John--The Man Who Saw, now at RC

 

John--The Man Who Saw, now at RC

by Lydia McGrew

(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)

I have a new blog post on John's reliability as a guest blog post at Ratio Christi. In the interests of time, I'm not going to cross-post the entire thing, with links, but I will post the beginning here and put it under the "John" tag so that readers who browse the "John" tag here at W4 will find it.

In case you haven’t heard, the Gospel of John is different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But then again, maybe you’ve noticed this already! The other three Gospels often tell the same stories, sometimes even in similar words, while John goes his own way, often giving us information about what Jesus did and said that is found nowhere in the three Synoptic Gospels. Most of us who think of ourselves as evangelical Christians, especially if we self-identify as conservative Christians, never thought that that made John less historical, though. Not even a little bit. But you might be surprised at how widespread that view is, even among some scholars normally thought of as evangelical. For example, Craig A. Evans has said, when challenged by skeptic Bart Ehrman,

I suspect we don’t have too much difference on John. My view is the gospel of John is a horse of another color altogether. It’s a different genre.... So, I don’t disagree with you too much on that point. I think John is studded with historical details. Maybe you called them nuggets. That’s not a bad way of describing John. But I think the Synoptics are more than just some nuggets.

Evans has also said,

The principle source for material from which we may derive a portrait of the historical Jesus are the three Synoptic gospels--Matthew, Mark and Luke. They are called Synoptic because they overlap a lot, and we can see them together, which is what the Greek word means, see them together in parallel columns. John’s Gospel is another matter. What genre is it? It’s not another Synoptic Gospel, as some would like to think. All agree that there is some history in John, but is it primarily history, or is it something else?

See more here.

These questions about John’s robust historicity are understandably troubling to Christians for whom the Gospel is no less beloved than the other three, and often regarded as a great favorite. Do we really have to place these kinds of brackets around John because he might be of a partially non-historical genre?

For that matter, the Synoptic Gospels haven’t fared all that well when it comes to scholarly claims that they contain deliberate historical alterations. I have documented and rebutted such claims extensively, some of them from evangelical scholars whose names might be surprising, in my most recent book, The Mirror or the Mask. But John definitely comes in for an extra helping of doubt.

The wonderful thing is, though, that all this skepticism is misplaced. In fact, John demonstrates his historical intention constantly, both in his explicit statements (e.g., John 19:35) and in many subtle details.

Rest of the post is here.

Posted by Lydia McGrew on January 23, 2020 9:27 AM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Tags: (Gospel of John) (New Testament)

Keeping clear about "transferral" and centurions

 

Keeping clear about "transferral" and centurions

by Lydia McGrew

(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)

This post is about various possible interpretations of the episode of the centurion and his servant, narrated in Luke 7 and Matthew 8.

When we think about the Gospels or any historical account, or even about daily speech, we need to make careful distinctions. Unfortunately, careful distinctions are not always a hallmark of modern biblical scholarship. One place where such a distinction is not consistently made is between fact-changing “transferral” and non-fact-changing “transferral.”

If I say, “I’m building a house,” anyone who knew even a small amount about both me and current American culture would immediately know that I am not personally building the house with a hammer and nails. They would know, from my situation, that I’m hiring someone else to build it. This is obviously non-fact-changing “transferral”--I’m referring to myself as building the house while commissioning it, knowing that everyone will understand.

Another kind of non-fact-changing transferral is mere ambiguity, where the ambiguity is not even intentional. If I say that “Bob asked me to lend him $50” when Bob asked our mutual friend Joe to deliver the request on his behalf (perhaps thinking that Joe would be a good advocate), I’m merely abbreviating by not mentioning Joe’s involvement. This is potentially ambiguous, but if I realize that someone has gotten the impression that I saw Bob personally on that occasion, I can always explain: “Oh, sorry to be unclear. Bob didn’t come to me personally. He sent Joe to ask. I didn’t see Bob that day.”

But fact-changing transferral would be deliberately narrating in a way that looks like Bob came to me personally, when I know that he didn’t. It would be likely to confuse people, but not unintentionally. I would be intending to make it look like Bob came in a way that couldn’t be culturally seen (as in the first case) or merely an accident (as in the second case). My hearers might well get the wrong impression, and I would know that and be doing it on purpose.

If someone tells you that most evangelical scholars hold that Matthew “had” the centurion come to Jesus personally when he really didn’t, go back and read those they are citing and ask yourself: Is this scholar really talking about fact-changing transferral, or is a plausible reading of what he says that he is talking about non-fact-changing transferral?

I would say that a great many of those who have written on the issue of the centurion’s servant have meant non-fact-changing transferral of, perhaps at most, the “accidentally ambiguous” type. To assert, when they do not say so, that they are talking about Matthew’s deliberately having the centurion come personally when he knew that was not true is to go well beyond the evidence. Remember, too, that if Matthew was written before Luke, then readers of Matthew might very well never have heard the version of the story in which the servants came instead of the centurion. How, then, would they not have been confused if Matthew deliberately tried to make it look like the centurion came personally though he knew that this was not true? If this was a fact-changing literary device used by Matthew, it would have been difficult to detect even by a conjectural, comparative method. And even if they had already heard the version we find in Luke, why would they have concluded that Matthew’s was intentionally non-factual rather than merely having a question about precisely what happened?

Michael Licona is now “co-opting” harmonizations of these passages, though in all probability many if not most traditional harmonizers are speaking of non-fact-changing transferral in this passage. In a recent ETS paper he claimed that fact-changing transferral in this passage is the “majority” position among evangelicals and listed a number of scholars as allegedly endorsing fact-changing transferral in this passage. But several of these, such as D. A. Carson, speak of the passage in a way that very plausibly looks like they are speaking of non-fact-changing transferral. In his commentary on Matthew, Carson writes briefly about this difference in a way that is quite typical:

Probably Matthew, following his tendency to condense, makes no mention of the servants in order to lay the greater emphasis on faith according to the principle qui facit per alium facit per se (“he who acts by another acts himself”)—a principle the centurion’s argument implies (vv.8–9).

Yet Licona lists many names as though they agree with him that Matthew engaged in fact-changing transferral by deliberately having the centurion come personally to Jesus though he knew that this was not true. These would all need to be checked individually to see if they actually say this. See here for another and even more stunningly inaccurate instance of such an attempt at co-opting a well-known inerrantist harmonizer to the literary device views.

These sorts of confusions and equivocations must be avoided, as they simply make it difficult for us even to understand one another. They can thus lead us to believe that “everyone agrees” that the Gospel authors thought it was okay to change the facts invisibly when this is not, in fact, the case. (Not that popularity would make a view true anyway, of course.)

Remember: If the literary device views are just non-controversially saying what everybody already knew and thought, then where is the new, important contribution? It is extremely important not to allow equivocation to create a strange situation where we are simultaneously saying, “Hey, this is no big deal. It’s just harmless stuff that everybody already agreed” and “This is extremely helpful to give us new understanding of how the Gospels are using literary devices.”

Another important point: If you want to consider yourself an inerrantist and you think at the same time that Matthew wrote realistically and invisibly of the centurion as coming to Jesus personally when this was not true, how does it help for you to say that Matthew knew that what he was conveying by his writing was untrue? How does that make you a better inerrantist? How are you more of an inerrantist for saying that than you would be if you called this an error? I submit that it doesn’t help at all. See my two-part interview with Phil Fernandes here and here.

And please remember: None of this has anything to do with a readily recognizable figure of speech like, “Pilate took Jesus and scourged him” (John 19:1), an example Licona attempted to use in his recent dialogue with Richard Howe. It would be foolish to say that John is trying to make it look like Pilate personally scourged Jesus. He was precisely not trying to make it look like that, because he knew that it would be immediately well-understood that Pilate did nothing of the kind. He was not “making” or “having” Pilate scourge Jesus personally. He was not trying to lead his readers to imagine or picture Pilate scourging Jesus personally. The very fact that Dr. Licona and others have to say that Matthew made or had the centurion come to Jesus personally shows that they are not talking about a mere manner of speaking but about something that is completely different and, indeed, incompatible with such a mere, easily-understood manner of speaking.

Think clearly. Reason carefully. Then decide.

Disclaimer: I am not myself an inerrantist. But I like to think clearly about the issue. I myself, as Licona is now fond of pointing out, as if to "out" me, lean toward agreeing with Licona that Matthew portrays the centurion throughout the passage as being personally present. But (in contrast to Licona) I do Matthew the courtesy of thinking that he believed what he said. This presumably means that, if the servants really came instead as in Luke (which I'm also inclined to think), Matthew apparently made a good-faith error. I am also not entirely closed to the harmonization given by John Wesley and others according to which the centurion came at the very end but did not speak up (just to see what was happening?) and Jesus recognized him and spoke to him at Matt. 8:13. But I am somewhat inclined against this as it would make the references to the centurion at different points in the passage have different meanings, which does not seem plausible as a form of narration by a reporter. Again, if the idea that Matthew made a good-faith error here is unwelcome, that's fine, but please remember that you gain nothing by saying that Matthew inserted a deliberate, willful, invisible, realistic falsehood into the narration. At that point, you should probably go with an available harmonization such as non-fact-changing transferral involving some sort of accidental ambiguity on Matthew's part.

My new book, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, is available for pre-order and will be fully out on December 10. In it I discuss the many (including much more radical) fact-changing literary devices proposed by theorists and present and defend an alternative, nuanced, positive model of the Gospels' reportage. Pre-order your copy now and follow me on Facebook!

Posted by Lydia McGrew on December 7, 2019 1:47 PM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Tags: (harmonization) (Licona) (New Testament)

What does it mean to say that John "tweaks" history?

 

What does it mean to say that John "tweaks" history?

by Lydia McGrew

(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)

My new book, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels From Literary Devices, will be available for pre-order very, very soon and fully "out" by December 10. In it, as readers of this blog know by now, I rebut claims that the Gospel authors knowingly and deliberately altered facts for literary or theological reasons. I also present and defend a nuanced, positive view of the Gospels' historicity that I dub the reportage model.

Another book, no doubt much more widely anticipated than mine, that was in press at approximately the same time and has recently come out is Christobiography, by eminent New Testament scholar Craig Keener. Because the two books were in press at overlapping times, I did not have access to the particular wording of his work that he put into Christobiography until after my own book was typeset. (I did give Dr. Keener the heads-up about my own work more than a year ago and urged him at that time to read it in blog post form.) The result of this partial overlap in the processing of the physical books is that my own research on Keener's work was based on a more scattered set of his many works--his commentaries on various books of the Bible and a 2016 anthology called Biographies and Jesus that he both edited and contributed to on the subject of the genre of the Gospels.

In Christobiography Keener has gathered up and summarized many of his views on these subjects, and I have now verified that he does not contradict his earlier writings on the topics I am discussing nor show a change in his views. I am also unable to find anywhere in this book where Keener anticipates my objections, answers them, or requires me to change my arguments. In fact, he repeats several of the points that I critique in The Mirror or the Mask, sometimes in similar wording. I just had to find them while writing The Mirror or the Mask by more arduous labor in his other works. He also expounds these views in more detail in the other works I have used for research. In Christobiography he also provides no new evidence for the claim that the Gospels are Greco-Roman bioi. Rather, as in the anthology Biographies and Jesus, Keener takes that genre as a given and seeks to place the Gospels' reliability within the range that he, Licona, and others believe was the normal range of historical reliability allowed by that genre. Christobiography also, even more than any of Keener's earlier works, defers explicitly to Michael Licona's book Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?, with numerous footnotes that "punt" to Licona's claims. Hence my detailed critique of Why Are There Differences in The Mirror or the Mask is pertinent to Christobiography as well.

Because Christobiography is so new, interviews and posts about it are popping up around the Internet, and these usually take the form of implying that the emphasis of the book and of Keener's theories and statements is entirely a positive one for the reliability of the Gospels. This article by Dr. Keener himself in Influence is an example.

And indeed, like many of Keener's other works, Christobiography claims that the Gospels are reliable. What is odd, however, is the combination of that statement with the repeated deference to Licona's views that the evangelists (frequently, according to Licona) considered themselves licensed to change the facts. And Keener himself, though seldom giving specific examples, will frequently move back and forth between strong statements about how reliable the Gospels are and vague allusions to flexibility and freedom in narration. (See esp. his Chapters 5, 11, and 13.)

Occasionally he actually comes down to specifics, though this occurs more often in his commentaries. And these specifics are troubling. He does so most of all (though not, I want to emphasize, exclusively) for the Gospel of John. His most recent common word for what he thinks John did with history is "tweaking."

My concern is that the ambiguity of Keener's writing (often more ambiguous than that of Licona) may cause readers to be unaware of what he is getting at and to think that his emphasis upon reliability is entirely solid and is qualified only in ways that no one but the wildest extremist could possibly object to. That is simply not the case. I have given some concrete examples in this earlier post.

A brief digression is probably necessary here about the fact that Dr. Keener wrote the foreword to my early 2017 book, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts. I am of course very grateful to Dr. Keener for that foreword and glad that he liked Hidden in Plain View. (Indeed, I hope that the sorts of considerations that he apparently appreciated in that book will eventually move him to change some of his other views.) At the same time, I do not regard a scholar's having written an endorsement of a book as a permanent bar to public criticism of that scholar's work by the author of the book. Keener himself is enough of a professional that I doubt very much that he would say that I should never publicly criticize his work because he blurbed an earlier work of mine. But my experience with the ardent followers of Dr. Licona indicates that some of them are likely to imply precisely that. Just as book endorsements are endorsements of ideas rather than mere expressions of positive personal feeling about the author, so too with disagreements. My criticisms of ideas are never attacks on persons, just as I do not ask for endorsements merely because people are my personal friends. I have done an enormous amount of research since Hidden in Plain View came out, especially in Keener's work. I have meticulously followed up his footnotes to original sources; I've found specific examples of his generalizations to discover what he means by them. This has been careful, thoughtful, time-consuming work. He and I have also had some personal e-mail communication. I realize now that Keener's work is a combination of statements that seem to me correct and statements and methodology that seem to me seriously flawed, and I think that it would be wrong to "play favorites." Indeed, Licona himself has repeatedly complained about "critics" (probably there referring to Dr. Geisler back in 2011 and following) who, Licona says, publicly criticized his work while giving others who agreed with him a free pass (perhaps there referring to William Lane Craig's endorsement of the proposition that John moved the Temple cleansing dyschronologically). As a post I just put up recently makes clear, Licona's own judgement about who agrees with him is far from infallible, since (since Dr. Geisler's death) he is unexpectedly trying to say that that arch-opponent actually agreed with the idea of fact-changing literary devices! But there is some truth to the claim that people do not always realize that there are high-profile evangelicals who do share at least some of Licona's views. I have therefore always tried to be consistent and even-handed in my willingness to disagree publicly and to criticize publicly and in detail, even if the person in question is someone whose capitulation to literary device theory surprises and grieves me. I'm under no illusions that doing so will gain me credit for fair-mindedness and consistency from Licona and his followers. I'm more likely to be tasked with ingratitude for daring to criticize Keener after he blurbed my earlier book! I can only make it clear that, no, I haven't forgotten that Keener wrote the foreword to Hidden in Plain View and that, nonetheless, it is more important to maintain clarity and to write in a scholarly fashion about serious problems where I see them. End of digression.

Keener's recent terminology for the changes that he thinks John made to history tends to downplay his own views. He refers to John's having "emphases" and exercising a "storyteller's surprise" and "tweaking" history. He says that John is "simply using a storyteller’s surprise, tweaking some details in the traditional passion narrative for theological points[.]" None of this is sufficiently clear. He does have a partial list of examples in the Influence article:

John omits the role of the disciples in Jesus finding a donkey (Mark 11:2; John 12:14).

John skips Jesus’ words about His body and blood and depicts Jesus as the Passover Lamb more directly (John 13:1, 18:28, 19:36).

In John, Jesus dips the bread and gives it directly to Judas (John 13:26) instead of Judas dipping it (Mark 14:20).

In John, Jesus rather than Simon carries Jesus’ cross (Mark 15:21; John 19:17).

Jesus’ final recorded cry in John sounds triumphant rather than pitiful (Mark 15:34; John 19:30).

Several of these are so trivial that it is only in the mind of an excessively literary theorist that they could be thought of as historical "tweaks" at all. The reference to Jesus as finding the donkey in John 12:14 is the most unremarkable abbreviation of the longer story told in Mark and is not remotely intended to give the impression that Jesus went personally, walked about, and found a donkey. This is a non-fictionalizing use of so-called transferral, which must be sharply and consistently distinguished from trying to make it look like person A did something when he really had someone else do it for him. There is not the slightest reason to think that it has any theological significance whatsoever. And the same for dipping the sop in the dish, as I discussed in the earlier post. Lots of people were doing a lot of dipping, and Jesus is merely referring in the Synoptics to the fact that his betrayer is eating with him at the table. John isn't trying to tweak anything there for any reason, much less a theological one.

I discuss at length both in the earlier post and in The Mirror or the Mask Keener's extremely strange idea that John deliberately suppresses the role of Simon of Cyrene so as to give a bent impression of history (that Jesus carried his own cross farther than he actually did) and thus make a theological point.

Here I want to focus on one item in this list, because it is so obscurely worded that a person who had no idea of Keener's other writings would simply not know what he means here. It is this item:

John skips Jesus’ words about His body and blood and depicts Jesus as the Passover Lamb more directly (John 13:1, 18:28, 19:36).

Okay, so John doesn't in fact narrate the institution of the Lord's Supper and he does in fact explicitly mention that John the Baptist called Jesus the lamb of God (John 1:29). Interesting that that isn't one of the references here. But why or how would one consider those to be "tweaks" in history? What is this item doing in the list along with the implication that John had Jesus dip the sop "instead of" Judas dipping it, and so forth? What is this item even about?

To know that, you have to read other places where a similar list occurs in Keener's works and his discussion elsewhere. Here is a similar list in his John commentary:

A close examination of the Fourth Gospel reveals that John has rearranged many details, apparently in the service of his symbolic message. This is especially clear in the Passion Narrative, where direct conflicts with the presumably widely known passion tradition (most notably that Jesus gives the sop to Judas, is crucified on Passover, and carries his own cross) fulfill symbolic narrative functions. (The Gospel of John: A Commentary, pp. 42-43)

Here is one in his Acts commentary. First, the main text:

Luke seems more likely to report the events as he has them from his tradition than does John. John takes significant liberties with the way he reports his events, especially in in several symbolic adaptations in the passion narrative ([footnote] 105), whereas Luke follows, where we can test him..., the procedures of a good Hellenistic historian....Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, vol. 1, p, 793

I note the phrase "significant liberties" which perhaps would not have fit so well as "tweaking" or "emphases" into the Influence article.

Here is footnote 105:

E.g., Jesus gives Judas the sop (John 13:26; contrast Mark 14:20); he appears to be executed on Passover (John 18:28; contrast Mark 14:14); he carries his own cross (John 19:17; contrast Mark 15:21).

I now note that the references Keener gives in the Influence article for claim that John "depicts Jesus as the Passover lamb more directly" are precisely those references that several NT scholars, including Keener in his other works, take to mean that John has changed the day of the Last Supper and Jesus' crucifixion. John 18:28 is listed in the Acts commentary to support the claim that in John, "Jesus appears to be crucified on Passover." That is clear enough, since Keener is definite that he is not crucified on Passover in the Synoptics. This is allegedly a "direct conflict."

Keener teaches in his John commentary that John deliberately narrated in such a way as to make it appear that Jesus was crucified on the day when the Passover lambs were killed, the first day of Passover, in contrast with the Synoptics, who indicate that he was crucified on the day after the Passover lambs were killed. This theory of counterfactual change in John's narrative is (unfortunately) quite popular even among some evangelicals, and Keener is a proponent of the view that John altered the day in order to emphasize the theological point that Jesus is the Passover lamb.

In his discussion in the John commentary he also tries to connect this with John's omission of the institution of the Lord's Supper. Here are some long quotes from his John commentary:

The announcement of both the “day of preparation for Passover” and the “sixth hour” (19:14) is significant for developing a Johannine hermeneutic consistent with the specific character of the Fourth Gospel’s intrinsic genre. This announcement signals to us that the Fourth Gospel’s passion chronology differs from that of the Synoptic tradition, probably already popular in John’s day (Mark 15:25).... Given John’s literary method elsewhere, we incline toward reading John symbolically rather than Mark. Members of John’s audience familiar with the traditional passion story presumably behind the Synoptics and Paul would have already noticed the difference at 18:28, a difference linking Jesus more directly with Passover. No longer do the symbolic bread and wine of the Last Supper represent Passover, but the death of Jesus itself does so directly (6:51–58). Biographies could exercise a degree of chronological freedom (see introduction, ch. 1), and John may adapt the chronology to infuse it with his symbolic message. In this Gospel Jesus is delivered over for crucifixion on the day the Passover lambs are being slaughtered (18:28). The Gospel of John: A Commentary pp. 1129-1130

[I]t seems better to read John’s final Passover chronology symbolically. Passover began at sundown with the Passover meal. Whereas in the Fourth Gospel Jesus is executed on the day of the Passover sacrifice preceding the evening meal (18:28; 19:14), the Synoptics present the Last Supper as a Passover meal, presupposing that the lamb has already been offered in the temple. Both traditions—a paschal Last Supper and a paschal crucifixion—are theologically pregnant, but we suspect that Jesus, followed by the earliest tradition, may have intended the symbolism for the Last Supper whereas John has applied the symbolism more directly to the referent to which the Last Supper itself symbolically pointed....John probably does know the same tradition as Mark. Whatever the traditions behind the Gospels, however, Mark’s and John’s approaches at least imply (perhaps for theological reasons) the Passover on different days, yet derive from it the same theology. The Gospel of John: A Commentary pp. 1100-1103

This, then, is what Keener's extremely cryptic reference in the Influence article means: John changed the day of the crucifixion (and hence the Last Supper) in his Gospel to something that was not factual, though he narrates it in what appears to be a realistic fashion. For some reason, though Keener says this clearly enough in his other writings, in the Influence article ostensibly saying how reliable the Gospels are, he refers to it in a manner so oblique that it is literally impossible to interpret without the help of his other works. A reader who tried to figure out why this is any kind of historical "tweak" at all, without access to the other things Keener has written on the subject, would be unable to do so and might think that Keener is not suggesting that John changed history at all.

Notice too that Keener tries to use the genre of Greco-Roman biography in his commentary to give readers the impression that they should expect such realistically narrated chronological changes in a biography. (I respond to these types of claims in great detail in The Mirror or the Mask.) But the impression one would get from the advertisement for Christobiography is that the identification of the Gospels as ancient biography strongly defends the historicity of the Gospels, not that it leads us to expect historical changes.

Another brief digression, since readers may be wondering: I don't think there is any real problem with the day of the crucifixion or Last Supper. Those who take John 13:1 to mean that the Last Supper as a whole took place before the Passover are both over-reading and mis-reading what that verse says. Those who take 18:28 to mean that the crucifixion took place on the first day of Passover are missing the fact (as Craig Blomberg points out in The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel, pp. 237-239) that if the leaders had contracted a ceremonial uncleanness from entering Pilate's hall they could probably have taken care of it by washing at sundown. This conclusion is supported by rules concerning ceremonial uncleanness in Leviticus 22:4-7 and Numbers 19:22. Therefore the ceremonial uncleanness they are concerned about is apparently one that would prevent them from eating a meal during the day rather than one that would prevent them from eating an evening meal. Therefore they appear to be concerned about some meal other than an evening Passover. Merely by putting John alone together with some Old Testament information one can conclude that John is not portraying this as the day when the Passover lambs were killed. Note that this point does not arise from a felt need to harmonize with the Synoptics but from informing one's understanding of John alone by OT information in order to understand what is really the most natural interpretation of John 18:28 all by itself and hence John's probable meaning. This point is one that neither Licona nor Keener addresses. John is narrating so artlessly that he isn't even considering that anyone (much less a largely Gentile set of readers looking for contradictions 2,000 years later) would think that by the reference to eating the Passover in 18:28 he is portraying this as the day when the Passover lambs were killed.

Consider, too, just how deviously John is supposed to be narrating here if he is really using 18:28 to "put" Jesus' crucifixion non-factually on the day when the Passover lambs were killed. He would have to be inventing an obscure scruple on the part of those conspiring against Jesus which they did not actually feel or express at the time and inserting this invention into the narrative as a hyper-subtle cue about what day this was in an attempt quite indirectly to make a point about Jesus as the Passover lamb.

"The preparation of the Passover," the phrase used in 19:14, is actually quite reasonably read as Friday in Passover week. "The preparation" is quite common as a designation for Friday. (See Blomberg, pp. 246-247.) Craig Blomberg has done an excellent job bringing together these relevant points and forcefully countering the idea that John goes out of his way to try to make this look like Jesus was crucified on the day when the Passover lambs were killed. Nor is Blomberg the only scholar to take this position. These arguments have been around for a long time and also seem to have convinced Andreas Kostenberger and D. A. Carson as well as older authors. End of digression.

Keener also believes and argues quite emphatically in his commentary that John (dyschronologically) moved the Temple cleansing. Keener is even dismissive of St. Augustine's opinion that it is "evident" that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice. (But remember: It's those of us who harmonize who are terribly anachronistic and don't understand ancient rhetorical standards!) I realize that the view that John dyschronologically moved the Temple cleansing has become increasingly popular; it is one of two fact-changing literary devices that even William Lane Craig has explicitly endorsed. But that shouldn't make us so ho-hum about that we don't pause to think about how odd it is for someone to be so confident of that (and Keener is extremely confident about it) and to base it upon the alleged genre of the Gospels and standards of the time (as Keener also, erroneously, does) while simultaneously confidently declaring the Gospels to be historically reliable because of their genre!

As discussed in the earlier post, Keener also has less common views about factual change--less common at least among evangelicals. He, followed by Licona, casts significant historical doubt upon the incident where Jesus breathes on his disciples and says, "Receive the Holy Ghost."

This last point sits especially uneasily with Keener's assurance to the readers of the Influence article that authors of biography were "were not supposed to make up events like novelists did." Does Jesus breathing on his disciples not count as an "event"? One hopes that Keener and others would not nitpick concerning the word "event." After all, what is the point of assuring people that the Gospel writers did not make up events if an entire, theologically freighted sub-incident in the course of one of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances might well be made up?

But more: Keener says in his Matthew commentary that Matthew duplicated an entire healing of two blind men, placing the duplicate incident early in Jesus' ministry, even though that incident did not happen at that time, and also narrating a healing of two blind men in Jericho later in Jesus' ministry. (The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, pp. 282, 306-307) If this duplication (creating an entire extra healing) does not count as making up events, what does? He also on the same pages says that Matthew duplicated blind men within the healing (in both places?) and the demoniacs healed in Matthew 8, a position that he alludes to more cryptically in Christobiography, pp. 317-318. Should we think of the Gospel authors as reliable if they made up people within events?

As I have often said, a major problem with the way that the "Greco-Roman biography" thesis is used, aside from the historical question of whether it is true, is that scholars like Licona and Keener use it to set a ceiling for how historical the Gospels are. They present the thesis as entirely a defense of the historicity of the Gospels, but they use it again and again to argue that the Gospels should be expected to contain at least such-and-such an amount of deliberate factual alteration. That is what I mean by setting a ceiling on historicity. In fact, Licona has said this:

The majority of New Testament scholars agree that, at minimum, the Gospels share much in common with the genre of Greco-Roman biography. Therefore, it should be of no surprise to observe the Gospel authors using the compositional devices that were part-and-parcel of that genre. In fact, we should be surprised if we did not observe it.

In other words, we should positively expect to find some realistically narrated, deliberate factual changes in the Gospels if they are in this genre or even have much in common with this genre. Keener in Christobiography appears to concur, a conclusion that might well surprise readers of the recent reviews and announcements of the book.

For that isn't exactly the impression readers would get from the Influence article about Christobiography. Most troubling of all are euphemisms and deeply coded statements that obscure the content of Keener's claims. A scholar purporting to educate laymen about the flexibility that the Gospel authors had in their narration at least should tell his readers in plain English what he is saying that the authors did. He should do that even if using plain language creates tension with the overall message he wants to convey--namely, that he is defending the reliability of the documents. His audience has a right, at least, to clarity. If they then begin to have their doubts about the reliability of documents in which authors are expected to make such deliberate, invisible changes, that is their right as well. Then, perhaps, they can begin to ask themselves whether these claims about genre and flexibility are true and justified after all. For information on that question, I recommend The Mirror or the Mask.

Posted by Lydia McGrew on October 28, 2019 9:45 AM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Tags: (Craig Keener) (Gospel of John) (Licona) (New Testament)

Getting Dr. Geisler right

 

Getting Dr. Geisler right

by Lydia McGrew

(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)

Dr. Norman L. Geisler was one of the foremost defenders of the doctrine of inerrancy in the 20th and early 21st centuries. A tireless and prolific author, he was also an advocate of a rapprochement between evangelicalism and Thomistic philosophy. He passed away just this summer, on July 1, 2019.

One of the things that Dr. Geisler was known for in the years before his death was his set of serious objections to the literary device theories and genre criticism of evangelical apologist and scholar Michael Licona. Geisler held that Licona's views were incompatible with any doctrine of inerrancy worth the name and was alarmed by the redefinition of the term in a way that he believed rendered it meaningless. He wrote many articles on the subject and in fact got a bit of a name for himself as (allegedly) a witch hunter with a personal vendetta--a reputation that he (not surprisingly) disputed.

On Friday, October 11, Southern Evangelical Seminary hosted a dialogue between Michael Licona and Richard Howe (the latter being what one might call an old-fashioned inerrantist) on the question of what constitutes inerrancy. The video is available here. I make no claim whatsoever to have watched all of it, or even close.

At one point (about 23 minutes in), my name comes up in Dr. Licona's presentation, with a bit of snark about my not being an inerrantist--as, indeed, I am not and have made no secret of not being. Interestingly, this fact seems not to bother the inerrantist hard-liners nearly as much as it seems to bother Dr. Licona. The reference to my alleged "flat-footed literalism" is an unfortunately typical bit of rhetoric in lieu of answering my arguments. I've argued that Licona is wrong about the existence and the evangelists' use of fact-changing literary devices. Some of these arguments have existed for well over a year and a half in blog post form, but as a matter of public record, Licona refuses to engage with them. But I don't intend to talk about Licona's mention of me except extremely briefly. I'm more or less willing to regard it as free publicity. I will note further only that Licona continues to ignore my careful definition of the term "fictionalization." As I have said over and over again (see here and here), that term as I define it does not per se entail deceptiveness, though I do think that in fact the Gospel authors would have been deceptive if they had engaged in invisible factual change. That is because I also disagree (and have argued in detail for my position) with Licona's claim that the Gospel authors were writing in a genre like our biopics in which audiences expected invisible factual changes, though they couldn't tell where they arose. The term "fictionalization," however, is intended to include such movies, books, etc. See my many posts on this topic and read my forthcoming book, The Mirror or the Mask. And indeed we would unhesitatingly call such artistic productions in our own time "partially fictionalized," without necessarily intending any disparagement. I use the term "fictionalizing" as synonymous with "fact-changing." It refers to the fact that the alleged alterations in question are 1) invisible (the narratives appear realistic), 2) deliberate, 3) contrary to fact.

But that's not what this post is about. Instead, this post is about an eyebrow-raising representation of the views of Dr. Norman Geisler himself concerning chronology, which Licona uses to try to catch Dr. Howe. I'm glad to say that Howe patiently makes the relevant distinction and says that he would have to see the context of the quote from Dr. Geisler, thus avoiding any appearance of falling for a "gotcha."

Watch the video, beginning at about one hour and three minutes. Licona is talking about the narratives in Matthew and Mark of the cursing of the fig tree. He reads two sentences from this short "Bible Difficulties" article by Geisler, deliberately not saying who the author is. The two sentences are these:

Matthew, however, addresses the two trips of Christ to the temple as though they were one event. This gives the impression that the first day Christ entered the temple He drove out the buyers and sellers as well.

Howe pretty clearly does not recognize the author. As the dialogue continues, Licona eventually reveals that the author of the two sentences is Norman Geisler. Licona insists, and even explicitly repeats in the ensuing conversation, that these sentences mean that Dr. Geisler held that, in Matthew, Jesus cleansed the Temple on Sunday in Holy Week, contrary to fact and contrary to Mark, who implies that he cleansed the Temple on a later day.

In other words, Licona insists that Norman Geisler held that Matthew deliberately changed the chronology of Holy Week to something contrary to fact.

Now, to anyone who knows the history of the Geisler-Licona dispute, such a claim is simply astounding and highly implausible. Norman Geisler was adamantly, repeatedly, explicitly opposed to any notion that the Gospel authors deliberately changed the facts. The attempt to say that they wrote in a genre that permitted them to do so was the very basis of his objection to Licona's entire set of theories, and that such a view was incompatible with inerrancy (a doctrine for which Geisler would have cheerfully and unhesitatingly died) was a never-ending theme with him. On the face of it, such an interpretation of two sentences of Geisler's writing, sans context, is so improbable as to be incredible. Dr. Geisler would, I venture to say, have been as likely to be found standing on his head in the middle of Times Square whistling "I'll Fly Away" as to be found saying that Matthew or any other evangelist deliberately changed chronology in his Gospel to make it contrary to fact.

Here we must make a distinction that I have made over and over again, and that Licona persistently ignores. This is the distinction between achronological narration and dyschronological narration. In the former, an author narrates events out of order or briefly, leaving out details, and may accidentally give the impression that something happened in a way that it did not happen, but such a misunderstanding is a mere accident if it occurs. The author or speaker is not trying to give the impression that events happened in a way contrary to fact.

In the dialogue, Dr. Howe illustrates achronological narration (in this case achronological compression) by imagining himself phoning his mother to tell her about the conference and narrating briefly in a way that might accidentally make her think that several events all happened on the first day of the conference, when he was merely being inexplicit. If, on the other hand, he said explicitly that events happened on the first day of the conference when those events happened on the second day, that would be dyschronological narration. While Howe doesn't use that terminology (which is my invention), both he and Frank Turek (the moderator) point out this distinction to Licona.

With that in mind, here is the context of the two sentences from Geisler:

PROBLEM: Matthew places the cursing of the fig tree after the cleansing of the temple. But Mark places the cursing before the temple was cleansed. But, it cannot be both. Did one Gospel writer make a mistake?

SOLUTION: Jesus actually cursed the fig tree on His way to the temple as Mark said, but this does not mean that Matthew’s account is mistaken. Christ made two trips to the temple, and He cursed the fig tree on His second trip.

Mark 11:11 says that Christ entered the temple the day of His triumphal entry. When Christ enters the temple, Mark does not mention Christ making any proclamations against any wrongdoing. Verse 12 says “Now the next day,” referring to the trip to the fig tree on the way to the temple on the second day. On this day, Christ threw out those buying and selling in the temple. Matthew, however, addresses the two trips of Christ to the temple as though they were one event. This gives the impression that the first day Christ entered the temple He drove out the buyers and sellers as well. Mark’s account, however, gives more detail to the events, revealing that there were actually two trips to the temple. In view of this, we have no reason to believe that there is a discrepancy in the accounts.

One may fairly say that this is somewhat too brief and does not directly address Matthew's reversed order in narrating the cleansing and Jesus' first encounter with the fig tree. If someone other than Geisler had written it, one might say that the explanation is somewhat ambiguous as between achronological and dyschronological narration. This is why everyone should start being much, much more explicit about that crucial distinction when discussing such matters. But the reference to Mark's account as "giving more detail" and "revealing that there were actually two trips" indicates that Geisler is taking Matthew to be narrating achronologically and leaving out this additional detail. In any event, one certainly cannot and should not say with any confidence that this short article attributes dyschronological narration to Matthew.

Despite the greater context of the article, and even despite the fact that Howe and Turek emphasize the distinction between deliberately and accidentally giving a contrary-to-fact impression, Licona does not correct or even for a moment doubt his interpretation of Geisler. On the contrary, he literally says, of moving the event to a different day, "Norm did this with Matthew." He also says, "I think it's pretty clear in Matthew that the cleansing took place on Sunday, and this is something that Norm and his [Richard Howe's] brother Tom agree on and numerous evangelicals say the same thing."

Permit me to express some doubt. I'm hoping to get in touch with Thomas Howe, who is still alive, to put the achronological/dyschronological distinction to him and to ask him if he would attribute the former or the latter to Matthew in the cursing of the fig tree. (Thomas Howe's health is poor and may make it impossible to obtain a statement from him on this or related topics.) I can't say about "numerous evangelicals," since they are unnamed. Certainly the persistent refusal on the part of Licona and other literary device theorists to make the distinction, and their use of evidence for achronological narration as if it supported dyschronological narration, has influenced some to get confused on the matter. We can perhaps hope that this doesn't yet extend to "numerous evangelicals."

As for Dr. Geisler's views, here is further evidence from his other writings about what he thought concerning chronological matters:

In his book Defending Inerrancy, co-written with Bill Roach, Geisler wrote critically concerning Clark Pinnock's attenuated concept of inerrancy. Geisler and Roach quote Pinnock as saying,

What could truly falsify the Bible would have to be something that could falsify the gospel and Christianity as well. It would have to be a difficulty that would radically call into question the truth of Jesus and his message of good news. Discovering some point of chronology in Matthew that could not be reconciled with a parallel in Luke would certainly not be any such thing….Inerrancy is a metaphor for the determination to trust God’s Word completely.

Geisler and Roach are having none of this as a concept of inerrancy. They say,

Here one sees the very weak “general” sense in which the word “inerrancy” is employed by Pinnock. It would have been more forthright simply to deny the term.

This seems highly relevant to any attempt to attribute a dyschronological interpretation of Matthew to Geisler.

Elsewhere in the book, Geisler and Roach praise a stricter definition of inerrancy on the grounds that
it “meant that the Bible is free from errors in matters of fact, science, history, and chronology…”

In discussing alleged Bible discrepancies more generally, Geisler makes the achronological/dyschronological distinction himself, though not with that terminology, concerning the stories of the temptations in the wilderness:

Sometimes there is a topical rearrangement of the snapshots in order to fit the theme of the Gospel writer. For example, Luke gives a different order of the temptation events than is found in Matthew. Matthew lists them as the temptation (1) to turn stones into bread, (2) to jump from the pinnacle of the temple, and (3) to worship Satan. But Luke reverses the last two. This fits both the grammar of the text and the purpose of Luke. Matthew uses the words “then” and “again” (4:5, 8) which indicate a chronological order, while Luke uses only “and” (Lk. 4:5, 9) to connect the events. So, Matthew lists them chronologically but Luke puts them climactically or topically, possibly to end on the high note of Jesus’ victory over Satan.

Note that here, when Geisler thinks that Matthew is clear about chronology, he takes that as decisive. It is because Luke is inexplicit, using only the word "and," that Geisler takes it that Luke may be narrating in an achronological fashion. And in this same article on various possible solutions to Bible discrepancies, Geisler again takes aim at the "genre criticism" that he so strongly opposed.

More tellingly still, Geisler expressly stated that Licona's own view that John changed the day of Jesus' crucifixion is incompatible with inerrancy.

Licona even goes so far as to affirm there is an error in the Gospels regarding on which day Jesus was crucified. He said “[John] may have changed the day and time of Jesus’ crucifixion in order to make a theological point.” Earlier in a debate with Bart Ehrman at Southern Evangelical Seminary (Spring, 2009) he said, “I think that John probably altered the day [of Jesus’ crucifixion] in order for a theological—to make a theological point there.”

But this is clearly contrary to the ICBI view of inerrancy which demands “the unity and internal consistency of Scripture” (Article XIV). Also, “We deny that later revelations…ever contradict it” (Article 5). We affirm the unity, harmony, and consistency of Scripture…. We deny that Scripture may be interpreted in such a way as to suggest that one passage corrects or militates against another” (Hermeneutics Article XVII). WE affirm that since God is the author of all truth, all t.ruths, biblical and extrabiblical, are consistent and cohere…” (Hermeneutics Article XX).

If Geisler is adamant that it was contrary to inerrancy (and hence in his view false) to say that John changed the day of the crucifixion, it is extremely improbable that Geisler means to say that Matthew changed the day on which Jesus cleansed the Temple in Holy Week.

With all of this in hand, as well as the larger context of the two sentences Licona quotes, it is beyond doubt that Geisler meant to attribute achronological narration to Matthew, not dyschronological narration, as a solution to the difficulty of the fig tree.

One may, of course, find that solution unsatisfactory, but that's not the point here and now. The point here and now is that it is illegitimate to try to co-opt two sentences by one of the foremost defenders of unqualified inerrancy, even going so far as to say that he "agrees" that in Matthew the Temple cleansing takes place on Sunday, contrary to fact, when he does not say that at all.

What I find perhaps most disturbing is that Licona is so unequivocal and so insistent about this hugely improbable interpretation of Geisler. He never once stops and turns back and says, "Well, that's how those sentences read to me," acknowledging that this even could be a misunderstanding of Geisler, or "that's how I would interpret what Geisler says there, though I can see that you might interpret him as just saying that Matthew inadvertently gives a misimpression." Nothing of the kind. When Turek finally induces Licona even to acknowledge the distinction in question, Licona goes into his own reasons for not thinking that this was an accidental misimpression given by Matthew. That's certainly his prerogative to do. But that leaves uncorrected and unqualified his repeated claims that Geisler says that Matthew deliberately changed the day on which an event happened.

Norman Geisler has gone to be with the Lord, but I know that there are people who are very concerned, understandably, to preserve his legacy. Whether one agrees with him or not, it is only fair to represent his positions accurately. I find it a little surprising that Licona's new approach concerning Geisler, who opposed Licona's views to the last of his strength while he was alive, is to try now to interpret him as agreeing with Licona that Matthew used fact-changing literary devices. Such an interpretation should not be allowed to go unchallenged, in bare fairness to Geisler's memory.

Posted by Lydia McGrew on October 12, 2019 6:34 PM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Tags: (Licona) (New Testament)

The realism of Jesus' dialogues in John

 

The realism of Jesus' dialogues in John

by Lydia McGrew

(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)

Scholars will sometimes imply that the dialogues in John are artificial by saying that the misunderstandings of Jesus’ interlocutors provide an opportunity for Jesus to develop his theological ideas further. Even when a scholar does not say so explicitly, it is difficult to avoid hearing the implication that John at least partially invented the audience confusions, questions, and interruptions to “set up” Jesus’ further theological expositions, as if the interlocutors are two-dimensional stooges. For example, with reference to how John “develops” Jesus’ “discourses,” Craig Keener says,

As Dodd and others have noted, John develops most of his discourses the same way: Jesus’ statement, then the objection or question of a misunderstanding interlocutor, and finally a discourse (either complete in itself or including other interlocutions). John usually limits speaking characters to two (a unified group counting as a single chorus) in his major discourse sections, as in Greek drama. (The Gospel of John: A Commentary, p. 68)

This gives a rather surprisingly artifical impression.

Similarly, Keener says, “Such misunderstanding serves as a dramatic technique allowing the primary teacher the occasion to expound the point more fully” (p. 546). (Digression: As I’ve noted in other posts on John, scholars have a special, just-constructed-for-John use of the term “discourses” that includes conversations. This definition is not applied to the Synoptics, which is then used to argue that there are lots more “long discourses” in John than in the Synoptics--an instance of the kind of strange reasoning with which NT scholarship is unfortunately rife. Keener’s description here shows part of the rationale for this just-for-John definition of “discourses.” Scholars believe that there is a special pattern that unites the conversations and speeches in John that is artificial in appearance and distinctively Johannine.)

Certainly there are cases where Jesus uses the misunderstanding of an interlocutor as an opportunity for further explanation. But so would any good teacher in literal history. It is rather frustrating that the relevance and aptness of Jesus’ answers, even their cleverness, should be taken as an opportunity to imply that the dialogue is constructed rather than naturally occurring. Indeed, it is worth asking what, precisely, a dialogue between a good teacher, known for extremely cryptic statements, and either a confused or a hostile interlocutor would look like if it were recognizably historical, and how that would differ from what we have in John.

In the dialogue with Nicodemus, Nicodemus does ask how a man can enter again into his mother’s womb and be born (John 3.4), and Jesus does answer by saying that one needs to be born of the Spirit (John 3.5). In one of the final conversations with his disciples before his crucifixion, Jesus almost seems deliberately to provoke a baffled question by telling his disciples that they know where he is going and the way to go there (John 14.4). Thomas, in perhaps understandable exasperation, says that this is not so. They do not know where he is going, so how can they know the way? (John 14.5) Jesus immediately picks up on the opportunity to utter, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14.6)

Does the aptness of these bits of dialogue cast doubt upon their recognizable historicity? Not at all. All four Gospels show that Jesus was a rather frustrating person, given as he was to cryptic sayings. He probably knew very well how to interact with his disciples in precisely this way, and did so intentionally.

Moreover, the implication that the dialogues in John appear artificial through an overly pat consonance between question and answer, misunderstanding or interruption, and further explanation rests on cherry-picked data. The dialogues, looked at more carefully, have the somewhat random characteristics of realistic conversation, and there are many places in John where interruptions and misunderstandings do not really further the topic previously under discussion at all. The woman at the well in John 4.19-20 changes the subject entirely. When Jesus gets too close to her personal life, she veers off into flattering him by calling him a prophet and asking him where he thinks they should worship. Jesus allows her to change the subject and follows her into the new topic, prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem (and Gerizim) and saying that the true worshipers are those who worship God in spirit and in truth. In John 7.34, Jesus says that they will seek and not find him. His listeners muse over what he is saying: Is he saying that he will go and teach the Greeks in the diaspora? This misunderstanding does not further the conversation at all. It is the end of that particular discussion.

The so-called “Light of the World Discourse” is a particularly good example of the rocky, realistic properties of the conversations in John. Jesus declares that he is the light of the world, but in John 8.13, the interruption takes the conversation in a different direction from what Jesus was following before. There actually is no dialogue or discourse at all on how or whether Jesus is the light of the world. The hostile listeners “go meta” by accusing Jesus of arrogance for testifying of himself. They may be remembering something Jesus said during a different feast (John 5.31) in which he said that his testimony is not true if he testifies of himself, attempting to use those words against him. As with the woman at the well, Jesus follows them into the new topic and discusses his right to testify of himself. In vs. 21, Jesus says that he is going away and that they cannot follow him. They wonder (vs. 22) whether he will kill himself. In his reply (vss. 23-24), Jesus does not really explain his misunderstood words about going away. By the time we reach vs. 48, some in the crowd are simply angry (probably because Jesus told them that the devil rather than Abraham was their father in vs. 44) and utter a contentless insult. This is not the only time that Jesus encounters hecklers. In this case, Jesus answers the insult (that he is demon possessed) directly and keeps repeating that they are dishonoring him, adding the claim that anyone who obeys his word will never see death. This hardly looks like an artificial dialogue. The disrespect of the crowd in this chapter and Jesus’ sometimes stubborn, angry, and insulting responses hardly give the impression of an unruffled sage engaging in a smooth dialogue with a two-dimensional “chorus” constructed as a literary foil.

Someone in the grip of the theory that John constructs dialogues to give Jesus a chance to develop theological themes might think that Martha’s misunderstanding of Jesus’ promise to raise Lazarus (John 11.24) is too good to be true, a literarily constructed set-up for Jesus to say, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11.25). But upon further reflection, one should realize that it was quite natural for her to think that Jesus was referring to the resurrection at the last day, a common view in Jewish thought at the time, as N. T. Wright has shown. And in the larger picture, Martha’s misunderstandings in the passage as a whole are quite realistic. Her boldness and practicality when she remonstrates with Jesus about opening the tomb, on the grounds that Lazarus’ body must stink by this time (John 11.39), are entirely consistent with her personality as portrayed both in John and in Luke 10.38-42. Martha certainly doesn’t look like a two-dimensional interlocutor that John has constructed for Jesus to bounce sage-like sayings off of.

Cherry picking is one of the major banes of New Testament studies. For example, I've shown that several claims of "development" in the Gospels rely on cherry picking. (See here and here.)

Cherry picking passes without serious challenge in NT scholarship often because too many scholars in the discipline lack the analytical epistemology training to ask whether the data is cherry picked. There is also an unfortunate tendency to assume that, if some scholar can think up a theory, that theory is automatically epistemically respectable. Hence, the mere suggestion that John "develops" his dialogues by "having" the interlocutors ask questions that Jesus can answer, and one or two apparent examples, are treated as enough to make the theory a very live contender indeed.

What all this points to is the need for fresh perspectives on NT studies and a higher degree of rigor in evaluating proposed theories. It would also be extremely helpful if scholars would come out and say more explicitly and clearly what they are getting at and what they think a given evangelist did. Then we could decide whether the theory in question is supported by the evidence. I hope to bring that fresh perspective in my blog posts, Facebook posts, and next two books.

Be on the lookout for The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, available for pre-order November 20 of this year and coming out physically in December.

This post itself has been a draft of material that is slated to appear perhaps a year later in The Eye of the Beholder, entirely on the Gospel of John.

Be sure to follow my public content on Facebook for updates! (You do not have to be a Facebook "friend" to follow public content, though it appears that you do need to have a Facebook account of your own and be logged in.)

Posted by Lydia McGrew on September 9, 2019 3:53 PM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Tags: (Gospel of John) (New Testament)

The prophecy dilemma for literary device theorists

 

The prophecy dilemma for literary device theorists

by Lydia McGrew

(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)

Recently Esteemed Husband and our friend Tom Gilson did a webinar for Apologetics Academy. I watched some of the livestream on Youtube. During such livestreams there is always some chat going on "on the side" in the comments, and this time a skeptic commentator was throwing in various questions, many of them irrelevant to what Tim and Tom were actually saying. One of his comments was something to this effect: Since the Gospel authors believed that Jesus fulfilled prophecy, wouldn't this have motivated them to invent things that never happened in order to be able to say that prophecy was fulfilled?

Since he is an outright skeptic, presumably he would have no qualms about saying that a Gospel author who did that was simply lying and was motivated by the desire to serve a religious cause by deceiving his audience. Still, one might ask him in that case why the evangelists believed in Jesus themselves, and in particular in his fulfillment of prophecy, if they knew that they had to invent things in order to "make" him fulfill prophecy. The skeptic would, one guesses, at that point have to fall back upon some generic statement to the effect that people, especially religious people, don't always think rationally about these things and may simultaneously believe in their religion and also believe that they are morally justified in lying to further it. Bart Ehrman has said this in so many words about early Christians. To my mind it is an unconvincing answer, particularly about the evangelists who were writing the very first memoirs of Jesus and claimed to have known him. At the founding of a religious movement, the distinction between "charlatan" and "sucker who listens to charlatan" is more stark and obvious, even to not-always-rational human beings. And if the evangelists were charlatans, their motivation is extremely difficult to figure out, given the initially low status and persecution of Christianity and the fact that they could have avoided much trouble for themselves had they not accepted and promoted Christianity.

But matters are difficult in a different way for the Christian literary device theorists whose work I am critiquing in my forthcoming books, The Mirror or the Mask and The Eye of the Beholder.

For the Christian scholar who holds that John or other evangelists sometimes tweak the facts or even invent things in order to make theological points emphatically does not want to say that the evangelists were deceivers. These scholars lean heavily on the word "genre" to help them to thread this needle. As Craig A. Evans says to Bart Ehrman, speaking of John's Gospel, "I object to saying it’s not historically accurate. Well, if something isn’t exactly historical, how is it not historically accurate? It’d be like saying, 'You mean the parable, the parable was a fiction Jesus told? It’s not historically accurate?'"

In other words, John's Gospel, like a parable, is not rightly judged by standards of historical accuracy at all. As Evans said later in response to a question from the audience, "And so the Johannine sayings, the distinctive ones, with a few exceptions, they’re the ones that look like, as I said earlier, a different genre altogether, something that only incidentally has historical material in it, but otherwise is a completely different type of literature..."

But the whole point of "another genre" is that the original audience itself is not led into thinking that these things really happened. Jesus' original audience didn't believe that the Prodigal Son was a real person, for example.

So if "genre" is to function in the way that the literary device theorists want it to function, the original audience is supposedly not misled by the ahistorical narrative, because they take the whole thing with enough grains of salt that they don't take all of the events to be historical, even when woven seamlessly into the rest of the document.

But consider the dilemma this creates concerning prophecy. I could choose here almost any prophecy that Jesus is said to fulfill, since the literary device theorists' method would mean that (as in a movie only "based on true events") we can put a question mark over almost anything in the narrative. The fact that the legs of the thieves were broken but that Jesus' legs were not, for example. Why should we take that to have really happened if John was wont to modify his narrative and add things for theological reasons? And the event is only singly attested. It is found only in John's Gospel.

Here are two things that actually are questioned by Christian, evangelical scholars: 1) That Jesus literally said, "I thirst" from the cross is questioned by Daniel B. Wallace and by Michael Licona. In his unpublished paper on the subject, Wallace expressly relates his questioning of the historicity of this event to the fulfillment of prophecy, though the exact connection in Wallace's mind is extremely obscure. It is apparently related to Wallace's strange idea that John would not want to record either Jesus making a literal expression of thirst (though it appears that John has done exactly that!) or his cry of, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" as in the Synoptics. So Wallace claims that, when John says that Jesus said, "I thirst" to fulfill Scripture, it is Psalm 22:1 that is fulfilled (where the Psalmist says, "My God, why have you forsaken me?"), but that John has made this fulfillment somewhat difficult to see by making up substitute words--namely, Jesus' expression of thirst. (Wallace, "Ipsissima Vox and the Seven Words from the Cross," unpublished, pp. 7-8. For some exact quotations, see here.) 2) Both Michael Licona and Craig Keener suggest that Jesus did not literally breathe out on his disciples and say, "Receive the Holy Spirit" as recorded in John 20:22. Keener is somewhat more ambivalent and unclear as to whether there might have been some real "encounter with the Spirit" that lies behind this passage, but he certainly calls its historicity into question. Yet at the same time, Keener insists that this breathing must, in John's Gospel, provide "fulfillment of [Jesus'] Paraclete promises" that Jesus has made earlier that he will send the Spirit. (Keener, commentary on John, p. 1200). In other words, maybe the event didn't happen at all, but John put it into his Gospel to fulfill Jesus' prophecies that he would send the Holy Spirit!

So this issue of prophetic fulfillment is not just something I am making up. It is a real and acute difficulty for literary device theorists.

Let's apply some analytical clarity to the matter. The evangelists narrate many supposed fulfillments of prophecy. For any given alleged fulfillment, there are the following possibilities:

The evangelist expected his readers to believe that the event happened.

The evangelist did not expect his readers to believe that the event happened.

At this point I fully expect some pedantic readers to point out that maybe the author thought some of his readers might be confused but most would not, to point out that "readers" and "audience" are not monolithic terms, and so forth. But unless we have some concept or other of what the majority of the original audience would have understood, what a typical member would have understood, and what the author expected them to understand, then we cannot talk about genre at all. In other words, such generalizations are needed for everyone in the discussion, and indeed literary device theorists desperately need such generalizations, for they are the ones telling us all that "the original audience" wouldn't have minded such-and-such, or would have expected these sorts of changes, and so forth. So take it that when I ask what the author thought his audience would believe, I am using some such category as "the majority of his audience," "the audience for which he desired to write," "the typical members of his audience." This would be similar to what we would mean if we talked about a movie "based on true events." We would point out that people who go to such movies, steeped in our own culture, are "supposed to" understand that some things have been factually changed, even if they don't know what those things are. While there might be some outliers, such as children or people who have never stopped to consider what a "movie version" really is, there is supposed to be a general consensus in the audience, on which the movie-makers can rely, that the movie is not entirely factual.

Now let us further suppose, to set up the dilemma, that the evangelist himself did not believe that the event happened. Suppose, for example, that John did not really think that Jesus literally stood on earth before his disciples, breathed out, and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit."

Then, not believing it himself, he either did or did not expect his readers, seeing that he narrated it, to believe it.

Suppose that he did expect them to believe that it happened. In that case, John is a deceiver. He wants his readers to think that Jesus did something at that time that in fact he himself believes that Jesus did not do. According to Keener, the idea is supposed to be to narrate the fulfillment of Jesus' promises about the Holy Spirit. (This, by the way, is a highly implausible theory, since Jesus' promises about the Holy Spirit in John make it clear that he himself will not be physically present when he sends the Holy Spirit. So in terms of the theology taught in John's Gospel itself, this would not even appear to be a fulfillment. But set that aside for now.) If John wanted his audience to believe that this happened and that the promises were fulfilled in this way, then he is knowingly misleading them, and the literary device theorist who accepts this option can no longer express outrage when we say that, on his theory, the evangelists were liars. One wonders in that case why we should think of a deliberately lying Gospel as divinely inspired at all.

On the other hand, suppose that John, believing that the event didn't happen, did not expect his readers to believe it either. In that case, what's the point? In that case, nobody in the situation thinks that there was a real-life action of Jesus that looked like this that fulfilled the prophecy in question. Is the function of the narrative then supposed to be like that of some known-to-be-apocryphal story? Does it just cause us to reflect on how great it is that the Holy Spirit exists?

And why, we might ask, should we then independently believe that we ourselves are empowered by the Spirit? If the narrative in John is just a bit of pious fiction and would have been accepted as such (or at least suspected to be such) by its original audience, what then is our evidence for our own empowerment by the Spirit? After all, Jesus' own words, especially in John, are often called into question by the same scholars. Did Jesus ever clearly promise to send the Holy Spirit at all?

Or take another prophecy--the one about Jesus' bones not being broken. As already noted, if John tended to add things to his narrative for theological reasons, and if he modified his crucifixion narrative in particular (per Wallace) by adding words that Jesus never said, and if John's "genre" is such that we should not assume that the events it appears to narrate in all sobriety really occurred, how confident should we be that the thieves' legs were broken but that Jesus' legs were not?

Then, once again: If John believed that these parts of the narrative did not occur, did he expect his readers and hearers to believe that they did? If so, then he is a deceiver. If not, and if he was right, then for all his readers could tell those parts of the narrative do not really fulfill any prophecy. Prophecy is fulfilled only if an event really happens that fulfills prophecy. No event in history, no fulfillment. If neither John nor his readers believed that there was a real fulfillment as described in the narrative (the thieves' legs were broken, but Jesus' legs were not), then the narrative does not show that Jesus fulfilled prophecy.

But the apostles were constantly preaching that Jesus fulfilled prophecy. Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy was very important to their message to their fellow Jews. And there is every reason to take the evangelists (some of whom almost certainly were apostles themselves) to be at one with the apostles in their attitude on this matter. Real prophetic fulfillment was central to the founding of Christianity as it originated in Judaism. Why would we think that John and his original audience would think that there was any point whatsoever in the narration of a pseudo-fulfillment grounded in made-up facts?

This argument, of course, is the same argument that I have made in other posts under the heading "Fake Points Don't Make Points." Here I am putting it into the form of a dilemma in order to encourage us to think clearly about the issues involved.

As Julius Africanus (Christian historian, circa A.D. 160-240) said about the alleged attempt to use fake points for religious purposes in Jesus' genealogies,

Nor shall an assertion of this kind prevail in the Church of Christ against the exact truth, so as that a lie should be contrived for the praise and glory of Christ. For who does not know that most holy word of the apostle also, who, when he was preaching and proclaiming the resurrection of our Saviour, and confidently affirming the truth, said with great fear, If any say that Christ is not risen, and we assert and have believed this, and both hope for and preach that very thing, we are false witnesses of God, in alleging that He raised up Christ, whom He raised not up? And if he who glorifies God the Father is thus afraid lest he should seem a false witness in narrating a marvellous fact, how should not he be justly afraid, who tries to establish the truth by a false statement, preparing an untrue opinion? For if the generations are different, and trace down no genuine seed to Joseph, and if all has been stated only with the view of establishing the position of Him who was to be born—to confirm the truth, namely, that He who was to be would be king and priest, there being at the same time no proof given, but the dignity of the words being brought down to a feeble hymn,—it is evident that no praise accrues to God from that, since it is a falsehood, but rather judgment returns on him who asserts it, because he vaunts an unreality as though it were reality.

Posted by Lydia McGrew on July 8, 2019 9:22 AM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Tags: (Craig Evans) (Licona) (New Testament)