7/24/14

Post-Modernist Analysis uitable for Über-Mouse Applied in Error to the Gospel


Source, form, redaction and narrative criticism methods comprise the gist of modern and post-modern literary analysis of the gospel books. They all seem to look past Jesus as Lord and to other things involving composition and theories about historical development of the books. While adumbrating new tools for regarding the gospels and perhaps increasing knowledge about it they may make operating assumptions about the books that are for-themselves unsupported. 
 The same problems that modern tools of literary analysis of the gospel produce have arisen before in a somewhat analogous fashion in theology. Early on in the field of what is now called Christology disputes arose about the nature of Jesus Christ. Was he fully man yet fully God, was he co-eternal as the Son before his human appearance etc. such problems of interpretation in the generations following the first generation of Christians led to various schools of thought such as Monophysitism arising that were resolved at the highest levels. Unfortunately the application of historical generalities such as ‘history is written by the victors’ leads some to view history in an incorrect way-as if there was always just one surviving and authorized version of history being written and buried like the Dead Sea Scrolls by victors. The Qumran scrolls of the Old Testament were written by a community that was slaughtered by Romans. It is hard either to say that the first couple of centuries of Christian history were notable for military or civil victory. It was a spiritual victory that was won as the liberating reality of the Lord Jesus Christ became known and the ways of venal paganism were dropped by ordinary people.
 It is important for Christians not to be overly influenced by the profusion of cultured despirers of Christianity in academia and science today armed with tools of existential analysis and confusion about the content of written history and what it means. Most likely the first century Christians that wrote the gospels were all well-acquainted and talked with one another about the life of the Lord-what more likely activity were the disciples and Apostles to do in the decade or two following the death and resurrection of the Lord? They were practical men and women who knew the Lord and applied his teaching to their new community. Luke, the writer of the book of Acts, confirms the existence of an early church at Jerusalem. Stephen, James, Peter, Paul, John-Mark and Matthew knew one another and probably talked over the main points of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ repeatedly. Some of the gospels were written down for particular communities perhaps simply to survive persecution in Jerusalem. 
 After Peter had left for Rome I think, James-the brother of Jesus was thrown from the temple mount and then beaten to death with clubs. He must have been a tough guy. Peter may have ordered his amanuensis Mark to write down a gospel for the Romans to survive his possible forthcoming death. Matthew the tax collector and disciple wrote a beautiful theologically inspired gospel account for the Jews and Luke the physician, perhaps encouraged by Peter and Paul wrote one as well in his excellent Greek. The disciple John, the independent, irascible follower of the Lord who had moved to Ephesus perhaps sensing the approaching Roman invasion and destruction of Jerusalem, wrote his own account of the life and meaning of the life of Jesus Christ.
 John’s account is theologically inspired and there is no substantial reason to doubt its veracity. Ephesus was a city at a main point of trade crossing east and west. The church at Ephesus was well established and Paul must have talked with John there or earlier in Jerusalem. The early Christians and early church knew one another in that smaller world of the first century though there were 200 million human beings alive. Failing to comprehend history as skillfully as some post-modernist have achieved is an age-of-fracture intellectual anemia. One could read the Civil War by Julius Caesar and doubt that he wrote it and use several methods of literary analysis to prove the point. He did have a Lieutenant write a part of it for him-on the Spanish War I seem to recall, so why not the rest? In fact couldn’t it have been just a fiction? The reality of the composition of that book might be visualized in a better way I think.
 Narrative criticism methods regard the gospel implicitly as if it had not historical correspondence. One could do that with any written material including the U.S. constitution, in which case it would be called legislating from the bench. The founders today would support concentration of wealth and the elimination of taxes on the rich-less than strict constructionism.
 The gospel is not the story of Über-Mouse, super-hero tycoon of Wall Street, Super Bowling and  The Nation of Cheeseburger  who drank deeply from a cast off old bottle of Myrtle's special steroid formula suddenly transformed into Über-mouse with a star of his/her/its own on Broadway’s sidewalk of N.Y. stars. Narrative analysis is a legitimate method yet its application needs to be judiciously applied if one wants to keep a semblance of accuracy for analysis. It was fair to criticize the manifesto of the Unibomber on a narrative literary basis though it corresponded to actual works of an individual too concerned with the mass extinction of life on Earth. One can judge the danger levels of global warming, habitat loss and mass extinction by the percentage of Americans that don’t really want to own a fossil fuel burning car-about 1 or 2%. If Americans don’t care about it then it’s no problem. If a narrative approach to the gospel brings one to disregard the historical reality of the appearance of the Lord of the Universe on Earth and the one chance for salvation unto eternal life that is worse than failing to comprehend the reality of the Anthropocene era of mass extinction .
 Following is an excerpt from Louis Berkhof's public domain work 'An Introduction to the New Testament' ...
Berkhof writes in Introduction to the New Testament-  
quote-In the first place the general plan of these Gospels exhibits a remarkable agreement. Only Matthew and Luke contain a narrative of the infancy of our Lord and their accounts of it are quite distinct; but the history of Christs public ministry follows very much the same order in all the Synoptics. They treat successively of the Lords preparation for the ministry, John the Baptist, the baptism, the temptation, the return to Galilee, the preaching in its villages and cities, the journey to Jerusalem, the entrance into the Holy City, the preaching there, the passion and the resurrection.
The details that fit into this general plan are also arranged in quite a uniform manner, except in some places, especially of the first Gospel. The most striking differences in the arrangement of the material results from the narrative of a long series of events connected with the Galilean ministry, which is peculiar to Matthew and Mark, Matt. 14:22— 16:12; Mark 6: 45—8: 26; and from the history of another series of events related to the journey to Jerusalem that is found only in Luke 9:
51—18:14.
But there is not only similarity in the broad outlines of those Gospels; the particular incidents that are narrated are also in many cases the same in substance and similar if not identical in form. The amount of agreement that we find in this respect is represented by Norton, Genuineness of the Gospels p. 373, and by Westcott, Introduction to the Study of the Gospels p. 201, in the following manner: If the total contents of the Gospel is represented by 100, the following result is obtained:
Mark has 7 peculiarities and—93 coincidences
Matthew has 42 peculiarities and—58 coincidences
Luke has 59 peculiarities and—41 coincidences
If the extent of all the coincidences be represented by 100 their proportionate distribution will
be:
Matthew, Mark and Luke 53
Matthew and Luke 21
Matthew and Mark 20
Mark and Luke 6
Still another estimate, viz, that by verses, is suggested by Reuss, History of the New Testament,
I p. 177:
Matthew out of a total of 971 verses has 330 peculiar to him.
Mark out of a total of 478 verses has 68 peculiar to him.
Luke out of a total of 1151 verses has 541 peculiar to him.
The first two have 170 to 180 verses that are lacking in Luke; Matthew and Luke, 230 to 240 wanting in Mark; Mark and Luke about 50 wanting in Matthew. The number common to all three
is 330 to 370.
The preceding statements refer to the subject-matter of the Synoptics. Taken by itself this might give us an exaggerated idea of the similarity of these Gospels. As a corrective it is necessary to bear in mind that the verbal coincidences, though they are remarkable indeed, are nevertheless considerably less than one would expect. Dr. Schaff and his son, after some calculations based on Rushbrookes Synopticon, get the following results:
The proportion of words peculiar to the Synoptics is 28,000 out of 48,000, more than one-half.
In Matthew 56 words out of every 100 are peculiar.
In Mark 40 words out of every 100 are peculiar.
In Luke 67 words out of every 100 are peculiar.
The number of coincidences common to all three is less than the number of divergences.
Matthew agrees with the other two gospels in 1 word out of 7.
Mark agrees with the other two gospels in 1 word out of 4½.
Luke agrees with the other two gospels in 1 word out of 8.
But comparing the Gospels two by two, it is evident that Matthew and Mark have most in
common, and Matthew and Luke are most divergent.
One-half of Mark is found in Matthew.
One-fourth of Luke is found in Matthew.
One-third of Mark is found in Luke.
The general conclusion from these figures is that all three Gospels widely diverge from the common matter, or triple tradition, Mark the least so and Luke the most (almost twice as much as Mark). On the other hand, both Matthew and Luke are nearer Mark than Luke and Matthew to each other.” Church History, I p. 597.
In connection with the preceding we should bear in mind that these verbal agreements are greatest, not in the narrative, but in the recitative parts of the Gospels. About one fifth of them is found in the narrative portion of the Gospel, and four fifths in the recital of the words of our Lord and others. This statement will create a false impression, however, unless we bear in mind the proportion in which the narrative parts stand to the recitative element, which is as follows:
Narrative Recitative
Matthew 25 75
Mark 50 50
Luke 34 66
From what has now been said it is perfectly clear that the Synoptics present an intricate literary problem. Is it possible to explain the origin in such a manner that both the resemblances and differences are accounted for? During the last century many scholars have applied themselves with painstaking diligence to the arduous task of solving this problem. The solution has been sought along different lines; several hypotheses have been broached, of which we shall name only the four most important ones.
In the first place there is what has been called (though not altogether correctly) ~the mutual dependance theory (Benutzungshypothese, Augustine, Bengel, Bleek, Storr). According to this theory the one Gospel is dependent on the other, so that the second borrowed from the first and the third from both the first and the second. On this theory, of course, six permutations are possible
viz.:
Matthew, Mark, Luke.
Matthew, Luke, Mark.
Mark, Matthew, Luke.
Mark, Luke, Matthew.
Luke, Matthew, Mark.
Luke, Mark, Matthew.
In every possible form this theory has found defenders, but it does not meet with great favor at present. True, it seems to account for the general agreement in a very simple manner but serious difficu1ties arise when one seeks to determine which one of the Gospels was first, which second and which third. This is perfectly evident from the difference of opinion among the adherents of this hypothesis. Again it fails to account for the divergencies; it does not explain why one writer adopts the language of his predecessor(s) up to a certain point, and then suddenly abandons it. Of late it is tacitly admitted, however, that it does contain an element of truth.

In the second place the hypothesis of oral tradition (Traditions-hypothese, Gieseler, Westcott, Wright), should be mentioned. is theory starts from the supposition that the Gospel existed first of all in an unwritten form. It is assumed that the apostles repeatedly told the story of Christs life, dwelling especially on the most important incidents of his career, and often reiterating the very words of their blessed Lord. These narratives and words were eagerly caught up by willing ears and treasured in faithful and retentive memories, the Jews making it a practice to retain whatever they learnt in the exact form in which they received it. Thus a stereotyped tradition arose which served as the basis for our present Gospels. Several objections have been urged against this theory. It is said that, as a result of the apostles preaching in the vernacular, the oral tradition was embodied in the Aramaic language, and hence cannot account for the verbal coincidences in the Greek Gospels.
Again it is urged that the more stereotyped the tradition was, the harder it becomes to account for the differences between the Synoptics. Would anyone be apt to alter such a tradition on his own authority? Moreover this hypothesis offers no explanation of the existence of the two-fold, the triple and the double tradition, i. e. the tradition that is embodied in all three of the Gospels and that which is found only in two of them. The majority of scholars have now abandoned this theory, although it has ardent defenders even at present. And no doubt, it must be taken into account in the solution of this problem.
In the third place we have the hypothesis of one primitive Gospel (Urevangeliums-Hypothese)
from which all three of the Synoptists drew their material. According to G. E.Lessing this Gospel,
containing a short account of the life of Jesus for the use of traveling missionaries, was written in
the popular language of Palestine. Eichhorn, however, following him, held that it was translated
into Greek, worked over and enriched in various ways, and soon took shape in several redactions,
which became the source of our present Gospels. There is very little agreement among, the defenders of this theory regarding the exact character of this original source. At present it finds little favor in scientific circles, but has been discarded for various reasons. There is absolutely no trace of such an original Gospel, nor any historical reference to it, which seems peculiar in view of its unique significance. And if the existence of such a source be postulated, how must the arbitrary alteration of it be explained, how did these different recensions come into existence. It is evident that by this theory the problem is not solved, but simply shifted to another place. Moreover while in its original form this hypothesis accounted very well for the agreement, but not for the differences found in the Synoptics, in its final form it was too artificial and too complicated to inspire confidence and to seem anything like a natural solution of the Synoptic problem.


In the fourth place the so-called double source, or two document theory (Combinations-hypothese,
Weisse, Wilke, Holtzmann, Wendt) deserves mention since it is the favorite theory of New Testament scholars today. This hypothesis holds that, in order to explain the phenomena of the Gospels, it is necessary to postulate the existence of at least two primitive documents, and recognizes the use of one Gospel in the composition of the others. The form in which this theory is most widely accepted at present is the following: The Gospel of Mark was the first one to be written and, either in the form in which we now have it, or in a slightly different form was the source of the triple tradition.
For the double tradition, which is common to Matthew and Luke, these writers used a second source that, for want of definite knowledge regarding it, is simply called Q (from the German Quelle). This Q may have been the λόγια of Matthew mentioned by Papias, and was probably a collection of the sayings of our Lord. The differences between Matthew and Luke in the matter of the double tradition finds its explanation in the assumption that, while Matthew drew directly from Q, Luke derived the corresponding matter from Q and other sources, or from a primitive Gospel based on Q.”-end quote


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