to have visited Rome any time between 54 and 57 AD, and
then one could have placed Mark at that time, and Matthew at any period after 57 AD. The field is ripe for
speculation.
18 Old Latin Anti-Marcionite Prologue, Recenssion 2, see Bernard Orchard and Harold Riley, The Order of the
Synoptics and Why Three Synoptic Gospels, pp. 148-149.
 14

insignificance we find also in Mark—Matthew and Mark here both standing in stark contrast
to Luke.
Escaping to the country or flying to the hills would have been quite impractical in the
period 67-68 AD, and therefore alien to any gospel written later so it is difficult to see how
any of the Synoptics could have written as they did at any time after 66 AD when the
Christian community is said to have removed itself from Jerusalem, perhaps to Pella. The
arguments that Matthew and Luke show knowledge of the fall of Jerusalem are very flimsy,
and have been effectively refuted by Dodd and Robinson.19 There seems no difficulty in
supposing that a Christian scribe of the 50s AD inherited the saying that “the king was angry,
and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city” which we find in
Matthew 22:7, inserting it in the context of the parable of the marriage feast in 22:1-10 or
finding it already there. A similar saying occurs in Luke 19:27, appended to the parable of the
pounds, “as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them
here and slay them before me.” Roman actions in Alexandria, Galilee, and Jerusalem long
before 70 AD provided ample precedent.

C. St. Luke
Either suggestion, that St. Mark wrote his gospel around 49 AD or that he wrote it
between 55 and 57 AD, would be quite compatible with Luke's beginning to compose his
gospel while Paul was in prison in Caesarea in 58-60 AD, a location which would explain his
good knowledge of the geography of Palestine from Galilee to the coast and from Galilee
northwards, while his time in Jerusalem might explain his knowledge of traditions associated
with Jesus' family as well as with some traditions such as the appearance of the risen Christ to
Peter before he appeared to the other apostles which we find elsewhere only in John and Paul.
It also explains the abrupt termination of Acts at a point in 62 or 63 AD, and the absence of
any trace of mention of any persecution of the Church in Rome, any visit of Paul to Spain, or
the deaths of Peter and Paul.
Further, the work of the Jerusalem school deserves some respect. True the general
idea which inspired R.L. Lindsey and the Jewish rabbinic scholar David Flusser, that Mark's
gospel was an adaptation of Luke, seems implausible, above all because of the lack of
adequate explanation of the things Mark left out, as well as any explanation of the origin of
narratives he includes but which are not to be found in Luke, such as the feeding of the four
thousand. Yet the work of the Jerusalem school includes solid argument that Luke had access
to Hebrew versions of traditions used also by Mark, versions most likely to exist in
Jerusalem, for instance the discussion by Randall Buth and Bryan Kvasnica of the parable of
the wicked husbandmen, showing that many or most of the Hebraisms in St. Luke do not
spring from imitation of the Septuagint, and are foreign to Luke's own style as seen in Acts
16-28, but echo late biblical or post-biblical Mishnaic Hebrew.20 That Luke used some
Hebrew sources in non-Marcan parts of his gospel is apparent from Carmignac's discussion
of the Canticles21 in chapter 1 as well as being suggested by Bauckham22 in regard to the
genealogy in chapter 3.
All the Synoptics present a picture of Jesus which is quite compatible with his
appearing to his contemporaries as amongst those they would have referred to the pious or
Hasidim of that time, identified in the mind of others as a sub-group of the Pharisees, and
different from other Pharisees and from the Essenes in encouraging going out to sinners and
those not of the group, rather than excluding contact with them, and associated both with

19 C.H. Dodd, The Fall of Jerusalem and the "Abomination of Desolation" (1947), reprinted in More New
Testament studies, Manchester 1968, pp. 69-83, and J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament, Chapter
II.
20 Jesus' Last Week (Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels – Volume One), ed. Steven Notley et al., pp.
53-80, 259-318 in arguments illustrated in.earlier papers by Randall Buth.
21Abbe Jean Carmignac, The Birth of the Synoptic Gospels, 1987, Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago, (trans.
from French La Naissance Des Evangiles Synoptiques, de Guibert, 1984).
22 Jude and the relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, T.&T. Clark, 1990, Ch. 7..
 15

going out to the poor and with intimacy with God in prayer. This picture, urged upon us by
Flusser,23 is also at home with what we find in St. John's Gospel, and would go with a use of
Hebrew in public moral (halakhic) teaching and parables (of which any further explanation to
the apostles might naturally be given in Aramaic, since it is clear he habitually used Aramaic,
as I remark below).

VII. The tri-lingual background of the Gospels

All the four gospels, and it seems Q also, appear not as translations but as each originally
written in Greek, and this gives rise to the question of their relation to the original Aramaic
and Hebrew of Jesus. Eusebius, in his Demonstratio Evangelica III.4.44 and VII.10, speaks
of the apostles as speaking Syrian, thereby implying the distinction between Aramaic and
Hebrew. That Jesus' conversation with the Apostles was in Aramaic is confirmed by the way
both Paul and St. John's Gospel take Jesus to have given Simon, first amongst the apostles,
the title Cephas which is a Hellenisation of the Aramaic kepha and so as John says means
Rock, expressed by the Greek Petros.24 However, Jesus was addressed by the honorific title
of “rabbi,” and was taken to be one who had letters, that is who could read the scriptures in
Hebrew, and evidently gave his public teaching in a different style from his private teaching
to the disciples. The fact that his public style often required Hebrew is particularly signaled
by the way some statements are introduced by the Hebrew Amen, Amen, in our translations
appearing as “verily verily,” or “truly, truly.”
Within the Persian empire, as within the Assyrian empire, Aramaic came to be used as
the lingua-franca even in administration, its use extending to Egypt, and the decline of
Hebrew was intelligible, but in the period of Greek and Roman rule Aramaic had no such
advantage. During the period of Maccabean and especially Hasmonean rule, a great attempt
had been made to revive Hebrew—so much so that some first-century rabbis speak of there
being no point in speaking any other language than Hebrew and Greek, and in both the
Mishnah and the Talmud practically all parables, 5,000 in number, and, with the exception of
some early teachings of Hillel recently arrived from Babylon, all halakhic teachings are set
forth in Hebrew.25 Moreover, it appears that the defenders of Jerusalem during the siege of
70 AD shouted at the Romans in Hebrew, not Aramaic,26 and so we should not assume as
readily as has been that when Hebrew is referred to in Paul, or in John, Josephus, or
Eusebius, it can mean Aramaic or Hebrew indifferently—quite contrary to what the texts of
Josephus and Eusebius would suggest, both presenting an appearance of careful
differentiation. On the contrary, the only substantial argument that the mother tongue in
which Josephus addressed the inhabitants of Jerusalem in 70 AD was Aramaic not Hebrew is
based on the supposition that The Wars of the Jews, because it was addressed to the Jews of
the East, would have been written in Aramaic, whereas all other arguments such as his
priestly background, Pharisaic identification, discussion of the language in which the
Assyrians addressed the people of Jerusalem in the time of Hezikiah, converge on suggesting
that what he calls his ancestral tongue was Hebrew.27 Accordingly, we should take it that

23 David Flusser, Chapter V, Jewish Sources in Early Christianity, ISBN 965-05-0466-4,

24 It is part of Matthew's skill as a translator particularly to use of the near synonyms petros and petra in Greek
in order to reproduce the spirit of Jesus' giving Simon Peter the name Cephas.
25 I draw this information from David MacAskill, A Semitic Model For Re-appraising Literary Composition in
the Gospel Of Matthew, M. Phil, Aberdeen, 1997.
26 P. 299, Jesus' Last Week (Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels – Volume One), ed. Steven Notley et
al., in a section adapted from an earlier paper by Randall Buth.
27 The survival of Aramaic place-names after the revival of Hebrew is not evidence that Aramaic is being
spoken. Maurice Casey argues that Josephus' use of the word for Sabbath is rooted in Aramaic but this he runs
contrary to Peter Walters view that ta Sabbata owes its origin to a direct transliteration from Hebrew as its
language of origin, rather than being formed as a pat of a declineable Aramaic form (The Text of the Septuagint:
Its corruptions and their emendations, Peter Walters, D. W. Gooding (ed.), Cambridge, 1973, p. 172, cf. p. 168),
and brought up by Pharisees in Jerusalem one would expect Josephus to regard Hebrew as his mother tongue.
 16

when Hebrew is spoken of, it is Hebrew not Aramaic which is meant, as when we are told
that Jesus spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus in the Hebrew tongue, or that the
superscription to the cross was put in three languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, or that Paul
spoke to the Sanhedrin in Hebrew in Acts 22. The Hebrew of Jesus' times as is evidenced
from the Mishnah had incorporated many Aramaisms as well as Aramaic place-names and so
no argument is to be drawn from how they occur in John, but it was still distinctively
Hebrew, rather than Aramaic.
All the gospels, and Q as well, must have had carefully memorized sayings of Jesus
behind them, some of which might have been jottings on what the Greeks called pinakes, in
Hebrew pinqasin, probably most commonly on parchment, that is on material formed from
skins, although sometimes on tablets,28 and one must anticipate that these remembered
sayings may have been sometimes in Hebrew and sometimes in Aramaic. It is notable that
there are parts of Matthew such as the infancy narratives which come neither from my
hypothetical Hebrew Matthew nor from Q in which one can divide between parts like
Matthew 1:17-25, which must have had a Hebrew foretext because they depend on a Hebrew
word play, and parts such as the dialogues between the Magi and Herod, which could only
have an Aramaic foretext,29 just as in Luke there are elements such as the hymns of chapters
1 and 2 which, from the word plays they contain, must surely have had a Hebrew foretext.
Other word plays, such as those which speak of raising up sons to Abraham from these
stones, suggest a background which might equally be in Hebrew or Aramaic, but, in view of
arguments of Buth (see n. 18), most likely in Hebrew.

VIII. St. John and modern critical approaches

The attempt to divide between the high Christology of St. John's Gospel, Hebrews,
and the Apocalypse, and the supposedly lower Christology of the rest of the New Testament
has been supported by arguments dating the content of St. John's Gospel as late as possible in
the first century. The main grounds for this lie in supposing it to date from a period after the
division between church and synagogue so that the disputes described in the gospel can be
considered responses to the arguments of Jews after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD and the
subsequent council of Jamnia establishing Rabbinic Judaism on the footing on which it has
stood ever since.
However, considering the stylistic uniformity of St. John's Gospel, Hengel's picture of
chapters 1-20 embodying the reflections, frequently reordered and redrafted, of one author
over a long period, with his historical memory was sealed by 65 AD,30 is much more
plausible than the picture of the gospel as the work of a community. This fits with the early
Church tradition of St. John dying in the reign of Trajan. All that was required after the main
author's death was a final editor who felt no liberty except to put the bits together, sometimes
so that the breaks are obvious as in the insertion of chapters 15 to 17 after 14, and to write up
the appended chapter 21, containing matter harking back to chapter 1, in such a way as to
seem integral to the whole plan, as bits, one might say, to be fitted somewhere.
Whether the main author of John composed what he composed before 70 AD as
J.A.T. Robinson supposes,31 or in the reign of Trajan, as Hengel supposes, following the
tradition he takes for granted from Irenaeus, is not important at this point in my argument.
What matters is that the content, although not necessarily the form of presentation, seems to
arise out of the period of Jesus' lifetime on earth, rather than that of controversies 50 years

(Peter Walters thinks that Pascha and Sicera, direct borrowings from Aramaic, may well have been part of the
vernacular Greek of the Egyptian Jews, which is how they established themselves in Septuagintal Greek.)
28 Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, pp. 160-163,.cf. Jacqueline Genot-Bismuth, Un Homme
Nomme Salut, de Guibert, Paris, 1986, pp. 187-189.
29 Vide MacAskill, op. cit.
30 The Johannine Question, 80-81, 88-108.
31 Redating the New Testament, Chapter IX.
 17

later. The disputes between the schools of Hillel and Shammai of which the gospel shows
awareness were disputes fought out in the lifetime of Jesus as much as the succeeding
decades. Moreover, unlike Matthew, for whom the scribes and the Pharisees sat in Moses'
seat and were to be followed in what they preached although not what they practiced, the
fourth gospel writes, it seems,32 from a perspective of one associated with the priestly
aristocracy and for whom the Pharisees and their schools had no special claim to authority in
interpreting the Torah. True, the importance of the disputes between these schools revived
again as Rabbinic Judaism regathered itself after 70 AD, but, at that stage, they were
important only for followers of this Rabbinic Judaism and not for any of the groups with
which St. John has been supposed to be concerned.
The main argument for presuming a dating for much of the material in John and
Matthew after the split between Church and synagogue depends upon the idea that there was
relative peace between Church and synagogue at least until 62 AD and on the evidence of
friendliness and even protectiveness on the part of the Pharisees towards the community
surrounding James, referred to as “the brother of the Lord,” and in Josephus as “James the
Just.”
This picture seemed confirmed by Douglas R.A. Hare's 1967 argument33 that none of
the statements attributed to Jesus at any point in the synoptic gospels, even the reported
response to the high priest on the morning before the crucifixion, would have counted as
blasphemy seems to depend on supposing that the Jews of Jesus' time used the expression
blasphemy in the narrow way described in the Mishnah.
Meantime, in 1968, J. L. Martyn published his History and Theology in the Fourth
Gospel arguing that the exclusion from the synagogue spoken of in John 9 could not be the
ban called niddui in the Mishnah since this was a matter of discipline amongst those still
considered within that discipline, rather than expulsion from the Jewish people as those
subject to Jewish discipline, and could not be the more severe cherem associated with the use
of the word anathema since this has been shown by Hunzinger in 1954 not to be recorded in
rabbinic use until the third century AD.
Therefore, Martyn inferred that the exclusion concerned was a matter of being
brought under the Birkat ha-minim,34 the benediction which curses the heretics described as
minim, one of the three groups which are considered to have separated from the community
of the Jews, the other two being apostates and traitors, and this exclusion he associated with
the Council of Jamnia where certainly the Birkat ha-minim was reaffirmed. However, the
Birkat ha-minim was one of benedictions introduced in the late Maccabean period, at that
time probably directed against the Essenes, and there is no evidence that something new was
introduced into its terms at the council of Jamnia.35 The conjunction of nosrim or Nazoreans
with minim is found only in two Palestinian texts, and nowhere else,36 perhaps directed
against Christians of the circumcision seeking to attend Jewish synagogues after 135 AD, and
there is no evidence of its being included in anything enacted at Jamnia or used universally.

32 I here adopt the view of Martin Hengel in The Johannine Question, pp.110-112, 124-126.
33 Douglas R.A. Hare, The Theme of Jewish Persecution of Christians in the Gospel according to St Mathew,
CUP, 1967. This book includes (p. 25) the very strange remark, “There is no reason to suppose that the author of
the fourth gospel was more accurately informed on this matter [as to whether one could be stoned on a charge of
blasphemy] than we are.”
34 One may note that in Hare's assessment (op.cit., pp. 54-5) the Birkat ha-minim in any case did no more than
exclude from playing a formal part in Jewish worship. Lawrence Schiffman in Jewish and Christian Self-
Definition: II, ed. E.P. Sanders et. al., 1981, tells us that it did no more than to exclude the minim from serving
as precentors.
35 Pp. 637-643, David Flusser, Judaism and Origins of Christianity, 'The Jewish Christian schism Part II',
pp.635-644.
36 These were preserved in the Cairo Genizah, that is the hiding place in a Cairo synagogue founded in 892,
conceivably reflecting attempts by some of this new Jerusalem diaspora to attend synagogues in Egypt.
 18

Accordingly, the Birkat ha-minim however relevant to the consideration of the

separation of the Christans of the circumcision from the Jews of the synagogue is irrelevant
to the consideration of the interpretation or dating of the Gospels.37
However, Jews whose predominant language was Greek seemed often to have had
separate synagogues even in Jerusalem even before Jesus' ministry and the apostolic
preaching, so that a Jew such as Philo predominantly relied upon the Septuagint. In any case
from the beginning all Christians met for the apostolic teaching and fellowship, the breaking
of bread and the prayers, separately from other Jews, the distinctive features of their worship
including the hymns and Eucharist noted by Pliny, the peculiarity of Christian gatherings
being to bring Greek-using Jews and Hebrews together, creating tensions for the Church first
experienced in Jerusalem and then in Antioch.
In Luke's account, what was new was first the extension of baptism to God-fearing
Jews by Peter, and then men of Cyprus and Cyrene's preaching in Antioch to Greeks more
generally, creating a more extended community distinguished by the Roman administrators
under the name Christians. However, at this stage in the history of the Church, the preaching
was always first to Jews and only afterwards to Gentiles. And in Antioch, Asia, and Greece,
we do not have the impression that there were distinct Greek-using Jewish synagogues. And
such was the context of the tensions in regard to the baptized Gentiles sharing the Eucharist
first as to whether they should be circumcised and second as to whether they should conform
to the norms of Jewish kosher dietary custom, norms which presented themselves as
conditions of table-fellowship.
Such was the context in which Christians had the experience both in Thessalonika and
Judea to which St. Paul refers in 51 AD in I Thessalonians 2:14-15 in terms of the Jews
“driving Christians out” and hindering them from speaking to the Gentiles.
The picture presented by John that interrogators were sent by the authorities in
Jerusalem to interrogate John, and that Jesus was the subject of official consideration in
Jerusalem over a period of years, with the decisive meeting of the Sanhedrin in regard to
Jesus taking place some time before the final passover in the way portrayed in John 11:47-52,
anticipated by Nicodemus' remarks to the crowd in 7:50-53, and that these preceded less
formal meetings on Good Friday itself leading up to the approach the Pontius Pilate, may
well be historically more accurate than the picture presented by the synoptics by whom
everything is presented as if it happened in one week—or such is Raymond Brown's
judgment in The Death of the Messiah.38
It is indeed paradoxical that in The Community of the Beloved Disciple Raymond
Brown considers the group of followers of John the Baptist described in John 1 and the
existence of the beloved disciple (regarding him as an historical eyewitness, albeit in his final
view not as one of the twelve), and in The Death of the Messiah he considers John's account
as more accurate in many particulars than that of the synoptics (including the whole shape of
Jesus’ ministry, matters of Jewish law, and the date of the Passover on which Jesus died39),
and not only some merely incidental matters of historical geography and the dating of the
building of the temple, despite his regarding John as uninterested in history.40 It is curious
how a person supposed to have no historical concerns and no accurate knowledge of temple
history should propose that the temple as it existed at the time of the cleansing of the temple

37 See J.A.T. Robinsons's very full discussion, pp. 72-87, particularly citing Reuven Kimelman, "Birkath ha-
Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity," in Jewish and
Christian Self-Definition II: Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period, pp. 226-244 ed. Sanders, E.P.,
Baumgarten, A.I., and Mendelsson, A. (London and Philadelphia, 1981), concurred with by J. Neusner in The
Second Century, vol. 2, 1982, p. 247, amongst many other authorities.
38 The Death of the Messiah, consider p. 559 in the light of the facts already evidenced that in John the only
judgment before Caiaphas was the one reported in John 11:47-53, cf. 12:10, and that in John 18:13-28 it is clear
that the only decision made before Caiaphas was to pass Jesus on to the Romans, cf. Brown, pp. 373-397, 414-
416, 475-476, 478-480, 516, 541, 547, 554-555, and the overall conclusion on p. 759, cf. 847-849.
39 The Death of the Messiah, pp. 1369-1376.
40 Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah, and The Gospel According to John (Anchor Bible).
 19

should have been forty-six years in building, a dating which is incredibly precise putting the
cleansing of the temple in 27 or at latest 28 AD.
Brown's presumption that John is uninterested in history was strongly reinforced by
his full acceptance of Martyn's 1968 argument that John was written after the Council of
Jamnia at which the Birkat ha-minim was supposedly first made effective against Christians,
so that the main drift of the gospel is entirely anachronistic, with the disputes in the time of
Jesus and the presentation disputes between Jesus and his opponents in Jerusalem in fact
directed against disputes taking place within a supposed Johannine community41—a view
embraced by almost all later studies of the gospel, Cullmann and Ashton conspicuous
amongst them. However, once we have seen we should dismiss the myth of the relevance of
the council of Jamnia to the consideration of the gospel texts, we can join Hengel and
Bauckham in doubting the dependence of the gospel on any supposed “Johannine
community,” the posthumous editor having left the main text in the same disjointed state in
which we find it, and confining himself to adding a final chapter of thematically
homogeneous material.
Other reasons Brown gives for envisaging the synoptic gospels as having “a better
chance of being historical” than St. John's Gospel include the supposed absence of the
conception of an apostle as one of twelve in St. John, St. John's possible ignorance of the
virginal conception of Jesus, and St. John's failure to mention the institution of the
Eucharist.42 However, although the noun “apostle” does not occur in St. John, the verb
apostolein does, and in two crucial contexts—one in which he says to the disciples (4:38) “I
sent you (apostolein) to reap that for which you did not labor,” and in 20:1 where he roots his
sending of the twelve in his Father's sending (apostolein) of him (cf. Hebrews 3:1 “Jesus, the
apostle and high priest of our confession”). Moreover, the gospel shows clear awareness of
the twelve as a group in chapters 6 and 20 (the twelve are also referred in the Apocalypse
21:14, cf. 4:4, 5:8, 12:1).
More evidently, the whole of chapter 6 is an exposition upon the Eucharist in the form
of a midrash on Exodus. It seems that the way John adopts a different midrashic style of
presentation from that adopted by Matthew has confused Brown's judgment. It is a style of
Midrash quite different from that to be found in Matthew, and even more foreign to modern
conceptions as to how the bios or life of a person should be presented. Thus, because for St.
John the pre-existence of Jesus is implicit in his being the Messiah and Son of God who will
baptize with the Holy Spirit, St. John has no hesitation in presenting John the Baptist as
testifying to Jesus as being “before me.” For the author of John, that would have been part of
the real significance of the Baptist's witness. In general, Bauckham has abundantly shown
that John presupposes that some or all of his hearers will be acquainted with some elements
of such early traditions as are embodied for instance in Mark, e.g., the imprisonment of John
the Baptist as the starting point for Jesus’ ministry in Galilee and the episode of the woman
wiping Jesus feet with her hair. He is therefore writing for an audience and readership who
are presumed to be acquainted with the main narrative elements of early tradition, and can
therefore be selective in the episodes he makes key to his exposition.
As to the virginal conception and Bethlehem as the place of Jesus' birth, it would be
thoroughly in accord with the fourth evangelist's tendency to irony that people should
disclose the truth without knowing that they do so, as when Caiaphas says that it is expedient
that one man should die for the people, or when the crowd say, "when the Christ appears, no
one will know where he comes from" (7:27), “has not the scripture said the Christ is
descended from David and comes from Bethlehem” (7:42), and later "we were not born of
fornication or miscegenation" (8:41). In view of the place of Mary in key roles in the gospel,
it would be surprising if St. John did not know of the virgin birth, especially in view of the
closeness of his traditions to those of Luke and of the beloved disciple to Mary. And many
41 Thus, the building up of the importance of a “Johannine community” was originally provoked by the
supposition that the Birkat ha-minim had this particular strategic importance, Martyn, op.cit., p. xviii and the
Gospel of John in Christian History, Paulist Press, 1978, pp. 90-92.
42 The Community of the Beloved Disciple, p. 21.
 20

have supposed that John 1:13 should read “who was born, not of blood, nor the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of a male human being, but of God,” referring to Jesus, and not to the
children of God in general, a reading to be found in the texts used by Irenaeus and Tertullian,
and in some Latin versions.
Accordingly, we may reasonably say that there is nothing in the internal evidence
which requires us to date St. John's Gospel later than 70 AD, so that the only reason for doing
this lies in the external evidence of the beloved disciple's having continued redrafting into old
age and of his having a personal connection with the Churches of Asia along with Philip. It is
clear that Papias and Polycarp are considered by Irenaeus to have conversed with ones who
had seen Jesus in the flesh—including the unnamed beloved disciple supposedly known to
the high priest, spoken of as the eye-witness giving authority to the gospel, though Irenaeus
seems unaware that the beloved disciple43 (perhaps referred to as John the Elder, a former
follower of John the Baptist with a priestly background, himself a Jewish hiereus if
Polycrates of Ephesus is to be believed) may possibly be a person quite distinct from John the
Apostle, son of Zebedee. Bauckham’s recent book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels
as Eyewitness Testimony, argues that the evidence that Irenaeus regarded the one he refers to
almost always as “the disciple of the Lord” as one of the twelve is much weaker than is
commonly supposed. However, his reasoning seems stretched, and it is quite plausible that
Zebedee should have been one of the many priests in Galilee who lived in relative poverty,
sharing nothing of the enormous riches of the Jerusalem priesthood, and needing to draw an
income from somewhere, in his case from a fishing business in which his sons took part until
called by Jesus.
My interest in the essential historicity of St. John's Gospel arises from the fact that,
while on the one hand it embodies the heart of what became the orthodoxy of the creeds and
early councils, on the other hand it does more than any other book in the New Testament to
explain how Jesus, an orthodox Jew, could conceive himself as one with his Father in such a
way as to bring accusations of blasphemy against him, and as king and messiah whose
kingship was not earthly or political, a prophet like Moses and Elijah, indeed greater than the
prophets, indeed greater than the Temple, yet capable of death in order to bring life to many.
John, more than any other, brings us close to the mind of Christ hidden from us in the
synoptics, in this way fulfilling the role of the preferred outstanding disciple (in the technical
Hebrew phrase, the talmid muvhaq) of a teacher,44 chosen to give truest witness to his mind.

IX. Appendix

Much of the motive for some of the above is to exhibit the weakness of much of the
argument that goes on in modern liberal biblical criticism.

A. The puzzling contrast between our pictures of the Church in Asia up to 60 and after
70 AD
We have a striking ignorance of the Church's history in the period 62 to 110 AD,
which presents remarkable continuity amidst discontinuity.
Consider the Church in Asia. In our minds, the Church in Asia is dominated by Paul
up until 58 AD, and, assuming Colossians to be written before the earthquake in 61 AD, of
influence on the cities in the valley of the Lycus, Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Colossae. And if
2 Timothy was written or reputed to be written in Paul's lifetime, his influence in Ephesus
must have extended even up until sometime between 62 and 67 AD.45

43 The beloved disciple is described by Polycrates of Ephesus in writing to Pope Victor as having been a Jewish
hiereus, which fits with Hengel's speculations seeing his vantage point as rooted in association with the non-
Pharisaic aristocracy of Jerusalem, as well as with Tresmontant's speculation that he might have been the house-
holder of the place of the last supper and with his interest in anonymity.
44 Jacqueline Genot-Bismuth, Un Homme Nomme Salut, de Guibert, Paris, 1986, pp. 214, 216.
 21

But then from 100 AD onwards the Churches in Asia appear to look back primarily to
“John, the beloved disciple,” as the one who appointed their bishops and “Philip,” a Philip
identified both with the apostle amongst the twelve, conspicuously associated with the
beloved disciple and with Andrew in the fourth gospel, and with one of the seven appointed
to serve the Hellenists in Jerusalem, referred to as deacons in Acts 6. A Johannine
background also appears notably in the traditions concerning Easter and in many of the ideas
and vocabulary of the Apocalypse of John, which includes seven letters to Churches in Asia.
Yet, although Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp writing to the Philippians show clear
identification with the Pauline tradition, speaking always like Paul and Luke of presbyters
and deacons, at the same time Ignatius’ writings to the Churches addressed in the Apocalypse
are occupied with some of the same problems of Judaizing and docetism of which the
Apocalypse accuses them. Moreover, he never associates Paul with Ephesus, but only with
Rome. And in Ignatius, we are as much in the world of the gospels as of the epistles. To the
Ephesians he writes of Mary's virginity, Jesus' birth, and Jesus' death as three things hidden
from the Devil, and in Ignatius we find much distinctively Johannine thoughts and
vocabulary (notably a Johannine use of the word “flesh,” also found in I Timothy 4:16), e.g.,
telling the Magnesians to run “to one Jesus Christ, who came forth from One Father, while
still remaining one with him, and returned to Him.” Also Ignatius tells the Philadephians to
keep to their bishop as to their shepherd, keeping away from bad pastorage obtained away
from him, harking back to the idea presented in the synoptics of the Lord providing shepherds
for the sheep. The idea of apostles or other ministers as shepherds appears in St. John's
Gospel, where Peter is to shepherd Jesus' sheep as well as to feed them, but, outside St. John's
Gospel, is to be met only in the reference to shepherding in I Peter 5:2 and to pastors in
Ephesians 4:11, while outside St. John the idea of Jesus as shepherd appears only in Hebrews
and 1 Peter.

B. Some reflections on other writings of the New Testament period

As to other early Christian writings, the text of the epistle of Clement which speaks of
the time when Peter and Paul were each done to death because of “unrighteous jealousy” and
“jealousy and strife” as “noble examples of our own generation,” along who were gathered a
great multitude of the chosen, “victims of jealousy” as in “the days nearest to us” encourages
one to to date it early rather than late in the period between 68 and 85 AD. This is confirmed
by the nonexistence of a collection of Pauline letters when he wrote.
It is odd that, although in his contribution to the book Antioch and Rome Raymond
Brown accepts the normal dating for Clement's epistle as after a supposed persecution under
Domitian in the 90s AD, the only justification he offers for believing in this persecution lies
in a footnote in which, of the three authorities cited, two (L. Goppelt and R.M. Grant) argue
that no significant persecution occurred under Domitian and the third (Barnard) supplies
evidence to the same effect. Goppelt conceives there to have been endemic persecution from
the time of Nero onwards, but it is notable that Pliny the Younger associates a climax in
apostasy due to persecution as having taken place 25 years before he wrote in 112 AD, that is
in or before 87 AD, relatively early in the reign of Domitian, not in the traditional date in the
mid-90s. Clement when he wrote does not seem to be writing as one in authority, but as one
fulfilling the role described in The Shepherd of Hermas as that of letter writer for the Roman
Church,46 while The Shepherd of Hermas is of a piece with other Jewish-rooted literature of
45 Our only other relevant information is provided by Hebrews 13:23–the author of Hebrews seems to be
writing to Rome and planning to go to Rome, and tells them that Timothy has been released and may come with
him. Hebrews is very un-Pauline not only in style but also in making the Day of Atonement and not the
Passover the center of its reflections on how the Jewish sacrificial system was fulfilled in Jesus.
46 This fits with the evidence that The Shepherd of Hermas was written late in the first century as of a piece
with other Jewish Christian literature of that time. The Muratorian fragment is our only reason for supposing it
to have been written by the brother of Pius, presiding in Rome in the 140s AD, and there the writer may have
been confused by a sameness of name.
As to Barnabas, the absence of references to other works except 2 Apoc. Baruch make any date early after 75
AD possible. Both works predict the end of the three Flavians, but both must be written before 96 AD because
 22

the late first century.47 The early date would fit well with the fact that Clement and Hermas
provide evidence only of a two layer presbyter/deacon structure. I note that, since Clement's
epistle uses Hebrews, my argument reinforces any argument for dating Hebrews before 70
AD, which fits with the natural supposition that it was written at a time when temple worship
still continued.

Domitian the 3rd Flavian was not followed by any Christian recovery or any return to use of the temple in
Jerusalem. The Didache seems to draw on the same traditions (possibly from Antioch) as Matthew, except that
the expression “the Lord's day” might suggest a later time.
47 Cf. Richard Bayckham, Jude and II Peter, in the course of justifying a placing 2 Peter around 80 AD and was
written by a leader in Rome of Jewish roots, and Robinson's Redating the New Testament.