Can We Trust the New Testament? by J. A. T. Robinson

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Continuation of Chapter 3: THE TOOLS OF DISCRIMINATION

THE TOOLS IN USE

But before him in the story others are sent, and there is a good deal of minor variation in the number of servants sent and in the treatment accorded to them. In his book The Parables of the Kingdom C. H. Dodd suggested that the oldest, and simplest version was the typical triad of the folk-tale, of two servants followed by a son, who alone gets killed. He lived to see his suggestion vindicated by the Gospel of Thomas, which has precisely this. The rest of the detail is expansion and elaboration to bring the story more closely into line with the long list of Old Testament prophets and their fates (who are clearly those whom the servants are meant to represent). This is most obviously the case in Matthew's version, where the individual servants have been replaced by two waves, the second more numerous than the first, corresponding to the former and the latter prophets. This is a typical example of the process of allegorization (making each of the details of the parable symbolic), which is especially characteristic of Matthew (compare, for instance, Matt. 13.37-43 and 49f.).

To be continued...

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Continuation of Chapter 3: THE TOOLS OF DISCRIMINATION

THE TOOLS IN USE

It is more surprising and significant therefore that at the next and most critical point, the sending of the son, which is the climax of the story, Matthew has the least allegorized version. He―and again Thomas―simply have: 'Afterward he sent his son to them'. Mark has: 'He had still one other, a beloved son; finally he sent him to them'. This carries just those marks of development that we might expect in the Christian tradition―the stress on uniqueness and finality and the epithet 'beloved', which is used of Jesus by the divine voice in the accounts of his baptism and transfiguration. They are descriptions not of the son in the story (they add nothing to it) but of the Son in the Christian reflection. Nevertheless, the fact that he is a son and not just another servant is integral to the story in all its versions. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Jesus was referring by this analogy from human life to himself and his relationship to God. This claim is not created by the Church. What the Church does is to expound and expand it. And the version that does this most explicitly is Mark's―who used to be thought the least theological! It is significant that Matthew, with Thomas, looks at this point to be nearest the source―though at other points, perhaps at most other points, he seems the furthest away. It suggests, as I said earlier that the hypothesis of a simple overall priority will not fit the facts.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Continuation of Chapter 3: THE TOOLS OF DISCRIMINATION

THE TOOLS IN USE

In what follows in the story, the fate meted out to the son, Mark has 'So they seized him and killed him and flung him out of the vineyard'. Matthew and Luke both have these events in reverse order: he is flung out of the vineyard and then killed. A minor point perhaps, yet it is to be noted that this corresponds more exactly with what happened to Jesus, who was led away to be crucified outside the city. The change may therefore reflect later Christian tradition, though it is to be observed that it is not Matthew and Luke who make this point in their passion narratives but John (19.17)―and the Epistle to the Hebrews (13.12). So it is precarious to read too much theological motivation into what the evangelists are doing.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Continuation of Chapter 3: THE TOOLS OF DISCRIMINATION

THE TOOLS IN USE

The climax of the story in the Synoptists is that the vineyard is taken away and given to others, and Matthew once more makes quite explicit by his allegoration that the reference is to the Gentiles: 'The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation that yields the proper fruit'. Thomas has no such point―only the stock warning with which he rounds off many of his parables: 'He that has ears, let him hear'. It is probable that, as so often, the application of the parable is secondary in all the versions. Jesus usually seems to have left his hearers to draw their to draw their own conclusion.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Continuation of Chapter 3: THE TOOLS OF DISCRIMINATION

THE TOOLS IN USE

Finally, in all the Synoptic Gospels, though not again in Thomas, the parable is fused with an appeal to Scripture: 'Have you not read this scripture: "The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner"?' This is no part of the story proper, which ends with the son's rejection, not with his vindication. It may have been brought in to give the story a 'Christian' ending, with a veiled reference to the resurrection. Yet it has been pointed out that there is a concealed pun in the Hebrew between son (ben) and stone (eben)―and this challenging use of Scripture (in contrast) with its confirmatory use by the evangelists to fulfill prophecies) is characteristic of Jesus. Moreover, the 'stone' saying forms the next, though separate, saying in the Gospel of Thomas―whose order does not elsewhere follow our Gospels. So there could well be a link that goes back to Jesus or early tradition, though the version underlying the Synoptists may have fused it with the parable.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Continuation of Chapter 3: THE TOOLS OF DISCRIMINATION

THE TOOLS IN USE

What emerges? We may be pretty sure that we have here a story that comes from Jesus's own lips and carries the same point he made. Yet in all sorts of small ways (from which I have merely selected) we can see how it was expanded and adapted to the Church's later use. The precision-tools which scholars have devised and refined enable us to discriminate with reasonable confidence and objectivity. Taken with a host of other examples, they can help us break down and then build up. Disagreements there will be, because the presuppositions of those using the tools make a great deal of difference to the results. But that is a reason for getting together and pressing on, not for giving up. Technical difficulties too there are here, as in every other field of study. But that is not an argument for the layman to throw in the sponge: it is a challenge both to communication and to application. There is no reason why at a popular level it should be more beyond him than most do-it-yourself activities―or, say, the serious appreciation of music. And we do not regard music critics as threats, or as remote academics whose language it is not worth trying to learn. If even at second hand we can follow them, our understanding and perception will be enriched.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP

We have now looked at some of the processes which the tradition about Jesus went through and how scholars detect these and can to some extent play the tape back. But how extended was the tape? In principle it does not matter, but in practice it makes a considerable difference to our confidence in filling the gap between the event and the records. What of those 'gulfs of oblivious mythopaeic time' in which anything could have happened and no one would have been any the wiser? Or, to change the analogy, the interval between the ministry of Jesus and the first written record of it has been described as a tunnel period. Is there any means of checking that the train that went through the tunnel is recognizably the same train that came out? If there was no one around when the records came to be written who had been present at the events or had even heard their parents or grandparents talk about them, then obviously our controls are very much less direct. In fact trust in the New Testament documents for telling us anything about Jesus or the Apostolic Church has varied in inverse proportion to the distance from them at which the documents have been dated.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP

When was the New Testament written? The layman could be forgiven for expecting that by now the scholars might have settled such an elementary question. Yet the time-span over which the New Testament documents have been held to come into being has expanded and contracted in concertina fashion―or rather having been stretched to its greatest lengths by the extreme German critics of the nineteenth century it has been contracting fairly steadily ever since. At the turn of the century, the span extended from about AD 50 to AD 150―and that was already a good deal shorter than it had been on some reckonings. By the middle of this century, with the isolated exception of one book, it was halved, from about AD 50 to about AD 100. I am personally of the opinion that it should be halved, or more than halved, again, from about AD 47 to just before AD 70. I am aware that this is an extreme position and I am compelled at this point to refer for the scholarly basis of it to a recent book of mine, Redating the New Testament. I merely give a summary of its arguments here. The reader should be warned that most New Testament scholars would not agree with me. But I believe that it represents the direction in which things are moving and I am convinced that the critical orthodoxy reflected in the textbooks rests on far less solid evidence than the consensus would suggest.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP

A similar sort of revolution has been going on in prehistoric archaeology, and comparisons are instructive. Radio-carbon 14 dating and the modifications of this introduced by the evidence of tree-rings and in particular those of the incredibly long-lived California bristle-cone pine (the story is well told in Colin Renfrew's Before Civilization) have upset the picture. Not only have they affected the overall span―in this case stretched it, so that monuments like Stonehenge are quite a lot older than was previously supposed. Much more significantly, they have confounded the assumptions on which the patterns of distribution, dependence and diffusion were so confidently based. For example, it was assumed that the megaliths of Brittany and Ireland (and the ideas and skills needed to build them) must have spread by diffusion from a single source in the Near East, whereas the datings now demonstrate that they were earlier and came into being independently. So many of the arguments about relative datings have been shown to be circular. Insert a new set of assumptions and another equally consistent pattern can emerge―with the intervals expanding or contracting according to the time available. It shows how much of what appears an established scholarly consensus rests not on hard facts but on the presuppositions by which they are interpreted.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP

Nothing so world-shattering or mind-exploding is happening on the much smaller scale of New Testament chronology. But I could not give my own answer to the question, Can we trust the New Testament?, without querying some of the reigning assumptions of the critics. For, as in archaeology. the number of firm absolute dates is far smaller than might be imagined: the rest, with the relative intervals and interconnections, have to be filled in by inference and deduction.

Here are some of the fixed points that are generally agreed:

AD 30 the crucifixion (possibly, but less probably, 29 or 33).
AD 51-2 Gallio proconsul of Achaia (Acts 18.12).
AD 68 the death of Nero
AD 70 the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP

The Gallio date depends on the lucky accident of a discovery of an inscription at Delphi published in 1905. A key date for which it would be most helpful if we had equally firm evidence is when Festus succeeded Felix as procurator of Judea (Acts 24.27), for this would give us an end-term for Paul's missionary career and journey to Rome. But unfortunately and rather surprisingly, we have not. Nevertheless, we can build in the basis of the intervals supplied at first hand by Paul himself in Gal. 1.18 and 2.1 (whose evidence is excellent but whose interpretation is much disputed) and by the author of Acts (who is very thin and vague at some points but very detailed and trustworthy at others, especially when, from the "we" in the narrative, he himself was in all probability present). From these and other sources we may infer that the Council of Jerusalem described in Acts 15 took place about 48 and that Paul finally reached Rome, as a prisoner, about 60.

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP

THE EPISTLES AND APOCALYPSE

Paul's letters roughly occupy the 50s. The earliest are probably 1 and 2 Thessalonians (50-1), followed by 1 Corinthians (55), 2 Corinthians and Galatians (56) and Romans (57), though some would put Galatians before the Council of Jerusalem in 48. Others would put the 'captivity epistles' (Philippians, Colossians and Philemon, and, if it is Pauline, Ephesians) up to a couple of years later, during his imprisonment in Rome (60-2) described in Acts 28.16-31. But I am convinced that they fit better into his earlier detention at Caesarea (57-9) described in Acts 24.22-7. The same applies, I now think, (though this would not be generally accepted), to 2 Timothy, where the mention in 4.16 of 'the first hearing of my case' refers. I believe, not to some hypothetical trial (and subsequent release) in Rome, but to that under Felix, in Acts 21-4. In fact I am persuaded that the other two Pastoral Epistles, 1 Timothy and Titus―whether Paul himself actually penned them or had them written on his behalf―can also be fitted in earlier still, before he was in prison. This again would usually be denied (in fact many would put them years after his death, with genuine fragments possibly incorporated). But with regard to the main body of the Pauline Epistles there is not much difference of opinion. The value of thus being able to date at any rate the major Epistles with considerable confidence between 50 and 60 is that it supplies an absolute scale against which to measure other developments. It also shows how much can happen in a decade.

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP

THE EPISTLES AND APOCALYPSE

For the rest of the New Testament writings it will be convenient to consider them with reference to the two further landmarks mentioned earlier, one at each end of the Roman Empire: the death of Nero in 68 and the fall of Jerusalem in 70.

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP

THE EPISTLES AND APOCALYPSE

The death of Nero had been preceded in July 64 by the fire of Rome, which Tacitus, the Roman historian, tells us led to Nero fastening on the Christians as scapegoats after failing to allay the rumors that he himself had started it. Since he had by then already planned and begun the rebuilding of Rome, including a stupendous palace for himself, we can hardly put this persecution earlier than 65. If 1 Peter comes from the apostle Peter (and the reasons for doubting this are to my mind not compelling), then it looks from references to 'the fiery ordeal that is upon you' (4.12) as if it dates from the beginnings of the persecution. For I would agree with those who think that the allusions in the Epistle are best explained by the hypothesis that the material was originally prepared as sermon material for a congregation in Rome (perhaps at Easter baptism), before, under the pressure of events, it was hastily converted into a letter (by the addition of 1.1f. and 5.12-14) and sent off to Asia Minor. If so we could date 1 Peter with a fair degree of accuracy in the spring of 65.

[John Reece]

Can We Trust the New Testament?

Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP

THE EPISTLES AND APOCALYPSE

2 Peter and Jude (which are clearly interconnected, since most of the material is reproduced in similar words and in the same order as 2 Peter) are much more problematic and frankly not very important. I treat them briefly here so as to get them out of the way. 2 Peter has survived as the one New Testament document still thought to have been written in the middle of the second century (under the false name of the Apostle), But the grounds for putting it so late appear to me to be a great deal less than compelling. I would completely agree that it cannot, on stylistic ground, be attributed to the same hand as 1 Peter. But I am not at all sure that it could not have been written during the Apostle's lifetime, by an agent on his behalf, as a final testament and reminder of the fundamentals of the faith to the churches of Asia Minor shortly before his departure to Rome. Perhaps indeed we can actually name the agent. For Jude describes how he has been forced to interrupt a longer letter to send an urgent appeal to the same readers to unite in the defense of the faith against false teachers (Jude 3). I suggest that that letter was 2 Peter, and that the earlier one on the same topic to which he refers in 2 Peter 3.1 is not our 1 Peter (whose recipient and theme are very different) but that which Jude had written to them under his own name. For the style and much of the material are identical. In this case there would be no good reason for rejecting Jude's claim to be the brother of James, the Lord's brother (who, after all, would want to pretend to be Jude?), and to date the Epistles of Jude and 2 Peter before James's martyrdom in 62: for they breathe no hint of persecution, in marked contrast to 1 Peter.