I put a
lot of quotes up here from Raymond Brown’s Introduction to the New Testament
mainly for use when I am not on my computer and do not have access to them.
A variety of subjects are covered so I recommend searching them if need
be. I chose the titles and headers myself with brevity and I tried my best
to edit out any spelling or typing errors I found but the spell checkers
don’t get them all.
.
Christiany: A religion of the Book?
""""Only
in a limited way is Christianity a "religion of the book." those
who followed and proclaimed Christ existed for some twenty years before
a single NT book was written (i.e., before AD 50). Even when the NT books
were being composed (ca. AD 50-150), Christian communities existed in areas
where no preserved book was authored; and surely they had ideals and beliefs
not recorded in any NT book. (Indeed some who thought of themselves as followers
of Christ probably had ideas rejected or condemned by NT writers.) Furthermore,
during the last few decades in which NT books were being penned, Christians
were producing other preserved writings (e.g. Didache, I Clement, Epistles
of Ignatius of Antioch, Gospel of Peter, Protoevangelium of James).""""
Foreword
Viii
Basic Info on NT Studies
""""""The
concern more central to the introduction will be the study of the extant
Gospels, i.e., portraits of the activities of Jesus written twenty-five
to seventy years after Jesus' death by authors who may never have seen him.
We do not have exact reports composed in Jesus' lifetime by those who knew
him. Rather what we are given pertinent to the life and ministry of Jesus
comes to us in a language other than the one he regularly spoke and in the
form of different distillations from years of proclamation and teaching
about him. 4 In one sense that attenuated reminiscence
might seem an impoverishment; in another sense, however, the Gospels understood
in this way illustrate how Christians, dependent on word of mouth, kept
alive and developed the image of Jesus, answering new questions. Did they
do so in fidelity to him?""""
4. For
those who believe in providence, this indirect and not totally consistent
witness to Jesus would have been a vehicle chosen by God--something forgotten
by those who spend their efforts "improving" on it by harmonizing
the Gospels.
Foreword
viii-ix
Canonical Dimension of the Bible?
""""""There
is unity to the collection; yet one should be cautious of statements claiming
"The Bible says . . ." even as one would not state, "The
Public Library says . . ." when one means to quote from Jane Austen
or Shakespeare. The better phrasing names a specific book or author: "Isaiah
says" or "Mark says," thereby recognizing that individuals
from different periods of time with different ideas rote the individual
books of the Bible. Although the books take on added meaning because they
are part of the whole Bible, their individuality cannot be overlooked."""""
xxxiii-Useful
information
"""Although
they incorporate earlier components, oral and written, the books that constitute
the OT were authored in the period 1000-100 BC.""""
xxxiv--Useful
information
OT Canon Set in Jesus’ Day?
"""Although
the Jews of Jesus' time had a sense of fixed sacred writing in the two areas
of "the Law" and "The Prophets," there was as of yet
no unanimity on which books constituted "the writings." 5 Some works like Psalms were accepted
early as part of the category (see Luke 24:44), but wide general agreement
fixing the contents of sacred scripture for the majority of Jews came only
in the course of the 2d century AD.
5 "The
Law" refers to the first five OT books (the Pentateuch). "The
Prophets" refers to Joshua Judges, I-II Samuel, and I-II Kings, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve minor Prophets. Eventually "the Writings"
came to include Psalms, proverbs, Job, Song of Songs (or Canticle), Ruth,
Lamentations, Ecclesiastes (or Qohelet), Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah,
and I-II Chronicle.
xxxiv--Useful
information
Coining of the New Testament
"""Only
in the 2d century do we have evidence off Christians using the term "New
Testament" for a body of their own writings, ultimately leading to
the use of the designation "Old Testament" for the scriptures
of Israel. It would still be several centuries more before Christians in
the Latin and Greek churches came to wide agreement about the 27 works to
be included in a normative or canonical collection."""
p. 4
Purpose of Christian’s writings and
their hesitancy to Write early
"""The
introductory section above, "useful Information about the Bible,"
reported that by the time of Jesus Jews had become very conscious of sacred
writings: the Law, the Prophets, and the other books; and that is what early
Christians meant when they spoke of Scripture. Why were the first Christians
somewhat slow in writing their own books? A major retarding factor was that,
unlike Moses who by tradition authored the Pentateuch, Jesus did not produce
a writing that contained his revelation. He is never recorded as setting
down even a word in his lifetime or telling any of his disciples to write.
Accordingly the proclamation of the Kingdom of God made present in J. Moreover,
the first Christian generations were strongly eschatological: for them the
"last times" were at hand, and undoubtedly Jesus would return
soon--"Marantha" (= marana tha; 1 Cor 16:22); "Come Lord
Jesus" (Rev 22:20). Such anticipation of the end of the world did not
encourage Christians to write for future generations (who would not be around
to read books).
Letters.
It is no accident, then, that letters were the first Christian literature
of which we know: Since they can be designed to answer immediate, pressing
problems, they were consistent with an urgent eschatology. That these letters
were written by Paul clarifies another factor in the appearance of Christian
literature. Paul was a traveling apostle who proclaimed Jesus in one town
and then moved on to another. Letters become his means of communication
with converts who lived at a distance from him. 8 Thus in the 50s of the 1st century Paul produced the earliest
surviving Christian documents: 1 Thess, Gal, Phil, Phlm, I and II Cor, and
Rom. There is a somewhat different tone
and emphasis to each, corresponding to what Paul perceived as the needs
of the respective community at a particular time. This fact should make
us cautious about generalizations in reference to Pauline theology. Paul
was not a systematic theologian but an evangelizing preacher, giving strong
emphasis at a certain moment to one aspect of faith in Jesus, at another
moment to another aspect--indeed to a degree that may seem to us inconsistent.
On the grounds that Paul does not mention an idea or practice, very adventurous
assumptions are sometimes made about his views. For example, the Eucharist
is mentioned in only one Pauline writing and there largely because of abuses
at the Eucharistic meal at Corinth. Except for that situation scholars might
be misled to assume that there was no Eucharist in the Pauline churches,
reasoning that Paul could scarcely written so much without mentioning such
an important aspect of Christian life.
By the mid-60s
death had come to the most famous of the earlier generation (i.e. those
who had known Jesus or who had seen the risen Jesus: see I Cor 15:3-8),
e.g., Peter, Paul and James "the brother of the Lord. The passing of
the first generation of Christians contributed to works of a more permanent
nature. Letters/epistles remained an important means of Christian communication
even if they were written now not by Paul himself but in his name to preserve
his spirit and authority. many scholars assign II Thess, Col, Eph, and the
Pastoral Letters (I and II Tim and Titus) to this category of "deuteroPauline"
writings, composed in the 70-100
(or even later), after Paul's death. A plausible explanation is that disciples
or admirers of Paul were dealing with the problems of the post-70 era by
giving advice they thought faithful to Paul's mind. While still dealing
with immediate problems such as false teachers or counterfeit letters, the
deuteroPauline letters often have a tone that is more universal or permanent.
For instance, the idea of the second coming of Jesus was not lost but had
become less emphatic, and so II Thess warns against those who overemphasize
its immediacy. Col and Eph theologize about "the Church" rather
than about local churches as in earlier Pauline writings. The structure
advocated by the Pastorals, consisting of presbyter/bishops and deacons,
is meant to help the church survive for future generations."""
8 If the geographical spread of Christianity contributed
to the production of Christian letters, it may be no accident that we do
not have any letters of the twelve apostles to the Jewish Christian community
of Jerusalem. From what is reported in the NT (as distinct from later legends)
we might assume that, with the exception of Peter, the twelve traveled little.
Accordingly they could have communicated orally to a Jerusalem audience,
and indeed the spoken mode seems to have remained the privileged or expected
form of proclamation even after there were written accounts (see Rom 10:14-15).
Attestation to this is given by Papias ass late as AD 125 (EH 3.39.4).
p 5-7
Colored Presentation: Basic Info Stuff
"""Experiences
stemming from the decades that separated Jesus from the evangelist colored
this presentation. Relevance to Christian problems determined the selection
of what was preserved from the Jesus tradition. For instance, the Marcan
Jesus' emphasis on the necessity of suffering and the cross may reflect
persecution undergone by Christians addressed by Mark. Expansion or explication
of the Jesus tradition was demanded because the hearers and readers were
no longer the Palestinian Jews of Jesus' lifetime but Gentiles to whom Jewish
customs and ideas were strange (see Mark 7:3-4)."""
p 7
"""Despite
the local colorings of all four canonical Gospels, their overall import
was to preserve for late-1st century readers (and indeed, for those of all
time) a memory of Jesus that did not perish when the eyewitnesses died."""
p 7
Traditional Authorship
"""None
of the Gospels mentions an author's name, and it is quite possible that
none was actually written by the one whose name was attached to it at the
end of the 2d century (John Mark, companion of Paul and then of Peter; Matthew,
one of the Twelve; Luke, companion of Paul; John, one of the Twelve). 9 Nevertheless, those names constitute
a claim that Jesus was being interpreted in a way faithful to the first
and second generation of apostolic witnesses and preachers.
9 The
claim that Luke wrote the Third Gospel and Acts is the most plausible of
the four attributions, closely followed by the claim that Mark was an evangelist.
p 7-8
Revelation of John
"""Persecution
of God's people by the great world empires challenged the extent to which
history is under God's control. Apocalyptic literature responds to this
by visions that encompass what is happening in heaven and on earth at the
same time--visions that can be expressed only in luxuriant symbols. The
parallelism of heaven and earth gives assurance that what happens below
is under the control of God above, and that earthly persecution reflects
struggles between God and the major evil spirits. A special aspect of Rev
is that the apocalyptic message has been attached to letters to specific
churches, so that by expressing the attributes of God in a symbolism that
goes beyond rational description, the author is reminding those Christians
of the late 1st century that the kingdom of God is larger than the history
they were experiencing. it gives them hope, nay assurance, that despite
(or even because of) the setbacks they have suffered, God would make them
victorious. Unfortunately, many modern readers have forgotten 1st-century
addresses; and not knowing this type of literature and the plasticity of
its images and time symbols (so prevalent in the Jewish apocalypses cited
above), they think of Rev as an exact prediction of the future revealing
arcane secrets to them. Rather, the grandeur of "the Alpha and Omega,
the first and the last" (Rev 22:13) lies beyond chronology and human
calculation."""
p 8-9
The Eucharist
"""The
stories of the Last Supper are simply cult legends, Bultmann tells us (BHST
244-45), even though others point out that a tradition about a Eucharistic
supper on the night that Jesus was given over was already established when
Paul became a Christian in the mid-30s (1 Cor 11:23-26)."""
p 23
Discerning theological Emphasis and
Marcan Priority
"""Where
it is possible to know with reasonable assurance the material an author
used, one can diagnose theological emphasis by the change the author made
in what was taken over from the source. For example, if Matt and Luke used
Mark, the fact that they greatly esteemed the twelve is made evident by
their omission of Marcan verses stressing the failure of the apostles and
by their addition of segments showing the apostles in a good light (Luke
9:18-22 omits from Mark 8:27-33. and matt 16:13-23 adds to it).
p 24
Inspiration and Inerrancy
"""A
number of interpreters take an intermediate position. 20 They accept inspiration, deeming it
important for the interpretation of scripture; but they do not think that
God's role as an author removed human limitations. In this approach, God
who providentially provided for Israel a record of salvific history involving
Moses and the Prophets also provided for Christians a basic record of the
salvific role and message of Jesus. Yet those who wrote down the Christian
record were time-conditioned people of the 1st and early 2d century, addressing
audiences of their era in the worldview of that period. They did not know
the distant future. Although what they wrote is relevant to future Christian
existence, their writing does not necessarily provide ready-made answers
for unforeseeable theological and moral issues that would arise in subsequent
centuries. God chose to deal with such subsequent problems not by overriding
all the human limitations of the Biblical writers but by supplying a Spirit
that is a living aid in ongoing interpretation.
Within positions
(4) there are different attitudes on inerrancy. Some would dispense altogether
with inerrancy as a wrong deduction from the valid thesis that God inspired
the scriptures. Others would contend that inspiration did produce an inerrancy
affecting religious issues (but not science or history), so that all theological
stances in the scriptures would be inerrant. Still others, recognizing diversity
within the Scriptures even on religious issues, would maintain only a limited
theological inerrancy. Finally, another solution does not posit a quantitative
limitation of inerrancy confining it to certain passages or certain issues,
21
but a qualitative one whereby all Scripture is inerrant to the extent that
it serves the purpose for which God intended it. Recognition of this type
of limitation is implicit in the statement made at Vatican Council II: "The
books of scripture must be acknowledged as teaching firmly, faithfully,
and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings
for the sake of our salvation." 22
Yet even this response runs up against the problem of finding a criterion:
How exactly does one know what God wanted put into the Scriptures for the
sake of our salvation?"""
20 Sometimes
designated "centirst," these may well constitute the majority
of teachers and writers in the NT area.
21 Any
effort to maintain that only certain passages in the NT are inerrant is
problematic if inerrancy flows from inspiration that covers all the scriptures.
For a general treatment, see N. Lohfink, The Inerrancy of Scripture (Berkeley:
Bibal, 1992).
22 Dei
Verbum (Nov 18, 1965) 3.11.
p 30-31
More on Scripture
"""Many,
more conservative Christians think of scripture as the product of revelation,
so that every word of it constitutes a divine communication of truth to
human beings. This approach, which identifies Scripture with revelation,
runs up against the objection that some passages in Scripture (lists of
names, temple measurements, poetic descriptions, etc.) do not seem to involve
truth or, at least, truth that affects a way of life or salvation . . .
other Christians, not finding revelation in every Biblical passage, contend
that Scripture is not revelation but contains it."""
p 32-33
"""No
matter how earnestly modern Christians may affirm that they hold nothing
except what is found in scripture, they are so far from the worldview of
the OT and NT authors they cannot look at spiritual realities the way those
authors did."""
p 33
"""The
NT books were written some 1,900 years ago in Greek. From the viewpoint
of language, even the most competent English translation cannot render all
the nuances of the original Greek. From the viewpoint of culture and context,
the authors and their audiences had a worldview very different from of ours:
different backgrounds, different knowledge, different suppositions about
reality. We cannot hope to open an NT book and read it responsibly with
the same ease as we read a book written in our own culture and worldview."""
p 36
Arguments From Silence
"""The
NT writers certainly knew more of the Christian tradition than they were
able or chose to convey in their writings; John 21:25 is specific about
that. Therefore we should maintain a certain distrust of negative arguments
from silence, as if the failure to write meant the failure to know. For
instance, only Matt and Luke tell us about Jesus' virginal conception. Failure
of other NT writers to mention it does not necessarily mean that they did
not know of it (or, a fortiori, would deny it); yet neither can we assume
that the knowledge was widespread. On the level of the literal sense, exegesis
that embraces what the evangelist did not actually convey in writing becomes
very speculative."""
p 38-39
Careless editing?
"""By
way of example, one may note Luke does not report a scourging of Jesus by
Roman soldiers as do Mark/Matt; accordingly, in Luke 23:26 the antecedent
of the "they" who led Jesus away to be crucified is grammatically
"the chief priests and the rulers and the people" of 23:13. Many
commentators would read this passage as a deliberate Lucan attempt to make
the Jews the agents of the crucifixion and to exculpate the Romans. Yet
careless use of antecedents is not infrequent in writing. 34 Eventually Luke makes clear that there were (Roman) soldiers
involved in the crucifixion (23:36), and elsewhere he indicates that the
Gentiles killed Jesus (18:32-33; cf. Acts 4:25-27). From other NT evidence
one may suspect that all or most Christians would have heard and known of
the Roman role in crucifying Jesus, and so Luke's audience would have understood
the "they" of Luke 23:26 in that sense (as have Christian audiences
ever since). Most likely, then, the grammatical sense of what Luke wrote
was not what he intended to convey.
34 Indeed,
Luke is sometimes a careless editor: he reports Jesus' prophecy about being
scourged (18:33) but then, by omitting the Roman scourging, leaves the prophecy
unfulfilled
p 39
Note on contradictions
"""Often
commentators detect contradictions in the sequence of a NT book and assume
that one writer could not have been responsible for the text as it now stands
or that the writer combined diverse sources without recognizing that they
were irreconcilable. Such a solution is not impossible, but not necessarily
probable. The account as it now stands made sense to someone in antiquity,
and so what seems contradictory to modern interpreters may not be really
contradictory. For instance, some commentators would find a contradiction
between Mark 14:50 that says of the disciples, "And having left him,
they all fled," and Mark 14:51 that still has a certain young man following
Jesus, and Mark 14:54 that has Peter following him from a distance. In this
type of narrative are these really contradictory, or are they cumulative
ways of illustrating the failure of the disciples? All went away denying
Jesus, including eventually even those who, by still following attempted
not to flee."""
p 40
Canonical Dimension
""The
whole canonical dimension is often neglected in two ways. First, some earnest
believers are under the false impression that the biblical message is always
(and indeed, necessarily) uniform, whereas it is not. One may explain that
there is no contradiction between Rom 3:28 ("justified by faith, apart
from works of the law") and Jas 2:24 ("justified by works and
not by faith alone"); but one can scarcely imagine that Paul's attitude
was the same as that of James. When people quote Paul, "Christ is the
end of the Law" (Rom 10:4), they may need to add that in Matt 5:17-18
Jesus says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law . . .
not the smallest letter nor the smallest part of a letter of the Law will
pass away till all these things have come to pass." Then one has a
fuller picture of what the NT says about a Christian’s relation to the Law.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, the church has placed side by side
in the same canon works that do not share the same outlook. The response
to the canon is not to suppress or undervalue the sharp view of an individual
biblical author, but to make up one's mind in face of diverse views existing
side by side.
Second,
on a more scholarly level where this diversity is recognized, there is sometimes
a thrust toward defining "the center of the canon" or "canon
within the canon." All must recognize that certain Biblical books by
their length and profundity are more important than other books; e.g., it
would be a bizarre interpreter who would attribute to Jude and Rom the same
importance"""
p 43
"""Recognizing
that there are diverse views in the NT, some scholars decide that certain
works are misleading, inferior, or harmful and should receive little emphasis
39 or even be excluded from the NT. Appealing to the Pauline distinction
between letter and spirit (II Cor 3:6-8), they contend that Christians cannot
make the NT an infallible authority and must distinguish the real spirit
within the NT."""
p 44
"""Consistently
in the course of history, Christians who were arguing to prove they were
right and others were wrong have appealed to select NT passages and books,
unconsciously ignoring other passages and assuming they were following the
whole NT. Is that remedied by consciously ignoring other passages? Might
not those who profess to follow the NT profit more by paying serious attention
to the passages they find problematic and by asking whether those passages
highlight something defective in their own perception of Christianity? Might
they not profit more by maintaining the whole canon even if that means that
they are challenged by its diversities? Readers could then allow Scripture
to serve as both conscience and corrective."""
p 44
Textual Criticism
"'Many
differences among the textual families visible in the great uncial codices
of the 4th and 5th centuries existed already ca. 200 as we see from the
papri and early translations. How could so many differences arise within
a hundred years after the original books were written? The answer may lie
in the attitude of the copyists toward the NT books being copied. These
were holy books because of their content and origins, but there was no slavish
devotion to their exact wording. They were meant to be commented on and
interpreted, and some of that could be included in the text. Later when
more fixed ideas of the canon and inspiration shaped the mind-set, attention
began to center on keeping the exact wording. The Reformation spirit of
"Scripture alone" and an ultraconservative outlook on inspiration
as divine dictation intensified that attention."""
p 51
Herod’s Cruelty
"The
brutal cruelty, indeed virtual insanity, of Herod's last years give rise
to Matthew’s account of this King's willingness to slaughter all the male
children at Bethlehem up to age two as part of his desire to kill Jesus."""
p 58
Christians as anti-Law?
"""In
certain Christian communities a strong antipathy arose toward the leaders
of the Jewish synagogues as reflected in a series of passages in Matthew
(6:2,5; 23:6); the accusation was made that synagogues
persecuted Christians (Matt 10:17; 23:34) and expelled them (John
9:22; 12:42; 16:2). A statement such as John 9:28 makes a sharp distinction
between the disciples of Jesus and the disciples of Moses; and in some NT
passages "the Jews" (and their Law) are treated as alien (Matt
28:15; John 10:34; 15:25)."""
p 62
Paul and Slavery
"""Yet
the fact that Paul, who thought that the end of the world was coming soon,
did not condemn the social structure with its massive number of slaves was
tragically misinterpreted for many centuries as Christian justification
for the existence of slavery, indeed, of a slavery often harsher than existed
in NT times."""
p 68
Greek of NT
"""The
heavy Semitic influence on the Greek of some NT books, the colloquial character
of Mark, and the grammatical mistakes of Rev might well have made these
works sound crude to better educated audiences who had the whole course
of schooling. Understandably then, by way of implicit self-defense Paul
acknowledges that he did not preach "in words taught by human wisdom"
1 Cor 2:13)."""
p 70
Prerabbinnic traditions, Mishna etc
"""Yet
the Jewish scholar S.J.D. Cohen wisely warns against a general attribution
of prerabbinic traditions to the Pharisees. (Indeed one must be careful
about employing in Gospel interpretation other material in the Mishna, e.g.,
the description of how the Passover Seder is to be celebrated and the description
of what constitutes blasphemy. What took place in Ad 70 changed many detail
in such issues; and the Mishna represents an idealized 2d-century outlook.)"""
p 80
Jesus and Gentiles and Pagans
"""In
the synoptic Gospel memory he has little contact with Gentiles or Pagans,
forbids his disciples to go near them (Matt 10:5) or imitate their ways
(Matt 6:32), betrays Jewish prejudice toward them ("dogs" in Mark
7:27-28; "even the Gentiles" in Matt 5:47)."""
p 83-84
Euaggelion in Paul
"""The
appearance of the word euaggelion in Paul covering a content that would
have a similar purpose (Rom 1:1-4; I Cor 15:1-8; cf. I Cor 11:23-26) means
that Mark was certainly not the first to put together Jesus material for
a salvific purpose, even though his was the earliest preserved full narrative."""
p 104
Scholars on Mark
""On
the other hand, an even larger number of scholars would judge much of what
Mark narrates as factual. Suppose that Jesus was baptized by JBap and did
proclaim the coming of god's kingdom both by sayings/parables that challenged
people's entrenched attitudes and by healing the sick and expelling what
he regarded as demons; suppose that he aroused the antipathy of Jewish leaders
by exercising too sovereign a freedom toward the law, by claiming to speak
for God in a way they regarded as arrogant, and by challenging Temple administration
through actions and warnings--then Jesus himself would have supplied the
kinds of material that ultimately went into the Gospels, no matter how much
that material developed over the decades that separated him from the evangelists.""" 10
10 There
is a rough outline of Jesus' activity in the sermons of Acts, e.g., 2:22-24,
and especially 10:37-41: It began in Galilee after JBap's baptism when Jesus
was anointed with the Holy Spirit.
p 104
Historical Jesus
"""Portraits
of Jesus. Nevertheless, even in the latter understanding the production
of Gospels required selection from the Jesus material. Accordingly it is
helpful to keep distinct three portraits: the actual Jesus, the historical
Jesus, and the Gospel Jesus. A portrait of the actual Jesus would involve
everything of interest about him: exact dates off birth and death; revealing
details about his parents and family; how he got along with them and how
he grew up; how and where he worked for a living before he began preaching;
what he looked like; what his preferences were in food and drink; whether
he got sick from time to time; whether he was humorous, friendly and liked
by villagers of Nazareth, etc. We have nothing like the detail in the Gospels
as biographies or lives of Christ. awareness of that deficiency is important
for readers who might otherwise approach the Gospels in the same way they
would approach the life of a famous modern figure, without any sense of
tendentious Gospel selectivity.
A portrait
of the historical Jesus is a scholarly construct based on reading beneath
the Gospel surface and stripping off all interpretations, enlargements,
and developments that could possibly have taken place in the thirty to seventy
years that separated his public ministry and death from the written Gospels.
The validity of the construct depends on the criteria employed by the investigating
scholars. The detailed recognition that the Gospel picture reflects developments
beyond Jesus' lifetime was first and most ardently promoted in the last
two centuries by skeptics who wished to challenge traditional Christian
theology . . . the portrait of the historical Jesus is a construct based
on limited evidence and designed to produce a minimalist view that can be
scientifically agreed on. It can give us at most a tiny fraction of the
detail and coloring of the actual Jesus, and it will constantly change as
scholarly method is refined or revised. Since the investigation strips off
the Christological appreciation of Jesus by his followers, the two-dimensional
picture that emerges will be singularly lacking in theological and spiritual
depth and almost surely will be partially distorted because it will reflect
what the investigators with to highlight. The notion that Christian faith
should depend on reconstructions of the historical Jesus is a dangerous
misunderstanding.
The Gospel
Jesus refers to the portrait painted by an evangelist. It stems from his
highly selective arrangement of Jesus material in order to promote and strengthen
a faith that would bring people close to God. The evangelist included only
information that served that purpose, and the needs of the envisioned audience
affected both contents and presentation. That is why the Gospels written
by different evangelists for different audiences in different decades had
to differ. . . The life of the real Jesus attracted and convinced disciples
who proclaimed him throughout the known world. how do the portraits of the
actual Jesus, the historical Jesus and the Gospel Jesus match up to "real" in that sense? major aspects
of the actual Jesus are unreported and thus unknowable; functionally, then,
this picture of Jesus can only be partly real to subsequent generations. Because of what it excludes, especially of a
religious and theological nature, the depiction of the historical Jesus
(or better "the reconstructed Jesus") is the farthest from giving
us the real Jesus. As we shall see in Appendix I, it is hard to see how
the historical Jesus reconstructed by many scholars would attract the ardent
commitment to the point of death that we know Jesus evoked from those who
had known him. If one accepts that the portraits in the Gospels retain significant
amounts of material from the actual Jesus
and their missionary goal was not alien to his, then those portraits
are as close to the real Jesus as we are likely to get."""
p 105-106
Evangelists Eye Witnesses?
""Yet
most modern scholars do not think that the evangelists were eyewitnesses
of the ministry of Jesus. This surely represents a change of view; but the
denial of the tradition may not be as sharp as it first seems, for the early
tradition about authorship may not always have referred to the evangelist
who composed the final Gospel. Ancient attributions may have been concerned
with the one responsible for the tradition preserved and enshrined in a
particular Gospel (i.e., to the authority behind the Gospel), or to the
one who wrote one of the main sources of the Gospel."""
p 109
""The
recognition that the evangelists were not eyewitnesses of Jesus' ministry
is important for understanding the differences among the Gospels. In the
older approach, wherein the evangelists themselves were thought to have
seen what they reported, it was very difficult to explain differences among
their Gospels. How could eyewitness John (chap 2) report the cleansing of
the temple at the beginning of the ministry and eyewitness Matthew (chap.
21) report the cleansing of the Temple at the end of the ministry? In order
to reconcile them, interpreters would contend that the Temple-cleansing
happened twice and that each evangelist chose to report only one of the
two instances. however, if neither evangelist was an eyewitness and each
had received an account of the Temple-cleansing from an intermediate source,
neither one (or only one) may have known when it occurred during the public
ministry. Rather than depending on
a personal memory of events, each evangelist has arranged the material he
received in order to portray Jesus in a way that would meet the spiritual
needs of the community to which he was addressing the Gospel. Thus the Gospels
have been arranged in logical order, not necessarily in Chronological order.
The evangelists emerge as authors, shaping, developing, pruning the transmitted
Jesus material, and as theologians, orienting that material to a particular
goal.
Corollaries
of this approach to Gospel formation would include the following:
-- The Gospels
are not literal records of the ministry of Jesus. Decades of developing
and adapting the Jesus tradition had intervened. how much development? That
has to be determined by painstaking scholarship which most often produces
judgments ranging from possibility to probability, but rarely certainty.
-- A thesis
that does not present the Gospels as literal history is sometimes interpreted
to mean that they are not true accounts of Jesus. Truth, however, must be
evaluated in terms of intended purpose. The Gospels might be judged untrue
if the goal was strict reporting or exact biography; but if the goal was
to bring readers/hearers to a faith in Jesus that opens them to God's rule
or kingdom, then adaptations that make the Gospels less than literal (adding
the dimension of faith, adjusting to new audiences) were made precisely
to facilitate that goal and thus to make the Gospels true.
-- To some
such an approach to Gospel truth is unsatisfactory since, if there have
been developments and adaptions, how do we know that the Gospels offer a
message faithful to that of Jesus? Scholars cannot be certain guides since
they disagree widely on the amount of alteration, ranging from major to
minor. This is a theological issue, and so a theological answer is appropriate.
Those who believe in inspiration will maintain that the Holy Spirit guided
the process, guaranteeing that the end-product Gospels reflect the truth
that God sent Jesus to proclaim.
-- Much
time has been spent in the history of exegesis harmonizing Gospel differences,
not only in minor matters but also on large scale, e.g., trying to make
one, sequential narrative out of the very different Matthean and Lucan infancy
narratives, or out of Luke's account of appearances of the risen Jesus in
Jerusalem and Matt's account of an appearance on a mountain in Galilee.
Besides asking whether this is possible, we need to ask whether such harmonization
is not a distortion. In an outlook of faith, divine providence furnished
four different Gospels, not a harmonized version; and it is to the individual
Gospels, each with its own viewpoint, that we should look. Harmonization,
instead of enriching, can impoverish.
-- In the
last half of the twentieth century respect for the individuality of each
Gospel had an effect on church liturgy or ritual. Many churches have followed
the lead of the Roman Catholic liturgical reformation in introducing a three-year
lectionary where in the first year the Sunday Gospel readings are taken from Matt, in
the second year from Mark, and in the third year from Luke. In the roman
church this replaced a one year lectionary where without any discernible
theological pattern the reading was taken one Sunday from Matt, another
Sunday from Luke, etc. A major factor in making the change was the recognition
that the Gospel pericopes should be read sequentially within the same Gospel
if one is to do justice to the theological orientation given to those passages
by the individual evangelist. For instance, a parable that appears in all
three Synoptic Gospels can have different meanings depending on the context
in which each evangelist has placed it.""""
p 109-111
Marcan Priority and Q
"""Mark
has 661 verses (vv.); Matt has 1,068, and Luke has 1,149. Eighty percent
of Mark's vv. are reproduced in Matt and 65 percent in Luke. The Marcan
material found in both the other two is called the "Triple Tradition".
The approximate 220-235 vv. (in whole or in part) of nonMarcan material
that Matt and Luke have in common is called the "Double Tradition."
In both instances so much of the order in which that common material is
presented, and so much of the wording in which it is phrased are the same
that dependence at the written rather than simply at he oral level has to
be posited."""
p 111
"""Many
would attribute to Q a low Christology since in it Jesus emerges simply
as a Sophist or Cynic wisdom teacher. yet the Q Jesus is to come and baptize
with the holy spirit, as proclaimed by JBap (3:16-17; 7:18-23). He is greater
than Solomon and greater than Jonah the prophet (11:31-32). He is portrayed
as the Son of Man who will come in judgment (Luke 17:23,27,30,37) and as
the son of man who is rejected and suffers in his lifetime (7:31-35; 9:57-60).
He is the Son to whom all has been given; he is known only by the father,
and only he knows the Father (10:22). It is insufficient to simply call
Jesus Lord; one must hear his words and do them if one is too survive (6:46-49).
Jerusalem must bless him (13:34-35), and one must prefer him over family
(14:2-27). He can proclaim with assurance that in the kingdom those who
follow him will sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Such
a Jesus is far more than a wisdom teacher."""
p 120
Argument from Silence and Q Still
"""The
argument from silence becomes a major factor in such a presupposition. for
example, because there is no reference in the Q material to crucifixion
or resurrection, it is claimed that the Q Christians ignored, rejected,
or gave little importance to such belief. (In the combination they made,
matt and Luke found no contradiction between Q and Mark with its strong
emphasis on the passion or between Q
and their own emphasis on the resurrection. One cannot assume that independently
two evangelists took over a source they wished to correct; rather a justifiable
assumption is that Matt and Luke agreed with Q or they would have not have
used it. Moreover, there are some Q parallels in mark--could the theology
of Mark and Q have been so contradictory? What proof is there that ay early
1st-century Christian believed in a Jesus who was not uniquely distinguished
by the fact that he had been crucified and raised? A rejection of crucifixion/resurrection
is characteristic of a Gnosticism not clearly datable before the 2d century.)
In the hypothesis
that Matt and Luke used both Q and Mark, it is not unreasonable to assume
that Q was as old as mark and in existence in the 60s. Some, however, make
the improvable claim that Q is older than Mark and is indeed the oldest
Christian presentation of Jesus. There is evidence against too early a dating,
since certain sayings in Q suggest that an interval has passed since the
time of Jesus. One has the impression from Luke 11:49-52 that Christian
prophets and apostles have been persecuted. Luke 11:39-44,46-48 shows considerable
hostility toward the Pharisees and lawyers; intense conflicts with Pharisees
probably developed later in the history of Palestinian Christians rather
than earlier.
Extravagant
hypothesis based upon this hypothetical document have left their mark on
modern "Historical Jesus" research (see Appendix I). The portrait
of Jesus the wisdom teacher or Cynic philosopher with no apocalyptic message
and no messianic proclamation emerges from speculations about stage one
of Q theology--a portrait that some would substitute for the Jesus of the
Gospels and the Jesus of church faith. A bit abrupt but worthy of reflection
is the proposal of J. P. Meier, marginal 2.178, that every morning exegetes
should repeat, "Q is a hypothetical document whose exact extension,
wording, originating community, strata, and stages of composition cannot
be known." Linnemann, "Is There," is even more acerbic. That
having been said, in the judgment of most, the existence of Q (without many
of the added hypothesis) remains the best way of explaining the agreements
between matt and Luke in material they did not borrow from mark."""
p 121-122
Page Transcribed by Vincent Sapone, ©, 2002 laurie.vailonis@snet.net