A Good Historian Trusted Mark (xxxiv)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 34th in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

Raymond E. Brown's discussion of Luke as a historian in his book,  Introduction to the New Testament (pp. 319-322), presents a relatively positive evaluation of Luke's historiographical credentials. Brown's estimation is based on the contents of Acts, but we'll remember that Luke-Acts are a two-part work written by the same author. Brown argues that the events in Acts are historically plausible. Acts, furthermore, contains verifiably correct details. The author, writing 30-50 years after the fact, couldn't possibly have known all of those details himself. Brown concludes, "...the author of Acts does not get bad grades for historical accuracy in the various sections of his book. Though he wrote more in a biblical style than in a classical history style, it is not ridiculous to think that the author might have been a fitting candidate for membership in the brotherhood of Hellenistic historians, even if he would never be made president of the society." (p. 322)

The author of Acts is the author of Luke. If, in Acts he does a fairly good job at preserving historical accuracy, it follows that he would have done the same in the gospel. In this light, then, we should note that Luke took over 75% of the contents of Mark into his own gospel. It's not quite correct to leap to the conclusion that because Acts is fairly accurate, therefore Mark is also fairly accurate. It is correct, however, to argue that the author of Luke-Acts was clearly concerned to preserve accurate data about the past; and to that end, he relied heavily on the Gospel of Mark for his portrayal of the Good News according to Jesus Christ. The author of Luke thought Mark was reliable. The author of Luke, furthermore, had a good sense about historical accuracy and what was reliable.

What this means is that we can't simply write Mark off as a theological mystification of the actual Jesus. If we are to question the factual reliability of his accounts, we need to have good reason. I would argue, further, that even where we can question the factuality of a given event, we can frequently rely on the underlying development of events and chronology betrayed in the event. Luke the historian trusted Mark. That trust counts for something.

Mark's Data Reconsidered (xxxiii)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 33rd in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

Following on our previous posting in this series (here), and a number of other recent entries, we're still faced with the problem of how Mark collected, collated, and recorded his data. We've noted a number of clues. The constant presence of the disciples, for example, may be a "footnote" telling us something about one of his sources. In Mark 2-3, we have what may be another clue, the progressive growth of the over classes' animosity towards Jesus. In the 31st posting (here), we noted that in Mark 2 the over class went from harboring ill thoughts about Jesus to openly expressing their negative feelings to him directly. By 3:6, they're plotting to kill him. On the one hand, the sequence of events is too neat and doesn't leave room for mixed feelings about Jesus or for those of the over class that may have sympathized with him. Still, as I noted in the 31st posting, Mark does capture what must have been actually happening, that is that the more the over class heard and observed the less it liked Jesus. By whatever research method he may have used, the author of Mark knew that the over class didn't automatically reject Jesus. It took time for their antipathy to form and grow. The author was aware of historical processes and portrayed them in gospel form. It seems possible that his data included a number of incidents in Jesus' life, as remembered by his informants. Some of the stories themselves may have suggested the historical developments that took place, and Mark may have shaped them and re-worked into his own gospel drama.

The point I want to emphasize here that Mark very probably reflects with some accuracy historical processes that took place in the life of Jesus. He even seems to have some degree of sensitivity to a time line, in which a series of events is made to reveal the progressive unfolding of such processes. If the story line has some basis in history, isn't it possible and even likely that the individual stories that compose that line also have some basis in the actual past? And, again, if Mark is sensitive to historical changes that took place in the events of Jesus life, wouldn't that suggest that he was using some historically reliable data to shape his gospel? Let me emphasize, as always, that we're playing here with speculation and probabilities. But, in any event, I don't think we can dismiss lightly the possibility that Mark offers us some clear windows on the empirical Jesus.

Cut Them Some Slack

Democracy might be messy. It's certainly complicated. It takes a while to consolidate. But for the first time in perhaps a millennium, the Arab people are taking charge of their own affairs. So let's cut them some slack. It's only been a year.

Fareed Zakaria
"Zakaria: Democracy takes time," CNN

To Give and Receive With Gladness

To be a saint is to live not with hands clenched to grasp, to strike, to hold tight to a life that is always slipping away the more tightly we hold it; but it is to live with the hands stretched out both to give and to receive with gladness. To be a saint is to work and weep for the broken and suffering of the world, but it is also to be strangely light of heart in the knowledge that there is something greater than the world that mends and renews.

Frederick Buechner
Source: Now and Then
From: inward/outward

Chapter & Verse

The Geneva Bible (from Wikipedia)

The Bible is divided into chapters and verses and few people doubt the utility of its being so divided. Indeed, the need for some scheme was felt even in the early church, and from that point on various methods were tried (and discarded) over the centuries until the 13th century. As you might expect, the division into chapters came first and verses followed later. It was the English theologian, Stephen Langton, while lecturing at the University of Paris sometime between 1203 and 1207, who divided the Vulgate Bible (a Latin translation) into chapters. A somewhat later version called the "Parisian Bible" became the standard format and carried over into English translations of the Bible.

The division of the Bible into verses started with a Jewish scholar, Rabbi Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus. In about 1447, he divided the Old Testament into verses, but his verses weren't numbered. The numbering of verses as well as the development of verses for the New Testament is credited to Robert Estienne, a French printer-editor. In 1551 he published a Greek-Latin New Testament which he divided into verses. Four years later, he published the Vulgate, using Rabbi Nathan's verses for the Old Testament and his own for the New Testament. The first English Bible to have verses was the Geneva Bible (1560), which followed Estienne's versification. The same system was carried over into the King James Version (1607).

As necessary as this division into chapters and verses may be, it also poses obstacles to understanding the content of the Bible. There is a very real tendency among average readers and scholars to read verses and chapters as isolated units, esp. in relation to material just before and after the verse or chapter in question. This division has also opened the door for proof-texting, which allows anyone to think anything they want and still find "justification" for their improbabilities in Scripture by citing particular verses, often lifted out of context. We tend to forget, in sum, that the division of the Bible into chapters and verses is an entirely artificial construct.

For further information on chapters & verses in the Bible see (here).

Reading Ephesians 1:1-2

It is the challenge, joy, and headache of our times that when it comes to the Christian faith everything is pretty much up for grabs.  Nothing can be taken for granted.  Things are often not what they seem to be.  Take, for example,  the first word in the first two verses of Ephesians (Eph. 1:1-2).  These two verses purport to be the opening salutation of the Apostle Paul to the Christians at Ephesus and read::

(1) Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus: (2) Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a problem with the first word of the text, "Paul".  Mainstream biblical scholars seem to generally agree that the actual Paul didn't write this letter—for reasons of both content and linguistic usages.  The best guess is that a colleague or disciple of Paul wrote this letter and that it was probably written after his death, sometime later in the first  century.  The actual author probably signed it with Paul's name so that it would be more widely read and accepted as having the authority of Paul, which is to say the Book of Ephesians is a forgery.  Forgeries are not uncommon in the New Testament, and in the past we have glibly claimed that it was common in ancient times for authors to attribute their writings to famous individuals so they would carry more weight.  There's been some more recent scholarship, however, that contends that this sort of thing was no more acceptable in ancient times than it is now.  The ancients knew what constituted a forgery and rejected the practice just as we do today.

So, if Paul didn't write these words and they are a forgery that apparently fooled the ancient church, do they carry any weight for Christians today?  My sense is that our best answer is, "yes," in spite of the admitted serious flaw of their being forged.  It is impossible to believe that every letter Paul ever wrote is now in the New Testament.  The early church found some to be of more value than others, enough so that these valued letters circulated more widely in the Christian movement than Paul had originally intended.  The measure of a letter's value was not just that Paul wrote it but, rather, that it had an intrinsic value in and of itself.  Ephesians was one such "letter".  This letter to the Ephesians thus is of value in its own right in spite of the fact that it is not Pauline, and the fact of the matter is that we can't be 100% sure it didn't come from Paul anyway.  We can think of circumstances in which the author believed himself to be conveying Paul's thoughts directly even though he was not using Paul's words.  Admittedly, it probably didn't happen that way, but as long as the authorship is uncertain we should not totally rule out a legitimate connection to Paul that would place the letter in a category other than being a forgery.

The point is that the early church valued this letter for its contents, which means that we can give it the benefit of the doubt.  It is in the scriptures, and we can treat it as scripture.  For those of us who are not biblical literalists, furthermore, the uncertain origins of Ephesians serves to remind us that the Bible too participates in the flawed reality of life.  The Spirit works through its flaws just as it does in other arenas of life.  The Book of Ephesians, thus, can have serious spiritual value for us today just as it did in ancient times.  Amen.

The Empirical Jesus Revealed - Mark 3:1-6 (xxxii)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 32nd in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).

Interpreting events in Mark is complicated. This passage, Mark 3:1-6 for example, seems both contrived and real at one and the same time. On the one hand, it contains no specific little details. It follows very neatly on 2:23-28 and elaborates the subject in that passage. If Jesus, furthermore, had attended this synagogue previously, he'd done so without healing the paralytic's hand. What made his enemies think he'd do so this time? If he hadn't visited this synagogue, how did they know he would? Why, again, did they think he'd heal this man this time? Or, was there a "truth squad" following Jesus around to try to catch him doing something wrong? As it stands the event is too neat and doesn't quite ring true, historically. There's the added problem that Mark reports Jesus as feeling both angry and sorry for his enemies (3:5 TEV). Now, how would the author of Mark know what Jesus was feeling? Did Jesus say to the disciples, "Boy, did I have mixed emotions about those Pharisee guys"? And then the disciples remembered that and somehow the data got to Mark. Seems farfetched.

On the other hand, the event is vintage Jesus: His compassion for a member of the under class. His attack on the dehumanizing aspects of the Law. His open defiance of his enemies, which we can take as his attempt to communicate with them. The evolving plot to assassinate Jesus (a continuation of a theme in Mark 2). Even his reported mixed emotions, a very human response that still manages to convey Jesus' compassion for the over class, rings true. This story, in all probability, summarizes in gospel form important elements of the empirical Jesus' personality, behavior, and message. It probably recalls, stereotypically, things that happened in the empirical Jesus' life.

The Plot Thickens - Mark 2 (xxxi)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the 31st in a series (originally written in 1998) looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).


Mark isn't just telling a story. He's presenting gospel data and lines of argument. In posting 29 (xxix) of this series, I argued that most of Mark 2 contains a definition and description of the nature of Christian community. At the same time, Mark is also pointing to a progression in the tension between Jesus and the over class. That theme runs through the chapter.  In 2:7, the Pharisees are critical of Jesus' forgiving a man's sins, but they don't actually voice their thoughts. Jesus read their minds, as it were. In 2:16 the Pharisees voice their criticisms of Jesus' eating with sinners, but not directly to him. They go to his disciples. Finally, in Mark 2:24, the Pharisees voice their criticisms of the disciples picking wheat on the Sabbath directly to Jesus. On one level, the whole sequence seems entirely artificial in its construction. It's much too neat for the real world. At another level, however, I suspect that Mark is pointing to something that did happen. The more the over class came to know about Jesus the more openly critical they became of him. I can just hear some informant telling the author of Mark, "At first, you know, the Pharisees didn't say much. They mostly just listened. But we knew they weren't happy about things. And Jesus kept egging them on, kept criticizing them to their faces. And he encouraged us to do things that only made matters more tense. After awhile they started to question us and question Jesus more and more openly. Things soon got really bad." This is completely speculative, but if the author did use oral sources and was told things like this, then we can see him crafting his raw data into gospel data, a set of stories that capture several intertwining themes and carry the gospel story forward with dramatic effect. In any event, there's no good reason why the author's gospel description doesn't contain strong hints as to historical realities.

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2012 comment; Another possibility is that the author's informations related stories similar to the ones contained in Mark 2, and it was the author who discerned the pattern of increasing conflict from them. If this was the scenario, then the stories in Mark 2 even more closely mirror actual historical events than I speculated as possible back in 1998. There is a larger point here, which is that it is not at all far-fetched to think of Mark's material as coming from oral history sources. We can see credibly how his stories and his arrangement of them could reflect the living memory of his sources.

How Come We Have to Have Churches?

From time to time someone will ask a pastor, why are churches even necessary?  We don't get the question often, but we do get it.  Paul Tillich, writing in his book, Dynamics of Faith (NY: HarperOne, 2009 [1957]),  gives what surely must be one of the most creative answers to the question of why humans need faith communities of some sort.  He argues that every spiritual act "is dependent on language and therefore on community."  It is in such communities that language lives, and, "Without language there is no act of faith, no religious experience!"  It is faith communities that create languages and symbols of faith, which can only be fully understood by the community.  Faith thus requires language, which means it requires a community.  Tillich concludes, "Only in a community of language can man actualize his faith." (p. 27)

Sixty-five years later, I suspect that many church-based thinkers would today answer that Christianity is really a long story that begins with Christ himself.  The church is the steward of the story.  It is the place where it is told, cherished, and preserved.  Tillich would probably answer that, yes, the church is the repository of Christianity's stories, but there are no stories without language.  He would be right.

Thus, we can only speak of Christian faith by drawing on the language spoken by the churches.  Without them there is no living faith.  As important an insight as this may be, it only reflect a larger truth, which is that no human institution can live without language.  Language lies at the core of what it means to be human.  It binds culture together in a way that nothing else does.  So, Tillich is right, but he also isn't saying anything that doesn't apply to human society more generally.  We can't live without language.  Still, the fundamental point here is that churches do not exist for the purpose of coercing faith or preserving certain kinds of dogma.  They are stewards of language, story, traditions, and much more all of which are elements of personal faith.

Individuals, of course, can and increasingly often these days do go it alone without belonging to churches.  They can only do that, however, because there are churches.  Once the native language speakers of Christianity die, so dies the language and the faith that depends on it.  So, yes, we have to have churches even if we personally go it alone.

Our Purpose

The Shorter Catechism, an honored resource for faith of our Presbyterian tradition, answers the question, "What is the chief end of man?" with the statement, "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."  That sounds quaint to modern ears, but it actually means something quite profound, namely that we humans are constructed to reach out for that which is Beyond us.  We are created to have an affection for that which is Beyond the Universe.  Millions of years of evolutionary sculpting has gone into our longing for something, something Beyond.  We name the Beyond "God" because we perceive that it is ultimate and thus at the end of all else that is beyond us—and that it is holy and thus stands outside of the universe in an incomprehensible way.  The catechism claims that we are linked to this Beyond to such an extent that the praise and enjoyment of it is our highest purpose.  Put this way, many dwellers of the 21st century may well consider the whole idea ridiculous, but it is hardly "quaint." Put this way, the catechism claims that we are created for worship and for a level of joy not yet attained.   Put this way, the catechism claims is that earthly evolution is climbing its way aeon by aeon toward God and that the rate of acceleration is increasing.

Why does humanity exist?  What is our purpose?  Our primary reason for becoming is to ride the rising tide of evolution in worship and with joy.