Are the Gospels Based on Eyewitness Testimony? A Response to Abu Zakariya

In previous posts, I have been reviewing a book by Muslim polemicist/apologist Abu Zakariya (in particular, chapter 5 of the book). So far, we have seen that Zakariya's objections to the gospels as inspired Scripture and to Messianic prophecy have fallen far short of convincing. Here are links to my two previous rebuttals to Zakariya:

Were the Gospels Written Under Divine Inspiration?

Was the Crucifixion of Jesus Foretold in the Old Testament?

In this third installment, I am going to be reviewing Zakariya's third wave of attack, which is against the gospels as eyewitness testimony.

The External Attestation of Authorship

Zakariya begins,

When we scrutinise the Gospel authors in the light of their identities and content and date of their writings, we will find that they are not credible eyewitnesses to the crucifixion. To begin with, it's important to recognise that the Gospels themselves are, strictly speaking, anonymous. While today in the New Testament you see the headings "The Gospel according to..." at the start of each of the Gospels, it's important to note that none of the authors identify themselves by name within the texts. They were quoted anonymously by Church Fathers in the first half of the second century (i.e. 100-150 CE) and the names by which they are currently known appeared suddenly around the year 180 CE, nearly 150 years after Jesus. We find this in the writings of early church apologists such as Justin Martyr who was writing in the middle of the second century. Justin quotes from the gospels on numerous occasions, but the striking ting is that he does not call the Gospels by their names. Instead, he regularly calls them "Memoirs of the Apostles." He does not say that he thinks the disciples themselves wrote the books, only that these books preserve their "memoirs" (meaning, their recollections of the life and teachings of Jesus). These are some of the reasons that have led scholars to believe that the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were assigned to the Gospels long after they were first authored.

Using an Undesigned Coincidence to Corroborate the Johanine Authorship of John's Gospel

Recently on this blog I have been showing how undesigned coincidences can be used to corroborate many aspects of Biblical history, as well as even the authorship of various books of the Bible. Here, I want to use an undesigned coincidence to corroborate John's gospel as having been written by John the apostle.

It is widely known that John's gospel omits the name of one disciple -- that of John the son of Zebedee, preferring instead to identify him by phrases such as "the disciple whom Jesus loved". At the end of the gospel, in John 21:24, the author of the gospel identifies himself as being the unidentified disciple. He writes,

This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.

Is there any independent evidence to corroborate the author's claim to be this disciple? If so, then the argument for Johanine authorship rests on being able to demonstrate the identity of this disciple -- and I think a very convincing case can be made for him being John the son of Zebedee by a process of elimination.

That being the case, consider what we find in John 18:15-16:

Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he entered with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, but Peter stood outside at the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the servant girl who kept watch at the door, and brought Peter in.

It makes sense to identify this other disciple as John -- first because he is unidentified (which is how John is treated consistently in John's gospel) and second because "the disciple whom he loved" (which I take to be the apostle John) was certainly present at the cross, since we read in John 19:26-27:

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

It is thus a reasonable inference to take the other disciple from John 18:15-16 to be John the son of Zebedee. What then is the significance of him being "known to the high priest"?

In John 18:10, we read,

Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's servant and cut off his right ear. (The servant's name was Malchus.)

How did the author of John's gospel come to know the name of the high priest's servant? Indeed, he is the only gospel author to give us this detail. This makes sense, however, if indeed John was someone who was known to the high priest. This corroborates the Johanine authorship of John's gospel. It is not by itself conclusive, but when taken in conjunction with other independent lines of evidence (both internal as well as external), one has a persuasive cumulative case to take John's gospel as penned by the disciple John.

Fred Sanders: Jesus in the Gospel of John

Here's a short lecture by Fred Sanders on the deity of Christ in the opening chapter of John's Gospel.

The Gospel of John (Visual Bible)

The Gospel of John is the fourth of the canonical Gospels. This 2003 film version is a word-for-word adaptation from the Good News Bible.