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"It was impossible in almost all cases to know what someone said on
a distant occasion, and therefore it was accepted practice among
readers and authors of the time to invent speeches, and it is certain
that the speeches preserved in Acts, for example, are entirely of Luke's
creation. No one would have expected otherwise." - Richard Carrier
Selecting and Rejecting Gospel Material
04/05/2020
One of the challenging questions that is raised, and that the
intellectually responsible believer MUST face,
concerns how it can be legitimate to
select and reject Gospel verses or passages as valid. How can it be
justified to accept and believe certain material and to discount or discard
other material in the Gospel accounts concerning what Jesus said and did?
Formation of NT Canon
First let me quote from Carrier again from an article titled "The
Formation of the New Testament Canon (2000)":
https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/NTcanon.html
Contrary to common belief,
there was never a one-time, truly universal decision as to
which books should be included in the Bible. It took over a
century of the proliferation of numerous writings before
anyone even bothered to start picking and choosing, and then
it was largely a cumulative, individual and happenstance
event, guided by chance and prejudice more than objective
and scholarly research, until priests and academics began
pronouncing what was authoritative and holy, and even they
were not unanimous. Every church had its favored books, and
since there was nothing like a clearly-defined orthodoxy
until the 4th century, there were in fact many simultaneous
literary traditions. The illusion that it was otherwise is
created by the fact that the church that came out on top
simply preserved texts in its favor and destroyed or let
vanish opposing documents. Hence what we call "orthodoxy" is
simply "the church that won."
Astonishingly, the story isn't
even that simple: for the Catholic church centered in Rome
never had any extensive control over the Eastern churches,
which were in turn divided even among themselves, with
Ethiopian and Coptic and Syrian and Byzantine and Armenian
canons all riding side-by-side with each other and with the
Western Catholic canon, which itself was never perfectly
settled until the 15th century at the earliest, although it
was essentially established by the middle of the 4th
century. Indeed, the current Catholic Bible is largely
accepted as canonical from fatigue: the details are so
ancient and convoluted that it is easier to simply accept an
ancient and enduring tradition than to bother actually
questioning its merit. This is further secured by the fact
that the long habit of time has dictated the status of the
texts: favored books have been more scrupulously preserved
and survive in more copies than unfavored books, such that
even if some unfavored books should happen to be earlier and
more authoritative, in many cases we are no longer able to
reconstruct them with any accuracy. To make matters worse,
we know of some very early books that simply did not survive
at all (the most astonishing example is Paul's earlier
Epistle to the Colossians, cf. Col. 4:16), and have recently
discovered the very ancient fragments of others that we
never knew existed, because no one had even mentioned them."
With that introduction the following fundamental points must be considered:
1. Eyewitness accounts or
non-eyewitness accounts: Whereas the Gospels of John and Thomas are
presented as eyewitness accounts, the Synoptic Gospels clearly are compilations of other
written material and thus
non-eyewitness accounts handed down by people only orally for probably
two decades or more after Jesus was gone. These accounts naturally included the
emendations that creep in from a chain of retelling. If we can find
justification for accepting the Gospels of John and Thomas as eyewitness
accounts, then nothing in these should be
overridden by anything in the Synoptic Gospels, nor the balance of the
New Testament.
"It was
impossible in almost all cases to know what someone said on a distant
occasion, and therefore it was accepted practice among readers and
authors of the time to invent speeches, and it is certain that the
speeches preserved in Acts, for example, are entirely of Luke's
creation. No one would have expected otherwise. Clearly there were no
written editions of the speeches (as they surely would have been
preserved with Paul's letters), and oral memory is notoriously bad at
recalling anything but the gist and occasion of such things, and even
then is easily corrupted by intervening events that alter or distort
memory. In the time of L [Luke] and J [Josephus], it was well understood and accepted that
speeches would be used as vehicles for the author to convey his own
ideas, but also that it was proper to create speeches according to what
the author thinks would have been appropriate to the speaker and the
occasion (thus giving them at least some justification for inclusion in
a supposedly objective history)." Article on Luke and Josephus, Richard Carrier
The more "traditional" Christian mythos, with which both
John and Thomas disagreed, is essentially misguided, which
means that with their being in agreement, John and Thomas have it right. The Gospel of John is not a
hodgepodge of collected stories, parables and snippets of conversations with
little or no context as are the Synoptic Gospels, but is rather a well
structured synopsis of strong thematic unity more directed toward the
philosophy and message of Jesus than incidental narratives or parables, and
there are several clear internal indicators that the Gospel writer John was the
eyewitness disciple. The other auspicious aspect of this is that John and
Thomas quite clearly agree on the salient points of Jesus message. They VERY
CLEARLY AGREE on the good news!
2. Gospel writer paradigm:
Everyone has a paradigm and, outside of challenging that paradigm,
they generally can only think, understand, talk, write and behave within it. The
Paradigm of the Synoptic Gospel compilers was of course the traditional Judaic
paradigm of the transcendent, law-giving, center-of-power-and-control version of
God found in the Old Testament, whereas the paradigm that John and Thomas
imply is radically new and different.
3. Gospel writer agenda:
Everyone has an agenda, and each Gospel writer/compiler had an agenda that
becomes apparent fairly readily. Thus we can see that Matthew was compiled with the
agenda to showcase Jesus
"as a greater Moses who introduced both a new
law and covenant and as a Davidic king destined to rule the universe."
Matthew quoted or paraphrased the Old Testament about 130 times.
Generally adhering to Mark's chronology, he arranged Jesus' teachings in
the form of five public sermons probably meant to parallel the five
books of the Mosaic Torah."[1]
Luke's agenda doesn't seem to go much beyond compiling–in his own words–"an
orderly account", which includes his "characteristic preoccupation with
human relations and social ethics. His suspicion of the rich, concern
for the poor, sympathy for women and other oppressed groups give the L
passages a particularly tender ambience."[2]
There are a lot of reasons to think that Luke borrowed heavily from
Josephus, and that he got a little of it confused in his retelling.
John's Gospel is the only Gospel that deals with the major
theological issues in a highly structured way using long passages of
Jesus' teachings and his major miracles. John pulls no punches as to the
absolute supernatural and dramatic nature of these miracles. He is
interested in showing Jesus to be the creator and the Logos, a word that
means the fount of rationality, logic and reason in contradistinction to
mythos. Mythos is that which must be accepted because it is traditional, or
is what the elders or everyone else accepts and is not to be
questioned or challenged, whereas logos can be apprehended, challenged and understood by
using logic and reason.
John's Gospel is the only biblical Gospel that features the Good
News about uninterrupted living and not dying, whereas this is only partially mentioned incidentally in the Synoptics,
and his Gospel directly implies the simple instructions that we are to
follow to inaugurate our Kingship of the heavens. It is also evident that
John wrote his Gospel to be significantly corrective without directly challenging
specific passages in the others with which he disagreed.
4. Embellishments and
fabrications: Some of the Synoptic accounts are obviously
embellished or maybe even partially or totally fabricated, such as the various
additional women besides Mary that visited the tomb as soon as the Sabbath
was over (They may have visited later). The quotation in Mark that
introduces John the Baptist is actually a composite of texts from Second
Isaiah, the Book of Malachi and the Book of Exodus. Also, the whole account
of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus smacks of having been fabricated
for more than one compelling reason.
5. Forced selection and
rejection: When the Gospel accounts of the events, deeds and words
of Jesus differ and are factually and/or mutually exclusive, we are forced to
conclude that one or both are misremembered or embellished, thereby
DICTATING a select and reject process, or at the very least a holding of both in abeyance.
6. Misquotations: Given
that the very first Gospel, Mark, was produced some 35 to 40 years after Jesus'
time on earth, and given all the other contradictions and
inconsistencies in the Gospel accounts, it would be strange indeed if
some statements of Jesus were not incomplete, garbled or misremembered.
Sometimes just a word being left out can change the meaning of a
communication completely. Even in a story about actual events, it was
impossible to know–because there was no written transcript, video or audio recording–what
was said at a distance and/or an earlier time, especially without an eyewitness.
7. Loss of context: In
extensive passages in the Synoptic Gospels, the verses are just
collections of sentences or phrases, just snippets of conversations with,
or statements by, Jesus, and the context is completely lacking. A big and necessary
part of any significant or non-simplistic communication is the context,
and without that, one is usually helpless to arrive at the intended meaning or
specific application. One extreme example is recorded in Matthew 5 and
Luke 16 where Jesus is talking about the Jews, their law and their
prophets reiterating what they teach and believe in his conversation
with the disciples. This is most of the time in Christian understanding
completely turned around and wrong. It is taken to be the teaching of
Jesus, when it is actually the teaching of the Pharisees, of which Jesus is
referring, paraphrasing, and rejecting.
In particular, Matthew has long passages of
jumbled non-contiguous pieces of Jesus' conversations where there is no
context, and where some of them have been so taken OUT of
the proper context even to the point of implying something opposite to what Jesus would
say or teach. In some places we can have no confidence that we are getting a
valid account of what Jesus said and meant. For instance, in
Matthew 5:17-20, verses 17 and 18 should be decoupled from the balance, and
maybe all of them should be decoupled from each other one. The context
of some of these verses was probably Jesus talking about what the Jews
currently believe (wrongly), just as it is in
Luke 16:17, where Jesus is not
talking about what is truth but what is in the collective mind of the current religious teachers.
Who knows for sure at this point?! We can only use our own judgment as to whether
Jesus would think and talk this way.
Another facet is illustrated
when Jesus is ostensibly saying, "But when you give alms, you do not let
your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may
be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you". Jesus
has no doubt made a point about sharing instead of giving, and yet that
part was lost and this extreme illustration, which may even be sarcasm,
was retained. This was not said to be as a code of behavior, but as an
elucidation of what happens when you share.
This should also be said: Tenuous interpretations of non-structured or
non-contextual passages in the Synoptic Gospels should NEVER be allowed to
override common sense. Why would anybody ever DO that?
For a different but equally denigrating perspective on the Synoptic
Gospels, See: Synoptics Legalism Bias
8. Strained correlation
with Old Testament prophecy: Many of the Old Testament quotes that
are used as prophetic utterances to affirm Jesus as the expected Messiah
in the Synoptic Gospels are so general or strained and unwarranted as to be too much of
a stretch for a valid correlation in the mind of a critical thinker.
9. Inclusion of invalid
material: In that day and in that culture, it was a common teaching
practice to use allegories, analogies, and parables. Some of the
parables may have been, and probably were, pharisaical parables and were
just put into the mouth of Jesus by the storytellers and the Gospel compilers.
This does NOT make their point necessarily valid or non-valid.
10. Irrelevant Material:
Accounts with no useful information, such as the appearing of Jesus to
two disciples on the road to Emmaus and its suspect action by Jesus in
blessing the bread, can be seen as irrelevant at best. Much of the narrative in
the Synoptic Gospels is interesting and maybe of some incidental help
but seems to be of very limited value in understanding the Gospel and truth
about the humanity of God and the equality the Creator offers.
11. Single or unilateral
source for much of the Synoptic material: The compilers of both
Matthew and Luke together include 90% of the previously "published" and
cherished book of Mark, which under superficial examination or consideration gives the
appearance of corroborating accounts when actually all of this 90%
primarily just came from one compilation source.
12. The crucial
and final criterion: ALL of the material and concepts worthy for
acceptance and inclusion must be understandable, sensible, compatible and coherent with
ALL of the other aspects of the paradigm, and must seem GOOD to and be
GOOD for the believer. If this isn't true, we have a fundamental problem that
overshadows all others.
Although the criteria advanced above may seem radical or
extreme, they are nothing but sensible and reasonable! Compare them to the criteria used by many others,
including one of the most
important and influential founders of the United States, Thomas Jefferson.
See:
Jefferson treatment of Bible
[1] Understanding the Bible, 2nd edition,
Stephen L. Harris, Mayfield Publishing Company, 1985, p. 268
[2] Understanding the Bible, 2nd edition,
Stephen L. Harris, Mayfield Publishing Company, 1985, p. 298 |