Eyewitness to Jesus is a most interesting documentary centering on the provenance of three small fragments of papyrus that have the potential -- depending on the date assigned to their origin -- to reinforce the historical accuracy of the Gospels by dating the time of their origins to the first few decades following the crucifixion of Christ. In other words, this could be proof that the Gospel of Matthew in particular was written by someone who witnessed the words and deeds of Jesus with his own eyes.

I found it somewhat strange that I had never heard of these fragments or the debate surrounding their origin, but this could be in large part due to the fact that most biblical scholars continue to date the fragments to sometime around 200 A.D.

In 1901, while serving as the chaplain at the Luxor Hotel in Egypt, Rev. Charles B. Huleatt purchased three papyrus fragments in a Luxor market, having recognized the obvious old age of the fragments and identifying the pieces of text as coming from the Gospel of Matthew. Huleatt personally thought the fragments originated two or three centuries after Christ but forwarded his find to his alma mater, Magdalen College in Oxford, England, for further study. An expert dated them to 200 A.D. or thereabouts, at which point the fragments were put in a display case in a remote section of the library and basically forgotten about for decades -- until 1995, when German scholar Carston Peter Thiede began a study that would lead to his conclusions that these fragments were written less than 40 years after the crucifixion. Already somewhat controversial in the field for his early dating of other Christian documents, Thiede failed to win an overwhelming number of converts to his findings before his untimely death in 2004 -- but his evidence is certainly compelling enough not to be dismissed out of hand. This documentary explores that evidence.

Conventional scientific dating techniques (such as carbon dating) cannot be applied to the fragments, so Thiede's investigation looked primarily to comparative analysis with other documents whose 1st- and 2nd-century origins are firmly established. Among the ancient documents he used for his comparative analysis were documents discovered in the Cave of Horrors at Nahal Hever (dating back to 132-136 A.D.), the Dead Sea Scrolls, and documents uncovered at Qumran. In essence, Thiede found enough similarities in the writing of comparative fragments to date Huleatt's fragments to a time predating that of the destruction of the Essenes at Qumran in 68 A.D. He further argued that the papyrus fragments in question would represent a copy of a work originally recorded on scrolls, thus pushing the date of origin well within the historical confines of the Eyewitness years.

British scholar Graham Stanton is given a chance to make his case for rejecting Thiebe's evidence in the end, but this documentary spends most of its time recounting the process by which Thiede came to his conclusions, taking the reader to some of the most significant sites in Christian history along the way. And, while it is clear that the documentary filmmakers obviously put significant stock in Thiebe's findings, the documentary makes no formal declaration as to where the truth lies. One would necessarily need to consult other sources to learn more about critics' refutation of Thiebe's conclusions, but Eyewitness to Jesus definitely serves to raise one's awareness of and interest in the historical evidence for Jesus' ministry, crucifixion and resurrection.