At Loyola there were some thirteen theology courses by the time I began my scholarship year in 1964. Among these were: Apologetics 120, Biblical exegesis (TH 220) and New Testament: A Historical Perspective, or TH 320. Note here that when one agreed to attend Loyola part of the “covenant” – whether one was on scholarship or not- was that you took at least one theology course each semester. It didn't matter if your major was theology, mathematics or physics.
One did have some choices, for example, between Study of the Old Testament (TH 220) and Apologetics. I opted for the former because I believed it would also prove useful later in Biblical Exegesis and I was correct. I ignored Apologetics because the course summary disclosed to me it wasn’t a serious knowledge area but a defensive PR gambit: learn new and better tricks to “defend the faith”.
Nothing has changed my mind since then, and I regard all Christian Apologists – whatever their background – as basically PR front men whose job is to try to rationalize any critical finding that undermines biblical claims, or doctrinal claims. This is as far removed from serious bible scholarship, say in textual and historical analysis, as Public Relations is from real news in the real world.
For example, while the Exxon –Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1989 was historically the worst environmental disaster in the U.S. to that time, the PR mavens recycled that to read that Exxon was actually “conducting a great test for their cleanup equipment”
In other words, PR amounts to clever deceptions and even lies to try to rationalize something that factually is quite the opposite. In the sphere of biblical interpretation, we see that Apologetics has enormous clout then, because as years have gone by more and more textual and historical researchers have found the biblical scaffolding of facts hangs on mere threads. So why not enlist a body of apologists to make a case, as opposed to accepting the limits of the scriptures as written – that they were scribbled by defective humans hundreds of years after the fact and bear little or no relation to either biography or history?
Of course, apologists didn’t just emerge on the scene of late because a few atheists, secular humanists, or Jesus Seminar scholars had exposed the New Testament as mostly clever fables. They existed as far back as the early Church, and often arrived (like St. Augustine) from pagan backgrounds. These intellectuals then took up their verbal “cudgels” against any one who heaped scorn or charged the early Christians with make believe or as being impostors. The apologists always had their answers, and why not?
The word itself derives from “ apologia” – the Greek word for defense. So, in other words apologists were first in the business of defense, not truth seeking per se. They instead tacitly conceded beliefs in this or that doctrine, then defended it to the death. Just as well because in those early days a supremely competent apologia was often the difference between being persecuted or not. Even Paul admonished the need for such 1 Peter 3: 15.
Meanwhile, New Testament historical research excises all emotions and preconceived notions of what’s “proper” and sticks strictly to the historical arc of the texts under consideration. It also looks carefully at major anomalies between the quadriform gospels, for example – and why this event is massively included in one, but not the others. For sure, a genuine historical event ought to appear throughout all – not be over elaborated in one while given short shrift in the others.
For example, Prof. Dale B. Martin in his Yale University course, entitled: Introduction to New Testament History and Literature, aptly observes in his lecture No. 13:
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/introduction-to-new-testament/content/sessions/lecture13.html
That the Gospel of John is the only one that contains exhaustive details on the actual trial of Yeshua before Pilate. The other three just offer a few words. This implies the Gospel of John has been elaborated, perhaps by later copyists – who wanted to embellish it to confer the patina of historical moment. After all, what can one make of just a few words, say in Luke or Mark? (Btw, I invite serious readers to watch the whole lecture, and maybe the others from his course here)
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/introduction-to-new-testament/content/class-sessions
Prof. Martin also makes many other salient points including that the arc of NT events occurs in far too disjointed a way to be a historical document. But this ought not be surprising, since the handlers and keepers of the earliest documents – including the Nag Hammadi scrolls, have already admitted that (cf. Rev. Thomas Bokenkotter, in ‘A Concise History of the Catholic Church’, notes (page 17):
“The Gospels were not meant to be a historical or biographical account of Jesus. They were written to convert unbelievers to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, or God.”
In other words, the gospels were written as propaganda documents. And why not? The early Christians, in a fight for their very lives, needed all the discursive ballast they could get, including propaganda and apologias. This often meant the difference between being tossed to the lions in the Coliseum and remaining free to preach or spread the word (Kerygma).
But it is disingenuous not to face the truth of the duplicitous origin of many biblical parts, passages and even whole books. For example, as we learned at Loyola, Church Father Origen was perhaps the first Christian Father to complain about the meddling of copyists as he wrote (First Principles):
“The differences among the manuscripts have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others; they either neglect to check over what they have transcribed or, in the process of checking, make additions or deletions as they please”.
As Bible scholar Bart Ehrman also notes (Misquoting Jesus, p. 54) there were almost no controls for standardization of textual content like there are today because there were no copyright laws! Thus, copyists could literally add or subtract as they saw fit. One estimate has it that nearly all the references in the NT to “Satan” or “Hell” were accomplished at the hands of copyists, leading one Bishop of Corinth to remark that:
“The devils’ apostles have filled it with tares, taking away some things and adding others. For them the woe is reserved”.
Now, what about biblical exegesis or textual analysis? In this case the actual structure of the idiom used in each translation is studied, going back to Aramaic for example, then to Greek and Latin and English. We use something called hermeneutics which asks what the writer (in that vernacular) actually meant in the idiom of his day (NOT our day!) and what losses in meaning that idiom encountered as it was transcribed to other languages in succession.
Thus the primary objective of exegesis is interpreting what the passage in the original language meant in terms of its OWN CONTEXT not simply putting it into the new one. THIS is why so many biblical literalists foul up and end up in a ditch.
As I noted in an earlier blog, the process for the literalist is basically 1:1 onto:
[Text x] -> [Text x]
Thus, [text x] undergoes no modification from what their eyes detect or parse in the passage.
In fact, there are three primary phases of the hermeneutics process so that at least three stages have to be covered, so:
[text x] -> [1] ->[2] –[3] -> [Text Z]
Even this is oversimplified, since technically each step also needs to be checked and parsed from one language to the other. For example, what did the author MEAN in Aramaic? What did he mean when this was transferred to GREEK? What did he mean when this Greek was transferred to Latin? What did he mean when the Latin went to English? Then step [2] – repeating the same. When we did exegesis at Loyola we used columns for the four main languages and parsed each passage for EACH step before arriving at the final meaning. (As anyone who's ever studied foreign languages knows- and I've studied Latin, Russian, German and Spanish- it is essentially impossible to get a perfect translation from one to another!)
What we acknowledge in doing this procedure is the fact that we have NO ORIGINALS of any scriptures, only error-ridden copies. But, if we can take the passages through the above sequence, then let the light of the historical research shine upon the effort, we can at least approach the truth. We are not so naïve as to claim or expect we HAVE the truth, since hermeneutics itself – its very use- is a tacit admission one can’t take passages literally.
The many logia in the Gospels would, if they could convincingly be shown derived from a single personality or source, be strong evidence that a historical Jesus existed. But such is not the case. In tandem textual analysis and historical research (see the Yale lecture)discloses we are left with an artifact created or invented by eager followers.
Two books for readers who are seriously interested in textual analysis:
1) The Authentic Gospel of Jesus’ By Geza Vermes.
2) 'Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why' – by Bart D. Ehrman
No comments:
Post a Comment