N.T. Wright on Jesus Studies from "The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions"

N.T. Wright on Jesus Studies

From Marcus Borg & N.T. Wright, "The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions"

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Part of the challenge of history comes from allowing suspicion a proper role. Suspicion, that is, of the texts themselves, of one's colleagues' readings, and particularly of one's own. However, a caution is necessary. The guild of New Testament studies has become so used to working with a hermeneutic of suspicion that we find ourselves trapped in our own subtleties. If two ancient writers agree about something, that proves one got it from the other. If they seem to disagree, that proves that one or both are wrong. If they say an event fulfilled biblical prophecy, they made it up to look like that. If an event or saying fits a writer's theological scheme, that writer invented it. If there are two accounts of similar events, they are a "doublet" (there was only one event); but if a singular event has anything odd about it, there must have been two events, which are now conflated. And so on. Anything to show how clever we are, how subtle, to have smoked out the reality behind the text. But, as any author who has watched her or his books being reviewed will know, such reconstruction again and again miss the point, often wildly. If we cannot get it right when we share a culture, a period, and a language, it is highly likely that many of our subtle reconstructions of ancient texts and histories are our own unhistorical fantasies, unrecognized only because the writers are long since dead and cannot answer back. Suspicion is all very well; there is also such a thing as a hermeneutic of paranoia. Somebody says something; they must have a motive; therefore they must have made it up. Just because we are rightly determined to avoid a hermeneutic of credulity, that does not mean there is no such thing as appropriate trust, or even readiness to suspend disbelief for a while, and see where that gets us. (pp. 17-18)

 

 

 

            Almost all scholars still believe that the earlier the material, the more likely it is to bring us into contact with historical bedrock. This assumption is by no means always justified, but let us remain with it for the moment. It at once opens us the long-standing problem about the sources that, whatever one's prejudices, are bound to play a large role at some point: the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).

            Further stages of investigation are frequently undertaken. Prior to the writing of the gospels and their sources, the material probably circulated in oral forms, which can be studied in terms of their likely settings. When the gospel writers used their sources, they can be presumed to have selected, adapted, and arranged the material.  A three-stage development can then be postulated: (1) the shaping of preliterary oral traditions; (2) the collection of oral traditions into literary sources; (3) the collection and editing of these literary sources into polished gospels. In case this were not already sufficiently complex, it is frequently supposed that we can and should also investigate further hypothetical stages of the history of Jesus traditions between these three.

            If all this worked, and if most scholars agreed about it, it would be fine. But it doesn't, and they don't, and it isn't. Despite frequent claims, a century of research has failed to reach anything like consensus on a single one of the stages in question, let alone on the hypothetical developments in between. Thus:

 

1. There are dozens of different proposals about how to analyze the forms of the early tradition and about what elements of the life of the early church they may reflect. None commands widespread agreement.

 

2. There are at least two widely held, variously developed, and mutually incompatible theories about the literary sources of the synoptic gospels: (a) The majority still hold that Mark was written first  and that behind the passages in which  Matthew and Like overlap with each other but not with Mark was a source that scholars call Q. A vocal minority within this majority claims to distinguish different stages in the development of Q; many others, though believing firmly in Q, offer radically different explanations of its origin or, alternatively (like Marcus [Borg]), regard all such further theories as at best unprovable. (b) A minority, however, hold that Matthew was written first and was used by both Mark and Luke (so that Q never existed). Further, several who agree with the majority on Marcan priority agree with the minority that the overall between non-Markan passages in Matthew and Luke is better explained by Luke's use of Matthew than by a common source.

 

3. Mutually incompatible theories abound as to where, when, and why the synoptic gospels came to final form. Since there is no agreement about sources, there is no agreement as to how and why the different evangelists used them. If, for instance, we believe that Matthew used Mark, we can discuss Matthew's theology on the basis of his editing of Mark. If we don't believe Matthew used Mark, we can't.

 

4. In the nature of he case, if there is no agreement about how the tradition developed in these major stages, there is no chance of agreement on possible levels or layers in between.

 

            One reason for the continuing impasse on these questions is that they are often addressed, and solutions to them proposed, with more than half an eye on the probable outcome for the supposedly second-order questions concerning Jesus. The Q theory came to birth as a part of a conservative response to radical nineteenth-century skepticism; it provided, so it was said, a reliable and early source for Jesus' sayings. Now, however, some who promote it do so in the hope that, by isolating a hypothetical "early Q", they may offer a radically alternative vision of Jesus and early Christianity to that which appears in the synoptic tradition as a whole. Similarly, Marcan priority has sometimes been used as a way of affirming that the early church preserved a memory of Jesus' career, at least in outline; Matthean priority is now sometimes presented as a way of ensuring the authority of sayings (parables, for instance) which might otherwise be suspect as occurring only in one source, and that a late one. And so on, and so on. (pp. 20-22)