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.You can t read these books as disinterested histori-cal accounts.None of them is that.What would you do as a judge ina court trial in which you have conflicting testimony from eye wit-nesses? One thing you would certainly not do is assume that eachwitness is 100 percent correct.Someone or everyone is gettingsome information wrong.The trick would be to figure out who iswrong and who is right if anyone is right.The same applies toancient documents like those in the New Testament.If there is con-flicting testimony about historical events, all the witnesses cannotbe (historically) right, and we have to figure out ways to decide whatmost probably really happened.We take up this task in chapter 5. t h r e eA Mass of Variant Viewsn the mid-nineties I was asked by Oxford University Press toIwrite a college-level textbook on the New Testament.I wasn tsure this would be the best career move for me: I didn t have tenureyet, and sometimes university tenure committees look askanceon textbooks as not involving real research.And I wondered whatthe pitfalls would be in trying to communicate historical-criticalscholarship to nineteen-year-olds for whom all this would be news.Idecided to call a number of my friends in the field to see what theythought about it.Should I do it? And if so, what kinds of problemswould I have in trying to digest hard-core biblical scholarship basi-cally for kids just out of high school?I received lots of good tips and advice, but I think the wisest com-ment came from my friend Charlie Cosgrove, who years earlier hadhelped get me through graduate school (he was a couple of yearsahead of me at Princeton Seminary and taught me the ropes).Aboutthe textbook Charlie said, The hardest thing will be deciding whatto leave out. I ended up writing the book, and Charlie was absolutely right.Itis very easy to decide what to include in a book on the New Testa-ment because there is so much to include.But to keep the book man-ageable and affordable, a number of important and beloved topics 62 j e s u s , i n t e r r u p t e dsimply have to be left out.And leaving out topics that are near anddear to your heart is painful.I had the same experience with this book.When talking aboutdiscrepancies in the Bible, I want to go on and on there are so manyof them that are both interesting and important.But I ve managedto restrain myself and have kept my discussion to one chapter theprevious one.Yet I have the same problem with the present chapter.I or any other historical critic could easily devote an entire bookto its topic, but I ve restricted myself to a single chapter.As we saw in the previous chapter, the discrepancies in the Bibleare important in part because they force us to take each author seri-ously.What Mark is saying may not be at all what Luke is saying;Matthew may stand at odds with John, and they both may conflictwith what is said in Paul.But when we look at the contrasting mes-sages of the different biblical authors, there is more involved thanthe kinds of detail and minutiae that we dealt with in chapter 2.There are much larger differences among these authors and booksdifferences not simply in a detail here or there, a date, a travel itin-erary, or who did what with whom.Many of the differences amongthe biblical authors have to do with the very heart of their message.Sometimes one author s understanding of a major issue is at oddswith another author s, on such vital matters as who Christ is, howsalvation is attained, and how the followers of Jesus are to live.Differences of this magnitude do not involve a simple contradic-tion here or there, but alternative portrayals of major importance.Itis impossible to see these alternative portrayals if we do not alloweach author to speak for himself.Most people do not read the Biblethis way.They assume that since all the books in the Bible are foundbetween the same hard covers, every author is basically saying thesame thing.They think that Matthew can be used to help under-stand John, John provides insights into Paul, Paul can help interpretthe book of James, and so on.This harmonizing approach to theBible, which is foundational to much devotional reading, has the ad-vantage of helping readers see the unifying themes of the Bible, but A Mass of Variant Views 63it also has very serious drawbacks, often creating unity of thoughtand belief where originally there was none.The biblical authors didnot agree on everything they discussed; sometimes they had deeplyrooted and significant disagreements [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.You can t read these books as disinterested histori-cal accounts.None of them is that.What would you do as a judge ina court trial in which you have conflicting testimony from eye wit-nesses? One thing you would certainly not do is assume that eachwitness is 100 percent correct.Someone or everyone is gettingsome information wrong.The trick would be to figure out who iswrong and who is right if anyone is right.The same applies toancient documents like those in the New Testament.If there is con-flicting testimony about historical events, all the witnesses cannotbe (historically) right, and we have to figure out ways to decide whatmost probably really happened.We take up this task in chapter 5. t h r e eA Mass of Variant Viewsn the mid-nineties I was asked by Oxford University Press toIwrite a college-level textbook on the New Testament.I wasn tsure this would be the best career move for me: I didn t have tenureyet, and sometimes university tenure committees look askanceon textbooks as not involving real research.And I wondered whatthe pitfalls would be in trying to communicate historical-criticalscholarship to nineteen-year-olds for whom all this would be news.Idecided to call a number of my friends in the field to see what theythought about it.Should I do it? And if so, what kinds of problemswould I have in trying to digest hard-core biblical scholarship basi-cally for kids just out of high school?I received lots of good tips and advice, but I think the wisest com-ment came from my friend Charlie Cosgrove, who years earlier hadhelped get me through graduate school (he was a couple of yearsahead of me at Princeton Seminary and taught me the ropes).Aboutthe textbook Charlie said, The hardest thing will be deciding whatto leave out. I ended up writing the book, and Charlie was absolutely right.Itis very easy to decide what to include in a book on the New Testa-ment because there is so much to include.But to keep the book man-ageable and affordable, a number of important and beloved topics 62 j e s u s , i n t e r r u p t e dsimply have to be left out.And leaving out topics that are near anddear to your heart is painful.I had the same experience with this book.When talking aboutdiscrepancies in the Bible, I want to go on and on there are so manyof them that are both interesting and important.But I ve managedto restrain myself and have kept my discussion to one chapter theprevious one.Yet I have the same problem with the present chapter.I or any other historical critic could easily devote an entire bookto its topic, but I ve restricted myself to a single chapter.As we saw in the previous chapter, the discrepancies in the Bibleare important in part because they force us to take each author seri-ously.What Mark is saying may not be at all what Luke is saying;Matthew may stand at odds with John, and they both may conflictwith what is said in Paul.But when we look at the contrasting mes-sages of the different biblical authors, there is more involved thanthe kinds of detail and minutiae that we dealt with in chapter 2.There are much larger differences among these authors and booksdifferences not simply in a detail here or there, a date, a travel itin-erary, or who did what with whom.Many of the differences amongthe biblical authors have to do with the very heart of their message.Sometimes one author s understanding of a major issue is at oddswith another author s, on such vital matters as who Christ is, howsalvation is attained, and how the followers of Jesus are to live.Differences of this magnitude do not involve a simple contradic-tion here or there, but alternative portrayals of major importance.Itis impossible to see these alternative portrayals if we do not alloweach author to speak for himself.Most people do not read the Biblethis way.They assume that since all the books in the Bible are foundbetween the same hard covers, every author is basically saying thesame thing.They think that Matthew can be used to help under-stand John, John provides insights into Paul, Paul can help interpretthe book of James, and so on.This harmonizing approach to theBible, which is foundational to much devotional reading, has the ad-vantage of helping readers see the unifying themes of the Bible, but A Mass of Variant Views 63it also has very serious drawbacks, often creating unity of thoughtand belief where originally there was none.The biblical authors didnot agree on everything they discussed; sometimes they had deeplyrooted and significant disagreements [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]