Nonconformist Chronicles

Luke and the Torah

Some of my previous posts have hopefully shown that the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in the New Testament is rarely, if ever, in mere terms of predictions that came true. The Old Testament references and allusions recorded in the New Testament are more akin to "parallels" than they are to "predictions." Events in the New Testament are echoes or reiterations of events in the Old Testament. This includes events from every genre of Old Testament literature and not just the prophetic books.  

John Shelby Spong's book, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes is indispensablele for showing how the Gospels employ the Midrashic principle of offering rabbinic-style commentary on the Old Testament. Spong says that the Gospels are liturgical, written for use in early Jewish-Christian worship. In the assembly, the Gospels demonstrated how Jesus fulfills what was written in the Law as Gospel pericopes were paired with the weekly Torah readings. 

The Midrashic principle and the liturgical theory for Gospel origins lead Spong to rightly conclude that there is Jewish content in almost every verse of the New Testament. The Jewish content in the Gospels gives us a perspective for reading the entire New Testament through a Jewish lens. 

Following Goulder, Spong showed how the structure of Matthew's Gospel followed five major Jewish festivals. Moving to Luke, Spong shows how each section of Luke's Gospel follows the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy). Jesus' Journey to Jerusalem in Luke 9:51-18:14, for example, is remarkably parallel to the Book of Deuteronomy. Some highlights:

• Whereas Moses sent out emissaries (Deut. chapter 1), Jesus sends out disciples (Luke 10:1ff)
• The contrast between living on bread alone as opposed to living by the Word of God (Deut. 8:1-3) is aptly parallel in the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Martha was making preparations while Mary was listening to Jesus.
• The year for canceling debts (Deut. 15:1-18) is echoed in the story of a woman released from eighteen years of crippling bondage (Luke 13:10-21).
• The rebellious son (Deut. 21:18-21) is somewhat parallel to the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32).

While these allusions to the Old Testament texts aren't always made explicit by the New Testament authors, they are too uncanny to be coincidental. 

Midrashic elements abound throughout Luke even apart from his overall structure which parallels the Torah. The birth narratives in Luke 1 and 2, for example, bear striking resemblances (in some instances) to the birth narratives of Isaac and Jacob in Genesis. Spong further contends that Luke relied heavily on the story of Hannah and Samuel while composing the birth narratives of Jesus and John the Baptist. The parallels abound there as well (compare 1 Samuel 1-2 to Luke 1-2).

There are similarities between the Josephs of the Old and New Testaments. Also tantamount to Luke's Gospel is his representation of Jesus as both a prophet like Moses and an Elijah-type figure. Jesus' ministry included a miraculous feeding, raising a widow's son from the dead, and a miraculous ascension to heaven which paved the way for his spirit to indwell his followers.

Spong has shown how the Gospel authors made use of the Old Testament, other Gospel authors, and of the Jewish liturgy in their composition. And equally intriguing is Spong's insistence that Acts is a midrash on Luke as events in the early church are reflections of events in the ministry of Jesus.  

For all of these insights, I applaud Spong's contribution to New Testament scholarship. But I'll show where I part company with him in my next two posts as we ask some hard questions about the Gospels.        

Why were the Gospels Written?

The Gospels likely consist of stories and sayings of Jesus that were passed down orally through the decades. These oral traditions were then assembled in book form becoming the individual pericopes of the Gospels. Some pericopes appear in more than one Gospel and each author edited and arranged material according to the needs of his respective readership.

The church was at least thirty years old by the time the first Gospel was written. So each of the Gospels was written in the service of the church, for the congregations of each of the authors. It is doubtful that the church, which grew out of Judaism, had made a clean break with the synagogue by the time the synoptics were composed. So the earliest Christians, who were Jewish, likely continued to gather in synagogues for worship.

Synagogue worship included designated Scripture readings for each worship assembly. The Torah (the five books of Law--Genesis through Deuteronomy) was read through publicly in the course of a year, one passage at a time, one week at a time.  

Returning to Spong's book, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, he contends that the purpose of the Gospels was theological as opposed to historical and liturgical as opposed to literal. What is meant by "liturgical" is that the Gospels were written for use in early Christian worship. Spong contends that each week a pericope about Jesus would be incorporated into synagogue worship which would serve as Christian exposition on the day's reading from the Torah.

So the early Jewish Christians were finding points of correspondence between their sacred Scriptures and what they had experienced in Jesus of Nazareth. Finding Jesus in their Scriptures was their attempt to make sense of the God presence they had discerned in this man. So each week, an episode or saying from the life of Jesus would correspond with, or elaborate on, a passage from the day's Scripture reading.

Building upon the work of Michael Goulder, Spong puts the Gospels beside the Jewish liturgical calendar and concludes that the structure of the Gospels follow the Jewish year. Goulder had argued that the five teaching blocks of Matthew correspond with five major Jewish festivals.

The Sermon on the Mount, for example, corresponds to the Feast of Pentecost which had evolved into a commemoration of the giving of the Law at Sinai. Now Jesus delivers instruction from a mountain, as did Moses.  The Jewish New Year corresponds to Matthew 11 which centers on John the Baptist who announced the New Year theme of the coming of the kingdom. The Feast of Tabernacles (or Harvests) corresponds to the agricultural parables in Matthew 13. The transfiguration text of Matthew 17 would land on the Feast of Dedication which dealt with God's glory. And of course, the sayings of Passion week would correspond to Passover.

Spong has obviously put tedious hours into his research even demonstrating that while Mark only covers six months of the Jewish year from Rosh Hashanah to Passover, Matthew was written to expand upon Mark and cover the entire Jewish year. 

The Passion narrative at the end of Mark's Gospel would obviously correspond to the Passover narrative in Exodus. Spong then goes backward from the Passion narrative counting the divisions of Mark imposed by Codex Alexandrinus (containing one of the earliest manuscripts of Mark to which we have access) and discovers that the teaching block found in Mark 9:14-11:11 would appropriately correspond to the weekly Torah readings from Deuteronomy. This is appropriate since Deuteronomy could be considered a catechism for those entering the Jewish community while these teachings in Mark seem to likewise be catechetical in tone. 

The reading from Genesis describing judgment in the days of Noah would correspond to Mark 13, an apocalyptic text dealing with judgment. And going backward to the beginning of Mark's Gospel, this section corresponds with the Jewish New Year at which the blowing of the shofar announced the coming reign of God. So the kingdom is Mark's concern as the book opens.

So Mark's Gospel seems to follow the Jewish year from Rosh Hashanah to Passover, with the various pericopes consisting of early Christian preaching on the Torah as it was read week to week in the synagogue. Spong continues to apply his liturgical scheme to Matthew and Luke, showing how they expanded upon Mark's liturgical intent.  Now if this seems rather complex, it's because it is. Perhaps Spong had to work too hard to achieve such an elaborate theory.

Whether or not one agrees with Spong's theory that the structure of the Gospels follow the Jewish liturgical year, his book is nevertheless invaluable for showing how the New Testament uses the Old. The life and teachings of Jesus are clearly recorded as Midrash (Rabbinic-style commentary) on the Hebrew Scriptures. Spong gives numerous examples of how New Testament texts retell and heighten the stories of Jewish Scripture. 

The Gospels are saturated with references and allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures, but not usually (if ever) in a prediction-fulfillment mode. But as I've said before, the life and teaching of Jesus recapitulates the sacred history of Israel. The Gospels serve in incorporating the stories and sayings of Jesus into the life and worship of the early church by connecting his story to the Jewish sacred text.

 (Photo courtesy Flickr)         

How We Got the Gospels

Sorry about the long hiatus. I'll explain it all later.

This post, while self-contained, builds upon my previous one and from here everything will start coming together.  

This post will deal primarily with the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The term "synoptic" means "common-view" (according to Stuart and Fee's How to Read the Bible for all it's Worth). It comes from two Greek words which literally mean "seeing together." These Gospels are called synoptics due to their great similarities.  

The Gospels are not biographies. They obviously omit a good portion of the life of Jesus and they aren't always chronological. Nor are they simply collections of sayings (i.e., teachings) because they also include narratives. The Gospels are unique collections of sayings of Jesus and narratives about Jesus.

How can we explain the coming together of these stories and sayings in a way that recognizes the striking similarities and subtle (or not so subtle) differences among the three books? First, we consider similarities. The synoptics are similar in that they record many of the same stories and sayings. For example, common stories among the three include the temptations of Jesus (Mark 1:12-13; Matt. 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13), the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:30-44; Matt. 14:13-21; Luke 9:10-17), and the triumphal entry (Mark 11:1-11; Matt. 21:1-11; Luke 19:28-44). Common sayings among all three include the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20; Matt. 13:1-23; Luke 8:1-15) and Jesus' Olivet Discourse (Mark 13; Matt. 24; Luke 21:5-38). This is not an exhaustive list. Other stories and sayings may only appear in one or two of the synoptics. Some of these are reworked either subtly or considerably from one Gospel account to another.

What explanation can account for both the similarities and differences among these Gospels, especially in light of the fact that the first one was probably not written until anywhere from 35 to 50 years after the crucifixion of Jesus? How were the stories and sayings preserved and why weren't they reported identically in the Gospels?

The most logical explanation of how the Gospels came to be, given the oral culture of learning in the first century, is that the stories and sayings were handed down verbally through the decades until they were finally written down. Each individual story or saying, like those cited above, is called a "per-i-co-pe" (a four-syllable word that does not rhyme with periscope, has a short "o" and a long "e" on the end). 

Each pericope, whether we're talking about the story of Jesus' temptations or a saying like the Parable of the Sower, likely circulated orally and independent of a particular context until the Gospel authors began to assemble these memories about Jesus into their respective books. Material is sometimes arranged chronologically, but other times it is arranged topically. The literary context of each Gospel is arranged with the needs of each Gospel's original readers in mind. This accounts for some of the differences in wording, ordering of pericopes, and emphases.

The similarities of the Gospels is likely the result of literary dependence among the authors. It's likely that Matthew had Mark in front of him when he wrote his Gospel and that Luke had access to both Matthew and Mark. Each subsequent author made additions and omissions that were pertinent to his particular readership. Each author shaped and arranged his material according to the particular needs of his readers. The author's individual writing style, personality, background, and education also comes to bear upon the differences among each Gospel. 

Some might argue that this is a very "earthy" way of explaining Gospel origins. Where does inspiration come in? I don't think this explanation rules out the notion that God was behind all of this every step of the way. But noting the differences among the Gospels it is highly unlikely that God mechanically dictated word-for-word what each author was to write. God's method of operation has always been to deliver the gospel through earthen vessels. The gospel is always heralded through personality and individuality. Why should we think that the written account of the gospel should be any different?