The Gospel Of Matthew - Eyewitness Account*
CARSTEN THIEDE had one of the most powerful and original intellects to have shaken up New Testament scholarship in the past two decades. He fused academic rigour with deep Christian faith. With scholarly tenacity fuelled by personal commitment he relocated Emmaus where, according to the final chapter of St Luke’s Gospel, the risen Jesus met two of His disciples. More significantly and much more controversially, Thiede meticulously examined three original papyrus fragments — kept for most of the past century in the library of Magdalen College, Oxford — dealing with the Gospel of St Matthew. Boldly he went on to redate the gospel to AD66, a decade or more earlier than the dates assigned by previous scholars.
If true, this thesis would mean that this Gospel was written by men who had had personal contact with Jesus or had been eyewitnesses to His ministry. This would give the Gospels the status of a text recording the events of history, rather than a work of folklore based on an “unreliable” oral tradition, as much of 20th-century scholarship maintained.
Thiede set out his claims in Eyewitness to Jesus, written with the journalist Matthew d’Ancona and published in l996. Its reception was spectacular. Even before it was published, the New Testament scholar Graham Stanton of King’s College London rushed out Gospel Truth? to challenge Thiede’s conclusions.
In spite of sustained and at times fierce attacks upon it, the book has run to fifteen editions in eight years. And while many respected scholars are still not persuaded, Thiede’s theses have steadily gained ground. His supporters insist that he found new ways, stringent and lucid, of studying the Gospels as the source of history, and believe that New Testament scholarship should adopt his approach.
* Quoted from the TimesOnline News article, December 21, 2004 (timesonline.co.uk)
The Rev. Professor Carsten Thiede was an archaeologist, papyrologist and historian of early Christianity (l952-2004)