Dave Matson's Reaction
Dave Matson's Reply to ITW Authors in the Following:
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THIS DISCUSSION
1) Introduction to an Object of Faith (Believing the Resurrection Story of Jesus Christ) - by Brian Lawson
2) A Believer Objectively Comments on the Resurrection of Jesus - by Mark McFall
3) It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman!
4)Commentary By Dave E. Matson (Response to ITW articles, items 1-3) 5) Brian Lawson's Response to Dave Matson's Commentary
(Identifying the Resurrection Body of Jesus) - by Brian Lawson
6) Mark McFall's Response to Dave Matson's Commentary
7) Dave Matson's Reaction *This Page*
8) Concluding Remarks in a Discussion with Dave Matson
Dear Brian,
Having read the reviews of my commentary by yourself and Mark (Issue 2005), I see a need to clarify my use of “mainstream Bible scholarship.” I’m a little disappointed that Mark would see its use as a possible “slippery, tactical move.” As Mark noted, however, I do owe your readers some solid sources to support my statements as to what “mainstream” Bible scholars believe. But, first, let’s clear up a little misunderstanding.
I did not claim that the Gospels are of the same genre as “Alice in Wonderland.” I had to reread my first paragraph, because I thought I must have misstated something to cause such a flap. But, no, I did not equate the two. My purpose was to express, pointedly, the foolhardiness of putting so much faith in the details of the Gospels, given that mainstream scholars reject them as historical accounts. That is, historical theories that hang on the Gospel details are no better than those built from the details of “Alice in Wonderland.” We are not dealing with a collection of hard facts in the first place, and the magnification of little fictions created from faith expectations or tradition do not add up to a more accurate history, though they may be the basis for recovering some historical insights. I probably could have been clearer on that point.
Our main beef seems to be over what mainstream Bible scholars believe. To begin with, the true, Bible scholar is interested in letting the facts speak for themselves. He or she is not in the business of squeezing the facts to fit preconceived dogma. The true, Bible scholar seeks the best explanation available and does not hide behind mere possibilities or loopholes, which is the basis of most apologetic works. Various prejudices cannot be wholly eliminated, of course, but it is pretty obvious when one runs into those die-hards who, despite their degrees, hardly deserve to be called objective scholars. The conservative Christian, usually intellectually sheltered, seems oblivious to the fact that there is a world of mainstream, Bible scholarship out there. Over the last 130 years, those scholars have destroyed or seriously undermined many things that conservative Christians take for granted.
Mainstream Bible scholarship should not be viewed as a monolithic block, with all its scholars marching in locked steps. Its authors hold a wide spectrum of opinion. But, they all share one thing--a deep respect for the evidence and a mature judgment of facts. Therefore, on many points, they share a general consensus that runs contrary to popular dogma. An excellent introduction to mainstream Bible scholarship may be had in the numerous volumes of the Anchor Bible, especially the more recent ones. The Anchor Bible is an international project of interfaith scope, and it is not sponsored by any ecclesiastical organization; it is not concerned with upholding any particular theological doctrine. It is concerned with the facts and a mature judgment thereof, as any serious scholar must be. It marks a new era of cooperation among serious scholars in biblical research and presents us with the best that Bible scholarship has to offer.
Like it or not, mainstream Bible scholars do reject the Gospels as historical accounts, but that does not mean that they regard everything in them as fiction. Some mainstream scholars hold out hope of recovering a kernel of information about a real, historical Jesus. Many of them came together not long ago in an event known as The Jesus Seminar. (They finally accepted about 18% of the statements attributed to Jesus in the Gospels as having fully passed their various tests.) Others, early on, such as Albert Schweitzer (that great missionary, doctor, theologian and musician of the last century) spent a lifetime studying this question, only to conclude that the real Jesus has largely been lost to us. The incomparable Ruldoph Bultmann founded a school of thought that is critical of any attempt to find the historical Jesus in the Gospels. A more modern work at this end of the spectrum would be Robert M. Price’s “Deconstructing Jesus” (2000). So, the pendulum has swung back and forth on this question, but neither of these mainstream views naively treats the Gospels as though they are historical accounts, let alone eyewitness accounts.
If there is such a thing as a body of mainstream, Bible scholarship out there, where might we find it? For starters, we might look at the great encyclopedias, widely regarded as reasonable, fair summaries of scholarly knowledge in all fields. We might also turn to the great universities. I’m not talking about places where priests and preachers get their religious indoctrination, but places where objective study is valued for its own sake and done at a high level. Beyond that, we could look at some of the great commentaries, such as the Anchor Bible or the older, Interpreter’s Bible. Forget about those apologetic tomes designed to seek out hypothetical scenarios (often several are presented without concern for where the truth lies) in defense of a dogma. When loopholes become more important than answers with good track records, you may be sure that a dogma is being served. On a smaller scale, there are some honest hand-books and other works that convey the findings of mainstream Bible scholars. Mainstream scholars often write for such popular magazines as Bible Review, which have a degree of intellectual respectability. You can tell that BR is not a propaganda organ by reading the letters to the editor, where rants and threatened cancellations by fundamentalists are routine fare. (On the other hand, even BR is not above throwing an occasional bone to fundamentalist readers by way of questionable articles written by apologists. The bills have to be paid.)
Among the encyclopedias, The Encyclopædia Britannica stands first, so let’s see what it has to say about the Gospels as history.
The character and structure of the individual traditions are incorporated into the Gospels, which definitely do not have a historical or biographical interest in facts, circumstances, and the course of events. They do not reproduce the story of Jesus as such but, instead, recount history interpreted from the viewpoint of the Christian faith. What Jesus says, does, and suffers is interpreted as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises, and his story is slanted toward his end (the Passion and the Resurrection), his significance as the divine Saviour, and his Second Coming. In other words, the Gospel texts do not intend to describe the Jesus of the past but rather to proclaim who he is for all ages of time. These perspectives of the post-Easter church to which the writers belong and for which their reports are intended must continually be taken into consideration. (Britannica CD 2.02 “Jesus: The Christ and Christology”)
Here is what the hard-bound, 15th edition of The New Encyclopædia Britannica (2003) has to say:
The studies of form criticism made a life of Jesus in the old biographical sense impossible, just as consistent eschatology had declared impossible the codification of a universal ethic from the teachings of Jesus. (The New Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th edition, vol. 22, p.352)
Want another opinion? How about The Encyclopedia Americana, that other formidable encyclopedia found in most libraries.
The Gospels are not biographies and make no distinction between the events they narrate and the interpretation those events are thought to bear. But they are the basis for modern attempts to reconstruct the Jesus of history... (The Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition [1999], vol. 16, p.38)
While the four Gospels obviously tell the same story, their interpretations of it clearly differ and many important contradictions may be noted among them. (The Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition [1999], vol. 16, p.40)
The Encyclopedia Americana goes on to survey some of the tools used by mainstream Bible scholars:
Modern scholars employ three different but interrelated methods in examination of the Gospels.
Source criticism is concerned with the literary relationship of the Gospels to one another. It is generally agreed that Mark is the oldest Gospel, that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source independently of one another, and that they also used both Q and special sources. ... Form criticism attempts to get beyond the literary sources by distinguishing between the editorial frameworks of the Gospels and the traditional materials that have been placed in these frameworks. Individual passages are separated form their literary context and examined in terms of their form and possible function in the earliest Christian preaching and even in the ministry of Jesus. Finally, redactive criticism attempts to define more clearly the perspectives of the Gospels as they are, focusing attention on the editorial frameworks rather than the traditional materials. (The Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition [1999], vol. 16, p.40)
The World Book Encyclopedia(2004), though not in the above class, does bear out my contention that each Gospel was written to reflect the needs of its own communities. (See volume 2, p.283). Early on, the four Gospels can be traced to distinct geographical areas, most of them being outside of Palestine. The fact that doctrines get modified for the use of particular communities may be observed even today. In the Andes of South America, the Indians have their own version of the Catholic religion, a view that integrates Indian sensibilities with the old Spanish doctrines.
The World Book Encyclopedia (2004) is also aware of mainstream Bible scholarship:
Scholarly study of the New Testament is sometimes called criticism. ... Interpretative critics often find a different meaning in the Bible than those who have not studied it in this way. Such an understanding of the Bible is unsettling for some Christians. ... The most respected [read “mainstream scholars”] schools of religious studies teach the New Testament in the light of all that modern learning and scholarship have achieved. (The World Book Encyclopedia [2004], vol. 14, p.288)
None of the Gospels gives a complete story of the life of Jesus. Each is a collection of His acts and words, written as an expression of the faith of a particular Christian community. (The World Book Encyclopedia [2004], vol. 8, p.277)
Of course, these works are not out to antagonize potential buyers, especially works aimed at the high school level, so the bad news is often broken in gently. Here, we are told (somewhat cryptically) that the Gospels are not complete stories. True enough, but a more pointed statement would say that the Gospels are, in fact, largely faith reconstructions based on the Old Testament and accepted formulas and sayings, cobbled together to form a story that serves a theological perspective, rather than an historical accounting. Even Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000), about as friendly as one can get to traditional views without abandoning mainstream scholarship altogether, says as much.
... if we wish to use the Gospels to recover information about Jesus we shall have to be alive to the Evangelists’ concerns as having shaped, perhaps significantly, the way the story is now told. (Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible [2000], p.523)
Hence, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible expresses the basic hope of the Jesus Seminar, that historical information might be recovered from the non-historical accounts. Note, the cryptic admission that the Evangelists’ faith had something to do with how the stories are formulated. We are not dealing with a reporting of matter-of-fact history. Once we get into the 20th century, the “biographical” notion of the Gospels was soon rejected within mainstream Bible scholarship.
Let’s look at another encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of Religion:
Albert Schweitzer’s classic study, “The Quest of the Historical Jesus,” (1906), and his work in general ...
...tended to dissuade scholars from continuing earlier efforts to write a life of Jesus. This reluctance was reinforced by the development of form criticism..., which showed that traditions about Jesus’ words and deeds seemed to have been passed on mainly as separate units or small groups of units. Because the chronological order of these units and their original contexts are frequently unknown, no detailed biographical framework--even for Jesus’ ministry in the last year or two of his life--can be established. ... After Bultmann’s Jesus (1926), many New Testament scholars, at least in Europe, not only declined to produce lives of Jesus but would not even attempt studies on his historical ministry. (The Encyclopedia of Religion [1987], Vol. 8, p.21)
This is particularly true of Mark. Mark is like a string of beads (collected sayings and traditional stories) that have been cobbled together to serve a theological perspective. What chronological order those “beads” might have had in their original contexts, those that might be historical, is anyone’s guess.
Finally, let us look at the New Catholic Encyclopedia. Catholic scholars, while having their own prejudices, are especially free to pursue the facts of the Gospels objectively inasmuch as Catholic doctrine is not tied to biblical primacy. We find that the historical-critical method of New Testament interpretation is the model within which most scholars [read “mainstream scholars”] work. (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edition [2003], vol. 10, p.305)
In 1953, Tübingen’s Ernst Käsemann raised the issue of “the continuing of the gospel in the discontinuity of the times and the variations of the kerygma.” From this concern was born a “new quest for the historical Jesus.” The new quest admitted that it was virtually impossible to recover the specific details of Jesus’ life and ministry, but suggested that the application of newer methods pointed to realities in his life and ministry which served as the basis for the KERYGMA, the development of the oral tradition, and subsequent theological reflection.
(New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edition [2003], vol. 10, p.303)
Hence, even the more hopeful elements of mainstream Bible scholarship do not view the Gospels as historical accounts; they hope to recover some basic, historical truths from traditional, faith-based accounts.
What do the respected universities teach? It so happens that I recently purchased a set of CDS containing the lectures for a course on the New Testament. Since it is the only one I have purchased, and having not reviewed it until now, I can hardly be accused of picking and choosing. The professor of this course is Dr. Bart Ehrman, Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his B.A. from Wheaton College and his M.Div. and Ph.D., magna cum laude, from the Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the winner of the Student’s Undergraduate Teaching Award (1993), the Ruth and Philip Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement (1994), and now the Bowman and Gordon Gray Award for excellence in teaching (1998). That is to say, he is an excellent scholar (and teacher) and a good example of what I mean by “mainstream Bible scholars.”
Dr. Ehrman points out (in Lecture 10) that the Gospels are “highly problematical” as historical sources, because the oldest (Mark) was written 35 years after the events in question, because they have been acquired from oral traditions decades in the making, traditions that show evidence of having been changed in transition--sometimes a little and sometimes a lot. He points out that most historians (read “mainstream scholars”) reject the claim that we are dealing with eye-witness accounts. Rather, we have accounts that are biased, altered, and inconsistent with one another. As the later, non-canonical gospels graphically demonstrate, and we could cite those as early as the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas, early Christians had no problems at all in altering or inventing stories about Jesus. It would be naive to pretend that those who wrote the Gospels, only a few years earlier, were magically free of such defects. Yet, in spite of all that, like the Jesus Seminar, Dr. Ehrman believes that we can be reasonably confident in deducing some of the things that Jesus really said and did--if we apply some sound principles of critical reasoning to the Gospels. That is to say, we should not naively treat them as biographies based on accurate, historical details. In particular, independent attestation, dissimilarity and contextual credibility are the major tools of serious scholars (read “mainstream scholars”) trying to sort out what Jesus actually said and did.
It may interest you to know that one of the most widely held conclusions from such work (again, a significant segment of our “mainstream scholars” at work) is that Jesus functioned as an apocalyptic prophet. That is, Jesus believed that his world was coming to an imminent end, that judgment was at hand, and that his fellow Jews had better get it right with God. It was Albert Schweitzer who first convincingly viewed Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet. Most modern scholars have adopted that basic conclusion, more or less, including Dr. Ehrman who supplies (lecture 11) powerful reasons for rejecting some recent criticism.
We might also consider Dr. Burton Mack, a highly respected professor of New Testament at the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California, who also wrote “The Lost Gospel” (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993). In his book he had this to say:
Q demonstrates that factors other than the belief that Jesus was divine played a role in the generation of early Jesus and Christ movements....[as a result] the narrative [canonical] gospels can no longer be viewed as the trustworthy accounts of unique and stupendous historical events at the foundation of the Christian faith. The gospels must now be seen as the result of early Christian mythmaking. Q forces the issue, for it documents an earlier history that does not agree with the narrative gospel accounts (p.8, 10) (From “Q The Lost Gospel” by Stephen J. Patterson, in Bible Review, October 1993)
Q, as you may recall, is part of the Two-Document hypothesis that is accepted by most scholars (read “mainstream Bible scholars”) today. It appears that Matthew and Luke used a source (Q) that was not available to Mark. In a nutshell, Q can be roughly reconstructed by way of comparing these three gospels, and it turns out that Q is a list of Jesus sayings.
It is as though Matthew and Luke both had a collection of sayings from which they, independently of one another, drew sayings to insert into their basic Marcan outline... .
That is exactly what a majority of Gospel scholars believe today. Matthew and Luke shared two sources which they used independently of one another. The first was Mark, which they used as a basic outline. The second was a collection of (primarily) sayings, which they shuffled into the Marcan outline as they deemed appropriate... . This is known as the two-source hypothesis; it is the basis of most modern Gospel scholarship.
(“Q The Lost Gospel,” by Stephen J. Patterson, Bible Review, October 1993, p.35)
Hence, we have it from a Bible scholar writing for Bible Review. Clearly, he is citing a responsible body of scholarship that has reached a general consensus on this point. This type of consensus is what I’m referring to when I speak of mainstream Bible scholarship.
Scholars took a long time deciding just what Q was. The sheer fact of its nonexistence was no small problem--and an obvious opening for Q skeptics. In recent years, however, resistance to the idea of Q has largely disappeared as a result of another amazing discovery: a nearly complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas [in 1946]. ...
The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings of Jesus, each introduced by the phrase, “Jesus said”--in short, a collection of sayings rather like [the deduced] Q. Though Thomas is most definitely not Q, its discovery proved that such documents existed in early Christianity.
(“Q The Lost Gospel,” by Stephen J. Patterson, Bible Review, October 1993, p.35-36)
The alternative to the Two-Document hypothesis is the Griesbach hypothesis, which contends that Matthew is primary (the oldest) among the Gospels. Die-hard traditionalists still cling to it despite its many problems. In the volume “Mark 1-8" of the Anchor Bible, the translator and commentator, Marcus, provides a powerful list of reasons as to why modern scholarship has sided with the Two-Document hypothesis (p.40-47).
Finally, let me present The Anchor Bible Dictionary (6 vols., 1992) as one last example of a major, scholarly work pointing to the kind of consensus that I call “mainstream Bible scholarship.”
Further careful study of the gospel of Mark confirmed the conclusion that when the author created his narrative in the way he did, he was more concerned to solve theological than historical problems, with the result that the gospel does not fit modern canons of historical accuracy. Study of the order of events as they occur in the gospel showed clearly enough that the author was not concerned with accuracy in the presentation of the itinerary of Jesus or in the chronology of his movements. ...
It was the dawning awareness of this fact that brought to an end the attempt to write lives of the “historical Jesus” based on the materials in the gospels purged of their supposedly later theological increments. The attempt to write such “lives” occupied gospel scholarship to a major extent both in Europe and America from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. It became clear that so much of the material necessary for such a “life” of the “historical Jesus” had to be provided by guesswork to fill in the gaps, however, that the course of such a “life” tended to reflect more the prejudices and presuppositions of the one making the guesses than it did the actual course of Jesus’ life. Scholars have therefore concluded that based on the evidence we have, an accurate historical account of the life of Jesus cannot be reconstructed, whether on the basis of the material found in Mark alone, or on the basis of a combination of materials from all of the gospels. ...
Further study of the reasons for the order in which Mark placed his traditions, a study based on a method called “redaction history,” led scholars to appreciate the theological subtlety with which this unknown author approached his task of constructing a narrative of the adult life of Jesus of Nazareth.
(The Anchor Bible Dictionary [1992], vol. 4, p.545)
If Mark is not an historical account, then Matthew (which borrows about 90% of Mark for its framework) and Luke (which borrows about 60% of Mark for its framework) are hardly in much better shape. Moreover, Matthew and Luke contradict each other in their infancy accounts, which they could not get from Mark. John, on the other hand, is off on a theological tangent of his own and, for better or worse, about 90% of the Johnine stories and sayings have no parallels in the synoptic gospels. A lot more could be said, but it is time to sum up my main point.
Although I have only scratched the possible sources that could be cited, it should be clear by now that a consensus of opinion among biblical scholars, contrary to conservative apologetics, does exist out there concerning many aspects of the Gospels, an opinion that is constantly referred to by standard, universally accepted reference works, university courses, and well placed Bible scholars everywhere. That is what I meant by “mainstream Bible scholarship,” and it rejects the Gospels as historical accounts. Many mainstream scholars, however, do believe that some information about what Jesus really said and did can be extracted from the Gospels by the use of scholarly tools. Most of those scholars seem to have concluded that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who erroneously believed that judgment day was at hand, but there are other mainstream views as well.
Best Wishes,
Dave E. Matson
P.O. Box 61274
Pasadena, CA 91116
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