Previous blog posts have profiled Protestant and Catholic family Bibles which identified early publication dates for the Gospels, including a publication date for Matthew within a decade of the resurrection and ascension. My goal has been to demonstrate that at one time there was a general awareness, within the English…
Excerpts from the writings of two additional authors, Robert Cockburne (1755) and Thomas Townson (1778), relating to the origins of Matthew’s Gospel, have now been posted. As with the other excerpts, I have modified the spellings and punctuation, to make the material more accessible to the modern reader. An extended…
In the verse below, can you find Paul’s reference to something which was previously written which presented Christ as crucified? O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. (Galatians 3:1 ESV) The ESV wording above is typical of…
I was excited today to find several older Catholic Bibles which also list an early date for Matthew’s Gospel. The date was integrated into a chronological index for the New Testament. Of course, finding dates in old Bibles doesn’t prove when the Gospels were published. However, what I am trying…
Excerpts from the writings of Richard Ward (1646), William Cave (1676), and John Edwards (1695), relating to the origins of Matthew’s Gospel, have now been posted. Credit belongs to Google and to the Early English Books Online project for digitizing and making these works available. I have modified the spellings…
For those who may be in the area, I’ll be presenting a paper at the 2024 Northwest Regional Evangelical Theological Society meeting at Multnomah University in Portland, on Saturday, February 17, 2024. The title of my paper is: “A Fresh Reading of Against Heresies 3.1.1: Affirmation of an Early Greek…
Cover to the 1880s family Bible which was purchased by my mother's paternal grandfather.
Christian apologists have offered a variety of reasons for why we should judge the Gospels as trustworthy. I particularly appreciate Peter J. Williams’ succinct Can We Trust the Gospels, in which he (1) presents the testimony of ancient non-Christian sources concerning the Christian movement, (2) demonstrates that the Gospel authors…
Irenaeus’ Against Heresies 3.1.1 (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.8.2–4) has long been a mixed blessing for those who want to leverage the church fathers to argue that Matthew was published early: For, after our Lord rose from the dead, [the apostles] were invested with power from on high when the Holy…
On this website, my focus is on the early publication of Matthew’s Gospel, as the first Gospel to be published. Yet, among those who advocate for Matthew as the first Gospel, there are two main camps. Those subscribing to the Augustinian theory, as it is often called, affirm a Matthew,…