It doesn't get any newer than this. This is the New Perspective on the New Perspective of Paul and the apostles. The theology undergirding this critique received formal expression in 1646. But since the confessional theology of the Westminster Assembly turned out to be entirely biblical, the goodness of such theology turns out to be "new every morning."
Some popular forms of radical NT scholarship insist that James and Paul essentially represented two different schools of thought, with Paul favoring salvation by grace alone through faith apart from good works. James allegedly denied this, arguing instead that good works formed an essential aspect of the Christian life, meaning eternal life, such that without them no one could be saved.
Sanders has a newer view of Judaism, and of the people against whom Paul was said to have engaged in an ongoing apologetic. But first, as always, I wish to introduce my readers to the presuppositional mechanics which operate behind the historical evaluators. You could think of this as a "heads up" lead to a lengthier discussion about people like N.T. Wright, E.P. Sanders, Marcus Borg, James Dunn, and maybe just maybe John P. Meier. These are the guys swinging the heavy bats these days in historical Jesus studies.
But I have to tell you, I am really not that wowed. They share a common core of philosophic assumptions regarding historical methodology in general, and of the Gospel accounts (and epistles) in particular, which I find fairly naive (and even counter-intuitive at times), dressed though they are in scholarly attire.
Let us consider E.P. Sanders on "
The Historical Figure of Jesus" (1993).
In his landmark work, published by Penguin Press in 1993, E.P. Sanders penned in the preface (p. xiii),
"We know about Jesus from books written a few decades after his death, probably by people who were not his followers during his lifetime. They quote him in Greek, which was not his primary language, and in any case the differences among our sources show that his words and deeds were not perfectly preserved. We have very little information about him apart from works written to glorify him. Today, we do not have good documentation for such out-of-the-way places as Palestine; nor did the authors of our sources. They had no archives, and no official records of any kind. They did not even have access to good maps. These limitations, which were common in the ancient world, result in a good deal of uncertainty."
Now this is remarkable for several reasons. The skepticism emblazoned on the preface of a work so monumental that many seemed to think it a "pioneering effort" of the highest quality could not survive, I will argue, even the most cursory study of the sources themselves. Only the academically popular "higher critical" spirit of excessive skepticism (some call it "Bultmania") which is born of a philosophical machinery wholly at odds with the New Testament itself, could generate such a willful blindness to what is relatively obvious.
The NT Gospel and epistolary authors stridently disagree with Sanders. And if we were to use their theology [This would be a New Testament form of NT Criticism, which is more or less what I do] to create such a machinery to assess
Sanders' own assessments, his preface would not have made it to the press in the first place. It simply begs far too many questions, includes a non-sequitur and a contradiction or two thrown in for good measure. So let us see what comes of a NT criticism of Sanders outlook on the NT documents.
First, let us compare Sanders to the Gospel writers, for whom I shall presume to speak, adopting their own "ancient world" views the best I am able to present an alternative case for the sake of comparison. And let us take his affirmation of faith one at a time.
Sanders: "We know about Jesus from books written a few decades after his death, probably by people who were not his followers during his lifetime."
Luke: "I have written only of that of which
I have a perfect knowledge, being fully certain
from the many Gospels I have studied, which information can be compared (and I did compare it) with that
of those twelve who were eyewitnesses of everything Jesus said and did."
My Comments: The Gospels contain
identifiable readings embedded within them that did not come from decades after his death.
These were extremely early. They contain contemporary information Jesus taught the apostles, unaltered. This is provable historically. The eyewitnesses alive at the time kept the message unchanged. I have shown this -- more than once -- using the "Jesus Seminar's" own common criteria, like the counterproductive features rule (by way of "reductio ad criterium" argument).
You can also see the "no change" view for yourself by watching Paul's gospel -- which he preached in Rome at the end of Acts, and compare this to the message which Jesus preached in the Gospels, or at the beginning of Acts (by the apostles John and Peter, and those of Acts 2). The embedded Aramaic poems also show the same Gospel preached. This doctrine Paul taught Timothy, showing that all minister trained by the apostles had just the same understanding of the Christian faith (by design), as their qualifications indicate (see 1 Tim. 3: "a good understanding of the faith" and Jude v. 3 "
the faith once
for all delivered to
the saints").
Sanders: They quote him in Greek, which
was not his primary language, and in any case the differences among our sources show that his words and deeds were not perfectly preserved.
Paul: "Cephas had three names: Simon [Hebrew], Peter [Greek] and Cephas [Aramaic]. We left the record in Greek because that was the tongue of
the whole world, our evangelistic target. Many Aramaic phrases are preserved in the Greek translations found in the writings we left. The apostles used these Scriptures for
practical purposes. We
trained everyone using them in
the one same faith of the Lord Jesus, and
set ALL the churches in order by one pattern: One Lord, one faith, one baptism. The differences - from our standpoint - could not have been contradictions or we would have failed at our intended purpose of uniting all Christians as one against Rome and the Jews who wanted to kill us. We overcome them by one Gospel preached everywhere."
My Comments: Who won? The "differences" therefore should not count against the truth of what we [Christians] strove for. Not all "differences" are "inconsistencies." These differences seemed non-contradictory
to everyone but much later readers, who read with a philosophical orientation far removed from those of the authors.
Not perfectly preserved? Then why does it say, "The law of the Lord is perfect," and " The Scripture cannot be broken." If you do not have
an objective standard of perfection (and you do not), how do you know that this canon does not measure up to
what you do not have?
So differences show imperfection. Yet, if every Gospel said just what the others did, this would render 3 of the 4 totally unncessary and historically irrelevant. They would not be regarded as independent sources, but mere copies. So Gospels agreement is bad, and so is disagreement. How does this
not show
personal prejudice against the historicity of the NT canon as the guiding rule in advance of the evidence of the canon itself?
Even N.T. Wright, who co-authored a book with Marcus Borg (Of "Jesus Seminar" fame) in 1989 called
The Meaning of Jesus, wrote of this problem in the following words from p. 18:
"The guild of New Testament studies has become so used to operating with a hermeneutic of suspicion that we find ourselves trapped in our own subtleties. If two ancient authors agree about something, that proves one got it from the other. If they seem to disagree, that proves one or both are wrong. If they say an event fulfilled biblical prophecy, they made it up to look like that. If an event or saying fits a writer's theological scheme, the writer invented it. .... Anything to show how clever we are, how subtle, to have smoked out the reality behind the text. But, as any author who has watched her or his books being reviewed will know, such reconstructions again and again miss the point, often wildly. If we cannot get it right [as with book reviews] when we share a culture, a period, and a language, it is highly likely that many of our subtle reconstructions of ancient texts and histories are our own unhistorical fantasies, unrecognized only because the writers are long since dead, and cannot answer back."
Doctor Wright wins the Ophir Gold Nobel historical sobriety prize. I could have scarce said it better on a good day. Such frank admissions do not often grace the printed page, much like Dr. Crossan's "something of a bad historical joke" comment. I believe N.T. Wright's comment explains the reason for Crossan's well.
Note, here also that Sanders sounds
very certain. Yet later you will find him decrying the uncertainty of it all. This is the way of skeptics. They cannot know anything for sure (given their rejection of the biblical outlook), but they always know (with certainty) just how much you cannot know. Laugh or cry. Either is appropriate.
This again shows that
personal prejudice against the canon guides the Bultmanic historiographic account Sanders and others typically offer.
Sanders: We have very little information about him
apart from works written to glorify him.
Paul: We wrote to glorify Him because
the historical truth about Him requires this. We were and are eyewitnesses of this fact. Your implicit assumption to the contrary could be used to show
as much prejudice in your own historical judgments about our writings as you say that ours are tinged by too much favoritism toward the Lord of Glory, even Jesus the Christ. But why should a prejudice
against someone or his teachings be considered any better
than its contradictory when the evidence has not yet been considered? Or were you there also?
My Comments: It simply does not follow from "enthusiasm" to falsity or exaggeration. This is especially the case when
you have the same enthusiasm for the truth as you do your hero about whom you write. Solomon wrote that the truth endures forever, while lies are soon exposed. The apostles knew and believed this, and they wrote for posterity (Peter expressed this sentiment regarding the
preached gospel and baptism: "This is for you and your children, and
all who are far off"). They would permit nothing but what they knew to be the truth because anything else would be discovered false in a short time frame. There were simply too many people alive as hostile witnesses to the ministry of Jesus who would have been happy to point out their written errors.
Paul and others like him -- there were at least 40 (who vowed not to eat until they had killed Paul) -- would have written counter-gospel accounts. I know I would have if I had been on the wrong side of the aisle. And if converted to Christ, I would have been interviewing and writing (like Luke and his assistants). I have done some of this on my own to get eyewitness information from older people regarding the Depression in the U.S. during the 1930's. Today, I found a pictorial history of Livermore, at the Carnegie "Old library" downtown, which book covers the Depression years. It was most helpful.
Sanders is addicted to the same non-sequitur I hear from countless historians who show themselves capable of far better logic than this. This shows that the problem is not intellectual. It is personal prejudice against the Gospel accounts which leads them to load the dice this way. They know better, and yet they do it anyway. My professors at CSU Hayward insisted on this same non-sequitur, but not nearly so much when they studied Herodotos, who openly writes to glorify Greece.
Sanders: Today,
we do not have good documentation for such out-of-the-way places as Palestine;
nor did the authors of our sources.
Paul: this statement contains the kinds of contradictions of which you accuse us. If you have no good knowledge about ancient Palestine, then you admit you have no good way of judging whether or not we did. Any judgment we make you will have to judge by poor knowledge (you just said so). Therefore, since we were eyewitnesses of all that Jesus began to do and to teach from the beginning of his ministry, since we lived in Palestine all our lives -- and you did not -- we certainly ought to have the benefit of the doubt in any one case where you suppose we did not know the land well. In fact, all educated Jews -- from Dan to Beersheba -- knew the Holy Land well. It was our tribal heritage and very dear to us because of the promises of God to Abraham.
My Comments: If I do not know much about some topic, and then claim you do not either, this presupposes a fair understanding on my part, for I sit to judge others on that topic. How can I be BOTH an unfit critic on the one hand, and a fit critic on the other. Is this not one of those contradictions you were implicitly talking of earlier?
I have already noted the
early Aramaic poems of early and high christology. The Greek form does nothing to hinder the truth of their earliness or of what they claim. These show that no theology, no matter "how reflective" or mature it might be, therefore, can be used as a sign of "lateness" in any gospel or epistle.
Sanders: They had no archives, and no official records of any kind.
Luke: First, we did have official records. These were the gospel accounts formed by early Christians and confirmed by the twelve eyewitnesses. It was their deuteronomically required status as eyewitnesses which made the writings official. "Apostle" is, after all, the highest office, followed by the evangelist and prophet. What did you suppose we were doing by inscripturating the words and deeds of our Lord to teach them to all generations? Please read my Gospel prologue
more carefully.
That was the purpose for which Jesus appointed
scribal-prophets as apostles. That is why they had to be "
eyewitnesses." Their testimony, which I (we) have put in order for you
is just the official record about which you speak (approved by the apostles as fully accurate, who memorized the sayings and deeds of Jesus self-consciously).
My Comments: Sanders utterly misses the point of the Older Testament as a covenant-historical (quite official) record of Israel, which prophesied --
stated the credentials of the coming Messiah, so that when He arrived, He would be easy to spot. God even required all Israel to sing those credentials repeatedly and endlessly (the Psalter).
Second, yeah, what Luke said. The NT aims to provide a prophetic history that was
just as official as the First Testament. These men knew they were writing for posterity, and that their tasks were sacred. They researched and wrote with the utmost care because
their beliefs demanded this. The Church, from their point of view, was the pillar and ground
of truth, not the pillar and ground of highly creative exaggerations built up over time.
Sanders: They did not even have access to good maps.
Paul: Everywhere I went, I left behind churches. We communicated by letter and by mutual friends who gave us the directions we needed. The Roman soldiers also knew a great deal about much of the empire, and those who converted to Christ helped us a great deal. We did not need maps.
My Comments: They didn't have the internet. They didn't have football. They didn't have plasma teevees. And, yet, somehow, the Christians still managed to win the entire empire to Jesus Christ. You say "Mapquest," we say "Constantine." Our maps (local people with good memories) were good enough.
Sanders: These limitations, which were common in the ancient world, result in a good deal of uncertainty.
Paul: None of the apostles speaks of the gravity of uncertainty. The very thing which amazed us was just how certain we became, but only after the Lord Jesus had firmly and repeatedly overcome our skepticism. We put this in writing, especially in the somewhat humorous case of Thomas (also called "Didymus"), who said to all the twelve that he would never believe unless he put his hands where the nails had been in the Lord's crucified body.
Are you the first to doubt, or is that not the common condition of man? And did we not have Sophists, Cynics, and Gnostics among us who would have never believed in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, unless our Gospel came to them with a demonstration of power from the Spirit of Christ to do alone what could overcome their persistent skepticism? Or is there a shortage also of Thomases in your era?
Did I not persecute the Church with all my might, opposing them as many in your day do? What set of creative accretions overcame my hostility to the One whom I now serve -- tell me if you know -- you who bid us be so uncertain of that to which we were eyewitnesses from the first. For there is no record you have which says other than that I took extraordinary pains to harm the servants of Christ, but am become one of those and suffer all things that I might gain Christ.
My Comments: That's what I'm talking about. The certainty of uncertainty contradiction common to such scholars results from their rejection of the testimony of the biblical record in favor of autonomous judgments which have ultimately no certain basis. All becomes uncertainty for them in the end, if you ask the right questions (and I do - habitually). How much more "official" than the Word of the Living God do you want to get? And what does that even mean?
If the biblical record was so frought with uncertainty, why doesn't any of this show up in the biblical record itself -- as though that record were written to overcome uncertainty. And why did Luke write:
"It seemed good to me also, having had
perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,
That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed."
Sanders says imperfectly preserved; Luke says perfect understanding; Sanders says much uncertainty of the record because of limitations of ancient world; Luke says certainty of that which we have been taught
FROM THE FIRST (beginning of Jesus ministry) -- suggesting that transmission of information over time has done nothing to make it imperfect.
It's all so confusing. It almost looks like Sanders
totally ignores Luke's testimony. Many other liberal scholars do just the same sort of thing. This explains why he believes we have no idea who actually wrote the Gospels. Most scholars (Christian or not) are not this skeptical regarding Luke. This fact puts Sanders into the radical camp.
He waxes plainly Bultmannian at points. His argument that, "There are legendary traits in the four gospels of the New Testament, and there is also a certain amount of newly-created material ... Nevertheless, it is in the four canonical gospels we must search for traces of the historical Jesus" (ibid., pp. 64-65). Traces? Newly-created? Legends? I think the cards are pretty much on the table here.
Not only does this simply treat lightly all the earliest testimony of the apostles and prophets, but it overlooks most if not all of what the early church fathers have to say (the second and third generation Christians). This shows the uncanny and compelling power of postmodern, form-redaction critical assumptions and methods to override biblical parameters AND common sense all at once. Its assumptions remain firmly founded on evolutionary
dogmata, which I have refuted so many times I will not venture here to do so again.
Other scholars grind different axes.
James D.G. Dunn, for instance -- despite all the forthright internal evidence for the unity of the Apostolic corpus (the dominical deposit entrusted to them) pits Paul against James openly in a little green paperback he wrote back in the early 1990's.
The internal testimony of much Scripture (Old and New Testaments) carefully mitigates against this view. I have already shown this in four ways.
1. The modern Gospels criteria render this impossible
2. The unified, ancient apostolic deposit (apodosis) forbids this
3. The inter-textuality of the NT forbids this [Paul knew the other apostles and had James confirm his preaching on two separate occasions,
openly arguing for it in Acts 15]. Dunn contradicts Acts 15 directly. This falsifies his thesis.
4. The Churches were set in order according to one standard only. This can be seen from the clear statements of Paul in 1 Corinthians ("churches of God"), from the 7 identical lampstands in Rev. 1 (and the Older Testament, which prophesies this catholicity); and it is to be infered from the many passages of the OT regarding the regulative principle of the worship and government of the Church, and the fact that God has but one standard for all men (Prov. 20:10, etc).
In short, given the biblical teachings regarding the nature of truth and historicity -- yes, the Bible is sufficient to teach historiography too (how to write history properly) -- Sanders simply offers a counter-biblical historiography to be used against the Bible's own testimony thereupon. His uncertainties about which he feels quite confident are not those of the biblical writers (quite the opposite) and Dunn postulates an unhistorical division within the apostolic ranks that the canon outrightly denies.
The choice is clear enough that we must have one or else the other -- the ancient biblical (self-consistent) historiography, or its modern, skeptical, and Bultmanic competitor, which self-eliminates both de facto (as I have shown) an in the nature of the case given its rejection of certain biblical teachings.
The two history-assumption sets -- biblical and postmodern -- are simply incompatible. One leads to the certainty of the faith we have been taught, and the other to total skepticism in the end. The patient man will see an endless number of Bultmanic portraits of Jesus come and go, only to be outlasted by the bibical Jesus of history and Christ of faith, which have been one and the same all along (assuming the right faith that is).
Luke will finish with the upper hand. And we know this now (by faith) because the contrary is impossible.
And now for a moderately unscientific postscript: Why the Germans are so GOOD at technology, and so poor at New Testament criticism I have no idea; but the beer more than makes up for this. Let's face it.
