Material for Chapter 5

23 Pages·2004·0.15 MB·English

Material for Chapter 5
I. Why are These Gospels in the NT, and Not the Others?
In the last chapter of the present book, we will consider the formation of the NT canon,
and why these four Gospels “made it” into the NT and others did not. However, this is
such an important issue for both scholars and beginning students of the NT that we should
offer a brief initial treatment here. Mainstream (that is, the early catholic) Christian tradition
from at least the second century C.E. has identified Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as the
Gospels that are canonical for the mainstream church. One of the ways they did this, as we
saw above, was to formally title each one “The Gospel according to . . . .” However, other
gospels were also present in the second-century church and perhaps at the end of the first
century, each claiming to be a valuable witness to Jesus. These so-called apocryphal
(“hidden”) gospels are attributed to an apostle. Until about fifty years ago, scholars
typically saw the apocryphal gospels as historically useless for our knowledge of the
historical Jesus as compared to the canonical Gospels. This is still the conclusion of many NT
scholars today. One expert on Jesus sharply characterizes the apocryphal gospels as “a field
of rubble, largely produced by the pious or wild imaginations of certain second-century
Christians” (Meier 1991, 1:115). However, some have argued recently that a few of these
gospels may be useful sources of historical information about Jesus, and those in the early
Christian church who disliked their teaching suppressed them. They include:
• the Gospel of Peter. John D. Crossan has argued that a mid-first century source
of this gospel is a source of Mark, especially its passion narrative (Crossan,
1988).
• The Secret Gospel of Mark. Morton Smith, who discovered a document which
witnesses to this gospel, argues that canonical Mark wrote to correct this source
(Smith 19xx). It includes some stories not found in canonical Mark, one that
resembles the Lazarus story of John 11, another in which the young man of
Mark 14:52 who fled away naked at Jesus’ arrest comes to Jesus at night for
teaching.
• The Gospel of Thomas was found in its entirety in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in
Egypt. It collects 114 sayings of Jesus, but contains no narrative of his actions,
death or resurrection. Most sayings are paralleled in the canonical Gospels, but
those that are not in the canonical Gospels are strikingly unique. Of all post-NT
works, the Gospel of Thomas is the most fascinating for NT scholars and
debated by them. It is the most likely to contain authentic Jesus traditions, and
a great deal of research focuses on it. Indeed, some recent scholarship refers to
it as the “Fifth Gospel.”
So why did the mainstream church exclude these works from the canon? Historical
investigation of this process has led to many probable factors: church “politics,” struggles
with movements like Gnosticism which threw doubt on any gospel book with a suspected
tinge nosticism, rising anti-Judaism in the church which cast a negative light on Jewish-
Christian gospels, and others. Another reason appears counter-intuitive at first, but in the
context of literature of the times it makes good sense: the very fact that the four canonical
gospels were anonymous served to commend them as reliable. The common practice in
Judaism of the time was for pseudonymous, later literature to name their authors explicitly
and play up their importance, while anonymous literature is more likely to be earlier and
authentic. However, the main reason is that they were seen as being non-apostolic in their
teaching. To put it another way, they diverged in content so much from the general
teaching of the (oral) gospel, and the four Gospel books that were rapidly gaining
acceptance in the wider church, that they did not look “apostolic” to second and third
century mainstream Christians. When the mainstream of the church did not use these
books, they lost any chance of canonical standing. (Lest we be too negative on the
mainstream church for excluding gospels it did not like, we should remind ourselves that
Gnostics and others did the same thing; it is the very nature of a canon to include approved
literature and exclude disapproved.) However, historical scholarship into Christian origins is
not bound to the conclusions of the church about the canon, and it has rightly reopened
the question of the value of some of these books. Some see Thomas as rivaling the
canonical Gospels in importance. Others see it (and even more the other apocryphal
gospels) as at best a secondary source, of limited or no value. This is one of the areas of
sharpest debate in current NT study, and the truth probably lies somewhere between these
two extremes.

I. Luke 1:1-4 and source criticism
We begin our treatment of source criticism by examining Luke 1:1-4, the only place in the
Synoptics where a Gospel author refers to other early Christian writings about Jesus:

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events
that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by
those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,
I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to
write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may
know the truth concerning the things about which you have been
instructed.
In this passage, we can detect four stages in the origins of our Gospel books. The first
stage and the oldest source of Luke’s material is eyewitness testimony (v. 2), which comes
“from the beginning.” Luke writes that he is basing his own account on material that goes
back to eyewitnesses, not that he himself is an eyewitness. Most NT scholars today would
deny that the Gospel writers themselves were eyewitnesses to Jesus—why would an
eyewitness use wording from earlier documents instead of his own, fresh wording? Even
today, if three different witnesses’ accounts of a contemporary event would agree in
wording as closely as the Synoptics agree, we would have good reason to suspect that they
have conspired to “get their story straight”! Nevertheless, the gospel writers likely had
access to stories about Jesus, his life and teaching, which came ultimately from
eyewitnesses. Whether or not they had living access to these eyewitnesses, disciples like
Peter and John, when they wrote is a different question. Most of this generation was
probably dead when the gospels were written, if the common dating of the gospels from
about 70-100 C.E. is correct.

The second through fourth stages run as follows. The second stage indicated is the passing
down, or traditioning, of the gospel materials orally in the church. Luke strongly implies
that this material was put to a religious use in the church when he says that his material
was employed by “servants/ministers of the word.” These were not neutral observers.
Rather, the eyewitnesses and those who passed along their words were themselves those
who used the message (“word”) in the church. In a third stage, “many” (not just a few!)
others wrote about Jesus (v. 1). Typical of ancient writers, Luke does not name them. Note
that he does not say explicitly that he is using any of them as sources, only that he and his
reader(s) know that they exist. Their knowledge of these other writings, and Luke’s explicit
purpose of improving upon them, opens the possibility that he is using at least some of
them as sources. As we shall see below, similarities among Matthew, Mark and Luke lead
most scholars to conclude that some sharing of written sources is happening. Either one
author is copying another’s work, or two or three Gospels are sharing a common source or
sources, or both. In a final stage, the author of Luke “sets down” his own book (v. 3). He
has been “investigating everything from the very first” (v. 3). This may have involved
critically inspecting his sources, both oral and written. He also organizes his material into a
good sequence, an “orderly account” (v. 3). His role as an author comes in as he selects,
shapes, and retells his material for his readers.

III. Three approaches: author-centered, text-centered, and reading-centered
Three different approaches are used today to reading the Gospels, in both the older
historical-critical method and the newer methods we will employ in the present book.
Author-centered approaches focus on the author’s involvement in writing the Gospels. The
key here to interpreting the text is not so much in the text as through the text, located in
the author, her/his sources, style, concerns and emphases. The meaning of the text arises
from its authorial intent, what the author intended to say judged by what he or she
wrote. The historical-critical methods of source, form and redaction criticism are author-
centered approaches. They describe the author’s work, with source criticism studying the
longer written sources, form criticism studying the shorter units of oral sources, and
redaction criticism studying the author’s finished Gospel. The focus of attention in author-
centered studies is therefore behind the Gospel texts, to construct the background against
which the text can be understood and the author’s meaning come clear. Social-scientific
reading of the Gospels can also be called an author-centered approach in that it focuses on
the cultural situation of the authors and how they address it. Of course, it also looks
intently at the cultural situation of the audience, but it consistently looks behind the Gospel
texts to see how the culture of the times forms the foundation on which the meaning of
the text is built.

Text-centered approaches such as narrative criticism focus on the text itself, the “world”
that the text creates, reading the story of the text entirely on its own terms. The meaning is
found within the text, not behind it. Narrative and contemporary rhetorical methods are
text-centered. Scholars working with this approach concentrate carefully on the genre,
structure, and content of the text. Careful attention to the text is clearly important because,
without understanding the text in itself, there are great possibilities for misinterpretation. A
historical or cultural reader would say that sometimes the text itself points beyond itself to
other texts and events in the past, indicating from their point of view that a text-centered
approach may be too restrictive. Reading the Gospels is different from reading novels, they
say, and this may limit the usefulness of text-centered approaches. Therefore, many of
them combine author-centered and text-centered approaches, such as the historical
method and narrative method. However, all readers of the Gospels today by whatever
method generally agree that knowing how the text tells its story is crucial to interpretation.
Reader-centered approaches focus on the interaction between text and readers, with
primary attention to readers and the process of reading/listening. In the present book,
feminist and cross-cultural methods are reader-centered. These approaches look at the
assumptions that readers bring to the reading process, assumptions drawn from the
culture, world-view, and practices of reading learned by the reader. These assumptions
form a pre-understanding. These approaches, assumptions and practices of reading are
both individual and social. Thus scholars speak of the “interpretative community(ies)” to
which they belong, meaning groups which share a common approach to reading a text or
texts. Stanley Fish, an influential literary theorist whose ideas have come across into NT
study, has written about this in his book, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of
Interpretive Communities (Fish 1982). Reader-centered approaches can be either
contemporary or historical. Some historical reader-centered approaches study how ancient
readers would have experienced the text as readers/listeners, and therefore use tools from
ancient rhetoric to study reading/listening as the process of persuasion. Other readers of
the Gospels approach them with modern rhetorical tools, and sometimes also approach
them with particular ideological commitments in order to see how the text reads from that
perspective. Such approaches are used in feminist reading and cross-cultural reading. In
sum, in all these reader-centered approaches, meaning arises from the interaction between
the reader and the text.

IV. Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Thomas, cited occasionally by Hippolytus and Origen, was discovered in 1945
among the Nag Hammadi, Egypt documents. This document contains, by modern scholarly
division, 114 sayings of Jesus. Its sayings come in several forms: proverbs and other
wisdom sayings, parables, prophetic sayings and very brief conversations. The Gospel of
Thomas is the most important second-century non-canonical source we possess in the study
of the historical Jesus.

About a quarter of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, typically the shortest ones, are
virtually identical to Synoptic sayings. For example,

(20) The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.” He
answered them, “It is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds. But when in falls on
plowed ground, it grows into a large shrub and becomes a shelter for the birds of
heaven.”

(26) Jesus said, “You see the sliver that is in your brother’s eye, but you do not see the
log in your own eye. When you take the log out of your eye, then you will see to
remove the sliver from you brother’s eye.”

(54) Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

About one-half have partial parallels in the canonical gospels. For example,

(8) And he said, “The [wise] man is like a wise fisherman who threw his net into the
sea. When he drew it up from the sea, it was full of small fish. The fisherman found
among them a large, good fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea; with no
trouble he chose the large fish. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
(9) Jesus said, “Behold, the sower went out. He filled his hand [with seed], and he
threw. Some fell on the road. The birds came, and they gathered them up. Others fell
on the rock and did not send roots into the earth and did not send ears toward heaven.
Others fell among thorns. They choked the seed, and the worm ate (it). And others fell
on good earth, and it raised up good fruit to heaven. It bore sixty and one hundred
twenty per measure.”

The final approximate one quarter to one third are manifestly gnostizing sayings with a
different theological outlook than the rest:

(18) The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us how end will occur.” Jesus said, “Have you
found the beginning that you search for the end? In the place of the beginning, the end
will be. Blessed is he who will stand at the beginning, and he will know the end, and
he will not taste death.”

(29) Jesus said, “If the flesh exists because of spirit, it is a miracle, but if spirit (exists.
because of the body, it is a miracle of miracles. But I am amazed at how this great
wealth established itself in this poverty.”

(83) Jesus said, “The images are manifest to man, and the light in them is hidden in the
image of the light of the Father. He will not reveal himself, and his image will be
hidden by his light.”

(84) Jesus said, “When you see your likeness, you rejoice. But when you see your
images which came into being before you, (which. do not die nor manifest, how much
will you will bear!”

The Gospel of Thomas has no christological titles, no narrative material, and no reference
within its sayings to any action of Jesus or any event in his life. It is dated after 70 and
before ca. 140, the date archaeologists have determined for its papyri. Within this range
further precision is difficult, although most interpreters place its writing in the second
century, understanding that many of its oral traditions are much older. Most place its
composition in Syria, where traditions about Thomas, the fictional author of this book, were
strong. It also shows a Jewish-Christian origin in Saying 12 with its praise of James the
brother of Jesus,

The disciples said to Jesus, “We know that you will leave us. Who will become our
ruler?” Jesus said, “Wherever you may be, go to James the righteous one. Heaven and
earth came into being for him.” (Cf. also 27).

However, Thomas has since moved beyond this into Gentile Christianity:
(53) His disciples said to him, “Is circumcision profitable or not?” He said to them, “If it
were profitable, the father would beget them circumcised from their mother. But true
circumcision in the Spirit is completely useful.”

Of all the extra-canonical gospels, The Gospel of Thomas is the one most likely to have a
claim to preserve a significant number of authentic sayings of Jesus. The argument for the
independence, and hence the value, of the traditions of Jesus sayings in the Gospel of
Thomas is based on three main factors. The first is genre: as a collection of sayings, the
Gospel of Thomas represents the genre in which the early Jesus material was collected and
passed down, such as is found in Q. No such collections are to be found later than about
150 C.E., the sayings genre having been absorbed into the dialogue genre. So it is likely
that the roots of the Gospel of Thomas are in an early collection that dates to the first
century. The second argument is the order of the sayings, which in the Gospel of Thomas
is independent of the order of the Synoptic Gospels. The order of sayings in the Gospel of
Thomas is due to its catchword composition (typical of oral tradition, completely non-
narrative structure, and other factors). The differing order makes it unlikely that Thomas
was literally dependent on the Synoptics. Occasionally the Gospel of Thomas and Luke
agree in order against Mark, but this probably does not mean that Thomas used Luke; it
can be explained as a variant of the Q tradition common to Luke and Thomas. Third, a
history-of-traditions argument states that the Gospel of Thomas often gives the sayings of
Jesus in an earlier form than that found in the Synoptics. For example, the parables of Jesus
are far less allegorized than the parallels in the Synoptics, as in saying 65, the parable of the
wicked husbandman:

(65) He said: “A good man had a vineyard. He rented it to some farmers so that they
could work it; he would receive its profits from them. He sent his servant to get from
the farmers the profits of the vineyard. They seized his servant, beat him, and almost
killed him. The servant went back and he told his master. His master said, ‘Perhaps
they did not know him.’ He sent another servant, and the farmers beat him also. Then
the master sent his son. He said, ‘Perhaps they will respect my son.’ Those farmers
seized him, and they killed him, because they knew he was the heir of the vineyard. He
who has ears, let him hear.”

The form in Thomas is simpler and shorter than the Synoptic form (Mark 12:1-12 par), has
no allusions to Isaiah 5:1-2, and shows no trace of allegory. Thus, it is arguably closer to the
earliest probable form of the parable as given by Jesus.

The treatment of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas is governed by its theological
aims, which can be characterized as "semi-Gnostic," or “gnosticizing,” that is, on the way
to Gnosticism (sayings 18, 29, 83-84). Not yet present are the formal gnostic cosmology
and mythology that we see in full-blown Gnostic systems of the second century. Also, the
short narrative contexts of a few sayings (22, 60, 100; 12 and 55, given above) show that
Thomas does not have an overall post-resurrectional setting, as almost all other gnostic
gospels do.

(22) Jesus saw babies being nursed. He said to his disciples, “These babies being nursed
are like those who enter the Kingdom.” They said to him, “We are children, (and. shall
we enter the kingdom?” Jesus said to them, “When you make the two one, and when
you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the upper as the lower,
so that you will make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will
not be the male and the female [not] be female; when you make eyes in place of an
eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, (and. an image in
place of an image, then shall you enter [the kingdom].”

(60) They saw a Samaritan carrying a lamb; he was going to Judea. He said to his
disciples, “Why does he carry the lamb?” They said to him, “That he may kill it and eat
it.” He said to them, “As long as it is alive he will not eat it, but only when he has killed
it and it has become a corpse.” They said, “Otherwise he cannot do it.” He said to
them, “Seek a place for yourselves in rest, lest you become a corpse and be eaten.”

(100) They showed Jesus a gold coin, and they said to him, “Caesar’s men demand
taxes from us.” He said to them, “Give Caesar’s things to Caesar, give God’s things to
God, and give to me what is mine.”

Jesus is exclusively a revealer of secret teaching who brings salvation by his teaching alone.
As the first saying of Thomas relates, "Anyone who finds the interpretation of these words
will not taste death.” The world and the human body are unqualifiedly and irredeemably
evil (27, 111):

(27) If you do not fast against the world, you will not find the Kingdom. If you do not
keep the Sabbath as the Sabbath, you shall not see the Father.

(111) Jesus said, “The heavens and the earth will roll up in your presence, and he who
lives by the Living One will not see death….”

As in later Gnostic systems, femaleness is equated with fallenness, and "every woman who
makes herself male will enter the kingdom of God" (114). This today is the most
controversial saying in this document, and for its interpretation should be compared with
other gender-symbolic sayings such as saying 22.

(114) Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, because women are not worthy of
Life.” Jesus said, “Look, I shall guide her so that I will make her male, so that she also
may become a living spirit, being like you males. For every woman who makes herself
male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The eschatology is “realized”; the kingdom of God is beyond time and place, yet always
present, and people enter it by self-knowledge:

(3) Jesus said, “If the ones who lead you say, ‘There is the kingdom, in heaven,’ then
the birds of heaven shall go before you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the
fish shall go before you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and outside you. If you
know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will know that you are sons of the
living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty, and you are
poverty.”

(49) Jesus said, “Blessed are the solitary and the chosen, because you will find the
Kingdom. Because you come from it, you will return there.”

(50) Jesus said, “If they say to you, ‘Where did you come from?’ say to them, ‘we come
from the light, where the light came into being through itself. It stood) and reveals itself
in their image.’ If they say to you, ‘[Who] are you?’ say to them, ‘We are his sons and
we are chosen of the living Father.’ If they ask you, ‘What is the sign of you Father who
is in you?’ say to them, ‘It is movement and repose.’”

(113) His disciples said to him, “On what day will the Kingdom come?” (He said,. “It
will not come by expectation. They will not say, ‘Look here,’ or, ‘Look there,’ but the
Kingdom of the Father is spread out on the earth and men do not see it.”
Discipleship is an individual, not a community matter; the “you” in the Gospel of Thomas
typically singular, while in the Synoptics it is typically plural. The individual must itinerate
through this life by rejecting all ties to possessions and family, and to formal religious acts
like fasting, prayer, sacrifice, cleansing, and circumcision (6, 14, 42, 53, 55, 60, 89, 99, 101,
104).

(6) His disciples asked him, “Do you want us to fast, and how shall we pray, and shall
we give alms, and what food regulations shall we keep?” Jesus said, “Do not lie, and
do not do what you hate, because all is revealed before Heaven. Nothing is hidden that
will not be revealed, and nothing is covered that shall remain without being revealed.”

(14) Jesus said to them, “If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves and, if you pray,
you will be condemned and, if you give alms, you will do evil to your spirits. If you enter
any country and wander through (its. regions, if they receive you, eat whatever they set
before you. Heal the sick among them. For that which goes into your mouth will not
defile you, but that which comes out of your mouth will defile you.”

(42) Jesus said, “Be wanderers.”

(55) Jesus said, “He who does not hate his father and his mother cannot be my disciple,
and he who does not hate his brothers and his sisters and does not carry in my way will
not be worthy of me.”

(89) Jesus said, “Why do you wash the outside of the cup? Do you not know that he
who made the inside is also he who made the outside?”

(99) The disciples said to him, “Your brothers and your mother are standing outside.”
He said to them, “Those here who do the will of my Father are my brothers and
mother; they will enter the Kingdom of my Father.”

(101) He who does not hate his [father] and his mother in my way will not be able to be
my [disciple], and he who does [not] love his father and his mother in my way, will not
be able to be my [disciple], for my mother…, but [my] true [mother] gave me life.

(104) They said to him, “Come, let us pray today, and let us fast.” Jesus said, “Why?
What sin have I committed, or by what have I been conquered? But after the
bridegroom has left the Bridal Chamber, then let them fast and pray.”

The Gospel of Thomas offers much to the study of the historical Jesus. It does not offer
anything of narrative value on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. However, its rich
collection of sayings, many of which may go back to early stages of Jesus tradition, sheds
light on parallel passages in the Synoptic Gospels. Many scholars see an independent
stream of tradition in these sayings, and this is the primary value of Thomas in Jesus
research. But these sayings must be analyzed individually, and it is hard to draw an overall
judgment on their value. Their distance from Jesus, theologically and temporally, must also
be taken into account. Obviously, sayings that reflect an explicit gnosticizing tendency will
usually be discounted. What remains is of potential value in understanding the teaching of
Jesus, its individual sayings and overall meaning. For example, the lack of christological
titles in the Gospel of Thomas may indicate that Jesus did not claim these for himself. Also
if we eliminate the gnostic overtones from Jesus’ teachings to his followers, more evidence
is comes forward for the radical itinerate charismatics that preached the earliest Jesus-
message. The radical social stance of some segments of early Christianity may have found a
new home in gnosticizing Christianity in the second century.

V. The Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre Hypothesis

A number of other hypotheses have been proposed to solve the Synoptic Problem, but the
two above have dominated discussion during the last hundred years. A significant
alternative is Farrer’s proposal developed and championed today by Goulder and Goodacre.
They argue that Mark is first, Matthew second, and Luke used both Mark and Matthew.
This eliminates Q completely and produces this picture:

Table 5.4: The Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre Hypothesis
Mark
Matthew
Luke
This view does avoid the problems of affirming Matthean priority, but it faces some of the
same objections as the Griesbach hypothesis, for it holds that Luke has edited Matthew in
ways that appear hard to understand. This has meant that, like the Griesbach view, it is not
very widely held.

VI. An Evaluation of Form Criticism and Redaction Criticism
Form criticism has two separate but connected tasks. First, it categorizes and analyses the
stories and teachings of the Gospels by their literary form. For most NT scholars, this is
descriptive, helpful and unproblematic. Second, it makes historical judgments about what
in the Jesus tradition is most likely to have come from Jesus, and what could be added by
the early church in oral or written tradition between Jesus and the Gospels. Arguments over
form criticism tend to focus mainly on the second, and each of the form critics’ main
principles as discussed above has been challenged. First, as most NT scholars now
recognize, oral transmission of gospel material did not stop when the Gospels were written,
as many form critics assumed. Oral tradition about Jesus likely was passed on just as fully
and carefully after the Gospels began to be written as before. Only after a period of time
did oral tradition begin to wane. Therefore, oral and written traditions may have interacted.
Second, form criticism has traditionally assumed that all oral traditions circulated separately
in small units. Now we know that collections of stories, such as we have in Mark 2, may
well have arisen in the oral tradition. As we have seen above, C. H. Dodd has shown that a
framework of the story of Jesus was widely circulating, likely in oral tradition, before it
became the framework of the written Gospels. Third, despite the careful categorization of
forms, many stories do not fit neatly into one category and are therefore classified as
“mixed” or even “formless.” The “story of Jesus” form comes close to a miscellaneous
form. This reminds us that we must not be inflexible in fitting the gospel materials into pre-
conceived, fixed forms. Fourth, the “laws of tradition” outlined above need nuancing and
careful application, for it is difficult to produce rules so dependable that they are truly
“laws.” We can speak of the tendencies of oral tradition, or at most of principles of oral
tradition, and even then we must not be inflexible. The historicity, whether an event
actually happened or a word was actually said, of any unit of Gospel tradition cannot be
automatically deduced from its form. For example, some NT researchers of the past viewed
miracles and predictive statements as intrinsically inauthentic, while parables themselves—
especially the short ones—tended to be viewed as authentic. This automatic deduction of
historicity from form is done less today. Instead, the authenticity of each unit of the
Gospels should be judged on a case-by-case basis.
In sum, form criticism helps us in recognizing the true nature of the Gospels. Its recognition
that stories were preserved because they were helpful to the early Christians suggests that
our Gospels give us their picture(s) of Jesus. What we have in the Gospels is what the
earliest Christians thought was important to preserve. That many stories can stand on their
own highlights the “gospel in miniature” that each story or saying contains, and looking for
that gospel in miniature is helpful in illuminating the Gospel stories.
The strengths of redaction criticism are several. This approach is effective at uncovering the
evangelist’s own contributions to the Gospels. It helps us to see particular emphases in
each writer, and it takes seriously the role of the evangelists as full-fledged authors and
theologians. Redaction criticism treats the Gospels more holistically, whereas form criticism
focuses so much on the individual stories that it can “lose the forest for the trees.” Finally, a
redaction-critical approach helps us to read the evangelists independently. It allows us to
see each Gospel’s portrait of Jesus, prompting us to probe deeper into both the historical
Jesus and the Gospel writers’ portrayals of him. It has also made it possible to gain useful
insights into the evangelists’ communities, on the assumption that each Gospel is written
for a given church or group of churches.

Redaction criticism, like any other method, has its weaknesses. First, some practitioners of
redaction criticism are inclined to think that redaction was always invention by the gospel
writers to correct their oral and written sources. For students of the NT who view the Jesus
tradition as being more stable than creative, and/or for those who have a high view of oral
tradition, this is a weakness of redaction criticism. However, significant differences
between the Gospels do exist, and the Gospels require careful study to understand what is
being said, and why. Second, the tendency of redaction critics to focus most on the
differences between the Synoptics may be misleading, glossing over the substantial
agreements between them. Third, most redaction-critical study assumes the Two
Document Hypothesis, and therefore studies the redaction of Mark and Q by Matthew and
Luke; but a significant minority uses other views, especially one that accepts Markan priority
but denies the existence of Q. Thus the scholarship divides into different groups for
redaction-critical study, depending on their solution to the Synoptic Problem. Fourth, the
actual practice of redaction criticism, although holding out the initial promise that it would
study the Gospels holistically, has often devolved into a minute study of pericopes. This loss
of a holistic view of the Gospels has helped to open the door for some of the newer
methods we will study in the present book, especially narrative and rhetorical criticism.

VII. The Contents of Q

Luke Matthew Contents
Beginnings
3:7-9, 3:7b-12 John the Baptizer: warnings of divine judgment on Jewish