Exegesis and the Synoptics 9780761859710, 9780761859727, 0761859713

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EXEGESIS AND THE SYNOPTICS

Robert Geis

University Press of America,® Inc. Lanham ·Boulder ·New York ·Toronto ·Plymouth, UK

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To the Theotokos of L ight The B lessed Virgin of Warraq al-Hadar, Giza 22 December 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

vii

DISCREPANCY AND CONTRADICTION EVANGELJON

15

APPLY ING ORIG EN' S EXEGETICAL METHOD

25

HEB RAISMS: EARLIER GOSPEL DATINGS

49

TOWARDS AN NT CANON

69

AUGU STINE AND HARMONIZATION

87

B REAKDOWN OF HARMONIZATION

97

EXEGESIS AND SKEPTICISM

111

NOTES

121

TEXTS F ROM THE CANON

1 47

INDEX

161

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

171

PREFACE

Exegesis and the Synoptics is an amplification and intended solidification of important points which I believe my 20 1 1 book, Divinity of a Birth, makes. In the latter, while approaching the issue of prophecy it became clear that an earlier dating of the New Testament (NT) Gospels would bring the prophecies an­ nounced there closer to the t ime of their actually having been fulfilled. Matthew, Divinity argued, brings the narrative's transcription to the time of Jesus' actual ministry, or very close, because it was written in Hebrew. Other portions of the NT Gospels also show a Hebrew undertext, making Divinity 's argument about prophecy more cogent. Read together, i.e., Exegesis and Divinity provide a more complete argu­ ment for an early Gospel narrative of Christ, in Hebrew, then redacted into Greek. It is neither inarguable nor unl ikely that this redaction made for many of the discrepancies modernists claim, as wel l as post redaction critics of the late second century onwards. The fierce rejection by the earliest Christians of vari­ ous attacks on the Gospel message (which we shall discuss in this work), how­ ever, argues for a proto-community knowledge of a Gospel without the discrep­ ancies that the redactions of the originals occasioned. No one, our point on this is, goes to the coliseum to be eaten alive based on accounts of a resurrected man that are fil led with errors, historical inaccuracy, and contradictions. I refer to Divinity in this work, then, with the purpose of showing a continu­ ity of argument from it and expansion of points on Gospel dating, original Gos­ pel language, and with, as well as because of, that internal Gospel consistency which its arguments provide against certain schools of exegesis today. The ref­ erence to Divinity, frequent as it might sometimes appear here, is a reference to the first part of the overall argument that sets out an earlier dating of the Gospel narratives than is generally accepted. Exegesis is the further substantiation of the argument. The one work provides a different angle from which to see the same truth than the other work, and in that way enlarges one's vision of the overall truth of the argument. It enlarges the field of that which, both books argue, is true or, more modestly, cannot be said to have less truth than hypotheses which

Preface

viii

move more on models and suppositions than actual history. The two titles to­ gether, it is my hope, give a cohesion that prior approaches to this difficulty have not fully provided. There is almost a baldness in contemporary rejection of Patristic evidence and assertions on the Scriptures written by the Apostles. This is not unexpected given the NT claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Extraordinary claims, after all, usually run the risk of extraordinary rejection. It just puzzles one when the rejections stem from an outlook with presuppositions as obvious as the En­ lightenment's. One would think more powerful arguments would be necessary. The weakness in the arguments against Patristic claims we take up here. The evangelist John them" (Cf.

Gen. 2:7; Jn.

(20:22) tells us that ''He breathed (tvapi>Ol)atv) upon 3:8; Acts 1:4; 2:2). The Word, John is announcing in

this passage, utters forth from the breath (that which gives life from Him

{Gen.

2:7; cf. Ezek. 37:9) of the Divine in the Resurrected Christ to those whom Christ, God incarnate, called and who accompanied Him during His ministry. Christ's life is truth

(Jn.

14:6). Life occurs through the breath. In our pas­

sage of this Resurrection appearance of the Lord to His disciples John is telling us the Divine has infused His truth alive into those whom in His earthly ministry

He chose to follow Him. 1 Its power takes on that of a rushing wind (q>tpoµtvr)c;

1tVofic; [Acts 2:2]), the Spirit (1tVci>µa) in fire (m>p�) descending on them to move their minds with a passion from a new understanding which will set the hearts of their hearer's ablaze with the truth they are learning, and a truth trans­ forming. These individuals were therefore inspired, given to take in of the Word. What they declared that truth-that inspiration-to be, became the canon, con­ firming the Old (OT}, and declaring the New, Testament. They preached to the proto-communities this canon of truths by whose adherence salvation and for­ giveness from sin were offered and came about.

Revelation (22:18-19)

tells us this inspiration comes to an end with its

words. It emerges, then, that the Gospels which came to be canonized have a basis in the original Apostles themselves. Accordingly, as inspired, these Gos­ pels are true. The attack on the actual Gospel messages, what did Christ say and do, and what He did not, was not long in coming after Christ's death. Already in the late first century the works of John came to receive rejection by the early Church. Little discussed, it is a peculiarity on the Church's approach to its own (here, one of its first Priests). Less than one hundred years later there was an attempt to purge the NT from any Jewish influence. Here we see a Church ready and able to rebuke the attempt. Charges of discrepancy and contradictions among the manuscripts left to the ages which claimed to be records of the actuaJ events and teachings in Christ's life brought the Patristics to adjudicate such charges, charges they came to dismiss and reject not without reason. One may point to the reaction to Mar­ 2 cion in the early Church. How did such a rejection to his claims about what was

Preface

ix

in the Gospel become so fierce if the basis for that rejection was a text, a collec­ tion of narratives, that had discrepancies and contradictions? A commitment to C hrist and H is Apostles which such a rejection evinces argues for a narrative and message circulating at that time that was beyond such charges. It reinforces out claim that discrepancies came as a result of late first century redactions, and were not of the gravity claimed in the original. We have the division of the Gospel manuscripts into those called the Syn­ optics (Matthew, Mark, Luke [Johann Jakob Griesbach in 1776 being the first to take on the three by synopsis {setting the three Gospels next to each other for a one look, a "seen together," comparison} ]),3 and the one written by John partly as a result of these differences. The div ision stems from the similarity among the Synoptics, and the ir differences from John. Does this difference give evidence of weakness of narrative, or falsehood? Or does it indicate redaction (editing) of original texts into Greek from He­ brew that were left in this edited form when the canon of the Gospel was finally proclaimed? Le., were the redacted texts, and not the original texts where the discrepancies that the redacted contained did not exist (or, certainly, not to the extent of the redacted), the texts that were canonized? Absent the original texts, did Church leaders s imply seek to al low the Greek texts, warts and all, which replaced the lost texts over one hundred and fifty years to be accepted because though there were discrepancies, the Apostolic tradition was clear throughout the pericopes in the Greek texts? Was it that the message of the Cross and the Resurrection was enough without getting bogged down in details about slight historical m inutiae? What was at variance, after all, within the texts was never a matter of the truth of salvation. Were "harmonization" and "consensus" the antidotes to such missing originals? The question arises again, and merits such repeating, because of how fiercely the early Christians in the first and early second century rejected the various attacks on their Gospels. If there were these discrepancies in the proto-texts, the Hebrew texts, what accounts for the first Christians' indefatiga­ ble resoluteness to defending their preaching when attacks came? Who would defend works that were so perforated with inaccuracies and the like? Indeed, it is not inconceivable that these Christians were going to their deaths under Nero and Caligula (and thus very close to Christ's Resurrection) with these Hebrew Gospel texts and narratives in circulation (even to the time of Galerius in the early fourth century). It is these texts we are holding that more l ikely than not were without the discrepancies with which their redaction later ended. The point is of gravity in exegetical integrity. In not wanting to take on this question of how so many could die for a text of errors and contradictions, and work through the difficulties this presents to those who simply assert that there have always been these "discrepancies," (i.e., the texts were originally in Greek as they are, and not in Hebrew, then redacted {which caused the 'errors'}) does not such Scriptural exegesis greatly lose any claim to seeking precision or accu­ racy that a text of such sacredness deserves and warrants?

x

Preface

4 Father Jean Carmignac has made the trenchant observation that vocaliza­ tion errors (occasioned by the Hebrew language's tri-consonantal Masoretic point framework), along with scribal, in a number of places can strongly be argued to account for errors between the evangelists. These could not be errors unless originally what was factual is known. Discrepancies among three or four texts about the same incident must have one focal point, one basis of intrinsic evidence, where the error is absent. That throws the discrepancy/error discussion into a radically different setting than exegetes intent on discrediting the Writ that has come down to us would have or want. Other questions present themselves. Are redacted texts inspired? If the Church at a Synod canonizes as inspired texts that have been redacted, the re­ daction it would appear takes on the status as being part of inspiration in that Christ told the Church that to it He gave the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever it declared on earth so the same would be declared in Heaven

1 6:1 9; 1 8: 1 8).5

(Mt.

Change in the ordering of the books of the NT, which occurred

at Councils and Synods long after the Apostles wrote, we argue does not change their inspired status. It says more about ecclesial political ambitions than any­ thing about the truth of the Word. Are the Gospels a form of investigative reporting? Should they have the at­ tributes of a forensic inquiry? If they are inspired, God-breathed {0&61[\16U Ei µT] to \If £Ucracr0m KAHMENT01: A'

DISCREPANCY AND CONTRADICTION

Having set out in our Preface the critical points for discussion, as wel l as outlines of the possible solutions synopsis of the Gospels has raised, we can now go into detai l what both those problems and solutions are. None of the four Gos­ pels agree at all times on each point or incident that they narrate. They disagree in particular respects about the same incident. {The account of Jesus' Resurrec­ tion is a stark instance, at first glance.) Some contain almost the same wording, and record these identically worded stories in the same sequence, although their authors are different. Three of the four that are in the canon, 1 when set side by side, show similarities and differences that a synoptic view (one "looking all at once") seems unable to reconcile. This is the so-called Synoptics problem. If there are contradictions, disagreements, discrepanc ies in the Gospels, how does

one see them as the work of the Divine? How can one hold they are inspired? I f they disagree, how can they be said t o be truthful? Our term "canon" (derived from the Greek Kavmv "kanon" meaning "reed" or "cane," or also "rule" or "measure") is not used lightly. It is meant to refer to the full Scriptural collection (one that is final and closed), all the works declared inspired that constitute the Old and New Testaments. It is critical to note that this does not mean an ecclesial assembly is the guarantor of what is inspired. The Scriptures, as prophetic documents, show themselves to be inspired since prophecy is only a work of the Divine. Christ declared the OT writings before Him to be therefore inspired because they were about Him ("all Scripture is about Me" [Lk. 22:37]), were prophetic of Him. The Apostles, as being in H is presence and upon Whom, He breathed, i.e., infused with truth, declared what was Scripture. B ut their declaration is to us only a guidance, an instruction, of what is al­ ready the case. Their declaration that something is inspired does not make it inspired. Christ's reference in Luke to what has been written about Him names it as inspired. These texts of the Old Covenant the Apostles will preach as inspired therefore. What they preach and write of Christ they will declare as Scripture (2 Peter 3:16), declare as inspired, because He is the Truth. (Jn. 14 :16). The works

Discrepancy and Contradiction

2

which they declared were inspired they did so only because of their inspired status already. This inspired status allows their entry into the canon.

An

ecclesial

assembly declaring works canonical, as happened in Carthage (397 AD, 419 2 AD) only acknowledges what is already the case, sc., that certain preaching, particular books, show themselves to have a character that only Divinity can bestow. This character, in tum, gives out their status as revealed. The canonicity (inspired status) of a Scriptural text is not the judgment of some appointed body to make. The Church acknowledges the text as revelation from the Divine from the internal evidence of the text and the apostolicity it bears, and thus in line with other such texts, can announce they belong to such a body or "canon." Ter­ tullian (160-220 AD) explains this term ''apostolicity": Then in the same way the Apostles went out to found churches in every city possible. It is from these apostolic churches that all the subsequent churches, one after the other, derived the rule of faith and the seeds of doctrine. Even so today they continue to derive from the Apostles that which is necessary in order that they be churches. Indeed, it is for this reason only that they are able to deem themselves as apostolic, as being the off!:>i>ring of apostolic churches. As in science, every genus reverts to its original for its classification,

so

with the

apostolic church. However many or great these churches may be, they comprise but one primitive Church, founded by the Apostles, from which they all spring. In this way all

are

primitive. All 3

their unbroken unity.

are

apostolic. They are all one by means of

If the texts that were placed in the canon at Hippo Regius and Carthage were in part redacted texts that had been in Greek from the original Hebrew, as we maintain, the Church has the authority to place them in the canon because of Christ's assertion so in Heaven.

Jn.

(Mt.

16:19) that whatever it loosed or bound in earth would be

14:26 is our assurance that this would be under the guidance

of the Spirit Who came upon the Church at Pentecost. Those texts, then, as de­ clared part of the canon the Church holds under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That commentators have claimed over the decades that the four Gospels which have come down to us as the record of Christ's life have discrepancies among them is well known. An examination of that claim, and to what extent it may or may not be true, and to what extent such discrepancies may or may not affect the overall, as well as the particular, teachings

(didache) that

these Gos­

pels contain, provides insights that, left to itself the statement obscures and holds back. Because the Gospels attributed to (or written by) Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem to have a concordance among them that one does not see when they com­ pare with John, our topic becomes more complicated. It may be, however, that the complication emerges only on a first or cursory reading. Subsequent read­ ings, with the prior kept in mind, may allow for a less strident comparison among these works. Chrysostom's preface to his commentary on

Matthew

gives

us fair warning that to seek identity and repetition amongst different witnesses or testimonies may tum us away from one crucial consideration. There is the

3

Discrepancy and Contradiction

possibility that strong similarity and agreement among such testimonies might cloud our ability to see whether that agreement is an attempt at deceiving the one(s) to whom that testimony has been made available. Exact detail and speci­ ficity with respect to time, date, place, environs, ambience and the like can be the product of a pre-conceived, pre-elaborated effort, Chrysostom notes, to con­ vince without a basis in fact or truth for the effort. Too much agreement among witnesses bears the suspicion that one is being given a pre-arranged testimony where those giving the testimony have all worked out beforehand what it is they are going to say and deny. It is this such warning from Chrysostom that makes sense to heed as we survey what has come down to us as four "lifes" of Christ. The problem of the Synoptics has had a long and thicketed history. At root is the question of the legitimacy of the Gospel accounts' inspired status of teaching and life. Papias' Interpretation of the Lord 's Oracles [(KupiaKffiv Aoy irov 'E�TfYftcm;; Kyriak6n Logion Exegesis), alternately Exposi­ tion of, Commentary on, the lord's Sayings], although now lost, remains in iso­ lated fragments, quoted by Eusebius. 4 It refers to books ( £K rrov PtPA.iwv [ ek ton bib/ion]), 3 .39.4 of the "Elders (npeapmepo�)." While it is no secret that Euse­ Christ's

bius was not in sympathy with some of Papias' theological views, and thus his 5 curious position that Polycarp was a hearer of the original Apostles but Papias, a bishop of a city in walking distance of Polycarp and a contemporary of the same was not, we do have his citation ascribed to Papias. As early as the very beginnings of the second century, 6 then, we have a statement that corroborates Luke's preface to his Gospel that narratives

(on)"fllatV [diagesin])

of Christ's life were in existence at or prior to Luke's own

composition. 7 It has been argued that Papias, in fact, in our passage was placing the written accounts (J31J3A.irov) in a lower position of respect than the oral tradi­ 8 tions circulating. He states, e.g., "I did not assume that whatever comes from

books is as helpful to me as what comes from a living and lasting voice." 9 .Joseph Lightfoot has pointed out that Papias' acknowledgment of the existence of the written works extant in his time of Matthew and Mark, and Mark's accu­ racy in writing (as expressed in the following Eusebius text argue such a position.

10

[3.39. 1 5))

would

Mark, who had indeed been Peter's interpreter, accurately wrote as much as he remembered, yet not in order, about that which was either said or done by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed H im, but later, as I said, Peter, who would make the teachings anecdotally but not exactly an arrangement of the Lord' s reports, so that Mark did not fail by writing certain things as he re­ called. For he had one purpose, not to omit what he heard or falsify them.

diagesin, and in 11 as Fitzmyer has

What strikes one quickly is the fact that Luke uses the word the same preface speaks about the

grapsai (ypci'Jlm). Diagesin,

noted, etymologically points to a composition ''that 'leads through an end,' a comprehensive story which aims at being something more than a mere collec­ tion of notes of compilation of anecdotes." The two are not, however, the word

4

Discrepancy and Contradiction

Papias used,

biblios. The fact that the word biblios occurs, a word in Koine usu­

ally indicating something complete and content bound, appears to inform us that there were in fact "books" from ''the Elders." If these books are not what we now call "Gospels," or their similitudes, it is difficult to identify what they would be. The "Elders" have authored them (we are not told if all the Elders Papias names authored them, or only some [we do know Matthew and Mark did]), but if Matthew and Mark qualify as Elders (Matthew by name does at Ec­

clesiastical History,

39.

4), then we have the original of the followers of Christ 2

as having transcribed "books." In his Against Marcion, 1 Book 4, chapter 34.6 (208 AD), Tertullian13 in this respect refers to the "Gospel of Matthew" by title

("evangelio Matthaei"), as well as in 35.9 the "Gospel of John" ("evangelio

loannis"). 14 That these two titles circulated at this time indicates their being a

matter of some recognition before the date 208 AD. The way Tertullian refers to them, in fact, seems to indicate that neither title was recently coined, but a mat­ ter of common knowledge. In other words, it seems we can conclude that what they wrote were not a collection simply of sayings, aphorisms, short stories, etc., but it appears we have Papias telling us they wrote books-much in the same way, one would expect, that we look at a, and understand by the term, "book" today. It has an author. It has a theme. And it is not a collection of sayings or prayers or hymns.

That it is not for Papias we see from his inclusion of Matthew in his list of El­

ders who wrote a biblios, and Matthew we know was not a co11ection of sayings, stories, prayers, or hymns. Augustine tells us it was written in Hebrew and was, as he terms it, an order of narration ("narrandi ordinem").15 We begin to understand what Papias means by

bib/ios. He means what Mat­

thew wrote (a ("narrandi ordinem"), or anything comparable to it. It appears to be indisputable. To state otherwise is to disagree with both Papias (who de­

scribes Matthew's effort as an "ordered arrangement" in contrast to Mark, who

had not)16 and Augustine. The word biblios bears identity to Luke's own use of the term, sc. logos (A.6yov), that he uses in the first line of his A cts of the Apos­

tles to describe his account of Christ's life: Tov µ£v 1tpt1£, ©v fjp�aro 6'l11aou�1tOtEiv 'tE Kai otM.CJl(EtV That logos is not a disaggregated sequence of sayings or stories. We know this because we have Luke's logos and can read it. It tells us "of all that Jesus said and did," 1: I) which is what a book would contain.

(Acts

We have then the acknowledgment that there was not simply an oral trans­

mission of the story of Christ. There was one that the Elders themselves (some of them) composed. That is what biblios tells us. This would mean the Gospels cannot be narratives that push far into the se­ cond century. Instead they have to originate around the time of Christ. Matthew, after all, did not live one hundred years. If he lived the normal life span of the male in his day, his

biblios had to have been concluded most likely materially

before the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD (disregarding the arguments that absence

of the Fall of Jerusalem in any of the Gospels indicates their compositions be­ fore that date). The fact of human lifespan being a limit to when a work of an

5

Discrepancy and Contradiction

author can have been written points to a somewhat contemporaneous transcrip­ tion of the life of Jesus by those who wrote one. A canonized text of Christ's life, which is what we mean in part by the term "Gospel," need not have the burden about it, then, that it is late (i.e., e.g., mid­ second century) in its composition. That is, that its authorship occurred decades after Christ's death. Already we see by Luke's own testimony (Lk.

1 : l 3) -

that

there were compositions in writing about Christ before Luke's. Since he trav­ elled with the Apostle, recorded extensively in his Acts, and Paul died before the mid-sixties, we push back his own Gospel to a time earlier than that. This will raise for us later the issue of just what it is those who argue for a late composi­ tion of the Gospels are claiming. In our passage ( 1 5- 1 6) from Eusebius is the curious (at first glance) state­ ment where Papias quotes an Elder who assures us that while Mark had no firsthand knowledge of what Christ said or did, he wrote ("having become the interpreter of Peter") what Peter told him, though accurate (aKpt�ffic;

E')'pmvEV), it cruvra�tv). This, though, does not have the gravity it appears to at first pose. Rather, 1 5- 1 6 seems (from the Greek [npoc; rac; XPEiac; t1rowiro rac; iitiiammA.iac;]) to mean that Peter was

might not have been "in the correct order'' (o\>x rocmsp

not setting forth a chronology of Christ's events, but in his preaching, which Mark took down, he would speak about what needs fit his hearers at the mo­ ment. It is of interest that this Elder appears to be defending Mark against any charge that what Peter said may have been not as others would have liked it, somewhat in the spirit (one may opine) of the Apostle in his

Galatians 2 : 1 1

crit­

icism of Peter "because he was manifestly in the wrong." Nevertheless, it is im­ portant to note that Papias does not tell us Mark in any way was said to have

deviated or strayed from what Peter said. The point of "accurately'' again con­ fronts us, as it does in Luke's preface (Lk. 1 :3).

David Dungan 1 7 hypothesizes this Elder to be John, "the one whom Jesus

loved" (cf.

Jn. 20:2).

Peter's behavior as a follower of Christ before the Resur­

rection seems to be less than endearing, for all the reasons with which readers of the Gospels are more than familiar. John appears to have not let "bygones be bygones" if Dungan is correct, and wh ich might answer how it is that Polycarp, 18 a confirmed "hearer of John," and the early second-century Father, Ignatius of

Antioch, never quote him. To the contrary, Caius, an early Bishop of Rome,

refused to quote his writings, 19 and Epiphanius argues that the discrepancies

between John and the Synoptics (the origin of Jesus, His relationship to John the Baptist, and the beginning of His ministry) is the reason for this dismissive atti­ tude towards John. Epiphanius writes that John has Jesus working the miracle at Cana immedi­ ately after his narrative on John the Baptist and Prologue, while there is much more detail in the works of Matthew, Mark, and Luke before the public ministry

ri

of Jesus becomes a to ic in them. Too, John writes of two Passovers Jesus ob­ served, the others one. 0

Discrepancy and Contradiction

6

If, however, Epiphanius is telling us that with John come differences other than what one finds in the Synoptics, does that not require that Epiphanius is referencing written documents, and not oral traditions? After all, how does Epiphanius get to make his claim stick if there is nothing in writing to substanti­ ate what he has said? And if Caius, Bishop of Rome, was not receptive to John, is there any significance that it was to the

Revelation that he seems to have been

opposed, notwithstanding that he was a late second century prelate? If these works are in writing, how do the writers transcribe, set down, what they know is different than what another writer may have written, especially if different can mean "contradictory to"? If John, who is not in the Synoptic group­ ing, has in fact written an account which differs at seemingly significant points, as Epiphanius implies, from those in the Synoptic category, would this not mean that John was not conversant with their texts? Was there a body of literature that they used which was not available to John? The differences between

John and

the other three Gospels is one reason we have this Synoptic classification. Matthew, one of the Synoptic writers, and John surely knew each other, since they travelled together the same land with Jesus. They were both at the Passover the night before His crucifixion. If they, then, both knew each other, and both were to write down (Matthew earlier than John) what they knew and experienced of this Jesus, that their account would have discrepancies or be con­ tradictory of the other in parts would imply memories at fault or, worse, outright inaccuracies and falsehoods. If Matthew, as was set out in my work

Birth2 1

Divinity ofA

more likely than not composed his account of Jesus at least in part co­

temporaneous, as eyewitness, with the activities and teachings of Jesus, anything he writes that differs from John could be a serious matter if it were contradictory to it. The contradiction would have to be grave for the believer to have any im­ pact of his or her acceptance of Christ as God. We may look at Jn l :

2 1 (KJV).

'Are you the prophet?' And he answered, 'No'," seems to contradict

Mt. I I: 1 3-

The crowd asks John the Baptist, '"Are you Elijah?' And he said, 'I am not.'

1 4, (KJV)

''For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you

will receive it, this is Elijah, which was for to come." Is John the Baptist Elijah or not? Has a contradiction so early crept into the inspired text? It seems that to label it a contradiction is an extreme. Jesus, Whom

Mt. I I : 1 3- 1 4

is quoting, can

quite easily be indicating that John has the qualities, attributes, character of Eli­ jah without any contradiction occurring here.

Jn. I :42 (KJV) reads, "And he brought him

to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld

him, He said, 'You are Simon the son of Jona: you shall be called Cephas, which is translated 'a stone."'

Mt. 4: 1 8 (KJV),

"And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Gali­

lee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers." In the John passage Simon is not also named Peter, while in

Matthew he is.

This is surely not a contradiction, nor a discrepan­

cy. But it is a difference. That Cephas

(Kepha) appears

in the John passage im­

plies to us the Petrine alternative, however, and thus reduces the force of a dis­ crepancy charge even further.

Petros

is the Greek form of the Aramaic

Kepha,

7

Discrepancy and Contradiction

though not as clean an alternative as petra

(nfapa),

a difficulty which has made

identifying Simon with the rock on which Christ will build His Church especial­ ly pronounced since Paul calls Christ

nfapa in I Cor. I 0:4.

The point of this exegesis of this particular pericope is that we have a dif­ ference between John and

Matthew again;

yet, we certainly do not wish to label

the two Gospels questionable whenever such a circumstance between them aris­ es. The difference we have seen in these instances just surveyed means nothing as far as accuracy goes. Difference is not always indicative of inaccuracy. We may continue with this difference of accounts found in the two Apostles who (unlike Mark and Luke) were with Jesus. Do we need to invoke faulty memory, or a source that one might have been using that the other did not, a source which had a different rendition of various occurrences in the ministry of

Mt. 4:2 1 tells us after Jesus called Simon (Cephas), He called James and I :43 the strong implication is He called Philip after He called Peter, whom in I :44 He states is from Bethsaida, while Mt. 8: 1 4 seems to indicate Pe­ ter was from Capemaum (cf. Mk. 1 :2 1 , 29), his house there being a place Jesus Jesus?

John. In Jn.

entered. An individual having a house in one city does not exclude that he was "from" another. Just as Jn.

12:3

saying Jesus' feet were anointed with expensive

oil does not preclude that the Savior's head at the same sitting could also have been anointed

(Mt. 26:7).

The order in which various evangelists may report that

Christ called His Apostles might clear up if one allows a difference for days. So allowed, contradiction and discrepancy leave that discussion. In our two passag­ es

(Mt. 4:2 1

and Jn.

1 :43),

we read it was a day later, a day after He had called

to Peter, that Jesus spoke to Philip. This means He could have in fact called James and John the same day as He called to Peter. Jn. 1 2: 1 tells us Jesus was in Bethany six days before the Passover that

preceded His crucifixion,

Mt. 26: 1 -6,

four days later than John's date. The diffi­

culty with the claim that there is a pivotal discrepancy here is blunted by the overall agreement of all exegetes that the Passover dating has so many shades of uncertainty because of that to which exactly the evangelists were referring when 22 they referenced this Feast. It is well known that the day in which it began was called generically at times the Passover, even though the Feast itself lasted a number of days. Precisely what calendar day did they actually have in m ind

when each made their reference? It is well-nigh impossible to pinpoint what was in Matthew's mind when he wrote the words in

26: 1 -6,

as well as in John' s

when he tells us when Jesus entered Bethany as far as what calendar dating they each had in mind for the Passover day. Alternatively, Jesus could have been in Bethany at the time without any contradiction to

Matthew's

John

tells us

passage in that being at a place six days

before an event does not mean you are not there four days later. Matthew does not say when Jesus actually arrived in Bethany, Mark

( 1 3 :3, 1 4 : 1 ) only that Je­ (22: 1 , 2) only that

sus previously had spoken at the Mount of Olives and Luke the Passover was drawing near.

These are small discrepancies (but not irreconcilable contradictions), and we have found that as we have moved past the Synoptic writer Matthew and the

Discrepancy and Contradiction

8

non-Synoptic John to the other two Synoptics, Mark and Luke the discrepancies

occur there too. Before we go further on with those issues of a more general pattern of perceived discrepancy or difference, we need inquire about the dis­

missal by a large contingent in the early Church of the non-Synoptic evangelist, John. It was for the discrepancies and others like it, on which we have touched here that Epiphanius, as we noted, reported communal disrespect of John, ''the disciple whom Jesus loved" (Cf. Jn. 13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 2 1:7, 2 1:20) in the early Church. It seems in fact that were it not for Polycarp and lrenaeus, John could have whispered into oblivion. Clement, Bishop of Rome, in his 95 AD sixty-five chapter admonition to the Corinthians mentions John not once. Peculiarly, the problems in Corinth that Clement addressed were in many ways the same as those in Ephesus, some scant distance away where John had resided. The problems Clement had seen are mirrored in John's

summarizes Corinth.23

Third Epistle. Marsh

The Epistle of Clement itself supplies complete information as to the circum­ stances under which it was written. Dissension had arisen within the Christian community at Corinth, and the church was torn asunder. The original ground of contention is not mentioned, but the course of the strife is clearly indicated. A small party of malcontents ( 1 : 1 ; 47:6) had used their influence to secure the deposition of certain presbyters, men duly appointed according to apostolic regulations, who were, moreover, of blameless reputation and unfai l ing zeal in the performance of their duties (44 :3). A fierce controversy was raging, and the Corinthian Church, hitherto renowned for its virtues, especially such as are the outcome of brotherly love (I :2-2), had become a stumbling block instead of an example to the world (47:7). Once before, the Church at Corinth had shown the same spirit of faction ( l Corinthians 1 : t o, 1 2). History was now repeating it­ self, but the latter case was much worse than the former. Then, the contending parties had at least claimed to be fo l lowing the lead of apostolic men, but now the main body of the Church was following 'one or two' contumacious persons in rebel lion against their lawful rulers (47).

Compare this to 3

Jn. 9- 10:

I wrote something to the congregation but Diotrephes, who likes to have first place among them does not receive anything from us with respect . . . . He goes on chattering about us with wicked words. Also, not being satisfied with these things, neither does he himself receive the brothers; and those who are wanting to receive them he tries to hinder and to throw out of the congregation.

Notwithstanding that John mentions the same difficulties as Clement's Co­ rinthian correspondence, John's status as ''the disciple whom Jesus loved" surely placed him above Clement in the ranking of respect, making Clement's silence about John in his correspondence with the Corinthians at once odd. Additionally out of sorts is that beginning in the middle of chapter forty-seven of his Corin­ thians

Epistle till chapter fifty-one, Clement discourses at length about the love

9

Discrepancy and Contradiction

we need to have, as Christ commanded. Yet he does this w ithout any reference to John whose

Epistles

on forty-six occasions bring up this subject of love for

one another, and his Gospel forty-two times bring up love as an issue for ever­ lasting life. A lso peculiar is that in his

mentions Peter and

Paul as the ••good" apostles, and at

Epistle (5:3) C lement 4 7: 1--4 "'distinguished,"

but John, who was

geographicall y closer (probably j ust three hundred miles from Clement), re­ ceives no acknowledgment. Ignatius of Antioch, martyred in Rome, also is a puzzlement. He was a fre­ quent communicator with Polycarp, a disciple of John. Yet, Ignatius never men­ tions Saint John. Justin Martyr, the great Christian apologist of the second centu­ ry, c ites John only once. 24

John was an Apostle, one of the original twelve. J udas was also, so being

one of the original twe lve may not carry the weight we want. However, unlike J udas, (with whom John has no semblance at all), this John whom the early

Church seems to have ignored was a witness with Peter and his brother James to the Transfiguration

(Mt. 1 7: 1-9, Mk. 9:2-8, Lk. 9:28-36 2 Peter 1 : 1 6-- 1 8). He Lk. 24:36--43 ; Jn. 20: 1 9-20), with the others received the Great Comm ission before Christ ' s ascension (Mt. 28: 1 6--2 0; Mk. 1 6 : 1 4-1 8; Lk. 24:44--49; Jn. 20:2 1 -23), was entrusted by Christ, on the Cross, with the care of H is mother (Jn. 1 9:26--2 7); was, with Peter, in­ was a direct witness to the Resurrected Christ (cf.

strumental in establ ishing the Palestine proto-communities. Paul recognized John as one of the three "'pillar" Apostles

(Gal. 2 :9)

to

whom he had to submit his teachings for administrative and doctrinal approval.

John not only set down a written Gospel, but also three

Epistles.

Importantly, he

was a priest from the l ine of Aaron, and composed that work which ends all in­ spiration, the Book of Revelation.

Polycarp, it is true, did not shun John. In his

1 15

Letter to the Philippians (about

AD)2 5 the B ishop of Smyrna (not far from Ephesus, where John spent some

thirty years) quoted from John, '"For everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh is antichrist," a c lear reference to l

7.

Jn. 4:2-3

and

2 Jn.

Polycarp taught that bel ievers need "return to the word handed on to us from

the beginning."26 John ' s

Epistles

taught the same. Polycarp, whom Irenaeus

in John ' s G ospel and his

Epistles:

'"He that raised Him from the dead will raise

writes was ordained by the Apostles themselves, 2 7 preached the words of Christ us also, if we do His will and walk in His commandments, and love the things which He loved" (cf.

Jn. 7: 1 7; 1 4 : 1 5 ; 1 Jn. 2 :6, 1 7; 5 : 1 -2).

This affirmation of John, it is not unusual, would issue from one who actu­ ally had been with him. Polycarp, though, is a lone witness in the proto-days o f bel ief. Was it because of the supposed discrepancies between John ' s writings

and the others that no one else would stand with John? In

1 54

AD Polycarp met

with Anicetus, Bishop of Rome, to discuss the matter of Eucharist fasting, to persuade A nicetus that the Eucharist in

1 54

AD should be celebrated according

to the calendar of the Jews, which in that year was the seventeenth of the Jewish Metonic cyc le. The progressive destruction of Sanhedrin oversight over the Jew­ ish Lunar-Solar calendar because o f Rome' s increased interference fo I lowing its

IO

Discrepancy and Contradiction

destruction of Judea in 1 35 AD placed the calendar, and thus observance of Jew­ ish feasts, in chaos. John had taught to observe the time of the Eucharist on the fourteenth day of the first Jewish month-on the day before the Passover of the Jews. This meant that the time for celebration could occur any day of the week.

Many

Christian authorities took it upon themselves to calculate their own full moon for the Eucharist ceremonies, rather than the prior practices of complicated calcula­ tions in lunar cycles. The Church in Rome simply abandoned an association of the Eucharist with the full moon and decided to observe it on a Sunday (the day of Christ' s Resurrection) after the full moon of spring had occurred. The Church in Rome, then, in l ine with its practice begun in 1 40 AD to keep the Eucharist on 28

a Sunday fo llowing the Passover week rejected Polycarp, and with him John.

Around 1 90 AD, Victor, the Bishop of Rome, excommunicated those (mostly in the people in Asia M inor) who continued to follow John ' s way of calculating the time for the Eucharist, with Irenaeus' rebuke for his unilateral action. Thus we have the Church in Rome assuming increasing power with, in the year 250 A D, Cyprian, ironically Bishop of Carthage, declaring Rome to be the holder of Peter's keys, the culmination of such possession occurring in the 29 Council of Chalcedon in 45 1 AD. While there seems l ittle Scriptural evidence for such attribution, 3° Cyprian by Petrine primacy did not mean, contrary to Chalcedon, that the Church in Rome had total authority. He frequently, in fact, disputed with the Roman Bishop on numerous issues with the statement from Scripture of Christ (Jn. 20:2 1 ft) that al l the Apostles (µa011mi) had been given a

type of equal authority. 3 1

Why was there a dismissal of John's opinions b y these men i n the late first century up till the end of the second century? John certainly was not a proponent of Jewish observances in the way Peter (e.g., on the circumcision question) was (cf.

Gal. 4: l O; Co/.2: 1 6-1 7).

Had not Christ violated the weekly Sabbath, thus

leaving its observance moot for Christians (Jn. 5: 1 8)? When Christ fed the five

thousand (Jn. 6: 1 - 1 5) this was at a Passover time during which

Ex. 23: 1 7 had De. 1 6: 1 6).

taught all able-bodied Jewish males needed to be in Jerusalem (cf.

The Feast of Tabernacles was not a matter of the punctuality Moses seemed to have demanded (Jn. 7: 1 - 1 7). All this John reports without any rebuke or ques­ tioning of Jesus' acts. John was not someone who took to obsequy easily. This personality trait could be one element in seeing him as perhaps "difficult" to deal with, as some­ one best to avoid. 3 Jn. 9 reports, as we saw, a certain Diotrephes as rejecting John' s authority, and refusing to meet with the "brethren" whom this Son of Thunder, as Christ had called him (and his cousin James [Mk. 3: 1 7]) was send­ ing to the community which Diotrephes apparently wanted to run. The issue of Gentiles and their role in the Christian sect came up again, and this too seems to have been a thorn of contention that pitted some against John. We do know, too, from reading John 's

Third Epistle, that he

could be blunt (cf. 3 Jn. 7), which is

always a cause of rancor in matters that deal with authority and control.

lI

D iscrepancy and Contradiction

The political turmoil of

63

A D-70 AD was a great time of stress for the

proto-communities of C hristianity . I f J. A. T. Robinson is correct that part of

J ohn' s

Revelation was completed prior to 63 AD (and there is solid argument 3 that it was), 2 one can suggest it was fami l iar to the proto-communities. John ' s

Book of Revelation seemed t o have augured a time o f the second coming in their mind in the not distant future. We do know that Rev. I O: 1 1 , however, seems to speak of a second phase of prophecies which John would announce, thus putting

to test

2 Peter 3 :2

in which the early followers ask "Where is the promise of H i s

coming?" Did they t h i n k for the arrival of Christ would be in the ir l i fetime? Pe­ ter

(2 Peter 3 : 8- 1 0) answers them, One day w ith the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slack­ ness . . . . but the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens w i l l pass away with a great noise.

In fine, Peter is tel ling them that their sense of time and waiting is not how the Divine measures time. Thus, any j udgment on John that he had spoken in ways that he should not have, that is, that his prophecies about Jesus coming again had failed, one can infer Peter to be saying would not be to understand the meaning of when Christ would reappear.

We thus have a further complexity to the rejection of John. It is that the no­

tion of the Messiah as a victorious ruler seems stil l l ingering in the Jewish mind­ set of the post Resurrection communities. While it is diffic u lt, if not at all im­ possible, to see Isaiah ' s Suffering Servant

(Is. 53 :9;

cf. l

Peter 2:22)

as a the

promised of God in Eden Who would slay the m ighty Roman army, the idea of

the seed of the Woman whose heel would strike the serpent as a mil itary victor was an undertone in numerous Palestinian settings at the time of J ul ius Caesar, Tiberius, Nero, Cal igula. It is by no means clear, then, that the early Church set John aside for rea­ sons of discrepancies with other Gospel accounts (the Synoptics) in circulation.

We will, in fact, want to see whether such disagreements may have been more a redaction phenomenon than one in the original composition. G iven that the

charge of these discrepancies do not come early in the proto-communities, but

later (some one hundred forty years years, it seems [which we discuss in another

chapter when treating of Celsus { 1 77 AD} ]), at the minimum after Christ ' s death), the redaction phenomenon may indeed account for these disagreements. From the h istory we have just traversed, however, it is c lear far more was afoot in the rej ection of John. It is a history which reflects very badly on the early Church. J ustin Martyr never mentions these issues, which surely had to be known to him and others in the early Church. For they are known to us today. In any event, in bringing up this former pagan Justi n Martyr who became a fierce defender of the early Church, what is striking to the modern ear is his re­ ferring to the early accounts in circulation about Christ (the Gospels, in effect, of 33 However, given

today) as "the memoirs (furoµvrwovrnµam) of the Apostles."

Discrepancy and Contradiction

12

the existence of philosophical works that used this term to refer to the sayings or teachings of men like Socrates and Pythagoras,34 and the erstwhile pagan phi­ losopher Justin's apparent intent to give the accounts of the Apostles the re­ spectability philosophy had, his choice of the term is not unusual. If these "memoirs" (the Gospels) had differences, discrepancies, among the� how does one get to classify them with the works of Socrates and Pythag­

oras? It does not appear to have been an issue with Justin, his intent being to give the early communities a legitimacy in the Roman world. Marcus Aurelius' sentence of death on him would indicate he failed to influence at least this one individual whom h istory has honored for other reasons. More important is the Justinian project carried through his ascetic student Tratian in his Syriac language

Diatesseron (of which

we have no extant copy).35

This was to serve as the Syriac "Gospel" till the four-Gospel canonization of the fifth century. This replaced Justin's ''memoirs," but the objective was the same: a continuity such that no contradictions were left in, but instead a harmonization came about through a proper understanding of what the Apostles had set forth. Justin had criticized, as had Irenaeus, 36 pagan writings where contradictions stood out (in Ireneaus' case, the Gnostics). Justin, though, never sought to syn­ chronize John with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Tratian, however, as the term otil -reaaaprov

(dia tesseron) indicates, embarked upon a "fitting to­ dia tesseron taken from Greek musical

gether" of the four Gospels, the term

efforts meaning "through the (first) four notes." Unlike Justin, then, Tratian was efforting a fourfold harmony of the Gospels

that came down from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In l ine with the Pythago­ rean backdrop to the notion of apµovia

(harmonia) operant throughout the dia tesseron, what Tratian was preparing was a Christian tetrakys (-rccpamc;). The terakys was the overarching Pythagorean term for perfection, congruence, har­ mony, balance, and the like. The goal, whether or not achieved (given that Tra­

tian included more than the four Gospels for harmonization), seems clearly

enough to show that these so-named discrepancies and contradictions had such circulation that the widely respected Pythagorean dynamic was a necessity in arguing Gospel credibility. It is surely odd that the Divine teaching needs a Pythagorean emetic, as it were. Odder stil l is the movement of Marcion (reported in the above referenced Tertullian ' s

Against Marcion,

Book 4) which sought to expurgate all Semitic

presence from Christianity. As the Roman government turned increasingly hos­ tile to and suppressive of the Jewish race after the failed bar Khobba revolution of

1 32 AD, Marcion, among many other Christians, argued for a total break

from any Semitic identification. After all, the Christian Melito of Sardis had authored an

Easter Homily

(cs. 170 AD) accusing the Jews of Sardis of putting

Christ to death. Roman hostility to the Jews was rampant, and we have from Justin Martyr's

Apology ( l .3 1 )

the claim that the Jewish revolutionary bar

Khobba ordered Christians to be put to death if they would not deny Christ. Marcion denied Christ was ever crucified (claiming the Jews put Simon of

Cyrene to death instead), denied He could ever have been a Jew, 37 denied He

13

Discrepancy and Contradiction

was ever born. H e s imply appeared all at once and commenced His ministry and, upon being finished, just disappeared (reappearing to Paul, whom Marcion

greatly admired and believed alone had the true interpretation of the Christian

message). Further, about all those contradictions everyone was c laiming in Scripture, Marcion ' s solution was his gospel was the only legitimate one, the works prior to his being faulty especially given their Jewish tone.

Taking any of this seriously requires a blindness to exegetical disciplines,

but Marcion apparently, given the extent to which he addressed these so-called discrepancies, labored on in their reconcil iation by denying, first the entire OT. H is

Avtt0tcm�38 elaborated contradictions which he believes are Genesis being a pronounced example. Here he refers

in the sacred

J ewish texts,

to the Jewish 39 account of creation as crude, and later on the Jews as accursed from Eden.40 42 Stripping all elements of Jewish influence4 1 in his Evange/ion was not dif­ ficult for Marcion, who also has Paul ' s

Epistle to the Galatians (cf., e.g., Gal. Against Marcion, l .20. 1 ; 2) as fodder for his anti-Judaism. Paul (Gal. 2 : 1 -2) seems to have spoken of only one Gospel (cf. Rom.

2 : 1 1 - 1 4; Tertullian,

There also 3 2 : 1 6), giving Marcion, according to Origen ' s report4 the basis for denying there were gospels. There was only

a

Gospel, and Marcion's was a form of Luke' s,

but without the first three chapters, and with changes that l renaeus44 rejected,

and for which "disfigurement" Tertu l l ian seems at a loss to provide the reason ("Lucam videtur Marcion e l igisse quern caederet").45

Marcion ' s claim to there being only one Gospel (the one referenced, he be­

l ieves, by Paul's use of the s i ngular in

Gal. 2 : 1 -2

when referring to ffi>ayyeA.iov)

is without historical basis. H i s opposition to a Hebrew dimension to the newly

establ ished Christian sect seems to dismiss all prophetic value i n the Old Testa­

ment. Many prophecies about Christ appear there. It seems difficult to dispute

that these forward-looking assertions from 1 900 BC to the time of the Caesars and Herod are not about H im.

Whether or not Marc ion ' s critics were bitter enemies, there is no gainsaying

that Marcion, along w ith others who taught similarly (Satuminus of Antioch and the Syrian Cerdo), forced a new focus on what Gospels were to be seen as really

from the acts and teachings of Christ, and which were not. The rebuttals to Mar­

c ion indicate that the early Christian commun ities did not accept him, and one would i magine therefore did not accept his claims about the Gospels.

I f so, then the early Christians seem already to have settled on what was au­

thentic and what was not. Seeds for the Gospel canon, that is, are not late bloom­ ing at all. A lready at the time of Marcion, given the rejection we are able to p ick

up in the writings of Tertull ian and Origen, there is seen a basis of teaching that Marcion has rejected, a basis which seems to have its ground in an actual docu­ mentation of Christ' s life. Otherwise, what would form the basis for its legitimacy, as so many accept­ ed, against Marcion? Surely not hearsay, oral commun ication. It is a basis which, given the strength with which its proponents stressed it in attacking Mar­ c ion, suggests a body of truth already set and which found its way into written form long before Marc ion began his project of a new

evangelion.

D iscrepancy and Contradiction

14

If so, how is it that such a body of text could have the discrepancies and contradictions exegetes have been arguing for centuries are present in the Symoptics amongst themselves, and in comparison to John? How would any body of believers take as true what was so composed? Or is it that the original body of writing did not have these discrepancies, that they only crept in after certain compositions were finished and edited? If the reaction to Marcion was so strong, is this evidence that it was only over time that discrepancies in the texts came in, and that they were not in the original proclamations of their authors? The possibility cannot be ruled out at all. That exegesis has not taken the possi­ bility up says more about the exegesis so conducted than about the facts of the matter.

E VANGELION

We have seen that Eusebius confirms (by way of Papias) that the

gelion

evan­

of Christ's ministry and word was from the time of the Elders (the origi­

nal fo llowers of Christ, the Apostles) a

biblios.

The Gospel in its earliest form

was a book, in other words. The "good news" was in writing as a book. 1 The Enlightenment notion of Gospels being only availab le or composed not till the m i d second-century, a thesis that has held sway for an extended period in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is sharply incorrect, then. 2 What allowed such a notion to become standard in outlook on Gospel composition remains a matter needing resolution in that such an outlook obviously lessens, rather than strengthens, faith and one' s abi lity to preach the Word. After a l l, one hundred and fifty years in the darkness of the long distant past can have many errors and fables contained in it, and this incl udes the Scriptures, so one heard argued from

those arguing such a time span in the case of Christ ' s Resurrection to the Gos­ pel ' s actual compositions. If, though, the Gospels were already a

biblios

in the

hands of the Elders, as E usebius reports Papias' words, such an objection to faulty memory and encrustments of fables and the like loses almost all its force.

The way has been c leared for credibility in the documents once thought in writ­ ing only long after the Apostles had left the earth. Additional ly, a

biblios,

were it in Hebrew, and not Greek, wou ld help ex­

plain the cliscrepancy phenomenon. A

biblios

from Hebrew to G reek means re­

daction took place, and in that redaction process mistakes resulting in discrepan­ c ies and disagreements easily emerge. When apologists took up the issue of the

charge of discrepancy among the Gospels they did not take up the issue of re­

daction as the cause of the discrepancy because they did not have the Hebrew originals. They could only deal with the Greek texts. Yet, we w i l l argue that the Hebrew language itself, when being transcribed, could explain some discrepancies in the text precisely because of its triconso­ nantal nature. At this, it does not appear, the apologists were competent because the Hebrew tongue was not their native tongue, or one that they had known l ike the fishermen and tax collectors of Palestine. Our evidence for this is that of the

16

Evange/ion

apologists in question, which we will see later, none wrote one work in Hebrew (that we have at least). Nor is their command of Hebrew noted by others. A command of the language may have raised suspicions for them as it has for us. Looking at tri-consonantal formations in the language, when we revert back from Greek to Hebrew, does indeed show how at times some discrepancies claimed in the NT Gospels could have their source in such formations (or mis­ formations, to be more accurate). The errors then would not be sourced in the evangelion itself, but in tri-consonantal lapses to which the scribe was prone. We have used the term evangelion [(dmyytA.10v) the announcement of good news], and some comments are in order about it before we proceed. As it per­ tains to the NT, it is important to note that no proper understanding of what the evange/ia contain is possible without realizing the OT as their backdrop and precursor. Nor, contrary to the assertion of Albright and Mann, can it be under­ stood as simply a message or recounting exclusively to the early Christians of the life of Christ. The Great Commission, ''Go therefore and make disciples of all nationsn (Mt. 28: 1 9-20; cf. Mk. 1 6: 1 4- 1 8; Lk. 24:44-49) makes this plain. Convey the message of the Resurrection not just to Jews, but to the entire world. Even if Mark, as Chrysostom (a minority, but not necessarily wrong, opinion) writes, wrote originally in Hebrew, that it did not remain in Hebrew but took up composition in Greek, shows this awareness of the earliest followers: Jew and Gentile were to hear the Word. Pentecost (Acts 2 : 1 -3 1 ) was the grace that moved the followers beyond the shores of Palestine to the entire world, as Christ commanded: One need not look far for the reason why the evange/ia were written, rather than its message simply remain a vocal recounting of the life of Christ. Just as the OT was in writing, and therefore in permanent and unchanging form, so also in writing the Gospels would the first Christians be following "the ways of their fathers," the Patriarchs and Prophets of old whose teachings and activities were also not simply kept as oral traditions, but recorded on scrolls for posterity. For assurance that all generations coming would know of the Lord, the written word became a tool of immense import for those aware that knowledge of the time of Christ' s return to earth is given to no man (Mt. 24:36; cf. 24:4, 5). What made an evange/ion an evange/ion (one of the four to be accepted) was precisely the known and documented acceptance by the proto-community, the first believers, that what was in those four evange/ia which came to be ac­ cepted as the inspired accounts of the Lord, had Apostolic val idation. The Apos­ tles, in being in daily contact with Christ, wrote, spoke, and preached of all that Jesus preached and worked, and what was not within their preaching (Kll PUaaro { whence the noun Jdtpuyµa [kerygma {cf. lk. 4: 1 8- 1 9; Rom. 1 0: 1 4; Mt. 3 : 1 for variants of the verb}]) could therefore have no place in what came to be accept­ ed as the four canonical accounts of Christ. It is their inspired transmission and preaching that gives unity to the evange/ia. Thus, gnostic intimations or undertones current in that day, such as con­ tempt of the body, claims to a secret gnosis (knowledge), employment in certain ways of various terms not common to the language (such as the meanings given

17

Evange/ion

to "light," "darkness") could not be evangel ical, could not be part o f the true Apostol ic accounts. The

Thomas

Gospel of Thomas, 3

therefore, fa i led canonization.

xlviii, e.g., in a rep lication of the parable of Luke ' s sycamore tree

( 1 7:6), seems more to be emphasizing not so much faith and prayer that is re­ warded but unity, an object of Gnostic teaching. Thomas cxi seems to emphasize self-knowledge as a primary goal, while the Kingdom comes about through sel f­ awareness (xviii, x l ix, 1, lxvii, lxxxiv). In

Thomas

it is as if it is not the D ivine

who brings about the Kingdom, but one ' s own achievements at sel f-awareness

that does. The outright rejection of prophecy ( I i i) is what does

Thomas

in as any

remnant of Apostolic teaching in that Christ tells us "al l Scripture is written of me

(Jn. 5 :39-40)."

More so, the Patristic Jerome notes that the word

evangelion

was app lied to

texts that were heretical to the early Christian community to attempt to hide their heretical bent. (This is why we were careful to point out the use of biblios and

logos in our prior chapter According to the Hebrews,

as it pertained to also known as the

evangelion) . The disputed Gospel Gospel ofthe Nazarenes, was var­

iously attributed to Matthew, but acknowledging a Hebrew tract of Matthew in which some hold he first wrote his work on Jesus is not to agree that this version was of that Apostle.

The one that came to be discarded by the tradition was that Hebrew rep l i­ cant, as it were, of Matthew used by the Nazarenes. These were a community whose refusal to do away with the Law of Moses in their practice forced them out of early Christianity. The

Gospel of Matthew that

comes to us does not con­

tain what seem clearly to have been some Nazarene community additions, much

in the manner of the Carpocratians. The basis for acceptance or exclusion was the Apostolic preaching and teaching known from the beginning, which the

Gospel of the Nazarenes apparently fa i led to abide. This fail ure differentiated Matthew. The term evangelion appears in the Septuagint (the Greek OT) at, e .g., 2 Kingdoms4 4 : 1 0 (also 1 8 :20, 1 8 :22, 1 8 :25-27, 4 Kingdoms 7:9) and has the them from the genuine

sense of good tidings or good news. In l iterary classification it is the "genre" of good news. This carries over to NT Mk. l : I, 1 : 1 4 (cf. lizesthai] in the Septuagint ls.

fil>ayytl.il�Ea0m ( euange­

40:9, 4 1 :27, 52:7, 60: 6, 6 1 : I , where the term re­

fers to the bearer of the message of God ' s deliverance) and appears in I

Cor.

1 5 : 1 -9. The term conveys the sense of a proclamation-the proclamation of

G od ' s del iverance through Christ of mankind from his fall in Eden.

EL 6 Xpmroc; 6 uioc; mu 0mu mu John 's account of the Baptist declaring

This is acknowledged by Peter's I:u �&vroc;

(Mt. 1 6: 1 7)

and pronounced in

himself not to be the Christ but the one to "make straight" the pathway for His com ing ( 1 : 1 9-23; cf.

Mt. 3 : 1-6; Mk. 1 : 1 -6; Lk. 3 : 1 -6).

Wh ile the Gospels are

not simply passion-resurrection narratives with extended introductions (a claim made because of the paucity of biographical material in them), those narratives of H i s death and Resurrection for sure inform, give fullness of meaning to, all that has preceded them in what

Mark 's opening (rnayyEA.iou I riaou Xptrovi} po&Vto KpumQ'.> futobmaEt_ ao (kai ho pa­ ter sou ho blepon en to krypto autos adoposei soi): ''And your Father Who sees in secret, He will repay you" is the literal translation, an unusually cumbersome way for us of saying "And your Father who sees in secret will repay you" (see GNB, NIV, NEB). Not, however, in Hebrew. Asyndeton (the absence of an expected conjunction): most Greek sentences are linked by a connecting particle. Its use in Greek is rhetorical mostly (see A cts 20: 1 7-35). However, the frequent presence of asyndeton in the fourth Gos­ pel (see, for instance, Jn. 5:3) in this non-Greek rhetorical use gives basis for arguing a Hebraic substrate. This construct in the Synoptic Gospels occurs al­ most exclusively in the sayings and parables of Jesus. For some this gives sup­ port to the thesis of a "sayings manual," or a "sayings tradition" originally not a Greek composition or in Greek (see Mt. 1 5 : 1 9). Parataxis, from the Greek verb paratasso "l set side by side." Also named "coordination of clauses." ln Koine Greek, sentences usually contained one main verb, with any other verb placed in subordinated adverbial clauses. They were not, as it were, all in one central clause each next to the other in no order of sub­ ordination in one apparent main clause. In Hebrew, though, main verbs are side by side, conjoined with a simple conjunction (the Hebrew waw "and"). While in Koine Greek we see a semblance of this in the continual appearance of •'and" (Greek kai) in the Gospels, its pres­ ence is far in excess of normal Koine. Mark (where we see it most) 1 0:33-34 is

Hebraisms: Earlier Gospel Datings

61

a clear example: "Behold, we are going u p t o Jerusalem, and (kai) the Son of Man will be delivered up to the chief priests and scribes, and (kai) they will condemn Him to death, and (km) they will del iver Him up to the Gentiles. And (km) they will mock H im and (kat) spit upon Him and (kai) scourge Him and (kai) kill H im, and (kai) three days later He will rise again." This situating of all verbs this way is clearly a Hebraism, a Semitic pattern. Koine typically would, perhaps, have subordinated one or more of these clauses by means of partic ip les or relative clauses. It argues for the thesis that from this emerged the Greek translation later on. In the NT we have instances where an unnecessary pronoun appears after a relative one, such as in Mk. 7:25 (literally it would read, "a woman whose daughter of her"). We see this construction in the Greek because the Hebrew relative pronoun is without gender and has no declension. This construct, while possible (but not smooth) in Greek, is native to Hebrew which needs the person­ al pronoun in clauses that follow any clause in Hebrew with a personal pronoun. This instance of repetition of a construct in Hebrew occurs also in the use of prepositions. Absent in literary Greek, but characteristic in the Semitic tongue, is the repetition of a preposition before every noun of a series which it governs; e.g., Mk. 3 :7-8, 6:56, 1 1 : l . The Semitic use of the positive for the comparative or superlative has no Greek parallel. Mk. 9:43 reads, "If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better (Greek kalon, literally "good") for you to enter life crippled than having your two hands to go to hell." Mk. 1 2:28, "the most important" (literally, "the first"); Lk. 5 :39, "better'' (literally, "good"); and Jn. 2: I O, "You have kept the best (literally 'good') wine until now" are further instances. Notable in the NT (especially Luke, [Mark has only four examples of it]) is the constant use of the introductory phrase ••1t came to pass" (E'yE\'&ro [egeneto]) with another verb in the Greek. This closely resembles a Semitic idiom meaning "it was so" or "it came to pass." So, Lk. 2 :6, "And it came to pass (egeneto de) that while they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth" (cf. see lk. 2 : 1 , 2 :6, 2 : 1 5, 3 :2 1 , 5 : 1 , 5 : 1 2, 5 : 1 7, 6: 1 , 6:6, 6: 1 2, 7: 1 1 , 8 : 1 , 8:22, 9: 1 8, 9:28, 9:37, 9:5 1 , l 1 : 1 , 1 1 :27, 1 4: 1 , 1 7: 1 1 , 1 8:35, 20: 1 , 22:24, 24:4.) The "Hebrew genitive," found for example in Phil. 3 :2 1 , where Paul de­ scribes "our lowly body" (literally "the body of our lowl iness"), and "his glori­ ous body" (literally "the body of his glory"), Lk. 1 0:6 "a peace-loving man" (lit­ erally "a son of peace"), 1 Thess. 5:5 "people who belong to the light" (literally "sons of light"), and Col. 1 : l 3 "his dear son" (literally "the son of his love") provides further for the substrate character for which we have been arguing. The future indicative taking on the form of the imperative mood is a Hebra­ ism. The Hebrew verb form expressing the future in Greek usually translates as a command. Mk 9:35, "If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all"; lk. 1 : 1 3, "And you shall call his name John," (alternately) "You are to name him John." (Cf. Mt. 1 9: 1 8- 1 9. ) In Hebrew, one uses the verb form in it known as the in finitive absolute with a similar verb form to express emphasis. E.g., Gen. 2: 17 reads "you will

62

Hebraisms: Earlier Gospel Datings

surely die" (while the literal Hebrew is "dying you will die"). In the NT in Lk. 22: 1 5, the Greek 'Em0uµi� btdruµ11aa (epithymia epethymesa [literally "'with desire I have desired"]) in our way of speaking is "I have earnestly desired." Mk. 4:4 1 's &q>0�1)0T)aav q>6J3ov µtyav (ephobethesan phobon megan [literal Greek "they feared a great fear'']) in English appears as ''they feared greatly"; similarly in Mt. 3 : l 0, ''they rejoiced with a great joy." The Septuagint contains a number of similar parallelisms (Hebrew to Greek) and in the same way it is a translation of Hebrew to Greek, so one would argue these instances from Luke and Mark (also in Acts) argue for the same point. The use of iom) (idou [behold! ]) is a known correspondent to, if not outright imitation of, the Hebrew :i�;:i (hinne), VJ (hen). NT instances are Mt. 1 :20, 2:9, 3 : 1 6, Lk. 1 :20, 1 :3 1 , 1 :36, 2 :25, Acts 1 2:7, James 5 :9. Pleonasms (using more words or word parts than is necessary to express something) are common in Hebrew (especially in the Psalms). NT examples are "he arose and went," "he lifted up his eyes and saw," "he took and planted" (see Mt. 1 3 :3 3 , 1 3 :46, 25: 1 6, lk. 1 5: 1 8, Acts 5 : 1 7). Frequently, the verb archomai ••1 begin" (or its cognate) is used pleonastically (see Mk. 1 :45, 5 : 1 7, 6 :7). This characteristic would indicate a Hebrew backdrop once more to the inspired text of Christ's ministry. There is no gainsaying that ancient Hebrew poetry composes differently than classical Greek. Strophe and stichs course throughout the Hebrew that do not obtain in any way in Greek. Stress units, versets (minimum of two, maxi­

mum of ten, syllables) into strophe, in tum into stanza, are distinct from the Greek way. Hebrew poetry is most characterized not by rhyme, but what Ewald termed Sinnrhythmus and Lowth para//e/ismus, 43 and is without meter.44 Though Isaac Taylor of Ongar and Carl Keil of Dorpat45denied the presence of epic and dra­ matic poetry in the Bible, (the argument seeming to be, since the essence of fic­ tion is untruth, both of which are in epic and dramatic poetry, how could God allow poetry in H is inspired text?),46 we see its occurrence, as Davies47 concise­ ly points ou� e.g., in (synonymous parallelism) Ps. 36:5: 1 5 : 1 ; 24: 1 -3 ; 25:5; 1 Ki.. 1 8:7; Is. 6:4; 1 3 :7; (antithetic) Prov. 1 0: I ; 1 1 :3; 29:27 [cf. 1 0: 5 ; 1 6:9; 27:2]; Ps. 3 7 :9; Ps. 20:8; 30:6; ls. 54:7; (synthetic) Ps. 1 9:8; Prov. 1 :7; [cf. 3 : 5,7; Ps. 1 :3 ; 1 5:4]; (introverted,48 in which ''the hemistichs of the parallel members are chiastically arranged, as in the scheme ab ba." Thus), Prov. 23 : 1 5 [cf: 1 0:4, 1 2; 1 3 :24; 2 1 : 1 7; Ps. 5 1 :3]); (palilogical, in which one or more words of the first member are repeated as an echo, or as the canon in music, in the second. Thus), Nahum 1 :2 : Jdgs. 5:3, 6, 1 1 , 1 5, 23, 27; Ps. 72:2, 1 2, 1 7; 1 2 1 ; 1 24; 1 26; Is. 2:7; 24: 5 ; Hos. 6:4; (climactic or comprehensive, in which the second l ine completes the first. Thus,) Ps. 29: 1 ; Ex. 1 5:6; Ps. 29:8; (rhythmical parallelism: 49 Thus), Ps. 1 38:4; Prov. 1 5:3; 1 6:7, 1 0; 1 7: 1 3 , 1 5; 1 9:20; 2 1 :23, 25. This occurrence would indicate a priori that the Taylor and Keil claim of epic and dramatic poet­ ry being absent of truth (or inspiration, which is inspired truth) is itself absent of truth.

Hebraisms: Earlier Gospel Datings

63

It takes us far afield to go into these matters at greater depth, but the gram­ mar rules of the Hebrew make it c lear that the Magnificat and Our Father (Mt. 6: 1 2- 1 3 ) could never have been Greek verses originally, nor Zacharias' "Bene­ dictus" (Lk. 1 :68-79. ) That is, if one needed any evidence that Greek and He­ brew are different in their formation, its poetry offers gainful insight into that assertion. Because these passages are overtly in the Greek as Greek texts, while we know their structure is not in Greek form, what prevents one from asking if there are not other such instances throughout the Greek texts to the point of ask­ ing if the entire Gospel texts might not be similarly formed, i.e., formed from a Hebrew structure? Carmignac' s contribution to our understanding of the Hebrew weave throughout the Synoptic Gospels proceeds beyond pointing out the structural form of the Benedictus and Our Father. Zacharias' Benedictus in Luke, l , com­ posed of three strophes, in its second is the allusion to the three protagonists of the passage (John (through the word hdnan [show mercy], root of Yohdndn), Zacharias (through zdkar [he remembers], root of Zdkdrydh) and El izabeth ([through shdba '] root of Elishdba ] ) which the Greek could in no wise provide. We see this p lay on words (a characteristic of Hebrew) in the Our Father in where "the word ' forgive' corresponds to the root ndia, 'debts' and 'debtors' to ndshdh, and 'temptation ' to nasah. A similar strain is Mk. 3: 1 4- 1 5 with the root Hebrew sh/, whence the words "send," "have power," and "cast out" can be traced. Does Mark make this passage, whose Hebrew would show this play on words phenomenon, by chance? Or does the fact that in the Hebrew one can identify such a play indicate a Hebrew substrate after all? The same with Mt. 3 :9 and Lk. 3 :8. These verses speak of the power of God such that He could change stones (,}_:;l�D [ 'ebdnim]) into children (1,�� [ bdnim]) of Abraham. Once more, the Hebrew penchant for play on words. More hidden, but present in the text, is Mt. l :2 1 . Father Carmignac notes what Tresmontant pointed out in his The Hebrew Christ50 in the passage: an important and subtle relation of causality is embedded in the Hebrew yoshia '

,

·

and yeshua ' . "You will call H is name Jesus for He will save the people from

their sins. " No such relation appears in the Greek, though it is impl icit in the very enunciation in the passage of Jesus' name for it is Hebrew in origin, and it means ''who saves." If we take this word p lay phenomenon further, Carmignac 5 1 points out its presence in the texts where it does not appear in the Greek, but in Hebrew it would: Mk. 2 :6, 2 :2 1 , Mt. 9: 1 6, Mk. 3 : 1 0, 4:6; Mt. 1 3 :6; Mk. 6:38; 9: 1 8; 1 0:34; 1 1 : 1 5 and Mt. 2 1 : 1 2; Mk. 1 3 :8, Mt. 24:7, Lk. 2 1 : 1 1 ; Mk. 1 3 :2 1 ; 1 4: 1 1 ; 1 4 : 1 6; 1 4 :4 1 and Mt. 26:45; Mk. 1 4:65; Mt. 9:8, 1 4:30, and 27:54, Mk. 5: 1 5 and Jn. 6: 1 9; Mt. 1 4 : 1 2; Mt. 26:3 8. It is, however, seen in both the English and the He­ brew in L k. 1 :46, the Magnificat: ''My soul exalts the Lord and my spirit exults in God my Savior," which in the Hebrew gives tagdel and wetdge/.

Hebraisms: Earlier Gospel Datings

64

Note that here there is no question of syntactical or grammatical identity of the Greek to the Hebrew. We have gone beyond that to the actual occurrence of a phenomenon that of itself remains inexplicable. Why do Mark and Matthew use the Hebrew play on words? Or is it that the Greek conceals what was origi­ nally there? The many occurrences of the play on words indicate that these are not by chance. They show a deliberate and formed approach to the writing of the text. That approach seems to have been originally from the Hebrew. Right in the

Magnificat

one finds a very obvious Hebraism, a clause expli­

Lk. l :5 1 ' s Greek 'EnoiT\aEV Kp6:T� tv f3paxiovi ai>wu translates into English "He has made power in His arm." The

cable only from a Hebrew comprehension.

formulaic prayer that Mary has cited from the Hebrew, and which one finds, 5 52 according to Father Carmignac, in his Qumran text 3 translation with Guilbert, 54 Cothenet, and Lignee, the Qumran ?;o �W¥ (Asah hay[) gives us the intelligi­ bility we need. The Greek phrase, as rising on top of the Hebrew, would have us understand the phrase as HHis arm has performed great feats of strength." Citing the

Magnificat

as an example of a Hebrew substrate would be misleading, of

course, inasmuch as this prayer is clearly not one Mary rendered in Kaine. She spoke the prayer in Hebrew. 55 Samuel Terrien has noted that when one translates the Greek text back in­ to Hebrew several salient features of Hebrew poetry do emerge, features that show a non-Greek origin to the prayer. The prayer of M ary here itself traces l Kingdoms ( l Samuel in Terrien's citation): 56

back to Hannah's prayer in

Mary: My soul glorifies the Lord (lk. I :46). Hannah: My heart rejoices in the Lord ( l Ki . 2: I ). .

Mary: My spirit rejoices in God my Savior (lk. I :47). Hannah: For I delight in Your deliverance ( I Ki. 2: l ). Mary: Holy is His name (Lk. I :49). Hannah: There is no one holy like the Lord ( I Ki. 2:2). Mary: He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the hum­ ble (Lk. I : 5 2). Hannah: The Lord sends poverty and wealth; He humbles and He exalts. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; He seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor

( 1 Ki. 2:7, 8 cf. Ps.

1 1 3:7, 8). Mary: He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty (Lk. l : 53 ). Hannah: Those who were full hire themselves out for food, but those who were hungry hunger no more. ( I Ki. 2:5). Mary: He has scattered those who

are

proud (Lk. l :5 1 )

.

Hannah: those who oppose the Lord will be shattered ( I Ki. 2: 1 0).

The fact that Mary's

Magnificat

seems to trace back to Hannah, a Hebrew

sacred oration centuries before, solidifies the notion of a Hebrew underlying portions of L uke as we saw in

I : 5 1 . That he keeps the Greek phrase as a literal

Hebraisms: Earlier Gospel Datings

65

translation of the Hebrew, a translation that is of difficult understanding till we understand whence the formula for the Marian oraison comes, makes this plain. Certain phrases in the Synoptics appear to have notions in them (all inessen­ tial [of no consequence to the matter of salvation]) which do not make sense on their face. Suggesting that the documents were copied frequently from one copy­ ist to the other, particular seemingly unintell igible phrases take on a c larity they do not at first blush have. If we take the Greek text and see in its underpinnings Hebrew, various copyist mistakes (not intentional in these cases [to separate this analysis from Origen 's comments on intentional differences introduced]) emerge as explanations why the Greek text may have inexplicabilities about them that a bad hand in a Hebrew scribe (perhaps the evangelist himself) can explain. One letter copied for another can make for a reading not exactly consonant with what one would expect. When the mistakes or seeming mistakes make sense when seen as errors in a Hebrew copyist transcriptions, we have good rea­ son to argue the Greek text was original ly a Hebrew one. In the Greek of Mk. l :7 John the Baptist says "I am unworthy to unfasten (in Hebrew ;:hw� [ldshelet]) the strap of His sandals," but in Mt. 3: 1 1 the Greek has him saying "carry" (which in Hebrew is J!lnNtZ!, las 'et). The latter does not make much sense to us, but the former does. That the latter does not one can c laim because a copyist transcribed incorrectly in the Hebrew what the Greek took up as the word Matthew wrote, an incorrect transcription of /dshelet. Scribal error occurs in the mustard seed parable: no mustard seed becomes a tree, yet in Mt. 1 3 :32 and Lk. 1 3 : 1 9 one reads it does. Carmignac points out in Qumran calligraphy the letters N and P together can look l ike S. 'Es is the He­ brew for tree, but 'np (anaph) is the word for branch. We thus have a mustard seed not becoming a tree, but one that, as Mk. 4:2 reads, has branches in wh ich birds can reside. Other such scribal error in Hebrew one can argue in Mk. 8:3 1 compared with Mt. 1 6:2 1 ; Mk. 8:27 with Mt. 1 6: 1 3 ; Mk. 9:43 with Mt. 1 8:8; Mk. 1 1 : 1 4 with Mt. 2 1 : 1 9; Mk. 1 1 : 1 9 with Mt. 2 1 : 1 7; Mk. 1 2 : 1 5 with Mt. 22: 1 9; Mk. 1 6:8 with Mt. 28:8; Mt. l l :25 w ith Lk. 1 0:2 1 ; Mk. 1 0:49 with Lk. 1 8:40; Mk. 1 5: 1 6 with Mt. 27:27; Mk. 1 5 :39 with Mt. 27:54 or Lk. 23 :47. Because of the Qumran manuscripts discovered in 1 949 we have been able to identify Hebrew/Aramaic scribal errors, and especially where they may occur. Applied to the Gospels (as in the passages j ust cited), where there are certain differences in the same scene being presented, we see the same errors possible, occurring again. In all of these the transfer of a letter, the proximity of one letter to another, confusion of one letter for another, the absence of a mark in one, suggest that if the explanation for the difference comes to scribal error in the Hebrew, then the texts in question are most likely Hebrew in origination and not Greek. The Q umran documents have also given the ability to identify roots in He­ brew that give rise to different meanings. Unl ike the romance languages and their derivatives, in Hebrew the consonants are often what give substance to what is before the reader or heard by the l istener. That is, it is these that are the frequent basis of what is being communicated. Thus, in Mk. 9:49 we read in the

Hebraisms: Earlier Gospel Datings

66

Greek "will be salted, seasoned by fire." Because of Qumran it has been discov­ ered that one root of :-t'?.l (me/ah) signifies ''to salt," the other ''to vaporize, in­ cinerate." Applied to our issue here,

Mk. 9:49 then shows that underlying it is, in Mk. 9:49 is taken to actually

fact, a Hebrew substrate. Only in this way, when

mean "will be incinerated by fire," do we get the significance of the text, for nothing can be salted or seasoned by fire.

Not, however, does the Qumran collection alone move

us

towards the H e­

brew substrate notion. We saw in Divinity of a Birth that Matthew, as well as a number of sections in the other Gospels (beside the Luke examples above),

showed a Hebrew substrate in the same way that translations in the Septuagint

showed that it was the Greek when translated back into the Hebrew that evinced

the Hebrew substrate. This we knew because the Greek on its own did not "flow." This is understood independently of recourse to any Q umran documents.

We can take another instance that Carmignac identifies: it is in the Septua­

gint translation of Lev.

20: 1 8

and how

Mk. 5 :29

and Lk. 8 :44 argue a Hebrew

substrate in the same way the Septuagint is a translation from the Hebrew. It

translates the Leviticus ivlt (meqor) by the very words we see successively in

Mark 7tllrTl (pege) and Luke pucnl)µam �rof\c; airoviou)" is to be taken literally. The Greek rendition of the Gospel must oblige the word being transmitted as closely as possible to its original. From the many instances of Hebraisms which we have identified in Mark, ( 1 : 1 -4, 7; 1 : 1 3 ; 2 :6; 2 :2 1 ; 3 : 1 0; 3 : 1 4-1 5; 4:6, 1 9, 30, 32; 5 : 1 3, 29; 6:36, 38; 8:27, 3 1 ; 9: 1 7, 1 8, 42, 43, 49; 1 0:34, 49; 1 1 : 1 4, 1 5, 1 9; 1 2 : 1 5; 1 3:8, 2 1 ; 1 4: 1 1 , 1 6, 4 1 , 65; 1 5 : 1 6, 39; 1 6:8) 1 Mark appears as an original Hebrew document, 2 just as in Divinity of a Birth we sketched out how Matthew's Hebraisms made its original composition as a Hebrew document too obvious. The Hebraisms run throughout Mark in too steady of a stream to think it was not a continuous narra­ tive in Hebrew. This, of course, is not to say they were written in the 60s AD as a minority of scholars (e.g., Carsten Thiede)3 has held. Claiming fragments of both Matthew and Mark back to the 60s in Greek requires much more proof than what has been advanced so far for the claim. Mark, some have held, is earlier than Matthew because it lacks the detail of Matthew (as well as Luke). If it had been written after them, would it not have contained some of what these narratives did? Contravening that is the fact that there are details in Mark that seem not to interest Matthew or Luke-----e. g., sad­ ness Jesus felt (3 :5), or His family's attitude towards Him (3 :2 1 ). Be those facts as they may, they do not detract from Mark 's being an early document, one far earlier in composition than a Greek one would have been. One finds it incon­ ceivable, after all, that the words of a Hebrew man, one prophesied by the Scrip­ ture of the Hebrew people, would have been composed in Greek before it would have taken its original presentation in Hebrew. And reading Mark shows a He­ brew running throughout the Greek overlay. What is unique, however, is Origen 's lack of comment on the importance of these Hebraisms. He tells us how to proceed in our exegesis, and yet seems not to have encountered what the Greek compositions are demanding more and more that we admit. Thus the question of reconciliation of seeming conflicts in the compositions before him, a matter that exercised him greatly, was of far greater burden to him. This because if the works were originally in Hebrew, redaction by the community subsequent to make these texts available to a wider audience, surely could have allowed differences inessential to the message of

71

Towards An NT Canon

Salvation, though historically askew. I f the Scriptures are a historical document,

Origen's difficulty is how does one straighten the disparities one finds?

If the originals were written in another language and subsequent hands were

more interested in the salvific message rather than the actual specifics which

could not be checked, what weight does the actual historical detail carry? Not a historical detail about virgin conception, or virgin birth, or a wedding feast in a place called Cana. These are essential verities of salvation history. However,

whether two thousand were fed one day or twenty-five hundred, or if the number of fish caught in a net was hundreds or less (cf.

Jn. 2 1 : 1 1 )

,

and was at one place

instead of another; whether Pilate, harangued by Temple workers congregated by minions of the High Priest, issued the command for Christ' s being taken away by Roman soldiers whi le sitting on his j udgment seat, or standing; these are not matters of salvific import. If the details of the last Pasch Christ celebrat­ ed are without the specificity an exegete wants, is it possible the writers were

not composing for exegetes? Or might it be because since the first Christians,

the proto-community members, were of the Hebrew faith there was no need seen

to go into such details?

Irrespective of Origen's exegetical tools, and whether they would bring cor­

rect or incorrect conclusions to bear on tracing the Gospel to the language origi­ nal ly composed, Porphyry' s v irulent attack on Christianity gives us the first in­ sight into the breakdown of any possibility of dry objectivity in exegesis. Indeed, if the early Church authorities, as we discussed earlier, could present problems for the acceptance of some or all of John ' s compositions, what would

prevent one of Porphyry' s

(233-304

AD) disposition to be the first to start from

outside that Church the attack on how one should reason about inspiration?

The time was ripe for his Against the Christians in Fifteen Books (ca. 270 AD).4 Rome was in steep decline, its one thousand years of empire approaching an ending point that debauchery and the absence of love of patria bring. The

Christians were the ones that were cited as the cause, however. Persecutions

were rampant, Origen and Polycarp among the martyrs at the Roman Emperors

beckoning. Christian-owned property, congregants, along with copies of the Scriptures, d isappeared. Valerian' s especially systematic persecution came to an

end under Gallienus (260-268 AD), but the Tyre disciple of Plotinus fevered the empire against Christianity to a point where Diocletian sought the religion ' s

extinction.

The savagery came to an end with Constantine ' s

3 12

AD Edict of Tolera­

tion (Constantine also ordered Porphyry' s work to be destroyed, most likely

accounting for our having no copies today), but thi s did not stop Julian the

Three Books Against the Galileans5 after Eusebi­ response Against Hieroc/es and his three part reply to Porphyry. Within am­

Apostate' s Porphyry inspired us'

bits of a hundred year upheaval Rome was a cauldron of anti-Christian and pro­ Christian forces that would see the followers of Man i

(2 1 6-276

AD) to take up

Porphyry' s cudgel against the fo llowers of Jesus of Nazareth. The attack on discrepancies and the like was nothing new. We saw Ori gen react to these w ith the charge that some discrepancies eventuated from agendas

Towards An NT Canon

72

of anti-Christians. The implication was that discrepancies in redaction may have in fact been the doing of those with such agendas. Porphyry's own disagreements stemmed, it appears, from the general milieu of the day which saw Christians as inimical to the empire. His own charges against the Christian texts seem at times to arise from what he thinks the texts should say, rather than what they did say. The debate about the texts sti l l did not stop Christians from being willing to suffer death under the Emperors of the time. That willingness reinforces our thesis that these discrepancies battered about by the critics of Ori gen' s day (and subsequent decades) lacked for the Christian communities believability or, therefore, force. Why order documents riddled with obvious and blatant errors, contradictions, and falsehoods (as the Roman Emperors ordered)? In such an instance they are their own undoing, and need no special attention of one who was considered a god. The Christian will­ ingness to die for these texts was awaiting a final answering blow. This would come about, as we shall see, with Augustine. 6 Dungan sets out what has remained of Porphyry' s Against

the Christians.

It

appears Porphyry's aim was to repeat Celsus: set out an exposition of inconsist­ encies and perceived contradictions in the Scriptural compositions. He did not l im it his view to what was known as the good news of the Christians.

Genesis

came in for the criticism of its allowing a serpent power over an almighty Deity, notwithstanding that it has the Divine actually being the creator of what is there­ fore evil. Porphyry finds it strange Christ only appeared to the disciples instead of His crucifiers. The implication is a smart individual would have gone to the High Priest and Pilate so that they too would believe. Would this also not have stopped the persecution of H is followers? There is the seeming contradiction for Porphyry where Christ preached '�fear not them that kil l the body," with His prayer in Gethsemane to let the cup pass from Him. He stated in

Jn. 5:3 1

that

did He bear w itness to H imself, it would not be true, but called H imself the Light of the world. Mt. 1 9:24 has Christ saying it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Yet this would make anything but poverty the manner one must live, which Porphyry believes is absurd. In

Mt. 26: 1 1

Christ says "Me you do not have al­

ways" yet He says in other places "I am with you always." In Mk.

1 6: 1 8 Christ

says the true believer will suffer no harm from poison, but if this is so then tak­ ing of poison should be a mandatory test for all who seek to follow Him. Porphyry takes issue with the crucifixion accounts, where sus refused the v inegar pressed to His lips,

John says

Matthew says Jn. 6:54

the opposite.

Je­ es­

pecially troubles Porphyry as a suggestion of cannibalism, while Porphyry criti­ cizes the inaccurate citations in

Isaiah

what is in

Mark and Matthew

for prophecies (attributing to

Malachi,

e.g.), however infrequent as they are. Porphyry also 7 objected to Daniel's status as prophet, an objection a history of scholarship has addressed at length and finds wanting. Paul and Peter had disagreements which put to test the unanimity followers of Christ could possibly have in interpreting H is teachings. It is more that one follower's interpretation is what the followers

Towards An NT Canon

73

eventually accepted, rather than possibly what Christ Himse lf held which be­ came, according to Porphyry, doctrine. That is surely a sign of disarray in and questionabi l ity of Christ's own abi lity at preaching. That the Roman ( Latin) Church held Porphyry in such contempt (Leo X 's Exsurge Domine called Luther "another Porphyry") seems to argue for the force it felt of his condemnations. Yet, it is not clear what Porphyry' s points are. A claim of an inaccurate footnote for a prophecy c ited (as in the Isaiah/Malachi case above) is not something one is really going to fret over in the larger scheme of things (some would argue it shows the human side of inspiration) and Porphyry's charge of inconsistencies in the Scriptures real ly does not hold sway. H is quotes of Christ saying one thing at one time and another at another fails to note that Scripture is taken as a whole, and not one line at a time. To say bearing witness to H imse lf would not amount to truth, and then referring to Himself as the l ight of the world, does not involve Him in an inconsistency. Even the casual reader knows Christ is saying that the Pharisees and others would say He was not truthful if He bore witness to Himself; He is not saying that He would be being untruthful. The charge of cannibalism has l ittle probity given that Christ at the Last Supper referred to the bread He gave His disciples as His body (Mt. 26:26; Mk. 1 4 :22; Lk. 22: 1 9). Simi larly, it appears, with the remainder of the objections. It is l ike a beating a dead horse to one-by-one dismiss the comments of Porphyry. The Scriptures are the means themselves of effective dismissal . Porphyry' s work seems t o have had the effect it did because o f the general atti­ tude of the Empire at the time against the Christians, as we saw. One needs ask oneself what would have occurred if, following the notion that the Gospel texts were originally in whole (in Matthew 's case) and in part (for the other Gospels) Hebrew undertexts with redaction occurring as the Jew­ ish people lost favor in Rome 's eyes, one was able to show that the inconsisten­ c ies and the l ike were simp ly redactions from the Hebrew into Greek? Were wrong c itations for quotes perhaps the work of a loose redactive hand that did not check every dot and tittle? We noted what Origen cal led for in examining the legitimacy of the NT texts, and his method we maintain requires a look at the underlying Hebrew evinced in the Greek texts. Porphyry in failing to address this evidence dismissed the counsel of Origen and, at the same time, shows how tendentious h is work actually was. It was not the work of a scholar in his study so much as a p iece of propaganda that would not withstand the Origenic process of requiring one look at all the evidence. Part of that evidence is the possibility of a Hebrew original redacted into Greek, which accounts for mistakes (e.g., incorrect citations of a prophetic text) not found in the original. Eusebius responded to Porphyry pointing out, in the same manner Irenaeus did against the Gnostics, that Porphyry more or less addressed a hodge-podge of various c ircu lating nostrums and bel iefs attributed to the Christian sect, but not what in many instances it held. A delineation of what those teachings were was possible only by identifying the actual original teachers of Christ's doctrines and the l ine of succession to which these teachings were committed. Th is recogniza­ bly arduous if not impossible task ("it is beyond my power to produce a perfect

Towards An NT Canon

74

and complete history''} all commenced in Eusebius' compendious

History (mostly

Ecclesiastical

in the first six books), and his prior less extensive responses to

Porphyry. Eusebius clearly had access to Origen' s thinking, he having written

Celsus only a few years celsiastical History we

Against Ec­

before in Eusebius' birthplace Caesarea. And in his

see the fixed desire to establish what writings handed

[tafua µtv f;v oµoA.oyouµevmc;]),8 i.e., from the original disciples, and which were disputed ( f.cvrtA.cyouµf:vm) or outright rejected as spurious (v60m). Eusebius would end up with some twenty down were legitimate ("the accepted writings"

out of one hundred documents that fit what has come to be termed '"canonical" or part of the canon, body, that which fits the measure of legitimate or inspired. These were the Apostolic teachings which, once identified, would render Porphyry' s charges greatly diminished. It would be Tertullian 's

Prescription Against Heretics

which added to this

process of Eusebius the caveat that only those steeped in the Apostolic tradition could judge what teachings were not spurious, but which were in fact those of the Lord. Those bereft of such understanding had no authority to judge the teachings of the Apostles, which, because true, could not contain contradictions or falsehoods. Inspired teachings were outside the criticism of the pagans, Tertullian ar­ gued, because they did not recognize truth, while those who knew the truth did so because they recognized what was inspired. That is, they recognized what came from the Apostles and with that what had proceeded though succession from them-assertions and teachings that therefore had to be without error ("Nullus inter multos eventus unus est exitus . . . . Caeterum, quod apud multos 9 unum invenitur, non est erratum sed traditum.") By clarifying what works were of the Apostles, who were the direct recipients of the Lord ' s teachings, stating those teachings only would guarantee one against the charges of error and con­ tradictions Porphyry has thrown against the followers of Christ. For the Church, we need to note, to canonize Scripture (declare what is and what is not inspired Writ), it first itself must be legitimate. But it can only be legitimate if Scripture is, which is what it is supposed to canonize. It is a c lassic circular argument diffic ulty, 10 and requires we go back to the history of the issues with canonization. Prophecy, we argued at great length in our L inus

or Peter and Divinity of a Birth provides extensive and sustained basis

for claiming the D ivine origination of Scripture. The arguments against the evi­ dence we set forth as events prophesied do not appear to have the force neces­ sary to invalidate that evidence. Thus we avoid the circularity charge by show­ ing that because prophecy shows it to be of Divine authorship, what the Scriptures tell us has truth. ln granting, through the words of Christ, the commu­ nity of believers the powers to loose and bind, that community (the Church) has the ability to state what is and is not of Divine authorship. Because the Paraclete, as Scripture declares, guarantees against error in that power, a guarantee legiti­ mated by the prophetic nature of the text within which it is contained, sc., Scrip­ ture, it can declare what is and is not canonical. The Apostles, as possessed of

Towards An NT Canon

75

that inspiration because of their having been with Christ, therefore can announce to us what is and is not of the Word, what is and is not inspired. What body of authority, however, makes for the certification of the books in the NT as legitimate? I f Tertul l ian's rule is followed, that body which adheres to what has come down in the succession of authority from the Apostles. What they have declared as inspired teaching from and about Christ the body of fol­ lowers over which that Apostol ic succession has ruled, so long as that body has transmitted faithfully the Apostles teachings on this (no matter the number of generations or centuries), is truth and true. It is the truth about what is inspired in the texts collected for the NT. Apostol icity was the test of the inspiration because it was upon the Apostles that the Lord breathed (a notion we detailed in this work' s preface) and upon whom the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost (Mt. 1 0: 1 9, 20; Acts 1 5 :28; l Cor. 2 : 1 3 ; 2 Cor. 1 3 :3; 1 Thess. 2: 1 3). It was a permanent attribute endowed by the Divine which remained with the inspired writer, not some impulse from the Holy Spirit at different moments and t imes. In conveying and disseminating the Word of Christ, and His teaching, they conveyed something which of its very nature is sacred. Accordingly, various works not recognized as by or through the Apostles, e.g., the Epistle of Barnarbas, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Jude received no sanction of revealed authority and truth. The question of canonization of the NT Scriptures invites one to ask why we have these twenty-seven works that comprise it in the order that we do, an order different than its original arrangement. Was it meant to be originally a cohesive unity (like chapters of any narrative today), as if a story of the Savior from beginning to end, with subsequent Epistles of encouragement on His life to follow? Did its original order suggest a progressive ordering to those who as­ sembled it, the good news reaching first the Jews (thus Matthew), then a text accommodating the Jews and Gentiles (Mark, who is a Jew writing to a city in Italy), the Gentiles and Jews (Luke, the cultured Antiochean), and finally the Gentiles (John, who incorporates a Gentile [Greek] prologue). The Epistles of Paul surely are doctrinal ly progressive from Romans to Hebrews (Paul [Rom. l : 1 1 ] refers to his hearers in Rome as needing to "be established," and in the very next Epistle, 1 Cor. 3 : 1-2, as "babes in Christ" wh ile the later Ephesians [4: 1 2- 1 4] speaks of those "maturing") and would seem on the face of it to need to follow, not precede as they do today, the Epistles from James, Peter, Jude, and John. However, it appears almost an i mpossibility to argue this overarching the­ mat ic, one suggested by Martin, 1 1 as what controlled the original ordering, if for no other reason than the complexity of the works makes it extraordinarily diffi­ cult to tease out the correct threads that tie that thesis together. It is l ike mining an ore of gold, with thinned and ever thinning veins continually being found through one' s prayer and inspiration, opening up continually new ores of under­ standing to the people of the Church. Where is the final vein that signals we have all the gold, all the information necessary to look at the reason for the orig­ inal, proto-ordering that has been of such contention to this day?

Towards An NT Canon

76

What about the first ordering, the pre-canonical one that disappeared at Car­ thage, do we know as factual? It is no secret that the early ordering (as evi­

Epis­ 2, 3 John,

denced in the Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, and Ephraem manuscripts) of the

tles

had Paul ' s fourteen follow those from

and

Jude.

James,

l and

2 Peter,

l,

Athanasius, Leontius of Byzantium, Philastratis all placed Paul after

these, with Philastrati s going so far as to point out that in

2

Gal. 1 : 1 7

Paul wrote

the Jewish Apostles were "before me" (Gal. 1 : 1 7), 1 this Eastern ordering fol­ 13 lowed i n Canon LX of the Counci l of Laodicea, being further advocated by

Catechetical Lectures. 1 4 Lardner's Credibility 1 5 notes the Holy Damascene John's Dogmatic Theology followed this order, as wel l as positioning, as the aforementioned did, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ( in that order) before Acts and the seven pre-Pauline Epistles. The Latin Church placed Paul before the other Epistles, noting the ad­ Cyril of Jerusalem in his

vantage that placing Paul "before the Jewish Apostles" had if they were to be a Church that went beyond J udaism. It did not hurt that Paul ' s first

Epistle

was to

the Romans. It gave the Latin Church a j urisdictional advantage which the Scriptures had not. The Western Church . . . .gave priority of position to the Pauline Epistles. The tendency of the Western Church to recognize Rome as the center of authority may perhaps, in part, account for this departure from the custom of the East. The order in the Alexandrian, Vatican, and Ephraem manuscripts gives prece­ dence to the Catholic Epistles ( i.e., those of Peter, Jude, James, and John), and as this is also recognized by the Council of Laodicea, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Athanasius, it would appear to have been characteristic of the Eastern church­ es. t6

The Latin Rufinus (born ca.

330

AD) advocated this arrangement

17

that

placed Rome therefore ahead of the East in authority, which The Third Council 18 of Carthage took up, as well as Innocent of Rome, 19 and Gelasius, B ishop of 20 Rome (492 AD). The Easterner Gregory of Nazianzus agreed with this order­ ing, but then his fight w ith Arianism moved him to a call for a universal ortho­ 21 (cf. ica0oA.ucft

doxy. Placing Paul ahead of the "Catholic (Ka0oA.mli) Epistles"

Em Tel A.6ym, "Hebrew dialecf') cannot be taken to mean a Hebrew

Matthew

because he does not use the term the general

Greek term for language or tongue,

''yA.iOOcra," loses much of its force. Other

scholars on the language of the NT have also argued that at least portions of it

were originally in a Semitic tongue. "When we turn to the New Testament we find that there are reasons for suspecting a Hebrew or Aramaic original for the

Gospels of Matthew, Mark, John and for the Apocalypse."5 "The

Book of Reve­

was written in a Semitic language, and . . . . the Greek translation . . . . is a re­ 6 markably close rendering of the original." "We come to the conclusion, there­ 7 fore that the Apocalypse as a whole is a translation from Hebrew or Aramaic."

lation

The quotes summarize our contention from the opening lines of this book.

Exegesis and Skepticism

1 13

We saw in our own exegesis that the statements regarding discrepancy and contradiction, when approached as Origen and Augustine did, are able to lose their force because what one first argues are discrepancies and the like other considerations show as perhaps, if not probably, not discrepancies or contradic­ tions at all. No two historians have written the exact same account of any histor­ ical figure they have decided to study and on which to write. What exactly are we supposed to say in the case of Christ, then? If what we see in the Gospel nar­ ratives are not really discrepancies or contradictions nullifying, contradicting, the thesis that He is God, do we conclude that we still need a harmony and com­ pliance of attitude across the seas of discussion and narrative in order to accord the canonized texts of Christendom respect and worth? How is it that the Consensus (Harmonization of the Gospels) of Augustine came undone after some twelve hundred years? What is it that started question­ ing and doubting the authorship and order of the Gospel narratives? As elements of philosophy appeared in Augustine's Harmonization method, so elements of philosophy went to contribute to its breakdown. Certainty of any­ thing outside of the thinking self came into sharp questioning as skepticism took hold among Europe's intelligentsia in the sixteenth century. Descartes had made certainty of things outside the self contingent upon the verac_ity of God, Who would not give us the inclination to believe in an external world if there were none. Hume had played the causal maxim card, trying to imply, some will argue, that showing causality was not demonstrable might very well mean it was not an actual mechanism of nature. The astronomers had landed successfully on the fact that the earth was not the center of the universe, and this surely turned the Genesis account on its head. With that came the doubt of other things Scriptural, and with that questions as to whether Christ ever existed, whether He rose from the dead, and if He did, what of the authors who said this? Who were they? Were they eyewitnesses? Were their accounts historical? Or, if there were all these disagreements that Augustine believed he had finally resolved, is it because they were not cotempo­ rary accounts of Christ but set down long after the first century came to an end? We believe showing that the narratives of Matthew and some of Mark, Luke, and John were Hebraic in their undertext shows an early composition of many passages in the NT evangelia. Disregarding this lexical approach, or simp­ ly trying to argue it away as hypothetical when there are simply too many pas­ sages we have shown to have this Hebrew underpinning provides an answer to our question how anyone could ignore Augustine's assertion of the order of the Gospel writings. That lexical approach also showed him to be correct in a num­ ber of instances on an absence of disagreement which Enlightenment thinkers resurrected again thirteen centuries later. The culture of Europe had reached such turmoil that freethinking and hypotheses about things Divine was no more a challenge than Bacon's new science for looking at the world. 8 Not so much the Cartesian induced uncertainty about everything is what caused this biblical degringolade, though. Uncertainty (more precisely known as "doubt," or "disbelief') prepared for a new way of thinking. This is why we

1 14

Exegesis and Skepticism

have looked at it in Descartes. The epistemological fashion of uncertainty and metbodic doubt paved the way for advancing assumptions that had no factual, empirical, or even abstract support and using them as the basis for a new look at Scripture. If there is no certainty except that of the self, how do I know what level of certainty I can have beyond geometrical objects in my experience Des­ cartes argued. Providing metaphysical certainty for anything else was tanta­ mount to impossible, and thus Holy Writ became suspect. Hume had assumed in his argument against causality that "whatever is sepa­ rable in thought is separable in fact." My idea of the light going on is not con­ nected in anyway way to that of turning on the switch. I can think of one without the other. So, the causality maxim became a matter of doubt. Spino.za, though he preceded Hume, was in the same vein of making assumptions for which there was no basis. He held that a study of the theology in Scripture required an un­ derstanding of the history in which the Scriptural statement is made. "The uni­ versal rule for interpreting Scripture is therefore not to attribute anything to Scripture as its lesson which we do not find to be made transparent in the great­ est possible degree from its history."9 "Since when?" is a not unexpected response to this bland assertion. How do you prove this? On what basis is the statement certified, validated, secured? There is none. Yet it, for some reason, was taken up, more and more, as a prin­ cipal methodological formula for looking at everything said in the Scriptures. For sure, if there are no tools or witnesses (other than those who apparently had a stake in the outcome of what was said in the original Gospels, e.g., and who could vouch for them?) that give a framework for examining the truth or false­ hood of a historical statement, then it is obvious you have won more than half the argument about Scripture's doubtfulness before you even proceed with it. If you look at the historical record as set out in the Gospels, fissures rivulet through the text for doubt through which to stream. The most obvious example would be the thorny issue, mentioned in this book three times, of when Jesus cleansed the Temple. In John (2: 1 3- 1 7) it took place at the Passover (the first recorded in the Gospels) following H is baptism by John the Baptist. It was fore­ told (Mal. 3 : 1 ): "I will send my messenger," after which for John we find him in the Temple cleansing it; for so it was prophesied there (Mal. 3 :2, 3): He shall sit as a refiner and purify the sons of Levi (cf. 2 Chr. 30: 1 4, 1 5, [and Josiah's], 4

Ki. 23:4, Gen. 3 5 :2.) The second Passover Lk. 6: 1 records; Jn. 6:4, the third and ( 1 1 :55) the fourth (the Passover at which He was crucified). This would make Jesus' minis­ try as Dan. 9:7 prophesied, about three and one half years, His death happening in the middle of the third year. In the Synoptics, (Mt. 2 1 : 1 0- 1 7; Mk. I 1 : 1 I , 1 51 7; Lk. 1 9:45-46), the cleansing occurs at the end of His ministry, and most spe­ c ifically on Palm Sunday (in Matthew). The discrepancy could not be sharper, and the historical mismatch gives the skeptical pallet much on which to issue the dull colors of doubt, fabrication, and perhaps falsehood. If you cannot be accu­ rate on the opening of Jesus' ministry, the implication is, how do we take as fact based anything else that follows (in John)?

Exegesis and Skepticism

1 15

Thus, even not accepting Spinoza's premise that the historical must be un­ derstood before the theological, its context (he seems to be saying) for the theo­ logicaJ (in which case, as history changes, why would not the theological?) needs first to be established as fact. John does not seem to secure that in this much-disputed text on the cleansing of the temple. He may, though, indeed since his Gospel has more than one Passover in it (there are three, John tells us, in which Jesus went to Jerusalem), and he in fact seems to give us a date. Jn. 2: 1 3 states that Jesus went to the Temple in Jerusa­ lem around the start of H is m inistry and 2 :20 states that Jesus was told, "Forty and six years was this temple in building, and you want to raise it up in three days?" Using the first century historian Josephus' Antiquities comments at 1 5.380, given it took forty-six years to build the Temple, we get a time of 27-29 AD for this event. That John is so specific to put a date on this for us seems to indicate that indeed the Synoptics, in citing a Temple event w ithin a week or so of H is death, or three years later, may be narrating a second such event. It would seem odd for John to make certain he gives us a way to date this event if he did not have in mind a time other than the Synoptics, a time which differs by three years. ln other words, we did not have grounds here for claiming contradiction or discrepancy by looking at the historical record. John's account of a Temple cleansing may not in fact be wrong, or unhistorical. While some have suggested (which we noted in the prior look at this problem) Jesus' m inistry in John does not appear the length of the Synoptics, we have just c ited the passages where he posits three Passovers. We now only have the argument, it appears, as to wheth­ er in fac t there was one cleansing or one at the be g inn ing of His m inistry and one at the end. There is no historical verification for or against this claim. How­ ever, were there a cleaning at the end of the His ministry, the intimation follow­ ing that this occasioned the call for H is being disposed of, why would John knowingly write of the cleansing as having occurred at the beginning? The un­ resolvability of this does not argue against the historicity of the Gospel, as we have seen. Of the only seem ing conflict we had, the time of the Temple cleans­ ing we now seem to have disposed. Spinoza, in having us look at the historical

data, was seeking to render the theological data suspect inasmuch as if one was the context for understanding the other, and the one had flaws in it, then how can we be confident of the latter (i.e., the theological) conclusions or interpreta­ tions we draw? The Temple c leansing incident does not help him in advancing his historical/theological couplet theme. The aura of skepticism led to the period where the m ind was capacious enough to draw truths without the authority of some overseer (or deny that there was any actual one truth at all), as with the Christian Church and its handling of the Scriptures. Luther's comment (in large paraphrase) that one could reasona­ bly understand the Scriptures on one's own had concomitance in Kant's meth­ odology of Critique where the mind was the final arbiter of what data constitut­ ed reality in that the m ind itself creates the world appearing to it. Not only does

Exegesis and Skepticism

1 16

the m ind create such a world, in Hegel that mind is

Geist or Absolute Spirit

that

makes its epiphany in the institutions of society ever clearer till this Spirit real­ izes itself in the other and knows that it has so realized itself. We are quickly moving away from the post Augustine world of the Middle Ages where the Church held Holy Writ to herself and cautioned against the peo­ ple knowing the language in which it was written. That would, it seems, give the peasants and laborers an ability to read it for themselves, instead of having the clergy preach its truths as the Magisterium saw them to be. From this authoritarianism to the other extreme where everything became questioned in Christianity, came the breakdown of acceptance of any one crite­ rion for j udging what did and did not constitute the sacred canon. Different mo­ tives were behind the curtain of "the new exegesis," but one is not easily misled. Spinoza was certainly confident that his charge of history as how Scripture be­ comes in the end validated theologically was seed for its undoing. To argue for a historical criterion when fifteen hundred years had passed, in a time (sc., Spino­ za' s) when there were scarce, if any, original document of the NT, and not one living witness, is clearly not a criterion that favors the believer in the Word. Unless one asks on what basis Spinoza decided that history was the arbiter as he describes it. And there is none, as we saw. It was simply a statement he made, apparently hoping it would make its way untrammeled and undisputed down the decades of new exegesis to follow as a controlling law for that exege­ sis. He, of course, did not get any help from Martin Luther in this direction. Cal­

vin writing not long after Luther and who doubted if Paul wrote some of the

Epistles

ascribed to him as well as holding John and the other three evangelists

were too far apart for John to have canonical status with them, was impetus from Christianity itself, if not a Christianity of a predestined kind, for the results of Spinoza' s "historical methodology" to take hold without needing anything from that methodology.

So also, though not out of any ideological conviction, were those taking ad­ vantage of Johann Gutenberg' s

( 1 398-1 468)

culture changing discovery of the

printing press. Now written works were not that difficult to disseminate, and the effort of Cardinal Inquisitor Ximenes de Cisneros

( 1 436-1 5 1 7)

to assemble a

magnificent final text of the Word almost made it to publication when in an irate Pope halted it till the Greek

New Testament he had

1 5 14

loaned out for perus­

al in this project came back to the Vatican Library. A five year delay of its re­

turn gave the Basel publisher Froben 1 0 the opportunity to have Desiderius Eras­ mus

( 1469- 1 536) 1 1

come out with a Greek edition of the NT ahead of the

Franciscan Cardinal's

Complutensian Ployglot.

Unfortunately, Erasmus made corrections of a Greek NT manuscript in Ba­ sel based on texts which no one seems to have found. And, when discovering the Greek manuscript did not contain the final six verses of Revelation, he took Je­ , rome s Vulgate and used the final Latin verses. Not unexpectedly, complaints from far and wide came in. And justifiably-there was a plethora of spelling and punctuation mistakes overlooked by Froben in the haste to capitalize monetarily on such a project.

1 17

Exegesis and Skepticism

A lso, Erasmus' Greek text was one of the most unre liable one could have want­ ed. 1 2 B ut the damage was done. [f Erasmus could go about submitting an NT edition, what was there really to stop anyone from a similar effort i f one had the fi nanc ial backing? More though was that Erasmus did not use Jerome' s as the basis for his translation, but a Greek manuscript. The Parisian Robert Estienne in

1 550

Vulgate

pub l i shed an edition of the Scripture

with variant glosses from other Greek manuscripts in the margins. If there were variants, which was the genuine and original manuscript? It did not help that the and Codex C/aromontanus, 1 4 in the possession of

Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis 13

Calvin' s friend, Theodore Bez.a ( 1 5 1 9- 1 605), 1 5 differed substantially either from Jerome. Nor that the Elzevir brothers16 in Leiden published what their second edition of the reworked Erasmus/Beza text called a

textum receptum.

While with

the revolution of the printing press Holy Writ (or its l ikeness) was now eas i ly obtained by more than j ust a c ircumscribed group of the c lergy, translations are not what occupied the scholar ' s l ibrary. It was the original text which he needs, not a ''received edition .." And the received editions c irculating seem to have been able to originate from the nearest Greek manuscripts, which need not have

been the correct ones. The student of this era, however, sees how various tenets were proclaimed as models for a new beginning in understanding, but without any evidence to back them. The fledgling Baconinan move towards a new science, where appar­ ently empirical data were the basis for anything claimed "scientific" has not em­ p irical defense of why only empirical data should suffice as scientific. It cannot, yet Baconism took hold. We already saw Hume' s assumptions on causality. And Kant seems to have made a similar faux pas of reasoning when he tells us space is the

a priori

form of external sensibil ity because we cannot think of anything

as non-spatial. A point ( indivisibi l ity in an extension), however, is one such non­ spatial (because indivisible, it takes up no "space") entity of which we can think.

That Kant did not see this is peculiar inasmuch as he was so detai led in setting down h i s architectonic. How does such an i ntellect m iss such an obvious reality

as a point being the counterfactual to the statement that we cannot have any val­ id notion, valid experience, that is not spatially conditioned? Looking at all the

"philosophic" activity from our twenty-first century one seems to get the notion

that all these ' thinkers" were in too much of a hurry to get out their pronounce­ ments more than in a hurry to get to the truth. But then truth does not reach one in a hurry, as one would have imagined these thinkers would have known. Sti l l , one must keep in m ind that such thinkers were now able to take up oc­ cupancy in university chairs all over Europe, now that the c lergy were no longer the teaching force they had been up t i l l Luther. Any layman could take up the c lassics and then, should he choose, write on matters biblical from any angle he w ished. The field was open for all sorts of debates and opinions, and the Church was no longer any force in settl ing matters. Augustine was long gone in the con­ sciousness of the exegete. Now the hope was to find manuscripts that dated back to the actual times of Christ H i mself (pre-destruction of Jerusalem times). Surely such documents could handle the discrepancies that Calvin brought up, and eve-

Exegesis

1 18

and

Skepticism

ry apparent exegete in Europe with a capability in Greek, Hebrew, or paleogra­ phy. It is important to trace this development as we have very broadly here be­ cause we have before us a once all powerful and all-instructing institution, the Roman Catholic Church, as the repository for Scriptural matters now challenged in ways that no friar of the thirteenth century could have imagined would be possible. The chasmic shift from its authority to anyone being able to postulate whatever one wanted is the example of extremes in history that one does not so often encounter. It is obvious that one need not thread his way through all the debates from the time of Erasmus till this day. We have looked at the results we have today in NT canonization and saw that many of the c laims of disagreement and the like are of only insignificant worry. They lack teeth, as any second look at the dis­ crepancy claim in each case seems to make plain. Our thesis is that the Gospels are of Hebraic origins, were probably ordered translated once it was realized Christ was not coming back in the first century (an idea we argued Scripture never provided in the first place). In the translation some errors arose because of how translations can leave such mistakes in the natural order of translating. Origen' s charge of agendas among the competing redactors, and thus discrepancies in the texts, also has force. What interests us the most is how there is a set of passages that appears al­ most identical in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These are the so-called parallel pas­ sages. How did three writers end up with the same story in the same or such closely similar words? It is not that they closely follow each other's accounts; it is that the accounts are almost similar in the redaction language, sc., Greek. If the Patristics are to be followed,

Matthew

is the first writer. At the end of the

day, one may argue, as we have argued, that Matthew wrote this text in question

Mark and Luke and redactors translated Mark and Luke. Or there was a document redactors placed in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

where these parallel passages appear in it from his Hebrew and placed it in that Matthew did not write that

This however is without any historical verification except for the possible

Aoyirov document of Papias (via Eusebius) that we had referenced. He claimed Matthew had used this himself, and this may be in some sense a lead to resolv­ ing the parallel passage problem that has vexed exegetes since Erasmus. (If Mat­ thew used it [for, as we know, no such document has ever surfaced], it was as an ancillary to his own recollection, one might imagine, perhaps something to check against for quotation or geographical names.) A question that one poses is why the Patristics were ignored after Trent? No Father of the Church ever placed

Mark

in a position ahead of Matthew, and yet

Mark took priority in order of composition. Were it so obvious that prior, how could Augustine say

Matthew was prior?

Mark

was

And how is it with the work

of Farmer Mark has again become disputed as first? It is also remarkable, given the amount of linguistic evidence, that the ar­ gument for a Hebraic origin has found such little traction today. The mindset for a Greek original is without the evidence a scholar should want. Why Augustine,

1 19

Exegesis and Skepticism again, has been dismissed in his comment of a Hebrew

Matthew

makes one

wonder as to exactly what the reason is. What powers the exegete of today to simply rule out or investigate the Augustinian statement? A missing original? Tresmontant had no original when he approached

thew

Mat­

to see if there were not explanations for why his Greek was so "Hebraic."

His work, along with Carmignac, overwhelmingly argues the likelihood of a Hebrew undertext. We have also quoted others in this chapter of the same mind. We have further argued that it is difficult to imagine the Gospel writers scribing in Greek, when the inspired language of the Patriarchs was in Hebrew. G iven the intellectual capacity the ages have recognized in Augustine in comparison to just about any other thinker (and this includes the scriptural exe­ gete) the exegete needs be careful in not looking far more deeply into A ugus­ tine ' s claim. Acknowledging that the Gospels were originally Hebrew docu­ ments goes a good length to beginning to see how we have the parallel passages in the Synoptics. It also may go a good length in reaching what the first evange­ lists actually had in mind when they wrote about this Man Who rose from the dead.

NOTES

PREFACE 1 . For further exposition on this subject from my research see Robert Geis, Divinity of a Birth (Lanham: University Press of America, 20 1 1 ), note 4, 1 63-64; 3, 1 7 1 ; and 32, 1 75. The literature and teaching on this topic, Divine inspiration, is simply too wide­ spread to pinpoint any one work that brings the reader to a salutary and fully precise notion of how the Lord inspires. 2. On this highly controversial and divisive second century figure (85-1 60 AD) Marcion (son of a bishop who became a bishop himself and whose father excommunicat­ ed him, as did Rome) see Tertullian, Against Marcion in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Arthur Cleveland Coxe, (eds.), The A nte-Nicene Fathers (hereafter ANF, Volume 3 [hereafter number only] { Peabody: Hendrickson, 1 994 } . Hereafter all Ante­ N icene Fathers translations in English shall be assumed as having been from this publica­ tion, unless indicated otherwise). Cf. E. C. Blackman, Marcion and His Influence (Lon­ don: SPC� 1 948); Adolf von Harnack, Marcion, das Evangelium vom fremden Gott, Zweite Auflage (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs Verlag, 1 924), (English translation, 1 990, by John Steely and Lyle Bierma, Marcion: The Gospel ofthe Alien God [republished by Wipf and Stock { Eugene, Oregon } , 2007); R. Joseph Hoffmann. Marcion, on the Restitution of Christianity: A n Essay on the Development of Radical Pau/ist Theology in the Second Century (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1 984); John Knox, Marcion and the New Testament (New York: AMS Press, 1 942); David Salter Williams, "'Reconsidering Marcion's Gos­ pel," Journal ofBiblical Literature 1 08 ( 1 989), 477-96. J. F. Bethune-Baker, An Introduction To The Early History Of Christian Doctrine. (London: Methuen & Co., 1 903), 82, writes, "Marcion speaks in brutal terms of the ignominy of man created in loathsome matter, conceived in the filth of sexuality, born among the unclean, excruciating and grotesque convulsions of labour, into a body that is a 'sack of excrement,' until death turns it into carrion, a nameless corpse, a worm-filled cadaver." Cf. Benjamin Walker, Gnosticism: Its History A nd Influence. ( Wellingborough: Crucible, 1 983 ), 6 1 ; and 1 45, which claims "It was to him (Marcion) that we owe the terms Old Testament and New Testament. . . . His suggested emendation of the New Tes­ tament constituted the earliest textual criticism of the Bible." According to Von Harnack (Adolf von Harnack, Marcion, das Evangelium vom fremden Gott, l l 4-1 1 5 { see earlier citation in this note} [cited in Martin Rumscheidht, (ed.), 'Adolf Von Harnack: Liberal

Notes

1 22

Theology at its height,' John de Gruchy, (ed.),

The Making of Modern Theology (London:

Coll ins. 1 989), 28)], Marcion was the real creator of the Catholic Church: By his organiz.ational and theological ideas and by his activity Marcion gave the decisive impetus to the creation of the early Catholic Church and provided it with a model, what is more, he deserves the credit for the first grasping and carryi n g out a canonical collection of Christian writings, the New Testament. Marcion 's anti-Semitism (which we discuss later on) makes von Harnack's assertion disputable in the least, and outright eccentric at the most. Marcion was as much responsi­ ble for the theological underpinnings and structure of early Christianity as any Barnabas was. Take your pick, the evidence in both cases is patently in absence. Neither one origi­ nated the claim that Christ rose from the dead, which is the core, cornerstone, and build­ ing block of Christianity or anything that can be called Christian ("If Christ is not risen from the dead, our faith is in vain." [ l

Cor. 1 5 : 1 4])

3. See Griesbach's Symbo/ae criticae ad supp/endas et corrigendas variarum N. T.

/ectionum co//ectiones (Halle: impensis lo. lac. Cvrtii V idvae, 1 785, 1 793), and his Commentarius criticus in textum Graecum Novi Testamenti (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 20 1 0 [reprint]). He divided the manuscript of the NT into the Alexandrian, Western, and Byz.antine. ln it he gives probabi l ity rankings to certain contentions, perhaps no more convincing then than today. This absence of cogency in "probability" rankings holds, unfortunately, as we shall

see, for current exegesis likewise. The Birth of the Synoptics,

4. See, e.g., Jean Carmignac,

tr. Michael Wrenn (Chica­

go: Franciscan Herald, 1 984) and further references to him in the notes as we proceed. 5. That Christ makes the same statement in J 8: J 8 to the Twelve as He does to Peter in 1 6: 1 9 makes more than plain He is giving this power not to one individual (Peter) but

to His Church (the Twelve, and subsequent followers). See, e.g., my discussion of this passage in chapter one of Robert Geis, America, 2009). Hans Kong's

Linus or Peter (Lanham: University Press of Infallibility? An Inquiry (Garden City: Doubleday Image,

1 972) is a similar (though apparently hierarchically disapproved) reading from a Priest of the Western Church. Infallibil ity does not center in one indi vidual but in the entire com­ munity of Christ on earth. 6. See (Bishop) John Arthur Thomas Robinson,

Redating the New Testament (Phila­

delphia: Westminster, 1 976). Robinson 's call for redating the NT was echoed by subse­ quent scholarship such as John Wenham' s Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke: A Fresh Assault on the Synoptic Problem (Downers Grove: lnterVarsity Press, 1 992). Wenham suggests the Synoptic Gospels were written in the early to mid 40's AD, a good twenty to twenty-five years before the earliest general ly accepted date for Mark. Cf. Carsten Thiede's much debated claim in his

The Jesus Papyrus (with Matthew

D' Ancona [New York: Random House, 1 996)), where he asserts three scraps of papyrus from

Matthew (the Magdalen papyrus) can be dated to 60 AD (so that, in fact, our earliest

fragment of a papyrus NT text is not from a second century John document, as has been held). Such a dating would mean that Matthew 's G�spel most likely was written by an eyewitness.

Thiede also believes a papyrus fragment from Cave 7 at Qumran is a fragment of

Mark and can be dated back to no later than 68 AD. The arcane and recondite world of papyrology is not how Robinson and others get to their early dating of the NT, however, intriguing and beneficial as reading Thiede 's meticulous research is. Not all agree with him, though, which does not affect the methodology of Robinson, which focuses on the absence of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD in the Gospels, among other things.

Notes

1 23

Exciting and remarkable in this field of papyrology are the 1 972 claims of Spanish Jesuit Jose O'Callahan. He identified a Cave 7 Dead Sea Scro l ls manuscript fragment from Qumran as a piece from the Gospel of Mark. Fragments from this cave had previ­ ously been dated between 50 BC and 50 AD, the early fragments hardly within the time frame established for NT writings. Using the accepted methods of papyrology and pale­ ography, O'Callahan compared sequences of letters with existing documents and eventu­ ally identified nine fragments as belonging to one Gospel, Acts, and a few Epistles. Some of these were dated slightly later than 50, but stil l extremely early. E.g., Mk. 4 :28 (Frag­ ment 7Q6) is dated 50 AD; 1 2: 1 7 (Fragment 7Q7), 50 AD; 2 Pel. 1 : 1 5 ( Fragment 7Q l 0), 70 AD; Acts 2 7 : 28 (Fragment 7Q6), 60 AD. O'Callahan ' s controversial claims eliminate a Q document, and place the writings right at the time of the eyewitness community of believers, which would be of astounding import to apologetics. On O'Callahan, see P. Garnet, "O'Callahan 's Fragments: Our Earliest New Testament Texts?" Evangelical Quarterly 45 ( 1 972). Stephen Hodge in his The Dead Sea Scrolls Rediscovered: an Updated Look at One of Archeology 's Greatest Mysteries (Berkeley: Seastone, 2003 ) Second Edition, 220, warns that O'Callahan's thesis has been completely discredited. Again, that does not affect the methodology of Robinson and others who have pivoted, as we said, on the destruction of Jerusalem' s not being mentioned as a bellwether for dating the NT Gos­ pels. Another scholar in the field of redating, Dom Bernard Orchard, Matthew, Luke and Mark (Manchester: Koinonia Press, 1 976) has provided greatly in our understanding of the chronology of the Synoptics as well as their dating; (see also his ''A Fragment of St. Mark's Gospel Dating from before AD 50?'' Biblical Apostolate 6 ( 1 972). 7. See, e.g., Claude Tresmontant, The Hebrew Christ: Language in the Age of the Gospels, tr. Kenneth D. Whitehead (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1 989) and The Gospel ofMatthew, tr. Kenneth D. Whitehead (Front Royal: Christendom Press, 1 996). DISCREPANCY AND CONTRADICTION 1 . As referring to the term "canonical" Protocanonical and deuterocanonical were not used before the sixteenth century. The former refers to those inspired writings which have been always received by Christendom without dispute; deuterocanonical, those whose Scriptural character was contested in some quarters. The historian will note Athanasius's use of kanonizomenon (canonized) [cf. XXXIX Festal Epistle of Athanasius, translated in Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, Philip Schatt: Henry Wace, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (hereafter, NPNF, Volume 4 [hereafter number only] Series 2, 55 1 and 552 { Peabody: Hen­ drickson, 1 994 } . Hereafter all N icene and Post-Nicene Fathers translations in English shall be assumed as having been from this publication, unless indicated otherwise)� David Brakke, "Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria's Thirty Ninth Festal Letter," in Harvard Theological Review 81 ( 1 994), 3954 1 9 (cf. Eusebius's use of kanon and endiathekous biblous { "encovenanted" books} ) alerts u s t o a use o f this term fo r the inspired texts. Cf. Athanasius, Festal Letter, 39.6. 3 : "Let no man add t o these" (the twenty-seven books of t h e NT), "neither l e t him take ought from these." (In this letter, Athanasius uses the word Kavov1�6µ£Va [ kanoni­ zomena.]) The Council of Laodicea of the same period speaks of the kanonika bib/ia. [n their introduction to The Canon Debate (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 1 3 , the editors McDonald and Sanders appear to assert the notion of a closed body of inspired writings was not a concept in antiquity. Apparently we have to wait till 1 768 for David

Notes

1 24 Ruhnken's

Historia critica oratonlm graecorum

to make clear this element of closure.

They go on to say (30), "'it is necessary to keep in mind Bruce Metzger's distinction between "a collection of authoritative books" and "an authoritative collection of books." Since

Revelation 22 : 1 8- 1 9 tells

us Scripture is at an end with its composition, it is hard to

see how Athanasius could not see the notion of closure that McDonald and Sanders seem to claim he did not have in mind when referencing the canonization of the texts that were in the Christian communities at his time.

2. Lee Martin McDonald & James A Sanders,

The Canon Debate, Appendix D-2, "''Revelation was added later in 4 1 9 at the subsequent synod of Carthage." 3. Tertul lian, Prescription Against Heretics (De Praescriptione Haereticorum), 20. 4. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3. 3 9. 1 - 1 6. Bishop of Caesarea, Eusebius Pamphi l i l ived 263-339 AD He wrote a Life of Con­ stantine, as well as Onamsticon, and Ecclesiastical History. Gibbons' Decline and Fall

note 1 9:

.

does not appear to have the highest regard for the Bishop's historical method for reasons

R. W. Burgess and Witold The "Chronici canones " of Eusebius of Caesarea: structure, content and chronology, AD 282-325; 2. The "Continuatio Antiochiensis Eusebii": a chronicle of Antioch and the Roman Near East during the Reigns of Constantine and Constantius JJ, AD 325-350. Historia ( Wies­ he advances (see. e.g., Volume One Chapter sixteen). Cf.

Witakowski, Studies in Eusebian and Post-Eusebian chronography 1 .

baden, Gennany). Heft 1 35; (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1 999), 69. It is difficult where to draw lines demarcating accuracy and inaccuracy in many cas­ es. Where we find absence of possible motive for a statement one most likely can have some confidence in the statement made. Eusebius does not appear to benefit from his claims about Papias, in fact seeming to denigrate him somewhat, as we saw. This proba­ bly allows us some confidence in his dating and assertions regarding Papias.

5. Polycarp of Smyrna, burned at the stake, is regarded as one of three chief Apos­

letter to the first recorded by lrenaeus of

tolic Fathers, the others being Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch. His

Philippians

is the only surviving work we have of h is. lt is

Lyons.

6. ''Eusebius, in spite of his desire to discredit Papias," ( cf. note four above) •·still places him as early as the reign of Trajan (AD 98- 1 1 7); and although later dates (e.g.,

AD 1 30- 1 40) have often been suggested by modern scholars, Bartlet ' s date for Papias' literary activity of about AD 1 00 has recently gained support ( Schoedel 1 967: 9 1 -92; Kortner 1 983: 89-94, 1 67-72, 225-26)." See W i lliam

Dictionary (New

R. Schoedel, The Anchor Bible

York: Bantam, Doubleday, 1 992), Volume 5, 1 40.

7. See, e.g., Stephen C. Farris, "On Discerning Semitic Sources in Luke 1 -2" in R. T. France and David Wenham, eds.,

Studies of History and tradition in the Four Gospels

(Sheffield: J SOT, 1 982), Volume 2, 20 1 -23 8.

8. An i mportant source on the question of oral tradition in the proto-communities is Birger Gerhardsson,

Memory and Manuscript.

Acta Seminarii Neotestamentici Upsali­

ensis, XXII, 1 96 1 (Copenhagen: Gleerup, Lund, and Munksgaard, 1 96 1 ) and

and Transmission in Early Christianity.

Tradition

Coniectanea Neotestamentica, XX, 1 964 (Co­

penhagen: Gleerup, Lund, and Munksgaard, 1 964 ). See also Oviant Anderson, ""Oral Tradition" in Henry Wansbrough, (ed.),

Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition,

Volume 64

( Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1 99 1 ); Kenneth Bailey, "" Informal, Controlled, Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,"

Asia Journal of Theology 5. 1 ( 1 99 1 ) 34-54;

Martin

Hengel, "Eye-Witness Memory and the Writing of the Gospels: Form Criticism, Com­ munity Tradition, and the Authority of the Authors" in Marcus Bockmuelh and Donald Hagner, (eds.), The

97; Werner Kelber,

Written Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 70The Oral and the Written Gospel ( Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1 973).

125

Notes

9. Joseph L ightfoot, Contemporary Review, I I , 1 875, 390 sq. 1 0. Cf. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 6. 1 4.5-7, reporting

Clement writing that

"many entreated Mark, as one who followed him for a long time and remembered what was said, to record what was spoken; but after he composed the gospels, he shared it with anyone who wanted it; when Peter found out about it, he did not actively discourage or encourage it."

1 1.

The Gospel According lo Luke. Anchor B ible Commentary 1 979), Volume I , 292. 1 2. Bishop of S inope, 85- 1 60 AD. He was the first to propose an NT canon. It con­ sisted of eleven books grouped into two sections: the Evange/ikon, being a version of the Gospel of Luke, and the Apostolikon, ten Pauline Epistles. He considered the Apostle the Joseph Fitzmyer,

(Doubleday: New York,

only one who actually understood Jesus' teachings and transmitted them correctly. See

Marcion and His Influence (London: SPCK, 1 948); John Clabeaux, The Lost Edition of the Letters of Paul: A Reassessment of the Text of Pauline Corpus Attested by Marcion. Carho/ic Biblical Quarterly. Monograph Series No. 2 1 , 1 989; R. Joseph Hoffmann, Marcion, on the Restitution of Christianity: An Essay on the Develop­ ment ofRadical Paulis/ Theology in the Second Century (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1 984). 1 3. Tertul l ian. Against Marcion, ( 1 . 1 . 1 5) tells us this work was written in the fi f­ teenth year of the reign of Septimus Severus, or 208 AD. A work of paramount import, Edwin C. Blackman,

Tertull ian in the first two chapters here attacks Marc ion' s dualism, the third chapter his v iew of Christ as the prophesied messiah of the OT, and fourth and fi fth Marc ion's treat­ ment of the Gospels and St. Paul. Interestingly, Book

4, 2 1 .4-5

refers to the Third and

Fourth Book of Kings. Authoritative in English is the Latin/English edition of E. Evans,

1 972). Latin Edition and Das Neue Testament TertuJ/ians (Leipzig: Fues Verlag 1 87 1 ); A. B i l l, Zur Erkliirung und Textkritik des 1. Buches Tertu/Jians adversus Marcionem (Texte u.Untersuchungen 3 8, 2) [Leipzig: Fues Verlag 1 9 1 1 ]); J. Naumann, "Das Problem des Bosen in Tertull ians zweitem Buch gegen Marcion," Zeitschrift fur Theo/ogie u. Kirche 58 ( 1 934) 3 1 1 -363, 533-55 1 . 1 4. Tertullian, Against Marcion. 1 5. St. Augustine, De Consensu Evange/istarum, 1 .4. See note 2 in the chapter "Au­ gustine and Harmoniz.ation." The full quote from 1 .4 is: Tertul/ian Adversus Marcionem

(Oxford: Clarendon Press,

translation. Commentaries are H. Ronsch,

Horem sane quattuor solus Mattheus hebraeo scripisse perhibetur eloquio, ceteri Graeco, et quamvis singul i suum quendam narrandi ordinem tenuisse videantur, non tamen unusquisque eorum velut alterius praecendentis ignarus voluisse scribere repperitur vel ignorata praeterrnisisse, quae scripsisse al ius in­ venitur, sed sicut unicuique inspiratum est non superfluam cooperationem sui laboris adj unxit. nam Mattheus suscepisse intellegitur incamationem domini secundum stirpem regiam et pleraque secundam hominum praesentem vitam facta et dicta ejus. Marcus eum subsecutus tamquam pedisequus et breviator ej us videtur. Cum solo quippe Johanne nihil dixit, solus ipse perpauca, cum so­ lo Luca pauciora, cum Mattheo vero plurima et multa paene totidem atque ipsis verbis sive cum solo sive cum ceteris consonante. Lucas autem circa sacerdo­ talem domini stirpem atque personam magis occupatus apparet. nam et ad ip­ sum David non regium stemma secutus ascendit, sed per eos, qui reges non fuerunt, exit ad Nathan fi li um David, qui nee ipse rex fuit, non sicut Mattheus, qui per Salomonem regem descendens ceteros etiam reges ex ordine persecutus est servans in eis de quo postea loquemur, mysticum numerum.

Notes

1 26

1 6. See "what Papias had in mind when he said that Mark did not write " in order.' It is perhaps most likely that Papias was measuring Mark by Matthew (who is said by Papias to have made •an ordered arrangement' of the materials)-or perhaps more gener­ ally by Papias' own conception of what ought to be included in such an account-and that he had in mind completeness of information as well as ·order' in the narrow sense of the term." William R. Schoedel, 1 7. David Dungan,

The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Volume 5, 1 4 1 - 1 42. A History of the Synoptic Problem (Doubleday: New York,

1 999), 2 1-25. 1 8. Culpepper is the only one I know who doubts Polycarp knew John, appearing to argue that he, as well as other disciples ('"elders"), were dead at the time some have claimed he "heard John." Eusebius'

Ecclesiastical History, 3. 39. 4 uses the past tense of

the very "'say," in referring to Polycarp and the Apostles. "I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders,-what Andrew or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or

by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of

the Lord." The implication for Culpepper is the disciples named were dead. The argu­ ment is unpersuasive. See Alan Culpepper, John,

The Son a/Zebedee (Columbia: Univer­

sity of South Carolina, 1 994), 1 09-- 1 1 1 . 1 9. It appears that Caius (late second century) rejected John ' s Apocalypse. See S. D. F. Salmond ""Introductory Notice to Caius, Presbyter of Rome" in 20. Epiphanius' comments are at

ANF, 5 :599. The Panarion o/St. Epiphanius, Bishop ofSalamis.

Phil ip Amidon, tr. (Oxford: University Press, 1 990), 1 8 1 [Panarion, 5 1 . l 7. l l- 1 8. l and 22. 1 .] 2 1 . See Robert Geis,

Divinity ofa Birth, 65-96. Y 'tziat Mitzrayim, the Israelite's exodus from Egypt The tradition places the Exodus from Egypt on the fifteenth of N isan in the year 2448. Since 22. Passover celebrates

Jewish holidays begin the night before, Passover begins at sundown on the fourteenth of Nisan and continues for seven days, except in the Diaspora, where it is observed for eight. Passover

(Pesach) is also called Hag Ha Aviv, the holiday of Spring, since it rakes Hag Ha 'Matzot, the holiday of unleavened bread, since leavened food is forbidden. Another name for Passover is Z 'man Heiruteinu, place between late March and mid-April ; also

the season of l iberation, since the story revolves around the flight from Egypt and free­ dom from slavery. The story of Passover is found in the

Torah, in Sefer Shemot (the book

of Exodus, especially 1 2 : 1 2-1 3). It begins with the death of Joseph and the rise of a new Egyptian Pharaoh (possibly Ramses II). See my

The Christ From Death Arisen (Lanham:

University Press of America, 2008), chapter seven, on the Passover feast and dating. 23. F. S. Marsh, "Epistle of Clement of Rome," in James Hasting, (ed.), Dictionary ofthe Apostolic Church (New York: Scribner's and Sons, 1 9 1 6), Volume l , 2 1 6. 24. Justi n ' s First Apology, ch. 6 1 , referenced John 3 :5. 25. Polycarp, To the Philippians, 7: 1 . 26. Polycarp, To the Phillipians, 7:3. 27. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4. 1 4; cf. 5 .20. 28. The difficulties of this calendaric approach to theology and belief in the Divine appear in anecdotal form in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 7. 32; and Irenaeus's rebuke of Anicetus at 5.24. 29. F. F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to the Conversion ofthe English, American ed. (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1 979), 340-34 1 . 30. See fo r the Orthodox perspective, Robert Geis, Linus or Peter: the Question of Papal Infallibility (Lanham: University Press of America, 2008). Ct� the Roman Catholic, Hans Kiing, Infallibility: An Inquiry. This Roman Catholic cleric's rejection of a unilat-

1 27

Notes

eral authority in Rome is sharp, theological, and in concert with the overall Orthodox outlook. 3 1 . Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, 4; cf Herbert Newell Bate, (ed.), Catholic and Apostolic: collected papers of Cuthbert Hamilton Turner (London: Mowbray, 1 93 1 ), 228. Cyprian, an early patristic, (martyred AD 258), in this work set forth the position "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" (outside the Church there is no salvation). It is the earliest known appearance of that statement. 32. J. A T. Robinson,

Redating the New Testament (London, SCM, 1 976), 22 1 -253. Apology 61, 4-5. The term appears thirteen times in his Dia­ logue with Trypho the Jew. 34. E.g., Memoirs ofSocrates by Xenophon, and those of the Pythagoreans, as refer­ enced by lamblichus in his De Vita Pythagorica, 1 57, ( Ludwig Deubner, [ed.], { Leipzig: 3 3 . Justin Martyr, 1

Teubner, 1 93 7 } , (rev. Ulrich Klein, 1 975) 88. 1 2- 1 8. 3 5 . A scholarly presentation of thi s work is William L. Petersen, Tatian 's Diates­ seron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance and History in Scholarship (Supple­ ments to Vigi/iae Christianae 25 [Leiden: Bri l l, 1 994]). 36. lrenaeus, 'f>..f:rxo