Nonconformist Chronicles

Ready for Relaunch

I began this blog in 2006 with the original intent of posting at least weekly for the purposes of expanding my teaching ministry and learning from others who cared to exchange comments and ideas. The first year was very encouraging with many well received posts and a couple of fairly popular series. I've made some good friends through this endeavor, some of whom I've since met in person or spoken with by phone.   

The last couple of years have seen a decrease in my posts and in my readership. I've been removed from the sidebar of several bloggers, others admit to rarely or no longer checking in, and the number of hits and comments have slacked off considerably. My own lack of commitment can be blamed for this. So I've thought about giving up blogging altogether. In the near future I'll share some highlights (and low-lights) of the past two years that have kept me from the blog.  

But the random thoughts that I'd like to bounce off you are becoming more frequent again and I'm thinking my writer's block might be over. So today I intend to relaunch myself into the blogosphere. In celebration of this relaunch I've thought about redesigning the blog, kind of like when TV shows replace the theme song for a new season. But honestly, I like how the blog looks now. Blue is such a calming color and so easy on the eyes.

But I still want to do some things differently that might improve this blog. More frequent posts for sure. Possibly shorter posts. Maybe more of a balance between the popular level and more scholarly types of posts as opposed to getting bogged down in a long series on one theme for several months.

I don't blame those who might have given up on this blog, but I do appreciate those who've hung around: Lisa, Preacherman, Bobby, Frank, and others. Thank You! I have a variety of ideas in mind for the near future. I would love to hear any suggestions you might have for future posts. 

(Photo credit: NASA)

What About the Resurrection?, Part Two

I know I promised to post the second part of my thoughts on the resurrection soon, but life and work just tend to get in the way. Sorry. I'm not altogether sure who all is reading this anyway, but since this blog is a good place to organize my thoughts and get at least a bit of feedback, I suppose I will continue. So where were we? Oh, yes. The resurrection.

Was the resurrection of Jesus a literal, historical event, or something else entirely? My previous post suggested that Matthew argued specifically for a literal, historical, and bodily resurrection of Jesus. Matthew contended that the body of Jesus had not been stolen as some had reported. So in reckoning with the empty tomb, my previousus post concluded by asking, "What happend to the body of Jesus?" 

Were the earliest Christians perpetuating a hoax when they preached the resurrection? If so, why would they have been willing to die for their belief in that event? Why would they, at risk of injury or death, continue to acknowledge Jesus as living Lord? The topic of the apostolic speeches and sermons in Acts is consistently the death and resurrection of Jesus (Acts 2:23-39; 3:13-15; 10:39-40; 13:27-31; 17:2-3; 17:31-32; 23:6; 26:22-23). The goal of Christian preaching was to impart faith in Jesus by proclaiming his resurrection from the dead. 

I've granted that the Scriptures were written to pre-modern audiences and at times communicated theological truth without overturning some pre-modern assumptions that can no longer be taken literally. But in the case of Matthew's resurrection narrative and the speeches in Acts, the very point of these texts is the assertion that the resurrection happened and that this makes all the difference. 

The question "What does this mean?" does not always render the question "Did this really happen?" superfluous. In the case of the above texts the very meaning depends upon whether the resurrection really happened. 

Since I've been looking at Spong's work, what does he say about the resurrection? He does not believe that it was a literal historical event. He follows Crossan who speculates that the church created comforting legends regarding the decent burial of Jesus, whose body likely (according to these authors) met the fate of most crucified men, thrown into a shallow grave and devoured by wild dogs. 

So while neither the burial nor the resurrection was literal (according to these authors) some kind of turning point experience occurred which emboldened the followers of Jesus to go out and boldly proclaim him to the world. Spong identifies this experience as "Easter" but admits ignorance in identifying the particulars of this event. He does contend that it was not a bodily resurrection, but perhaps some kind of heavenly vision.

Whatever Easter was, it was a major turning point at which the earliest disciples were "able to stare into the reality of God" which now included Jesus as a part of that reality (Spong, 302). The resurrection narratives were simply the only way that the early church could narrate the God-presence that they continued to experience in Jesus and their conviction that death could not contain him.   

Crossan suggests that the disciples might have seen an apparition of some sort. So what does this mean? Were the disciples hallucinating? Were the apparitions the wishful thinking of their wild imaginations?

For authors like Spong and Crossan, the resurrection might have been taken literally by pre-moderns, but honest thinkers living on this side of modernity simply cannot bring themselves to embrace with their hearts what their minds will inevitably reject. So it's argued that in this scientific age, the literalness of the resurrection must be jettisoned in order to make room for the rational thinkers who cannot force themselves to believe it. Spong argues that unless we can save the gospel from literal distortions that it will surely die.    

The fallacy of this conclusion is that the real divide is not between pre-modern and post-modern. Even many pre-moderns to whom the apostles preached had difficulty believing the resurrection. But we never find the apostles making the gospel more palatable for unbelievers. They never changed their preaching to accommodate those who had trouble with it. The account of a man rising from the dead has never been met with total acceptance by any generation. But whether we believe it remains the dividing line between faith and unbelief.  

What About the Resurrection?, Part One

I have recently posed the question, Can We Take the Bible Literally? There are undoubtedly many texts that aren't meant to be taken literally. The Scriptures, at times, employ poetic license, allegory, apocalyptic, parable, and other non-literal forms and genres. So I don't believe every text is to be taken literally.  

Nor do I think it's always necessary to force the pre-modern biblical texts into a scientific mold as if they were written to either demonize or to be harmonized with modern theories or discoveries. Modern science wasn't even on the biblical authors' radar screens. 

While God knows all the secrets of the universe, I doubt that he revealed them to these authors who originally addressed pre-moderns. The biblical authors wrote within the framework of pre-scientific understandings, sometimes reflected in the Scriptures themselves, which does not make the biblical theology any less true.

I believe that God took the biblical authors where they were, not revealing everything to them, but just what was pertinent to human redemption. If it were proved to me beyond the shadow of a doubt (which it has not been) that creation did not take place in six literal days, or that the Book of Jonah is a parable, or that the "demons" Jesus cast out were actually diseases, this would not shake my faith in the least. But are some texts intended to be taken literally as objectively and historically true? Does the theological truth of some texts depend upon the literalness of historical events described therein?

I think a case in point would be the resurrection narratives in Matthew's Gospel. Matthew clearly argues for a historical, literal, and bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Matthew dispels the rumor that disciples stole the body of Jesus. The tomb was well-guarded and well-secured (Matthew 27:62-66).

The rumor of the stolen body began with guards who claimed to have been asleep at the time of the alleged grave robbery (Matthew 28:11-15). As Rubel Shelly asked in his book, Prepare to Answer: A Defense of the Christian Faith, what court would accept the testimony of those who claim to have been asleep during the incident in question? Moreover, Shelly contends that had the disciples stolen the body, both religious and Roman officials had both the means and the motive to produce the body. They could "examine every piece of evidence" and "interrogate every witness" (p. 205). 

We must reckon with the empty tomb when pondering the claims of the Christian faith. What did happen to the body of Jesus?  

More later---soon---I promise.                   

Can We Take the Bible Literally?

Can a person, in all intellectual honesty, believe that the events of the Bible are literally true? Was the world created in six literal days, did the Red Sea literally turn to blood, and was Jesus bodily raised from the dead? Retired Bishop John Shelby Spong says "no" to all of the above. He cites the "intellectual revolution" from Copernicus to Einstein as having made it impossible for educated people to view the Bible as literally true.

Spong argues that the biblical miracles cannot be true since Newton showed that the universe operates according to fixed natural laws. Moreover, Darwin surely disproved that humans are a special creation made in God's image. According to Spong, "there has never been a human perfection from which we have fallen away. There has been rather only the evolution of higher consciousness..." (Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes ). Spong further maintains that Einstein has "demonstrated the relativity of all articulated truth." 

The biblical narratives, written within a pre-modern framework, can simply not be taken literally by the intellectually honest post-modern thinker. Yet Spong refers to himself as a Christian and to Jesus as his Lord. Spong hopes for a time in which the church will not consider literal understandings of Scripture to be the litmus test of orthodoxy. He envisions a church in which those who cannot intellectually force themselves to believe in a bodily resurrection of Jesus can still be embraced as Christians. He puts himself in this category, also rejecting such foundational doctrines as the virgin birth and the ascension.  

It sounds to me as if Spong is saying that we have simply outgrown a literal reading of the "myths and legends" of Scripture. We have become too sophisticated to believe all that and any thinking person who does has intellectually compromised. At least that's how I understand Spong. 

I have agreed with much of what Spong says in his book which has been the launching pad for my last several posts. He certainly caused me to think. I cannot overemphasize the book's significance for articulating the New Testament's use of the Old. I've been trying to communicate much of this to the church for years and I now have the means to do so even more adequately.  

But I disagree when Spong asserts that the Gospel authors did not intend their works to be taken literally. He surely overstates the case when he says that "Jewish people did not relate to sacred history as if it were an objective description of reality." Even if we grant that to be occasionally true, it seems that for Spong "Jewish" consistently equals "non-literal." I think it's a stretch to imply that Jewish authors of antiquity were never concerned about literal history or objective reality. 

Spong is correct in that reading the Scriptures through a Jewish lens will open up a whole new world for us. But I'm not convinced that reading the Bible through a Jewish lens will always imply a non-literal reading. Spong attempts to form too solid a link between the Jewishness of a work and its "supposed" non-literal intent.   

While I know that Spong is a champion of human rights and rails against Anti-Semitism, some of his arguments about what makes a book Jewish are almost reminiscent of some of the original motive behind the Documentary Hypothesis. German theologians dissected Jewish Scriptures, assigning the Pentateuch to various authors, believing the Semitic mind to be too irrational to recognize all the "contradictions." Spong, likewise, has not painted the Jews of antiquity in a very rational light. But in all fairness, I'm sure he meant to show that what a modern Westerner considers "rational" would not even occur to an ancient Jew. While this is true to an extent, I don't think it's true to the extent Spong believes.     

Spong believes that thinking Christians must work to deliver the gospel from "literal distortions" or else it will die. But does the gospel really need us to save it? And is there really a gospel if there is no bodily resurrection of Jesus? What does it mean to believe in the resurrection?

What if someone in our church family decides to stop taking the resurrection literally? Do we excommunicate them or do we say, "Well, that's okay. We admire your intellectual honesty. So just stay on board and help the rest of us make the world a better place"? What do you think?

More on the resurrection in my next post.              

The All-Important Question: What Does this Mean?

My previous post related John Shelby Spong's view that the all important question in biblical interpretation is not "Did this really happen?" but "What does this mean?" I agreed to the extent that we Westerners have indeed failed to discern truth in myth, legend, intuition, and poetry. We have rather tended to feel that only that which is literal and objective can be true. So we've spent inordinate amounts of time and spilled tons of ink trying to prove that the Bible is scientifically precise, historically literal, and nowhere contradictory. We have tried to force pre-modern works into a modern mold. 

In terms of the pre-modern and non-literal, some would argue that the creation narrative in Genesis is neither historically literal, nor scientifically plausible. It is rather a poetic prose, true in the sense that it affirms God as the source of all that is good. The description of humanity's failure is also theologically accurate. It's a situation which has consistently repeated itself down through the ages as human beings have sought complete autonomy for selfish ends, resulting in disastrous consequences. 

So perhaps the important question in the creation accounts is not so much whether everything came into being in six literal days, whether a snake really talked, or whether digesting forbidden fruit exposed nudity. But what the narrative means is the all important question. Will we seek to live autonomously with delusions of godhood or will we submit ourselves to living under God's Word which speaks new creation into existence--a Word that transforms chaos into order.

Some believe that the Book of Jonah is a parable as opposed to literal history. So the important question would not be whether Jonah was really swallowed by a fish. The important question is whether we will be a light to the nations, compassionate to everyone regardless of their ethnicity. Or will we allow prejudice, hatred, or vengeance to blind us?

Was the Samson story a Paul Bunyan type tale (as a friend once suggested to me)? Did he really tie three-hundred foxes tail-to-tail using their tails as torches to light the grain-fields? Is it important to believe this is literal history or is the all important moral to this story more about the danger of compromise? 

And did Jesus cast out literal demons? Or was the language of demon-possession the Gospel authors' accomodative language to a pre-modern world in reference to various diseases which at that time lacked scientific diagnoses?   

Moreover, the cosmology assumed in the Hebrew Scriptures is not a scientific description of the cosmos. It is certainly accomodative language as the authors communicate truth within the framework of a pre-modern package.

I'm not saying whether I agree with any or all of the above viewpoints. Let's just say that I'm sympathetic to them and I don't reject someone who holds to these conclusions. (Nor will I be posing these questions in Sunday morning sermons where the point of these texts will be "What do they mean for us?")  

But are there indeed parts of Scripture that simply must be understood as literally true and historically accurate before one is considered "orthodox?" Stay tuned.      

Are the Gospels Literal History?

I believe that the Gospels came about through both oral tradition and through literary dependence upon previous Gospel authors. I've agreed with John Shelby Spong, whose book, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes has shown the New Testament to be largely a midrash on the Hebrew Scriptures in which the stories of old are retold and heightened to describe the God-presence encountered in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

Spong adds to this his comparison of the Gospels with the Jewish calendar, indicating that the Gospel pericopes were designed to expound upon Scripture readings in the synagogue. Spong even shows evidence of knowledge of the undisputed Paulines in the Gospels. The content and structure of the Gospels came about through an elaborate and intricate set of circumstances.  

Spong argues that the Gospels are a liturgical genre as opposed to a literary genre, which in his mind, would rule out the Gospels being literal history reported by eyewitnesses to capture objective reality (p. 93). Here is where I part company with Spong.

Now I do agree with his view that the uncanny similarities between some Gospel narratives and Old Testament narratives are not just mere foreshadowings of the life of Christ. I've argued that the Hebrew Scriptures traditionally viewed as "predictive" prophecy actually had a historical context all their own, typically describing events which happened in ancient Israel. These events were then repeated in some sense in the New Testament and perhaps specifically in the life of Jesus.

But Spong goes as far as to say that God did not plant these "clues" into the ancient text in anticipation of Christ. To do so would be for God to take an enormous literary risk that these texts would be accurately translated and preserved for hundreds of years. While I heartily admit to a very human element in the production and transmission of the Scriptures, I nevertheless feel that God has been behind the scenes providentially orchestrating key events in the history of the text. While I doubt that God micromanaged every detail of the process, mechanically dictating every word, I do believe that he is in some sense sovereign over the text. 

Spong, however, believes that the Jewish-Christian authors simply searched their Scriptures looking for clues about Jesus and then made all the midrashic applications on their own. So the Gospel authors were simply creative enough to find what they were looking for in order to employ their Scriptures to make sense of Jesus. Moreover, they manufactured stories about Jesus from their own imaginations. Spong says that Jesus' Journey to Jerusalem, in Luke 9:51-19:27, is basically a liturgical creation of Luke's that probably doesn't go back to the historical Jesus. 

Spong does not believe that the Gospel writers intended their works to be taken as literal history. But it wasn't until the church finally broke with the synagogue that the New Testament was taken captive by Gentiles who insisted that the Gospels were literal history as opposed to being mainly liturgical and theological. Unlike the Jewish mind, the Western mind---anchored in time, space, and objectivity has always had trouble embracing the truth found in myth, legend, intuition, and poetry. 

So, according to Spong, demanding literalness or historical accuracy from the Scriptures fails to recognize that the Bible is a Jewish book. Literalness read into John led to the Christological and Trinatarian controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries, leading to creeds and councils whose conclusions have become the definition of orthodoxy and thereby the dividing line between who is in or out of Christian circles. Spong sees this as unfortunate. 

Now I do believe that the Scriptures are primarily theological works as opposed to being books about history or science. I also believe that we Westerners have tended to literalize and objectify everything. We have indeed failed to discern truth in such genres as myth or poetry. And some Scriptures may call us to do exactly that. I agree that the Bible is not a science book, but was written from a pre-modern world view, from a time in which miracle and magic were considered very real. 

This all leads Spong to conclude that the pertinent question when reading a biblical narrative is not "Did this really happen?" But the all important question is "What does this mean?" To a large extent, I agree. We've spent too much time trying to harmonize Scripture with science or trying to harmonize the Gospels with one another. To be overly concerned with a harmonization of the Gospels is to miss one author's unique point because we don't allow him to speak without being qualified or restricted by another author. 

I think the all important question really is "What does this mean?" What is the theological point of a given passage? That is usually the most important question. But should this rule out the importance of ever asking "Did this really happen?" For this, we'll await my next post. But I am interested in any questions or comments in the meantime.  

Luke and the Torah

Some of my previous posts have hopefully shown that the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in the New Testament is rarely, if ever, in mere terms of predictions that came true. The Old Testament references and allusions recorded in the New Testament are more akin to "parallels" than they are to "predictions." Events in the New Testament are echoes or reiterations of events in the Old Testament. This includes events from every genre of Old Testament literature and not just the prophetic books.  

John Shelby Spong's book, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes is indispensablele for showing how the Gospels employ the Midrashic principle of offering rabbinic-style commentary on the Old Testament. Spong says that the Gospels are liturgical, written for use in early Jewish-Christian worship. In the assembly, the Gospels demonstrated how Jesus fulfills what was written in the Law as Gospel pericopes were paired with the weekly Torah readings. 

The Midrashic principle and the liturgical theory for Gospel origins lead Spong to rightly conclude that there is Jewish content in almost every verse of the New Testament. The Jewish content in the Gospels gives us a perspective for reading the entire New Testament through a Jewish lens. 

Following Goulder, Spong showed how the structure of Matthew's Gospel followed five major Jewish festivals. Moving to Luke, Spong shows how each section of Luke's Gospel follows the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy). Jesus' Journey to Jerusalem in Luke 9:51-18:14, for example, is remarkably parallel to the Book of Deuteronomy. Some highlights:

• Whereas Moses sent out emissaries (Deut. chapter 1), Jesus sends out disciples (Luke 10:1ff)
• The contrast between living on bread alone as opposed to living by the Word of God (Deut. 8:1-3) is aptly parallel in the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Martha was making preparations while Mary was listening to Jesus.
• The year for canceling debts (Deut. 15:1-18) is echoed in the story of a woman released from eighteen years of crippling bondage (Luke 13:10-21).
• The rebellious son (Deut. 21:18-21) is somewhat parallel to the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32).

While these allusions to the Old Testament texts aren't always made explicit by the New Testament authors, they are too uncanny to be coincidental. 

Midrashic elements abound throughout Luke even apart from his overall structure which parallels the Torah. The birth narratives in Luke 1 and 2, for example, bear striking resemblances (in some instances) to the birth narratives of Isaac and Jacob in Genesis. Spong further contends that Luke relied heavily on the story of Hannah and Samuel while composing the birth narratives of Jesus and John the Baptist. The parallels abound there as well (compare 1 Samuel 1-2 to Luke 1-2).

There are similarities between the Josephs of the Old and New Testaments. Also tantamount to Luke's Gospel is his representation of Jesus as both a prophet like Moses and an Elijah-type figure. Jesus' ministry included a miraculous feeding, raising a widow's son from the dead, and a miraculous ascension to heaven which paved the way for his spirit to indwell his followers.

Spong has shown how the Gospel authors made use of the Old Testament, other Gospel authors, and of the Jewish liturgy in their composition. And equally intriguing is Spong's insistence that Acts is a midrash on Luke as events in the early church are reflections of events in the ministry of Jesus.  

For all of these insights, I applaud Spong's contribution to New Testament scholarship. But I'll show where I part company with him in my next two posts as we ask some hard questions about the Gospels.        

Why were the Gospels Written?

The Gospels likely consist of stories and sayings of Jesus that were passed down orally through the decades. These oral traditions were then assembled in book form becoming the individual pericopes of the Gospels. Some pericopes appear in more than one Gospel and each author edited and arranged material according to the needs of his respective readership.

The church was at least thirty years old by the time the first Gospel was written. So each of the Gospels was written in the service of the church, for the congregations of each of the authors. It is doubtful that the church, which grew out of Judaism, had made a clean break with the synagogue by the time the synoptics were composed. So the earliest Christians, who were Jewish, likely continued to gather in synagogues for worship.

Synagogue worship included designated Scripture readings for each worship assembly. The Torah (the five books of Law--Genesis through Deuteronomy) was read through publicly in the course of a year, one passage at a time, one week at a time.  

Returning to Spong's book, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, he contends that the purpose of the Gospels was theological as opposed to historical and liturgical as opposed to literal. What is meant by "liturgical" is that the Gospels were written for use in early Christian worship. Spong contends that each week a pericope about Jesus would be incorporated into synagogue worship which would serve as Christian exposition on the day's reading from the Torah.

So the early Jewish Christians were finding points of correspondence between their sacred Scriptures and what they had experienced in Jesus of Nazareth. Finding Jesus in their Scriptures was their attempt to make sense of the God presence they had discerned in this man. So each week, an episode or saying from the life of Jesus would correspond with, or elaborate on, a passage from the day's Scripture reading.

Building upon the work of Michael Goulder, Spong puts the Gospels beside the Jewish liturgical calendar and concludes that the structure of the Gospels follow the Jewish year. Goulder had argued that the five teaching blocks of Matthew correspond with five major Jewish festivals.

The Sermon on the Mount, for example, corresponds to the Feast of Pentecost which had evolved into a commemoration of the giving of the Law at Sinai. Now Jesus delivers instruction from a mountain, as did Moses.  The Jewish New Year corresponds to Matthew 11 which centers on John the Baptist who announced the New Year theme of the coming of the kingdom. The Feast of Tabernacles (or Harvests) corresponds to the agricultural parables in Matthew 13. The transfiguration text of Matthew 17 would land on the Feast of Dedication which dealt with God's glory. And of course, the sayings of Passion week would correspond to Passover.

Spong has obviously put tedious hours into his research even demonstrating that while Mark only covers six months of the Jewish year from Rosh Hashanah to Passover, Matthew was written to expand upon Mark and cover the entire Jewish year. 

The Passion narrative at the end of Mark's Gospel would obviously correspond to the Passover narrative in Exodus. Spong then goes backward from the Passion narrative counting the divisions of Mark imposed by Codex Alexandrinus (containing one of the earliest manuscripts of Mark to which we have access) and discovers that the teaching block found in Mark 9:14-11:11 would appropriately correspond to the weekly Torah readings from Deuteronomy. This is appropriate since Deuteronomy could be considered a catechism for those entering the Jewish community while these teachings in Mark seem to likewise be catechetical in tone. 

The reading from Genesis describing judgment in the days of Noah would correspond to Mark 13, an apocalyptic text dealing with judgment. And going backward to the beginning of Mark's Gospel, this section corresponds with the Jewish New Year at which the blowing of the shofar announced the coming reign of God. So the kingdom is Mark's concern as the book opens.

So Mark's Gospel seems to follow the Jewish year from Rosh Hashanah to Passover, with the various pericopes consisting of early Christian preaching on the Torah as it was read week to week in the synagogue. Spong continues to apply his liturgical scheme to Matthew and Luke, showing how they expanded upon Mark's liturgical intent.  Now if this seems rather complex, it's because it is. Perhaps Spong had to work too hard to achieve such an elaborate theory.

Whether or not one agrees with Spong's theory that the structure of the Gospels follow the Jewish liturgical year, his book is nevertheless invaluable for showing how the New Testament uses the Old. The life and teachings of Jesus are clearly recorded as Midrash (Rabbinic-style commentary) on the Hebrew Scriptures. Spong gives numerous examples of how New Testament texts retell and heighten the stories of Jewish Scripture. 

The Gospels are saturated with references and allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures, but not usually (if ever) in a prediction-fulfillment mode. But as I've said before, the life and teaching of Jesus recapitulates the sacred history of Israel. The Gospels serve in incorporating the stories and sayings of Jesus into the life and worship of the early church by connecting his story to the Jewish sacred text.

 (Photo courtesy Flickr)         

How We Got the Gospels

Sorry about the long hiatus. I'll explain it all later.

This post, while self-contained, builds upon my previous one and from here everything will start coming together.  

This post will deal primarily with the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The term "synoptic" means "common-view" (according to Stuart and Fee's How to Read the Bible for all it's Worth). It comes from two Greek words which literally mean "seeing together." These Gospels are called synoptics due to their great similarities.  

The Gospels are not biographies. They obviously omit a good portion of the life of Jesus and they aren't always chronological. Nor are they simply collections of sayings (i.e., teachings) because they also include narratives. The Gospels are unique collections of sayings of Jesus and narratives about Jesus.

How can we explain the coming together of these stories and sayings in a way that recognizes the striking similarities and subtle (or not so subtle) differences among the three books? First, we consider similarities. The synoptics are similar in that they record many of the same stories and sayings. For example, common stories among the three include the temptations of Jesus (Mark 1:12-13; Matt. 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13), the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:30-44; Matt. 14:13-21; Luke 9:10-17), and the triumphal entry (Mark 11:1-11; Matt. 21:1-11; Luke 19:28-44). Common sayings among all three include the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20; Matt. 13:1-23; Luke 8:1-15) and Jesus' Olivet Discourse (Mark 13; Matt. 24; Luke 21:5-38). This is not an exhaustive list. Other stories and sayings may only appear in one or two of the synoptics. Some of these are reworked either subtly or considerably from one Gospel account to another.

What explanation can account for both the similarities and differences among these Gospels, especially in light of the fact that the first one was probably not written until anywhere from 35 to 50 years after the crucifixion of Jesus? How were the stories and sayings preserved and why weren't they reported identically in the Gospels?

The most logical explanation of how the Gospels came to be, given the oral culture of learning in the first century, is that the stories and sayings were handed down verbally through the decades until they were finally written down. Each individual story or saying, like those cited above, is called a "per-i-co-pe" (a four-syllable word that does not rhyme with periscope, has a short "o" and a long "e" on the end). 

Each pericope, whether we're talking about the story of Jesus' temptations or a saying like the Parable of the Sower, likely circulated orally and independent of a particular context until the Gospel authors began to assemble these memories about Jesus into their respective books. Material is sometimes arranged chronologically, but other times it is arranged topically. The literary context of each Gospel is arranged with the needs of each Gospel's original readers in mind. This accounts for some of the differences in wording, ordering of pericopes, and emphases.

The similarities of the Gospels is likely the result of literary dependence among the authors. It's likely that Matthew had Mark in front of him when he wrote his Gospel and that Luke had access to both Matthew and Mark. Each subsequent author made additions and omissions that were pertinent to his particular readership. Each author shaped and arranged his material according to the particular needs of his readers. The author's individual writing style, personality, background, and education also comes to bear upon the differences among each Gospel. 

Some might argue that this is a very "earthy" way of explaining Gospel origins. Where does inspiration come in? I don't think this explanation rules out the notion that God was behind all of this every step of the way. But noting the differences among the Gospels it is highly unlikely that God mechanically dictated word-for-word what each author was to write. God's method of operation has always been to deliver the gospel through earthen vessels. The gospel is always heralded through personality and individuality. Why should we think that the written account of the gospel should be any different?       

Prophecy that isn't Predictive: Two Examples

There is more to prophecy than predictions that came true. In fact, most prophecy is not "predictive" in nature. Here are two examples.

After the death of Herod it was safe for Joseph, Mary, and Jesus to end their sojourn in Egypt and return to Israel. Matthew 2:15 states: 

And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I have called my son." 

This cites a prophecy from Hosea 11:1. But the Hosea passage, in its original context, was clearly not a prediction about Jesus coming out of Egypt. The Hosea passage reads: 

When Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I have called my son. 

The "son" in Hosea is the collective nation of Israel. So words referring to Israel being called out of Egypt are now applied to Jesus being called out of Egypt. It is the midrashic principle at work in which "stories about heroes and events of the past are heightened and retold about later heroes and events." So here is a case in which events in the life of Jesus are shown to parallel events in the sacred history of Israel. 

Likewise, Matthew 1:22-23 speaks of another prophetic fulfillment.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel--which means "God with us."

Matthew applies these words to Mary, mother of Jesus. But the original context of Isaiah 7 clearly refers to a child born during the lifetime of King Ahaz, 700 years before Christ. The child serves as a sign to King Ahaz that before this child is old enough to know right from wrong, the two kingdoms to the north will be laid waste. So Ahaz needn't fear these enemies. He needn't make an alliance with Assyria for protection. Assyria cannot be trusted. But Ahaz should trust God. 

The Hebrew word almah in the original text of Isaiah 7:14 does not mean "virgin." It meant "young woman" as it is accurately translated in the New Revised Standard Version. In the days of Ahaz a young woman would bear a child who would be a sign to Ahaz. The child's name will be Immanuel as a reminder to Ahaz that God is with Israel.

When Isaiah was translated into Greek, some 200 years before Matthew, The word almah was translated parthenos, a word that could mean virgin or young maiden. Matthew, who likely had the Greek translation of Isaiah in front of him as he composed his Gospel, chose to render the term parthenos as "virgin" and apply the prophecy to Mary. 

So was Matthew dishonest in applying this passage to the mother of Jesus? The Western Gentile mind might assume that Matthew took Isaiah 7:14 out of context to make it fit what he wanted it to mean. But rather, he was showing how the life of Jesus recapitulates Israels's sacred history at practically every turn. 

So prophecy is most often "fulfilled" in New Testament literature not in terms of predictions that came true, but in terms of events in Israel's sacred history that parallel events in the life of Jesus. As John Shelby Spong asserts, the only way the Jewish Christians could make sense of the God presence they encountered in Jesus was to search their sacred Scriptures for texts that seemed to foreshadow this experience. 

This follow up to my previous post hopefully prepares us to further consider the midrashic principle at work in New Testament literature. We'll look at this and more implications of Spong's work in a near future post. 

(Photo courtesy Flickr)