Introduction
What witnesses do we have to the life of Jesus Christ and which is the best?
There are essentially five witnesses that attest to the life of Jesus Christ:
1.) The canonical gospels.
2.) Non-Christian Jewish material.
3.) New Testament text outside of the canonical gospels.
4.) Non-canonical gospels.
5.) Roman material.
We will discuss each of these sources in turn, with an eye to its utility in establishing the historicity of Jesus, He born of a virgin, very much in the literal sense the Son of Man (besides His deity, the incarnate God-Man). Jesus, who left heaven’s abode and slipped into time down here in the land of sin and sorrow to redeem and save a wayward, depraved humanity unto righteousness and everlasting joy in that idyllic heaven He calls Home. Home indeed, not only for Himself, but for His Beloved.
The Canonical Gospels
Of the witnesses listed, none can compare to the import let alone wealth of information that is contained in the canonical gospels: Matthew 1:1ff, Mark 1:1ff, Luke 1:1ff, and John 1:1ff. They are therefore our chief witnesses to the life of Jesus Christ; these works bear the name of their inspired authors. Concerning their special qualification for penning this history, Matthew and John were apostles—they saw and heard Jesus daily for an extended period of time, and they are thus primary-source eyewitnesses to the historical Jesus. (“The Twelve Apostles”). It is probable that Mark, not an apostle, learned about Jesus through the apostle Peter’s teaching (Cruse 50). Peter, like Matthew and John, was a primary-source eyewitness; he attested to the Gospel of Jesus Christ unto martyrdom by crucifixion. Luke, a learned physician, but not an apostle, relates that he had the occasion to study accounts of the matters at hand; consequently, he too set down an account:
Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed. (Luke 1:1-4)
Skeptics argue that in the gospels we see a historical bias because the text was penned by Christians. As Richard Niswonger points out,
Historical literature does not lack for examples of one involved in an event also penning its history, and that alone does not imply bias. The intelligent reader will be wary of distortion yet engage the material with objectivity. (Niswonger 112)
An exhaustive discussion about origin and original order of the gospels is beyond the scope of this study; it is, however, selectively included below in the discussion of the Synoptic (Gospel) structure. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels. Synoptic could be defined so: literally, “together-looking.” Practically, being arranged section by section so as to allow one’s eye to discern at a glance the various passages that are common to these three gospels, and also the portions which are slightly different between them, as in synopsis.
The Synoptic Gospels correspond closely in their witness to the life of Jesus Christ, though not without some divergences in their parallelism, which are themselves, nevertheless, generically inconsequential as concerns the consistent, standard message of the Synoptics (we mean Synoptic Gospels), indeed of all four of the gospels, that of Redemption | Salvation on the back of a Savior, even Jesus the Son of Man. The Synoptic structures are discussed separately below. Compared to the Synoptics, the Gospel of John is wonderfully unique in its style and historical witness, and again, that most critical element—the generic message of the gospels—is not compromised by this Gospel’s more theological structure. The Gospel of John is discussed in this context separately below.
non-Christian Jewish material
The most meaningful Jewish witness extant is that of the historian Josephus (AD 37-101). Written about AD 95, his Antiquities of the Jews references Jesus twice. Once in relation to His half-brother James (Antiquities book xx:chapter 9:1), and again more directly (Antiquities book xviii:chapter 3:3)
The Rabbinic works reflected in the Talmud offer very little that help us to construct a meaningful account of Jesus’ life. He is identified as Jesus of Nazareth, His disciples are said to have healed the sick in His name, He is recorded as saying He came not to abolish the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfill them, as He said in His Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:17). The rest of the material concerning Him seems to be grooved and polemic. Grooved in the sense that it casts Him as the enemy of Israel—a false prophet and teacher who contradicted the “wise” men of Jerusalem (Scribes and Pharisees, Sadducees), and as one who led the Jewish people astray. Polemic in the sense that it challenges Jesus’ virgin birth, His divinity, His sinlessness, His innocence of the charges against Him at His trial. As the Mishnaic component of the Talmud was several centuries in development (c. AD 90-220), it is difficult to determine whether this mindset reflects first or second/third-century Rabbinic thought. In the end, the Jewish sources offer very little that help us to reconstruct the life of Jesus Christ.
New Testament Text Outside the Canonical Gospels
Acts 1:1ff (New Testament History, the Spirit of God planting and spreading His Church), the Epistles (essentially commentaries on the Gospel in the dress of Pauline and non-Pauline correspondences with the churches, Romans 1:1ff), and Revelation 1:1ff (the end of mundane time, Jesus’ impending return), comprise this material. Though it is filled with Gospel-doctrine per se, and illustrates the same in practice, the New Testament text outside the canonical gospels is nevertheless quite lean on biographical and historical narrative concerning our Savior; it is therefore a decided subordinate to the canonical gospels in that regard—this does not imply that the material is inferior, simply that its utility in the reconstruction of the life of Jesus Christ is much less than that of the canonical gospels. Romans describes Jesus as being of the seed of David (Romans 1:3), 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 recounts Jesus’ words instituting the Last Supper, 1 Corinthians 15:1ff relates Jesus’ resurrection appearances. Hebrews 2:18 recounts our Lord’s suffering and temptation, cf. Hebrews 4:15, and Acts 20:35 relates a saying of Jesus not recorded in the gospels. For the purpose of historical reconstruction, the New Testament text outside the canonical gospels does not reveal to us anything substantial about the God-man Jesus Christ that we didn’t already know from studying the canonical gospels.
The non-Canonical Gospels
Some would argue that these gospels add little to our picture of the historical Jesus. Our picture, however, is dependent upon our understanding of the transmission of traditions about and from Jesus and of the process of the formation of written gospel texts. The non-canonical gospels are important witnesses to these developments. In many instances, they are directly dependent upon the earliest stages of the collections of sayings of Jesus and stories about him; and they show little, if any, influence from the gospels of the New Testament […] While large parts of the early church finally limited the growth of this literature by canonizing the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, other Christian groups continued to cultivate their own books– books which claim to contain both the genuine words of Jesus’ revelation and their interpretations. Although some of these writings are known as “Gnostic gospels,” which sometimes place Jesus’ words into a post-resurrection situation, they often preserve older traditions. Perhaps more important, these gospels reveal to us the way in which Christians in different situations renewed the living voice of Jesus on the basis of such older traditions. (Cameron 9-10)
These works can largely be classified as traditions of sayings of Jesus, and traditions of stories about Jesus. As R. Cameron alluded, it is a very large body of work—canonicity of our gospels did not occur until AD 367, therefore these works had plenty of time to develop, multiply, and suffuse the early Church (“New Testament Canon” and canonicity). It would seem, on the surface, that this material provides the kind of information that might allow one to construct a history of Jesus, but the not so insignificant difficulty is that much of the material is either an altered restatement (e.g., Ebionites) or paraphrase (e.g., Hebrews, Nazarenes) of our canonical Gospel text, or quite a stretch of the imagination (as compared to the canonical text, e.g., the Gnostic bent of Philip, Thomas, Truth). The conclusion is, though the non-canonical gospels probably do reveal first and second-century Jesus-tradition, they do not provide for us substantial, and in no way improved, witness over against the canonical gospels in attaining to the historical Jesus.
The Roman Witness
The Roman witness to the life of our Savior is meager. As known presently, only three Roman historians referenced Jesus in their work. The Roman consul and writer Pliny the Younger (AD 61-113) refers to Jesus in a letter written to the emperor Trajan (AD 98-117):
Presently the mere handling of the matter produced the usual result of spreading the crime, and more varieties occurred. There was published an anonymous pamphlet containing many names. Those who denied that they were Christians or ever had been, when, after me, they invoked the gods and worshiped with incense and wine your statue which I had ordered to be brought for that purpose along with the images of the gods, and, further, reviled Christ– things which it is said that no real Christian will do under any compulsion– I considered should be dismissed. Others who were named by the informer admitted that they were Christians and presently denied it, admitting that they had been, but saying that they had ceased to be, some several years before, some even twenty. All these likewise did homage to your statue and to the images of the gods and reviled Christ. They affirmed moreover that the sum of their crime or error was that they had been wont to meet together on a fixed day before daybreak and to repeat amongst themselves in turn a hymn to Christ as to a god and to bind themselves by an oath, not for some wickedness, not to commit theft, not to commit robbery, not to commit adultery, not to break their word, not to deny a deposit when demanded, these things duly done, it had been their custom to disperse and to meet again to take food– of an ordinary and harmless kind. Even this they had ceased to do after my edict by which in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden the existence of societies. For these reasons I deemed it all the more necessary to find out the truth by examination– even with torture– of two maids who were called deaconesses. I found nothing but a perverse and extravagant superstition. (Pliny)
The Roman biographer and historian of culture Suetonius (AD 70-150), best known for Lives of the Caesars, refers to Jesus in that work in the section “The Life of Claudius:”
Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome. (Suetonius)
The Roman public official and historian Tacitus (AD 60-120), in one of his two major works, Annals, refers to Jesus so:
Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. (Tacitus)
That is the extent of the Roman witness to the historical Jesus. F. F. Bruce believes that the scantiness of references lies in the fact that Rome considered Judea a rebel outpost, rife with bandits and dissidents; add to that Jesus’ relatively small following at the time of the crucifixion, and not many historians were stirred to attention by our Savior’s death (Bruce 13-18). We see in the Roman witness confirmation of the reality of Jesus as a historical figure, but not much detail about Him or His life.
The Synoptic Structure
As primary-source witnesses to the life and teachings and commands of our Savior, head and shoulders above all other witnesses, in scope and wealth, it is necessary to establish the authenticity (genuineness, trustworthiness) of the four canonical gospels as witnesses to the historical Jesus. The three Synoptic Gospels have structures which must be delineated and understood—first as between themselves, and second, between themselves and the Gospel of John.
Even a casual examination of the first three Gospels reveals a surprising amount of parallelism in words, phrases, incidents, and stories, and in the ordering or basic structure of the material. Most of Mark can be found in Matthew, and a high proportion is also repeated in Luke. Of the 661 verses in Mark, 606 are essentially in Matthew, and 308 in Luke. But there are also striking divergences in the Synoptics. Luke is the most distinctive, with 520 verses peculiar to itself, and Matthew has 300 verses found nowhere else. (Bruce 31)
Mark is the least distinctive, with about 93 percent of its material duplicated in the other two. (Niswonger 100)
With such high duplication numbers, it begs the question, was Mark, i.e., Peter (Peter informed Mark), to some degree the source of a Synoptics Gospel “template”? Let’s try something. Assume a scale wherein we assign a “1” to anyone who has intimate, firsthand knowledge of Jesus’ ministry, an apostle essentially, and something less than 1 but greater than 0 to anyone who does not have intimate, firsthand knowledge of Jesus’ ministry, a non-apostle essentially. Also, the slash, i.e., / means division below; the pipe i.e., | means “coming from.” Moreover, apostles are in red font, non-apostles in black font. Finally, we recall these numbers:
Mark contains 661 verses,
606 of Mark’s 661 verses are duplicated in Matthew,
308 of Mark’s 661 verses are duplicated in Luke.
Looking at the numbers, it would almost seem to be expected that since two apostles, one each in the numerator and the denominator, are behind the Matthew/(Mark|Peter) ratio, call it ratio a, it should tend toward 1.0 since the numerator and denominator are the “same.” And what we actually have here is 606/661 = approximately 0.92, which ratio tends toward 1.0 as expected. We would further expect ratio a to be stronger than ratios consisting of only one apostle, this ratio format is meant Luke/(Mark|Peter), call it ratio b, stronger because such ratios should tend toward something less than 1.0 since there is no “apostle offset” in the numerator in this case, and what we actually have is 308/661= approximately 0.47. Those results are exactly what we would expect, and in the limit for analytical purposes let’s just say that the ratios a : b are 1 : 1/2 over against each other. That is precisely 2:1, which should be expected given we have 2:1 apostles to non-apostles at the information spigot. If we consider a third ratio, we can divide out the Mark | Peter base and determine the Luke/Matthew ratio, call it ratio c; let’s check it.
c= b/a = Luke/(Mark|Peter)/Matthew/(Mark|Peter)=Luke/Matthew=308/606=0.51.
Ratios b (Luke/Mark|Peter=0.47) and c (Luke/Matthew =0.51) are nearly identical. The obvious point is that if Mark|Peter is some sort of template, then both Matthew and Luke would have used it, and that means ratio b, that of Luke/(Mark|Peter) should approximately equal ratio c, that of Luke/Matthew, which is what we see. It suggests that Mark|Peter is common to both Matthew and Luke, which is another way of saying that Mark|Peter was in some manner a template (assuming we are working with decent input numbers—they just need to be “in the ballpark” for this analysis to hold). In the limit, i.e., rounding to the nearest tenths, we have this ratio sequence—a: b: c = 1: 1/2 : 1/2. Ratio a (Matthew/(Mark|Peter) is in the same proportion to ratio b (Luke/Mark|Peter) as it is to ratio c (Luke/Matthew). If we have a Marcan template, it can be no other way. See also figure 1. Let’s step back for a moment. Suppose we do have a Mark|Peter template as assumed per the above, one wonders, more generally, besides the numbers, why? Why did it turn out that this particular source (Mark|Peter) ended up being the template? Why did God choose this one and not some other/s? God kept the “goodies” tightly in the family at first we think, and we believe He did it through the person, in particular, the out-front personality, of Peter. Jehovah God always keeps His Word, no matter how trivial or insignificant it may seem, when something roles of His lips, “…it gonna’ happen friend…”, and right here He is keeping His word to Peter (Matthew 16:13-15, 16-19: we reckon Jesus speaks here precisely of His Word the Gospel, foundational to the Church, shortly to be disseminated foremost by Peter, the Spirit-led linchpin in that regard, John 21:15-17, Acts 2:1ff, esp. Acts 2:41, “Feed My Sheep“). Peter was the head of the apostles, always out front, his personal presence comes across like that, he was first to speak, first to act, first. And, he knew what happened in Jesus’ ministry like “the back of his hand” as it were. When things were happening in Jesus’ ministry, Peter was always part of it, usually out front, until at the very end when things got too expensive for him, as Jesus anticipated and prayed about (Luke 22:31-32), and of course Jesus restored him ever so tenderly praise God, for Peter’s own sake, and for the brethren as concerns us in this context. And this is the main point here about Peter: The others seemed to follow his lead before and after Jesus’ absence. Luke would have deferred to Peter almost pronto we reckon, but as a learned man, he would not have stopped there, probably at the behest of Peter no less, as he intimates himself, speaking of sources, plural. No surprise, therefore, that ratio b shows the greater relative scatter away from the linear fit; also notice that the relative scatter of ratio c is only slightly different from that of ratio b, because, significantly, the strong ratio a attests that Mark and Matthew, the respective denominators of ratio b and ratio c, are closely correlated. Put differently, If Mark and Matthew were not closely correlated, the relative scatter would be more pronounced in one direction or another (one of these, either b or c, would show markedly greater relative scatter depending on how grossly uncorrelated Mark and Matthew were). The upshot is that it appears as though Luke is introducing the small bits of relative scatter away from the linear fit that we see, probably because his sources were more than just Peter, while Matthew appears to be more singularly dependent on Peter, and of course Mark is entirely dependent on Peter. Matthew was never out front in the days of Jesus’ ministry, so it seems, certainly not to the degree that Peter was, but Matthew had experienced the same happenings that Peter did; Matthew, looking at a Mark|Peter template, would have recollected precisely what was in that template, but certainly with his own Spirit-led insights that he later wrote down, which also accounts for some of the divergences we think. It’s different with Luke, because he simply did not come to the matter with the same experiences that Matthew did. Luke we are going to suppose was totally dependent on his sources (Peter+others), all clearly contemporary with Jesus’ ministry. It comes as no shock that this Gospel (Luke) is distinctive, and generally speaking, hat is no accident, for God gives us here yet another, and quite circumspect in this case, Spirit-led angle on the same material. It is the sort of elegant design that demands attention and study for centuries (for the Drawn, drawn to the Feeding Trough). Maybe that is enough for this section. In sum, it seems to us that Mark|Peter underlies our Synoptic Gospels, and from that Gospel-kernel Matthew and Luke, by way of recollection, and Jesus-sources, respectively, entirely under inspiration, compiled their gospels. God was taking a centuries-long (salvific) view of the text, we think that motivated the unexpected-to-human-sensibility inspiration.
The first of our structures can now be stated: account for the high degree of similarity among original compositions; if the answer posited is the works were copied/shared, then account for the dissimilarities between the copied works—which extends far beyond the peculiarities of the Greek language. Even selective copying/sharing cannot reasonably account for the dissimilarities. What was just offered may go a long way toward answering both of those questions, but if that is not satisfactory, then, in the search for a cogent answer by other means, one is confronted immediately by the complicated history (the chronological record of events) of the Gospel sources themselves—suddenly, the quest for one history (Jesus) deconvolutes into the quest for two histories (Jesus+sources). It is fair to restate the goal at this point: establish a means to determine the historical Jesus; having determined that the canonical gospels are preeminently that means, establish the historicity (historical authenticity) of the same in light of the Synoptic structure. Much of biblical scholarship has been absorbed in attaining such an end for an extended period, producing a number of theories along the way, we will now survey some of the results of that scholarship.
The Oral-tradition Theory
This theory addresses foremost the similarities among the Synoptics, it offers little insight into the dissimilarities. It is sure that the Gospel message per se was repeated orally for several decades before it was recorded ( Fig. 2, “New Testament Canon“). During that time some suppose that it assumed a fixed, unvarying form. And as long as most of the apostles were still alive the need for a written record seemed less pressing, and attention would have been given to preserving an accurate oral account. Several Scripture passages suggest this. Speaking of the content of the Gospel message that he preached, Paul said he had received it from others and passed it on to the Corinthians (1Corinthians 15:1-3), and he also asserted that there was only one authoritative Gospel message (Galatians 1:8). In the final analysis, this theory can account for the similarities in the Synoptics very well, but not the dissimilarities.
The Interdependence Theory
This theory proposed that the earliest Gospel became the source for the author of the second and that the third author then utilized the first two gospels as sources for his Gospel. Augustine (A.D. 354-430) thought Matthew wrote the earliest Gospel, and he believed Mark wrote an abridgment of Matthew. Luke then was able to utilize both Matthew and Mark. This traditional view was also held by two scholars of German heritage, Johann Jakob Griesbach (1745-1812) and Theodor von Zahn (1838-1933), and it is still the common view of Roman Catholics. Griesbach believed that Mark was the last of the Synoptics to be written and depended on the other two and that Matthew may have been the first Gospel but most biblical scholars of the past century have rejected Griesbach’s order, preferring instead Marcan priority. Within the last decade, however, a few scholars within the liberal tradition have rejected Marcan priority and have attempted a revival of the Griesbach hypothesis […] Theodor von Zahn’s version of the interdependence theory is somewhat more complex than Augustine’s. He believed an Aramaic form of Matthew appeared first and became the basis for Mark’s Greek Gospel. The Aramaic Matthew was then rewritten in Greek with the aid of Mark’s Greek account. The two Greek versions were then available for Luke’s narrative (Niswonger 101-2).
The interdependence theory may provide some insight as to the Synoptic similarities, but it fails to explain the divergences in things such as word order, vocabulary, and inclusions/omissions.
Source Criticism
Source criticism was originally utilized in Old Testament exegetical studies; scholars first located (an analytical effort of its own merit) and then studied those works that were thought to be source material for the Old Testament book of interest. Beginning in the early part of the nineteenth-century, this concept began to be applied to the study of the Synoptic Gospels. As mentioned in the Interdependence Theory section, it was thought that a single Aramaic document lay behind the Synoptics–the “source” that motivates source criticism, but such a document was never found, and the idea ultimately gave way to a pseudo-interdependence theory approach called the two-document approach. The two-document approach contended that after Mark was published, it became the source for Matthew and Luke (we would tend to agree with that based on the ratio analysis above), along with another document called “Q” (probably the Q in the German “Quelle,” which means a “well”). Like the elusive master document above, here “Q” was never found. (Our ratio analysis above similarly does not support this “Q” document, the linear fit indicates it is not needed.) Source criticism ran its course by the early part of the twentieth-century.
Earlier we quoted the beginning of the Gospel of Luke and saw that at least one of the Synoptic authors intimates using sources.
Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed. (Luke 1:1-4)
So, of this we can be sure: God personally directed any use of sources in the writing of the Synoptics. They were probably a combination of oral and written tradition from the early days, as Luke intimates here. As most everyone has observed by experience, a story that circulates by word of mouth tends to change character as it circulates, but the Gospel was not just another story, it is most probable that its sacredness in the eyes of and on the lips of the beholder tended to preclude embellishment (God would not allow that and squelched it). It is well to remember that in the Eastern Culture of that day, memorized communication of a matter was an accepted and well-practiced and necessary method of transmission of the facts (especially within Judaism); in that culture, the oral tradition of an event does not necessarily imply an untrustworthy history of the same. Taking the argument a bit further, in ancient times generally, not everyone could read and write, so the business of precise memorization, a lost art, and relating the same to others precisely, was critical to survival. It is probably fair to assume that oral communicative skills were highly refined in ancient times—both practically, and ethically.
Form Criticism
It should be noted up front that in its extremes this theory destabilizes the Gospel tradition (in short, it puts an odium on God’s sacred and eternal Word). Form criticism focuses on the oral tradition that preceded the writing of the Synoptics (Fig. 2). Pioneers in the field such as Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Dibelius proposed that during the period of the oral tradition, the gospels took upon themselves fixed forms that were at the core manifestations of “grooving” by the early Church for the purpose of substantiating and propagating Church dogma (“Gospels Criticism-2“). This theory proposes an unstable Gospel tradition and therefore readily accommodates both the similarities and dissimilarities in the Synoptic Gospels through the vehicle of (Church) tampering with the tradition.
Proponents of form criticism see in each of the Synoptics literary forms which are the consequence of a Church that redressed the text to fit its own agenda. They propose the miracle stories are one such literary form, and Pharisaic-encounter stories another sort of literary form, Jesus-sayings stories another sort of literary form, parable stories another sort of literary form, and so on.
The different types of oral tradition, according to form criticism, were a product of the Christian community. According to the more radical brand of form criticism, as the Church told and retold the stories and sayings, it modified them and even created new elements to help resolve then-current problems and theological controversies. In other words, the Church did not preserve a pure and uncorrupted tradition, but rather adapted and even invented material to meet the needs of the time. The units then become for the scholar a primary source for the history of the first-century Church, but a secondary source, and an unreliable one, for the life and teachings of Jesus. In order to ascertain how a unit might have developed, form critics attempt to reconstruct the background situation that gave rise to that unit’s preservation or creation. By understanding the Sitz im Leben (life setting) of a story, one can discover the particular controversy or interest that shaped the unit until it assumed its final form […] The more destructive criticism of Bultmann may obscure the fact that form criticism need not be a radical methodology. The idea that the church preserved and shaped an oral tradition seems reasonable. No one doubts that the Gospel had an oral form before it assumed a written form. If the church did develop recollections of the sayings and stories about Christ, it does not seem surprising that scholars today could try to categorize these stories according to their form. It is also likely that the Church would have emphasized those aspects, words, and deeds, that seemed most relevant to the situations and crises in the Church. These remembrances could have been utilized by the Gospel authors. In other words, there is no reason to view the methodology in itself as totally baseless or destructive. It should be possible to examine the Gospels with form-critical tools without necessarily accepting the idea that the Gospels contain inventions of the church. (Niswonger 105-106).
Reaction to the extremes of form criticism, as well as its inability to account for historical aspects of Jesus (date of birth, length of ministry, and so on) caused it to become supplanted by another critical method, redaction criticism, by the middle of the twentieth-century.
Redaction Criticism
An outgrowth of form criticism, redaction criticism built on the former to a good degree as a reaction to its extremes, the same getting “smoothed over” here as it were, given a different style of walking shoes, with no less of an odium put on the Word of God. Unlike form criticism, redaction criticism (also referred to as “redaction story”) views the Synoptics in their individual entirety (as opposed to the units | pericopes of form criticism; pericope = “to cut around the perimeter”; pericope in that application was a text “cut out of its context” and “lifted out” and form-analyzed “naked” per the thrust of the preceding discussion of literary forms). Redaction criticism regards the author of the texts as editor | redactor of the source materials. The critic looks at the way the various pieces of the Gospel tradition were put together into its final literary form by an editor. The implication is that the persons Matthew, Mark, and Luke, our inspired Synoptics authors, were editors and collators of data; sort of peculiar jigsaw puzzle aficionados creating, or better, redacting a story from a plethora of Jesus-material at their disposal. But of course we know that Matthew and Peter were primary-source eyewitnesses to the things they recorded, and they informed Mark and Luke; in other words, they themselves generated the text they lived/experienced and then recorded, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, they did not redact it second-hand, under the guidance of personal opinion.
Instead of focusing attention on individual units, redaction criticism began analyzing the works of the three synoptic authors as unified literary compositions. Rather than viewing the writers as mere copyists whose editorial connections and additions needed to be excised, in order to get back to an original oral tradition, the new approach saw the diversity of the accounts as an indication of creativity. The contribution of each author consisted primarily of a distinctive theological emphasis. (Niswonger 107, red font added)
The problem with the foregoing lies in the word “creativity.” Call it a pastoral emphasis, or a theological emphasis, however one wishes to describe it, it is nonsense to think that God would “get creative” by way of the pen of little man, unless He is not assumed to be behind the text in the first place, for then what does it matter what man jots down and passes along—that, is the odium of redaction criticism, for it thinks precisely so, i.e., that God is not behind these texts from first to last.
The redaction critical approach addresses both the similarities and dissimilarities in the Synoptics because it makes malleable each evangelist’s pen (this is very bad, for that pen is tantamount to the finger of God which writes in stone), and thus demands less synchronization among the accounts. The redactionist would view each evangelist’s account as a writer-focused theological summary of the oral tradition. This approach then accounts for the variations in the Synoptics at the expense of producing highly Mark, Matthew, and Luke-subjective, theologically emphatic themes underlying these gospels. In turn, said subjectivity would render these gospels relative, not Standard, would it not? We need not go there, i.e., reconstruct this oral tradition; why add complexity to a largely uncomplicated problem. Stick with the firsthand accounts of the apostles Peter and Matthew, who informed Mark and Luke, and let it be. We do not doubt that an oral tradition manifested, probably already while Jesus was still alive, and particularly so after His resurrection and the postmortem appearances witnessed by hundreds, but we simply do not need it when we have these eyewitness apostle authors’ testimony, most of whom laid down their life as a testament to what they wrote.
Evangelicals have disagreed among themselves on whether redaction criticism (along with its predecessor form criticism) is a legitimate tool for the orthodox. Some scholars believe that the utilization of this method inevitably leads to the acceptance of presuppositions destructive to faith. Others have argued that if the methodology is applied carefully and kept subject to a high view of Scripture, it can yield useful insights. (Niswonger 108)
Let us be clear here, the Synoptic Gospel writers could not help but be faithful to whatever tradition existed, oral or otherwise, because (by God’s design) they were an integral part of that tradition from the get go! That is, with Jesus as the centerpiece, the tradition intimately involved precisely them. And they wrote as they were led to write. They did not have a laptop and a phone handy whereby they could check each other’s texts, they just simply wrote as they were led to write. We think it is a testament to the overseeing of the Holy Spirit that the texts resonate around Redemption | Salvation as well as they do given the serious compositional and publishing limitations the authors of that day and culture were faced with (no online dictionaries/ thesaurus, no slick word editors and memory sticks, no instant communication with the apostle next door–it was tough, and still our Lord got the job done unto the Salvation of millions since His day–all by this selfsame blessed Gospel, the Eternal Word). The modern hangups of similarities and dissimilarities in the text were not even on their mind we can be sure–frivolous and ridiculous. Each wrote a Gospel, and between all four of them, God has provided more than the reader needs to come to faith in Jesus Christ and be saved, secure in the presence of that Savior for the long haul on into eternity. That, after all, is the Gospel, is it not? Is it not Redemption | Salvation? If somehow we had inconsistencies in that theme, now that would be trouble, but just the opposite is true. The Gospel is Redemption | Salvation on the back of a suffering servant Savior who was shown to be alive postmortem by countless witnesses to seal the matter, and our brethren the apostles all agree on that and myriad other faith-succoring things that concern our, that is, the Church’s (not just some isolated church’s) Redemption | Salvation, and praised and much thanked be our great God for “keeping it all together” and “bringing it home” to us in our day across all those millennia for our eternal blessedness no less. We thank you great Jehovah God. Amen.
The Gospel of John
Let us now begin to put some pieces together. After positing that the canonical gospels were our preeminent means of attaining to the historical Jesus, we began to look at the historicity of the gospels; this forced us to discuss the Synoptic structure. We have discussed to this point the first of these structures, proposed so above: account for the high degree of similarity among original compositions; if the answer posited is the works were copied/shared, then account for the dissimilarities between the copied works—which we said extends far beyond the peculiarities of the Greek language, and further, that selective copying/sharing could not reasonably account for the dissimilarities either. This statement is the Synoptic structure as it manifests itself between the Synoptics; sundry theories have just now been discussed that address this the first of our Synoptic structures. Now we would like to address the second: the Synoptic structure as it manifests itself between the Synoptic Gospels collectively and the Gospel of John.
For many Christian people, the Gospel according to St. John is the most precious book in the New Testament. It is the book on which above all they feed their minds and nourish their hearts, and in which they rest their souls. Very often on stained-glass windows and the like, the gospel writers are represented in symbol by the figures of the four animals that the writer of the Revelation saw around the throne (Revelation 4:7). The emblems are variously distributed among the gospel writers, but a common allocation is that the man stands for Mark, which is the plainest, the most straightforward and the most human of the gospels; the lion stands for Matthew, for he especially saw Jesus as the Messiah and the Lion of the tribe of Judah; the ox stands for Luke, because it is the animal of service and sacrifice, and Luke saw Jesus as the great servant of men and women and the universal sacrifice for all people; and the eagle stands for John, because it alone of all living creatures can look straight into the sun and not be dazzled, and, of all the New Testament writers, John has the most penetrating gaze into the eternal mysteries and the eternal truths and the very mind of God. Many people find themselves closer to God and to Jesus Christ in John than in any other book in the world. (Barclay 1)
there are some striking differences between the Gospel of John and the Synoptic Gospels; let us enumerate them.
1.) Probably one of the most curious is that in John we find none of the parables that Jesus spoke in the Synoptics.
2.) The language of Synoptics is often brief, unforgettable narrative; in John it is typically discourse that runs the length of an entire chapter.
3.) In John there is no account of Jesus’ birth/genealogy, circumcision and presentation in the temple, baptism, temptations, or the transfiguration; nothing is related of the Last Supper, Jesus’ Gethsemane agony, or Jesus’ ascension into heaven. Conversely, in the Synoptics there is no mention of the discourse with the Samaritan woman at the well, and that with Nicodemus; nor is there mention of some healings that are related to the early Judean ministry; the Synoptics do not relate the raising of Lazarus, the washing of the disciples’ feet, the upper-room discourse (John 13-16), the intercessory prayer, and the miraculous catch of fish.
4.) In the Synoptics Jesus’ ministry begins after John the Baptist is imprisoned (Matthew 4:12, Mark 1:14, Luke 3:18-20), in John, Jesus’ ministry overlapped John the Baptist’s ministry (John 3:22-30, John 4:1-2).
5.) In the Synoptics the setting of Jesus’ ministry is Galilee; in John, Jesus’ ministry is largely confined to Judea, with occasional excursions to Galilee (John 2:1-13,John 4:35-5:1, John 6:1-7:14).
6.) In the Synoptics the duration of Jesus’ ministry could be as short as one year, as there is record of only one Passover Feast throughout that recorded ministry; in John, there is mention of three Passovers: at the cleansing of the temple (John 2:13), the feeding of the five-thousand (John 6:4-13) and the crucifixion (John 19:14-15), for a ministry that could run a minimum of two years, or a maximum of three years.
7.) the Synoptics put the cleansing of the temple at the end of Jesus’ ministry ( Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-17, Luke 19:45-46),
John puts it at the beginning (John 2:13-22).
In our search for the truth, we begin by noting one of the outstanding and unique features of the Fourth Gospel. The most remarkable thing about it is the long speeches of Jesus. Often they are whole chapters long, and are entirely unlike the way in which Jesus is portrayed as speaking in the other three gospels […] It so happens that in the writings of the early church we have a whole series of accounts of the way in which the Fourth Gospel came to be written. The earliest is that of Irenaeus, who was bishop of Lyons about AD 177; and Irenaeus was himself a pupil of the Bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp, who in turn had actually been a pupil of John. There is therefore a direct link between Irenaeus and John. Irenaeus writes:
John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leant upon his breast, himself also published the gospel in Ephesus, when he was living in Asia.
The suggestive thing there is that Irenaeus does not merely say that John wrote the gospel; he says that John published (EXEDOKE) it in Ephesus. The word that Irenaeus uses makes it sound not like the private publication of some personal memoir but like the public issue of some almost official document. The next account is that of Clement, who was head of the great school of Alexandria about AD 230. He writes:
Last of all, John perceiving that the bodily facts had been made plain in the gospel, being urged by his friends, composed a spiritual gospel.
The important thing here is the phrase being urged by his friends. It begins to become clear that the Fourth Gospel is far more than one man’s personal production and that there is a group, a community, a church behind it. On the same lines, a tenth-century manuscript called the Codex Toletanus, which prefaces the New Testament books with short descriptions, prefaces the Fourth Gospel thus:
The apostle John, whom the Lord Jesus loved most, last of all wrote his gospel, at the request of the bishops of Asia, against Cerinthus and other heretics. (Barclay 23-24)
Likewise, the great Church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea (AD 260-340), conveys this about the Gospel of John:
After Mark and Luke had already published their gospels, they say that John, who during all this time was proclaiming the gospel without writing, at length proceeded to write it on the following occasion. The three Gospels previously written, having been distributed among all and also handed to him, they say that he admitted them, giving his testimony to their truth; but that there was only wanting in the narrative the account of the things done by Christ among the first of his deeds and at the commencement of the gospel. And this was the truth for it is evident that the other three evangelists only wrote the deeds of our Lord for one year after the imprisonment of John the Baptist and intimated this in the very beginning of their history. […] For these reasons the apostle John, it is said, being entreated to undertake it, wrote the account of the time not recorded by the former evangelists and the deeds done by our Savior which they had passed by (for these were the events that occurred before the imprisonment of John) […] The apostle, therefore, in his gospel, gave the deeds of Jesus before the Baptist was cast into prison, but the other three evangelists mentioned the circumstances after that event. One who attends to these circumstances can no longer entertain the opinion that the gospels are at variance with each other, as the Gospel of John comprehended the first events of Christ but the others, the history that took place at the latter part of the time. It is probable, therefore, that for these reasons John passed by in silence the genealogy of our Lord, because it was written by Matthew and Luke, but that he commenced with the doctrine of the divinity as a part reserved for him by the divine Spirit, as if to a superior. (Cruse 89-90).
The Synoptics and John dovetail thematically with respect to Redemption | Salvation, still, from the foregoing quotes, it is clear that John and the other authors were purposely led differently by God.
The thing about the Gospel of John that always strikes us is that it is a lovely and easy read. We agree with many brethren who say that the place to begin one’s serious study of our Savior Jesus, and Christianity by association, is by first reading this Gospel, and reading | studying the Synoptics and other New Testament material later after spending some considerable time plumbing the depths, mining the treasures, found in the Gospel of John. How good it is that we have this Gospel to go along with the others, it is just terrific, and it does not take much thought to realize that it reads like it does because our Lord inspired this beloved apostle of His to write, well, John-style; John-style, for He knew John, yea, He knew John. He knew that John together with our Lord’s blessed Spirit would give us this beautiful take on Jesus’ precious Gospel. We reckon that the Gospel proper without the Gospel of John component is like assembly instructions, or say a travel guide, without pictures. One final note on John, it has been concluded that there were two men named John living in Ephesus at the time of the writing of the Gospel of John: John the Apostle, and John the Elder. Some have conjectured based on evidence that comes in part from John’s second and third Epistles (2John 1:1, 3John 1:1), that John the Elder penned (physically wrote) the Gospel, as well as these Epistles, but that the mind and memory behind them was John the inspired apostle, the one whom Jesus loved; that is, while the aged apostle John dictated, John the Elder recorded his words. (Barclay 28).
Quest Of The Historical Jesus
In consequence to the structures discussed above, biblical scholarship has followed several courses, witnessed several movements, in its quest to attain to the historical Jesus, the Son of Man. This quest is marked by three phases which are representative of those movements (“Gospels Criticism-1,” esp. Fig. 1). The first phase, called the Old Quest, reflects eighteenth and nineteenth-century biblical scholarship. The Old Quest was characteristically a noncritical quest—scholars of the day accepted the gospels at face value; they raised no critical questions on the narratives, and assumed that the Gospel writers were straight historians who told the facts as they were; when the facts seemed to contradict themselves, they harmonized them. During this phase, it was fashionable to write a “life” of Jesus (biography), and to do so in a noncritical, straightforward way. The German musicologist, philosopher, and theologian, Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), challenged this literalist mindset in 1906 in a work entitled Quest of the Historical Jesus. In it he argued that it is not possible to compose biographies of Jesus based on literal, historical scrutiny of the gospels. He compared the biographies that were compiled in that day to mirror images of the harmonizing composers’ theological bent. His thesis won the day for approximately fifty years; during that time biblical scholarship was dominated by form-critical methodologies, under the influence of Rudolph Bultmann and his disciples. This period witnessed no literal, historically-based biographies about Jesus; it might be called a “no biographies phase.” Reaction to the extremes of form criticism helped usher in the New Quest around the middle of the twentieth-century. The New Quest maintains that the gospels are the product of a long process that started with an oral tradition that circulated for at least forty years (~AD 33-73); during that time it is supposed that the gospels took their shape and some of their emphases from the missionaries and preachers who used them for the evangelical and pastoral purposes of the Church. The trend today, the Third Quest let us say, is certainly along the lines of the New Quest, with several new not-so-pretty twists (“Gospels Criticism-1“). As long as Satan is allowed largely free reign in this fallen world, there will always be these not-so-pretty new twists, each a little stranger than its predecessor, sad to say. (But never-mind, our Lord, He, omniscient, omnipotent , He the Sovereign, He indeed, has the last laugh here. Good idea to get on board with Him and not the loser dearest reader. Do so while the opportunity is in your reach friend. “A Letter of Invitation“)
Concluding Comments
It is an easy call, the very best witnesses to the life and times (and teachings and commands and requirements, i.e., ministry) of our Savior are the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Jesus speaking to the eleven apostles just prior to His crucifixion John 15:26-27, 17:20; note Acts 2:1-41, Romans 10:17-the Word heard per se in that generation, and read in subsequent generations as written down by these apostles, 1John 1:1-4, Jude 1:17). Crucial in its own right is the New Testament text outside the canonical gospels. All the other material, though it may provide fodder for scholarly debating about Jesus’ life, teachings, and ministry, is in the end more of a bumbling block than a help in these regards.
It has been the purpose of this summary-study on the historical Jesus, the Son of Man, to put forth some facts that help us understand and appreciate the written record that gives witness to the life and ministry and person of our blessed Savior Jesus.
We began the study by surveying the witnesses that make up this record, and concluded that the canonical gospels are preeminent among them. This conclusion led to the question of the historicity of these gospels. Engaging that question brought to the fore two Synoptic structures, which had in their nature a common thread: textual similarities and dissimilarities that on the face of it seemed to belie the originality and reliability of the text; this nature was observed among the Synoptic Gospels proper as well as between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. It was shown that sundry theses were proposed over the years which sought to reconcile the structures—oral, source, interdependence, and form/redaction critical. In this quest, the scholarship of the early period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was oblivious to any of the Gospel structures and focused instead on the literal historical reconstruction of the life of our Lord Jesus, employing explanation and harmonization at points of contrast; the watershed treatise on this approach by Albert Schweitzer in 1906 translated scholarly sentiment to that of a critical nature. For the next half-century the written historical record of the canonical gospels was seen more as unreliable first-century AD Church history—unreliable owing to its assumed self-serving machinations—than as reliable attestation to the life and teaching of our Savior.The trend remains largely the same but with some new profane deviants afoot that no less disrespect/blaspheme our Savior and presume to strip Him of His divinity and make a mockery of His supernatural ministry and His ministry per se.
The Divine Providence allotted a good measure of historical fact about the life and teaching of Jesus Christ to posterity—our faith in Him is not baseless. Nevertheless, it is a testimony to our humanness that enough is never enough, and more generates but more heady scholarship. By the nurturing foresight and goodness of Jehovah our God, we have been given a base of facts and insights intended to help all of us believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, physically became the Son of Man (the incarnate God-Man), some two-thousand years ago (John 20:30-31). That He offered Himself unblemished, as a sacrifice of atonement (1Peter 1:18-19), to God the Father, on behalf of fallen humankind (Genesis 3:15). That He was accordingly crucified and died (John 19:16-20, 23-27, 28-30). That after three days He physically rose from the dead (John 20:1ff). That He manifested Himself alive to His disciples and brethren (1Corinthians 15:5-8). That He ascended into heaven and is seated even now and forever more at the right hand of God our Father (Mark 16:19, Acts 1:9, Hebrews 1:1-3), interceding for His Beloved (Hebrews 7:25—Jesus’ continued ministry for the Drawn until all are brought home to glory praise God…). That’s the sacred story. But that is not all there is to it.
If this sacred story were a flower, then the attendant, particular events just described would be its stem, its base, a base of facts shouldering a blessed hope manifest in our flower’s bloom: all who repent of their sins, and trust and love this Son of Man—Jesus—He will raise to eternal life on the last day… and they will bloom forever, just like He, the Son of Man, blooms forever. In consideration of the thrust of this study, It is not possible to appreciate the flower by studying the stem over and over and over again, always with a fresh bent, to the exclusion of the Bloom. Similarly, the historical Jesus can be appreciated only within a framework that includes a base of facts—a stem—that is appreciated for its purpose: to lift up (make noticeable, and crystallize the reality of Christ and the hope that is in Him), to support (accomplish the divine will), and to beautify (conduct faith to the hope that is in Christ, who can make us blossom and bloom together with Him forever).
Thank You Lord Jesus. Praised be your Beautiful Name in all the earth thou Eternal Word. Please reveal yourself to the reader when they sincerely engage your Word, your Gospel, seeking Truth, seeking You. Amen.
Illustrations and Tables
Figure 1. Ratios {a,b,c} Fit
Figure 2. Ministry of Jesus, Synoptics, Paul, John Timeline.
Works Cited and References
“A Letter of Invitation.”
Jesus, Amen.
< https://developent.jesusamen.org/a-letter-of-invitation-2/ >
The Gospel of John Volume One.
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The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? 5th ed.
Grand Rapids: Erdmans 1980.
The Other Gospels: Non-Canonical Gospel Texts.
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Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History.
Hendrickson Publishers, 2001, 3rd Printing. 1-56563-371-7.
“Drawn.”
Jesus, Amen.
< https://development.jesusamen.org/drawn/ >
“Feed My Sheep.”
Jesus, Amen.
< https://jesusamen.org/feedmysheep.html >
Jesus, Amen.
< https://development.jesusamen.org/gospels-criticism-1 >
Jesus, Amen.
< https://development.jesusamen.org/gospels-criticism-2 >
Professor of New Testament.
Trinity Seminary.
Newburgh, Indiana.
“New Testament Canon.”
Jesus, Amen.
< https://jesusamen.org/newtestamentcanon.html >
New Testament History .
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Mathematica.