Revelation in the Light of Reason

Part Four: The New Testament in the Light Of Internal Evidence

Secondly, the authors must have been contemporaries of the events they narrate. The topographical, religious, social and political conditions at the time of Christ were extremely complex. Palestine was a nation where Jewish, Oriental, Greek and Roman civilisations inter-mingled. For example, the government was partly administered by the Romans and partly by the Jews themselves through the Sanhedrin—the great religious council of Jewish judges. Judea itself was at one moment a Roman province under a procurator, and at the next an independent State under a Herodian king. The system of finance was peculiarly intricate: taxes were paid in Greek money, Roman money was used in commerce, and dues to the Temple were paid in Jewish money. Yet amidst all this intricacy and complexity modern scholars have failed to detect any substantial error on the part of the writers of the New Testament. No stranger or group of strangers could have so accurately portrayed such a complicated set of facts. The writers must have been contemporary Jews.

Moreover, the same writers must have been alive before the destruction of Jerusalem during the abortive rebellion against the Romans (66-70 A.D.). This is evident because the destruction of the Holy City and the Temple led to an enormous maze of changes in population, government, finance, etc.

In one of his works Rackham presents this picture of the accuracy and vividness of St. Luke's Gospel "Yet," he writes, "in all this intricacy of political arrangement St. Luke is never found tripping. St. Luke is equally at home with the Sanhedrin and its parties, the priests and temple guard, and the Herodian princes at Jerusalem, with the proconsul of Cyprus and Archaia, the rules of the Synagogue and first men of Antioch in Pisidia, the priest of Zeus at Lystra, the praetors, lictors and jailer of Philippi, the politarchs of Thessalonica, the Areopagus of Athens, the Asiarchs with the people, assembly, and secretary of Ephesus, the centurions, tribune and procurator of Judaea, the first man of Malta, and the captain of the camp at Rome Such accuracy would have been almost impossible for a writer compiling the history 50 years later. In some cases where his statements had been impugned, St. Luke In, been signally vindicated by the discovery of inscriptions as in the case of the politarch of Thessalonica and the proconsul of Cyprus."