COMMENT BY A READER:
I like the “literary-historical” approach, but only up to a point, just so long as the claims of primitive history, the interpretations of bible scholars, and the anti-Semitic pronouncements of its religious authors, don’t outweigh or override the literature. After all, Jesus did NOT have personal biographers who took notes and reported what was going on throughout his lifetime. We only know of him as the protagonist within an ill-defined genre, someone carefully crafted after-the-fact in order to appear more god-like than human. Thus, it seems a mistake to treat the Gospel of Mark, or any similar ancient narrative (whether canonized or not), either as the legitimate retelling of history, or merely as one particular form of Greco-Roman storytelling.
RESPONSE:
Yes, it anyone thinks the literary-historical approach involves making historical claims about the narrative they have misunderstood what it is trying to do. Let me explain.
There are numerous ways, of course, that one can approach the Gospels of the NT, just as there are numerous ways that one can approach any text. But there is a fundamental difference (I can’t stress this point enough) between reading the Gospels in order to know how well they attest to historical events in the life and death of Jesus, and reading them in order to see how they function as pieces of literature with a story to tell. The first approach is interested in the Gospels as historical witnesses. The second approach is interested in them as literary endeavors. These are two very *different* approaches.
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“But it’s important to know what you’re doing when you’re doing it.”
Bingo! I think you hit the nail on the head. And one needs to be aware of what you are doing when when one makes conclusions about what one read.
Thanks, Dr. E.
Can the literary approach be used to determine whether the author “intends” at least parts of the stories to be read as historical accounts, leaving aside the question whether those stories can be treated as historical accounts by historians?
No, I’m afraid there’s not method in existence that can allow you to know what someone else “intends.” E.g., no one really knows what I intend by writing this reply! Maybe I intend to exercise my fingers a bit more to relieve the onset of arthritis!
I don’t know, I thought a core goal of hermeneutics is about discerning the author’s intentions. More specifically, if we identify a literary work to belong to modern poetry based on its sentence structure, heavy on use of metaphors, then we immediately think that the literary work probably is not trying to convey accurate history or record of events. Similarly, if someone starts with “Once upon a time…There was a black man called Barack Obama who was elected with a decisive landslide in a US presidential election” we immediately realise the account is intended to be fictional, because the opening phase signals the work belongs to a fictional literary genre. But if the phase is omitted, we may well judge from rest of the work that it is intended to belong to the genre of political history. That is, identification of the genre via literary hallmark devices or literary form, convey a great deal about the authors’ intent. OT scholars – including mainstream scholars and fairly conservative evangelicals – debate whether Genesis 1-2 are intended to be history, or poetry or mythic storytelling.
There have been huge debates about this in hermeneutical circles. I subscribe to the view that we cannot know an author’s intentions. If you want to read more about this, I’d suggest you look into “the intentional fallacy” — starting with the classic by Wimsatt and Beardsley.
“It is using the book for some purpose other than that for which it was written.”
Bingo!
Very helpful. The study of such things gets complicated, but separating a literary analysis from a historical one is quite important. Why not just use the term “Literary” rather than “Literary-Historical?” Would that be less confusing?
Because a “literary” approach often/usually involves using *modern* methods of literary analysis to study the next (as in narrative criticism). This method considers a literary genre in its own historical context as the key.
For anybody interested in looking a “literary-historical” method applied to Mark in a non-technical way “Mark as Story” by David Rhoads is an excellent application of this method. This little book at a huge impact on how I read Mark.
Bart, do you distinguish the “literary-historical” approach from the application narrative criticism to the NT?
I forgot to ask about this, something unrelated: I noticed that a book is coming out called “How God Became Jesus” on the same day your book “How Jesus Became God” comes out. Just curious, since it’s a direct response to your “How Jesus Became God” book, did you give them a manuscript beforehand?
http://www.amazon.ca/How-Became-Jesus-Michael-Bird/dp/0310519594/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393355748&sr=1-2&keywords=how+jesus+became+god
Yup, it’s a direct response by a group of evangelical scholars, and yes, we gave them my manuscript in advance. Good thing, too, since the advertisement for their book (which they would have given them before they saw my ms) completely mistakes what it is I argue in my book – possibly to their great surprise!
Last question – did they extent the courtesy and show you their manuscript? If so, did you add anything to your book on the basis of their critique.
Sorry — I’m not sure what you’re referring to!
Narrative criticism employs modern methods of literary analysis to a text. The literary-historical method is more interested in how the genre that is used “worked” in its own historical period.
Hi Bart
In September I will be doing my Masters in the History of Christianity and have had a lot of interest in form criticism and the literary genre of the gospels.
Burridge came to the occlusion the gospels are bios and byrskog came to the conclusion the gospels are historiography and not is has become common to believe the gospels are historical bios as concluded by Bauckham and Keener.
However, they all come to the conclusion that when writing bios, histories or both the information of the event or person was to tell the truth and say what actually happened and not story.
Aristotle stresses this and Lucian writes about how to write history.
If this is so, can we not say that the gospels are trying to tell us what happened? And not just that they are biographies period?
Thanks
You might want to read a bunch of biographies — for example, by Plutarch and Suetonius — and then make a judgment about what they purposes and materials at hand were for this kind of work.
Bart,
The challenge comes from mixing the “literary” and the “historical” together. It reminds me of Grape-Nuts cereal. All flakes and no nuts or grapes, either one. In point of fact, the emphasis has always been on the writing as religious history rather than literature. And this is the crux of the problem. For far too long most people have approached the writing as a kind of non-literary truth, something that far outweighs the words and deeds of characters in a novel or dramatic play. And as you say, “These are two very different approaches.”
What we need, then, is an appreciation of how the two have worked together, historically speaking, to mislead readers (and listeners) about who the main character was and what really happened. So here’s my take on it. (If you think it’s too long, maybe you can cut it into three parts.)
***********************************************************************************************************************
YESHU’S MAKEOVER
As a preface to my own narration I will mention a few foundational points worth noting. First off, I hope you have a sense of humor, because most of us take these kinds of discussions much too seriously. Even well- intentioned academics sometimes insist on being right, despite evidence to the contrary. And evidence is always hard to come by. For example, eye- witness reports from the gospels are no longer considered reliable. In fact, in any court of law these days their “testimonies” would be thrown out as “hearsay,” and those doing the testifying subject to charges of perjury.
There’s no denying that our New Testament gospels are the primary sources of what Jesus may have said and done, and for that reason just about everyone gives them undue credence. My point is that what makes them “the best” also makes them “the worst.” If anything, it puts their declarations on a presumptive pedestal as The Word of God or The Wisdom of Experts, either of which is highly suspect.
As far as Christian beginnings is concerned, anti-Jewish prejudices started with Paul, and they were soon amplified by anonymous narrators whose fabrications were embraced by church bishops, prelates, and make-shift councils, and then promoted by imperious emperors and their Romanized constituents. In other words, the seeds of transformation were planted by Hellenized converts and pro-Gentile literati whose editorial perceptions and biased judgments all pointed in the same general direction — away from Jerusalem, toward Rome, both Old and New.
Yet despite the outward march of peripatetic missionaries carrying their unique new-covenant messages, significant differences developed between communities of believers founded along the way. These were commercial rivalries and doctrinal disputes that left a decidedly “unlevel playing field” (to say the least), not only for displaced Jews and indigenous Pagans, but more so for Heretics. Even artists, minstrels and poets had to join the winning proto-orthodox team, while numerous gatherings of Lost Christianities found themselves marginalized and destroyed.
Of course, we now have a world-wide web to continue this historic struggle, but without all the violence, not counting Islamic terrorism and suicide bombings.
The real history, however, actually started before Paul, with James the Just (or the Righteous), his family, and other members of the Jesus Movement in Judea. Data in support of this corrected storyline is available and can be found within the works of exceptional scholars like Hyam Maccoby, E.P. Sanders, Roy Eckhart, Barrie Wilson, James D. Tabor, and most of all, Robert Eisenman.
Here, then, is the basic outline of what seems to have happened.
*Jesus was the acknowledged leader of an apocalyptic messianic movement, as was his mentor, John the Baptist.
*Both men were executed as “troublemakers” in the first part of the first century of the new millennium, by Roman and Herodian officials.
*Contrary to revisionist religious history, Jesus and John’s disciples were not rounded up or singled out for persecution.
*Most members of the Jesus clan relocated to Jerusalem and carried on as normative temple-worshiping Jews, led by James, the brother of Jesus.
*By in large, this group was made up of serious-minded, Torah-observant worshipers who practiced what they believed, peaceably, while awaiting their Master’s return.
*These Nazarene Galileans tended to embrace specific biblical prophesies, especially those of Daniel and Zechariah (among others), and their faith was in no way a separate religion.
*But brother James was murdered without Rome’s permission, precipitating unrest inside Israel and the first Roman/Jewish War, as well as the Great Diaspora.
*Afterwards, sentiment turned against the Jews, supported by propaganda about what had happened. (Who was it that said, “History is always written by the victors”?)
*Gospel stories played a significant role in re-scripting events leading up to the destruction of the Temple, shifting attention away from James and the rest of the Jesus family, toward Paul and his Christ-centered Movement.
*In the process of telling their tales, Hellenized, Greek-speaking authors used an anti-Semitic paradigm that has persisted into modern times.
The following quote is just a small sample of what the delusional, self-appointed Apostle wrote to some of his earliest followers. Remember, these words were written soon after the crucifixion, following his hallucinatory encounter with a formerly dead, resurrected Christ.
“When you suffered at the hands of your fellow countrymen you were sharing the experience of the Judean Christian churches, who suffered persecution by the Jews. It was the Jews who killed their own prophets, the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus, and the Jews who drove us out, his messengers. Their present attitude is in opposition to both God and man. They refused to let us speak to those who were not Jews, to tell them the news of salvation. Alas, I fear they are completing the full tale of their sins, and the wrath of God is over their heads” (Thess. 14-16)!
Because of these anti-Semitic slurs (among many others), Jesus would soon be portrayed as similarly anti-Jewish. After all, gospel writers and readers, including listeners, were mostly non-Jews who didn’t know much about the peculiar habits of “Yahweh’s chosen people,” and who preferred Gentile notions and nationalities to Jewish ones. So even though Jesus was a committed Jew, that was NOT how he behaved in critical scenes of the New Testament drama. On the one hand, he was described as the perfect man, godlike and kind, with powers extraordinaire – while on the other hand, he frequently acted like someone whose heart had hardened against his own brethren.
Moreover, our inventive storytellers used fictional characters and situations to exonerate the actual perpetrators of social injustice in order to ingratiate themselves with secular authorities. Instead of condemning the Romans, they portrayed a popular rabbi ranting against the Jews, the very same rebellious malcontents who ended up killing him, and God, too.
In Mark, for example, nearly every Jewish group is shown to be united in opposition to the new Messiah and his teachings (Mk. 15: 1-15); “evil tenants” represent Jews who murder an innocent messenger (Jesus) sent by the absent owner (God) (12:1-12); and a Jewish traitor, plus Jewish religious leaders and Jewish crowds are depicted as being directly responsible for the crucifixion (14:43-48). Matthew continues on with Mark’s biases using similar embellishments (Mt. 27:25). In Luke the “withered fig tree” stands for God’s judgment against unscrupulous priests and their Temple for failing to bear good fruit (Lk. 13:6-9); and in Acts we listen to Steven, the first Christian martyr, as he rails against “stiff-necked betrayers and murderers of the Righteous One” (Acts 7:51-52).
But it is the words of Jesus himself speaking to nameless countrymen in the Gospel of John that gives added weight to the condemnation. “You are of your father the Devil,” he supposedly says, “and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is the father of lies. But, because I tell the truth you do not believe me (Jn. 8:44).
Thus, we have “the Jews” insisting that Pilate release a criminal named Barabbas, in order to crucify an innocent man, and none other than unbelieving Judeans and their descendents who are slandered for all time as “SATAN’S CHILDREN” (Mt. 27:15-26; Mk. 15:6-15; Lk. 22:13-25; Jn. 18:38-40)!
Some Christians would still have us believe God Almighty was doing the talking, but I think he was just a fictionalized Jew receiving yet another Hollywood-style makeover to rival that of Robert Allen Zimmerman.
What do you think?
Don (not Max)
p.s. BTW, I think the comparison to Dickens’ novels misses the mark, but I get the point. 😉
I’m afraid you’re *not* getting the point. Maybe you aren’t reading my posts? The literary-historical method is called that not because it tries to uncover the history behind the text, but because it evaluates how a literary genre worked in its historical context and interprets a text accordingly. The interpretation is purely literary. It has nothing to do with what happened historically.
I’m afraid you don’t seem to get my points, either. I just think you use the “l-h” method like an interpretive straight jacket that too severely limits our understanding of what was written. But you are right, I’m not reading all your postings, just the ones that move me at any given moment. For me the “historical context” is the full range of time from the Maccabees to our modern era, NOT the narrow confines of Greco-Roman literary history. Granted, we have different opinions about that,, but what do you think of my *basic outline of what seems to have happened*, and my overall assessment of using the letters of Paul, plus the literary gospel medium, plus an anti-Semitic paradigm, to shape the historical perception of the person and/or protagonist) we call Jesus?
I’m not trying make an argument here, merely asking for some reasonable feedback. 🙂
It’s hard to give you feedback when you aren’t reading what I’m saying. I don’t know how to say it any more simply than I already have. The literary-historical method has NOTHING (how can I emphasize this any stronger than I am: N-O-T-H-I-N-G) to do with the question of whether the story is historically accurate or not.
Yes, I know.. That’s my point! Using the literary-historical method tells us absolutely NOTHING about who Jesus was or the history of what happened. As far as I’m concerned, It is woefully inadequate to the biblical historian’s task. What I don’t understand is your frustration in dealing with my assessment. For some reason you have overstated or misstated the points I’ve made, or ignored them altogether. I’m not asking you to judge the reasonableness of my analysis from the point of view of LITERATURE, just evaluate what’s been suggested from a broader, less confining context. After all, it’s not Shakespeare, or rocket science, is it???
It is inadequate to the historian’s task because historians don’t use it and it is not meant to be used by historians. Historians don’t find linear algebra to be of much use either.
Perhaps “literature in historical context” would be a more understandable phrase to the layman.
Yeah, clearly this label isn’t being understood….
But isn’t James Judas? 😉
So I’ve heard!
We have a genre called historical fiction that is quite popular today. It’s literature, with a story that happens in a historical period that existed, but everyone understands the story itself isn’t historical (or at least anyone with a hint of common sense does). Maybe calling it “historical fiction” would be better, or at least better for describing to the people on the blog here who don’t understand the implications of the phrase “literary-historical”.
Yes, I think “literature in a historical context” is preferable. Unfortunately, these sorts of terms get locked in and then we are stuck with them. 🙂