Part 1 (1/2)
WHO WAS JESUS?.
FINGERPRINTS OF THE CHRIST.
D.M. MURDOCK.
Foreword.
”The men of old, unlike in their simplicity to young philosophy, deemed that if they heard the truth even from 'oak or rock,' it was enough for them; whereas you seem to consider not whether a thing is or is not true, but who the speaker is and from what country the tale comes.”
Socrates, Plato's Phaedrus.
D.M. Murdock, familiarly known to admirers and friends as ”Acharya,” the Teacher, depends as much upon conservative writers, both Catholic and Protestant, this time around as she did on radical scholars in her first book, The Christ Conspiracy. I do not mean to suggest an unduly polemical goal or tone (indeed, she is everywhere moderate and restrained), but the effect is to take the fight right into the opposite camp. It can be a friendly debate, and it is good sport. Without rancor, differences of opinion are quite instructive. This time, she scrutinizes what might at first seem unexceptionable observations by evangelical scholars and apologists (usually the same thing) and Catholic scholars and encyclopedists, and then goes on to show how even their rea.s.surances to the flock contain the seeds of serious doubt that Jesus was divine-or even human! Did he exist at all?
Ms. Murdock spends some time on textual criticism, ”Lower Criticism,” which has long served as a ”safe” subdiscipline for sophisticated but conservative Christian scholars. Though textual criticism takes its starting point from the element of doubt, many or even most evangelicals see the need for it. Some of the first text critics were Plymouth Brethren and conservative Anglicans, and their concern was a natural extension of their doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Bible. If the very words of the text were inspired, then, isn't it logical to get as close as we can to the authentic text? It may be tedious, but it is a holy task. How interesting, as Murdock's quotations suggest, that while wearing the cap of the text critic, an evangelical scholar stresses the complexity of the issue, the huge number of textual variants, i.e., errors of transmission; but when donning the hat of the apologist, the evangelical minimizes their importance! Oh, don't worry: most of the errors are unimportant bits of grammatical inaccuracy or of a wandering eye, the scribe writing what he expected to be next on the page, not what was actually there. So the Lower Critic wants to keep himself in business, but as an apologist, and lest Lower Criticism open the forbidden door to the Higher Criticism (questions of author-attribution, historical accuracy, etc.), he maintains that his labors were basically for nothing, since the New Testament is close enough to a perfect original. No important theological point hinges on a textual decision. Oh no? How about the all-important Trinity doctrine? If only 1 John 5:8b (”For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.”) had not been revealed as a cheat smuggled into the text by a pal of Erasmus, theologians would have firm ”proof” of the Trinity.
Perhaps even worse is the fundamentalist retreat to the ”original autographs” (the biblical writings as they came fresh from the pens of their authors). It is a true pharmakon such as the French philosopher Jacques Derrida discussed: a ventured remedy that turns out instead to be a poison. Benjamin B. Warfield, one of the chief architects of the modern notion of biblical inerrancy, demanded that, before one p.r.o.nounced the Bible to be in error at any point, one must demonstrate that the original autographs contained the same text we are reading at that point. And that, as Warfield knew well, is impossible, the autographs having long since perished. How did Warfield (and his legions of followers) not see the terrible implication? Could we not propose that the Bible is as full of errors as Tom Paine and Colonel Ingersoll said it was, but then posit that once upon a time there existed a miraculous error-free Bible? Sure we could, and it would do us no good at all. That is a case of destroying the village in order to save it.
Ms. Murdock makes much of the neglected issue of a scripture the composition of which was ostensibly inspired, but whose preservation was apparently left to the s.h.i.+fting winds of fortune. If one were to claim only that the Bible had been infallibly inspired, we could not readily verify or falsify the claim, because the believer could always retreat to the autographs, or, failing that, he might appeal to an imaginary vindication in some ”Bible Contradictions Seminar” to be offered one day in heaven. But if one were to claim the scripture has been infallibly preserved through the many centuries of copying, well, we can falsify that claim, and it's been done. So why believe in infallible inspiration either? Actually, there are ”scriptural preservationists,” but they are no better off in practical terms, since all they can claim is that G.o.d has seen to it that the true reading of every line has survived somewhere in vast ma.n.u.script tradition, like a needle in a haystack. And it is the textual critic's job to find it. And once you've honed the claim for providential preservation of inerrant scripture in this peculiar manner, where do you differ from mainstream text critics? They, too, hope the true text is back there somewhere. Neither side claims to have it.
Are the four gospels a quartet of independent witnesses? Murdock shows what first appears to be, again, non-controversial: that even Catholics and evangelicals are by and large disposed to accept source criticism, that Matthew and Luke used Mark, etc. But they do not seem to realize, as Murdock does, that this admission is doubly fatal. First, it means that at least some of the gospels are not based on eyewitness testimony. Luke and Mark never claim to be. Matthew and John share names with two characters who appear in the gospel story, but that does not even hint that they are supposed to be the disciples Matthew and John. If Matthew the evangelist were Matthew the eyewitness disciple, how is it possible he would base his gospel on the account of Mark, who was not? But if sophisticated evangelicals understand and accept basic source criticism, why do they continue to harmonize the gospels with the rationalization that different witnesses to the same event may include, exclude, or stress different elements, resulting in accounts that differ but are all accurate as far as they go? That a.n.a.logy is simply impossible once you realize that source criticism entails redaction criticism: If author A uses source B yet differs at some point from B, then A has modified B. They are not independent.
Worse yet for the enterprise of apologists is that the very presupposition of source criticism disallows the appeal they make to verbal accuracy in the transmission of oral accounts of Jesus and his adventures (i.e., before they were recorded in the gospels). Leaving aside the doctrine of inerrancy (actually only pretending to do so), apologists claim that the unknown individuals who repeated and repeated the Jesus traditions did so with such remarkable fidelity that we may trust any given gospel pa.s.sage to be an accurate report. But if that is true, then the whole basis for positing interdependence between written gospels is out the window! Source criticism is based on the axiom that no one pa.s.ses down material with the verbal fidelity it would take for the gospels to be independent records of Jesus' words and yet so nearly identical.
Just as scholastic commentators on the Koran invented a special grammar to apply to the sacred text so it would say what they wanted it to say, so do Christian apologists have a set of rules, not for weighing evidence, but for twisting it toward a desired outcome. ”Acharya” Murdock helpfully lists some of these for us. And she shows how the criterion for ”plausibility” for such ”eel wrigglers” (as the Buddha called them) is not whether such stratagems make good sense of the text the way we would read any other text, but rather if the rationalization would result in a reading more compatible with inerrantist dogma. We are not playing the same game as inerrantist apologists. Or, more to the point, they are not playing the game they claim they are playing, the historian's game. They have a different goal and play by different rules. No wonder they seem always to win as long as you don't realize what they are really doing. But now you will. Thanks, Acharya!
Robert M. Price, PhD.
Author, The Pre-Nicene New Testament.
August 30, 2007.
Introduction.
”Everyone-Hindus, Muslims, liberals, conservatives-wants to claim Jesus as their own. Why? Because He casts a shadow across world history, and no one wants to acknowledge being aligned against His ideas.”
Dr. J.P. Moreland, ”What Would Jesus Think or Do?”
”We are a Jesus-haunted culture that is so historically illiterate that anything can now pa.s.s for knowledge of Jesus.”
Dr. Ben Witherington, III, ”Tomb of the (Still).
Unknown Ancients”
In the nearly two millennia since the story of Jesus Christ began to be circulated, millions of people have wondered, ”Who is Jesus Christ?” Much ink has been spilled, and many thousands of books have been written about this grandest of G.o.ds and men, in the quest to portray the ”real Jesus.” Practically every personality type and special interest group has been able to find a reflection of itself in Jesus, and countless people have looked to Christ as their example, inspiration and champion. Many millions, in fact, are quite convinced that Christ is indeed the G.o.d of the universe who came to Earth in a human body 2,000 years ago. Still others have settled into a comfortable position that Jesus was a ”nice guy” and a ”great leader” or a ”political rebel” who fought for the underdog. These individuals often believe that Jesus was simply a human being, not G.o.d, but that his enthusiastic followers added a series of fairytales to his biography after his death. A minority of others have looked at the gospel story with a jaundiced eye and found little evidence to be convinced of either of these two perspectives.
It has been remarked that, because of a lack of material outside of the New Testament, previous efforts at determining who Jesus was have relied heavily on ”wishful thinking” on the part of numerous authors, who ultimately have found a Jesus who resembled their ideal man. Concerning this development, in specific as regards the Christ of the controversial Jesus Seminar, Christian apologist Dr. Gregory Boyd remarked, ”Basically, they've discovered what they set out to find. Some think he was a political revolutionary, some a religious fanatic, some a wonder worker, some a feminist, some an egalitarian, some a subversive-there's a lot of diversity.”1 Christian apologist Dr. J.P. Moreland concurs: ”In other words, the Jesus Seminar's methods for deciding what Jesus said and believed created a Jesus that looks exactly like the members of the Jesus Seminar.”1 The problem of discovering the ”true Jesus” or the ”historical Jesus,” in fact, has been so acute that not a few observers have felt the same as Dr. Boyd when he also stated, ”Jesus is not a symbol of anything unless he's rooted in history.”2 Indeed, this subject is important enough to warrant a serious examination that may yield some shocking and unexpected results in our scientific inquiry as to who Jesus was.
The life of Jesus Christ is princ.i.p.ally drawn in four ”gospels” or books found in the New Testament section of the Holy Bible. During the second century of the common era (ce), there were many other gospels, numbering around 50 and written by a variety of people, but these four were deemed ”canonical,” or authorized, and placed into the Bible. Along with the canonical letters or epistles, as well as the books of Acts and Revelation, these four gospels-the word ”gospel” meaning, among other definitions, ”good tidings”-are a.s.serted to be the only truly inspired Christian texts out of hundreds. In other words, the faithful believe these books were written at the behest of G.o.d himself, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In the exploration here to discover Jesus, the a.n.a.lysis will be confined mainly to these four books, the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as well as certain other biblical and Christian texts. In determining the task at hand, the latest and best ”forensic” methodology must be applied, to conduct an investigation that leaves no major stone unturned and does not exclude the important details. Therefore, without s.h.i.+rking uncomfortable questions, unpopular positions and unpredicted conclusions, this scientific a.n.a.lysis of who Jesus was will attempt to identify the ”fingerprints of the Christ.”
The Gospel According to Matthew.
”If His words were not accurately recorded in the Gospels, how can anyone know what He really taught? The truth is, we couldn't know. Further, if the remainder of the New Testament cannot be established to be historically reliable, then little if anything can be known about what true Christianity really is, teaches, or means.”
Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon.
”The Historical Reliability of the New Testament Text”
”If we want to read the gospels as eye witness accounts, historical records and so on, then not only are we in for some tough going, I think there's evidence within the material itself that it's not intended to be read that way.”