Bible Alive Jesus Christ 002: "Criteria & Historical Foundations“”
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Here are questions from the second class of Bible Alive: Jesus Christ, meeting Tuesday nights. To follow you will need to read the book Jesus Christ: Fundamentals in Christology, by Roch Kereszty, o. cist.
ISBN-10: 081890917X
ISBN-13: 978-0818909177
It can be ordered here NOTE: YOU NEED to read the book.
Learn about the Gospels and their writing, here, at this FANTASTIC RESOURCE.
The following questions (modified and added to those on pp. 489-492) cover pp. 22-31.
Class Two Questions:
1. How is the historical uncertainty about some events and sayings of Jesus consistent with the reality of the incarnation?
2. How can you prove the general historicity of the New Testament records about Jesus?
3. Explain each criterion for an authentic Jesus tradition. Give examples of each?
4. From what you have learned so far, what is the value of the construct, “historical Jesus,” for apologetics?
Finally, take a look at this lecture by a worldwide leading Jesus scholar:
7 comments:
My only problem is that if I can't believe the historical comments that the Gospel writers made, then how can I believe any other comment which incorporates some historical event such as the death and resurrection of Christ.
Furthermore, as far as I know, all major historical disparagements can be reconciled (e.g. the different number of demon-possesed men at Decapolis, etc). I'd like some examples of some that cannot be reconciled.
Furthermore, can we really find a particular standard by which to compare the way these uneducated Jews wrote? I think like looking for the historical figure of Christ, we have to be careful to not expect these letters to be super Jewish in style, nor super Christian in style. They were men that were unaccustomed to writing, I think, that were writing about something totally new. What's more, Luke himself, claims that he is trying to be as accurate as possible.
Anyways, that's my two cents.
Dear Remy,
Thank you for your thought-provoking comments. Perhaps I misunderstand you, brother -- where did the presentation above promote distrust in the "historical comments" of the Gospel writers? And what do you mean by "historical comments"? In presentation two and three (just posted) there are many good reasons to trust the Gospels as Gospels -- just being mindful that they are not Western 21st Century biographies.
"Disparagement" implies belittling something, yes? I would not call the disagreements between various details "disparagement" at all. The only way I could do that is if I was mistaken as to the nature and limits of inerrancy and wrongly insisted in a plenary inspiration. All facts are true, but not all truths are facts. The Bible is all true, with some facts. I recommend you look again at slide 24 carefully. Its very important that we do not collapse stage three and two into stage one.
The New Testament presents us with four different stories that purport to tell us what Jesus said and did -- and not only that, but to INTERPRET what he said and did. There is much agreement! But there is considerable DISAGREEMENT of which facile harmonization distorts rather than resolves stemming from a fundamentalist anxiety for utter factual accuracy, something foreign to the ancient authors.
Continued....
Some examples of disagreements (not "disparagement") between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics:
1. Did Jesus go up to Jerusalem during his ministry only once (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), or several times (John)?
2. Was he put to death on Passover or on the eve of Passover?
3. Did Jesus' ministry last only one year (Synoptics) or around three annual Passovers (Jn 2:13; 6:4; 11:55)?
4. Was John the Baptist "Elijah" who preached repentance (Synoptics) or not Elijah, but rather was a “witness” to Jesus (Jn 1:19-36)?
5. Did Jesus begin his ministry AFTER John got arrested (Synoptics) or did his ministry OVERLAP with John’s (Jn 3:22-30)?
6. Were the first four disciples Jesus called two pairs of brothers (Simon & Andrew, James & John, according to the Synoptics), or were the first five disciples Andrew (1), an anonymous one (2), Simon Peter (3), Philip (4), Nathanael (5) (Jn 1:35-51)?
7. Did Jesus do many “miracles” but few longer speeches (Synoptics) or only seven “signs” but several long monologues and dialogues (John)?
8. Was it that Jesus commanded his disciples to “love your neighbors” and “Love your enemies” (Synoptics) or was it “love one another” (Jn 13:34-35; 15:12, 17; notice that the focus lies WITHIN the community)?
9. Peter is the first and most prominent of the “twelve apostles,” (Synoptics) yes, or was it that he was just recognized, whereas Mary Magdalene, Martha of Bethany, and the “Beloved Disciple” were more prominent as “disciples” of Jesus (John)?
10. Was Jesus’ focus a future Eschatology, namely that the “Kingdom of God” is coming (Synoptics) or did he have a realized Eschatology where “Eternal Life” is now (Jn 3:36; 5:24; 6:47-54)?
To be continued...
11. Are the opponents of Jesus the Sadducees and the Herodians and others (Synoptics) or rather the ones usually called “the Jews” or “the world” (John)?
12. And why do his opponents plot to destroy/kill Jesus?—is it for various reasons (Synoptics) or for blasphemy (Jn 8:59; 10:31-33; cf. 11:8)?
13. Did the Temple cleansing occur one week before Jesus' death (Synoptics) or at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (Jn 2:13-22)?
14. Was Jesus anointed at Bethany by an anonymous woman, an act objected to by anonymous people (Synoptics) or was this anointing performed by Lazarus’ sister Mary, and objected by Judas Iscariot (Jn 12:1-8)?
15. Was the Last Supper a Passover Meal on Thursday Eve (Synoptics) or was it that the Last Supper was not the Passover meal itself, but occured before Passover, which began Friday evening (Jn 13:1; 18:28)?
16. Was it in “Gethsemane” where Jesus is betrayed through Judas’ kiss (Synoptics) or some “Garden” in the Kidron Valley where Jesus IDs himself for arrest (Jn 18:1-11)?
17. And was Jesus crucified at 9:00 am on the Day of Passover itself, to later die by 3:00 pm that afternoon (Synoptics) or was Jesus condemned to death at noon on the Day of Preparation before the Passover where crucifixion & death occurred quickly (Jn 19:14, 31, 42)?
18. And was it not Women who prepared spices to anoint Jesus’ body after his burial (Synoptics)? But I thought that it was Joseph of Arimathea & Nicodemus who anointed his body before burial like royalty (Jn 19:38-42)?
19. Why does the Jesus of John’s gospel not speak as does the Jesus of the Synoptics? The former uses long, solemn discourses, filled with symbolic language, “I AM” formulas, and references to the Father, and has virtually no parables.
20. Very few of the episodes of Jesus’ ministry recorded in the fourth gospel parallel those of the synoptics. Apart from the account of Jesus’ initial relation to John the Baptist (which itself differs in crucial details [cf. Jn 3:26; 4:2]), the cure of the son of a royal official in Capernaum (4:46-53), the multiplication of the loaves (6:5-13), the walking on the waters (6:16-21), and a few scattered details of lesser moment, there is scarcely any real parallelism in the Johannine account with the synoptics before the last days of Jesus in Jerusalem.
(These 20 points taken from the “New Revised and Expanded Edition” of A Christological Catechism: New Testament Answers, by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J.)
To be continued...
There are also numerous differences of no small significance within the Synoptic Gospels themselves.
1. Consider that the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke are simply DIFFERENT STORIES that defy harmonization; in Matthew the heavenly communication about the child to be born is made to Joseph, but in Luke to Mary. You cannot simply make this difference disappear by claiming that it actually came to both of them.
2. How different are the stories of Matthew 2 and Luke 2!
3. Consider the divergent form of Jesus’ sayings about the prohibitions of divorce (with or without an exception?).
4. Consider the number of petitions of the Our Father (seven in the Matthean form, five in the Lucan). Which is the one on Jesus' lips? It CANNOT BE BOTH!
5. What about the number of beatitudes at the beginning of the sermon on the mount/plain (eight in Matthew, four in Luke)?
6. What about the problematic ending of Mark’s gospel, which may have ended originally at 16:8, with an account of the discovery of the empty tomb, but with no appearances of the risen Christ?
(These six points are also taken from the “New Revised and Expanded Edition” of A Christological Catechism: New Testament Answers, by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J.)
The Gospels are not biographies, my brother.
As far as a standard to see how they wrote, we are looking at them through various criteria to help us determine what belongs to each stage in Gospel formation and to see why it is not against reason to trust them in faith. By warning us to be careful not to expect the historical Jesus to be too "Jewish" or too "Christian" in style is along the path of the criterion of double dissimilarity. It's good. If however overused it makes the historical Jesus absurd, detached from the contexts of his own cultural milieu as well as the movement that sprang from him. But yes Jesus is irreducibly NEW -- we need FAITH to appropriate Jesus.
When you say "the historical figure of Christ" be aware that you have already INTERPRETED the historical Jesus. You called him CHRIST -- an interpretation. Amen, Jesus is the Christ, and we see that BY FAITH, a faith of which is not AGAINST REASON but transcends reason.
Luke is not writing for 100 percent factual accuracy, nor has he our Western contemporary concerns for that as if it were possible to isolate facts from interpretation.
May God bless you brother and we hope to see you in class soon. THANK you for contributing here, pray for us, and by all means post again on this or another topic!
Really appreciate you taking the time to reply. Thank you. You know I don't want to push this too much, and please don't reply if you think you've already addressed this. I just noticed that most of the disagreements that you brought up are clearly explained by understanding that the books were written by different people who had different perspectives or interpretations of the story. But, maybe it's just me, I don't agree that the majority of your points were disagreements. So one person called them Sadducees and another person called them Jews. I think every beginner Bible scholar knows that Matthew was written for a more Jewish audience and so we see that Matthew highlights some Jewish things like starting out with Joseph's genealogy, while another writer will focus on other things that he thinks might stand out to his particular audience. I mean for the most part we understand that the letters are being written by different people, for different audiences, at different times. If these differences weren't there these accounts would seem suspiciously similar. But I do not see disagreement. And there were some points there that I have heard skeptics make, but as far as I know they have all been well answered. Do you want me to post the responses or do you just disagree with the conclusions? If there are really good explanations that harmonize some of these disagreements, and they make sense according to scholarly criteria, why not accept them, even if it's not all the explanations? And yes, I have to tell you, that I'll have to agree to disagree with you, because I have no problem accepting the "both and" explanations, though not for everything. For example if one person says, Jesus said "..." and lists seven things, and then someone else says Jesus said "..." and lists five of those seven things, I have no problem with that. I already take the Bible as an inspired document, therefore I assume that the truths of all the statements 'Jesus said' must be true. So one guy mentions five of the seven. Maybe those are the ones he thinks his audience needs to focus on. Maybe he forgot two. Maybe Jesus actually said 20 things and those are the things that stood out to these authors. It doesn't matter. I still don't see a disagreement because like you said these guys aren't writing biographies. So none of them are in any way stating that what they're writing about Jesus is the complete and total story in chronological order. Because of that I can accept that two people can describe the same event, both be accurate, both highlight different parts of the event, and yet both still agree.
God bless you my friend. Thank you for contributing and asking real questions, making points, and helping. Thank you for your time.
Disagreement—while it can mean a refusal or failure to agree, here it refers to a difference between results, totals, claims, acts, etc., demonstrating that they cannot all be factual. The disagreements in the Gospels I showed are significant and—with respect to you my brother—in my understanding are not soluble with naïve harmonization—an act which betrays, given our contemporary recourse to historical critical and literary critical methods, a fundamentalist anxiety to preserve the Bible whole and entire as “the PURE word of God,” something untenable and absurd (only humans use words). The first slideshow illustrates how the Gospels are not “just the facts” but MUST be interpretation of the Jesus-event (Please see Bible Alive Jesus Christ One: “The Method of Biblical Christology” slides 57-65, 69-70, 74-75 and Bible Alive Jesus Christ Two: “Criteria & Historical Foundations” slides 13-19, 24). Remy if you really accept that the Gospels are not biographies, why do you protest the term disagreement?
I’m fine with “really good explanations that harmonize some of these disagreements, and they make sense according to scholarly criteria” if by “scholarly criteria” you mean the ones mentioned on slides 35-45 of Bible Alive Jesus Christ Two: “Criteria & Historical Foundations.” These would preclude fundamentalist assertions and eisegetical manipulation of the texts to fit a priori doctrinal commitments.
You said, “I already take the Bible as an inspired document.” You assume from that then that all the statements ‘Jesus said’ must be true. To make things clear I ask you: true or factual, Remy? Please define inspiration so we can know what you mean by inspired document and see how things follow.
You know I love you, my brother. We would love to see you at class! ;)
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