The Origins of Christianity and the New Testament. Rebecca I. Denova
is a verbal or written attack against an opponent, either real or imagined; rhetoric is the art of persuasion, often calling upon figures of speech and stereotypes, and designed to convince an audience of one’s arguments or point of view. (We are familiar with these terms in relation to contemporary politics and charges of “fake news” from both sides.)
Polemic and rhetoric are literary devices applied by all writers in the ancient world. In polemical writings, opponents may be named or constructed in what is known as “a straw man.” “Straw man” is the idea that the opponent’s arguments (as reported by the writer) are always shown to be wrong and thus defeated. Polemic is not “evidence.”
Throughout the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament, we have numerous examples of these literary devices. It was a favorite device of Jewish Prophets against idolatry and the gospels’ portraits of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and anyone who opposed Jesus.
The Problem of Anachronism
What is anachronism? It is placing something out of its own time and place, usually to a later time or place. The best way to understand this is the example of what are known as “gaffes” in Hollywood movies. It is like watching a movie that takes place in the 1970s where people are using cellphones.
Anachronism is the bane of all historians. This is because we are modern humans. It is difficult to set aside our own experiences and knowledge so that we can be entirely objective. We expect objectivity from historians, but it is virtually impossible. All historians must decide what they think is important, and so you have immediate subjectivity in the selection. Knowing the “end” always influences understanding the past. For example, it is very difficult to write a history of World War II and ignore how it ended.
New Testament scholars and historians do not escape this problem. Reading the books of the New Testament within the frame of their original historical context is quite a challenge. We know that these texts became the basis of a new, independent religion, Christianity. But the writers at the time did not know this. Complicating our reconstructions is the fact that historians and theologians have 2000 years of Christian theology that is so often “read back” into the texts.
As a historian of ancient religions (I also research the religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome), I face the same struggles as other historians. I will attempt in every chapter to try and avoid such pitfalls where I can. I will often insert a modern analogy, simply to help with the reading and the reconstruction of early Christianity. You will be able to distinguish an analogy from anachronism.
Creative Writing
Modern analyses of Biblical literature are sometimes offensive to readers in their descriptions of ancient texts. Many historians conclude that a story was “made up,” but this is the way in which ancient writers went about their craft. Historians such as Herodotus, Polybius, and Livy, for example, had access to “manuals” that provided the rules. You were expected to “make up speeches.” In a speech by a general before the troops were sent into battle, no one “took notes.” Instead, the writer created a speech that highlighted the known characteristics of the general. He was then judged on how well the speech fit the occasion. Both the writers/editors of the Jewish Scriptures as well as the New Testament utilized this device. This is especially so in the hundreds of speeches in Luke’s Acts of the Apostles.
Perhaps a better way in which to explain this type of writing is found in the modern category known as “creative nonfiction.” Creative nonfiction portrays real people and events, but with material added for dramatic effect. Creative nonfiction is employed by poets, playwrights, and screenwriters. In film “biographies,” speeches are added to highlight the meaning behind an event or to indicate what the person was “thinking.” We have the same process in ancient literature.
The First Quests for the Historical Jesus
Ever since the Renaissance, Europeans had been enthralled with the rediscovery of the literature and art of ancient Greece and Rome. When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he brought engineers and surveyors to record the monuments. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone decoded the lost art of hieroglyphs and “Egyptomania” became all the rage in Europe.
In the 1850s, Darwin’s work on the theory of evolution motivated men and women to begin digging up the Middle East (sometimes in the hope of proving him wrong). Europe learned of the great civilizations of Mesopotamia, Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon. The rise of the social sciences (Anthropology, Archaeology, Sociology, and Psychology) provided new criteria for the study of humans and human civilization.
What is deemed the “first quest” saw the production of popular books under the category of the Lives of Jesus, applying the new historical methods in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The writers freely filled in details (e.g. his life as a carpenter), harmonized the differences among the gospels, and psychoanalyzed Jesus (“What was he thinking at various times?”). New literary approaches to understanding “myth” in the ancient world led a few writers to totally dismiss the miracle stories and supernatural elements of Jesus as “myth.” Each writer began with an overall portrait of Jesus (as a reformer, as a revolutionary) and anything that did not fit into this portrait was eliminated.
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965)
Albert Schweitzer was a German theologian and doctor (the latter part of his life was spent as a missionary in Gabon, Africa). In 1906 he published The Quest for the Historical Jesus, largely a critique against Lives of Jesus, but he also provided new tools for the “quest” through the rest of the century.
A significant omission in the Lives according to Schweitzer was the “apocalyptic Jesus.” In the gospels, Jesus had proclaimed the imminence of God’s “kingdom” on earth. This was the Prophetic claim that God would intervene in history one more time in “the final days.” But the “kingdom” did not arrive. Was Jesus wrong?
Over the centuries, the delay of the kingdom was rationalized as time passed; Christians still awaited the kingdom, but in the interim, the church became idealized as a form of the kingdom on earth until Jesus returned. The problem of Jesus as a failed prophet became buried as somewhat embarrassing. The focus was more on elucidating Christian dogma. Schweitzer claimed that analysis of the “apocalyptic Jesus” should be the starting point for historical exploration, in the context of various views of apocalyptic thinking by Jews in the first century. This portrait of Jesus became a template for research in the rest of the nineteenth century. The importance of understanding apocalyptic thinking by Jews in the first century is now a fundamental element of research for New Testament scholars.
Second Quest
Ernest Kasemann (1906–1998) is credited with arguing that it was possible to uncover the historical Jesus through the application of new analytical tools, which became known as the period of the “second quest.” By the 1950s, scholars began to recognize that the first gospel, Mark, was written approximately forty years after the death of Jesus. The others followed Mark, often adapting and editing the first gospel as well as adding new material (Figure I.1). How do we distinguish the “sayings” of Jesus from those of Mark and the others?
Figure I.1 Timeline for events and the writing of the gospels.
| BCE | |
| Matthew’s nativity | 6 BCE |
| Death of Herod the Great | 4 BCE |
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