Fr. Larry Hart

This essay is an early draft of an article published under the title of “A Modest Proposal for a Systems Philosophy of Hermeneutics, As Applied to the Composition & Transmission of the Four Gospels” in Philotheos: International Journal for Philosophy and Theology. It has also been posted on academic.edu.  In this online posting footnotes occur as endnotes, followed by a bibliography.

Since the beginnings of the Enlightenment, the notion of a scientific hermeneutic has insinuated itself into academic Biblical studies –– particularly as regards the composition and transmission of the Gospels and the investigation of Christian origins. When Hobbs and Spinoza drew up lists of contradictions, inconsistencies, and anachronisms they had detected in the Pentateuch, they were setting out to disprove its Mosaic authorship, and by extension the entire Biblical corpus, by means of a rational and objective methodology. When 300 years later the Jesus Seminar conducted its investigation into the authenticity of Jesus’s sayings and deeds, it claimed its work to be based on objective scientific procedures. It meant, of course, that it was following along the hermeneutical lines of linear logic begun by Hobbs and Spinoza, and further developed and refined by a succession of scholars as “higher criticism”, or more correctly what is now known as the “historical-critical” method. However, here in the first quarter of the twenty-first century there is a shift in perspective as significant for Biblical studies as the Enlightenment was from Semler to Borg. This postmodern perspective recognizes that there is no philosophy, no theology of hermeneutics, without presuppositions, that absolute scientific objectivity is a delusion. It is as suspicious of logic and reason as higher criticism has been of faith. It perceives the universe more in terms of quantum mechanics than Newtonian physics; and, most significantly, embraces a more nonlinear systems understanding of processes. More and more this new perspective sees historical-critical methodology as flawed and unable to render a consistent and comprehensible understanding of Scripture –– particularly the Gospels. What is posited here is that a more nonlinear systems hermeneutic provides a reasonable way forward in the interpretation of Hebrew and Christian Scripture.

I Higher Criticism Reprised
As noted, in the seventeenth century Thomas Hobbes (1558-1679) and Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) drew up long lists of what they believed to be irregularities, mistakes, and prolepses in the Pentateuch, and then used them to argue that Moses could not have been the author of the five books of the Torah. The brilliant French physician and medical professor at Paris University, Jean Astruc (1684-1766), was disturbed by what he considered “this sickness of the last century”, and in 1753, determined to refute Hobbes and Spinoza, published, a defense of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Translated into English the rather unwieldy title was Conjectures on the original documents that Moses appears to have used in composing the Book of Genesis.

Astruc believed that the modern eighteenth century literary methods that had been developed in the study of the classics could be used in assessing the authorship of Genesis. He drew up parallel columns and assigned verses to each of them according to what he saw as the defining features of the text; for instance, whether a verse used “YHWH” or “Elohim” in referring to God, or whether it had a doublet (two accounts of the same event, such as the creation narrative or of Sarah and the king). Astruc identified four documents in Genesis which he believed mirrored the Four Gospels He arranged his results in four columns, declaring that this was how Moses had originally written Genesis, which later had been combined into a single book. This explained, he argued, the repetitions and inconsistencies which Hobbes and Spinoza had noted.

Astruc’s work was taken up and further developed by a succession of German scholars who saw Astruc’s method of analysis logically leading to an entirely different set of conclusions than those he had reached. ¹ Among the philosophers, theologians, and Bible scholars in this long line who continued to refine and apply this new methodology of “higher criticism” as it came to be known, or the “historical-critical” method as it is now more commonly identified, were: Johann Semler (1725-1792) who rejected the inspiration and correctness of both the Old and New Testaments; Johann Eichhorn (1752-1827), who in his adaptation of this methodology saw the entire Bible as having been written by many hands, and all supernatural events related in the Old and New Testaments as attributable to superstitious beliefs; Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), for whom the task of hermeneutics was to understand the thoughts of the author by discovering in works of a similar genre and, in balance with the grammatical interpretation, why a work had been produced in the first place; Ferdinand Baur (1792-1860), who argued that second century Christianity was a synthesis of Gentile and Jewish Christian thought; Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), who interpreted religion and Scripture primarily in anthropological terms; David Strauss (1808-1874) who distinguished between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history and interpreted the ideas of Christianity as myths; and, Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) who is most famous for the documentary hypothesis––the argument that the Pentateuch had its origins in a redaction of four originally independent texts identified as JEDP. ²

The three primary types of “higher criticism” as it eventually developed from Astruc’s work are: literary, form, and redaction criticism. Literary criticism attempts to understand the various strata, or layers of meaning, in a text. The first layer concerns the meaning and elements which are on or near the surface. Many of these can be answered by such questions as: Why? Who? What? Where? When? and How? However, most stories seek to communicate something both subtler and more significant than what is easily discovered in their literal content. Marcus Borg was correct, “The Bible always means more than it says”. The second strata of meaning has to do with identifying the mood and emotional content through an analysis of imagery, language, and style. Through a study of the author’s diction, phrasing, and selection of detail, it is thought, a third level establishing the attitude of the author toward the audience, characters, settings, and subject matter can be discovered. The analysis of the fourth layer is an attempt to interpret the author’s intent in light of what has been learned from examining the first three strata. ³
Specifically, the literary critic seeks to identify various phenomenon in the text, such as: (1) Doublets (stories that occur twice and how they compare or contrast). (2) Commentary (a comment made on a text by a scribe that has been incorporated into the text by a later copyist). (3) Stylistic Differences (stylistic and vocabulary differences that might indicate a different authorial hand). (4) Chronological varia (the insertion of a newer word in place of an obsolete term).

Historical criticism, or the historical-critical method, investigates the origins, social, cultural, literary, source and historical elements, of ancient texts in an attempt to understand the writer’s beliefs and intentions.
Redaction criticism studies the collection, arrangement, editing and modification of sources. It frequently tries to reconstruct the thinking and values of the “community” it imagines gave rise to a document or piece of writing and the purpose of the author, or authors, in writing a particular text. Source criticism refers to the effort to establish the sources used by authors and redactors in composing or editing a text. “Q” is one such source widely assumed by scholars. Unfortunately, sources are much easier to imagine than to factually discover in reality. ⁴ Form criticism also seeks to determine a unit’s original form and its historical context by classifying units of scripture according to literary patterns.

II Historical-Critical Method and Jesus Studies                                        Norman Perrin in What is Redaction Criticism? provided something of a summary to the above and an introduction to the development of the historical-critical method as practiced in Jesus Studies.

The purpose of form criticism has been to get behind the sources which literary criticism might identify and to describe what was happening as the tradition about Jesus was handed on orally from person to person and from community to community. Form criticism has been especially concerned with the modifications which the life and thought of the church––both Jewish-Christian and Gentile-Christian have introduced into the tradition, and form critics have worked out criteria for distinguishing these strata in the Gospels which reflect the concerns of the church from the stratum that might be thought to go back to the historical Jesus. . . . Redaction criticism is the most recent of the three disciplines to have become a self-conscious method of inquiry. It grew out of form criticism, and it presupposes and continues the procedures of the earlier discipline while extending and intensifying certain aspects of them. The redaction critic…is especially interested in the formation of the Gospels as finished products. ⁵

Gerhard Maier, the imminent German theologian and Scripture scholar at Tübingen, described redaction criticism as: “A theory which holds that the writers of the Gospels were not historians but theologians. To develop their own respective theologies”, explained Maier, “they (the writers of the Gospels) ascribed to Jesus words He never spoke and they credited him with things He never did. These ‘inventions’ were necessary in order to have a basis for the theology the writers wanted to develop”. ⁶ Higher criticism, or what has become known as the “historical-critical method” is, then, a theological and hermeneutical perspective with its own lengthening history. Indeed, it has been engaged in this meticulous, fragmenting, speculative, atomizing analysis, and secularization of the Bible for nearly three-hundred years now — depending on one’s starting point. ⁷

Albert Schweitzer famously dated the origins of the quest for the historical Jesus from H. S. Reimarus (1694–1768), ⁸  but Reimarus himself was, of course, actually representative of the whole Enlightenment critical orientation. The Bible, Reimarus insisted, is to be studied like any other book, and the life of Jesus is to be found in the Gospels by means of critically sifting and weighing their contents. Reimarus, then, sought to discover through “logical analysis” of the Gospels, and by careful attention to problems of relative credibility, who Jesus was as an actual historical figure. ⁹  Reimarus’s conclusion was that Jesus was a mortal Jewish prophet, and the apostles founded Christianity as a religion separate from Jesus’s own ministry.

Adolf von Harnack (1851-1931) sought to demonstrate the dependence of ancient Christology on non-Christian sources for its concepts and terminology as a way of arguing that Christianity had to get back beyond the Christ of dogma to what he thought to be the “essence of Christianity;” specifically, to the teachings of Jesus about the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

William Wrede (1859-1906), known for his now abandoned investigation of the so-called “messianic secret” in the Gospel of Mark, suggested Jesus’s instructions to keep his identity hidden in Mark was a literary and apologetic device by which early Christians could explain away what Wrede thought the absence of any clear claim of Jesus to be the Messiah.

Rudolph Bultmann (1884-1976), famous for his program of demythologization, argued that the message of the new Testament was expressed in mythical terms, which are now best interpreted according to the concepts of existential philosophy. Only faith in this existential message, the kerygma of the New Testament, rather than any particular facts regarding the historical Jesus are necessary for claims of Christian faith.

III Paradigm Christology
These attempts to discover through literary analysis of the Gospels who Jesus was as an actual historical figure have resulted in numerous manifestations of what the American neo-evangelical scholar Bernard Ramm referred to as “paradigm Christologies”; that is, Christologies that point to something unique, “special” is perhaps a better word, about Jesus which constitutes some higher ideal to which human beings may aspire. ¹⁰  It might be said, for instance, that “Jesus was truly the person for others,” especially, the poor, the outcasts, and the oppressed, that “Jesus loved as no other has loved”, or that “Jesus was a completely authentic existential person”.

For Schleiermacher, who was in a very real sense the father of paradigm Christology, Jesus represented the perfect God-consciousness which he said is in us all. The essence of the Christian religion, he argued, is the feeling of “absolute dependence” on the Father that Jesus felt. This, thought Schleiermacher, was the pattern to be followed in living the Christian faith. Since Reimarus and Schleiermacher, historical criticism in its unending permutations and in its number of paradigm Christologies has proliferated. Marcus Borg’s portrayal of Jesus as sage, mystic (or spirit person) and political activist is one contemporary example.

IV Criteria of Authenticity
Enchanted by the hopeful beginnings of the Enlightenment, those scholars instrumental in the development of historical-critical methodology thought they would be able to develop the tools necessary for the scientific investigation of the Bible. This hope was pursued enthusiastically throughout the modern era as if it were a real possibility already achieved. However, historical-critical methodology is now itself increasingly called into question. For one thing its notions of what science is and does is built on the supporting pillars of nineteenth century perspectives and logic. Its imagination and thought process continue to be shaped by Baconian methodology and Newtonian physics rather than that of quantum mechanics or nonlinear systems thinking. For example, the historical-critical method has a religious-like faith in the Enlightenment dictum that the solution to any problem comes through applying formal logic and the scientific method with total objectivity. Consequently, one frequently hears New Testament scholars, especially those engaged in a close scrutiny of the Gospels, asserting radical skepticism as an essential principle of biblical criticism as if that were the same thing as objectivity.

However, postmodern thinking regarding objectivity is changing. It begins with the recognition that there is no such thing as the sort of absolute objectivity that the children of the Enlightenment thought possible. Paul Ricoeur noted that, the illusion is not in looking for a point of departure, but in looking for it without presuppositions. “There is no philosophy”, he said, “without presuppositions”. ¹¹ Ricoeur went on to say: “Consequently, it (understanding) is never without presuppositions; that is to say, it is always directed by a prior understanding of the things about which it interrogates the text”. ¹²  In developing his theory of tacit knowledge Michael Polanyi, poly-mathematician, chemist, social scientist, and philosopher, argued that the belief that the exact sciences are characterized by complete objectivity is a “delusion”. ¹³  This is true not only because of our distorting prejudices and presuppositions, but also because every experience we have ever had influences the very questions we raise. We cannot escape our own total involvement in formulating what we know—or think we know. If this is true even in the exact sciences, how much more is it true in biblical and historical studies? And speaking of the exact sciences, or even just the disciplines of research psychology and sociology, no one who has ever had even an introductory course in research design and statistical analysis would mistake biblical or historical studies for “real science”. McKnight asserts in a simple and most straight forward manner, “Contemporary literary criticism lacks a universally accepted set of principles and methods”. ¹⁴  The reality is there are multiple ways of knowing, ¹⁵  and knowledge itself is a complex system. ¹⁶ 

Abraham Maslow, one of the most frequently quoted psychologists of the twentieth century, suggested, based on his own research, an alternate path to “scientific objectivism”, one which he believed would render more accurate perceptions and deeper understanding:

My finding is that which you love you are prepared to leave alone…. We make no demands upon it. We do not wish it to be other than it is. We can be passive and receptive before it. Which is all to say we then can see it more truly as it is in its own nature rather than as we would like it to be or fear it to be or hope it to be. Approving of its existence, approving of the way it is, as it is, permits us to be nonintrusive, nondemanding, nonhoping, nonimproving, to that extent do we achieve this particular kind of objectivity. ¹⁷

What Karl Barth, who thought historical criticism both necessary and justified, says of Adolf Jülicher’s work on Romans is as pertinent to our hermeneutical situation as it was to his own.

We observe how closely Jülicher keeps to the mere deciphering of words as though they were runes. But when all is done, they remain still largely unintelligible. How quickly he is. without any real struggling with the raw material of the Epistle, to dismiss this or that difficult passage as simply a peculiar doctrine or opinion of Paul. . . attributing what Paul has said to his ‘personality’, to the experience on the road to Damascus, (an episode which seems capable of providing at any moment an explanation of every impossibility), to later Judaism, Hellenism, or, in fact, to any exegetical semi-divinity of the ancient world. ¹⁸

If Barth’s criticism of criticism seems a little harsh to us, it must be remembered that he wrote his commentary on Romans as he listened to the exploding artillery shells of World War I and sought in his reading of Paul what might be of substantial and intelligible pastoral help to the people of his congregation rather than what was merely critical and speculative.

V Erosion of the Criteria
The criteria of dissimilarity, which argues that a saying attributed to Jesus must be distinguishable from both first century Judaism and early Christianity in order to be considered genuine, has been the primary test of the authenticity of Jesus’s sayings. ¹⁹ And the tools of form criticism and redaction methodology have provided the necessary support for the criteria of dissimilarity. For instance, form criticism asserts that only those traditions about Jesus were retained that reflected the interests of the early church. However, the criteria of dissimilarity, and form criticism itself, are beginning to erode both because they defy common sense and lack appropriate academic rigor. As Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter note in their Quest for the Plausible Jesus: “First with regard to the erosion of the criteria of dissimilarity… Objections were raised that separating Jesus from Judaism and early Christianity overlooked the continuity between Judaism, Jesus and early Christianity, a continuity that doubtless was present”.  ²⁰

The simple hard fact is that the criteria of authenticity are fraught with problems:
• Jesus is cut off from Jewish culture which renders him, as a historical figure, unintelligible. ²¹
• There is a failure to recognize that what any given exegete finds embarrassing may say more about what that particular interpreter thinks should be embarrassing than what the early followers of Jesus, or later the church, actually found embarrassing.
• Quite puzzling questions are left unanswered, for instance: If the Church wrote its answers to later issues into the text at a later date, why are not such matters as circumcision, or what foods are kosher, emotional and contentious topics in the early church, not dealt with definitively in the Gospels?
• There seems to be no awareness of the fact that if the answer itself is correct the question is nearly irrelevant.
• There is no real recognition that we simply do not know all we want to know or need to know; and, therefore, cannot account for unknown variables such as the elements of coincidence, or chance. Surely, hermeneutics in the twenty-first century cannot ignore the philosophical implications of Heisenberg or the emerging theory among quantum scientists that an event may be both cause and effect.
• The assumption that the Gospels were written from a community rather than to a community seems increasingly unwarranted. The only evidence given for the existence of Matthew’s Jewish community, or for Mark’s, Luke’s, or the Johannine community as the source of the Gospels comes from the inventive imagination of scholars. William A. Johnson argues, “The text does not merely serve or reflect its readers. . .  but actively seeks to create the ideal reading community to which the writing aspires”. He contends that texts are constructed in such a way as to guide speech, thought, and behavior. Communities, then, were the recipients and not the source of biblical texts. ²²  This obviously leads to a radically different way of reading the Gospels than that of form criticism.
• Complicating matters enormously for scholars following the linear historical-critical method, is the discovery that the work of ancient story tellers and historians was characterized by both fixity and flexibility––stability and diversity. In both the oral and written tradition of the first century Mediterranean World there is characteristically a teaching, or tradition, to be treasured, but it is formulated variously depending on the emphasis the teller might want to bring out for a particular audience or occasion. The story might be told by different, or even the same storyteller with different emphases, in a different order and with embellishments as long as the teller remained faithful to the core truth. This also means that there is no event or saying which can be traced back linear step by linear step, peeled back layer by layer, until the scholar comes to the pristine original. There is, rather, only the witness to the event. ²³

There are just two more difficulties among the many problems with the methodology of higher criticism and the criteria of authenticity that I will note here. The first is a question which is actually rooted in scientific inquiry. It is a question often raised but generally ignored: “Why is it that those using the same methodology come up with such different, even contradictory, results”? ²⁴  The mark of reliable science is that work done (experiments performed) in a prescribed manner have a common outcome. Finally, the historical-critical method is built on the premise that the Gospels are the result of quite a lengthy process; indeed, such an incremental evolution is essential to the entire enterprise of higher criticism. However, more convincing is Larry Hurtado’s argument that the Jesus story, with its accompanying adoration and devotion, is better described and explained as exploding into the first century world rather than evolving. ²⁵

Given all this, Morna D. Hooker writes in the foreword to Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity edited by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne: 

Contributors to this volume are divided between those who think these ‘tools’ (tools for determining the authenticity of Jesus’s words and deeds) still have a modest role, and those who are determined that they must be put aside altogether. Perhaps however, the time has come to abandon the whole enterprise of trying to discover “the real historical Jesus”.  ²⁶

There is much more but this should be sufficient to provide some understanding of why I am convinced that the historical-critical method is intellectually stuck and has left Scripture with little to say that is relevant or intelligible to a world with its back against the wall. ²⁷ Maier, therefore wrote: “The higher-critical method, for all practical purposes, has arrived at the end of a blind alley, we are faced with the responsibility of finding a different method of Biblical inquiry and scholarly study––one better suited to its subject. . . that the prospects are poor should not keep us from finding a better method”.²⁸

Nevertheless, there is a simple, if difficult, way out. I say difficult, because while understanding systems theory presents no great problem to any reasonably intelligent person, becoming a systems thinker involves a personal cognitive shift that is not easily made.

VI Systems Thinking
As already indicated, the way out being posited here is that of systems thinking. Systems thinking, at least in its formal sense, is a little less than seventy-years-old. After 1955 the continuously accelerating speed and complexity with which computers calculated, organized, stored, and retrieved information required a more efficient way for the human mind itself to manage and understand the vast quantities of information now available. General systems thinking was the scientific response to this need. 29  In systems thinking the focus is more on how information is organized than on content––process rather than content. In order to understand an organized whole, it is thought, we must identify not only a system’s individual parts, but the relation between them as well. A crucial tenet of systems thinking is: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. A fully assembled automobile engine has a power and greater functionality (is something more) than all its component parts lying in an orderly but disconnected arrangement on a garage floor. A family, a church, a hospital, a nation, the Bible are all greater than the sum of their parts and must be understood holistically.

Another major difference between systems and non-systems thinking is how cause and effect are understood. Systems thinking is nonlinear. Linear thinking is driven more by the older concept of simple cause and effect in which one cause has one effect––A causes B which then causes C and so on. ³⁰ The historical-critical method invariably assumes it has correctly identified A and therefore thoroughly understands B and everything that follows. Systems thinking on the other hand has to do with seeing a whole field of causes and effects in which each cause itself becomes an effect and each effect a cause. Strange as this may sound, even scientists now question the traditional concept of cause and effect. For example, physicists now think that at the quantum level gravity may be both cause and effect. Moreover, in systems thinking as A affects B its strength and manner of doing so changes as B in turn affects A. This means that Scripture must be understood holistically and with an appreciation for the fact that we never apprehend all the relational variables.

Michael Patrick Gillespie’s book, The Aesthetics of Chaos: Nonlinear Thinking and Contemporary Literary Criticism, although itself sometimes a rather linear presentation that leaves one wondering about Gillespie’s own process, is well worth reading. Gillespie, who is Professor of English at Marquette University, notes that in linear Newtonian thinking, which still determines the work of literary critics, one idea or observation creates the facts that become the basis from which successive ideas or observations are derived. “This approach”, he argues, “produces interpretations far too narrow to accommodate the full potential of literary expression”. ³¹  John Ciardi’s cogent argument for how poetry is be read is fully applicable here. Ciardi asserts that the first question is not what does a poem mean, but how does it mean? “Why does it build itself into a form out of images, ideas, rhythms? How do these elements become the meaning”. ³²  “Literary critics”, says Gillespie, “have become so used to the inconsistencies resulting from linear thinking that they simply ignore those particulars that do not fit its assumptions––what Newtonian scientists, upon encountering such irregularities, call ‘white noise'”. Gillespie sees quantum mechanics and chaos theory as providing a way of configuring literary studies “by finding connections in antinomies that commonplace Cartesian thinkers see only as contradictions; and, through this accommodation to ambiguity. . . move toward recognizing an order in the universe that scientists following Newtonian methods cannot hope to discern”. ³³

One of the underlying principles in chaos theory, which is included in systems thinking, is the notion that there is an order that emerges out of chaos, that there is a relationship between the two, and that everything is interrelated––every particular is part of a larger pattern. This interrelatedness and interdependency of each part of a system means that looking at the components of a system in isolation without seeing the whole not only distorts and confuses our understanding but may even collapse the system. ³⁴  Edwin H. Friedman, rabbi, and pioneer in applying systems thinking to family therapy, therefore observed:

Each component, rather than having its own discreet identity or input, operates as part of a whole. The components do not function according to their ‘nature’ but according to their position in the network. . . . To take one part of the whole and analyse its ‘nature’ will give misleading results, first, because each part will function differently outside the system, and second, because even its functioning inside the system will be different depending on where it is placed in relation to the others. In fact, the very notion of effect becomes relative. ³⁵

From a slightly different angle, it might be noted that linear thinking with its philosophical and theological atomization easily falls prey to what Alfred North Whitehead called “the fallacy of misplace concreteness”. The more specialized students and scholars of an academic discipline become; that is, the more socialized in a particular discipline’s abstractions and methodology, the more elaborate the abstractions themselves become with the end result that the abstractions themselves become detached from reality. ³⁶

In transitioning now to the composition and transmission system of the Gospels, by which I mean the four canonical Gospels, I will issue one important reminder and make one paradoxical observation regarding the nature of systems thinking. First, systems thinking is just that, it is a way of thinking. It is not particularly difficult to teach a student the concept of nonlinear thinking, it is a great deal of difficulty for them to learn to actually think in a nonlinear fashion. Second, and I think this particularly significant for Biblical studies, with systems theory “it no longer becomes necessary to know all about something (a text for instance) in order to comprehend it”. ³⁷

VII Systems Components of the Gospels
The focus in this essay is primarily on three components of the composition and transmission system of the four Gospels. (1) The oral tradition, (2) the written Gospels as rough, unfinished notes or memoranda (hypomnemata or commentarii) and, (3) The Gospels as ‘eyewitness’ testimony. However, it must be kept in mind that there are many other elements of the system as well––accident, opportunity, necessity, the sensus divinitas, and that grace which the historian and philosopher Glenn Chestnut described as “the mysterious X factor”. ³⁸ Certainly, the nature of the Gospels as a system can be more easily seen if, with John A.T. Robinson we conceive the writing of the synoptics as having been composed in parallel (I would say interactively and interdependently) rather than in a rigidly sequential process. The question, then, becomes: What if the whole process by which the Four Gospels came to be was far more fluid and dynamic than supposed, occurring not only within the context of a continuous oral exchange but also a sharing of written notes?

Robinson, who did not think the synoptic question entirely resolved, stated in Redating the New Testament, “Rather I believe that there was a written (as well as oral) tradition underlying each of them (the synoptics) . . . The gospels as we have them are to be seen as parallel, though by no means isolated, developments of common material”. . .  ³⁹ Matthew Larsen’s proposal, it seems to me, meshes quite nicely with Robinson’s more fluid and dynamic image of interplay or “parallelism”.

In his Gospels Before the Book which offers a way of reading the Gospels that could totally upend Jesus studies. Matthew Larsen maintains that the Gospels are hypomnemata (Greek) or commentarii (Latin). While the two words share the same wide range of meaning––public records, rough drafts, lists, announcements, commentary, memoranda, and notes––their most common feature is that they represent an unfinished, unpolished, writing project. They were, even if extensive, essentially notes which might be written by anyone. They could be written, for example, not only by the highly educated or elite, but by doctors, soldiers, builders, and other lower status worker––or even slaves.

The narcissistic Cicero, the Roman statesman, philosopher, and consul, as well as one of Rome’s most highly regarded poets, orators, and prose stylists, worried over how future generations would know how great he was. His answer was that a book would have to be written in his praise. However, this created a dilemma. He didn’t want to be seen as praising himself; but he thought no one could write such a book, actually any book, better than he could. The solution wasn’t difficult to find. Write detailed but unfinished notes and have Herodes Atticus, a notable Greek scholar and writer himself, edit and publish the notes (hypomnemata or commentarii) as a book authored by Atticus. ⁴⁰  One of Larsen’s key emphases is that hypomnemata (notes) are just that–– a brief record of facts, topics, or thoughts, written down as an aid to memory––rather like Pascal’s Pensées. They may serve as the basis for a book, but they are not intended as the finished literary product itself.

In Theaetetus, observes Larsen, Socrates tells Eucleides about a conversation he had with Theaetetus. As soon as Eucleides arrived back home in Megara  he wrote hypomnemata (made notes) of his conversation with Socrates as he remembered it. Later he wrote everything he remembered in the style of the conversation itself. ⁴¹  After that he made frequent trips to Athens to ask Socrates what remained unclear or forgotten to him. He would then return home to Megara and correct his notes about this prior conversation about a conversation. ⁴²  Larsen goes on to explain by quoting Lucian’s How to Write History: “After the writer has collected everything, let the writer first weave together from them a rough draft (hypomnema ti sunuphaineto) and make a text that is still unadorned and disjointed. Then, after the writer has put it in proper arrangement (ten taxin), let the writer bring in beauty, give it a touch of style, shape it, and bring it to order”. ⁴³  This is the process Larsen believes is especially evident in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark; that is, he sees the Gospel According to Mark as a collection of unfinished notes, a rough draft, and Matthew as the further refinement of that draft––the very thing scholars have thought unlikely. In Luke’s prologue with its reference to the attempts of others to set in order an account of the Jesus narrative and his own intention to provide a more careful account, along with the prologues more elevated and sophisticated style, seems to support Larsen’s hypothesis. The Acts of Timothy, late fifth century, includes a tradition of the earliest gospel texts as disorganized notes. When the disciples of John came to Ephesus, according to this tradition, they had with them a loose collection of notes which John reworked and arranged as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John then wrote another Gospel, the Fourth Gospel, to cover what he thought had been left out of the first three. ⁴⁴

Larsen wants to emphasize that the Gospels were not regarded as closed texts by early Christian readers, but as unfinished stories and sayings of a tradition that remained fluid and open to expansion and revision. Just how that fits with the early stabilization of the Christ narrative I am not quite certain.

One of Larsen’s many intriguing examples is Artemidorus Daldianus, a second century soothsayer famous for his five-volume work on interpreting dreams. Artemidorus gathered material, notes, for his books from other diviners during his extensive travels through Greece and Italy. Larsen’s interest in Artemidorus is principally in Artemidorus’s worry that others will steal his ideas or alter his books. Larsen’s argument is that the Gospels in their early form were unfinished and open books susceptible to alterations. However, it is also worth observing that according to Larsen, Artemidorus sought to “head off” or at least mitigate the effects of such efforts: “I ask those who read my books,” he wrote, “not to add or remove anything from their contents”. ⁴⁵ We might note that Artemidorus faced problems in this regard that the writers of the Gospels did not. For one thing his sources were more private and not easily accessed; whereas the Gospels were more public, open, easily accessible; and, therefore, more amenable to verification. To this might be added the overall continuity of the canon.

However, what is exciting is the notion of each of the Gospels as a “notebook” somewhere on the route to becoming a finished literary product, but never quite entirely refined or achieving the sort of literary elegance defined by the Greco-Roman world—either because that was not their intended purpose or because their original recorders and custodians were not from the learned elite who possessed those literary skills.

VIII Notes of Oral Witness Testimony
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham provides another element of the systemic composition and transmission of the Gospels. What I am suggesting, or perhaps asking, is: What if the Gospels are not formal histories or bibliographies, but more like notebooks or memoranda—notes of multiple and varied observations, conversations, events, experiences, impressions? How does one, using the methodology of form or redaction criticism, sort out such notes, on any subject, contained in someone’s composition book? By doubling down on the application of “modern literary methods”? I am not certain after reading Gospels Before the Book, that even Larsen quite grasps how problematic his thesis is for source, form, and redaction criticism. But what if Richard Bauckham is correct? What if the Gospels are essentially eyewitness accounts, and what, we might further ask, if more or less in parallel with these oral eyewitness accounts rough notes were written–– memoranda of what Jesus’s Palestinian contemporaries, especially family, friends, disciples, and recipients of his kindness, heard, saw, and thought of him or felt in his presence? Surely, the earliest friends and followers of Jesus must have talked frequently with others in synagogue, at work, in the marketplace, at the village and town gates, and in the temple precincts of what they knew of Jesus both before and after Easter. This is all part of the system.

It is not within the scope of this paper to recapitulate Bauckham’s rather lengthy and through discussion of the Gospel’s as eyewitness testimony; or, to explore his definition of “eyewitness”. However, it is possible and worthwhile to note the following from his book:

This directness of relationship between the eyewitnesses and the Gospel text requires a different picture of the way the Gospel traditions were transmitted from that which most New Testament scholars and students have inherited from the early twentieth-century movement in New Testament scholarship known as form criticism. . . . it has bequeathed one enormously influential legacy. This is the assumption that the traditions about Jesus, his acts, and his words, passed through a long process of oral tradition in the early Christian communities and reached the writers of the Gospels only at a late stage of this process. . . The Gospels embody their (the eyewitnesses) testimony only in a rather remote way. . . There is a very simple and obvious objection to this picture that has often been made but rarely taken very seriously. . . . Vincent Taylor wrote that “If the Form-Critics are right, the disciples must have been translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrection”. He went on to point out that many eyewitness participants in the events of the Gospel narratives “did not go into permanent retirement; for a generation they moved among the young Palestinian communities, and through preaching and fellowship their recollections were at the disposal of those who sought information”. ⁴⁶

It seems to me that a piece that is enormously helpful to Bauckham’s entire theory is the probability that those who first told the Jesus story (the disciples, apostles, and earliest believers) had not only their own first-hand experiences of the Messiah, as well as the oral stories of what others said they had experienced to pass on as verbal memorizations, but also hypomnemata, commentarii, memoranda, notes of events, conversations, and experiences as resource to share. ⁴⁷What must be seen is a first century setting in which informal conversations, discourses, and the writing of notes and memories were all taking place simultaneously, interactively, interdependently. ⁴⁸

IX A “Restorative” Hermeneutic
Modern criticism is “stuck”––stuck in a philosophy of analysis that is largely conjectural, that frequently begs the question, that is severely limited by linear thinking, that is sadly debilitated by professional ambitions; and is, therefore, generally inconsequential when it comes to pastoral care or spiritual formation. ⁴⁹  Neither has the textual analysis of the historical-critical method (linear thinking), as represented in the criteria of authenticity, served the study of the Gospels or of Christian origins all that well. What is needed is a systems perspective which sees the composition and transmission of the canonical Gospels holistically, interactively, and interdependently. Such an approach will include many elements in its field of vision; including, but not limited to: (1) The original orality of the Gospels as “eyewitness” testimony shared generously within the Christian community (churches), as well as with outsiders. (2) The probability that the Gospels represent notes, rough drafts, outlines, or memoranda of this testimony more than they do finished books of history or polished literary forms––notes which may, like all notes, seem disorderly and confusing; but, nevertheless, represent eyewitness reports of what Jesus of Nazareth said and did, and of how he was perceived by his contemporaries. (3) That the inscribing of these notes seems to have begun very early, ⁵⁰  openly, publicly, and somewhat in “parallel”, even interactively, with one another and certainly in conjunction with oral tradition. If all the actions and responses of each element in the gospel composition and transmission system were diagramed and portrayed graphically things would look much wilder (like the graphics of fractals on a computer screen), but they would also be both more explanatory and beautiful than any visualization provided by the historical-critical linear model.

Obviously, we may argue the accuracy of the observations of the earliest Christians or even doubt their truthfulness as we might with any witness providing testimony about an event. But in the end what these people thought and said of Jesus, and reported of their encounters with him as told in the canonical hypomnemata is all we have. ⁵¹  Well, that, and the sacred oral tradition that is both ancient and continuous ⁵²  but of sufficient power for those who live in the aura of its meaning to discover, in the words of Paul Ricoeur: “A time of criticism. . . that is no longer reductive but restorative”. ⁵³

Summary
This paper briefly recapitulates the history and methodologies of higher criticism before suggesting modern New Testament criticism is “stuck”. It proposes not that criticism be abandoned, for there is no going back to a pre-critical time of reading the biblical text. What is posited is a less linear systems approach with at least three components: (1) The oral tradition of The Gospels. (2) The written Gospels as rough, unfinished notes or memoranda ( hypomnemata) or commentarii) as proposed by Matthew Larsen (3) The Gospels as “eyewitness” testimony as presented in Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

End Notes

[1] E. F. Klug argued in his forward to Maier, “Historical-critical methodology cannot be claimed as a neutral discipline”. Whether we begin with Hobbes and Spinoza, or Semler its origins and continued development, with, as Maier himself states, ” . . .its endless chain of perplexities and inner contradictions”, represents not scientific objectivity but a negative prejudgment of the Biblical text. G. Maier, The End of the Historical-Critical Method.  (trans. E. W. Leverenz –– R. F. Nord) (Wipf and Stock; Eugene, OR 2001), 8, 11.

[2] For a contrary perspective see: U. Cassuto, The Documentary Hypothesis. Eight Lectures.  (trans. I. Abrahams) (Oxford University Press; Oxford 1972).

[3] For a specific, clear, and practical critique see: C.S. Lewis, Fern-seed and Elephants. And Other Essays on Christianity (Harper-Collins, New York 1975) 86-105.

[4] For a discussion on whether “Q” was an actual source for the synoptics or more of a scholarly fiction see: M. Goodacre –– N. Perrin, Questioning Q. A Multidimensional Critique. (InterVarsity; Downers Grove, IL 2004).

[5] N. Perrin, What Is Redaction Criticism? (ed. D. O. Via Jr.) (Wipf & Stock; Eugene, OR 2002)) vi.

[6] Maier, End of the Historical-Critical Method, 108.

[7] It should be noted that the historical-critical method is largely a Protestant phenomenon. Catholic scholars have been somewhat more judicious in embracing its methodology and a little more cautious in accepting its radical conclusions.

[8] A. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. (trans. W. Montgomery) (Dover Publications; Mineola, New York 2005).

[9] Schweitzer ended his study with Wrede. Schweitzer has often been thought of as having ended the quest for the historical Jesus whereas the reality is he extended and perpetuated it.

[10]B. Ramm, An Evangelical Christology. Ecumenic and Historic. (Thomas Nelson; Nashville, TN 1985) 177-179.

[11] Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil. (trans. E. Buchanan) (Beacon; Boston MA 1967) 348.

[12] Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil, 351. 

[13] M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge. Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. (University of Chicago Press; Chicago, IL 1962) 18.

[14] E. V. McKnight –– R. A. Spencer, “Contours in Literary Criticism and Methods” in Orientation By Disorientation. Studies in Literary Criticism and Biblical Literary Criticism Presented in Honor of William Beardslee.  (Pickwick; Pittsburg, PA 1980) 53-70.

[15] G. F. Chestnut, God and Spirituality. Philosophical Essays. (iUniverse; New York 2010). Also: L. Hart, The Annunciation. A New Evangelization and Apologetic for Mainline Protestants and Progressive Catholics in Postmodern North America. (Wipf and Stock; Eugene, OR 2017) 165-173.

[16] P. M. King –– K. S. Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment. Understanding and Promoting Intellectual Growth and Critical Thinking in Adolescents and Adults (Jossey Bass; San Francisco 1994).

[17] A. H. Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. (Penguin; New York 1993) 16 –17.

[18] K. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans. (Oxford University Press; London, 1933, Sixth edition 1968) 7-8.

[19] For a critique of this and other criteria as used by the Jesus Seminar see: W. R. Herzog II, Jesus, Justice, and the Reign of God. A Ministry of Liberation. (Westminster John Knox; Louisville; Louisville KY 2000).

[20] G. Theissen –– D. Winter, Quest for the Plausible Jesus. The Question of Criteria (trans. E. Boring) (Westminster John Knox Press; Louisville & London 2002) 6.

[21] See: N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God. (Christian Origins and the Question of God Volume Two; Fortress Press; Minneapolis, MN 1996) 91-98.

[22] W. Johnson, “Constructing Elite Reading Communities in the High Empires,” Ancient Literacies. The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome. (eds. W. A. Johnson –– Holt N. Parker) (Oxford University Press; Oxford 2009) 328-329.

[23] D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels. (William B. Eerdmans; Grand Rapids 2011) 38-39.

[24] Still worth reading in this regard is: C. S. Lewis, Fern-seed and Elephants, 90-99.

[25] L. Hurtado, How On Earth Did Jesus Become God? Historical Questions About Earliest Devotion to Jesus. (William B. Eerdmans; Grand Rapids, MI 2005) 25-30.

[26] C. Keith –– A. Le Donne eds., Jesus Criteria. The Demise of Authenticity. (T. and T. Clark International; London 2012) xiv.

[27] Hart, The Annunciation, 138-191.

[28] G. Maier, The End of the Historical-Critical Method, 48.

[29] Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) is recognized as one of the earliest figures in the development of general systems thinking.

[30] Circular thinking is not nonlinear thinking. It is merely a line of cause and effect with the ends tied together.

[31] M. P. Gillespie, The Aesthetics of Chaos. Nonlinear Thinking and Contemporary Literary Criticism. (University of Florida Press; Gainesville, FL 2003) 3,16.

[32] J. Ciardi –– H. Barrows –– H. Heffner –– W. Douglas, How Does a Poem Mean? (Part Three of an Introduction to Literature; Houghton Mifflin; Boston, MA 1959) 668, 663-670.

[33] Gillespie, The Aesthetics of Chaos, 3,16.

[34] C. P. Cordon, “System Theories, An Overview of Various System Theories and Its Application in Healthcare”, American Journal of Systems Science, Vol. 2, No. 1, (2013) 13-22.

[35] E. H. Friedman, Generation to Generation. Family Process in Church and Synagogue. (Guilford Press; New York and London: Guilford Press, 1985), 15.

[36] H. Daly –– J. Cobb, For the Common Good. Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future (Beacon Press; Boston, MA 1994) 25, 122.

[37] Friedman, Generation to Generation, 15.

[38] Chestnut, God and Spirituality, 1-22.

[39] J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Westminster Press; Philadelphia, PA 1976) 94.

[40] M. D. C. Larsen, Gospels Before the Book (Oxford University Press; Oxford, New York 2018) 12.

[41] Notice Eucleides did not have a stenographic verbatim he worked from, but from memory wrote notes in the style of the conversation.

[42] Larsen, Before the Book, 19.

[43] Larsen, Before the Book, 107.

[44] Larsen, Before the Book, 150-151.

[45] Larsen, Before the Book, 100.

[46] R. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Grand Rapids, MI 2017) 6-7.

[47] Imagine this possibility: A wealthy woman in Jerusalem witnesses a healing of Jesus and pays a scribe to write about it in a letter she sends to her chronically ill sister in Damascus. Or a rabbi having heard the beatitudes goes home and writes them down as he remembers them.

[48] Dunn, Jesus Paul and the Gospels, 22-44.

[49] Anyone who doubts this should read in its entirety: A. Sabar, Veritas. A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.(Doubleday; New York 2020).

[50] John A.T. Robinson made a convincing argument for the composition of the entire New Testament occurring prior to 70 C.E. At the very least we know the Gospel had a stable core no later than 40 C.E, but probably six years earlier. See: Robinson, Redating the New Testament, 1979. Also:Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 2005 edition.

[51] Dunn therefore notes that the question we should ask is not what Jesus originally said or did, but what did Jesus most characteristically say and do. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels, 11,40.

[52] Most people, even today, heard the gospel narrative before they ever read.

[53] Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil, 350.

 

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