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

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  • #91
    Can We Trust the New Testament?
    Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


    THE EPISTLES AND APOCALYPSE

    In any case it is this same James who is evidently claiming to be the author of the Epistle of James―and the very way in which he in no way flaunts his credentials as the brother of Jesus or as leader of the Jerusalem Church suggests that he is no impostor. Whether he could personally have written it has been much disputed, largely on the ground of its good Greek. But the mounting evidence going to show that at all social levels Palestine, and especially Galilee and Jerusalem, was bilingual makes this objection look less cogent than it did. Unlike the Epistles of Jude and 2 Peter, which belong to the 'silver age' of the early Church, the Epistle of James has a very primitive air about it. There appears to be no antagonism or even division between the Church and the Synagogue, all Christians, from its opening address in James 1.1 being assumed to be Jews. It shows no signs of developed Christian doctrine or Church order or of the arguments, such as mark the Epistles of Paul, about the terms on which Gentiles could be full members of the Church. It therefore seems to fit best before the great crisis which led to the Council of Jerusalem, when, we read, 'certain persons who had come down from Judea began to teach the brotherhood that those who were not circumcised in accordance with Mosaic practice could not be saved' (Acts 15.1). Indeed these people may have claimed that they were drawing 'all or nothing' implication from what James himself had written (cf. James 2:10: 'If a man keeps the whole law apart from one single point, he is breaking all of it'): hence the need for an official disclaimer from him and the Council (Acts 15.24). In this case the Epistle is likely to have been written not long before, perhaps in about 47. It would then be the first finished piece of Christian writing to have survived.

    Comment


    • #92
      Can We Trust the New Testament?
      Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


      THE EPISTLES AND APOCALYPSE

      But to return to the events arising out of the persecution under Nero, I believe that two more New Testament writings make best sense in this context. The first is the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is certainly not by Paul (despite its heading in the AV) and never claims to be: its style and thought-forms are decisively different. This is regularly dated by the textbooks round about 80-90―a decade convenient as a depository because we know remarkably little about it. But of all the books in the New Testament it would seem to me the least likely to come from after the destruction of Jerusalem and with it the end of the levitical high priesthood and the sacrificial system based on the temple. The author's elaborate argument, that this entire order of things must 'shortly disappear' (8.13), would have been pointless if it all at that moment lay in ruins. Indeed he says that 'the first tent" (representing for him the external structure of Judaism) 'still stands ... which is symbolic of the present time' (9.8f.). The letter I believe is clearly before 70. Yet those he addresses have evidently been through a good deal since they were 'newly enlightened' (10.32) and are in danger of relapsing under persecution that has already carried off their leaders (13.7). To cut a long story short, the Epistle to me makes best sense if sent to a synagogue of Jewish Christians in Rome who had lain low during the Neronian persecution, after the deaths of Peter and Paul (probably in 65-6) and yet before the relief brought by the suicide of Nero in 68―let us say, about the year 67.

      Comment


      • #93
        Can We Trust the New Testament?
        Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


        THE EPISTLES AND APOCALYPSE

        The other work, in contrast, clearly reflects the rejoicing which this latter event brought for the Church. It is the book of Revelation. Usually this is dated about 95, but this dating rests ultimately upon one statement of the Church father Irenaeus at the end of the second century. Since he also thought it was written by John the apostle, this would make it the work of a nonagenarian, which is hardly probable. He was almost certainly wrong too in supposing it to be by the same author as the Gospel and Epistles of John, whose Greek style and cast of mind are markedly different. If we go to the book itself, we find that the seer interprets one of his visions of Rome with its seven kings by the words, 'Five have already fallen, one is now reigning, and the other has yet to come; when he does come he is only to last for a little while' (17.10). This like most of his symbolism is deliberately opaque, but the sixth emperor was in fact Galba, who reigned from June 68 to January 69, immediately after the death of Nero by his own sword. The allusion to this event in chapter 13 and to the expectation confirmed as current at the time by the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, that he would return (like Hitler he was too evil really to be believed dead) underline the seer's preoccupation with Nero, the letters of whose name in Hebrew (the language evidently in which this strange man thought, whatever his pidgin Greek) add up to the number of the Beast, 666 (13.18). A dating in 68-9 is reenforced by another vision in 11.1-13, of the old city of Jerusalem. It is still standing and the worst that happens to it is that in an earthquake (not by enemy action) 'a tenth of the city fell'. If the whole lay in ruins and the smoke of its conflagration, like that predicted of 'Babylon (Rome), had actually been seen, as it was in its capture in 70, it is surely incredible that it should not have been described in the vision. The great Cambridge triumvirate of English New Testament scholars of the last century, Lightfoot, Westcott and Hort, all thought that the book of Revelation came from the period of the Neronian persecution (not that of the Emperor Domitian in the 90s), and I believe they were right. Indeed historians are increasingly questioning whether there was any organized persecution of the Church under Domitian―as opposed to the picking off of prominent individuals, some of whom may have been Christians, for reasons of state. In fact at whatever date we put the book, the figure of the Beast and the almost total martyrdom of the Church in a universal blood-bath is an imaginary projection on to the last times. It is the business of apocalyptic not to describe but to descry. The actual situation depicted in the letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor in chapters 1-3 reflects what need be no more than sporadic Jewish persecution―with but one martyr so far to show (2.13). Yet the frightfulness of the Neronian terror as described by Tacitus could have been sufficient to trigger anything in the seer's imagination:
        An immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of arson, as of hatred of the human race. Mockery of every sort was added to their death. Covered with the skins of beasts they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames. These served to illuminate the night when daylight failed.

        Comment


        • #94
          Can We Trust the New Testament?
          Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


          ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

          One of the most remarkable facts about the Acts of the Apostles is that it never mentions this terrible event (which from its excesses won, as Tacitus says, a good deal of sympathy for Christians). Nor does it record the deaths of Peter and Paul, or the outcome of the latter's trial―to which it has been leading up for many chapters. Nor does it confirm the fall of Jerusalem, which Luke's own Gospel is the most explicit in predicting (Luke-Acts being of course by the same author). Various explanations have been offered―including of course the guess that Luke was contemplating a third volume. This is totally unsupported―and even so why should he have broken off volume two where he did? By far the simplest explanation is that Acts finishes where it does because this is where things had reached by the time it was written, two years after Paul's arrival at Rome―that is, about 62. In fact (and this is strongly supported by the Roman historian Sherwin-White whom I mentioned earlier) Acts accurately reflects the conditions of Roman society and Roman law at this very period (and not any later developments), and I am convinced that this is the date of the book.

          Comment


          • #95
            Can We Trust the New Testament?
            Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


            ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

            However this has not been taken seriously by most critics (the great German historian Harnack is a noticeable exception). For, it is said, Acts presupposes the Gospel of Luke (Acts 1:1), and Luke presupposes Mark, and Mark is generally dated about 65. The Gospels of Luke and Matthew are usually put well after the fall of Jerusalem―80-90 being again a favorite depository. The main grounds for these judgments are (a) that Mark, according to tradition, represents in part at least, the committal to writing of Peter's preaching in Rome, and such a record would be more likely to be needed after his death (in fact one version of the tradition puts it after his 'departure'―though whether from life or from Rome is uncertain―but others say just the opposite); and (b) that Luke and Matthew, if not Mark, clearly reflect the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, which they say present, after the event, as prophecies on the lips of Jesus.

            Comment


            • #96
              Can We Trust the New Testament?
              Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


              ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

              How much weight we should in any case attach to the tradition that Mark depends on the preaching of Peter is debatable. I should be inclined to trust it, though to regard the connection with Mark's Gospel as we now have it as less direct. But in any case the dating of the Apostle's visit to Rome is quite uncertain. It is assumed to be at the end of his life, since he almost certainly died there, but Eusebius the Church historian, whose version is the only one to date the story, puts it during an earlier visit in the reign of the Emperor Claudius (AD 41―54) and indeed in the second year of that reign―and thus well before what would be required for an early dating of Acts. The first draft of St. Mark's Gospel could be as early as 45.

              Comment


              • #97
                Can We Trust the New Testament?
                Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


                ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

                With regard to the prophesies of the fall of Jerusalem, this is a matter of judgement. Are the details so precise as to require us to see them as compressed in the light of the events? Most scholars have thought so in regard to Luke 19.43f which has some very specific predictions of the siege and demolition of Jerusalem. In 21.20 too. Luke has in place of Mark's enigmatic phrase (derived from the book of Daniel), 'when you see "the abomination of desolation" usurping a place that is not his,' the words, 'When you see Jerusalem encircled by armies'. Again in 21.24 he has quite explicitly, 'They will fall at the sword's point; they will be carried captive into all countries; and Jerusalem will be trampled down by foreigners until their day has run its course'. These are generally taken as decisive evidence of prophecy by hindsight. But Dodd argued, conclusively in my opinion, that the details are derived not from what happened in AD 70 (there is no mention, for instance, of the most unforgettable incident, the description of the temple by fire) but rather from Old Testament language about the capture of Jerusalem in 586 BC. Quite independently, the Swedish scholar Bo Reicke has recently come to precisely the same conclusion―and then not only for Luke but also for Matthew as well.

                Comment


                • #98
                  Can We Trust the New Testament?
                  Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


                  ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

                  In Matthew the most suspicious piece of evidence looks to be that in 22.7: 'The king was furious; he sent troops to kill those murderers and set their town on fire'. As we said earlier, this is clearly a most inappropriate addition to the parable of the great supper (it is not in Luke's version of the story) and it was evidently added by the Church against the Jews. The sole question is whether the correspondence is so exact as to require the addition to be after the event. I would doubt it. Jewish prophecies which were unquestionably composed after the event (like the book of Baruch in the Apocrypha or the Apocalypse known as Baruch) go into much more precise detail, and if one really wants to see what such pseudo-prediction looks like, here is a Christian one from the so-called Sibylline Oracles: 'A Roman leader shall come to Syria, who shall burn down Jerusalem's temple with fire, and therewith slay many men, and shall waste the great land of the Jews'.

                  Comment


                  • #99
                    Can We Trust the New Testament?
                    Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


                    ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

                    This is precisely the sort of detail that one does not get in the New Testament. Moreover, it is difficult to see what purpose would be served by perpetuating, let alone creating, such prophecies long after the dust has settled, except to show Jesus to have been a prognosticator of uncanny accuracy. But then why did Matthew and Luke also include such notoriously unfulfilled prophesies as these: 'Before you have gone through all the towns of Israel the Son of Man will have come' (Matt. 10.23); 'There are some standing here who will not taste of death before they have seen the Son of Man coming in his kingdom' (Matt. 16.28; Luke 9.27); 'I tell you the present generation will live to see it all' (Matt. 24.34; Luke 21.32). If these Gospels really do belong to the period 80-90, that is fifty to sixty years after the crucifixion, it is surely difficult to explain why modifications after the non-event did not take place. Indeed, one of the few modifications―if that is the right way round to put it―Matthew made to the programme of the end of Mark 13 was actually to insert the final coming of Christ would follow immediately after' (Matt. 24.29; contrast Mark 13.24) the tribulation in Judea (on this interpretation the war of 66-70). This scarcely suggests that he was deliberately writing for the period of delay between the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the world! It seems far more likely that, if (as the form-critics have taught us to expect) sayings of Jesus were pointed up to serve the uses of the Church, it should be when they are relevant to the struggle ahead, not when it was all over.

                    Comment


                    • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                      Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


                      ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

                      The other thing that form-critics have rightly emphasized is that the Gospels are the product over a period of communities that collected and shaped material relevant to the needs of their developing life. This is not to deny the creative role of individual editors―particularly in the case of Luke, who describes his own aim and methods (1.1-4), and John. But, unlike the Epistles, the Gospels were not written for specific occasions at a moment of time. They appear to have grown from combining diverse traditions and to have passed through various stages and states. This I believe to be true of all the Gospels (it is quite likely, as many have thought, that Luke had already done a first draft of his Gospel before he came across Mark). But it is especially true of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew is in a sense a collector's piece, often holding together divergent traditions (e.g., about the coming of the Son of Man), which Luke has taken trouble to harmonize. Matthew also has material with good claim to belong to the most primitive tradition of the Palestinian Church (and which has affinities with the Epistle of James and the early Paul) combined with quasi-legendary matter and editorial developments that appear to be among the latest elements of the Synoptic tradition.

                      Comment


                      • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                        Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


                        ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

                        All this adds up to the conclusion that the Synoptic Gospels grew up together over a period of time in different centers and varied contexts of the early Christian Church. They did not simply follow each other in a straight line of succession, but incorporated overlapping traditions, both oral and written, without doubt influencing one another. I should not wish to assign overall priority to any, though I would judge that in general Mark probably preserves the preaching tradition (based perhaps on summaries of Peter's) in its most primitive state, while Matthew and Luke will at differing points take us back in the traditions of Jesus's teaching.

                        Comment


                        • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                          Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


                          ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

                          Where, however, I differ from most New Testament critics is in doubting whether this extended process requires to be dated nearly so late as current orthodoxy would suggest. I believe the period 40-60 (which was also the creative period of the Pauline preaching) satisfies the requirement well and that there is little or nothing that demands or suggests a later date―though developments in the liturgical and other life-proceses of the Church naturally went on, which are reflected in the later textual tradition. But there is nothing, as I see it, in Mark or Luke which requires a setting later than the period of missionary expansion covered by the Acts story.

                          Comment


                          • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                            Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


                            ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

                            With regard to Matthew, his Gospel shows all the marks of being produced for a community, and by a community, that needed to formulate its own position over against the main body of Pharisaic and Sadducaic Judaism (the latter, the priestly party, virtually disappearing after the demise of the temple ritual in 70). It is concerned with such questions as the interpretation of Scripture and the place of the Law, its proper attitude towards the temple and its sacrifices, the sabbath, fasting and prayer, Jewish food laws and purification rises, its rules for admission and the disciplining of offenders, for marriage and divorce, its policy towards Samaritan and Gentiles in a dominantly Jewish Church, and so on. These problems reflect a period when the requirements of co-existence compelled a clarification of what was the distinctively Christian line on a number of issues that could previously be taken for granted. This corresponds to the stage, in a later period of Church history, when the early Methodists in England were forced by events to cease regarding themselves simply as methodical Anglicans, loyal to the parish church and its structures as well as to their own class-meetings. At this point all kinds of questions of organization, of ministry and liturgy, doctrine and discipline, law and finance, present themselves afresh, as a 'society' or 'synagogue' takes on the burden of becoming a 'church'. But uneasy coexistence does not imply irrevocable break: indeed John Wesley claimed that he lived and died a priest of the Church of England. It is in some such interval that the Gospel of Matthew seems most naturally to fit. This is well illustrated by Matthew's characteristic interest (in 17.24-7) in what should be the Christian attitude to the half-shekel tax for upkeep of the temple. The teaching of Jesus is taken to be that 'as we do not want to cause difficulty for these people' the tax should be paid, even though Christians may rightly consider themselves free. This certainly does not argue a situation of open breach, rather a concern not to provoke one. In any case it clearly points to a time before 70. For after that this tax had to be paid to the upkeep of a pagan temple in Rome and would have had no bearing on the Jewish question (not to be confused with the issue of the payment of tribute to Caesar raised in Mark 13.12-17) which Jesus is represented as settling.

                            Comment


                            • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                              Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


                              ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

                              If therefore we place the development and emergence of the Synoptic Gospels in the period up to 60 or soon thereafter, it would narrow the gap between the crucifixion and the written records from some 35-70 years (on the usual reckoning) to little more than 30―with most of the material traceable a good deal further back. This would mean a gap of a single generation, comparable to the interval that now [as of 1977] separates us from the end of the second world war. Of course legends can grow in that time (witness the angels of Mons even within the first world war), and much development and reflection can take place. But it would mean that the mists of 'mythopaeic time' are a great deal less impenetrable than the cynicism of the foolish―or even the scepticism of the wise―would suggest.

                              Comment


                              • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                                Chapter 4: THE GENERATION GAP


                                ACTS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS

                                But there is still one significant part of the New Testament literature that we have not mentioned, the Gospel and Epistles of John. How does this fit into the picture? It was indeed from consideration forced upon me by the Fourth Gospel that I was compelled to look again at the old picture. To treat them in a separate chapter will also allow us to reassess the place of this Gospel today, which is, properly, of so much concern to the conservatism of the committed―not to mention the fundamentalism of the fearful.

                                Comment

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