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Catholic Bible Study
Lectio The Case for Jesus: The Early Church Fathers
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The early church is not silent on the authorship of the Gospels. From the earliest members of the Christian faith, the early Church Fathers, we learn how well-attested it was that the Gospels are in fact written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
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Welcome back, everyone, to the second session of our Alexio Bible study on Jesus, where we're looking at the biblical and historical evidence for Christ. In our first session, we looked at the modern theory of the anonymous Gospels and the idea that the stories about Jesus and the Gospels are kind of like a kid's game of telephone. And we looked at the fact that there are really good reasons, just from a historical perspective, for doubting that way of looking at the Gospels. In particular, we looked at the internal evidence that the Gospels were in fact written by and always were attributed to two of Jesus apostles, Matthew and John, who would have been eyewitnesses to Jesus, and also two companions of apostles, Mark, the companion of Peter, and Luke, the companion of Paul. And in that first session, though, we were just really kind of focusing on some of the key elements of internal evidence from the books themselves. In this session, what I want to do is go to the next stage and look at the external evidence from ancient Christian writers known as the early church fathers. Now, the early church fathers are fascinating to study. I don't know about you, but when I was growing up and kind of starting to study theology and study my faith, I kind of assumed that the only writings we had from ancient Christians were the New Testament, that that was it. We had these 27 books, and then we didn't have much else until, say, maybe St. Augustine wrote the Confessions. And I wasn't really familiar with these ancient Christian writers from the first and second and third centuries that didn't make it into the New Testament. Writers such as Papias of Hierapolis or Justin Martyr or Irenaeus or Saint Clement of Alexandria or Tertullian, these early Christian writers who were living in the second century and who were either disciples of the apostles themselves or disciples of people who were disciples of the apostles, in other words, second, third, and so on generation Christians. But these writers are very, very important for answering the question, who is Jesus? And can we trust the Gospels? Because they provide us with external evidence as to who wrote these four books? And this is particularly pressing in our day and time because a skeptic or someone who has kind of heard about these different theories of the anonymous Gospels might object to my first lecture and say, well, okay, Dr. Petrie, maybe the four gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Maybe they do attribute those books to those apostles and their companions. But what about the other Gospels that I've heard about? What about the lost gospels? Gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas, right, or the Gospel of Mary Magdalene or even Better. The Gospel of Judas, which made it in the news about 10 years or so ago, There was a bit of a hullabaloo about the Gospel of Judas. Although, let's be honest. Is that your guy? Like, do you. The Gospel of Judas, is he the one you want to go with? But these lost gospels have been the subject of lots of documentaries and television shows. And I know you guys watch them. I know I go to the. I spe a lot of Catholic audiences. And how many of you have seen the Discovery Channel episodes on the lost gospels and every hand goes up. How many of you read the Da Vinci Code and everybody, you know, lots of Catholics have read these things, so you get exposed to them, but you don't necessarily know. How do I discriminate between the books that are in the New Testament that I accept as inspired and canonical and authoritative accounts of Jesus and these other gospels? Both of them, this is important, have internal claims of apostolic authorship. Right? So the Gospel of Thomas at the end of the book says good news according to Thomas. So a scholar or skeptic might say, well, Dr. Petrie, if you accepted the internal evidence for Matthew, why don't you accept the internal evidence for Thomas that attributes that gospel to one of Jesus apostles? And the answer to that question, or one of the answers is the early church fathers, the external evidence from people who knew the apostles or who were disciples of people who knew the apostles. Because when you look at their writings, what you're going to see is in terms of external evidence, the early church fathers are completely unanimous in accepting that the four Gospels were written by eyewitnesses and companions of apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and are equally unanimous in rejecting those other writings, like the Gospel of Thomas as the forgeries of heretics. Okay, so let's walk through some of the external evidence for the Gospel authorship. Okay, so when we're talking about the early church fathers, it's really important to know just a few of these figures who we're referring to. So in my book and on the handout here, I just have a little chart of some of the different figures. So for some of these, they might be new names for you, they might be new figures. I would encourage you to read their writings, though. They're fascinating. You can get various copies of the early church fathers and accessible translations. But some of the witnesses that are really important for the authorship of the gospels are people such as, number one, Papias. Papias of Hierapolis was an early Christian leader living in what today is modern day Turkey. He was a disciple of the Apostle John himself and he was writing around 1:30 a.d. number two, Justin Martyr, whose parents obviously wanted him to be martyred when they named him. Sorry, that's a bad joke. Bad joke. Okay, yeah, no, that was not his birth name. But he was eventually martyred for the faith. He was a convert to Christianity from various schools of Greek philosophical thought, pagan philosophy, living in today we call Palestine. And he's writing around 140 to 165 AD so he's second century AD one of my favorite saints, number three, Saint Irenaeus of Lyon in ancient Gaul, modern day France, was a disciple of Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of John. So he's once again, he's once removed from that apostolic era. And then there's another writing called the Muratorian Canon, which we don't know who wrote it, but is a list of scriptures coming sometime around the second century A.D. other figures like Clement of Alexandria, who was living in Egypt, who was a disciple of the second generation, a very prominent Christian teacher in the early church. And what's fascinating about these ancient church fathers, if you look at that chart, there is notice they come from all over the place, right? They come from the Holy Land, they come from Gaul, they come from North Africa, in Egypt and Alexandria, or Asia Minor, Turkey. So there's a geographical spread there. It's very important because when you look at what these early Christian writers who are in the New Testament, none of their writings made it into the New Testament, but they were still part of the early church. When you look at what they have to say about who wrote the Gospels as external evidence, guess what they say they are completely unanimous in attributing Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I know it seems a little, you know, obvious, but it's very crucial because everything else we're going to do in this Bible study about who Jesus is and what he said and who he claimed to be has to first rest on the foundation of the principal witnesses to him in those four Gospels and who wrote those books. And I'll never forget when I first started reading the early church fathers for myself, like not just hearing about them, but actually sitting down, opening up Irenaeus, reading his writings, reading the writings of Polycarp, reading the writings of Clement, reading the writings of Papias, although we only have those in fragments. I remember thinking that they would be as agnostic about who wrote the Gospels as my professors were. Because my professors were like, well, we just don't really know, we can't possibly know who wrote the Gospels. They were anonymous. We don't. And I thought the Church Fathers would be the same way. And instead what I found when I read their actual words was they're matter of fact about it. There's not even a debate about it. They're completely unanimous about it and they just assert it without any kind of controversy, which by the way, there are lots of controversies in there. Early Church, this is not par for the course here. This is one of those things that's accepted. So what I want to do is, if you'll bear with me, I'm going to use a few longer quotes in this session from these Church Fathers. But that's because in doing history and examining reasons for our faith, it's important for you to see the evidence for yourself. I don't want you to just take my word for it. I want you to actually hear the voices, the testimony of, of these ancient Christian writers and what they have to say about the books that form the foundation of our faith in Jesus of Nazareth, our faith in Jesus Christ. So what does the external evidence say? Well, let's read through a few quotations here. This is from Papias of Hierapolis. Again, he's living in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. And this is what he says about who wrote the Gospels. Quote, the Elder John used to say this. Mark, having become Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered, though not in order of the things either said or done by Christ. For he, meaning Mark, neither heard the Lord nor followed him. But afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teachings as needed, but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord's sayings. Consequently, Mark did nothing wrong in writing down some things as he remembered them. For he made it his one concern not to omit anything that he heard or make any false statement in them. End quote. Okay, so notice something fascinating here about Papias. Remember, Papias is a disciple of John himself. Okay, so he's very close to the apostolic generation. Does Papias try to hide the fact that Mark was not an eyewitness to Jesus? No, he's just up front about that. So who is Mark? Well, Mark is Peter's interpreter, his scribe, right? He's writing down what Peter said about what Jesus said and what Jesus did, even though Mark himself had not heard or seen them things, any of these things. And Mark's one concern was to transcribe what Peter said in an accurate way so that he would communicate the truth about What Jesus did and said. So this again, first time I read this, it really blew my mind because according to the anonymous gospel theory, what you have is people making up fake titles and ascribing them to the books in order to give them authority. But that doesn't square at all with what Papia is describing here. He's saying, yes, this book was written by somebody who wasn't an eyewitness, but it's based on eyewitness testimony. Right. That's very important. It'd be like me writing a book about the Holocaust, even though I wasn't alive at the time. But I might be interviewing people. I can take their testimony and as long as I'm faithful in writing it down, I can give a true account. Does that make sense? Do you see the analogy there? It's very important to see this. Although you'll notice he is a little embarrassed by the fact that Mark isn't too orderly, which is true. If you read Mark's Gospel, it's just one thing after another. And Jesus immediately did this, and then he immediately did that, and he immediately did that. And he goes from one place to another, he casts out demons, he preaches the gospel, he tells the parables, and it's, it's very fast paced all the way until you get to the end. By contrast, compare Matthew's Gospel, which is very orderly, a series of actions, then a nice speech, Sermon on the Mount, and then some more actions, and then another speech to the disciples. Matthew's very orderly, he's very methodical. It's very well laid out. That's not how Mark is so Papius, a little embarrassed by that, but at the same time he's saying, although he didn't write it in order, he still was faithful to Peter's teaching. Okay, again, does Papy say anything about it being anonymous? No. Okay. Another early church father, St. Irenaeus of Leon. This is how he describes the gospels. Matthew also issued a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect. While Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and laying the foundations of the church after their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke, also the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel preached by him. And then afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who had also leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. That's from Irenaeus, book against Heresies. So notice here, does Irenaeus sound like he thinks the Gospels may or may not have been anonymous. No, he doesn't say anything about that. There's no evidence that any of the church fathers have even heard of such an idea. He's just rather matter of fact, not only about who wrote them, but notice about when they were written and the circumstances under which they were written. So Matthew, Irenaeus is one of the first people to tell us this. Papias also says it, but I didn't include it in my quote for some reason. I must missed that. But it's in the book. You can get the book and read about it. Matthew's Gospel is originally written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek. Right. Which was the language of the Roman world. Okay. And notice what Irenae says, that Matthew did this while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome. So we're going to come back to the date of the Gospels in a later session and ask, well, how close are they to the event? But notice that Irenaeus here saying that Matthew's writing or while Peter and Paul are still what? Alive. Right. And we know from ancient sources that Peter and Paul died in Rome sometime in the mid-60s of the first century A.D. around 64 or 66 A.D. under the persecution of Nero. So if Matthew's writing while they're still alive, then he's sometime before 65, 66 A.D. but we'll come back to that later. Notice again that Irenaeus, although Papias is in Asia Minor and Irenaeus is in Gaul, they both agree that Mark's Gospel is based on the preaching of who? Peter. Right. The chief of the twelve, the leader of the apostles. Right. They don't try to hide that. They're very matter of fact about it. Same thing with regard to Luke. They admit that he's not an eyewitness, but that he's a companion of St. Paul. And then finally he mentions that John is the last of the Gospels to be written and that he did it while he was residing in Ephesus in Asia Minor. Right. So just gives you a little bit of a window into not just the authorship, but also one of the early developments in the order of the Gospels. Irenaeus is one of the first witnesses to say Matthew's first, Mark's next, then Luke, then John. Which is interesting because that's of course the order that they appear in what, the canon of the New Testament, which I don't know if you've ever wondered about that. Why are they in the order in which they are in the New Testament? Have you ever wondered That. I mean, why not put Matthew and John first? I mean, they're the two apostles. Like you could have done that and then had the two non apostles together. Or you could have done Matthew, Mark, John, and then have Luke last and then Acts next so that Luke and Acts would go together because they were written by the same person. Like, why are they in the order in which they are in the New Testament? Well, according to the early Fathers, the order of the New Testament reflects the order in which they were. So they would be appended as they came out. And other books in the New Testament are ordered differently. Like the letters of Paul are by length. So they go from longest letter to shortest letters, right? Well, with some variation once you get to the Pastorals. But in any case. So just to give you a little bit of idea, this is external evidence. These are people who knew people who knew the apostles. What are they saying about the Gospels? They were written by the apostles and their companions. Third example here is Clement of Alexandria. So now we move from Gaul to Egypt. Now we're in North Africa, a whole other continent. We've got Asia Minor, we've got Western Europe. Now let's go and look at Africa. And what do they say? The exact same thing. A great light of godliness shone upon the minds of Peter's listeners, and they were not satisfied with a single hearing or with the oral teaching of the divine proclamation. So with all kinds of exhortations, they begged Mark, whose Gospel is extant since he was Peter's follower, to leave behind a written record of the teaching given to them verbally. And they did not quit until they had persuaded the man. And thus they became the immediate cause of the Scripture, entitled the Gospel according to Mark. And they said that the apostle, aware of what meaning Peter, here, aware of what had occurred because the Spirit had revealed it to him, was pleased with their zeal and sanctioned the writing for study in the churches. So press pause there for just a second notice here. Clement gives us a little bit more external evidence, not only that Mark writes the preaching of Peter, but that the reason he was compelled to do so is people were hearing all of these stories about Jesus and they said, somebody needs to write this down again. That's very historically plausible. If you don't mind, I'll just go back once again to the analogy of the Second World War. Right? We're coming to the time period where people who participated in the Second World War, most of them have died. And so what do historians and scholars have, period? What have they been doing for the last Two decades doing lots of interviews and writing down the memoirs of people before that generation is gone and that firsthand access is lost. Okay, well, according to the external evidence, that's what the Gospel writers were doing, right? Peter himself was just a fisherman, but they wanted to get his memories down on paper so that future generations could hear the words and the deeds of Jesus. And that is what Mark did. Now, if you look, there's one more quote from St. Clement where he talks about the other gospels. Listen to this. He says this quote, of all those who had been with the Lord, only Matthew and John left us their recollections. And tradition says that they took to writing perforce. John, it said, used all the time a message which was not written down and at last took to writing for the following cause. The three gospels which had been written down before were distributed to all, including himself. It is said he welcomed them and testified to their truth. But he said that there was only lacking to the narrative the account of what was done by Christ at first and at the beginning of the preaching. So they say accordingly, that John was asked to relate in his own Gospel the period passed over in silence by the former evangelists. That's the end of the quote there from Clement. There are some other true fathers like Eusebius, who say the same thing that John writes last after Matthew, Mark and Luke have published in order to supplement their gospels with some of the events and the teachings of Jesus and some of the aspects of the period of Jesus ministry that they didn't talk about. Okay, Things like the wedding at Cana, which is early on. But it's only in John. It's only in John that we learn that Peter and Andrew were disciples of John the Baptist before they were disciples of Jesus. Right? It's only in John that we learn about the resurrection of Lazarus, which is a momentous event. Right? There are lots of things in John's Gospel. The woman at the well of Samaria, one of my favorite stories. I wrote a book about it called Jesus the Bridegroom. You can read that too. But these are only in John. And so sometimes, again, sometimes skeptical scholars will say, aha. Look at the differences. Matthew, Mark and Luke are very similar. But John's Gospel is very different. It has these things that are only in John. This is a contradiction. This is a discrepancy. We can't trust the Gospel of John because it isn't telling us the same thing as the other gospels. But the early church fathers knew about the differences between John and the other gospels and. And they had a very plausible explanation for it, namely that the first three gospels were published and that John seeing them, accepted them, but wanted to fill in what the gaps, so to speak, with some of the other teachings and sayings of Jesus that weren't in those other Gospels but that were very important, right? I mean, think about we didn't have the wedding at Cana and the woman at the well. I mean there's so many powerful. The Good shepherd discourse In John chapter 10, I mean just go on and on and on. But the Bread of Life discourse, right? John chapter six, I wrote a book on that too. It's called Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist. But boy, is that a foundational text. Only John tells us that Jesus has prepared the disciples for the revelation of his eucharistic teaching. He doesn't spring it on them at the Last Supper out of the blue. He's already prepared them with his discourse on the new manna in John 6. So all that to say in a nutshell. Do the early church fathers sound to you like the Gospels were written anonymously and they had no clue who wrote them? And that they were like a telephone game of people, a bunch of anonymous tradants passing on stories of Jesus around the campfire, changing them up, nobody really knowing whether they were true or not, and then somebody who knows finally writing them all down and then 100 years later the title's being added. Is there any external evidence for that theory? Well, no. So historically, not from the perspective of faith, just history. From a historical perspective, objectively, why should I hold that theory if there's zero evidence for it? I don't think I need to. In fact, I think there are good reasons to doubt it. And there are good reasons to think that the Gospels were in fact written by the apostles and their companions. However, as soon as I say that, some people might say, well look, of course that's what the church fathers say. They're Christians, right? I mean they're believers. They're going to want to believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote the Gospels because it's buttresses their faith. What about pagans? What about heretics? What did they say about who wrote the Gospels? And to this, of course I have an answer, otherwise I wouldn't have raised it. Even the early heretics and pagan critics of Christianity admitted the Gospels were written by the evangelists, the most famous one being Celsus. Celsus was a major critic of Christianity. He was a pagan philosopher and he really hated Christians. So he wrote a Great book called against the Christians. Right? Isn't that a lovely title? Okay, just skewering them for all the reasons. He thought Christianity was a fraud and a hoax and a false. Well, I don't want to say a false religion, but a plague on Roman society. And his great opponent was Origen of Alexandria. And so in Origen's book, he quotes what Celsus says. Now watch this. This guy's a pagan. He's not a believer. He says this about the Gospels. Quote, the disciples of Jesus, having no undoubted fact on which to rely, devised the fiction that he foreknew everything before it happened. The disciples of Jesus wrote such accounts regarding him by way of extenuating the charges that told against him. End quote. Now you might be thinking, okay, what does that mean? Let me just paraphrase it for you here. What Celsus is saying is this. You can't believe the Gospels not because they weren't written by the disciples. He admits they were written by the disciples. He just says the disciples were a bunch of liars. Okay, now that's really important. Not because I think he's right, but it shows that in the 2nd century AD pagan critics of Christianity could not appeal to the anonymity of the Gospels. If Celsus would have had that argument in his pocket, he would have used it. He would have said, these are all anonymous. We don't know who wrote this. These aren't reliable. But even the pagans knew the Gospels were written by the apostles. They just said the apostles are a bunch of frauds. You see the difference there? So they bear witness. Even pagans bear witness, provide evidence for the Gospels being written by actual eyewitnesses to Jesus. Okay, so now the whole time I've been saying all of this, you might be thinking, because you watch Discovery Channel and History Channel and all those documentaries about these lost Gospels. Well, okay, well, what about the lost Gospels? What about these other books? Why don't Christians accept them as eyewitness testimony? So let me say a few things about that. In terms of the lost Gospels, we could do. I don't know if we could do a whole lectio on the lost Gospels, but I mean, I could, but I don't know if we should. But there are many, many books from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th centuries that are, in fact, they call themselves gospels or they mimic the genre of the Gospels and they're attributed to other figures such as Judas or Thomas or Mary Magdalene. These are sometimes called the lost Gospels to Make them sound sensational or the apocryphal Gospels. The word apocrypha means a hidden writing. Okay, well why would they be called hidden? Well, it's because they suddenly appear long after the apostles were dead. Right? So the Gospel of Judas appears in the late second century, or the Gospel Thomas appears in the second century. So they were hidden, but now they've come to light. And this is true even to our own day. Some of these ancient writings, like the Gospel of Judas have only been discovered in the late 19th and 20th centuries with the rise of modern day archaeology. For example, the Gospel of Thomas was studied at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the grave of an ancient, what appears to be an ancient Christian monk in the early 20th century. We only know about the text in terms of its actual contents from that recent discovery. So there is a sense in which they were hidden and now they've been discovered. But that already should give you a bit of a, you know, a cautionary mark against them. Right? Because think about it. If Judas dies in 30 AD, but the Gospel of Judas doesn't appear until 180 AD, 100 years or more after Judas death, then did he write it? Well, no, of course not. Right. I mean, it's hard enough to write when you're alive. It's very difficult when you're dead. I mean, it's almost impossible. Yeah, no. So even skeptical scholars recognize that these documents are too late to be authentic. Okay. Because they're from the late second century. So gospels like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is a bunch of stories about the childhood of Jesus, or the Gospel of Thomas, which is the most famous apocryphal gospel. It's a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus. If you want to read them sometime, you can get a translation of it. It's interesting. It's a little boring at points, but it's interesting. The last saying is really interesting. The gospel ends with these words. Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, unless a woman makes herself male, she can't enter the kingdom of heaven. End of gospel. So ladies, if you want that gospel, you want to add that to your collection, go ahead. It's true. That's how it ends. The Gospel of Judas is some dialogues between Jesus and Judas that kind of show that they collaborated in Jesus execution. And then the Gospel of Peter is a really brief account of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Actually, it's mostly just focused on the resurrection of Jesus. Now you can go and study all those ancient writings, but for our purposes Here, I just want you to know two things. First, modern scholars, no modern scholars think that any of them were actually written by Judas or Mary Magdalene or Thomas. Everyone agrees, believers and non believers alike, on base of historical evidence, that they are from a later period and they are forgeries. That's the first point. The second point though, is in terms of their contents, though, not just the dating. There are all kinds of problems with them, both theologically and historically. And I can't help but give you at least one taste of one of them. This is one of my favorite stories. This is from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. And one of the things this writing does is fill in the gaps of Jesus childhood. So here's a little story about baby Jesus according or little boy Jesus according to the emphasis Gospel of Thomas. When this boy Jesus was five years old, he was playing at the ford of a brook, and he gathered together into pools the water that flowed by and made it at once clean. But the son of Annas the scribe, was standing there with Joseph and he took a branch of a willow and dispersed the water that Jesus had gathered together. Now, when Jesus saw what he had done, he was enraged and he said to him, you insolent godless dunderhead. I don't know what the Hebrew is for godless dunderhead, but that's a pretty serious insult. What harm did the pools and the water do to you? See, now you also shall wither like a tree and bear neither leaves nor root nor fruit. And immediately the lad withered up completely. After this, Jesus again went through the village and a lad ran and knocked against his shoulder. Jesus was exasperated and said to him, you shall not go further on your way. And the child immediately fell down and died. Wow. Don't mess with Jesus on the playground. Right? Okay. That's the message of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. And there's lots more like this in this text. It's. I almost wonder if this text was actually written by a non Christian to mock Jesus, because that kind of stuff did happen in antiquity. People would forge documents to make fun of their opponents. Okay, so scholars today, nobody takes these seriously as actually having been written by the apostles. They contain lots of absurd things like this in them. However, for our purposes, I want to just conclude by pointing out it's not just modern scholars, but it's the ancient evidence as well. Unlike the early church fathers who were totally unanimous on the four Gospels when it came to the lost Gospels. Guess what? Even though the ancient Christians didn't have the Discovery Channel, they didn't have the History Channel. They knew about these texts and they unanimously rejected them also as forgeries. Listen to Eusebius and I'll end with this. Eusebius was a 4th century church historian, the most famous ancient church historian, and this is what he said. There are writings which are put forward by heretics under the name of apostles, containing gospels such as those of Peter and Thomas. To none of these has any who ever belonged to the ecclesiastical teachers ever thought it right to refer in his writings. Moreover, the type of phraseology differs from apostolic style and the opinion and tendency of their contents is widely dissonant from true orthodoxy and clearly shows they are the forgeries of what heretics? Eusebius, church history book 3. Notice one key point there. This is important. Why does Eusebius reject it, reject these other Gospels? Because no one belonging to the succession church writers. In other words, none of the bishops who were leading churches that were founded by the apostles who can trace their line back to the apostles ever said anything about a Gospel of Thomas or a gospel of Judas or a gospel of Mary Magdalene. Right. In other words, tradition, the tradition of the apostles doesn't bear witness to these texts. By contrast, all of those same apostolic leaders are unanimous that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were actually written by eyewitnesses to Jesus or the companions of apostles. Okay, so with all that in mind, you might say, okay, Dr. Petrie, maybe the internal evidence and the external evidence does suggest that the Gospels were actually written by the apostles and their successors. However, does that necessarily mean the Gospels are true? I mean, couldn't they have been fiction books? Couldn't they have been folklore? So when we come back, we're going to look at the question, what kind of books are the Gospels? Are they fact or are they fiction? See you then.