The Historical Jesus and the Jesus within History

I asked the question -- How much history is there in the Bible?   I did so in response to questions about the historical natures (or lack thereof) of the accounts of the healing ministry of Jesus.  The modern view of such things is rooted in David Hume's demands for empirical evidence.  Hume was a bit like Thomas, he wasn't going to believe until he saw evidence in his own life experience of something similar occurring.  Hume's skepticism isn't all bad -- after all there are lots of things that people claim to see or experience, that are foreign to my experience, and so I'm just a bit skeptical.  You see, I'm skeptical about UFO's and Big Foot.  I'm also a bit skeptical about a lot of what passes as faith healing.  There are, after all, a lot of legs being lengthened out there.  But, let's leave that off for a moment and return to the question of Jesus and history.

Ultimately, without video recordings we have to take somebody's word that events happened in the life of Jesus.  We have to take the word of the authors of the four gospels, for instance, works that were written anonymously some forty to sixty years after the fact (or not fact).  As we think about this question, maybe it would be worth while to change language for a moment.

We speak of the "historical Jesus," by which  we understand the Jesus who lived in history.  To use the criteria of the Jesus Seminar, it's the Jesus that we can agree existed in time and space, after the "post-Easter" interpretations get removed.  Different scholars, from Borg to Wright have their own sense of what this entails.  And all is good, unless we decide that there is one and only one absolute historical reconstruction.  As William Brosend writes in his book The Preaching of Jesus: "It is when one moves from, say, the "real" Jesus to the "only" Jesus, when reconstructions of Jesus within history are presented as historical and/or biblical absolutes, that a line has been crossed" (p. 3).

I appreciate Brosend's attempt at offering an alternate way of looking at the question of Jesus and history.

It is better, I have come to believe, to speak of our reconstructions as presenting Jesus "within history" rather than "the historical Jesus."  The former formulation admits to distinction between the biblical and the historical, without claims to whole and simple truths.  All believers have, to varying degrees, some idea or set of ideas about who Jesus was and is for them.  This is especially true for preachers.  To speak and write of Jesus "within history" is to make explicit that understanding, without making claims for Jesus "as he actually was," which is an unrecoverable reality from a historical perspective, and a not necessarily helpful one from a homiletical perspective.  (p. 3)

Brosend offers this statement as a way of focusing on the matter of Jesus' preaching, understanding that since we don't have recordings or full transcripts, we must rely on the way in which the authors of the gospels told the story.  Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright have different understandings of the way in which Jesus existed within history.  Neither can "prove" their version to be true, but both make there best attempt at understanding how Jesus existed within history.  You and I will have to make our own decisions.  Some among us will lean toward the mythical while others toward the historical.  We'll make our decisions on the basis of what we believe is possible.  We might call that the "Hume scale."   

Genesis for Everyone Parts One and Two -- Review

GENESIS FOR EVERYONE: Part One, Chapters 1-16. By John Goldingay. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010. 197 pp. GENESIS FOR EVERYONE: Part Two, Chapters 17-50. By John Goldingay. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 186 pp.

Genesis is the beginning of the story, starting creation and moving toward the creation of a people called Israel. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah and Rachel, and Joseph and brothers, these are the foundational stories, but the distance between that book and our day is quite wide and thus we need good and helpful guides. John Goldingay, David Hubbard Professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, seeks to offer us that guide.

The title of the book defines the audience quite well. This a set of commentaries – two in all – that focus on Genesis, written with a broad set of readers in mind. It doesn’t presuppose any expertise in the Bible, even providing at the end of each volume a glossary of words that might need some defining. A similar set of commentaries on the New Testament is being written by N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham.

In style and scope these commentaries remind this reader of William Barclay’s Daily Bible Study series that Westminster Press published a generation earlier. The difference in these two approaches is that while Barclay tended toward historical and cultural analogies, Goldingay largely integrates his commentary with stories from his life – family, friends, students. Each set of passages is usually introduced with a story from life, drawing the reader into the ancient story through the modern one. Whether that is helpful, only the reader can decide.

In terms of approach to the text, Goldingay is a scholarly British evangelical. He views the text as divinely inspired and guided, but that doesn’t mean that he takes the text with wooden literalness. He recognizes that the text Genesis came into existence over time, at the hand of multiple authors, though he doesn’t go into any detail as to the nature of that process. Indeed, he doesn’t deal with traditional authorship questions – JEDP. One would assume that the author doesn’t believe that such a discussion would further the conversation about interpreting the text at hand. Suffice it to say that God was involved and that the number of authors was several.

Goldingay sees history in the Genesis account, but he also sees parables. He likes the word parable rather than myth, due to the way many use the word myth (in a negative fashion). As he reads the text, he’ll suggest where the story is moving into the realm of history or the realm of parables, recognizing that often there is a gray area. Genesis 1 and 2 and the story of Noah, they are much more likely to be parabolic, stories that teach us about God and our relationship to God. As we get toward Abraham and the stories that follow, they are more in the realm of history, though even here there is some room to maneuver.

With regard to Genesis 1, which is often at the center of debate, he writes:

God did not design Genesis 1 to tell us what a camera would have caught if it had been present to film creation. Faulting it for failing to do so misses the point, and defending it to show that it does do so also misses the point. We have no need to try to show that science is wrong and that actually the world was created in six days, just a few thousand years ago. Equally we have no need to try to conform the "facts" of Genesis with science, for instance, by suggesting that a "day" in Genesis need not mean twenty-four hours but could cover a longer period (1:27-28).

To try to make the biblical text conform to science, or the reverse, simply misses the point that the text (and God) intend to make. The point he wants to get across is that this text has meaning for us, in our day.

If we needn’t be concerned about history and science in Genesis 1 and 2, which he sees as being a historical parable. To say this doesn’t mean that it’s not true, only that the truth is carried in a picture. But as we move along there is a movement, around Genesis 11 and 12, where parable begins to merge and then give way to history. But again, the point is not the historicity, but the story of God’s desire to reconcile and bless the world that God created (and recreated after the days of Noah). Of Abraham, he writes that here the story becomes more about real people and real places. He notes that the scholarly consensus has moved back and forth as to whether Abraham existed, so it’s wise he says, not to “hitch one’s wagon too firmly to whatever is the current scholarly consensus. Ultimately, he suggested that there will never be the kind of historical evidence that can make for “definitive judgments” (1:141). But, Goldingay sees in the way the story progresses signs that it is more than a parable.

Goldingay is open and yet cautious. Yes, I would use the word cautious rather than conservative. He seeks to anchor his commentary in the scholarly mainstream, but doesn’t push the envelope too far. There are not many surprises to be found here, but then this is written not for scholars but for lay people seeking to understand an ancient text so that they might find instruction for the faith.

On a personal level, I was interested in seeing how he handled the Sodom and Gomorrah story. He starts out his comments with an acknowledgment that this text stands at the center of contemporary debates. He writes about friendships with homosexuals, and recognizes their humanity and decency. As to where he stands on the issue, he writes:

I don’t take the view that same-sex relationships are just as valid as heterosexual relationships, but neither do I think they are inherently more terrible than various other ways of falling short of God’s vision for sexual relationships (2:27).

With that introduction to his own sensibilities, he goes on to say that this passage doesn’t speak to the nature of same-sex relationships that are under discussion today. The outcry that reaches God’s ears, that leads to judgment isn’t the sexual behavior of the people of Sodom, but rather “the violent way weak people are being treated by powerful people. The implication is that the issue in Sodom is the affliction of the powerless by the powerful” (2:28). The attempted rape of Lot’s visitors is just one more example of the violence and faithlessness of this city.

The book of Genesis is central to the Jewish and the Christian faith traditions. In it we find the roots of our faith. We hear of creation and covenant. We receive our commissionings from God and yet we see the ways in which we can be faithless. Goldingay, is in the end, a trustworthy guide. One need not agree at all points, to find in these two volumes a lively and instructive commentary on this most important text of scripture.

Genesis as Historical Parable

We've had a number of conversations here about the interpretation of Genesis.  Do we take it as history?  As science?  Should we read it literally or metaphorically?  The conversation becomes complex and conflicted, because how we answer the question has implications for other questions.  If we take Genesis as an explicitly historical text, especially chapters 1-11, which seem to have a mythical sense to them, then what do we make of the scientific evidence that challenges these assertions?

One way of handling the creation stories is to see them as a "historical parable."  This is the suggestion of Dr. John Goldingay, Professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary.   Fuller is evangelical, but it is not fundamentalist.  Having earned two degrees from Fuller, I can vouch for the fact that its biblical faculty would not take Genesis 1-3 as straightforward history.  So, what does he mean by this?   He writes in his new commentary on Genesis -- written for a lay audience -- Genesis for Everyone, vol. 1 (WJK, 2010):

To describe Genesis 1 as a creation "myth" is misleading.  One reason is that the word myth is used in many different ways; it's a confusing word.  But another reason is that calling something a myth is usually an insult, because it implies it is untrue.  I would rather call Genesis 1 a parable.  Describing it as the cosmos's "line of descent" hints at something like that; the expression usually refers to a list of a person's descendants.  It is a term that points to an account of the world's creation.  It is a metaphor.

So, if it's metaphor, what does that mean for us?  He continues:

God did not design Genesis 1 to tell us what a camera would have caught if it had been present to film creation.  Faulting it for failing to do so misses the point, and defending it to show that it does do so also misses the point.  We have no need to try to show that science is wrong and that actually the world was created in six days, just a few thousand years ago.  Equally we have no need to try to conform the "facts" of Genesis with science, for instance, by suggesting that a "day" in Genesis need not mean twenty-four hours but could cover a longer period.  When we do that, we obscure the story's own point in picturing God doing a week's work and then having a day off.  We have no need to try to prove that evolution is untrue or alternatively to try to show that Genesis can be reconciled with it.  All this means focusing on concerns other than the concerns God had in inspiring the story.  (pp. 27-28). 

I appreciate this idea of parable.  It does have a stronger sense to it than does myth, which as Goldingay points out, has negative connotations.  It also allows us to stay away from harmonizing tactics that lack credibility.  Finally, it seeks to take the creation story on its own terms as a remembrance of God's act of creation.