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Part 1
FROM EVENT TO TEXT
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Introduction
The criticisms laid out in this part of the book have as their primary interest the different points along the journey from event to text. If, for example, we imagine the journey of a story from the life of Jesus to the Gospel in which we now read it, the criticisms of this first section each explore a different part of that journey.
â˘Historical criticism and social-scientific criticism (Chapters 1 and 2) seek to understand the world of the New Testament better, looking both at the original event (that is, the life of Jesus and the earliest Christian communities) and at the communities into which the texts were written (those for whom the texts were originally written).
â˘Form criticism (Chapter 3) identifies the units of oral tradition in which the original stories about Jesus travelled around the earliest communities.
â˘Source criticism (Chapter 4) attempts to uncover the written sources that lie behind the Gospel texts that we now have.
â˘Redaction criticism (Chapter 5) explores the role of the Gospel writers as editors of the written sources they had to hand.
This first section, then, lays out the methods of interpretation which seek to uncover the different layers of a storyâs journey as it moves from the event when it first happened to the written text of the Gospels.
It may surprise some people that the Quest of the Historical Jesus is not included here, since it epitomizes, for many, the attempt to strip back these different layers of Gospel tradition. The reason for its lack of inclusion is because it is not a method per se, so much as a goal in the use of the methods described. One purpose, though not the only one, of employing these techniques is to discover more about the historical Jesus, but these techniques are also used to discover many other things about the formation of the New Testament texts and the communities in which they arose.
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1
Historical criticism
What is historical criticism?
Historical criticism (sometimes also called higher criticism) does not constitute a particular method of study, but includes a range of techniques to increase our understanding of the social and cultural world of the New Testament and further our understanding of the New Testament itself.
How did the theory develop and what are its main features?
Bruce Chilton
During the sixteenth century Western European scholars began to study the New Testament in Greek, rather than in Latin. At the same time they came to recognize that, in addition to being written in a foreign language, the New Testament represents the product of ancient, non-European cultures, reflecting conceptions of reality radically different from our own. Historical criticism developed by grappling with those basic difficulties in interpreting the New Testament; for the past two centuries, this critical approach has yielded diverse but valuable results.
Although its roots lie back in the sixteenth century, historical criticism as we now know it drew strongly on the work of Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and David Hume, who stressed the importance of using the intellect to understand the biblical narratives. Eighteenth-century interest in philology brought with it sensitivity to the importance of cultural environment in exegesis, as Adolf Deissmann showed in his brilliant discussion (Deissmann, 1901). Alongside this linguistic interest, there was also a concern to understand why texts emerged and developed as they did.
Discovery of the importance of the social setting of the New Testament brought about a split between a Hellenistic and an apocalyptic interpretation of Jesus and his movement. Hellenistic interpretation, most clearly instanced in Deist thought, saw Jesus and his movement as extensions of classical culture, and championed the portrayal of Christianity as a form of natural philosophy (see Jefferson, 1904). The apocalyptic interpretation insisted that the New Testamentâs preaching was trenchantly otherworldly, a prediction of the end of this age in an apocalypse that would usher in a new, divine order (see Schweitzer, 1906).
While both of these perspectives have much to offer, attempts to reduce Jesus and his movement to one or the other are misleading. Hellenism as a culture, and Greek as a language, did indeed embrace the Mediterranean basin of the first century, but the Hellenistic environment included many microclimates: different languages, cultures, customs and religions were a fact of life during the period. Both anthropology and archaeology have greatly enhanced appreciation of these microclimates and of their significance for interpretation. Jesus, to begin with, was born into the culture of Galilean Judaism, and he moved through three distinctive socio-economic worlds: peasant, town-based and urban. Historical criticism can enhance our understanding by paying close attention to the setting of the texts and understanding each passage in the light of its social, historic and economic background.
Although historical inference makes it possible to discern differing social settings in which Jesus was active, the Gospels themselves were composed in Greek, a generation and more after Jesusâ death, as Rudolf Bultmann showed in the most influential account of the development of the Gospels ever written (see Bultmann, 1921). Nonetheless, more ancient sources â nearer to the time of Jesus and sometimes in his own language, Aramaic â were incorporated within the Gospels. âQâ in its earliest form was a mishnah of Jesus, such as the disciples or rabbis of the time memorized in order to preserve teaching. In addition, teachers such as Peter, James (the brother of Jesus) and Barnabas made contributions to the understanding of Jesusâ teaching, and their influences have been discerned within the Gospels, in sources that were generated within their distinctive microclimates.
Paul was a product of Diaspora Judaism, rather than of Galilee or Judaea, but refinement in describing his setting is no less vital for exegesis than in the case of Jesus. Born in Tarsus, Paul grew up with the local custom that women veiled so fully that, according to the statement of a contemporary philosopher, they could not walk in the street without someone to guide them (Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 33.48). This cultural reflex came back to Paul when he wrote to congregations in Corinth (1 Cor. 11.5â6). But Tarsus was also a centre of Stoicism, and Paul adapted a Stoic metaphor, speaking of the âbody of Christâ (1 Cor. 12.12â31a) while his contemporary Seneca called the emperor the spirit that animates the body politic (De Clementia 1.3.5). At the same time, Paul in his correspondence with the Corinthians claimed personally to have received the most profound revelations that a human being was able to access (2 Cor. 12.1â4), whether in the context of Judaic or of Stoic thought.
Historical critical readings of the New Testament seek to illuminate the text by exploring the world in which the text came into being. It is important to recognize, however, that it also takes account of the differing settings in which the documents and their constituent sources were generated. Meeting that challenge provides a clearer sense of the evolution of the texts and offers insights into the evaluation of their meanings.
B. C.
What are the landmark publications on historical criticism?
Historical criticism is such a central pillar of New Testament scholarship that it is almost impossible to choose a few landmark publications. These five reflect the emphases in the article above.
Johann Salomo Semler (1779) Beantwortung der Fragmente eines Ungenannten insbesondere vom Zweck Jesu und seiner JĂźnger. Halle: Verlag des Erziehungsinstituts.
Semler was one of the first scholars to apply critical thinking to questions about the history and origins of the New Testament.
Thomas Jefferson (1820) The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (otherwise known as The Jefferson Bible).
This book was finished in 1820 but only published after Jeffersonâs death in 1904. His aim in producing this book was to return to the âpure principlesâ of what Jesus had said.
Adolf Deissmann (1895) Bibelstudien: Beiträge, Zumeist aus den Papyri und Inschriften, zur Geschichte der Sprache, des Schrifttums und der Religion des hellenistischen Judentums und des Urchristentums. Marburg: N. G. Elwert.
Translated into English as (1901) Bible Studies. Contributions chiefly from papyri and inscriptions to the history of the language, the literature, and the religion of Hellenistic Judaism and primitive Christianity. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. In this book, Deissmann built on the work of other scholars by developing a view of the language of the New Testament that took account, not only of literary evidence, but of the growing data from papyri and inscriptions.
Albert Schweitzer (1906) Von Reimarus zu Wrede. Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. TĂźbingen: J. C. B. Mohr.
Translated into English as (1954) The Quest of the Historical Jesus. London: Adam and Charles Black. In this book Schweitzer surveyed how Jesus had been understood by nineteenth-century scholars and showed how influenced they had been by their own cultures and values. He then went on to argue that Jesus must be understood in the light of apocalyptic expectations.
Rudolf Bultmann (1921) Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition. GĂśttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Translated into English as (1963) History of the Synoptic Tradition. Oxford and New York: Blackwell and Harper & Row. In this book Bultmann explored the traditional material used by the Gospel writers and tried to reconstruct how it had reached the form that it has.
Historical criticism in practice
As Bruce Chiltonâs article makes clear, exploring the background of the New Testament enables us to understand further the meaning of the text and can give depth and texture to our reading of the biblical narrative. It can fill out some of the details that we might otherwise miss and can help us to comprehend a little of the lives of the people about whom we read, such as what their concerns were, how they viewed the world and how they might have understood some of the things that were said. The problem, again as Chilton intimates, is that no one personâs life would have been the same as anyone elseâs. One person might have been heavily influenced by Greek thought, whereas another person might be entirely resistant to it. It is also very difficult, if not impossible, to be exhaustive; it is hard to look at all potential pieces of background at one time.
Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners: Matthew 9.9â13
In Matthewâs story about Jesus eating with the tax collectors and sinners in 9.9â13, two groups stand out: the tax collectors and sinners, and the Pharisees. This passage raises the question of why the Pharisees were so opposed to the tax collectors and, in particular, why they were against Jesus eating with them. An exploration into tax collectors and Pharisees in the first century can help to shed some light on this passage.
The episode contains the account of the calling of Matthew, whom many scholars suppose to be the same person as âLevi Son of Alphaeusâ, who, in Mark 2.14â17, was called while sitting at a tax booth. Tax collectors were widely despised and were often listed alongside other undesirables: for example, Cicero, in his treatise De inv...
