Reflections on the Gospels, Part I: What They Are Not

 

            As we come to the close of yet another year, we have just passed through the Christmas season; and so, it is an appropriate time to reflect upon the man whose birth is celebrated by that season: Jesus of Nazareth, son of David, son of Abraham.  What do we know of him, and how?  Such questions would take entire libraries to explore fully, but this is a mere essay, and in it, I wish simply to explore a few thoughts that might help all of us think about these questions more clearly, without having to delve into the mountainous minutiae of ancient history.

            The first thing to recall is that Jesus is a figure of history, and so we should ask: what are our historical sources for learning about him?  For many, especially Christians, the first thing that comes to mind is the set of four biographies of Jesus which begin the New Testament, called the Gospels.  However, there are 23 other books in the New Testament, and, read with care, they also can give us some information about Jesus, especially the book of Acts, which presents itself as a sequel to the Gospel of Luke (for example, it is in Acts that Paul quotes Jesus as saying “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” a statement found only there in the whole New Testament).

            Of course, the Church did not stop with the writing of the New Testament, so a third type of source, in addition to the Gospels and the other New Testament books, would be all the other early Christian writings, which themselves would take up several volumes in printed form.  Now, some might naively assume that the Gospels, or perhaps the New Testament in general, are our only sources for the life of Jesus, and might only grudgingly admit that something useful might also be found in the other early Christian writings; in truth, the Christians are only one of several sources where we may find mention of Jesus.  The three other types of sources for historical mentions of Jesus are: Jewish writers; Pagan writers who were neither Christians nor Jews; and those who, though they claimed to follow Jesus after a fashion, held beliefs deemed heretical by the Church; such were the Gnostics, for example, who composed many a “gospel” account about Jesus and his early followers, but they were rejected because they fit not with the Church’s own memory of the true teachings of Jesus.    

            The bulk of what we know about Jesus comes, of course, from the four Gospels.  What can we say about them?  Are they accurate?  How can we know?  A little logical reasoning can help us here.  There are three live logical possibilities: that the Gospels are the accurate record of the life of the man Jesus; that there was a real Jesus, but the Gospels fail to record his life accurately, giving us a legendary character only vaguely connected to the real, historical Jesus; that there never was a real Jesus, and the character in the Gospels is purely an invention, a myth.

            Which of these is the best description of what is the case?  The prima facie evidence is very much against the last of these, Jesus as myth, being true.  Jesus is mentioned multiple times in multiple sources in the first few centuries AD, Pagan, Christian, and Jewish.  Some sources were positive, some were negative, and some really found the whole thing quite tiresome, but not once in all that time did any of these people suggest that Jesus never existed at all.  This is strong evidence of a real historical memory of a real person, such that no one ever thought to claim that, like the emperor with no clothes, the Christians really had no Jesus to speak of.  Only after shifts in thinking like the Renaissance and the Enlightenment did some become so dismissive of the ancients as to think them capable of inventing historical figures out of pure imagination.

            Indeed, to dismiss Jesus as entirely an invention would create more problems than it would solve, starting with: if there was no real Jesus,  exactly how did Christianity get started?  If there had been no Jesus, no crucifixion, no resurrection, where did these ideas come from, and why were these men and women willing to die for the claim that these events did really happen?  Seen in its proper historical context, the story of Jesus, far from fulfilling the old idea, “if he had not lived, it would have been necessary to invent him,” is actually far too strange to have been invented.  A Messiah who, rather than leading his people to military victory against their oppressors, allows himself to be slain by them?  A dead Messiah who then was raised from the dead and assumed alone to heaven?  The resurrection from the dead was expected by many Jews at the time, but it was supposed to happen to everyone at once, at the end of time.  No one expected one person to be raised ahead of the rest.  If we claim there was no Jesus at all, much less a crucifixion and a resurrection, where did all this come from, and how did so many come to believe in it so passionately and so quickly?  And why, if the stories in the Gospels are pure invention, would they have the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection be women, a class of person at the time considered too flighty for their testimony to be admissible in court? (It is a telling detail that when St. Paul reports the many appearances of Jesus in First Corinthians 15, no women are mentioned; this is no contradiction, just a quiet exclusion from the witness list of those not likely to help the case—a wise move for any barrister.)  We must bear in mind that the Jewish writer Josephus, who fought in the Jewish revolt against Roman rule that ended in AD 70, and wrote several works of history in the early second century, tells of the killing of James, the brother of Jesus in the 60’s AD.  If there had been no Jesus, had there been a James?  If not, why would Josephus write about them as real figures of history just a few years later?

            Furthermore, if the Gospels had been either wholly invented myth, or mere legendary accretion around a kernel of historical memory, they would look different than they do.  C.S. Lewis once remarked that, as a lifelong reader of myth, he could say unequivocally that the Gospels were not of that genre, and anybody who knows aught of mythology or legend can say the same.  Myths and legends make their heroes larger than life, ten feet tall and bulletproof.  Jesus is no such thing in the Gospels.  Though born to a virgin (a miracle, yes, but a quiet one), when he is born, he does not speak prophetic words just after being born, as he does in some heretical accounts of his birth; he does not strangle serpents sent to kill him in his crib, as the infant Hercules does.  Instead, he is bundled up like any infant, and laid in a makeshift crib that is really a feeding trough for animals.[1]  When his life is threatened by King Herod, Jesus performs no protective miracle—his parents flee the region with him until the threat is gone.  The legendary King Arthur, in some tales, invades Rome; the Jesus of the Gospels says “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,” yet still gets crucified.  Even when he comes back from the dead, it is to comfort and further teach his disciples, not to wreak vengeance on his enemies.  Yes, he performs miracles, but lots of historical sources report miracles, and they are not dismissed as sources of history.  Only someone truly omniscient could know enough to be certain miracles are impossible (i.e. only someone with God’s level of knowledge could be certain God never acts in history).[2]  Two strong evidences for the reality of Jesus’ miracles are: 1. They appear completely non-mythic: all are performed after he starts teaching at age 30; none are done to show off, but rather out of compassion, or with reluctance, or to obey his mother (like the good Jewish boy he was); he is quiet about them, and urges others to be so, too. 2. Even his enemies admitted he performed signs and wonders, they only differed as to their interpretation of them—they called him a sorcerer, or demon-possessed.

            There is more to say about the Gospels, but this is the place to begin: they do not read like myth or legend.  A further examination will reveal their true genre to be that of history, more specifically, biography.  But that is for another time, another year.  

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[1] A “manger” takes its name from the French word—spelled the same way—which means “to eat.”

[2] For a great examination of the question of the possibility of miracles, cf. C.S. Lewis’ book Miracles.

Swiftly Seen Shakespeare III: Who is Sylvia? What is She?

 

            Of all the things I learned from watching the complete dramatic works of Shakespeare, no doubt one of the most interesting has been my realization that Shakespeare made a distinction in his use of language that we have since forgotten how to use, to the massive impoverishment of our capacities as both thinkers and speakers.  If you watch much of Shakespeare, it will eventually become obvious to you—even if you are a slow learner like me—that in Shakespeare’s language, “who is he?” and “what is he?” are completely separate and quite different questions.  The first is simply the request, “Please point out which of these men bears this name.”  The second requests a description of the man and his qualities.  For us, today, poor, benighted souls that we are, this distinction is lost, and we often use “Who is he?” for both of these inquiries, or for the second alone.  If we wish specifically to ask the first, without getting the second in the bargain, we are forced into such awkward locutions as “Which of these men is Benedick?”

            This, among other things, explains one rather foolish bit of exegesis some have foisted upon a rather mysterious section in The Lord of the Rings.  While in the house of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, Frodo asks the lady of the house, “Who is Tom Bombadil?”  Her response is simply the two words, “He is.”  Those of us who understand Shakespeare’s distinction realize that we should imagine Goldberry gesturing in Old Tom’s direction as she says this, for though Frodo may have meant to request an explanation of what sort of creature Tom is, she has no doubt taken his question in the Shakespearean sense, and merely indicated which of the beings present is called “Tom Bombadil.”  After reading the Bard, I now see that Frodo should have asked “What is Tom Bombadil?”  I suspect Tolkien is having a little fun with his heroes here, having them make a subtle mistake of interrogation which he and Goldberry both understand, but the hobbits and many readers do not.  Goldbery’s response is the sort of gentle rebuke—if it is a rebuke, rather than, as I take it to be, pure linguistic innocence—we find when we as children mistakenly ask “Can I do this?”, and we receive the adult response, “I don’t know?  Can you?”

            The proper question is: “May I use the chainsaw?  Of course you may!”[1] 

            However, since most people fail to see that Goldberry is simply answering the question Frodo has asked, rather than the one he intended to ask, they find some deep theological meaning in those two words: He is.  In Christian tradition, the expression “I am” has come to be associated with Jesus’ claim to be God—for God said to Moses at the burning bush “I am…therefore, tell them, I am has sent you.[2]”  Thus, when Jesus says “Before Abraham was, I am,” he is seen as laying claim to being the eternal Creator who sent Moses with the message, “Let my people go!”

            Thus, when Goldberry says “He is” of Tom Bombadil, some have seen in this some suggestion that Old Tom is a manifestation of Eru, the One, Creator of Middle-Earth.  But, in the words of Daniel “Oz” Osborne, “I call that a radical interpretation of the text.”  Rather than see here some deep theological idea which I think would run rather counter to Tolkien’s own deep devout Catholicism, we should instead see yet another bit of linguistic humor, a variation on the old gag of answering the question asked, rather than the one intended.  And Shakespeare, with his distinction between “Who is Sylvia?” and “What is she?” (the two questions  occur precisely in that order in a song in one play, so they are clearly different questions) helps us to see what is really going on here.  This illustrates the point of the great Oscar Wilde: life is too important to be taken seriously.  A light heart and a sense of humor is necessary if we are to avoid excessive overinterpretation of the text.  Hanlon’s Razor states: never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity; likewise, we should not go searching for deep theological mysteries when the presumption of a pun will suffice to explain the text, and fits the preferences of the author better, anyway.

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[1] Thanks to an old episode of The Jeff Foxworthy Show for this joke.

[2] Yes, I know it probably should be translated in the future tense—but this is about theological tradition, not Hebrew philology.