Synoptic Gospels

The Words of Jesus and Skepticism

AuthenticityOne of the commonly cited reasons for suspending judgment on the words of Jesus is that studies seeking to authenticate the words of Jesus tend to be concerned only with methods for authenticating the words and less interested in what is actually said in the Gospels. These types of studies fall into three categories. Some reject virtually everything the gospels report as words of Jesus.  The classic example of this historical skepticism is R. Bultmann, who famously said that we can know little more than the fact that Jesus lived and died. His “Jesus of History” and “Christ of Faith” dichotomy is not particularly helpful and yields very little in the way of historical insight. Others accept the words of Jesus as presented in the gospels with no attempt to sort out the voice of the Gospel writer from the voice of Jesus. This is problematic for the simple reason that we do not have the words of Jesus at all. He taught in Aramaic, we read the remembrance of those words recorded in Greek many years after they were first spoken.

Most scholars who work in the field of Historical Jesus research attempt to find a place between these two extremes.  This approach to the words of Jesus would use the tools of the scholarship to weigh sayings of Jesus less skeptically than the first group, but also less naively than the second. While it is obvious that we do not have the actual words of Jesus, we have access to the “voice of Jesus” as reported by the evangelists. In this view, various criteria of authenticity are favored over others, producing differing results. As is typically the case for middle positions, the skeptics find this approach to be inadequate (or worse, faith–based) and the conservative finds them too restrictive (or worse, liberal).

This is not to say that I am skeptical of the sayings of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. On the contrary, I am convinced that the Synoptic Gospels accurately record the “voice of Jesus.” The work of N. T. Wright, for example, attempts to read Jesus within the story of the Jewish people and treats the words of Jesus within that narrative world.  Similarly, J. D. G. Dunn argues that the synoptic traditions were shaped by an oral tradition repeatedly performed by disciples interested in what Jesus actually said or did.

Is it even necessary to argue for the authenticity of the Words of Jesus? What (if anything) is the benefit of using the criteria of authenticity when we study Jesus?

 

Bibliography: Excerpted from Jesus the Bridegroom (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2013).

The Words of Jesus and the Criteria of Authenticity

jesus-say-bulletin-graphic-01Mark Strauss does an excellent job describing and assessing the so-called “criteria of authenticity” used to evaluate the sayings of Jesus (Four Portraits, 359-62).  I have expanded this list a bit using volume 1 of John Meier’s The Marginal Jew.  The use of criteria for determining the authenticity of Jesus’ sayings are part of an inductive argument which can only lead to the likelihood that a given saying goes back to Jesus.  If multiple criterion imply that a saying is authentic, that increases confidence in that saying.

  • Dissimilarity (Discontinuity in Meier, 1: 171-174, also known as originality, or dual irreducibility). If a saying is unlike anything found in Judaism or the early church, then it is more likely to be correct.   But there is a serious problem here:  How can a historical Jesus be divorced from Judaism, the religion of the Hebrew Bible and the first century Palestine in which he ministered? Why Jesus reflect a culture different from Judaism if he was a Jew?
  • Multiple Attestation. This assumes at least a two source hypothesis,  If a saying is in Mark and Q, then it is more likely to be authentic.  If a saying appears in Mark, Q, and Gospel of Thomas, etc, this “triple attestation” that is more likely to be original.  On the surface, this seems reasonable although it assumes several things about source criticism.  However, it is not applied consistently by some scholars. For example, Mark 10:45 appears in multiple layers of tradition (as defined by the Jesus Seminar), et the saying is dismissed as a creation of the church.
  • Coherence (Meier, 1:176-177, also known as conformity, or consistency). The criterion of coherence states that whatever statements of Jesus that are supported generally by the other criteria are more likely to be authentic. This assumes that one has been able to isolate some authentic material using the other criteria and have established a database for dealing with other sayings.  This is not unlike the Jewish method of judging a prophet – the Torah was the database by which prophetic books were evaluated.  If they contradicted the Torah, they could not be authentic.
  • Embarrassment (Meier, Marginal Jew 1:168-171, also known as contradiction). The pericope is not the sort of thing that the early church would have gone out of their way to create. If one were imagining a community of believers creating stories about Jesus, it follows that they would suppress stories that were embarrassing or difficult to fit into the developing Christology of the church.  Meier uses the example of the baptism.  Jesus (the sinless son of God) presents himself to John the Baptist, a sinful mortal, in order to be baptized, even though John’s baptism was announced as for repentance and the forgiveness of sins.  Mark 1:4-11 has Jesus simply presenting himself for baptism, Matthew 3:13-17 has Jesus explain to John why baptism is necessary, Luke 3:19-22 places the arrest of John before the baptism story (as a flashback) so that the reader does not immediately connect John with the actual baptism.  By the time John writes, there is no actual baptism, only the witness of the Spirit to the identity of Jesus.
  • Rejection and Execution (Meier, 1:177). This element is quite different than the others.  It assumes that Jesus was in fact arrested by the Jews and tried for something, and executed by the Romans.  What might he have taught and done that would have led to that level of punishment?  If he was a teacher of parables and short witty aphorisms, then he is unlikely to get himself crucified.
  • Semitic Flavor. Strauss includes although it was not really one of the Jesus Seminar’s original criteria. If a saying or action of Jesus has a “pronounced Jewish or Palestinian flavor, it is more likely to be authentic” (361). His example is the use of the Aramaic word abba in Mark 14:36. The assumption is that Jesus spoke as a Palestinian Jew and (presumably) later writers would be unfamiliar with a Semitic context. This criterion may not be helpful if the writer is Jewish; Matthew could create Jewish things for Jesus to say, for example.
  • Divergent Traditions. Occasionally authors preserve traditions which do not serve their purposes. In Matt 10:5-6 Jesus tells his disciples to not go to the Gentiles, yet in Matt 28:16-20 he tells them to go to all the nations. As Strauss points out, this criterion is difficult to use since we may not understand the purpose of the Gospel writer. In the example given, it is possible the situation during Jesus’ ministry was different than after the resurrection.

In the end, do these tests achieve anything? It has become standard among conservative to state that the use of the Criteria tells us very little about Jesus and then dismiss them out of hand.  But I like how Blomberg concludes his discussion of the criteria: these arguments build on faith evidence with does actually exist (Jesus and the Gospels, 221).

I would unpack this statement in two directions.  If one already has faith that the Gospels accurately record Jesus’ words, then the criteria of authenticity provide evidence in favor of that faith.  We can be assured that we have accurate accounts of the sorts of things Jesus actually said.  On the other hand, if one assumes Jesus did not say certain things (Son of Man, eschatology, etc.), then the criteria will prove that assumption, Jesus could not have said the things the Gospels claim.

In the end, these tests are still matters of faith, and pretending that they are objective is a sham.

The Words of Jesus

redletterIn the first century most information was not recorded, it was reported orally. Jesus taught orally, the disciples listened, remembered, and eventually wrote down what he said. The problem is obvious, how do we know if the disciples accurately recorded the words of Jesus many years after they were spoken? In Luke 6:20, Jesus says “blessed are the poor,” but in Matthew 5:3, he says “blessed are the poor in spirit.”

Two issues are involved. First, should we argue for the “exact words” of Jesus in the first place? Jesus spoke Aramaic, we are reading a translation of a Greek text. For this reason alone we ought to dispense with the pious assumption the “red letters” are exactly what Jesus spoke, but are the accurate recollections of what he spoke. Second, if we think we can we determine whether the words of Jesus are in fact accurate reflections of what he taught, what evidence could we give to support this assertion?

Essentially, there are three options for the Words of Jesus.

  1. The gospels are the exact words of Jesus. In the modern world, we expect newspapers to record exactly what someone says. If not, the person quoted will likely complain that they were mis-quoted. In fact, the presence of quote marks is an indication in the modern world that the words between the quote are the exact words that were said.
  2. The word of Jesus in the gospels are fabrications of the early church. The early believers created sayings for Jesus to meet needs in their own communities. The sayings that were created usually are the claims that Jesus makes to be the Messiah or to be God. The gospel writers are using “creative license” to make Jesus claim the things that the church came to believe about him. This is the position of the Jesus Seminar scholars.
  3. The words of Jesus accurately reflect the things that Jesus said, but likely not the exact words in every case. The gospel writers accurately give the gist of the teachings of Jesus. This position understands that in the oral period there were possible adaptations and changes made to the sayings of Jesus, but that the changes were not as radical as the second position states. In fact, the proof that the gospel writers did not create sayings is found in Luke 1:1-4 – Luke bases his gospel on the reports and teachings of eyewitnesses to the events.

Scholars usually uses the phrases Ipsissima Vox and Ipsissima Verba to describe the words of Jesus.  Vox is the “very voice” of Jesus, while verba refers to the “very words” of Jesus. The gospels record the voice of Jesus rather than his exact words. Why is this so? Jesus likely taught in Aramaic, the common language of the first century Jew. When addressing a crowd of Jews in a synagogue, Aramaic would have been the only language he could have used. The text of the New Testament is in Greek, implying that the words of Jesus have been translated from their Jewish/Aramaic context into the Greek language.

Jesus is said to have spoken for hours to attentive audiences (Mark 6:34-36) The longest speeches in the Gospels would only take a few minute to read (Sermon on the Mount and the Olivet Discourse, for example). The writers are clearly giving us the teaching of Jesus in a summary fashion. It is very likely that Jesus taught very similar things in different places. Many in the crowds would not have traveled with him, the theme of the Kingdom of God and the ethical demands of the Kingdom would be repeated in many different settings in similar, although different ways. Which set of sayings does Matthew record?

The best solution is that Matthew arranged the sayings of Jesus thematically, for theological reasons. Luke did the same, although his strategy for arranging the Sermon on the Mount differs from Matthew. We are not reading a verbatim 15 minute slice of a long sermon from Jesus, but the sorts of things he often said, so often his followers remembered and repeated the sayings in various contexts.

Does the distinction between  Ipsissima Vox and Ipsissima Verba help with other problems in the Gospels, such as the Synoptic Problem, or the oral period between the events of Jesus’ life and the writing of the Gospels?

Albert Schweitzer’s Quest

Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus is in many ways one of the most important books of the twentieth century, although my guess is that few people would care to read it today. Perhaps because of the popularity of N. T. Wright, Schweitzer as a Historical Jesus scholar has seen something of a renaissance in recent years. Despite the overly-dramatic connotations, describing a search for the historical Jesus as a “Quest” has passed into common use in NT studies.

SchweitzerSchweitzer wrote his book as a critique of the “Lives of Jesus” movement in Germany. He surveys virtually every possible “life” that was written beginning with Remarius and subjects them to scathing criticism. For most contemporary readers, Quest for the Historical Jesus is the only way to read (in summary) the work of such German Protestants as Karl Bahrdt, who argued that Joseph of Arimetha and Nicodemus were Essenes. The Essenes were a shadowy “secret society” which took care of Jesus from childhood, taking him to Babylon from Egypt, where he was trained in medical skills and given a special “eye-cure” which he used to pretend to do miracles. The real problem is that Bahrdt lived nearly 100 years before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, so he had little idea what the Essenes were.

Schweitzer argued the “Lives of Jesus” writers ignored the apocalyptic elements of Jesus’ teaching. They assumed a priori that Jesus was not interested in making apocalyptic statements, therefore these are dismissed out of hand. Against nearly the entire body of scholarship of the nineteenth century, Schweitzer argued that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who announced the end of the world was coming soon. This is perfectly acceptable if we understand the Jewish apocalyptic texts of the second temple period, which all seemed to look forward to the Messiah and his reign in the world. Of course, for Schweitzer, Jesus was a failed messianic prophet. He arrived at Jerusalem expecting the Kingdom to come and when it did not, he “threw himself on the wheels of history” and was crucified.

That Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet is essentially N. T. Wright’s view, except Wright defines apocalyptic better than Schweitzer and Wright does not see Jesus as a “failed prophet.” The death and resurrection is the ultimate vindication of Jesus as the Messiah. In fact, Schweitzer’s description of Jesus is not unlike my own approach. Jesus must be understood against the background of Second Temple Period Judaism, which certainly had apocalyptic and messianic elements.

Did Schweitzer succeed? In the years following the publication of The Quest, it is possible to say that he had little or no influence on the course of scholarship. In fact, post-World War scholarship drifted even further into skepticism with Rudolf Bultmann. Schweitzer’s real influence was on a generation of scholars who had at their disposal the Dead Sea Scrolls and wider range of Jewish literature of the Second Temple Period.  As this material became widely available, there was more evidence that Jesus could be accurately described as an apocalyptic prophet.

Is it possible Schweitzer has more influence on contemporary “quests” for Jesus than most realize? Stanley Porter argued the much-debated Criterion of Authenticity are present in Schweitzer’s work and that the original Quest has “had a far more constructive impact than most have realized.” (Porter, “A Dead End or New Beginning?” page 34 in Jesus Research). I think Porter is correct; with the exception of N. T. Wright, few NT scholars recognize their debt to Schweitzer.

 

What is Redaction Criticism?

“…it is now generally recognized that the Evangelists were not merely ‘scissors and paste men.’ On the contrary, the ‘scissors’ were manipulated by a theological had and the ‘paste’ was impregnated with a particular theology.” Robert Stein, Robert Stein, Gospels and Tradition: Studies on Redaction Criticism of the Synoptic Gospels (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1991), 22.

While Redaction Criticism describes the original Sitz im Leben (life setting) of a saying in the life of Jesus, it is more concerned with the life-setting of the Gospel writer. Redaction criticism reads the gospels in two different directions. Assuming that Matthew and Luke used Mark, why does Matthew present a pericope in one way, Luke in another?  What is Matthew’s unique theological point of view? A redaction critic reads horizontally, comparing two or three identical stories or sayings in order to examine the differences between the gospel writers. They also read vertically within the one Gospel in order to discover that writer’s themes and theological priorities. Rather than focus on the community that “created” the stories, Redaction critics recognize that authors created the gospels as we read them from sources.

Cut and Paste Bible

Redaction Criticism makes some assumptions that may compromise the whole system. First,  Redaction Criticism must assume literary dependence, virtually always Markan Priority, the existence of Q, etc.  If these assumptions are false, then questions like “how did Matthew use Mark” are meaningless.

Second, since the assumption of Markan priority is a given in Redaction criticism, the question of Mark’s sources is almost impossible to answer. It is impossible to “do redaction criticism” on Mark, since we do not have enough data to examine.

Third, and most problematic, Redaction Criticism spends more time explaining parallels and non-parallels, and less time explaining what the text actually says. A commentary on Matthew that only seeks to explain Matthew’s redactional method may not be particularly interesting to someone wanting to know what Jesus said!

A simple yet controversial example is the Sermon on the Mount.  Most scholars now agree that the material in Matthew 5-7 comes from a sayings source (Q), and that Matthew created the “sermon” by thematically linking the teachings of Jesus, beginning with “he began to teach” and ending with “they were all amazed.”

A redaction critic might say that the Sermon on the Mount itself never really took place a historical event. An evangelical version of Redaction criticism might say Jesus’ words are authentic and Jesus often taught like this, but setting is contrived by Matthew. The Gospel writer has created a section of the teaching of Jesus (in contrast to the next two chapters, the miracles of Jesus, which end in a similar pronouncement). The other of the five discourses in Matthew (chap. 10, 13, 18, 24-25) were “constructed” in a similar way. Jesus really said these things but in various other contexts and not necessarily on a single occasion as present by the Editor Matthew.

The value in redaction criticism is in the horizontal reading – If Matthew used Mark, why did he re-state the text in the way that he did?  Why did Luke move the event / saying to another location in the life of Jesus?  The value of the themes and motifs that the writers work is enormous, giving a real insight into the meaning of a given text. Or is it possible any “real insight” into the Gospel writer’s method is imaginary, based on the reader’s presuppositions?