Historical Criticism did not originate with biblical scholarship; nevertheless, its application to Gospel studies has produced disastrous results. In order to understand the magnitude of this issue, it is essential to first understand the presuppositions that many liberal and/or secular scholars have about what Jesus “may have taught” and the “opinions” and “needs” of the church towards the end of the first century AD. These scholars generally believe that the Gospel traditions originally circulated orally for a lengthy period of time after Jesus’ death (this is their “Stage 1” of the evolution of canonical Gospels), radical Form Critics would even argue this period lasted as long as 70 to 100 years. However, toward the end of this period a number of these oral traditions began to be written down and preserved at different important churches in various regions of the Roman Empire. Once the greater church realized that the generation responsible for orally transmitting these “traditions” was dying away, they began to congeal these materials, some of which were still oral and some of which were written, into fragmented narratives, which some scholars believe to be separate documents (this is Stage 2 of the evolution of canonical Gospels). Some radical Source Critics refer to these materials as “Q,” “L,” “M,” and “proto-Mark.” Furthermore, radical scholars assert that these fragmented narratives were predominately products of Christian communities instead of accurate records from actual eyewitnesses. After another period of time, specific “redactors” (i.e., editors) gathered these materials and as used them as they composed their respective Gospels (this is Stage 3 of the evolution of canonical Gospels). Additionally, radical Redaction Critics assert that as these redactors used these anonymous sources they imposed upon them their own peculiar brand of theologies as they wrote. I use the term “radical” for those who hold to these particular presumptions because their positions are unsupported by the historical data and because they abuse the very disciplines within which they are viewed as “experts.” However, these disciplines are not exclusively used by liberal scholars. There are conservative Evangelical scholars that use them to engage in constructive research of the Gospels, and they do so using a disciplined and unbiased research methodology. The disciplines of Form, Source, and Redaction Criticism are actually neutral with respect to their specific fields of research. The problem occurs when liberal and secular scholars abuse them to promote their own “radical” presuppositions and speculative theories about the trustworthiness of the Gospels.
And what are these dangerous presumptions of these radical scholars? As previously explained they are that the New Testament Gospels are not literary products from the eyewitnesses and immediate disciples of Jesus. Instead, they are late compilations from multiple anonymous and fragmented sources that are more or less loosely based upon events involving an itinerant rabbi that the modern world refers to as Jesus. Moreover, as these redactors (i.e., the authors of the canonical Gospels) composed their respective Gospels they imposed upon their sources the urgent felt needs of their Christian communities. The Gospels are not, therefore, the accurate records of eyewitness accounts provided by Jesus’ immediate followers of what he actually taught and accomplished, but in general they are the “opinions” of regionally organized Christian communities concerning what Jesus might have said about what was really important to them during the time that the Gospels were being composed into their final form, which was almost a century later.
This model of literary development—which combines the disciplines of radical Form, Source, and Redaction Criticism—argues that the canonical Gospels are the products of oral and literary evolution. Consequently, they suffered from serial redactions over a prolonged period of time in order to meet the ever changing and subjective felt needs of later Christian communities that were far removed from the original events that the Gospels actually document. To liberal and/or skeptical scholars, therefore, these compositions cannot be trusted to provide any accurate historical evidence concerning the life of Jesus. Instead, they merely reflect the “opinions” and theology of the organized church during the time in which they were composed. Then finally, they argue, sometime in the late 4th and early 5th century the institutionalized church “christened” them with the status of “canonical.”
Some might ask, “Why would anyone promote such a ludicrous idea”? Secular scholars make these conjectures simply because their worldview demands that everything changes and evolves, even things such as literature and religions. Moreover, they approach all subjects such as philosophy, literature, culture, and religion with a bias against the existence of God and possibility of miracles. They assert that since God does not exist or that He is not personal or knowable, then miracles cannot and do not occur. There can be, therefore, only natural explanations for the origins of the Gospels found in the New Testament. Consequently, they create evolutionary constructs consistent with their worldviews, while simultaneously ignoring all and any evidence to the contrary. Consequently, their biases, conjectures, and conclusions are usually poorly defended. Moreover, in many academic disciplines these types of conjectures and presuppositions are only applied to the research of religions, and especially with respect to the origin of Christianity. For example, when reviewing copies of Chaucer poems, no competent scholar argues that the works of Chaucer have suffered from countless contaminations by the hands of multiple editors that have systemically changed or altered what the original author actually wrote—whoever he or she was. They do, however, argue about the meaning of his poems, as do many New Testament scholars concerning the words of Jesus—and this is a legitimate endeavor. Nevertheless, no one argues that the whole of Chaucer’s works are the literary products of serial redactors who did not actually know Chaucer, and the few that might are ultimately relegated to the trash heap of irrelevance—and rightly so.
It is important to note that Evangelical scholars do not reject the disciplines of Historical Criticism outright, but rather they reject the theoretical constructs and presuppositions that radical critics bring to their research of the Gospels. For example, Evangelical scholars recognize that very early in church’s history there was an “oral” period of gospel proclamation, and that during this period these oral proclamations and traditions were the dominant vehicle for disseminating message and teachings of Jesus. However, this period only lasted for approximately 20 to 25 years before the first canonical Gospel was written. Moreover, this oral period continued to run concurrently as the canonical Gospels were being composed by their respective authors, two of which are literary products from Jesus’ personal disciples (e.g., Matthew and John), while other two were composed by their contemporaries, men with which the apostles were quite familiar (i.e., Mark being a disciple of the apostle Peter; and Luke being a travel companion of the apostle Paul). Consequently, there is no hard evidence that the message that Jesus commissioned his disciples to proclaim (as documented in the Gospels), and which they faithfully disseminated during the “oral period” of the church’s history has ever suffered from constant subjective revisions or anonymous redactions. The very message that Jesus commissioned his immediate followers to preach is itself preserved and confirmed both in the book of Acts and the epistles of the New Testament. Consequently, Evangelical scholars do not reject the value of Form, Source, and Redaction Criticisms, instead they reject the speculative and undocumented late 3 stage evolutionary construct that radical Form, Source, and Redaction Critics promote while conjecturing about the development and untrustworthiness of the canonical Gospels. In short, the historical record documents that the same people who first orally proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ were also ultimately responsible for it being preserved in its current written form.
Consequently, when someone says that the Gospels are not historically reliable, then we should realize that they do not see them as we do. Instead they are viewing them through a secular lens, whether intentionally or simply as the result of their passive education. Regrettably, this perspective originated from the skeptical speculations contrived by radical Historical Critics. These critics reject all objective historical evidence corroborating that the canonical Gospels are the compositions of Jesus’ immediate follows, and as such they provide eyewitness testimonies concerning him. Consequently, the canonical Gospels are the only literary works that accurately document precisely what he taught and accomplished on our behalf, and any that reject them do so at their own peril.
Monte Shanks Copyright © 2011