A Facebook thread began with

When somebody asks me ‘Was Jesus God?’ I usually turn the question around. ‘Is it true that the living God was uniquely and personally present in Jesus?’
(Tom Wright).

Then, some of these responses:

Murray: Rowland: why do you suppose Wright turns the question around like that? Is he trying to avoid the theological complexities inherent in trying to explain the Trinity, do you think? It doesn’t seem to me that he’s trying to evade the divinity of Christ, so what is he about then?

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RC: Murray, start here (to confuse the issue a little more) – http://jmm.org.au/articles/19173.htm

Then http://jmm.org.au/articles/18677.htm

Then http://1monthtomeetjesus.blogspot.com/2008/03/was-jesus-god.html

And then maybe this – http://jmm.org.au/articles/19064.htm

More to come after my afternoon nap maybe…

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Murray: Re those links; very interesting. I suspect it amounts to Wright believing that one can’t say everything about Jesus relationship to the Father in one simple statement. A conversation between Wright and Rohr on this one might be interesting!

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[Another friend]‎@ Murray – on the value of Funk’s writings – you forgot Geza Vermes whom I also quoted. How DOES one get ONE God out of Jesus’ statement “I am going to YOUR God and MY God”? It assumes that Jesus has a God and that this God is the same as our God. If Jesus is God then that is impossible. Jesus is not going to himself but to God who is not himself. Jesus’ greatest commandment likewise points to a God who is not Jesus but other to him. If Jesus is God and is going to a God that assumes TWO Gods and NOT one God – but the Shema says ONE God. Who are we to believe? Jesus and the Shema or man-made dogma about a supposed trinity and a claim that Jesus is God though he never came out and actually said “I am God”. As a CHRISTian I follow the Christ OF God over man-made dogma.

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[Another friend]: Geza Vermes is the Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University .

Murray Hogg: My point is that Vermes and Funk are hardly the only two voices on the historicity of John’s Gospel. For what it’s worth, I’ve been doing post-grad studies on John’s Gospel for the last four years so I know a little bit about the issue and, frankly, the idea that GosJ is a late fabrication just isn’t so robust a hypothesis that I feel compelled to fall down in awe before either Funk or Vermes’ opinion. It’s especially questionable when it’s realized that those who advance it have their own theological axes to grind. It’s especially, especially questionable when somebody like Raymond Brown – who is one of the top half dozen Johannine scholars of the last hundred years – rejects it.

I will say, for the record, that I have tremendous respect for Vermes, but to say his opinion as cited above really doesn’t reflect a strong grasp of recent scholarship on John would be putting it kindly.

What I find particularly confusing, I must say, is the insistence that John 20:17 should compel me to some sort of theological conclusion when, by your own argument, it’s an utterly unreliable text. I trust you see my point?

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Rob Haskell: I stumbled into this discussion a little late! I suggest a two tiered approach: 1) what does the New Testament say about Jesus. A pretty darn good case can be made that it presents hims as “what God is” (not to burden the discussion with anachronisms). 2) there then arises the question as to the veracity of the text. Much more complicated, of course. But I think the deity of Jesus at least deserves to be treated as a solidly biblical notion, whatever you may think of the Bible. Specially if we allow the author of John to speak (“before Abraham was, I am” is I think a fair instance of Jesus openly claiming to be God).

But I also think there is much NT evidence that goes unnoticed. Ex – the way hymns in Rev.4-5 equate the lamb and the one who sits on the throne. Ex. Paul’s habit of “kurios replacement” where kurios (God) in the LXX seamlessly becomes kurios (Jesus) in the NT, as in “the day of the Lord” and many other examples (See Gordon Fee’s Pauline Christology). Ex: the way in which Jesus claims the obedience that is due to God in the story of the rich young ruler (“come and follow me” replaces the first 4 commandments). Personally, I think the evidence is very rich and compelling, though to be sure it is not as clearly stated as Christians tend to state it after some 2000 years of thinking about it.

Rob Haskell Again, I emphasize that I accept the entire canon of the NT. So when I argue for the deity of Christ, I am convinced by Revelation and John. Fair enough if you aren’t. But I do think that the canonical NT presents Jesus as God. In terms that you will probably agree with, I’d like to say: SOME PEOPLE in the first century, who also happened to write books of the NT, believed that Jesus was God. I’d also add this thought, which I thing NT Wright would also endorse (since the discussion began with him): Why did they think that?

But to the challenge! I don’t know that I can really “prove” anything from the Bible, granting that what constitutes textual proof is itself a minefield. I’m also nervous that if I do come up with a good argument you will say that that part was added by the tradition, or some such thing. But take a look at how Mark introduces Jesus in 1:1-3: John is in the dessert preaching the return of Yahweh according to Isaiah 40 and telling his listeners to prepare for his return. Mark is the voice in the desert preparing the way. In that prophecy it is clearly Yahweh who will return to his people. But when Yahweh does show up, fulfilling that prophecy, lo and behold! it’s… the man Jesus Christ. BTW, the story of the rich young ruler also appears in Mark (10) and I already mentioned it in my first entry. Here the “why do you call me good, only God is good” is a pointer. Combined with the fact that Jesus wraps up the first four (god-ward) of the 10 commandments into following him, the point is: “You call me good, doesn’t that suggest I’m… (and you should follow me)?”

Murray Hogg: ‎’To us Jews the Fourth Gospel is the most Jewish of the four’
Dr. Israel Abrahams, Reader in Rabbinics, University of Cambridge

Here’s a nice overview of the Fourth Gospel highlighting why Abrahams said what he did (above);

http://corthodoxy.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/an-introduction-to-the-gospel-of-john/

The bottom line of this is that every time the Gospel of John says something about first century Judaism that can be checked he turns out to be absolutely correct.

John treats “the Jews” no more harshly than the OT prophets treat Israel. Clearly the OT prophets weren’t working with an anti-semitic agenda, nor were they trying to curry favour with the gentiles. If the argument doesn’t work for them, it doesn’t work for John – regardless of what subsequent use people have made of the account.

Let me point out that the very facts you mention: that Jesus and his followers were all Jews works against the idea that the author of John was trying to distance himself from Judaism by freely concocting his account. Why, if John was trying to paint Christianity as anti-Jewish, he did not have Jesus himself making a clear statement to that effect? In my opinion, your thesis of fabrication fails precisely because the Gospel doesn’t say the sort of things I would expect it to say were your thesis true.

Take, for instance, the thesis that John wants to portray Jesus as divine. If the author of John is a gentile, trying to push a gentile agenda, including all of the gentile ideas, then why isn’t he more clear about it? Why doesn’t the Jesus of John’s Gospel say “I am God” clearly and unambiguously IF the author of the gospel was prepared to fabricate material to suit his theological agenda?

And why, if John IS an anti-semite trying to make Jews the enemy – why does he have NO clear statement from Jesus to that effect? Why in John 12:20 when Greeks came to Jesus seeking an audience does the author of John not take the opportunity to present a clear and consist statement that the Gospel is now for the Gentiles? Why, for that matter, does he claim to be an eye-witness and, by implication, a Jew himself.

And why, on your thesis, do we find such passages as Matthew 27:25 in the Synoptics – the clear point of which is to portray the rejection of Jesus by the Jewish people en masse? Surely if John’s only reason for portraying Jesus as rejected by the Jews was as you suggest, then we would not expect to find such reports in the Synoptics.

Rob: You say that the authentic saying of Jesus are the best guide to his own thinking. But where does this expectation come from? Is it legitimate? It’s at least a question that bears scrutiny and I think it can be informed by two considerations:

a) Jesus never wrote a book. So you are never going to hear anything directly from him. It will always be interpreted by the author who (at least up to now) will also be a disciple. But Christians have always accepted the apostolic testimony to Jesus as sufficient. In past times there was no critical academy to challenge it. In modern times the academy has not not succeeded in convincing the great majority of believers that there really is a problem. I’m also not sure what to make of dogmatic statements that the authors of the latter NT did not know Jesus (what do you think about the gospels?). To me this is an example of the unwarranted historical dogmatism of much NT scholarship. You have to admit that it is not impossible that the church developed around the authoritative testimony of the first Apostles and those who had been with Jesus and learned from him directly. Sociologically speaking it is highly likely. For a detailed argument along these lines see Baukham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006). Even if you question the traditional authorship of the books of the NT, there is still a very good case to be made for an authoritative tradition that is handed down through generations of disciples. This would seem to be the premise of the first century bishop Papias. So it’s not either authentic saying or people who did not know Jesus. There is a whole range of possibilities in between which may indeed nullify the distinction “they didn’t know Jesus.” (but of course, it is also very possible that NT authors did know Jesus, even if you reject traditional authorship)

b) When we look at the gospels through literary criticism it is quite clear that they are very well thought through and often very subtle in the message they convey. There is no reason to think that this does not come from Jesus himself, who by all accounts appears to have also been cryptic about some of his teaching. So we should treat the texts (thinking gospels here) as they were intended to be treated and not demand of them evidence that they are unlikely to provide – ie explicit statement which we already know are not there. But obviously there are statements that suggest the divinity of Jesus throughout the Gospels and the epistles. I don’t find it very convincing to just say “It’s not directly from Jesus, so it doesn’t count.” You don’t have anything directly from Jesus!

Finally, let’s also talk about the suggestion that Jesus is divine, without necessarily affirming that he is “the second person of the trinity” or “equal with God.” If we add this category, there is a lot more evidence in the synoptics, including, of course, the description of Jesus as “the son of God” (especially at this baptism and the transfiguration) and his own “son of man” (debated, but surely… it’s from Daniel 7: “He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him.”). My goodness! How does that not count as something Jesus said about himself which suggests he is divine! In the synoptics Jesus is really really special and has a very special connection to God that no one else does, a connection that is more than that of a human being to God. This category of evidence may not get us straight to “Jesus=God” but it does argue against the Jesus of the synoptics as “mere human.” I just don’t think that is an option. And once you see that Jesus is “somehow divine” the other more explicit category of evidence has the way paved.

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Rowland Croucher: A little note about theological discussions. I’m an amateur (in both senses) and I’m no expert on the provenance of the Synoptics and John, but have enjoyed reading the conversations between people of contrary… sorry opposing opinions on this and that.

Two books I’d highly recommend which put the views of competent scholars side by side are Tom Wright’s and Borg’s (on Jesus) and Tom Wright’s and Crossan’s (on the Resurrection).

See http://jmm.org.au/articles/25061.htm and

http://jmm.org.au/articles/25325.htm etc. etc.

And if you follow the search facility on our website, you’ll find many other articles by and about these people

One excellent little book by Tom Wright – ‘The Original Jesus’ – gives an irenic and excellent summary of the Jesus Seminar etc. (pp. 102 ff.).

Murray: Wright commends the work of Martin Hengel of Tubingen University. I don’t know him. Can you give me a para on his approach?

Thanks for this discussion: and sorry, others, if all this seems to be a bit irrelevant for you in terms of your Christmas shopping and leftovers and holidays or whatever :-).

And BTW, if anyone here is thinking of doing some formal theological study, this is the sort of discussion you’ll have on various subjects every day with your peers and professors. Exciting!

Murray Hogg ‎@ Rowland: Hengel (died 2009) was primarily a historian of early Christianity and New Testament scholar with a massive output. A brief paragraph hardly does him justice.

I’m familiar with him because his name crops up with frequent monotony in Johannine studies largely due to his book The Johannine Question (1989) in which he argues that the author of GosJ was “John the elder” mentioned in 2 John, 3 John, and Papias. Basically his approach here is to engage in a very considered study of the early literature in order to devise a rather robust theory about the composition of John – basically standard methodology to reach a rather imaginative solution to the issue.

Rob Haskell: As concerns the identity of Jesus, Hengel argued that the NT understanding of Jesus is coherent (even if it has development) and that it can be explained in the categories of Judaism without recourse to Pagan myths or gnosticism. He saw no break btw what Jesus was about and what the gentile church was about. See The Son of God.

There’s swags of material on the net, Rowland. Here’s a nice overview from Hurtado from Expository Times – it has a list of his translated works at the end;
http://rdtwot.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/hurtado_martin-hengels-impact-on-english-speaking-scholarship.pdf

Murray Hogg ‎@ Rowland: Another thought on Hengel and methodology…

I think it would be right to say that Hengel adopts a Historical-Critical methodology of the sort popular since about the time of F.C.Baur (c.1840). It’s an approach in which the historian is allowed to wield authority over the exegete and theologian, dictating to these later what they may, or may not, take as authentic, and therefore what they may, or may not, say. Funk and the Jesus Seminar are also examples of the genus. At their worst such scholars can have a pathological fixation on “the world behind the text” (Ricouer). At their best, they provide a helpful preliminary to the real work of Biblical exegesis.

A very great deal of recent NT scholarship has, however, moved away from such approaches to adopt an entire swag of newer literary methods. Here it would be worth mentioning that [the Jesus Seminar]and I are not on opposite sides of a “fundamentalist/evangelical” and “liberal” divide. Those distinctions only make sense in light of 19th century debates over religious rationalism which I consider utterly passe. Rather, they and I are on opposite sides of a modernist / post-modernist divide. I have little interest in scholars such as Funk not because I think they get the history wrong, but because I think their concern with whether the gospels accurately portray the historical Jesus is overblown. We KNOW that all four gospels – John’s gospel most of all – are theologically conditioned [Actually, anybody who’s read Clement and his 2nd century remark about John being a “spiritual” gospel should know this! Have 20th century critical scholars not been reading their church history? Jesus wept…] Having answered that question, I’m happy to just move on and deal with the NT documents as we have them in our hot little hands (Google Brevard Childs and canon criticism – you’ll see where I’m coming from).

Here it’s important to note that newer concerns in NT Scholarship – which tend to center around “postmodern” approaches to scripture – simply by-pass the worn “fundamentalist” / “liberal” distinction altogether. Remember here that the very term “fundamentalist” derives from the four volume set “The Fundamentals” which were a response to the higher criticism. Fundamentalists and liberals, in other words, are simply the two-sides of a particular historical debate grounded in a particular set of 19th century concerns. It’s relatively easy to discover who has gotten over such archaic interests: next time you find yourself in the middle of a discussion on whether (say) John’s gospel accurately reflects the historical Jesus then (as a sweeping generalization) the guy who needs the answer to be “yes” is the fundamentalist, the guy who thinks the answer must be “no” is the liberal, the guy for whom it maters not is the post-modernist.

Anyway, what I wanted to get to is basically the comment that there are a whole new set of questions in NT studies which go way beyond tired arguments about whether such-and-such a New Testament document is “historically credible” and I wonder if engagement with Hengel ought not to be tempered by the awareness that the historical questions he addresses are entirely passe IN SOME QUARTERS of NT studies. I’ll say that again for emphasis: IN SOME QUARTERS of NT studies – not all NT scholars are to be tarred with the same post-modernist brush, but it is an increasing trend.

If you have the interest to pursue this I’d recommend a reading of Green and Turner’s “Between Two Horizons” – the opening essay in particular. Here you’ll discover some idea of the current attitude toward “the world behind the text” and why many contemporary NT scholars don’t worry so much about attempting to understand the first century context of the NT documents nor to recover a hypothetical “authorial intent” which lies behind them. I don’t want to dismiss the importance of Hengel et al. but I do think, as I said, that the fixation on the historical Jesus (as opposed to the Christ of faith) is overblown and that, in most respects, the entire debate is passe.

I’ll only add that, given adequate space, I’d want to nuance ALL of the above – so please take it as a very coarse grained snap-shot of the overall terrain.

Rob Haskell: Thank you for this, Murray. You should recycle it as a blog post! I just have a couple things to add, which you probably would have had you done all that nuancing you mention :0) I think that Hengel gets extra points for his sheer historical acumen. This man knew the sources and the times and and tied his ideas to them more strictly than many critical exegetes working in that modernist approach did. Also something I’ve noticed studying Matthew is that, while newer approaches are definitely present in monographs and journal articles (mainly as hermeneutical theory), major commentators tend to be eclectic in their methodology. I don’t see major commentators moving away from the basic historical tasks of textual reconstruction and contextual interpretation. But something like narrative criticism is an additional tool which is not contradictory and which softens the “historical positivism” of previous generations. On the other hand, though, where do you think NT Wright’s approach fits? It seems to me that he is in some ways still operating as the historian, for historical context determines above all else the meaning of the text. It’s even a common criticism of him that he makes “the background the foreground.” (And I think I agree with him!) I sometimes wonder if evangelicals are a little too eager to sign on to the postmodern approach (narrative, cannon, literary) because it does away with so many uncomfortable questions. And yet, the question of history can never be fully ignored. After all, if Jesus did not rise our faith is in vain. And so, I wonder (sheer speculation here) if the thing that makes evangelicals uncomfortable with Wright is that he keeps insisting on going back to that “perilous” historical approach which they would rather not engage.

Murray Hogg: Thoroughly agree, Rob. Yes, Hengel’s historical accumen is unquestionable. Yes, modern commentators tend to use an eclectic mix of approaches. Yes, “postmodern” approaches can be adopted in order to evade difficult questions.

Re Wright: he stands in some conscious resistance to “postmodern” approaches precisely because the Christian Gospel can never be divorced from history. I think he would say of truly post-modern scholars that they perhaps say some interesting things, but that they have ultimately cut themselves adrift from any mooring in Christian tradition.

Putting aside what Wright might think, I’d personally say that history is critically important, but with two caveats: (1) Christian faith isn’t dependent upon historical reconstruction but on the enlivening action of the Holy Spirit. I think Calvin was right regarding the self-attesting nature of scripture, and I take such attestation is more persuasive for the average believer than any appeal to history; and (2) the Christian Gospel is not concerned with history only, but also with its interpretation from the stand-point of faith (note my use of language which is both/and, rather than either/or).

As respects evading difficult questions, I agree, except another observation: at some point we have to decide whether or not we’re happy enough with the historical scholarship and get on with the task of the exegesis of scripture.In my judgment, it is precisely scholars such as Hengel and Wright who justify us putting the historical questions to one side as being substantially addressed. That being the case, one can then apply other exegetical approaches to analyze the text. This is not an abandonment of history, but working on certain assumptions regarding the answers to the historical questions.

This, for what it’s worth, is why I kept putting “postmodern” in quotes: I’m perfectly happy to use postmodern methodologies, but it doesn’t mean that I’m unaware of, nor entirely sympathetic with, postmodern assumptions.

One of my over-riding concerns in all of this, let me say, is the fact that for the last 200 years or so we’ve been so focused on the historical question that we’ve largely avoided engaging with the biblical text in a way which addresses the needs of the average person in the pew. By acknowledging that there are guys like Hengel who affirm, as far as it is possible to do so, the New Testament account of Jesus we are at least free to pursue other approaches to the texts.

As a footnote, let me just make one ironic observation: I recently undertook an analysis of John 4 (the woman of Samaria) using a deliberately feminist hermeneutic with NO regard whatever to the historical factuality of the story. In doing so, I discovered that the story actually presumes a number of critical facts about the Samaritan notion of the Taheb (“messiah”) and this, in turn, suggests that the Johannine author was familiar with the distinction between Jewish and Samaritan views on the matter. By putting the historical question to one side, I actually discovered a strong argument for the text’s historical credibility. Point being that it can be surprising how all these various concerns actually inform one another, but not necessarily in the direction one commonly supposes.

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Rowland Croucher Couple of questions from this amateur:

1. Memory and ‘oral tradition’. How much do we trust the early generations of Jesus-followers to get the facts right over the decades before the Gospels were put together roughly as we have them? Wright puts a high value on pre-Gutenberg memory-accuracy in traditional societies. He has an interesting modern parallel: ‘Think of what would happen if someone took one of the songs of Bob Dylan – say ‘Blowing in the Wind’ and changed one of the lines… so it was for the early Christians: the stories of what Jesus had done and said were etched into their minds’ (Original Jesus 109).

2. Scholars’ competence. If you put Jesus scholars along a competence continuum, my hunch is that Hengel then Wright would be the ‘best’ conservative scholars, and Funk/Vermes/Crossan would be at the other end. They each have (ISTM) roughly similar levels of competence. Difference? Mainly a priori presuppositions they bring to their discipline!

3. Rob/Murray: would you agree with Wright’s (1996) suggestion that probably 70% of NT scholars still believe some version of the priority of Mark theory; the remaining 30% either don’t believe it or would say they aren’t sure? What would be the current state of play re the ‘Synoptic Problem’.

One of the problems for us amateurs is making a judgment about scholarly competence. I’ve read ’em all – conservative to liberal – and note, for example, the kind of ‘short shrift’ people at either end of the spectrum give to their opponents. (I heard Ben Witherington III complaining that he never gets cited by the Jesus Seminar scholars. Same for William Lane Craig. But those two guys aren’t in the same class, ISTM, as Wright, who is taken seriously by Borg, Crossan et al.).

Murray Hogg ‎@ Rowland, some good questions here, but unfortunately they all center on questions of the sort outside my area of expertise/interest.

To elucidate: Part of the consequence of people downplaying the historical reliability of John is that there has arisen quite a rift between Johannine and Synoptic studies. The guys who are big into the Synpotics are usually working with little or no reference to John and vice versa. The two groups have quite different concerns.

So keeping in mind that I’m in the Johannine camp I’d answer your three questions as follows (a Synoptic guy would give quite different answers, I think);

1) John doesn’t appear to try to reproduce Jesus’ teaching verbatim, but instead tries to give the “higher” sense of it. It’s well possible that one could arrive at something like John’s Gospel without any particularly acute memorization skills – say in the same way that a close acquaintance of a modern figure could give you an accurate portrayal of that person’s life and thinking without having memorized any of their work. There are those who raise the memorization/oral tradition within Johannine studies, but it’s hard to see precisely what problem they are trying to address.

2) A good measure of a scholar’s competence is, I think, the degree to which they are cited by other scholars. By that measure only Hengel would be regarded as competent in Johannine circles. As respects competence in Synoptic circles, I think you’re assessment is spot on. Let me just add that my recent attacks on people’s competence can be understood only when one grasps the point that even the most competent of Synoptic scholars can quickly find themselves out of their depth when they choose to dabble in Johannine studies, and vice versa. It’s interesting to note that not one recognized Johannine scholar is mentioned in your remarks – nor would any of the names you cite make a “most competent” list in Johannine studies. This makes sense only when one sees Johannine studies as an independent discipline with its own range of questions and concerns as divorced from Synoptic studies as is, say, Pauline studies or even Pentateuchal studies. One’s competence has to be evaluated on a discipline by discipline basis by appeal to the knowledge base and skill set appropriate to each.

I might only add that this is further complicated when one starts to note that the same applies for those doing more traditional historical-critical work as opposed to those engaged in the “post modern” approaches. I think one could, with little effort, discover some area of New Testament studies in which competence eludes even the most illustrious name. This being the case perhaps competence should be assessed on the basis of one’s ability to correctly assess one’s own awareness of a particular subject. I think Wright, Crossan, Borg, etc, would be the first to yield to Johannine scholars such as Brown, Maloney, Kaiser, Culpepper, Dodd, etc. for the simple reason that they would have some idea when they are getting out of their field. They know enough to know that the Kruger-Dunning effect applies (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect).

As respects Markan priority, well, that’s REALLY not a matter of interest in Johannine studies and I have no idea what percentage of scholars buy into what theory. I do know that some have argued for the priority of John (John A. T. Robinson for instance) – make of that what you will.

Finally, let me offer an emphatic AMEN to your comment that this is largely about assumptions. From my perspective, the problem with the entire debate which Wright, Crossan, Funk, et al. are having is that they don’t seem to get this point. Or, at least, they don’t seem to me to have grasped the fact that they are really asking the same questions asked by Strauss, Baur, and the Tubingen school in the early 1800’s BUT with no real justification for assuming the sort of things that Strauss et al. assumed. What we know about the dating of the Gospels, the archaeology of Palestine, the nature of first century Judaism and Hellenism, etc, etc, is so changed from Strauss and Baur’s day that I wonder that anybody can get excited over the sort of questions they raised. But that’s a story best kept for another day.

Rob Haskell ‎@Rowland, you ask irresistible questions. I’ll have you know I’m not writing on my blog right now because of this :0)

1. Of course the question of memory and tradition is not limited to John. However you cut it, there was a process of remembering, and Luke even mentions his investigations in that direction. I already mentioned Baukham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Here he lays out a well documented case for there being authoritative witnesses and a living, authoritative tradition which was consciously handed down. Another important work in this area is… Dunn’s Jesus Remembered. Check out pnotley’s review at Amazon.com which explains Dunn’s idea of “performance differences” between the gospel accounts (the stories were told in different ways in different groupings by different people, but they are still substantially the same). We should not forget that the “gospels” were first proclaimed, then written down.

2. A couple thoughts on competence. I don’t think being well known is necessarily a sign of massive competence. Some people just have a knack for the controversial (yes, brother Wright, we are talking about you) and while they can still be very competent it’s more the issues that they deal with that brought them to the fore. Other incredible scholars end up more in the background because their interests are more abstruse. Having said that, I do think that on average secular scholars tend to be more competent. There I’ve said it. Evangelicals, even scholars, often stop short of real intensive engagement with the sources and materials of NT studies. They have the “is it really practical?” bug. Whereas a secular scholar sees his calling as mastering the field. A few conservative scholars such as Wright, Fee, Evans, Mcknight, etc. do make the mark (and the academy does pay attention to them!). A friend recently told me of John Piper’s dismissal of his own PhD in NT studies. Once you get to that level, the thought goes, it all becomes minutia. I completely disagree, but that is another question. Of course, not every is called to really go the distance in academic studies, but then, that’s who the issues should be framed, not as “it’s not important”. Evangelicals are still dealing with anti-intellectualism.

3. Markan priority still rules the day. If you put Matthew before AD 70, it tends to get blurry, though. Matthew could have come first in that scenario (Gundry points this out in his Matthew). But the academy is pretty sure that Matthew was late due to the polemic against Judaism and the supposedly explicit reference to the destruction. Personally, I put most of the NT before AD 70. I really enjoy Paul Barnett on these questions – he pays more attention to history than most of the merely textual arguments do. Often overlooked is that the first Christian scriptures actually came from the hand of Paul, less than 20 years after the resurrection. (the question of Q aside, of course…)

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And Murray posted this article:

The Present State of Johannine Studies (Raymond Brown, 1966)

December 27, 2010 Murray Hogg

One of the curious aspects of scholarly study on the Gospel of John is that skeptical treatments of the gospel—those which argue that it’s a late non-Jewish fabrication—are actually decreasing in credibility. There are a few aspects to this which I’d like to comment upon, but for now here’s a brief overview of this curious historical trend from a Johannine scholar of note, Raymond E. Brown:

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In this century an enormous literature has been devoted to the Fourth Gospel. Indeed, the most instructive introduction to the study of the Gospel is to read one of the surveys of the literature on John—for instance, that of Howard, or the shorter article of Collins. The ephemeral character of some of the positions taken merits sober reflection. The most valuable analysis of Johannine literature is found in French in the writings of Menoud, whose own very competent and balanced opinions emerge from his criticism of the works of other scholars. His bibliographies are most helpful. Haenchen’s German survey is also remarkably complete.

In particular, in the decade after the Second World War there emerged a number of major contributions to the study of John. The commentaries of both Hoskyns (1940) and Bultmann (1941) may be included in this group since they had no wide circulation until after the War. In addition, Dodd’s Interpretation (1953) and the commentaries of Barrett (1955) and Lightfoot (1956) come immediately to mind. The difference of approach in these various works caused much discussion, as evidenced by the articles of Grossouw, Käsemann, and Schnackenburg.

Even a cursory acquaintance with this literature reveals that the trend in Johannine studies has passed through an interesting cycle. At the end of the last century and in the early years of this century, scholarship went through a period of extreme skepticism about this Gospel. John was dated very late, even to the second half of the 2nd century. As a product of the Hellenistic world, it was thought to be totally devoid of historical value and to have little relation to the Palestine of Jesus of Nazareth. The small kernel of fact in its pages was supposedly taken from the Synoptic Gospels which served as a basis for the author’s elaborations. Needless to say, few critics thought that the Gospel according to John had the slightest connection with John son of Zebedee.

Some of these skeptical positions, especially those regarding authorship and the source of influence on the Gospel, are still maintained by many reputable scholars. Nevertheless, there is not one such position that has not been affected by a series of unexpected archaeological, documentary, and textual discoveries. These discoveries have led us to challenge intelligently the critical views that had almost become orthodox and to recognize how fragile was the base which supported the highly skeptical analysis of John. Consequently, since the Second World War there has emerged what Bishop John A. T. Robinson calls a “new look” in Johannine studies—a new look that shares much with the look once traditional in Christianity. The dating of the Gospel has been moved back to the end of the 1st century or even earlier. A historical tradition underlying the Fourth Gospel similar to the traditions underlying the Synoptic Gospels is being posited by some. In fact, the author of the Gospel is gradually having his status as an orthodox Christian restored, after long languishing in the dungeons of Gnosticism to which he had been relegated by many critics. And perhaps strangest of all, some scholars are even daring to suggest once more that John son of Zebedee may have had something to do with the Gospel. This reversal of trend, however, does not mean that all the intervening critical scholarship has been in vain. Scholarship cannot return to pre-critical days, nor should it ever be embarrassed by the fact that it learns through mistakes. Indeed, it is the admirable honesty of biblical criticism and its ability to criticize itself that has led to a more conservative estimation of the historical value of the Fourth Gospel.[1]

Footnotes:

[1] Raymond Edward Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, vol. 1, 1st ed., The Anchor Bible 29 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), xxi-xxii.

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