The New Testament: Some Firm Ground
Posted on 02 July 2013, 17:16
Even if we were to agree that some theology of some Christian churches is questionable, we do need to try to push back against the tide of unsubstantiated invective directed against them. Unsatisfactory theology should not be attacked with unsubstantiated so-called “facts” such as, “scholars are perfectly aware there is no evidence that either the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, or the other writings, as we have them, existed within a hundred and twenty years after the Crucifixion,” {Link 1} or, “when it comes to Jesuah [It should be “Yeshua”] (the Greeks translated his name as Jesus [the Greek was Iesous, Latin Iesus]), there is no direct historic record at the time of his existence.” [On the contrary, there are several non-Christian writers from the 1st century CE who mention Jesus. {Link 2}]
Amongst other popular beliefs we also have the constant assertions, inspired by Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. {Link 3: These links are found at the end of the blog, for possible further reading}
Under the aegis of materialist philosophy, similar disregard for evidence can be shown in the academic world. Controversial theologian and philosopher Don Cupitt for instance presents Jesus as a radical secular humanist. In The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross J.M. Allegro argued that Jesus in the Gospels was in fact a code for a type of hallucinogen, the Amanita muscaria, and that Christianity was the product of an ancient “sex-and-mushroom” cult. The way to international renown seems to involve coming up with such startling theories on suspect evidence.
People who make such claims take care not to mention St Paul. Nobody in this wide world doubts that he was a real person. Nobody in this wide world doubts that he wrote his letter to the Galatians that we find in the New Testament of our present Bible, and that he wrote it about the year 50 CE, sixteen or so years after the death of Jesus. In his letter he mentions that great event, the appearance to him of the risen Jesus, which changed him from being the chief persecutor of Christians to being a follower of Jesus himself, and how after three years from this life-changing event he went to Jerusalem to “get information from” Jesus’ disciple Peter and James the brother of Jesus, for the first time. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Paul writes, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to [Peter] and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” Now, all agree that this letter is genuinely Paul’s. For him life after death is the same for us as for Jesus: “When [our body] is buried, it is mortal, when raised, it will be immortal.” [1 C0r 15:14]
Our survival of the death of the body, and Jesus’ survival of the death of the body, our communion with the spirit of the risen Jesus: that is central for St Paul. It was also central for early Christianity.
But we do need to remind ourselves what both “Christianity” and “Judaism” would look like in the years after Jesus died. According to many historians, most of Jesus’ teachings were intelligible and acceptable in terms of the contemporary Judaism; and that Judaism had no absolute orthodoxy except the Torah and the commentaries on it. There were Pharisees, Scribes, Essenes and other groups. The followers of Jesus worshipped at the Temple, attended the synagogues. St Paul in his missionary journeys apparently was welcome to preach in synagogues in Asia Minor, Greece, and in Rome. He was still a Jew although wanting to reform Judaism. What set Christians apart from Jews was their faith in Christ as the resurrected messiah. The belief in a resurrected Messiah is unacceptable to Jews today and to Rabbinic Judaism, and Jewish authorities have long used this fact to explain the break between Judaism and Christianity.
The Oral Tradition
Oral tradition was the normal mode for communicating the teachings of a spiritual master in the ancient world. For one thing, before the use of papyrus was widespread, writing was both clumsy and expensive. Using a stylus on a clay tablet worked, but once the clay dried no “corrections” or “edits” could be made. Writing on a scroll made of an animal skin was certainly an improvement, but was still limited. The widespread use of papyrus for the ancient world was like the coming of the internet in the modern world - a virtual explosion of written communication began.
Once great teachings began to circulate in written form ancient writers continued to be sceptical of using the written word. There was a sense that it fell far short for the communication of treasured knowledge. Church historian Eusebius relates this thinking from the fragments of Papias, “But I will not hesitate also to set down for your benefit, along with the interpretations, all that ever I carefully learnt and carefully recalled from the elders, guaranteeing its truth….For I supposed that things out of books did not profit me so much as the utterances of a voice which lives and abides.” - H.E. III.39,3-4 For the above reasons in the early years after the death of Jesus his teaching would have been mainly preserved in the oral traditions. There were no printed books for followers of Jesus to carry around with them, and of course only a small minority could read. Memorisation was central, as was certainly the case in preliterate societies of Greece or the New Zealand Maori, where a complex culture about the gods, genealogies, legends, histories, and skills necessary for survival were passed on by word of mouth and memorising. Before the development of the Greek alphabet “Homer, whoever he was, composed the works orally, committed them to memory, and recited them on demand, perhaps with a certain amount of improvisation to take into account the particular preferences of his audience.”
The written tradition
With regard to the life and teachings of Jesus, in the first place there will surely have been the oral tradition. Paul however does write down what he learned from Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, about the Last Supper, the crucifixion, and the resurrection appearances. And what he learned then was to dominate the rest of his life. At the very least, Paul refutes the nonsense that Jesus never existed. That spiritual genius, Paul, with his letters and constant travels, ensured that it was his interpretation of the teaching, life, death and resurrection of Jesus that shaped the origins of a Christianity that was apart from Judaism. Paul does refer to other missionaries, such as Apollos, who presented the teaching of Jesus somewhat differently, and who would have had their following as well.
Gospel of Thomas
But the letters of Paul were not the only early writings about Jesus and his teaching. In 1945 the manuscript of the Coptic text (CG II), was found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. It is now called “The Gospel of Thomas” and the original Aramaic or Greek was possibly written earlier than Paul’s first letter. It contains some of the sayings of Jesus quoted in our present gospels. But how and where were these gospels compiled?
There is some agreement that they were compiled after the Fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE where the Temple was destroyed and most of the inhabitants slaughtered or enslaved. This also destroyed Christianity in Jerusalem, leaving followers of Jesus in other countries needing to supplement the oral tradition with written material that could be read at assemblies for worship.
There is some agreement that the Gospel of Mark was the first to be written, that in compiling their gospels, the writers of Matthew and Luke each copied most of Mark, word for word, and quoted from a document that scholars call “Q” which is a collection of Jesus’ sayings that may have been written down while Jesus was alive, and then added material peculiar to the writer. These three Gospels were called “Synoptic” “seen from the same point of view”. John was probably written later.
Other gospels were also written, and there are numerous early writings, letters, homilies, that were circulating amongst Christians in the early days, and it took a long time before there was a consensus that the best of them all consisted of most of the books we now call The New Testament. After the fall of Jerusalem amongst the Christians outside Judaea there were many Christian and Gnostic sects with differing beliefs, differing holy books. Space does not permit to describe the complicated processes by which something like our present 27 books was accepted by many as the definitive canonic selection after the year 200 and there was some kind of a consensus about basic Christian belief. “Nonetheless, full dogmatic articulations of the canon were not made until the Canon of Trent of 1546 for Roman Catholicism, the Gallic Confession of Faith of 1559 for Calvinism, the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England, and the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 for the Greek Orthodox.”
For much of the history of Christianity, prior to the invention of the printing press, the Bible (with its varying make-up) was the Church’s book, and the Church decided which parts of the Bible were suitable to be read in public worship. Although Genesis 1 and 2 were regarded as a true account of the creation, there was no doctrine that the Bible contained the infallible truth. The Bible was to be interpreted and taught as seemed right to church leaders.
Then the printing press was invented. Gradually texts of the Bible became available to individuals, who drew their own conclusions about its message, and these conclusions were not necessarily sound, or not necessarily better than those presented by church scholars. The formation of small sects was made easier.
The printing press played a role in producing the Reformation, and then the Enlightenment which led to the development of science perceived by many as hostile to religion. In the established churches many members became less certain about the reality of the spiritual dimension. It was in the late 1800s that many, feeling threatened by Materialist science, retreated into asserting that the recently established canons of the Bible were infallibly correct, and that every word of the Bible was literally true: and that is the definition of Fundamentalism. This modern retreat into Fundamentalism has sometimes led to strongly held beliefs contrary to the spirit of Jesus’ teaching. It involves failure to see the Bible as a library of books written over a period of 1200 years, of unequal value in inspiring to a life in Spirit. It has produced the very stultifying legalism that Jesus was protesting against with the Pharisees. And continuing uncertainty about spiritual realities in mainline churches, not only fails to provide a counter to Fundamentalism, but fuels a retreat into it by people seeking a milieu friendly to deep faith. There is a desperate need for the light thrown on mind and Spirit by quantum physicists and open-minded studies of consciousness.
If we are not to be Fundamentalists, we may see the Bible as containing the testimony of spiritual forebears living palpably close to a beneficent spiritual reality. Their testimony invites us to go deeper into our own personal spiritual journeys and explore what will enable us to grow in spirit. We will evade the call of Spirit if we allow ourselves to get bogged down with disputes about the historicity of this or that event recorded in the New Testament, if we get annoyed by St Paul sometimes departing from his words, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor gentile, male nor female, bond nor free,” and reverting to the patriarchal ways of his culture. We let our spiritual forebears inspire us as much as they may, and in humility and openness also seek the Christ that is in all, through all, and above all.
J.K.Baxter
I am fond of the words of the New Zealand mystic, James K. Baxter, incorporated into the Anglican A New Zealand Prayer Book.
James K Baxter: ‘Song to the Holy Spirit’
Lord, Holy Spirit,
You blow like the wind in a thousand paddocks,
Inside and outside the fences,
You blow where you wish to blow.
Lord, Holy Spirit,
You are the sun who shines on the little plant,
You warm him gently, you give him life,
You raise him up to become a tree with many leaves.
Lord, Holy Spirit,
You are the mother eagle with her young,
Holding them in peace under your feathers.
On the highest mountain you have built your nest,
Above the valley, above the storms of the world,
Where no hunter ever comes.
Lord, Holy Spirit,
You are the bright cloud in whom we hide,
In whom we know already that the battle has been won.
You bring us to our Brother Jesus
To rest our heads upon his shoulder.
Lord, Holy Spirit,
You are the kind fire who does not cease to burn,
Consuming us with flames of love and peace,
Driving us out like sparks to set the world on fire.
Lord, Holy Spirit,
In the love of friends you are building a new house,
Heaven is with us when you are with us.
You are singing your songs in the hearts of the poor
Guide us, wound us, heal us. Bring us to the Father.
– James K. Baxter, ‘Song to the Holy Spirit’, in
Collected Poems
(ed. John Edward Weir;
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 572 pp.
{Where I got the series of mis-statements from} http://freetruth.50webs.org/B2b.htm
{Non-Christian references to Jesus} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Non-Christian_sources
{Why it was not the case that Jesus married Mary Magdalene} http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markdroberts/series/was-jesus-married-a-careful-look-at-the-real-evidence/
(More about Don Cupitt} http://philosophybites.com/2009/12/don-cupitt-on-jesus-as-philosopher.html
{Why we are sure St Paul wrote the first letter to the people of Corinth}
http://bible.org/seriespage/1-corinthians-introduction-argument-and-outline
{The stuff about Eusebius} http://www.churchhistory101.com/century1.php
{About Homer composing the Iliad before the invention of writing} https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/homer.htm
{Gospel of Thomas}http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas
{Siege of Jerualem}
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70)
{How it was finally decided on which books should be in the New Tesstament}
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment
{Detail on the origin of Fundamentalism} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism
Michael Cocks edits the journal, Ground of Faith.
Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr by Michael Cocks is published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and other bookstores.
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