Quotations
"The narrative Gospels have no claim as historical accounts. The Gospels are imaginative creations."
Burton Mack, Time, January 10, 1994
"[W]hat modern biblical research
has demonstrated repeatedly is that the bible ... was written by human beings
who made numerous mistakes and borrowed from each other and from the past ... If
the bible can be taken down from its untouchable pedestal and be treated
realistically, then the notion of adding to the Christian canon is not
so anathema."
M. Hamington, The Fourth R, July, 1992
The Jesus Seminar
The primary driving force behind
the popular media's present preoccupation with liberal views of Jesus has
been the Jesus Seminar. This Seminar, first convened in 1985 by Robert
Funk, is a gathering of 100 or so mostly liberal New Testament scholars
who meet on a regular basis.
They have determined, by a process
of voting with colored beads, that Jesus did not say 82% of what the Gospels
attribute to him. Indeed, in their view, even the majority of the remaining
18% is somewhat doubtful. Only 2% of these sayings can confidently be said
to be the actual words of Jesus. Their findings have been published in
their work, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus.
The work includes a new (and sometimes controversial) translation of all
the sayings of Jesus which they have decided to call the "Scholars Version."
A Consensus of Scholarly Opinions?
One of the facets of the Jesus Seminar
that has most irked scholars outside the Seminar, evangelical and non-evangelical
alike, is their tendency to equate their opinions with what "scholars"
in general hold to. Thus, for example, they call their new translation
of Jesus' sayings the "Scholars Version" of the Bible -- as though previous
translations were unscholarly! In the Introduction to The Five Gospels,
the Seminar spells out what they call "the Seven Pillars of Scholarly Wisdom" -- as
though anyone who disagreed with these "pillars" was thereby not scholarly!
As a matter of fact, however, a great many scholars, from a wide variety
of persuasions, disagree with elements of this highly controversial list
of "pillars."
But what is most frustrating is the
general way the participants sometimes represent themselves in their writings,
and in the media. One sees this, for example, throughout The Five Gospels
in which the words "scholar" and "scholarly" are always attached to the
opinions of the Seminar, making it appear to the uninformed reader that
they are representing what all New Testament scholars think on various
issues. So also, in much of the media coverage we read phrases like "critical
scholars have concluded," and "scholars now realize" etc., giving the impression
that these liberal scholars are representative of what most people who
specialize in the field think.
They aren't! Indeed, the conclusions
of the Jesus Seminar participants, and of others getting the bulk of the
media attention today, are usually representative only of the left-most
fringe of New Testament scholarship. In the interest of getting the full
story, you need to know this. And remember this next time you read about
what "scholars are saying" in your newspaper.
The Burden of Proof
Perhaps the most important of the
controversial "Seven Pillars of Scholarly Wisdom" published in The Five
Gospels is the assumption that the material in the Gospels is unreliable
unless proven to be otherwise. [ 1 ] This has been a staple of liberal New
Testament scholarship at least since the time of Rudolf Bultmann. It means
that "scholarly wisdom" places the burden of proof on anyone who would
want to say that Jesus actually said something the Gospels say he said.
In other words, the starting assumption is that the Gospels are not historical
unless proven otherwise. With such an approach, one is almost surprised
to find that the Seminar didn't conclude that the historical Jesus said
absolutely nothing!
Now a great deal of scholarly literature
has been written on the issue of where the "burden of proof" should be
placed as historians in general do their work. And, despite the presumptuous
claims of the Jesus Seminar, the thrust of most of this literature is to
argue that the "burden of proof" should generally lie on the part of the
historian who wants to argue that what an ancient document is reporting
is not true. [ 2 ] A historian, in other words, should generally have to prove
that an ancient account is wrong, not that what an ancient document reports
is right.
The basic reason for this is actually
quite commonsensical. We generally assume that people are telling the truth
unless we have good reasons to think otherwise, and there is simply no
reason why this assumption should not be applied to ancient people as well.
Indeed, as was said in the last chapter, were historians not willing to
apply this common courtesy to ancient authors, most of our information
about ancient history would have to be disqualified. If, for example, historians
assumed that accounts in the writings of ancient historians like Josephus,
Suetonius, Tacitus, or Livy could not be trusted until each account could
be individually proven trustworthy, we'd have to conclude that we know
next to nothing about ancient times!
Now there are times, of course, when
historians do conclude that an ancient author's account is mistaken, distorted,
legendary, or what not. But when they do so it is because they have found
good reasons to think this. They do not start with this assumption. And
even when they conclude that accounts are to some degree mistaken, biased,
or legendary, they do not therefore throw out the entire account. They
assume that an ancient author's tendency to make certain kinds of mistakes,
or to have certain kinds of biases, colors their record of history. But
it does not usually entail that the author is not writing about history
at all!
The Gospels And History
Why, then, do liberal New Testament
scholars not extend this common courtesy to the Gospels? There are two
basic reasons.
Are The Gospels Myth?
First, the Gospels contain many supernatural
elements, and as we have seen, many of these scholars simply equate the
"supernatural" with "myth" and "legend." So, they assume, the Gospels are
primarily "imaginative creations," and if there is anything historical
about them, this has to be proven.
The mistake involved here is that
the Gospels simply do not read like mythological and legendary accounts.
As C. S. Lewis frequently argued, one has only to compare the Gospel accounts
with ancient mythological literature to see this. The Gospels give us every
reason to believe that they intend to write history, so if what they report
is miraculous, this must be taken seriously.
Are The Gospels Theological Rather
Than Historical?
Secondly, many liberal scholars dismiss
the Gospels because they are theological in nature. Their purpose, as John
tells us, is to bring people to a faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God
(Jn. 20:31). They are written by people who already have a commitment to
the cause for which they are writing. And this, for many scholars, means
that they are not accurately reporting history.
It is obviously true that the Gospels
are written by people who are not just reporting events in a "neutral,"
"objective," fashion. But why should this entail that what they are recording
is not historically accurate? Why should a passionate commitment to the
truth of what one is reporting imply that what one is reporting is not
true? The survivors of Nazi concentration camps were certainly passionately
committed to the truth of what they were reporting, but this did not distort
the truth of their reports. If anything, it enhanced it. It's just that
what they were reporting warranted being passionate about it.
So it is with the Gospels. If what
they are reporting is true, one would expect them to be passionately committed
to it. So the fact that they are committed to their cause can hardly be
used against them to disqualify their reports. In fact, if you deny the
truth of what they are reporting, their passionate commitment to Christ
becomes utterly inexplicable. If they are making this story up, one wonders
why they would be willing to put their lives on the line for it!
A second consideration that reveals
the error of this liberal line of reasoning is that one cannot find an
ancient historian who didn't write with a strong political and/or theological
motivation in some direction or other. All ancient historical accounts -- and
most modern ones as well! -- were written with the motivation of making some
point, of teaching some lesson, or of buttressing up some political cause.
No one recorded history simply for the purpose of "telling it like it was."
It is well known, for example, that
Josephus' historical accounts -- upon which so much of our knowledge about
the first century hangs -- was strongly motivated to get the blame for Jewish
misfortune off the back of the Romans and to place it squarely on the backs
of Jewish revolutionaries. This certainly colors what Josephus reports.
But no one uses this insight to argue that Josephus was not writing history!
So why should we treat the Gospels any differently? There is no good reason.
Deciding What's True and What's Not
Yet, most liberal scholars do treat
the Gospels differently, and so we should not be surprised to learn that
most of the sayings of Jesus recorded in these Gospels are doubted by these
scholars. Since for these scholars the Gospels are guilty until proven
innocent, each saying of Jesus must prove that it is not created by the
early Church if it is to be accepted. It must, therefore, pass several
tests (usually called "authenticity criterion") in order to get a "red"
vote among Jesus Seminar participants (signifying it goes back to the real
Jesus).
While there is a good bit of disagreement
among these scholars about the criteria that each saying must meet, two
of the most important criteria are almost universally employed by these
scholars. And in the interest of being fully informed, you should know
about these criterion, and know about those scholars who think that the
way the Jesus Seminar participants apply them is altogether misguided.
Multiple Attestation
Perhaps the test for authenticity
most frequently mentioned in the media today is the criteria of multiple
attestation. In this view, a saying (or deed) of Jesus in the Gospels can
be believed to actually go back to the historical Jesus if it is found
in more than one early church source. This doesn't, however, mean that
it should be judged to be authentic if it is found in more than one Gospel,
for as was said earlier, almost all of these scholars maintain that Matthew
and Luke used Mark. If a saying of Jesus is found in material common to
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, therefore, this counts as only one source. To
be confidently accepted as authentic, therefore, it must also be found
elsewhere (e.g. John, "Q," or the Gospel of Thomas).
Two basic considerations demonstrate
the invalidity of applying this criteria in this manner. First, not all
scholars agree that Matthew and Luke used Mark when they composed their
Gospels. Indeed, an increasing number of scholars, both liberal and conservative,
are expressing serious reservations about this hypothesis (called the theory
of "Markan priority"). If this hypothesis is rejected, however, the way
in which the criteria of multiple attestation is applied by liberal New
Testament scholars completely falls apart.
Secondly, the manner in which this
criteria is applied in liberal New Testament scholarship completely depends
on their skeptical view of where the burden of proof lies. That is, while
the appearance of a saying of Jesus in two or three sources can be seen
as providing evidence for its authenticity, there is simply no good reason
to hold that a saying's absence in two or more sources is evidence of its
inauthenticity.
Given the amount of teaching that
Jesus gave in a three year period of time, and given how selective our
Gospels are, it should not surprise us that certain sayings of Jesus are
only found in Matthew, or in Luke, or in John. And unless we have good
reasons for thinking otherwise, these singular sayings of Jesus should
be accepted.
Criteria of Dissimilarity
The second important criteria that
is almost universally espoused by participants in the Jesus Seminar and
by other scholars getting media attention today is the criteria of dissimilarity.
This criteria states that a saying of Jesus can be judged as authentic
if it could not have been created by the early church and, many scholars
add, if it could not have been derived from ancient Judaism. In other words,
only those teachings of Jesus that are unique in comparison to what ancient
Judaism and the early church taught can be accepted -- and then, again, only
if they're found in more than one source! If a reported saying of Jesus
sounds to Jewish, or too Christian, it is out!
Three considerations demonstrate
the invalidity of this criteria. First, since Jesus was a first century
Jew, raised within the orthodox Judaism of his day, should we not find
it surprising if he didn't incorporated significant elements of the Judaism
of his day into his teaching? The Gospels, after all, tell us that Jesus
came to fulfill, not to destroy, the law. With what justification, therefore,
can anyone doubt any reported sayings of Jesus on the basis of their continuity
with Judaism?
Secondly, since the early church
was formed around the teachings of Jesus, why should we be inclined to
judge any continuity between its teachings and the teachings of Jesus as
being their creation? For example, The Five Gospels gives the boot to Jesus'
statement, "Have some, this is my body" (Mk. 14:22 "Scholars Versions"),
made at the last supper, because we know that early Christians viewed the
last supper as in terms of Jesus' sacrificial death. Jesus' statement,
therefore, sounds too "Christian" and thus is judged to be authentic!
But why shouldn't we rather suppose
that the early church thought this way precisely because Jesus taught this
way? Since the early church was foundationally centered on Christ, shouldn't
we expect that their teachings and his teachings would significantly overlap?
Shouldn't it surprise us if this were not the case?
Thirdly, the way that this criteria
is applied in the Jesus Seminar and elsewhere again depends on their skeptical
view of where the burden of proof lies. While it certainly is true that
the presence of unexpected and novel elements of Jesus' teachings in the
Gospel provides further confirmation of the authenticity of their material,
there is simply no good reason to argue this point in a negative direction
and contend that what is not unexpected and novel in the Gospels record
of what Jesus taught is therefore not authentic.
One could, and should, rather argue
this in the opposite direction. The fact that the Gospels preserve aspects
of Jesus' teaching and ministry that are unexpected and unique -- if not
at times outright offensive -- demonstrates their general reliability in
reporting what Jesus taught and did. For example, Jesus' relations with
women (especially those of ill-repute); his unusual cursing of the fig
tree; his demand that allegiance to him come before allegiance to family;
his cry of dereliction on the cross -- none of these things would have been
easy for the later church to accept or understand. Yet, there they are,
recorded in the Gospels.
Now if the Gospels were faithful
in preserving difficult aspects of Jesus' teaching and ministry such as
these, why think they were less faithful in preserving other less controversial
aspects of his ministry? Far from undermining the reliability of the Gospels,
then, a proper use of the criteria of dissimilarity is helpful in establishing
their general reliability.
Jewish Oral Traditions and the Gospels
The approach of the Jesus Seminar
participants and other liberal scholars in the media today presupposes
that there was a rather large gulf between the Jesus of the history and
the early church which wrote the Gospels. This gulf, they maintain, was
filled in by the "creative imagination" of early Christians. Sayings were
supposedly invented as needed, and retroactively put into the mouth of
Jesus. Stories about Jesus were supposedly freely embellished with legendary
features, or fabricated altogether from scratch. And so, when these sayings
and stories were finally put on paper (the Gospels), scarcely more than
an echo of the real historical Jesus remained.
Aside from the objections we have
already raised against this view in the preceding sections, this view,
according to many scholars, simply does not square with the fact that both
Jesus and his earliest disciples were Jewish. A great deal of work has
been done, especially by Scandinavian New Testament scholars, which argues
that in the Jewish culture in which Jesus operated, the large gulf posited
by liberal scholars between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of the Gospels could never have occurred! [ 3 ]
Among other things, this school of
thought argues that the best model for understanding the relationship Jesus
had with his disciples is found in the relationship certain Rabbis had
with their students. We know that the teaching of renowned Rabbi's was
held in the highest esteem by their students. Indeed, frequently their
teachings were regarded as "sacred tradition" that was to be in detail
memorized and passed on with little or no alteration. The early disciples
certainly held Jesus in the highest regard (to say the least) and the New
Testament displays this typically Jewish concern for faithfully passing
on sacred tradition (e.g. I Cor. 15:3-8, Gal. 2:1-10; Col. 2:7; I Thess.
2:13).
More recent studies in ancient Jewish
culture have added to this the further insight that memorization was a
standard pedagogical method in most Jewish learning. Many ancient Jews,
we are now finding, were capable of incredible feats of memorization. And
a number of recent scholars have made a solid case that many of Jesus'
teachings found in the Gospels have a clearly discernible mnemonic form
(viz. a form suited for memorization).
All of this adds further plausibility
to the view that Jesus' relationship to his disciples was that of a Rabbi
to his students. And it therefore suggests that the view that the Gospels
are largely "imaginative creations" of the early church is really an "imaginative
creation" in the mind of certain liberal scholars! The last thing Jesus'
Jewish disciples would have done is a) to forget who Jesus really was and
what he really taught, and then b) to recreate who Jesus was and what he
taught on the basis of their own needs!
At the very least, these studies
require us to conclude that, if ever there were ancient documents we should
be inclined to approach with the "burden of proof" on our shoulders to
demonstrate error, these four ancient documents should be them!
Other Evidences of Reliability
To the thinking of many New Testament
scholars -- usually those who do not get much media attention -- considerations
such as these are sufficient to completely undermine the skeptical approach
of liberal scholars to the Gospels. But we have not yet scratched the surface
of the large mass of historical evidence which supports the view that the
Jesus we find in the Gospels is the real historical Jesus. Time does not
permit us to enter into the full details of this evidence, but in the interest
of being fully informed on the issue, I shall conclude this chapter with
a brief overview of some of this evidence.
Experiential Vividness
Wolfgang Schadewaldt was one of our
century's most reputable classical philologists. Indeed, on many accounts,
he was the greatest Homer scholar ever. If ever there was a man who knew
how to judge the value of ancient documents, it was he. In an lecture addressed
to the theological faculty of Hamburg, and later to theologians at Tübingen,
he says this about the Gospels:
As a philologist, someone who has
acquired some knowledge of "literature," I am particularly concerned here
to note that when we read the Synoptic Gospels, we cannot be other than
captivated by the experiential vividness with which we are confronted ... I
know of no other area of history-writing, biography or poetry where I encounter
so great a wealth of material in such a small space. [ 4 ]
In this respect, as Schadewaldt recognizes,
the Gospels are quite different than the kind of literature that arises
from the "creative imaginations" of people. A wealth of graphic details
about such things as people's emotions, Jesus' unusual gestures, geographical
locations, and about the particular time and place of various events, fill
the Gospel narratives.
Liberal scholars, of course, nevertheless
attempt to write all this off as "literary invention." The Gospel authors,
they hold, were intentionally trying to make their narrative "look" real.
But, beyond attributing to the Gospel authors a most incredible combination
of literary ability and deceptive motivation, such a suggestion is completely
at odds with the standard way historians generally approach ancient texts.
Unless we have good reason to think otherwise, such "experiential vividness"
is usually judged to be evidence of an eyewitness influence. And it is
nothing more than an arbitrary prejudice against what these documents record
that prevents a similar assessment being made here.
Incidental Details
One of the things that is most impressive
about the wealth of detail in the Gospels is that much of it is completely
unnecessary to make the point of the account it is found in. It is, in
other words, incidental to the story being told. This is characteristic
of eyewitness reports. We saw in the previous chapter that the details
found in John's account of the empty tomb (Jn. 20:1-10) is an example of
this. The manner in which Mark cryptically notes how Jesus would sometimes
intently purview those around him before speaking is another (Mk. 3:5,
34; 5:32; 10:23; 11:11). This is just the sort of incidental thing eyewitnesses
tend to remember, and fabricators tend to leave out.
Counter-Productive Details
Even more forceful in terms of strengthening
the reliability of the Gospel accounts, however, is the fact that very
often the details the Gospels record not only serve no clear purpose, but
actually seem to go against the purpose of their accounts. So, we again
saw in the last chapter, the inclusion of questionable women at the very
core of the resurrection narratives could only hinder the resurrection
proclamation in first century Jewish culture. The fact that they are included,
therefore, testifies to the integrity of those who recorded the event.
This isn't the sort of thing they would make up!
In just the same way, there is absolutely
no discernible motive -- aside from the motivation of "telling it like it
really happened" -- for why the Gospels include the unusual detail that Jesus,
while dying on the cross, cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?" If their driving purpose is to portray Christ as the Messiah ("anointed
one") and as the Son of God, this is the last thing in the world they would
ever want to include in their narrative, let alone make up on their own!
So also, if these Gospels are driven
by theological agendas at the expense of recording reliable history, one
wonders why Mark would include ("creatively imagine"?) a discourse in which
Jesus seems to deny that he is even good (Mk. 10:18). One also wonders
why these narratives would include such potentially embarrassing things
as Jesus' (sometimes inexplicable) anger, Jesus' radical views against
legalism and unusual laxity on fasting and other standard religious behaviors,
his baptism, and his scandalous association with prostitutes and tax collectors.
One also wonders why these accounts
would include a good deal of material that presents the disciples in embarrassing
terms. They are, in all of these accounts, portrayed as unbelieving, cowardly,
dull, and even perhaps satanically inspired (Mt. 16:23). And, in fact,
the Gospels even admit that Jesus own family opposed him -- thinking he was
crazy -- during his ministry (Mk 3:21). This is hardly the kind of thing
which the supposed "creative imagination" of the early church would conjure
up on its own!
The Presence of Material Irrelevant
to the Later Church
If the Jesus of the Gospels was invented
by the Church to meet her own needs, then we should, obviously, expect
the Jesus of these works to always give teachings that are relevant to
this Church. But we don't! For example, Jesus' exclusive attitude towards
Israel during his ministry (Mt. 10:5-6) would be wholly irrelevant (and
perhaps offensive) to the Church of the 50s and 60s. For the Church had
by this time already become multiethnic. So too, Jesus' various debates
with the Pharisees about keeping the Sabbath and about Corban practices
would be wholly irrelevant by the 70s when, according to most liberal scholars,
the Gospels first began to be written.
Lack of Material Relevant to the
Later Church
Not only is much material present
that ought not to be there if the early Church largely created the Jesus
of the Gospels, but a good deal of material which ought to be there is
absent. If the teachings of Jesus are largely the result of the "creative
imagination" of the later Church to address its own issues, one would think
we'd find Jesus authoritatively answering many, if not most, of the questions
that we know the early Church wrestled with. But we don't!
A host of issues we know plagued
the early Church are completely unaddressed in the Gospels. Do gentiles
need to be circumcised? What role should charismatic gifts have in the
church? How should congregations be organized? How far is the "liberty"
of the Gospel to be taken, especially by women in Church? What role can
women play in the Church? And what foods can and cannot be eaten by Christians?
Yet we find the Jesus of the Gospels altogether silent on issues such as
these. Which simply tells us that the Jesus of the Gospels wasn't manufactured
to meet the needs of the early Church!
Aramaisms and the Sayings of Jesus
Whereas Jesus and his earliest disciples
spoke in Aramaic, we know that from around 50 A. D. on the church became
predominantly Greek speaking. A very compelling case can be made, however,
that many (if not all) of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels are translations
from an Aramaic original. For example, Jesus' statement that the Pharisees
"strain at a gnat but swallow a camel" (Mt. 23:24) makes much more sense
if it was originally an Aramaic pun, for in Aramaic "gnat" (galma) and
"camel" (glama) sound nearly identical.
This provides yet further confirmation
of the view that the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels derive from the historical
Aramaic speaking person they credit them to, rather than from the creative
imagination of the early Church.
Palestinian Background
Along these same lines, some features
of the Gospel accounts point unmistakably back to a Palestinian environment
which also helps substantiate the case that the Gospels are conveying information
that goes back to the historical Jesus. For example, Jesus' parable about
the farmer sowing seed which falls on rocky, shallow, and good soil, only
makes sense in a Palestinian environment where seed was sowed before the
ground was plowed (Mk. 4:1-8, Lk. 8:5-8). Elsewhere throughout the Roman
empire the practice was to plow the ground first. Such accuracy suggests
that the teachings of Jesus were passed on in their original form, even
in contexts in which the form of his teaching wouldn't have made immediate
sense.
Archeological Accuracy
Yet another category of evidence
that further confirms the reliability of the Gospels concerns archeology.
While there are, predictably, always points of tension between the findings
of archeologists (or the interpretations certain people give to archeological
findings) and the New Testament documents, by and large these findings
have confirmed the reliability of the Gospels.
For example, it used to be frequently
argued by liberal scholars that a town named Nazareth didn't exist at the
time of Jesus. The fact that it was never mentioned in any ancient listings
was enough to prove to them that it was a fabrication. (Why the Gospel
authors would simply make up a town and say Jesus came from there was never
explained). In the last several decades, however, archeologists have uncovered
several references to this small, insignificant town.
Numerous other examples could be
given. Mark's account of people digging a hole in the roof of a house to
lower their crippled friend down to see Jesus (Mk. 2:1-4) fits exactly
with what we've learned about housing construction in first century Capernaum.
They had thrash, not stone, roofs. John's long doubted reference to the
"pool of Bethesda" (Jn. 5:2f) as well as numerous other geographical details
mentioned in the Gospels have similarly been confirmed, as have the Gospels
portrayals of the temple, the details of Pilot's court, Jesus' crown of
thorns and mode of execution. And the list could easily go on.
This sort of accuracy is simply not
what one would expect were the Gospels "imaginative creations" of Christians
who were removed from the time and the locale of Jesus' ministry and who
had little concern for historical truth. It is, however, exactly what one
would expect if the Gospels are what they purport to be: records of what
Jesus Christ said and did.
The Authority of the Gospels
One final series of considerations
increases our confidence in the Gospels still further, and these all surround
the authority which these Gospels immediately possessed in the early Church.
To put the matter succinctly, if the Gospels we possess were simply created
by imaginative anonymous Christians some forty or fifty years after Jesus
lived, as liberal scholars contend, one has to explain why these documents
were so readily believed, and accepted as authoritative, by the early Church.
But this is not easy to do.
From the early second century on
we find Church leaders claiming to "pass down" reliable traditions that
these Gospels were composed by the people whose names they now bear. Indeed,
there are no exceptions in the early Church to these received traditions -- a
point that is utterly inexplicable if, in fact, these documents were written
by anonymous authors. The depth of the early Church's conviction that these
traditions were in fact true, and that the accounts of these Gospels were
in fact true, is attested by the fact that these people were willing to
lay their lives on the line for this belief.
How is this to be explained on the
view that these documents were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?
If ever anyone lived who was in a position to discern the accuracy of this
information, it was these people who lived within fifty years of their
composition and who had leaders (such as Papias) who personally knew some
of the apostles. And if ever anyone would be motivated to discern the accuracy
of this information, it was these people who were at this time often being
put to death for their faith.
So, if someone is going to argue
that this unanimous and intense conviction of the early Church was in fact
mistaken, they are going to have to provide a good deal of evidence to
this effect. They are going to have to explain why and how these supposedly
fabricated documents were immediately accepted as authoritative and received
the inscriptions they received. But this has never adequately been done.
The Jesus of the Gospels IS the 'Real'
Jesus
At the very least, this last point
is enough to argue that the burden of proof should rest on those who want
to argue that the early unanimous Church tradition was wrong in thinking
that these Gospels came from the authors whose names they now bear. And,
at the very least, all of this above cited evidence is enough to argue
that the Gospels deserve the same common courtesy which other ancient documents
generally receive: namely, the courtesy of being trusted until they are
proven wrong.
This, however, is precisely what
the Jesus Seminar participants, and other liberal scholars in the media
today, refuse to grant. Because the Gospels contain a radically unique
Jesus and supernatural material which these scholars rule out of court
at the start, the Gospels are judged to be unreliable unless proven otherwise.
And because its simply implausible to suggest that the real disciples of
Jesus could be responsible for these "imaginative creations," the traditional
authorship of these Gospels is assumed to be incorrect. With such working
assumptions, it is small wonder that these scholars end up concluding that
most of what the Gospels say Jesus said, he didn't say. They virtually
started with just this conclusion!
In reporting such startling conclusions,
however, the media rarely if ever exposes the arbitrary presuppositions
that lie behind them. And for this reason, the radical opinions of these
"experts" (usually just reported as "scholars maintain that ... ") can be
intimidating, and confusing, to the average reader. When you uncover what's
behind these conclusions, however, and when you learn that there are many
other scholars who have many solid reasons for regarding this liberal scholarship
as being fundamentally misguided, the force of this initially impressive
array of "experts" diminishes considerably.
We have, in fact, every reason to
believe that the Jesus of the Gospels is the real Jesus. If one doesn't
rule out this possibility at the start, and simply lets their head follow
the evidence in an objective fashion, one readily concludes this at the
end. When all is said and done, it is not the Jesus of the Gospels that is the result of "creative imaginations": it is, rather, the Jesus of certain liberal scholars who is now filling the pages of popular magazines and newspapers.
Endnotes
- Funk, et. al., The
Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (bib), pp.
4-5. [ Go Back ]
- See my discussions in Cynic Sage or Son of God. [ Go Back ]
- The two most renowned works to appear from this "Scandinavian
School" are H. Riesenfeld's The Gospel Tradition and Its Beginnings:
A Study in the Limits of "Formgeschichte" (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1957)
and B. Gerhardsson's Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written
Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity (Lund: C. W.
K Gleerup, 1961). [ Go Back ]
- W. Schadewaldt, "The Reliability of the Synoptic Tradition,"
in M. Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark, trans. J. Bowden (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1985), p.102. [ Go Back ]
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