I continue to receive great questions from folk and continue to try to answer them.  Here is a wide range on key issues for anyone interested in the informed study of the New Testament.

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 QUESTION:

Do critical scholars agree that miracles and the supernatural are outside the purview of the historical process?  If so, can you present the evidence to that effect?

Is this what is taught in post grad history schools outside evangelical institutions?

 

RESPONSE

It doesn’t take much evidence.  Read any historical account of, say, WWII, the Civil War, the French Revolution; the presidency of George Washington, JFK, Obama; the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the Industrial Revolution, the rise of Capitalism; the … pick any historical topic.  In every case there were people who said prayers of relevance for the persons, events, etc; some of these people at the end of the person’s life or at the end of the episode concluded that God must have been on their side (since what they hoped had happened did happen).

You will not find a single historical study (written by and widely received by a serious historian) about the effectiveness of these prayers in influencing the will or actions of the Almighty.  That is, NO historian would claim that the Allies defeated the Nazis BECAUSE God intervened.  From the perspective of the historian (whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or anything else) the activities of God are not part of the discussion.  Not even a small part.  Divine activities are not accessible to analytic scrutiny, whether or not they happened.

 

QUESTION:

Can you say more about how scholars “analyze patristic evidence (= quotations of church fathers) for establishing the original form of the New Testament text.”

 

RESPONSE:

It’s a very long story.  If you do a word search for Didymus on the blog you will find several posts explaining.  The very SHORT explanation is that we have church fathers who quote the New Testament.  They learned these quotations from the manuscripts available to them.  We know when and where they were living.  We can examine their quotations to reconstruct in part what their manuscripts must have looked like — that is, what wording of the verses they quote would have been found in those particular manuscripts from that particular time and place.

That’s of value because often the church fathers were living in times and places for which we do not have manuscripts of the NT, and this approach allows us to know how the manuscripts were being copied (and what kinds of errors made) in certain times and places.

 

 

QUESTION

Regarding the “requirement” of a bloody sacrifice: it’s true that Paul’s letter to the Hebrews states, “without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22).

But there are passages in the Old Testament that say otherwise. One example is Leviticus 5:11, which states that a person who couldn’t afford an animal for a sin offering, could offer fine flour. Another example is Psalm 51:16-17, which says, “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, you, God, will not despise.” And in Hosea 6:6. it is written: “For I desire faithful love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

In light of such passages, doesn’t it appear that Paul’s statement to the Hebrews was simply an attempt to justify the dogma of the crucifixion as a “necessary” sacrifice?

 

RESPONSE

It’s unlikely that Paul wrote Hebrews – it is almost universally thought among critical scholars that it wasn’t he, for lots of reasons; but whoever wrote it certainly had views of atonement that are not shared by all authors of the Hebrew Bible.  That, of course, is true throughout the NT, since the authors of the Hebrew Bible had different views about lots and lots of things.

My sense is that Christians picked up on the necessity of atonement because the earliest followers of Jesus believed he was raised from the dead, based on the claims of some that they had seen him alive afterward.  If he had been brought back to life, that showed he really was the Chosen One of God.  The answer that almost immediately occurred to them was that he was not being punished himself, and so he must have had to die for others.  That is, given the sacrificial nature of Judaism and all ancient religion – they though he had to have been a sacrifice for others.

That is, his death had been for atonement of sin.  Otherwise he would not have had to die. The author of Hebrews shares that view.  So do most authors of the New Testament, apart from Luke.

 

QUESTION:

I have a question about Mark 4, but more specifically about the methodology of deciding which materials come to the Gospel authors from earlier sources and which ones they themselves made up (or altered).

Mark 4:12 seems to say that parables prevent outsiders from understanding, while 4:22 says that what is hidden will ultimately be disclosed, and 4:33 says that Jesus spoke to people “as they were able to hear it.” Verse 24 also seems rather abruptly inserted into this sequence.

I realize that the tensions among these verses have long been discussed. What I am more curious about is how scholars decide whether such tensions are evidence that Mark has brought together originally independent traditions, rather than deliberately creating a literary or theological tension.

In other words, apart from the fact that a passage feels awkward or internally inconsistent, what criteria allow us to distinguish between inherited material that Mark has imperfectly combined and a tension that Mark himself intentionally created?

Does Mark 4 provide a good case where we can actually make that distinction with some confidence?

 

RESPONSE:

I’d say there’s no way to establish one view or another with complete certainty, but that the best approach is to consider Mark’s thematic emphases throughout the text to determine whether a troubling passage coincides with them or runs counter to them.  If it runs counter, then it’s more likely from a source he has not fully integrated.  If it coincides, then it’s either from a source he agrees with or his own composition.  Whether from an agreeable source or from his own head, either way it confirms his view.

In this case, the idea that he tells parables so outsiders will not understand is all part of Mark’s theme of the Messianic secret, worked out in various ways in Mark’s account, and for the most part not in the other Gospels.

I’d also say the other quotations seem to me to be easily assimilated to 4:11-12; they do not necessarily contradict it (so they are not necessarily evidence of other sources).  His comment in 4:11-12 is directed to those who have actually asked him for insight.  The “outsiders” have not.  They never will understand.  But some will — and that’s what vv. 22 and 33 are indicating.

Not sure if that helps or not.