Modern Scholarship Essay

Modern scholarship, beginning with the Enlightenment, brought into question the long-held belief that the Gospels were based on eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus. Such scholarship has developed a series of dates for the writing of the Gospels; the proposed dates raise several questions about the historical accuracy of the canonical accounts. This paper will first discuss the questions raised by the modern dating system. It will then discuss some of the responses that have been developed by believers and scholars.

The first problem presented by the dating system involves time. Scholars date the earliest Gospel account, that of Mark, being written in the late 60’s CE, at least 30 years after the death of Jesus. Other Gospels are written even later, with the last one written around 90CE. The fact that they were written so long after the actual events took place brings into question their historical accuracy. Is it possible to provide a factual account of something that happened 30 years prior?

Another problem is with the authors themselves. Modern scholars claim that the Evangelists, with the exception of John, were not themselves eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. The accounts in these Gospels are at least second-hand. This raises the …show more content…
The Gospel accounts are not written in the kind of biographical, historical fashion one would expect today. This leads modern scholars to question their historicity.

Three responses have developed to the questions posed by the modern dating system. Two of these responses are at the extremes. On the one hand, some say that the dating system casts such a strong doubt on the accuracy of the Gospels that we cannot know anything historical about the life Jesus. At the opposite extreme, others, particularly Christians of the Evangelical variety, completely ignore the historical problems posed by the dating system and read the texts as historical