Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Matthew_Green · 05-08-2004, 02:27 PM

For some time I have been fascinated with the question of just how much mythology underlies the gospels. I have thought of Jesus as being a Mythic Hero that had to be dissected like a biology lab frog to get to the real, purely human Jesus with a critical scapel. However, there has been something that has crossed my mind lately; what if the gospel authors never intended to write down history and the gospels don't reflect any Christological evolution in which a historical Jesus becomes layered with myth and legend over time? What if the gospel outlines are pure literary inventions?

It appears that some scholars tend to think so. Two of the more prominent ones that come to my mind are Dennis McDonald and Michael Goulder. McDonald has written a fascinating book called Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. He proposes that Mark's gospel was not meant to be understood as literal history but was simply writing an anti-epic, taking the Greek epic of Homer and interverting it, and hereby transvaluing Homer's epics.

Michael Goulder takes a different approach, however. He sees Mark as something quite differently:

Quote:

From time-to-time there appear, unheralded out of a hidden fold in the landscape, startling new variations of the Jesus figure. One such surprising irruption is what I call the "liturgical Jesus". A controversial scholar named Michael Goulder was the first to present this concept in detail.

Briefly, he proposed that the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke were never intended to be accounts of what Jesus did and said during his life.

First, they were constructed as collections of illustrative stories, intended to convey the meaning of Jesus in terms of God's action in the world. In other words, they were theological statements closely connected to a catechetical function. As such, they would have been loosely rather than directly associated with the theology of Paul of Tarsus. Whereas Paul was a Jew working primarily in a non-Jewish context, the Gospels of Mark and Matthew were most probably linked with Jewish Christians. Luke's Gospel may have been the work of a convert to Judaism. (But note the word "may", which indicates a guess here, as in most scholarly works.)

Second, says Goulder, the Gospels were assembled by their authors primarily for use in worship as liturgical readings. This use would, I think, most likely have been intended also as a teaching aid. Just as the Muslim youth of today still learn the Koran by heart, so did Jewish young people in the time of Jesus and the first Jewish-Christian communities learn the Jewish scriptures. They would, I think, almost certainly have quickly tried to assemble a Christian counterpart to the Jewish scriptures as they gradually broke away from official Jewry.

I think it's significant in this context that Mark's Gospel was probably assembled about the year 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans and many Jews dispersed into the Roman Empire. The grip of the official religious system on the Jewish faith would have been weakened enough at this point to allow an independent burst of creativity among Jewish-Christians.

John Spong, a disciple of Michael Goulder and retired Bishop of the Episcopal Church's Newark Diocese in the United States, proposes that the purpose of the Gospels was distorted later by non-Jewish Christians. They tended to regard the Gospels as records of what really happened - that is, as good history.

Their world views were fundamentally Greek and Roman. Greeks would not have understood Jewish Midrash - that method of illustrating and elaborating the meaning of God's actions which was an integral part of the way Jews interpreted the past

Wether Mark's gospel was an anti-epic or a midrashic creation, either theory, if gaining wider acceptance, will spell out revolutionary implications for New Testament studies. I have noticed one particular implication: In 1st Corinthians 15: 5, Paul says that Jesus appeared to the Twelve. If Goulder or McDonald is right, then it this early creed would not only contradict the gospels ( Paul says Jesus appeared to Twelve, Luke says Jesus appeared to the Eleven on the eve of the first Easter while John implies only 10 were present) but it would show that Jesus in all likelihood was never betrayed by Judas Iscariot. The betrayal would be a literary creation as would the post-resurrection appearances, the last Supper, and all predictions of betrayal by Iscariot. It need not be a legend that evolved over time. It would be a literary or midrashic creation, cut from the whole cloth of fiction.

Matthew

Roland · 05-08-2004, 04:35 PM

This is also Earl Doherty's argument in "The Jesus Puzzle."

Vinnie · 05-08-2004, 10:25 PM

Two more views:

1. JD Crossan: Twelve does not go back to the HJ but Jesus was still betrayed by a close follower. His name was not Judas but later Christians gave huim the name Judas to blame the Jews.

2. John Meier:

Quote:

“I think Vielhauer sets up a false dichotomy between two different literary forms (creedal formula and Gospel narrative), which come from different “settings in life�? (Sitze im Leben) in the early church, and which moreover function differently in their respective contexts. The presence of “the Twelve�? in the early and terse creedal formula of 1 Cor. 15:5 simply underlines the essential symbolic significance of the Twelve, which would have been especially important to the earliest Christian Jews of Palestine: the Twelve represented the twelve tribes of Israel, which many Jews expected to be restored in the last days. This interpretation of the Twelve is supported by the Q logion (Matt 19:28 par.) that we have already examined. The symbolism of the number twelve was thus all important. Not surprisingly, the number quickly became the very name of the group, a set designation or stereotyped formula that could be used of this eschatological group even when membership changed or when-for a relatively brief time after Judas’ defection-it lacked one member. In a way, this fixed usage of “The Twelve�? is intimated by the very wording of 1 Cor 15:5: first Cephas is mentioned alone, and then we hear of the Twelve, with no attempt to adjust or clarify the wording to indicate that, in the initial resurrection appearances, Cephas both stood apart from and yet was a member of the Twelve.

One might add here an observation about the way in which the nomenclature of the Twelve developed in the early church. As we can see from the independent witness of Paul, Mark, and John, “the Twelve�? used absolutely as a substantive and not as an adjective modifying “disciples�? or “apostles,�? was the earliest designation of this inner circle. Far from “the Eleven�? being the early and natural way of referring to the circle when one member was missing, the phrase ‘the Eleven�? occurs only in the second-generation stage of the Gospel tradition. Fittingly, it is Matthew and Luke, the two evangelists who supply the detailed stories of Judas’ death, who, out of their historicizing impulse for numerical exactitude, use the phrases “the eleven disciples�? (Matt 28:16), “the eleven apostles�? (Acts 1:26), or simply “the Eleven�? (Luke 24:9,33). This accountant-like precision is the sign of a late, not an early, stratum of the tradition. Not surprisingly, such precision is found in secondary, expansive narratives, not in an early, terse creedal formula that says only the essential. In brief, when one attends to the different literary forms of 1 Cor 15:3-5 and the Gospel narratives, coming as they do from different Sitze im Leben and having different functions, I think Vielhauer’s supposed contradiction, on which he bases his denial of the Twelve’s existence during Jesus’ lifetime, evaporates.�? (Marginal VIII pp 140-141)

Personally I share the view that Jesus' betrayal by a close follower is a bedrock fact of his ministry. See Crossan and Meier's arguments ( Who killed Jesus and v. 3 of a Marginal Jew).

Vinnie

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05-08-2004, 04:35 PM	#2
Roland Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: California Posts: 748	This is also Earl Doherty's argument in "The Jesus Puzzle."

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