INT.Chapter 2. Part 4.docx

Literary Criticism Description. We are using “Literary Criticism” as a catchall designation for contemporary approaches to the gospels that focus on careful study of the way the gospels function as pieces of literature. Of course, both scholars and laypeople have pursued this kind of study of the go...

Literary Criticism Description. We are using “Literary Criticism” as a catchall designation for contemporary approaches to the gospels that focus on careful study of the way the gospels function as pieces of literature. Of course, both scholars and laypeople have pursued this kind of study of the gospels for centuries. But what distinguishes modern literary criticism is a self-conscious turn from the preoccupation with the prehistory of the gospels that dominated gospel studies from 1800–1970 to a concentration on the text “as it is.” Investigations of the prehistory of the Synoptic Gospels such as dominate form and source criticism, it is claimed, have resulted in a “critical distancing of the text” that “has transformed biblical writings into museum pieces without contemporary relevance.” Even redaction criticism falls under criticism, because it is built on traditions analysis and tends to be preoccupied with distilling theology from the narrative. Thus, many gospel scholars no longer bother themselves with the question of sources and forms, or even of author and circumstance of writing. They simply want to discover how the gospels function as autonomous literary texts. Applying insights from the wider world of literary studies, these scholars analyze the narratives of the gospels, seeking to discover how the plot unfolds and how the characters develop. The real meaning of the narrative, indeed, is often seen to lie behind the words of the text, in the “deep structures” that the narrative reveals. “Structuralism,” appropriately, is the name given to the specific methodology that seeks to discover and classify these basic components of human thought and expression.101 Various other related methods and viewpoints, such as deconstruction, rhetorical criticism, discourse analysis, social-science criticism, and ideological criticism are often added to the mix. It should be emphasized that specific approaches within this very broad movement vary widely. As we suggest above, many literary critics are clearly working from a radical postmodern agenda, questioning our ability to discover the “original” meaning of the text and the utility of doing so even if we could. For such critics, the text takes on a life of its own. The meaning it conveys is not tied to its historical origin—whether we think of that origin as located in a community or an author—but to the way it functions as it is read by the modern interpreter. For many literary critics, then, we cannot speak of a true or false meaning of any given gospel text or of the gospel as a whole but only of my meaning and your meaning. Meaning is located, not in an author’s intention, but in the encounter of text and reader. Literary critics studying the gospels in this way mirror the movement in interpretation theory generally from an author-based hermeneutic to a text- or reader-based hermeneutic. But not all literary critics have turned their backs entirely on author and history. Many use modern literary methods as a basic tool to uncover the meaning intended by the authors of the gospels. They share with the more radical literary critics a conviction that tradition criticism is of minimal help in illuminating the meaning of the text. But they view various forms of literary criticism as tools to illuminate the meaning that the evangelists intended their texts to have. Evaluation. Literary criticism is rooted in a valid concern: study of the gospels has too often focused on the history of the tradition behind them to the extent that the gospels themselves become lost to sight. Focus on the text as we now have it is a welcome corrective to this tendency. Literary critics have also shed new light on the way different parts of the gospels function within the larger literary unit. And exegetes can profit from the taxonomies of narrative structures that literary critics use in their interpretations. But we must also point out some severe problems with the way many literary critics pursue their discipline. First, there exists among many literary critics a reaction not only against excessive historical analysis but against history itself. It appears that literary criticism has sought to turn the problem of historical skepticism and uncertainty into a virtue. True, they say, we can know little for certain about Jesus, but by insisting that the truth of the gospels lies within their own “narrative world,” the literary critic can ignore the problem. Yet the problem will not go away so easily, for the evangelists are demonstrably referring to events in the real world. The failure of literary criticism to deal with this means that it can never get to the real heart of the gospels. Second, the casting of the text loose from the author means—as many literary critics teach—that there can be no such thing as a correct meaning of the text. But the evangelists were individuals writing in specific circumstances and to specific audiences; this historical setting, not the individual reader, must set the context for interpretation. Third, the general tendency to derive categories of interpretation from modern literature, such as the novel, is a questionable procedure. Quite apart from the issue of the validity of modern theories of novel interpretation (and there is reason for skepticism), it is doubtful whether the gospels should be compared to the modern novel. Fourth, there are questions about the structuralism used in much literary criticism. These questions have to do with both the existence of the alleged deep structures as well as their usefulness for interpretation. Are we attributing to ancient writers modern structures of thinking and writing? Must all writing fall into such structures? These questions do not apply to all forms of structuralism, but they should make us very cautious about the usefulness of some of the more popular and far-reaching wings of the movement. Again, we want to emphasize that these criticisms apply only to certain kinds of literary criticism. As we mentioned above, many scholars pursue their literary studies of the gospels in combination with careful historical and philological study and with the aim of illuminating more clearly their original meaning. Such a melding of traditional exegesis and literary criticism holds great promise in discerning the message of the narratives through which God has chosen to communicate to us his good news. JESUS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS The two previous questions we have examined—How did the gospels come into being? How are they to be understood as literary works?—are important in their own right, but they become especially significant when we understand their ramifications for the historical issue. Do the gospels tell us a great deal about the early church but almost nothing about Jesus (Bultmann)? Do they tell us mainly about different forms of early Christianity, with Jesus but a shadowy and uncertain figure at its inception (some redaction critics)? Do they introduce us into a narrative world in which Jesus becomes little more than a protagonist in a story (some literary critics)? What do the gospels tell us of Jesus? This is a fundamental question for New Testament studies, and here we answer it only briefly by surveying some of the main approaches and indicating briefly our own position. The Question of the “Historical” Jesus Christians before the eighteenth century entertained few doubts that the gospels were to be read as historically reliable accounts of the life of Jesus. The main problem to be faced was that of harmonization: explaining how the four gospels could be combined together to produce a smooth and coherent account of Jesus’ life. Such attempts date from the earliest days of the church (e.g., Tatian in the second century) and continue to be popular in our own day. But this generally unquestioned confidence in the historical accuracy of the gospels’ portrait of Jesus changed in the eighteenth century under the onslaught of the Enlightenment. A new, critically oriented historiography was less disposed to accept ancient accounts at face value. This attitude applied especially to miracles, which did not fit well into the deistic view of a mechanical and reliable universe. The most famous early attack on the historicity of the gospels was that of Samuel Reimarus. His “Fragments,” published by Lessing in 1774–78 after his death, raised serious doubts about the gospel accounts. Among other things, Reimarus suggested that the resurrection did not occur; instead, the disciples stole the body. Reimarus’s attack on the gospels initiated what has been called the “first quest for the historical Jesus.” Nineteenth-century scholars who pursued this quest often shared the skepticism of Reimarus about the miraculous element in the gospels. H. E. G. Paulus, for example, explained away the resurrection as a revival from a coma in the cold tomb and argued that Jesus’ walking on the water was in reality his walking on a barely submerged sandbar. But a major break with this rationalistic approach came in the groundbreaking Life of Jesus by D. F. Strauss (1835–36). Strauss, while no more accepting of the historicity of the gospels than his rationalistic predecessors, insisted that they taught truth, but truth of a religious and philosophical nature. Much of the gospel material consisted of myths (stories with religious value) that were important witnesses to the “absolute spirit,” a concept taken from the then-popular philosophy of Hegel. Reaction against Strauss and other such extreme skeptics took many forms. One was the Markan hypothesis, which viewed Mark as relatively untheological and therefore a generally reliable basis for a historical Jesus. Such a view fed into the many lives of Jesus, told from a liberal perspective, in which the theological and dogmatic layers of the Greek-influenced early church (and particularly Paul) were stripped off in order to get at the real Jesus: the humble teacher of Nazareth. Three influential works ended the first quest. The most famous was Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus, a chronicle of “lives of Jesus” from Reimarus to his own time (1906). Schweitzer showed how each successive “historical” Jesus was little more than the projection of the writer’s own cultural and philosophical outlook back into the plane of history. Building on the work of Johannes Weiss,107 Schweitzer saw eschatology as the key to understanding Jesus. Jesus proclaimed the impending world-ending entrance of the kingdom of God and died disappointed when it had not come. Two other books written a bit earlier called into question the possibility of a nontheological, untendentious picture of Jesus: Martin Kähler’s The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ and William Wrede’s The Messianic Secret in Mark. Thus, as E. E. Ellis puts it, “The Quest began with the supposition that history could be extracted from the Gospels like a kernel from the husk; it ended with the growing recognition that the process was more like peeling an onion with history and interpretation intermixed at every layer.”110 Rudolf Bultmann kept peeling until there was almost nothing left. His form-critical studies of the gospels convinced him that we could know very little for sure about Jesus himself: the accounts have simply been reinterpreted too thoroughly by the early church. But this did not concern Bultmann, for it is not what we can uncover about Jesus in history that matters for us but what we can experience of Jesus in personal encounter with him here and now. Historical facts cannot prove articles of faith: “Rather, the acknowledgment of Jesus as the one in whom God’s word decisively encounters man, whatever title be given him … is a pure act of faith independent of the answer to the historical question.… Faith, being personal decision, cannot be dependent on a historian’s labor.” Bultmann, using existentialist philosophy as a guide, pursues a program of “demythologization” in which the modern reader penetrates through the myths of the gospels to find real truth. A concern among Bultmann’s own pupils that he had gone too far in casting loose the Christian faith from historical moorings led to the “second quest” for the historical Jesus. These scholars were concerned that Bultmann’s lack of interest in history would leave the church adrift and helpless to make any claims for itself at all. Ernst Käsemann opened this new quest in 1953, and he was followed by several other influential German theologians. Nevertheless, what even the “new questers” decided can be reliably known about Jesus was so small a residue of the whole that little was gained. Study of the historical Jesus has not waned over the years, and the number and variety of approaches defy simple classification. But two rather contrasting movements deserve mention. The first, the Jesus Seminar, continues the generally negative historical judgments that typified both the first and the second “quest.” Members of the Jesus Seminar, which has been in existence since 1985, meet periodically to vote on the authenticity of gospel material. The vote has usually gone against the gospels; only 20 percent of the sayings of Jesus, for instance, have been accepted as possibly authentic. The seminar, by means of an adroit media campaign, has attracted a great deal of attention—far more than its work merits. As several scholars have pointed out, the seminar is not representative of biblical scholarship generally, and its conclusions are driven by unwarranted presuppositions.114 Two of its members have published significant “lives” of Jesus, revealing the general tendency of the Seminar as a whole. While the two differ in many important respects, they agree in presenting a portrait of Jesus, built mainly on Q and the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas, that emphasizes his antiestablishment preaching and ignores or plays down his miracles, atoning death, and resurrection. The second movement we wish to mention has been dubbed the “third quest for the historical Jesus.” Scholars who might be placed under this rubric represent a wide spectrum of specific viewpoints. But they are generally characterized by a serious attempt to place Jesus squarely within the matrix of first-century Judaism and by a relatively positive approach to the historicity of the gospels. It would be impossible to catalog here the variety of interpretations of the life of Jesus that are current in scholarship in our own day; nor have we done more than scratch the historical surface. Indeed, the picture we come away with from so cursory a survey can be seriously misleading, since it focuses on the new and the unusual at the expense of the many fine restatements of a more conservative approach. But at least it enables us to see the extent to which the gospels have come to be considered exceedingly weak reeds for the historian’s labors. Yet such skepticism is not warranted. The evangelists certainly claim to be writing history. True, they write as passionate exponents of a certain interpretation of that history, and they select and arrange their facts accordingly. But as we have seen when discussing redaction criticism, there is no reason to think a person must be a bad historian because he or she is a strong partisan. As Martin Hengel points out, scholars have erred in thinking they had to choose between preaching and historical narration: “In reality the ‘theological’ contribution of the evangelist lies in the fact that he combines both these things inseparably: he preaches by narrating; he writes history and in so doing proclaims.” A truly open-minded approach is to listen sympathetically to the case the evangelists are arguing, trying to enter into their own world to see if it makes sense. We might find that it makes more sense than the worlds we have constructed for ourselves.119 The Possibility of a Historical Outline We have made no attempt here to prove a position with respect to the historicity of the gospels. But if we may grant that others have provided, not a proven position (there is no such thing as proof, in an absolute sense, in such matters), but nonetheless solid grounds for accepting the gospels as historically reliable, what kind of information about Jesus can we expect to find in them? Is it possible to reconstruct a historically coherent “life of Jesus”? Some deny the validity of any such attempt. Brevard Childs, for instance, insists that the “canonical shape” of the fourfold gospel should be respected. He faults traditional harmonies for seeking the meaning of the gospels in a historical construct that disregards this canonical shape.121 While Childs is right to insist that meaning is to be found in the texts as we have them rather than in some necessarily hypothetical pasting together of all four accounts, he is wrong to deny all significance to harmonies. For the truth of what the evangelists are saying is inevitably tied to the historical reality of what they narrate. The attempt to put together that historical reality—the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth—is both necessary and significant. But is it really possible? A major barrier to the enterprise has always been the many places in which the gospels appear to contradict themselves over historical details. The most troublesome texts have been the subject of many harmonizing interpretations, ranging from the ridiculous to the convincing. Our whole approach to this matter will depend greatly on what we think of the evangelists’ accuracy generally. The more we are impressed by their accuracy—as the authors of this volume are—the further we will search for satisfactory explanations. Nevertheless, there are some places where fully satisfactory answers simply are not available. In such cases, it is better, as Luther put it, just to let it alone than to force unlikely meanings on the text. These difficulties must not obscure the fact that the Synoptic Gospels exhibit a high degree of coherence about the general course of Jesus’ ministry as well as about many of the incidents within that ministry. Some of the greatest divergences do not suggest contradictions so much as accounts that have little in common with one another (such as the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke). Coherence at the historical level in such situations is relatively easy to attain. Nevertheless, a fully satisfactory historical harmony of Jesus’ life is impossible. It was simply not the evangelists’ intention to provide us with the kind of data we would need for such an enterprise. They give few exact chronological indicators, and those we do have (general phrases such as “after these things,” “when,” and Mark’s “immediately”) are often too general to be of real use to the historian. The evangelists narrate historical facts, but they so select, arrange, and present these facts that little information of the kind needed to piece together a detailed life of Jesus is available. The generally similar chronological sequence in the Synoptic Gospels is not always matched by agreement on individual episodes. In such cases, it is not a matter of chronological error, but of chronological indifference. The evangelists, and sometimes the sources they use, arrange their material topically at times, often making it impossible for us to know when in the ministry of Jesus a particular incident occurred. An example is the series of controversy stories that Mark narrates in 2:1–3:6. That Mark or his source has grouped these stories together because of their similarity in subject matter (Jesus in controversy with Jews) seems likely, particularly when we note that none of the episodes is given a specific chronological relation to any other. When, then, did Jesus heal the man’s hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1–6)? Early in the ministry, as we might conclude if Mark’s placement was chronological? Or later on, as the placement of the incident in Matthew might suggest (see 12:9–14)? We might venture some guesses, but we cannot know for sure: the evangelists simply have not given us enough information. The fact, then, that a detailed life of Jesus cannot be reconstructed on the basis of the Synoptic Gospels in no way discredits the gospels as accurate historical sources. They should be judged for what they do tell us, not for what they do not tell us. Gospel Chronology The task of setting the events of the gospels against the background of secular history is made easy by the references to well-known historical personages such as Herod the Great (Matt. 2), Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1), Herod Antipas (Luke 23:6–12), and Pontius Pilate (Matt. 27). With such indicators, we can situate the gospels generally within the history of first-century Palestine and the wider Roman Empire. But can we be any more exact? Several key incidents may yield more exact chronological data. Jesus’ Birth. Three data have been used to date Jesus’ birth: the involvement of Herod the Great (Matt. 2); the decree of Caesar Augustus, issued when “Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:1–2); and the appearance of the “star of Bethlehem” (Matt. 2:1–12). Herod the Great is undoubtedly the “king” of Matthew 2. It is almost certain that Herod died in late March or early April of 4 B.C. Jesus must therefore have been born before 4 B.C.—but probably not much before, since Herod slays children only two years old and younger (2:16). Augustus ruled the Roman Empire from 31 B.C. to A.D. 14. Unfortunately, the census to which Luke refers cannot be identified from secular sources. Josephus refers to a local census that took place in A.D. 6, and some think that Luke has confused the census that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem with this one. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that the only reference to Quirinius in ancient sources places him in office in the years A.D. 6–8. But it is unlikely that Luke, proven so accurate in historical and geographic details in Acts, would have made so serious a blunder. We may surmise that Quirinius had held an earlier post in Syria, or that Luke 2:2 should not be translated “this was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria” (TNIV), but “this census was before the census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.”125 In any case, the census does not help us date the birth of Jesus. Nor does the appearance of the star give us much help. Several identifications of the star with known astronomical phenomena have been proposed—a comet reported in 5 B.C. or a conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars in 7–6 B.C.—but none is certain. Moreover, in light of Matthew’s statement that the star “went ahead of [the magi] until it stopped over the place where the child was” (2:9), it is perhaps unlikely that the star can be identified with any natural astronomical phenomenon. All things considered, then, we can only estimate that Jesus must have been born sometime during 6–4 B.C. The Beginning of Jesus’ Ministry. According to Luke 3:1, Jesus began his public ministry “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar.” Here, we might think, is an indication that should yield an exact date. But the matter is not so simple. Tiberius became emperor after the death of Augustus in August of A.D. 14. If this is when Luke begins his fifteen years, then the date of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry would be either 28 or 29. But Tiberius began a coregency with Augustus in A.D. 11/12. Counting from this date would place the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in 25/26 or 26/27.127 However, while we cannot be certain, the former way of reckoning the beginning of Tiberius’s reign is the most natural, and it is therefore likely that Luke dates the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in either 28 or 29. With any of these dates, justice is done to Luke’s approximation that Jesus was “about thirty years old” at the beginning of his ministry (3:23). The Length of Jesus’ Ministry. The synoptic evangelists provide little information that can be used to determine the length of the ministry. It has been proposed that the events in the Synoptics could be packed into less than a year, but this compresses events too much. Moreover, Mark indicates that at the time of the feeding of the five thousand, the grass was green (6:39), which points to the Palestinian springtime. Yet since Jesus was crucified in the spring, Mark’s gospel suggests a ministry of at least a year’s duration. John supplies us with more information. He mentions the Passover three times in his narration of Jesus’ ministry: at the time of the cleansing of the temple (2:13), at the time of the feeding of the five thousand (6:4), and at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion (11:55). He also mentions a “feast” in 5:1 that may have been, although probably was not, a Passover. If the three Passovers that John mentions were distinct in time, then John’s gospel requires a ministry of at least two years. The Death of Jesus. On the basis of the previous two considerations, Jesus’ death must have occurred in A.D. 30 or later. Two lines of evidence have been used to determine the precise year: astronomical/calendrical and historical. We know that Jesus was crucified on Friday (“the Preparation Day” [Mark 15:42 par.]) in the Jewish month of Nisan. The beginning of that month was fixed at the time when the new moon was sighted. Thus, if we knew the date of the crucifixion, we could use astronomical calculations to determine the years during which that date would have fallen on a Friday. Unfortunately, the date of Jesus’ death continues to be a matter of considerable debate, Nisan 14 and 15 being the main possibilities. The uncertainty arises from apparently conflicting data from the Synoptic Gospels and from John. The Synoptics appear to make the Last Supper a Passover meal (see, e.g., Mark 14:12), making Friday Nisan 15. But on one reading of the fourth gospel, John implies that the Passover meal had not yet been eaten at the time of Jesus’ trial (18:28), which suggests that the day of Jesus’ death was Nisan 14. Numerous harmonization attempts have been offered, the two most likely being that the synoptic evangelists and John were utilizing different calendars in use in first-century Palestine, or that John in 18:28 does not really intend to suggest that the official Passover meal was still to be eaten. In any case, we must remain uncertain about the day of the month on which Jesus died. Nisan 14 probably occurred on a Friday in A.D. 30,132 and almost certainly did in 33; Nisan 15 may have occurred on a Friday in A.D. 30, and possibly also in 31. However, since the calculation of the beginning of Nisan depended on human observation, with many possibilities for uncertainty, we must not depend too strongly on the results. Nevertheless, the two most likely candidates are Nisan 14 (= April 3), A.D. 33, and Nisan 14 or 15 (= April 6 or 7), A.D. 30. The historical argument estimates the time at which it was most likely that Pilate, the Roman governor in Palestine, would have caved in to the pressure exerted on him by the Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus’ trial. Hoehner, for instance, has argued that Pilate’s desire to accommodate the Jewish leaders is credible only after A.D. 31, in October of which year the anti-Semitic Sejanus, ruler of the empire in fact under Tiberius, was executed. Combined with the astronomical argument, this narrows the possibilities down to one year: A.D. 33. But it may be doubted whether this set of circumstances is needed to explain Pilate’s behavior, for the Roman administration, whoever was in charge, was concerned to maintain stability in the provinces, and Pilate had already given some indication of failure at this point. Quite apart from this argument, however, some scholars think that the astronomical data are more favorable to the A.D. 33 date. In contrast, the year 33 is virtually ruled out if Jesus was crucified on Nisan 15, as the synoptic evangelists appear to suggest. Moreover, a crucifixion as late as A.D. 33 might fail to leave enough time between the death of Jesus and Paul’s conversion (see chap. 7). The various data do not, then, allow us at this time to decide the matter with certainty. But the A.D. 30 date is slightly preferable.