Why did Jesus stop reading?

[morbo3000]

The documentary hypothesis has some highly speculative aspects to it, and it's hard to see that as "scholarly." Might as well say the Jesus Seminar was "scholarly." People that deny it don't deny the texts were often edited.

I wasn't advocating the documentary hypothesis. Just using it to make the point that if you are going to cherry-pick texts to suit a theological agenda, what criteria do you use? Was it a scribe who added the parts you dont like? Or supressed the correct ones? Was the text a mosaic pieced together, with one author getting it "right" and the other not? How do you tell the difference?

A couple other points. I wasn't contrasting historical and scholastic. I was showing that each have presuppositions they are based on that lend them to one task or another.

The secular scholastic approach *is* speculative. Science is speculative. That's the whole point. Willingness to turn every rock over, including ideological. The best contributors to reddit.com/r/academicbiblical acknowledge the weaknesses of the documentary hypothesis and historical jesus studies. They talk about alternatives.

And historical christianity and secular scholasticism don't have to be mutually exclusive either.

[Paidion]

Once you say that only texts that meet certain theological presuppositions are divine, you have no foundation in either camp. You're in shifting sand in both.

Not if your "certain theological presupposition" is that the teachings of Jesus are true and without error. When these teaching disagree with the declarations of particular Old Testament prophetic writings, then you have three possible positions:

1. Accept the teachings of Jesus and reject some of declaration in the Old Testament prophetic writings.
2. Accept all of the Old Testament prophetic writings (though some of these are not consistent with others) and reject some of the teachings of Jesus.
3. Attempt to synthesize the Old Testament prophetic writings with the teachings of Jesus to form a consistent whole.

I think the majority of evangelical Christians opt for #3, but I think none of them have succeeded. For that reason, since I am a Christian, I take position #1. I would guess that Orthodox Jews take position #2.

[morbo3000]

Not if your "certain theological presupposition" is that the teachings of Jesus are true and without error.

It sounds like you have much in common with historical Jesus scholars like Marcus Borg. They prioritize the teachings of Jesus over Paul and the OT, as do I. However, they disagree with you about "true and without error."

How do you judge that the teachings of Jesus are true and without error? We know that Mark and the Q gospel sayings are the earliest records of Jesus. So trusting them makes some sense. But why trust Matthew and Luke? And certainly, why trust John, furthest from the life of Jesus, and of the most dubious historicity.

[dizerner]

How do you judge that the teachings of Jesus are true and without error?

It's really the final step for his systematic... if he can throw out the "mean" things that Jesus said, then he's got the god that pleases him... a real modern Thomas Jefferson.

[Paidion]

How do you judge that the teachings of Jesus are true and without error? We know that Mark and the Q gospel sayings are the earliest records of Jesus. So trusting them makes some sense. But why trust Matthew and Luke? And certainly, why trust John, furthest from the life of Jesus, and of the most dubious historicity.

Why trust Q? That is not a historical document. Q is but a hypothesis. I trust Q least of all. By the way, most of the content of Q appears in Matthew.

I trust Matthew and John most, because those two men walked this earth with Jesus and heard his teaching first hand. Thus they remembered the things that Jesus taught and did. I don't know how old you are, but if you are in your fifties, can't you remember many of the things you said and did 30 or even 40 years ago? I'm 77 and my memory is fading. Yet I clearly remember many of the things I said and did 60 years ago and more.

John Mark was not a disciple of Jesus, but he was taught by Peter. So he got his information second-hand. The fact that he wrote his memoirs of Christ earlier than the others doesn't count as much as the fact that it was second hand information.

Luke got his information from Paul, and Paul got his from the other disciples of Christ. So Luke's was third hand. It is likely the least trustworthy.

Not that we should necessarily judge these writings by the criteria I have given. The inspiration of the writers by the spirit of God may be a very important factor in their degree of accuracy. But that factor doesn't imply that they are inerrant. I don't hold to the view that God preserved certain writings from the possibility of error.

[morbo3000]

@paidon

Why trust Papias?

[mattrose]

Matt, I am curious. How would you explain the flood in light of your understanding of progressive revelation? Whether peoples' understanding of God's wrath grows and changes over time or not, it seems to me that a literal flood would only be expected if God was behind it.

Regards.

I think that humanity had become very wicked prior to the flood (Genesis 6:5). They had rebelled and created relational distance between themselves and God. In my view, when this relational distance is created by us, all hell breaks loose. This applies not only to human relationships, but also to the realm of nature and demonic activity. Personally, though I admit it is speculative, I believe the flood was the result of demonic activity.

I understand that many will recoil from such a suggestion given the literal reading of the text. Clearly it suggests that God caused the flood. I don't back away from that language, to be honest. I believe God is willing to take responsibility for creating a world in which humans have the freedom to reject him and demons have the ability and freedom to cause havoc in the natural realm. God creating such a world is a form of allowing the evil. And the God who allows something can be said to have caused it in some sense.

But, through progressive revelation, I think we learn more and more than things attributed to God in ancient times turn out to be attributed to other spiritual beings. David's census seems to be a good example of this. At first, the prompting was attributed to God. But later, in Chronicles, it was attributed to Satan. Job would be a different kind of example. All the characters in the story (including Job) attribute all the bad stuff to God, but the reader realizes it was actually Satan. Or Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10:10, attributes death in the wilderness wanderings to a destroying angel that is, unless I am forgetting, not mentioned in the text itself. These examples show that the Bible sometimes uses language that makes it sound like God is doing something even though it's not actually God doing that thing, at least not directly.

[john6809]

Thanks Matt. Can't say I agree with you. Not on the basis of being shocked by your suggestion though. It just doesn't read that way to me. If the activity was demonic, it was allowed by God since He warns Noah, ahead of time, to build an ark. And He obviously had the power to prevent it because He swore afterwards that He would never again, do (allow?)such a thing.

The same could be said in the other two of examples you give. God allows Satan to come against Job where, He hadn't before. It also seems that He uses Satan in the census that David calls. It doesn't seem incongruous to suggest that people understood God to use their enemies, natural and supernatural, to bring about discipline/punishment on His people or others. I'm sure this is no small thing to some.

As for Paul, it seems that the apostles were given inside information that allowed them to prove a point that others were not given. Perhaps it would be easier to allow that God spoke things to Paul and the other disciples that Paul didn't feel required argumentation.

Either way, I very much appreciate your response and value your opinions. I don't have a vested interest in the disagreement and have probably said enough. God bless you guys as you continue to hammer these things out.

[morbo3000]

My point is that you are mixing and matching between a critical and traditional understanding of the text, taking the parts you like from each, and rejecting the others.

I trust Matthew and John most, because those two men walked this earth with Jesus and heard his teaching first hand. Thus they remembered the things that Jesus taught and did.

This is a good example. How do you know that? The evidence that the Matthew of history wrote the gospel attributed to him is scant at best. If you are going to trust Papias for the attribution, the question is: why? I don't care, one way or the other. But that's because I'm not basing the trustworthiness of their accounts on the relationship and proximity of the author to Jesus.

In order to accept these attributions, you have to trust the early church father's decisions to include some books as canonical, and others not, and accept that they were certain enough about their criteria that the books made the final cut. That's an acceptance of the divine guidance of the process. And of the whole. Not just parts.

IMO, if people choose to ascribe inspiration to these texts, they are accepting the fathers' final decisions. There is really no other way. And we are too far away from the authors, and fathers to second guess their decisions. The same is true of the OT. Jeremiah is not an inherently inspired text. We attribute its "inspiration" because the fathers (jewish and christian) decided.

If, like me, you take a critical approach, you can second guess the fathers because you aren't interested in inspiration in the first place. But I can't use critical scholarship to disqualify one text, but then attribute divine revelation based on the claims made by the fathers to another. The assumptions of each methodology are mutually exclusive.

Not that we should necessarily judge these writings by the criteria I have given. The inspiration of the writers by the spirit of God may be a very important factor in their degree of accuracy. But that factor doesn't imply that they are inerrant. I don't hold to the view that God preserved certain writings from the possibility of error.

How do we know they are inspired? Only by trusting the process and criteria of the fathers. Once you throw that out, your house is on sand as someone earlier said.

[Paidion]

I trust Matthew and John most, because those two men walked this earth with Jesus and heard his teaching first hand. Thus they remembered the things that Jesus taught and did.

This is a good example. How do you know that? The evidence that the Matthew of history wrote the gospel attributed to him is scant at best. If you are going to trust Papias for the attribution, the question is: why? I don't care, one way or the other. But that's because I'm not basing the trustworthiness of their accounts on the relationship and proximity of the author to Jesus.

Why shouldn't one trust Papias, a hearer of John? Trusting first and second-century Christian writers concerning historical matters, such as the authors of the "gospels" is quite a different matter from trusting fourth-century (and later) Christian writers concerning philosophical and/or theological speculations about matters such as inspiration, "the Trinity", the nature(s) of Christ, whether one or two, etc.