Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Gospels

  • Link: Linguistics and Gospel Origins

    Dave Black had some interesting notes on this subject today, which I posted to The Jesus Paradigm. There is a constant debate on what is “correct” usage. We have this with regard to modern usage. I’ll have authors cite some manual against their editor, usually on optional items.

    So why do we expect all usage to be equal in Koine Greek?

    Here’s Dave’s money quote, I think:

    Lately it’s become clear to me that the question concerning correctness and incorrectness in language is not so much a linguistic one but a sociolinguistic one. In other words, it is people who determine what is correct and incorrect in language, not textbooks. In a sense, then, if everybody says “It’s me,” then this construction is correct. 

  • Reading the New Testament in Stereotypes

    It was a small Bible study in a church I had joined recently, and we were reading from the gospels. I was kind of trying to keep quiet and get to know people before I made too many comments. But after our gospel reading, people started to discuss it, or mostly to discuss the people in it.

    The disciples were pretty stupid. How could they possibly have missed the message so many times? The Pharisees were hypocrites, who obviously knew perfectly well that Jesus was right about everything and should have just given in immediately. Others didn’t do much better.

    “Would we really do that much better?” I asked. I wasn’t quite sure how to make my point. Frankly, given the situation, I doubted (and still doubt) that we would “get” what Jesus was up to any more quickly. As for the Pharisees, I am much more like them than probably any other group in history other than my own. I’m talking about studying the Bible, trying to apply it, falling to the very human tendency to criticize and apply what we learn in scripture to everyone else before we apply it to ourselves. Yes, it’s true. I teach that we should endeavor to apply everything we learn to our own lives first and then share and witness more than correct, and condemn not at all. But the hypocrite in me sometimes has me doing what I would not.

    Oh wretched man that I am, or, well, human man that I am, and that’s wretched enough and great enough for any of us.

    I’d like to suggest that we try to read the New Testament (and the whole Bible) in more sympathetic (or empathetic) categories. To see ourselves in the failings of those who are described in its pages, and in turn to see ourselves in Christ in the victories and successes.

    In the meantime, if you want to know what got me started this morning, read this post by Scot McKnight about the Pharisees. He provides a good deal of historical information that might help you get a bit more empathetic on the subject, and in turn may help you read the Bible in a more participatory* way.

    *I use “participatory” here in the same sense as in the Participatory Study Series, which is participating in the story of scripture, seeing yourself as part of it, and learning to extend it.

  • Reading the Bible Chronologically

    A number of bloggers have responded to Marcus Borg’s article at the Huffington Post on reading the New Testament chronologically. Responses include Gaudete Theology, Bill Heroman, and Philip J. Long. I’d suggest reading those responses before reading my few comments.

    Here are some points that struck me:

    1. Borg contends that there is a trajectory of conformity to the culture. The earliest materials are radical while the later items have accommodated. I’m wondering how much this would differ from simply the fact that early Christians found themselves having to continue living in the empire, and that there would be more questions to answer about culture. In other words, if Jesus or Paul were to answer enough questions from people living from day to day, they might appear less radical than the distilled essence we get from them now.
    2. The New Testament, as a “book,” is the creation and possession of the church. I happen to believe that it is God’s creation through the medium of the church, but nonetheless without the church there is no New Testament. At a minimum, we need to recognize that reading it in a way so substantially different from the way the church created it will result in seeing a different picture.
    3. The historian may want to see the individual documents and read a history. I have great sympathy with than enterprise, but as I noted in point #2 the reading becomes different.
    4. If one postulates a different chronology, the book changes again. For example, folks like William R. Farmer and David Alan Black don’t accept Markan priority. While I am not fully convinced of this position myself, I do believe they have each, in very different ways, poked some serious holes in the consensus view.
    5. Viewing the gospels as products of the church rather than formative of it seems to privilege the written word above the oral at a time when that probably was not the case. In other words, the stories of Jesus told in the gospels were likely formative, and because of that became part of the written record. The gospel writers didn’t choose which stories to record in a vacuum. They were aware of which stories were more influential.
    6. I think #5 holds whether the gospels were written by eyewitnesses or not. Eyewitnesses will have been telling the stories for decades before writing them down. What was formative for the church would be in the gospels because of that, if nothing else.

    Obviously, I’m not recording well-researched and supported theories. I’m just noting some questions and observations.

     

  • Michael Bird on Studying the Gospels

    Michael Bird has a really excellent post on critical and faithful study of the gospels. I’m not going to extract from it, though my hat tip goes to Darrell Pursiful who extracted an excellent quote.

    I was reminded of a book my company published recently, From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully. I haven’t had time to write the “reflections” post I usually write regarding each book I publish, but some of those reflections would surely reflect the attitudes that Bird expresses.

  • Book Notes: The Gospels for All Christians

    Bauckham, Richard, ed. The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998. ISBN: 0-8028-4444-8.

    I hesitate to call this a review. It’s more of an interaction with the text, a few thoughts as I read the book The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences. I’m going to allow myself to ramble! Also, as you will doubtless note, this was published in 1998, and thus is not “hot off the presses” and yet I think it is very relevant.

    This was one of the four books that I noted arrived via interlibrary loan on the same day, something marginally inconvenient, considering the size of the books and the height of my “to be read” stack. I had added it into the list at the last minute, because it was edited by the author of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, which was one that was already on my list, and because a friend had recommended it.

    I will confess that I started reading this book with low expectations. The problem it addresses, as stated to me, did not appear incredibly urgent or gripping. I was tempted to start with a different book, but there was that return date staring at me, and I loathe returning interlibrary loan books that I have not completely read, so I dug in.

    If you were educated in a liberal school, especially if you come from a conservative perspective, you will probably respond to this material differently. I compared notes with a friend who had used different texts than I did (I was educated by fairly conservative professors at Seventh-Day Adventist schools), and he certainly reacted differently on his initial read. Since I started conservative and moved more slowly left, I never took quite the extreme position which Bauckham is addressing.

    In the first chapter, Bauckham addresses the consensus view, at least at the time of writing, though I think it largely continues, which is that the gospels were addressed to specific communities and that in interpreting them we must discover the beliefs and the situation addressed in the community in order to understand the message. A corollary of this is that we learn either largely or exclusively about the community, rather than about Jesus when reading the gospels.

    To get the negative out of the way first, I felt that Bauckham overstated the nature of the consensus to some extent. Unfortunately, however, I can’t deny that there are folks around who exemplify precisely the attitude he is addressing. In turn, I think he overstates his case, practically eliminating any study of the audience from interpretation of the gospels. There are cracks in this extreme case, though they occur much more in the other essays, and he displays what strikes me as a slightly more moderate approach in chapter 5, John for Readers of Mark.

    Since he is attempting to force a paradigm shift, perhaps all this is understandable. Paradigms rarely shift when only nudged; they have to be attacked with sledge hammers. Then moderates (perhaps like me!) come around and start playing “moderately,” but in the new paradigm.

    I think this reflects a fairly common problem in Biblical studies (and perhaps other disciplines, but that’s their concern), in that when someone proposes a new approach or tool there is a tendency to apply it broadly to just about everything. Form criticism provides a useful tool for studying certain sayings that are transmitted orally, and then find themselves part of a written text. Form critics tended to make their tool the tool for Bible study, and soon they were studying things that probably never existed separately as part of the oral tradition using a tool that was really only well suited to that one task.

    If a carpenter worked in this manner with his tools we’d call him crazy. When Biblical scholars do so, we call them pioneers. And to be honest, in general they are. Their critics reverse the situation and throw out the tool because it doesn’t do everything its initial practitioners claim for it. This would be much like observing a carpenter using a hammer in many places where it should not be used, and concluding that the best option would be to discard the hammer.

    In turn, redaction critics come along and discard much work that goes with form criticism. Quite regularly they correctly criticize form critical work, yet at the same time they want redaction criticism to be the tool for Biblical studies, and soon we have it applied to texts that really show no signs of redaction.

    My suggestion here is that we need to salvage something from each of these things and make it useful, as many commentators (Brevard Childs comes to mind quickly) have done, not dismissing the methodologies completely, but putting them in their place.

    In the case of the gospel audiences, it strikes me that there would be significant impact of the author’s more immediate community, but that the broader audience would certainly reduce the amount that one could properly deduce about about the audience. Yes, it’s a moderating position, to which I am naturally attracted, but I think it is a valid one, a case in which a moderating position is precisely what is called for.

    I would use one of my own sermons as an example. I am very likely to prepare a text, preach it to a specific congregation, and then also post it here on my blog. The sermon is designed with the congregation I’m addressing in mind, but my words are not exclusively for them, and you should not interpret all of my words in terms of addressing that congregation. My ideas have formed in conversation with many people who hold many differing views. Yet there would be points that would be specific to that group.

    Similarly the form critical approach which heard the voice of the community in everything and the voice of Jesus in nothing needed some moderation. If you think about a modern preacher telling a story, ask yourself whether the preacher’s story is determined by the lesson he’s teaching the congregation or by the facts of the story as history.

    For me, the answer would be that I am loathe to adjust a story. I seek one that fits the situation I’m addressing without too much fudging of the facts. Nonetheless I do adjust emphasis. I have used the same story in different situations to make different points. I also know preachers who are quite comfortable adapting a story quite substantially to their needs at the moment.

    Would the disciples do this to the story of Jesus? Intentionally? I doubt it. But unintentionally I think they could apply stories in very different ways as time went on, and thus the audience and the situation of the early church would impact the message. It may be difficult or impossible to determine just how much, but given the possibility, it seems useful to me to try.

    The second chapter, The Holy Internet: Communication Between Churches in the First Christian Generation (pp. 49-70, Michael B. Thompson) is probably one of the two most helpful chapters I’ve read in the last five years, and the other one is the third chapter, Ancient Book Production and the Circulation of the Gospels (pp. 71-112, Loveday Alexander). This information is available elsewhere, but not in such a compact and helpful format. It’s very easy to underestimate communications in the ancient world.

    I’m reminded of the difference between the way my children communicate and the way I did when I was their age. We were in South America during my teen years, and it cost several dollars a minute to make international calls. You just didn’t do it, unless things were really, really critical. Now I get pictures and videos of my grandchildren moments after whatever great milestone–or merely interesting moment–has passed. When I talk about it, they’re likely to look blank and say something about how we must have really been out of touch! But we weren’t. Those snail-mail letters actually did communicate.

    When you compare snapping a picture with your cell-phone and sending it to a list of folks from your contacts to taking the picture, getting it developed, waiting for it, writing a letter, mailing it, and waiting for it to travel the necessary distance, it might seem like nothing would get communicated. But we did precisely that all the time.

    In the same way, we might imagine that if we had to walk from days to weeks in order to visit a neighboring church, we wouldn’t do it. Yet the folks in the early church did, and they did it quite a bit. We might also imagine that few books would be distributed if they were copied by hand, but again, we would assume incorrectly. People did go to all that trouble, and produced quite a few.

    One further thought I got from chapter three was the close connection between oral and written forms. I have argued this before in terms of the New Testament autographs. It’s quite possible that texts were revised even by authors after they were written down. We consider something more set in stone once it is written, but they perhaps did not. Some variations in early manuscripts might be explained by such freedom rather than scurrilous scribes (Western non-interpolations?)

    About People, by People, for People: Gospel Genre and Audiences (pp. 113-146, Richard A. Burridge) is more dense and less useful than the preceding two chapters, but nonetheless is rather helpful and provides some of the very balance I was requesting in the first chapter. I think I would still lean a little bit more toward seeing an impact of the audiences, but the argumentation here is definitely worth considering.

    I found Bauckham’s second essay, John for Readers of Mark (pp. 147-172) to be more interesting than his first, but ultimately unconvincing. I say this not in the sense of having a ready refutation, but rather in the sense of having a tentative verdict of “not proven” regarding his case. There are some intriguing connections here, and I’m not going to try to summarize them. Bauckham provides a way to read John as complementary to Mark on the assumption that Mark could be expected to be available to his readers. I think some of his arguments would be considerably blunted if gospel stories were transmitted orally, and especially if Mark represents a great deal of that oral tradition. But that is too much to try to argue right here. Bauckham does address the issue of oral traditions, but rejects them as adequate explanations; I find his rejection premature.

    The sixth essay, Can We Identify the Gospel Audiences (pp. 173-194, Stephen C. Barton), is a discussion of how accurately we can determine the gospel audiences. I think we do well to be skeptical, especially of our own reconstructions, but I also think that we will be saying something about audiences if we interpret at all. In general, however, the chapter is quite balanced in my view.

    Finally we have Toward a Literal Reading of the Gospels (pp. 195-217, Francis Watson). Again, this probably pushes a little further than I would be comfortable with, but it is nonetheless a valid counterpoint to the tendency to believe the gospels have nothing to do with literal events. Note here that Watson is using the word “literal” as it would be used in literary discourse, not the more popular idea of “having greater truth value.” The literal reading that Watson is looking for is one that allows the gospel writers to talk about actual events and people, even if he also wishes to symbolize something else.

    Nicodemus is a good example. One can understand him as symbolic of a particular group of people with whom the community had to deal, yet there is no particular reason to assume that there was no Nicodemus, or that there is no underlying actual story. This is an area again that calls for careful nuance. I’d like to quote Watson:

    Is it possible to envisage a future Gospels scholarship in which person and text are reintegrated? This suggestion would not entail the naive positivistic assumption that the Gospels are to be understood, so far as possible, as a direct transcript of historical reality. Like the various incompatible models of the so-called historical Jesus, the Gospels are interpretations of the historical reality to which they refer. The Gospels represent the early Christian reception of the life and person of Jesus, and the eventual emergence of the fourfold Gospel canon represents the decision that the Christian community will henceforth appeal to this complex rendering of the received reality and no other. . . .

    All in all, this is a worthwhile goal.

    In conclusion I must say that while I approached this book without enthusiasm, it grew on me as I read, and I think that the authors and editor have done a great service. I commend it to those who are interested in the study of the gospels.

  • Spectrum of Views on Historical Reading of the Gospels

    I often present a standard spectrum of views on reading the gospels as history, one which extends from the conservative, or even fundamentalist side, which claims that all details of any type must be historical, to the opposite radical conclusion which claims that the gospels are entirely fiction. Most discussion goes on somewhere between that, with many conservatives allowing for minor differences in what they regard as eyewitness reports, and few scholars claiming that there is no historical basis in the gospels.

    But there is another spectrum I’d like to point out this Easter season: Just how important is history to our faith? These two spectra may not be completely independent, but in my experience they can be. I have encountered people who believe pretty much whatever the gospels say is historical, but don’t regard that as terribly important. On the other hand there are folks who think that the “Jesus of faith” is the key, no matter how one takes the historical evidence.

    I personally tend to give the gospels the benefit of the doubt, though I have no need to reconcile issues like the number of demoniacs who met Jesus on the other side of the sea, or the numbers of denials and cock crowings, or who precisely showed up when on Easter morning. It is important to me to regard these as unimportant, but I’m not bothered too much if you want to reconcile them. I’m not disturbed, on the other hand, if the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000 is regarded as one event told multiple times with variations, or two distinct events.

    In the modern western world, we think first of facts and history, and whether this is all true, in the sense that it happened as described. But that can lead us to try to read the gospel to answer a list of questions that the gospel writers weren’t trying to answer. What I’d recommend, and what I try to do for myself on a regular basis, is to simply read the each gospel on its own and try to see just what the writer was trying to pretend. Then I can turn to history, or whatever other issues are involved. But my faith is profoundly based on their story and their testimony and the way that connects to mine.

    Chronology can be fun, in fact I enjoy it, but it is not the root of my faith.

  • Reading the Passion Narratives

    I was reading from Darrell Bock’s book Jesus According to Scripture, and I was struck by a footnote. I’ve been reading from the passion narrative in Matthew, because it is the lectionary selection for this year, but I like to read Bock’s notes because he points out the similarities and differences between the various accounts.

    In his note on the last supper (p. 359n54) he comments that:

    . . . To the extent that an interconnected tradition makes these points about the event, whether explicitly or implicitly, the order of the Gospels becomes less relevant, beca7use the basic symbolism of the event is there in all these elements in all versions.

    I’m not writing to critique Bock’s approach, though he is somewhat more conservative than I am. But I’d like to suggest a couple of things about reading. First, no single gospel story makes a train wreck of the passion accounts, i.e. the message is still there. Second, each gospel account has a unique emphasis, which we should watch.

    We tend to read these stories for history, which is why reconstructions of the sequence of events, telling us precisely how many cock crowings there were, or when Peter made each denial, or clarifying just who went to the tomb and when they did it. That sort of thing has a certain interest. But when we’re looking at those details and compiling a full story from our multiple sources, we can easily be missing the message of the gospels.

    As a believer, I like to read these stories simply for the impact, the symbolism, or might I say, the “mythical” element. “Myth” has a bad name, but one element of myth is that the story has a meaning beyond the narrated facts. A myth explains how one’s world hangs together and why. What I mean by looking at the mythical elements is to read the story for its broader meaning in salvation history. Change the questions. Go asking, “How can this story impact my life and the life of my church?”

    I have no problem with reading for history, but such reading is only a small part of truly absorbing the text and letting God work on your life through what you read. I would recommend reading or hearing these texts read aloud. I know the passion narratives are long, but the gospels spend all that time on them because they are important. Read them slowly. Absorb the symbolism. Let God speak.

    It’s much more important than sorting out the crowing cocks and denying disciple!

  • Lectionary Texts for Transfiguration – Cycle A

    I want to make just a few remarks on the texts selected for Transfiguration Sunday, February 3. I like to find common themes in the lectionary texts even when they don’t seem all that coherent. In this case, the texts are quite carefully chosen.

    First is the story of the transfiguration from Matthew 17:1-9. There are a couple of things to note about the differences in the transfiguration stories in the various gospels. Working from Darrell Bock’s Jesus According to Scripture (p. 235), note that Luke is the only one who mentions that the disciples slept. Mark and Luke both tell us that Peter didn’t know what to say, while Matthew does not. Luke notes the fear when the cloud appears. Matthew has the disciples fall down in fear at the voice.

    Our Old Testament and Epistles readings bracket this event. Moses goes up to Mt. Sinai and into the cloud in Exodus 24:12-18. Quoting Bock, p. 235: “A new era and reality appear with Jesus and the glory that his presence represents.” This is an important point, and one could build a sermon around this shift of emphasis. One of the things I notice repeatedly in discussions of scripture between Jews and Christians is that while we generally argue verse by verse, especially asking whether this or that is a Messianic prediction, we rarely discuss the overall difference in view.

    For Jewish interpretation, the Torah (Pentateuch) is the heart of God’s revelation, and everything is interpreted in relation to that. In Christianity, the Torah appears practically to get dismissed, and Jesus is the central element of Christian interpretation. We interpret everything in the light of the cross, no matter how we view the cross itself. How we view it is important, but it remains central. In terms of scripture, that places the four gospels at the heart of Christianity as the Torah is at the heart of Judaism.

    If you look at our lectionary readings, and compare them to synagogue readings, you’ll see the same thing. We center around a gospel passage; they around a Torah passage. This particular scripture is partial justification for that Christian approach. Jesus is presented as a second lawgiver, and the command is given to listen to him.

    The epistle, 2 Peter 1:16-21, introduces a later testimony and also the explicit connection of transfiguration with a confirmation that Jesus fulfills (in the sense of “makes complete”) the scriptures of the Old Testament. That, of course, is a subject in itself. One sermon might be the topic of type-antitype-testimony, and the importance of the testimony to each event. Peter, James, and John saw Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. Only Joshua went into the cloud with Moses. The written testimony is important in carrying all this through.

    Those with a more critical mindset (and congregations to go with it) might discuss the different views of a passage such as this. The obvious construction tying themes from Hebrew scriptures into the life of Jesus suggests that the story is written precisely to make that particular connection. There are two extremes. On the one hand one can imagine that the story was created precisely for the purpose of presenting Jesus as the new lawgiver, and didn’t actually happen at all. It’s edifying Christian fiction. On the other hand, one can assume that the reason this happened is that Jesus is, in fact, the new lawgiver, thus God did for him something similar to what he did for Moses.

    Finally, Psalm 99 is simply a celebration of God’s presence, with a number of allusions, including the temple (“on/above the cherubim”, verse 1), the pillar of cloud (v. 7), and the holy mountain (v 9). It would make an excellent call to worship.

  • Retelling and Rethinking the Unjust Judge

    This week’s lectionary readings included Luke 18:1-8, the story of the unjust judge. One of the problems many people have with this story is relating the unjust judge to God, but as I pointed out in a devotional one thing we are supposed to hear from the story is how God is different from the unjust judge.

    One approach I like to reading stories, and this includes historical narrative as well as parables, allegories, and fictional stories, is to retell the story for various purposes. I decided to try this after asking the question, “What happened afterward?” The widow got what she wanted, but what happened afterward. I wrote a short story based in a fantasy background, looking at that question, and posted it on my Jevlir Caravansary blog. But since that one is there for fun, I didn’t really go into any of the thinking that went into the story or how I would use it in teaching.

    I personally haven’t used this or any other stories I have written in teaching, though I’m planning to try it some time. The way I usually approach it is to call for ideas right in class, and help people use their imagination to build other stories around the one we’re studying. I think that imagination is an important element of Bible study.

    Now let me make it clear that I don’t mean that you should imagine what the story might mean and take that as the interpretation. What I suggest is that you imagine how things might be, and then use that to put the story into a context. How much like our imagained story is the original story? How is it different.

    The following questions won’t make sense if you haven’t read my short story related to Luke 18:1-8 or if you are not acquainted with the parable.

    1. Many people have trouble relating the unjust judge to God, while others don’t believe he is related at all, and that God is to be contrasted to the unjust judge. Do you find the character of Sir Frederick in the story easier or harder to relate to God? Why?
    2. Sir Carl in the story could be regarded as a God-figure in some ways. Does having a just judge in the story change your view? Why does Jesus leave the story so brief, with the questions open?
    3. Would you prefer if Jesus told stories that were a little bit longer with more things explained?
    4. How do you think other people would have reacted to the widow’s success, if we heard “the rest of the story”? Would it be similar to my short story in which they basically assume that hers was an isolated success? Can you relate this reaction or any other reaction you imagine to our responses to God and to testimonies about his care?
    5. Might the other people who were treated unjustly by the unjust judge have felt that the widow’s success was unfair?

    Finally, of course, does answering these questions, and or reading my short story change your understanding of the parable in any way? Realize, of course, that if I were actually teaching, the alternate story would be built from questions asked of the class and combined into a story as a group. That process of thinking has value in itself, I think.

  • Book: Conflict Holiness and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus

    This will not even be an attempt at a full review of this book by Marcus Borg. I just want to present a few notes. Such a review would take more time and more skill that I believe I can bring to bear.

    I generally find myself appreciating the spiritual implications that Borg finds in the teachings of Jesus, but I’m not always on the same wavelength in a historical sense. After reading N. T. Wright and Borg side by side, something they have made easy to do, I often feel more in tune with Borg’s conclusions and at the same time more in agreement with Wright’s arguments. There has to be something wrong with this, and perhaps in time I’ll get more clear on the issue. I have a strong streak of agnosticism regarding the details of any portrayal of the life of Jesus.

    But Conflict is a book that will be of value to you irrespective of your position on the historical details, because in it Borg goes into detail on the background for his conclusions about a considerable number of sayings of Jesus and even a few miracle reports, especially the healings on the Sabbath.

    He contends that the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is often misunderstood. To put it simplistically, it is often seen as one of hypocrisy vs sincerity or surface vs. heart religion. Borg sees it as two different conceptions of the identify of Israel. In supporting this position he provides some wonderful fodder even for those who may come to different conclusions. I was particularly helped by the material on the temple, the meaning of the cleansing incident, and the predictions of its destruction.

    N. T. Wright provides an excellent introduction (15 pages) to the current edition, which is valuable in pointing out where Wright would disagree. The disagreements are not extensive, however, on this topic, and Wright strongly commends the book overall.

    I am glad I picked this volume up.

    Numerical rating: 4