Faith on Trial (4 page)

The second question to be examined to determine if these documents will be admissible as ancient documents under the rule is whether they were found in a place where such a writing might naturally and reasonably be expected to be found.
20
The court will examine whether they were maintained by, and held in the care of, persons whom you would expect to have custody of them.

Applying the law to the facts of the case, we must consider that these manuscripts, as well as other portions of the New Testament, have not only been held in the custody of and used in the Christian church for almost two thousand years, but they have been examined for authenticity numerous times, not only by Christian scholars but also by critics. This test of authenticity was applicable under Greenleaf’s analysis even in the eighteenth century, before the Federal Rules of Evidence were enacted. Greenleaf concluded that the Gospel manuscripts were found where they would be expected to have been found, and their custodians were those whom one would expect to care for them. Customarily they have been treated as sacred writings by their custodians and have been treated as the plain narratives of the writers. No assertion is made by any custodian of the manuscripts that the originals were derived in any unusual or miraculous manner. Additionally, the documents were made public at the time they were written; that they were not held secretly has been well documented not only by early Christian writers and scholars but also by general historians.

Third, to comply with the twenty-year requirement for authentication of an ancient document, the age of the writing may be shown by testimony of expert witnesses, or witnesses with knowledge, that the documents have been held in the possession of another person or institution for over twenty years; or age may be determined by the physical appearance of the manuscript or even by the contents while considering the surrounding circumstances. Additionally, the age of a document can be identified by an expert witness from analysis of the paper, ink, handwriting, and through scientific tests, by comparisons to other documents that have been authenticated, or by analysis of other marks or indicia on the paper.
21
Clearly the Gospel manuscripts described earlier, and the papyrus fragments, satisfy the age requirement. Extensive evidence of the age of the manuscripts and the papyri will be offered to the jury in the following chapters when we examine the legal nature of the Gospels and the credibility of that testimony.

A statement in a document that is at least twenty years old, where authenticity has also been established in accordance with the preceding requirements, may be admitted as evidence of the truth of the facts that are recited in the statement.
22
In other words, such a statement is an exception from the hearsay rule. But note that the
fact
that is established by authentication is the truth of the assertions made by the writers of the Gospels that the things they saw occurred and the words they heard were spoken. For example, if Jane Jones testifies that she heard John Smith say that a ball was red, the fact established is that Jane Jones actually heard John Smith make that statement, not that the ball was actually red. Similarly, if the apostle John testified that he personally observed Jesus alive after his death on the cross, the fact we are establishing is that John observed that event,
not
the underlying implications of those facts.

An interesting case provides an illustration of this legal principle. In 1857 a vessel left the port of Havana for New York, carrying more than six hundred passengers and $2 million in gold. Off the coast of South Carolina, it sailed into the full fury of a hurricane. Most of the passengers and all of the gold were lost at sea.
23
Of course news of the great tragedy was reported around the world. After decades of searching for the ship, in 1987 it was found, and a contest over the ownership of the salvage ensued. In court insurance companies argued that they owned the gold because they had paid the insurance claims in 1857. The insurance companies had no copies of the policies, no copies of invoices, no proof of loss or any other records. Under the ancient documents exception to the hearsay rule, the court permitted introduction of the old newspaper articles to prove that the gold was, in fact, insured by these companies. The facts of the tragedy contained in the articles were accepted as true, but the companies still had to prove the rest of their case.
24

Some courts will require the proponent of the evidence, that is, the person asserting that these manuscripts are ancient documents, to show that the witnesses (the writers) had an adequate opportunity to observe the facts reported. Because of the age of the ancient writing, however, in the process of authentication, courts generally will not go so far as to require specific proof that the author of the text was actually there and had personal knowledge but will more likely require a showing from the circumstances that the witness
had the opportunity to have obtained
personal knowledge of the event.
25
The rationale for this is that after such a lapse of time it would be unreasonable to require strict proof that the declarant personally observed the facts recorded. The practical approach for a witness testifying through an ancient document has been to review the circumstances to determine whether he or she
could have had
personal knowledge of the matters reported. If the court determines that the declarant could not possibly have had personal knowledge about the events—e.g., the proposed witness was known to be dead at the time of the writing—then the recitals in the documents would not be accepted as true statements of what the writer saw or heard.
26

The legal nature of the testimony of the Gospels—that is, whether they come from personal knowledge and, for purposes of this rule, represent eyewitness testimony—will be examined extensively in the next chapter. Preliminarily, however, new evidence shows that the Gospels were written at a date sufficiently early to establish that the authors could have been present at the events that occurred.

One of the reasons we have limited the issue in this case solely to the truth of the reports of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is to simplify the process of proof by limiting that proof to statements of the core facts upon which Christianity is based, facts that the authors of the Gospels had the personal opportunity to observe and know. An attempt to prove that each story or statement reported in the Gospels occurred would require us to test each such event separately against the hearsay rule and the other rules of evidence, a process beyond the necessary scope of our trial.

Thus, we have seen that the Gospels are documents of the requisite age, coming from the proper custody, and free of suspicious appearances. They meet all of the requirements for authentication under the rules of evidence. Once documents, such as the Gospel manuscripts and the papyrus fragments, qualify as ancient documents, like all other such documents that meet the tests, they will be accepted from the limitations of the hearsay rule.
27

At the time the original Gospels were written, most writing was on papyrus, which was easily destroyed. The Chester Beatty manuscript is written on papyrus. The Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus are written on vellum (sometimes also referred to as parchment), which is made from the skins of certain animals that have been especially prepared. The manuscripts Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, as well as the Chester Beatty manuscripts, are clearly copies and not the original manuscripts. Although the best evidence is required to be offered in court, the original document is not required to be produced for comparison if all originals are lost or have been destroyed, unless the person introducing the evidence lost or destroyed them in bad faith.
28

An original is not required and other evidence of the content of a writing, recording, or photograph is admissible if: (a) all the originals are lost or destroyed, and not by the proponent acting in bad faith; (b) an original cannot be obtained by any available judicial process; (c) the party against whom the original would be offered had control of the original; was at that time put on notice, by pleadings or otherwise, that the original would be a subject of proof at the trial or hearing, and fails to produce it at the trial or hearing; or (d) the writing, recording, or photograph is not closely related to a controlling issue.
29

The copied manuscripts and the papyrus fragments are therefore admissible as evidence to the same extent as the originals. The process of authentication of a copy of the original manuscript is the same as that set forth for an original.
30

The copies are highly reliable. The copying of manuscripts in the first century was an important task, and it was performed by hand with great precision. Thousands of copies of the original manuscripts of the Gospels were made in the first centuries after Jesus’ death. The empirical findings of papyrology have matched papyrus fragments of the early dated manuscripts word for word in comparison with the corresponding texts in the later complete manuscripts, like pieces fitting into a puzzle. The science of papyrology identifies and dates all ancient texts other than inscriptions, and it includes such related disciplines as paleography, the study of handwriting. The integrity of the later copies has been verified by these comparisons.

Comparisons have also been made between the accuracy of the newer handwritten complete manuscript texts of the New Testament containing the four Gospels and the earliest versions of those documents, including the papyri, and the copies have been held to be much more accurate than copies preserved of other ancient writings. Rules governing the integrity of the copying of these manuscripts were strictly enforced, and severe penalties were imposed for carelessness.
31
The differences, or textual variations, between later manuscripts and the earliest complete manuscripts, as well as the early complete manuscripts and the even earlier papyri fragments, have been found to be negligible.

In addition, the integrity of the manuscripts can be tested not only against one another, but also against independent quotations taken from them in other writings of historical individuals. Writings of early church fathers in the second and third centuries
ad
contain more than thirty-six thousand quotations from verses of the New Testament. In fact, with the exception of only eleven verses, it has been said that the entire New Testament could be reconstructed today from those writings even if we had no actual manuscripts.
32

The textual integrity of the New Testament is much more reliable than that of other ancient documents. For example, there are 643 manuscript copies of the
Iliad
in existence, and they are similar in length to the New Testament. While only about forty lines of the New Testament have been questioned, 764 lines of the
Iliad
are questioned. Scholars who have made these comparisons have concluded that the New Testament is textually purer than any other great book.
33

Of the variations among the early and later handwritten copies of the manuscripts found in the New Testament, only a slight number of the variants have been found to have any weight, and most of them are merely mechanical matters such as spelling or style. A study of the textual variants in the existing New Testament manuscripts can be somewhat confusing because if one word is misspelled in three thousand different manuscripts, textual critics will count this as three thousand variants rather than one. After adjusting for that procedure, however, it has been estimated that the degree of substantial purity of extant texts of the New Testament is 98 to 99 percent.
34
F. F. Bruce, a well-known biblical scholar, has stated that textual critics of the New Testament have found no variants that affect material questions of historical fact or belief upon which Christianity is founded.
35
Sir Frederick Kenyon has stated that “not one fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading,” a statement also verified by Philip Comfort.
36

Most of the scribes responsible for making copies of the Gospels were Jews with a background of great respect for religious teaching and writing. Strict rules governed the work of the scribes, whether the books were viewed as sacred Scripture or literary works. The four Gospels, however, are believed to have been treated as sacred books from the beginning.
37
Established patterns required to be followed by Jewish scribes copying Old Testament Scriptures are evident in the manuscripts that were copied for what is now known as the New Testament. For example, special abbreviations designating holy names are found in both New and Old Testament manuscripts. The New Testament papyri and manuscripts have been found to have been produced with extreme care by educated and professional scribes, many influenced by the methods of scholarship required for work in the scriptorium for the library at Alexandria in Egypt.
38

Although a study of the Old Testament is not our purpose, it is relevant to consider the Dead Sea Scrolls, found at the caves of Qumran in 1946, to appreciate the accuracy and precision with which ancient texts were transmitted. Until that time a Hebrew manuscript known as the Aleppo Codex was the oldest known manuscript containing the full text of the entire Bible. It was written in Israel in about
ad
900. The books of the Old Testament found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, written approximately one thousand years before the Aleppo Codex, were found to be almost identical to those of the Aleppo Codex.
39
For example, in the scrolls found in the caves at Qumran was a manuscript of the book of Isaiah, dated about 200
bc
. Scholars were amazed to find only thirteen minor variations between the book of Isaiah contained in the Aleppo Codex and the book of Isaiah found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
40