Robson Resurrection of Jesus

The Origins of the Tradition and its Meaning for Today
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4835-4682-7
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 205 Seiten

Discussion of the Resurrection usually centres on whether it was an historical event. The Resurrection stories, primarily those of the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus to his disciples, are judged as to whether they are likely to be true. This approach will not do, for it ignores the bewildering complexity of the literature of the New Testament and of the differing - and not altogether consistent - patterns of thought represented in it. The Resurrection meant different things to different people at different times during the first century. The earliest Christians had to find ways of explaining what to them was the vital (eternal?) significance of Jesus of Nazareth, and the New Testament writings reflect the various ways in which the 'Jesus event' was interpreted during these formative years. Resurrection ideas formed part of this interpretative process. This book is a serious analytical study of the resurrection language and stories of the New Testament. For the benefit of non-theologians it begins with two chapters on the composition of the Gospels and the inter-relatedness of the first three. There follows a thorough critical study of the texts relating to the Resurrection. The conclusion is that it is the message of the Resurrection that matters (e.g. that the truths found in Jesus are eternal truths) and not its historicity.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Robson, Alan

Leseproben

CHAPTER 1 UNDERSTANDING THE TEXTS If we are to understand what is said about the Resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament we must first know something about the nature of the texts in which we find this tradition, and how such texts are to be read and understood. In this study we shall be concerned primarily with the gospels, but it will also be necessary to look at the Acts of the Apostles and some of St Paul’s epistles. All the Pauline epistles had been written before the first gospel (Mark) appeared in about 65CE. This was followed by Matthew and Luke between about 75 and 85, and then by John, probably in the nineties of the first century. The Acts of the Apostles is a second volume to Luke’s Gospel but, although it was written late in the first century, some of the material in the earliest chapters comes from very early sources and gives us valuable insight into the preaching and teaching of the christian community in the earliest years and before the first of Paul’s epistles. This relative dating of the documents is important, because it enables us to compare the later tradition of the church with the earlier, and to gain some knowledge of how the tradition was actually developing. The most important documents for our purposes are the four gospels, and it is vital that we understand what sort of literature they are, how they were composed and what their purpose is. It is popularly supposed that the gospels are much easier to understand than the epistles. These latter, it is said, are full of abstract theological argument, whereas the gospels are mostly concrete stories. This observation is true as far as it goes, but concrete stories are not always as easy as might appear. It is possible to read Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels as entertaining stories without realising that it was written as a biting satire on eighteenth century society. Albert Camus’s ‘The Outsider’ appears to be the story of a feckless young man who comes to a tragic end, but Camus’s purpose in writing it was to give concrete expression to his philosophy of the ‘the Absurd’ as expounded in abstract terms in his ‘Myth of Sisyphus’. George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ is on the face of it an unlikely but amusing and sometimes disturbing story of farmyard animals taking over the running of the farm, but it is of course a thinly disguised account of the evils of totalitarian government. Similarly, the gospels look like straightforward accounts of the life of Jesus from his conception and birth (in Mark, from his baptism) to his death and resurrection. Sadly, this is how the church has encouraged us to understand them, but it is quite untrue. Superficially, the gospels look like ‘lives’ of Jesus, biographies, but they are no such thing, and this is the first point we have to grasp if we are to understand them. These works are known as gospels, and the word ‘gospel’ means a proclamation of good news. So each of the gospels is the proclamation of a message. To this extent Mark’s ‘Gospel’ is more like Camus’s ‘The Outsider’ or Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ than, for example, Roy Jenkins’s ‘Life of Churchill’. Camus was preaching a philosophy of life, and Orwell was preaching the evil of certain kinds of political philosophy, like Soviet Communism. Similarly, Mark was preaching a new understanding of God (and therefore of the meaning of life) based on the events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth. He has a message for us, and it is the whole book that presents the message. We must therefore study his gospel in its entirety in order to discern the message. Matthew, Luke and John followed the example of Mark in presenting the ‘gospel’ in this particular form, and they did so because each of them had his own way of understanding and presenting the message; each had his own angle on it. The Synoptic Gospels and the Priority of Mark The first three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are known as the ‘synoptic gospels’. This is because all three have much the same material in them and are clearly inter-related. They can therefore usefully be studied alongside one another; they can be ‘seen together’, which is what the word ‘synoptic’ really means. When we study them in this way we find that there has obviously been copying from one to another, and it becomes clear that Mark was the first to be written. Matthew used Mark’s gospel as the framework of his own, copying into his own work most of what he found in Mark but frequently adding material not found in Mark. So most of what we read in Mark is found also in Matthew, and this led to the comparative neglect of Mark in the worship and teaching of the church. It also led to the belief, expressed by St Augustine of Hippo, that Matthew wrote first and that Mark produced an abbreviated and, by implication, inferior version of Matthew. All the evidence suggests that this is quite wrong, for when we study Mark and Matthew side by side we find that where both have the same material it was actually Matthew who did the abbreviating. He did this no doubt to make room for all the additional material he was going to include, for in those days there was a limit to the length of any one scroll. We also find that Matthew from time to time improves on the Greek style of Mark’s text and, more interestingly, corrects what he sees as theologically or religiously unacceptable statements in Mark. There is therefore no doubt that Mark wrote first and was copied by Matthew. He was also copied by Luke, but here it seems that Luke produced the main framework of his gospel before making use of the text of Mark. Thus, whereas in Matthew we find that the text of Mark is fairly evenly distributed throughout his gospel - and therefore seems to have provided the main framework - in Luke the text of Mark is found in three blocks which seem to have been added after he had written his first draft. Luke, like Matthew, also altered Mark for reasons of literary or (as he saw it) theological propriety. The Material Shared by Matthew and Luke - ‘Q’ Much of the material in Matthew, Mark and Luke is therefore common to all three. The next discovery we make is that Matthew and Luke have other material in common which does not come from Mark. A careful study of this material in its contexts in the two gospels makes it very unlikely that either has copied from the other. This led to the conclusion many years ago that they must both have taken it from another written work which no longer exists, and this conclusion is still widely accepted. This hypothetical work has always been called ‘Q’ (from the German, Quelle = source). There is, however, no reason to posit such an unknown written source. Most of the verses (about 200) assigned to Q are far from identical in wording, and this would suggest that they have come down to our gospel authors by different lines of oral tradition. This, rather than a written source, would account for similarity of substance but not identity of wording. Where the wording really is identical we find ourselves with sayings of Jesus which are so memorable in terms of their structure and/or rhythm that they were not likely to be changed in the course of oral tradition. An example of this is Jesus’ saying: ‘Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened’. (Matt7f // Lk 11:9f). Such a saying, if it is remembered at all, will always be remembered in its original form. The theme is continued in the verses which follow, but now we find that while the substance of them is the same, the detail has become confused. Matthew continues (7:9-11): Or what man of you, if his son asks him for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?’ But Luke reads (11:11-12): ‘What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?’ The disagreement over details makes it impossible to suppose that these verses of Matthew and Luke were copied from a written document, but the differences are precisely the sort which arise when traditions are handed on by word of mouth. We conclude, therefore, that the material which is common to Matthew and Luke but which was not derived from Mark came to them through different lines of oral tradition. It is almost certain, of course, that both Matthew and Luke found this material in a written form, but what we are saying is that what had once been the same material (the same sayings of Jesus, for example), had become diversified during the early period of oral tradition and the differing versions of the same material were given permanence when the oral traditions came to be preserved in writing. Matthew and Luke probably did copy this ‘Q’ material from written documents, but they were not, as the Q hypothesis claims, the same document. There is no need for the Q hypothesis of a common written source, but the symbol ‘Q’ is still quite useful for identifying the material which is common (in substance, and sometimes in wording) to Matthew and Luke but which does not come from Mark. Material Peculiar to Matthew or to Luke - M and L When we have taken account of what Matthew and Luke copied from Mark, and what they have in common from other sources (Q), there remains some material which is found only in Matthew or only in Luke. This material is referred to as ‘M’ (Matthew) and ‘L’ (Luke). Not surprisingly, we find that the content of M and L tend...