Did they get it right??

Ben Witherington, in The Living Word of God, does more than just look at different types of literature that make up the New Testament. The next section of his book discusses the historical accuracy of a few disputed passages.

He starts with the differences of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. Some people say it appears that Bethlehem is the hometown of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew while Luke seems to say it is Nazareth. He notes that both accounts stress the Jesus was born in Bethlehem even though both authors realize Jesus was called "Jesus of Nazareth" and that his family lived there after his birth. He points out how much of both gospels tell the same story, especially the fact that Jesus came into this world through a miracle of a virgin birth. Matthew’s gospel does not give us an account of Jesus’ life before his birth; it does not tell the reader where the family lived before his birth. One other difference concerns the flight into Egypt, which Matthew mentions but Luke does not. This does not mean the flight did not happen. Different authors chose different elements to stress.

Witherington tackles Luke 2: 1-4, which some believe contains a problem. Those who doubt the accuracy of Luke say that the famous census of Quirinius took place at a later time than the gospel indicates and that the census described in Luke 2: 1-4 is highly improbable (families having to go to their ancestral hometowns to register). He starts his answer by indicating that Luke obviously knew when the famous census took place – check out Acts 5:37. In addition, the Emperor Augustus set out to get tax revenues from all his provinces, this would mean a census would be necessary. Luke 2: 1 might well mean that Augustus decreed that all the rest of the Empire be enrolled, some of the work already having been done. Another point has to do with the Greek language of Luke 2: 2. It could mean, "This was the first census which happened during when Quirinius was ruler of Syria," or it might read, "This enrollment was before when Quirinius was ruler of Syria." Finally, there is evidence from Egypt that people were forced to go to their ancestral homes for registration.

Then there are the questions that surround the slaughter of the innocents reported in Matthew. The author of this gospel describes a paranoid King Herod, who attempts to end any potential threat to his kingdom by killing all the babies in Bethlehem. How can it be, the skeptics ask, that a horrible event like this would not be written up in other historical accounts? But we need to realize that Bethlehem was a very small town in the time of Jesus, so no more than a handful of infants in that town would have been two years or younger. Plus we know from other sources that King Herod was fully capable of such nastiness since he killed several of his own wives and offspring.

Of course, critics have attacked many other parts of the Bible. But Witherington has demonstrated in the above examples that initial problems may simply be the case of misunderstandings or ignorance. There are plenty of good books devoted to tackling these issues of apparent biblical difficulties, so don't accept the statement of a skeptic without researching it carefully.

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.