Jesus according to Scripture

Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels

Darrell L. Bock, Benjamin I. Simpson

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781540964854
• eBook ISBN:
  9781493400416
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Updated Edition of a Bestselling Study of Jesus and the Gospels

In this work Darrell Bock, a leading evangelical New Testament scholar who speaks and teaches around the world, and Benjamin Simpson show that a coherent portrait of Jesus emerges from the four Gospels when they are taken seriously as historical documents. When read together, the Gospels provide a clear picture of Jesus and his unique claims to authority. This book surveys all the Gospel units and relates them to their parallel passages, showing how the literary and canonical relationships work. Offering up-to-date interaction with the latest discussions about Jesus, the second edition has been substantially revised and updated throughout and includes three new chapters on how we got the Gospels.

Part 1
The Four Gospels

Distinctive Voices and How We Got Them

For as there are four quarters of the world in which we live, and four universal winds, and as the church is dispersed over all the earth, and the gospel is the pillar and base of the church and the breath of life, so it is natural that it should have four pillars, breathing immortality from every quarter and kindling the life of men anew. Whence it is manifest that the Word, the architect of all things, who sits upon the cherubim and holds all things together, having been manifested to men, has given us the gospel in fourfold form, but held together by one Spirit.1

The writers of the Gospels make no attempt to develop the life of Christ historically or chronologically. They make no attempt to provide a biography of Christ. The writers, using the same extant material, select and arrange according to their individual emphasis and interpretation that which presents the particular portrait of Christ they desire to convey. The Gospels present the life of Christ thematically and thus are to be viewed as complementary and supplementary rather than contradictory.2

The forming of the fourfold Gospel canon probably took place around the middle of the second century. At about the same time, the apologist Justin Martyr was referring to these church scriptures as “memoirs of the apostles.” He tells us that they were being read as scriptures in the worship services of the church.3

All four [Gospels] agree that in his deeds and words Jesus acts and speaks for God. He is not just a prophet, nor even the human agent of the kingdom of God; for the extraordinary response is that of worship, worship which may only be given properly to God himself. There may be four gospels, but there is only one Jesus, and he is God.4

The Scripture does not give us one story of Jesus, but four Gospels. Following this introductory unit, we will present the work of Jesus in a twofold structure, one part reflecting the Synoptics’ portrait of Jesus from the earth up and the other working with John’s presentation from heaven down. The present unit sets each Gospel in its historical context and provides an overview of each Gospel. The first three chapters look at broad issues of how the Gospels were composed. The main resource for ancient historians was eyewitness testimony, the topic of the first chapter. This raises two questions about the reliability of the Gospels, treated in the two following chapters. First, how reliable is the memory of an eyewitness? Second, since these historians mostly dealt with oral history, how reliable was the orality of the first century? The fourth chapter provides a survey of the structure, themes, authorship, setting, and date of each Gospel as a way of helping to summarize and set out each Gospel’s contribution to the canonical portrait of Jesus. Much more complete presentations of this material can be found in the technical commentaries on each Gospel and in specialized introductions to the NT. Such an overview will help orient us to the emphases of each Gospel before we examine how they work together to present Jesus.

None of the Gospels names its author. What we do often have is a rich tradition that describes authorship. However, that tradition sometimes is inconsistent in its details. Issues of date and setting are difficult to resolve. In all of these areas a reader should give attention to internal evidence from the texts. The problem is that the significance of these internal details is debatable when it comes to making judgments about implications for setting and authorship. Often inferences, not hard facts, are what we are considering. So we deal with probabilities in the judgments we make about some of the roots of each Gospel. The combination of external and internal evidence suggests that two Gospels are rooted in apostolic origins (Matthew, John), while two others have close connections with the apostolic tradition (Mark through Peter, Luke through Paul and others).

When it comes to outline and themes, we are on slightly more solid ground, because we are working with the textual data. But outlines also are a construct, a way of trying to map the structure of a Gospel. Such outlines are another useful tool in trying to see the main movements within a Gospel. The outlines presented here are set forth merely with such a suggestive intent. These outlines and overviews of the Gospels have almost a list-like feel as they move quickly from topic to topic. The details are found either in the Gospels themselves or in technical treatments more fully dedicated to such questions. Nonetheless, such an overview begins to reveal both how similar to and how distinct from one another the Gospels are. It is this mix of continuity and diversity in the Gospels that gives their portrait of Jesus its richness and that opens the door to a fresh appreciation of who Jesus is in light of the Gospels studied as a unit.

1. Irenaeus, Haer. 3.11.18 (ca. AD 180). This is a famous citation by an early church father. It shows an awareness of the fourfold nature of Gospel witness by the end of the second century, forming a cornerstone for the emerging canon of the NT.

2. J. Dwight Pentecost, The Words and Works of Jesus Christ: A Study of the Life of Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981), 24.

3. William R. Farmer, The Gospel of Jesus: The Pastoral Relevance of the Synoptic Problem (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994), 187.

4. Richard A. Burridge, Four Gospels, One Jesus? A Symbolic Reading (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 171.

1
Witnessing the Gospel

All this opens up the interesting question as to how far the formation of the primitive tradition was influenced by “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.” . . . As Bultmann sees it, the primitive community exists in vacuo, cut off from its founders by the walls of an inexplicable ignorance. Like Robinson Crusoe it must do the best it can. Unable to turn to any one for information, it must invent situations for the words of Jesus, and put into His lips sayings which personal memory cannot check. . . . The one hundred and twenty at Pentecost did not go into permanent retreat; for at least a generation they moved among the young Palestinian communities, and through preaching and fellowship their recollections were at the disposal of those who sought information.1

This personal link of the Jesus tradition with particular tradents, or more precisely their memory and missionary preaching, on which more or less emphasis is put, is historically undeniable. From the beginning, the recollection of the “words (and actions) of the Lord” played a role.2

The quotations above stand in stark contrast to how Rudolf Bultmann and the other form critics viewed the role that eyewitness testimony played in the early church. Bultmann argued that the community, detached from eyewitness testimony, was responsible for developing the traditions. The early church created the stories in the Gospel traditions inspired by what they found in the OT in spite of what they would have received from the earliest believers, who followed Christ.3 In contrast, both Vincent Taylor and Martin Hengel show how the Gospel traditions are rooted in the eyewitness testimony of those who were a part of Jesus’s ministry. These disciples related their memories faithfully; they would have remained a part of the community; they would have made themselves available to those interested in knowing more about Jesus, his life, and his ministry. The NT writers do not provide an explicit description of how these witnesses functioned—there would have been no need at the time. However, in the NT we see that eyewitnesses were present in the church, not as casual members, but in highly visible leadership positions. It would have been natural for the Gospel writers to take advantage of them as they wrote their Gospels.

Eyewitness Testimony and Ancient Historiography

When ancient historians sat down to write about the past, they came to trust what they saw more than what they heard.4 In this respect, eyewitness testimony became the most important source for these historians. Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Tacitus, and Josephus in some way repeated the dictum “the eyes are surer witnesses than the ears”—an expression going back to Heraclitus, a fourth-century BC historian.5 This eyewitness testimony they called autopsy. Samuel Byrskog, who has traced the use of eyewitness testimony through various Greco-Roman historians, defines autopsy as “a visual means to gather information concerning a certain object,” which could refer to a place, person, or past event.6 In short, these historians felt that the best way to talk about the past was through relating their own experience. An acceptable alternative, albeit an inferior one, was to interview eyewitnesses.

We see how these historians value personal experiences by the way they criticize other works. They complain that historians ignore eyewitness testimony, or else they call them lazy for their inability to find adequate participants of the events on which they report. For example, Polybius criticizes a historian, Timaeus, for his lack of personal involvement in the events that he describes. Polybius notes that Timaeus neglects any type of personal inquiry and relies solely on written records (Hist. 12.27). He goes on to call Timaeus’s character into question for allowing falsehood to come into his writing. Polybius refuses to call Timaeus’s work history (Hist. 12.12). Josephus provides a similar example. He criticizes Greek historians who are “bold enough to write about such affairs” without being there or interviewing those who were. He states that these historians “have written histories, and published them, without having b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Gospel References by Unit
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• Part 1: The Four Gospels
• Part 2: Jesus according to the Synoptists
• Part 3: Jesus according to John
• Selected Bibliography
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources
• Back Cover