Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The Historicity Of The Star Of Bethlehem (Part 2)

(You can read part 1 here.)

Adair refers to our alleged ignorance of who wrote the gospel attributed to Matthew and when it was written (280). He makes an unsupported appeal to an anti-prophecy assumption, saying that Matthew's reference to the Jewish temple's destruction "forces" a post-70 date for the document (ibid.). Justin Martyr gives us "the most unambiguous early citation" of Matthew's gospel, so the gospel may have been written as late as about 155 (299). He dismisses arguments for Ignatius' use of Matthew in the early second century by appealing to how factors like the authenticity and dating of Ignatius' letters and his use of Matthew are "uncertain" and not "decisively shown" (ibid.). He also dismisses Papias and the Didache as evidence for early use of Matthew (ibid.). Matthew and Luke's birth accounts have "very little in common" (364). He faults Matthew for poor methodology. He claims that Matthew "ought to be saying why he trusts his sources over others", that "Matthew's access to reliable sources is even less likely than was the case for Suetonius" (1534). According to Adair, Matthew's gospel ranks low by the standards of ancient biography, so that "his story of Jesus's birth has to be treated with significantly more skepticism than with most any other biography from antiquity" (ibid.). He calls Matthew's methodology "terrible" (1641). Matthew reports information that makes his account seem fictional, like "the mental states of figures" and "conversations between Herod and the Magi" (1706). Matthew's "only potential sources" are Joseph and Mary (ibid.). Adair thinks the account of the magi "and perhaps the entire Gospel of Matthew" belong to the genre of novel (1772).

He doesn't make much of an effort to interact with the scholarship and arguments that are opposed to his conclusions on such issues. Even when he's in a small minority, such as in seeing Matthew's gospel or just the passage containing the star account as belonging to the genre of novel, he makes little effort to interact with the counterarguments. He interacts with the opposing side more when he's addressing astronomical issues, which you'd expect given his scientific background, but he's much less interactive than he ought to be on issues like the ones mentioned in the paragraph above.

Concerning the authorship of Matthew and its use in early sources, see here and the other posts linked within that one. See, also, my discussion of early use of Matthew here, where I discuss Papias and some sources Adair doesn't address. On the genre of the infancy narratives, see here.

In my first post linked above, I write about the prominence of Matthew's gospel in early church history. There was widespread agreement among the ancient Christians and their opponents that Matthew's gospel was a first-century document, was composed by the apostle Matthew, and was written in a historical genre. The grouping of Matthew with one or more of the other gospels, which was already widespread by the time Justin Martyr wrote (e.g., Justin's interspersing of Matthew's material with other gospel material; his references to the reading of the gospels alongside Old Testament books in church services; Tatian's Diatessaron; Irenaeus' discussion of the gospel canon and the earlier Roman source he probably relied upon), makes it highly unlikely that Matthew was significantly different than the other gospels in date and genre. Craig Keener notes:

"Early Christians and their critics recognized the genre of the Gospels and Acts as offering public claims in the arena of history (cf. Luke 1:1-4; 2:1-2; 3:1-2; Acts 26:26) and proceeded in their debate accordingly." (Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, Volume I [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2012], 83)

And Matthew's gospel was in some ways the centerpiece of that debate. For example, in his second-century treatise against Christianity, Celsus cites Matthew far more than any other gospel. If Matthew was written in the second century, by somebody other than the apostle, in the genre of novel, it's very unlikely that the document would have been so prominent so early and would have been so widely perceived as a first-century work of history composed by the apostle.

(As they become available, future segments in this series will be linked here: part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6.)

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