Another look at the gospels

In the last blog covering The Living Word of God by Ben Witherington, I discussed the differences between modern biographies and ancient ones so that today’s readers might be more prepared for what they read in the New Testament gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. There are big differences in length, what is covered, and the amount of editorializing done by the author. Here is some more information about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that attempts to help us understand the mindset of those who wrote about Jesus.

Ancient biographies, of which the New Testament gospels are a part, had as their main goal “an adequate and accurate unveiling of the character of the person in question,” according to Witherington. That’s why there are many stories about Jesus which may have had little historical consequence but revealed his character. For example, think of the story of the wedding feast at Cana. Even though the story involved nothing of a historical nature, it did show his abilities and his relationship to his mother. Ancient biographies, in attempting to show us the character of the person, were highly selective and were not always written according to exact chronological order. For example, early parts of Matthew show Jesus doing nothing but talking or teaching, but the author is simply grouping the teaching material in one spot. When we look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke regarding the temptation of Jesus, we see a different order to the three temptations, not because the authors couldn’t get it straight but because they had a different purpose in relating this event.

Perhaps the best way to see the gospels is to think of them as interpretive portraits rather than snapshots. When we look at a painting of an individual, we see that the artist has been selective in what is shown to us so that we may gain some sort of insight into the person being portrayed. It’s not fair to hold the gospel writers to modern standards of newspaper reporting or modern biographical and historical conventions. Our question must be if the four gospels portray a good and true likeness of the historical Jesus. I think the answer to that is a definite “yes.”

The Gospels--did he really say that??

I just finished reading The Living Word of God by Ben Witherington, a professor of New Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary. In this book the author has interesting things to say about portions of the New Testament. He believes it's important to understand the various genres that makeup the twenty-seven books found there. Since I teach the Bible as literature at Palomar College, I wanted to share some of his points here; he believes we can understand the Bible much better if we understand the type (genre) of literature we are reading.

For this blog I'm going to focus solely on the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) as ancient biographies and histories. Many of my students assume that these gospels must be like modern biographies, covering the person's entire life, producing a chronological account, and containing precise quotations. They have questions when they discover this is not the case. They assume there must be errors in the text.

But Witherington claims these four gospels "all conform quite nicely to the conventions of ancient biographies, which were quite different in scope and character than most modern biographies." To start with, modern authors have unlimited space to tell their stories, but ancient biographies were restricted to material that could fit on scrolls. These authors had to be selective about what they covered. That's why, for example, we don't learn the entire story of Jesus’ life.

In addition, ancient biographies did not spend much time about early childhood development. People in the ancient world did not believe personality developed over time. Instead, they felt you were stuck with whatever personality you were born with. Again, we can see this when we look at the life of Jesus -- we know very little about him before his ministry started around the age of 30.

Another characteristic of ancient biographies was a focus on the death of the individual since this event was thought to reveal the character of the person. A shameful death was considered to be a revelation that the person did not have a good character. It's no wonder, then, that the gospel writers spent so much time on the death of Jesus -- they felt they needed to argue that this death was necessary to fulfill God's plan.

A fourth difference between modern and ancient biographies deals with the amount of editorializing the author did. Much editorializing abounds in modern biographies; the author is often eager to share his/her comments. However, the ancients tended to portray a person indirectly, allowing the words and deeds of the person in question to speak for themselves. That is certainly true of the gospels in the New Testament. We often hear the words of Jesus and are forced to decide for ourselves what he meant.

There is much more that Witherington has to say, but I'll save that for future blogs. I'm hoping that this information will allow us to appreciate the gospels for what they are rather than what they were never intended to be.

There they go again

I just finished reading Lee Strobel’s newest book, The Case for the Real Jesus. It’s like his others—the author interviews leading experts, this time trying to better understand the truth about Jesus. Recently, many different assaults have been made on the traditional picture of Jesus, and Strobel wants to find out where the truth lies. He has five key points which he develops.

First of all, he wants to find out whether other ancient documents, rather than the four Gospels, reveal a radically different Jesus. He discovers these alternative texts were written much later than the four Gospels and, therefore, have little historical credibility. For example, liberal critics love to talk about the Gospel of Thomas, placing it on an equal footing with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. However, it was written around 200 A.D., over 100 years later than the four Gospels. Other Gnostic texts also suffer from late dating and lack any connection with the real Jesus.

Strobel then seeks to discover whether the picture of Jesus is unreliable because of changes made by scribes in the documents. He finds that the New Testament is essentially reliable, despite many claims made recently about errors. Only about one percent of manuscript variations affect the meaning; not one essential doctrine is in doubt. Because we have so many New Testament manuscripts, we can trust the way Jesus is portrayed.

A third question the author seeks to explore deals with Jesus’s resurrection. Some critics suggest alternative explanations for this crucial event. He focuses on five key facts that almost all scholars, including skeptical ones, accept as historical truths--Jesus died on a cross, his disciples believed that he rose and appeared to them, Paul (a former persecutor of Christians)converted to Christianity, James (former skeptic and half-brother of Jesus) converted, Jesus’s tomb was empty. What is the best explanation for this evidence? The resurrection appears to be far more logical than any competing hypotheses.

One question which Strobel pursued was especially intriguing to me—did Christianity steal its ideas about Jesus from earlier pagan religions? Many scholars have examined stories of Mithras, Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus. The truth is that there were no dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity. In fact, they appear after the time of Jesus. These myths contained no parallels to the life of Jesus. The stories occurred in the unspecified and distant past and were usually related to the seasonal life-and-death cycle of vegetation. What is frustrating is that many scholars looked at these myths decades ago and discredited them, but now, thanks to the Internet, the same challenges are back.

One other challenge comes from those who believe Jesus was an impostor who failed to fulfill messianic prophecies. Strobel interviews a Jewish scholar who does a magnificent job in going through Old Testament prophecies, showing that only Jesus managed to fulfill the prophecies that needed to come to pass before 70 A.D., when the Jewish Temple was seized and destroyed by the Romans.

Lee Strobel has produced several thought-provoking books such as The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith, and The Case for a Creator. His latest, The Case for the Real Jesus, does an excellent job taking on the newest critics of Christianity.

Oh, no . . . he's back!!!

I saw on Drudge Report that Dan Brown is coming out with another book. His The Da Vinci Code was a monster hit that shook some Christians by claiming the gospels were not giving us the real picture of Jesus. I got curious then and read up on Brown's claims. The key point is that Brown got almost everything wrong in the book, not just Christianity. So here's a brief overview of his errors. If you'd like more details, let me know so I can email you additional info.


If The Da Vinci Code Comes Up . . .

Some say we shouldn’t take it so seriously (“it’s just a novel”)
But he claims it’s true


Brown got history wrong . . .
Constantine did not create a new religion out of Christianity
The Council of Nicea was not called to manufacture a belief in Jesus’ divinity
The Knights Templar were not guardians of the Holy Grail
The Priory of Sion is a recent invention


He got Christianity wrong . . .
Jesus was always considered divine
It predates mystery religions


He got ancient writings wrong . . .
The Dead Sea Scrolls contained no gospels or any reference to Jesus
Other “gospels” not included in our Bible were written much later; they contained fanciful stories of a non-human Jesus


He got Christian writings wrong . . .
The four gospels are actually the oldest and best sources for knowing about the life of Jesus
The New Testament canon was established long before Constantine


He got people wrong . . .
Mary Magdalen was not married to Jesus


He got his art and architecture wrong . . .
Art scholars disagree with most of his statements
The great Gothic cathedrals were not a result of the Priory of Sion or the Knights Templar