Are the Gospels Literal History?

I believe that the Gospels came about through both oral tradition and through literary dependence upon previous Gospel authors. I've agreed with John Shelby Spong, whose book, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes has shown the New Testament to be largely a midrash on the Hebrew Scriptures in which the stories of old are retold and heightened to describe the God-presence encountered in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

Spong adds to this his comparison of the Gospels with the Jewish calendar, indicating that the Gospel pericopes were designed to expound upon Scripture readings in the synagogue. Spong even shows evidence of knowledge of the undisputed Paulines in the Gospels. The content and structure of the Gospels came about through an elaborate and intricate set of circumstances.  

Spong argues that the Gospels are a liturgical genre as opposed to a literary genre, which in his mind, would rule out the Gospels being literal history reported by eyewitnesses to capture objective reality (p. 93). Here is where I part company with Spong.

Now I do agree with his view that the uncanny similarities between some Gospel narratives and Old Testament narratives are not just mere foreshadowings of the life of Christ. I've argued that the Hebrew Scriptures traditionally viewed as "predictive" prophecy actually had a historical context all their own, typically describing events which happened in ancient Israel. These events were then repeated in some sense in the New Testament and perhaps specifically in the life of Jesus.

But Spong goes as far as to say that God did not plant these "clues" into the ancient text in anticipation of Christ. To do so would be for God to take an enormous literary risk that these texts would be accurately translated and preserved for hundreds of years. While I heartily admit to a very human element in the production and transmission of the Scriptures, I nevertheless feel that God has been behind the scenes providentially orchestrating key events in the history of the text. While I doubt that God micromanaged every detail of the process, mechanically dictating every word, I do believe that he is in some sense sovereign over the text. 

Spong, however, believes that the Jewish-Christian authors simply searched their Scriptures looking for clues about Jesus and then made all the midrashic applications on their own. So the Gospel authors were simply creative enough to find what they were looking for in order to employ their Scriptures to make sense of Jesus. Moreover, they manufactured stories about Jesus from their own imaginations. Spong says that Jesus' Journey to Jerusalem, in Luke 9:51-19:27, is basically a liturgical creation of Luke's that probably doesn't go back to the historical Jesus. 

Spong does not believe that the Gospel writers intended their works to be taken as literal history. But it wasn't until the church finally broke with the synagogue that the New Testament was taken captive by Gentiles who insisted that the Gospels were literal history as opposed to being mainly liturgical and theological. Unlike the Jewish mind, the Western mind---anchored in time, space, and objectivity has always had trouble embracing the truth found in myth, legend, intuition, and poetry. 

So, according to Spong, demanding literalness or historical accuracy from the Scriptures fails to recognize that the Bible is a Jewish book. Literalness read into John led to the Christological and Trinatarian controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries, leading to creeds and councils whose conclusions have become the definition of orthodoxy and thereby the dividing line between who is in or out of Christian circles. Spong sees this as unfortunate. 

Now I do believe that the Scriptures are primarily theological works as opposed to being books about history or science. I also believe that we Westerners have tended to literalize and objectify everything. We have indeed failed to discern truth in such genres as myth or poetry. And some Scriptures may call us to do exactly that. I agree that the Bible is not a science book, but was written from a pre-modern world view, from a time in which miracle and magic were considered very real. 

This all leads Spong to conclude that the pertinent question when reading a biblical narrative is not "Did this really happen?" But the all important question is "What does this mean?" To a large extent, I agree. We've spent too much time trying to harmonize Scripture with science or trying to harmonize the Gospels with one another. To be overly concerned with a harmonization of the Gospels is to miss one author's unique point because we don't allow him to speak without being qualified or restricted by another author. 

I think the all important question really is "What does this mean?" What is the theological point of a given passage? That is usually the most important question. But should this rule out the importance of ever asking "Did this really happen?" For this, we'll await my next post. But I am interested in any questions or comments in the meantime.  

Comments

[Wendy]

Amen, brother. I have been making these kind of remarks in some Christian discussion lists I am in (without your eloquence or scholarship) and I was compared to a satanic atheist (now that is a contradiction in terms!), told I am in rebellion to God, that my faith is severely lacking or that I am on a slippery slope to damnation. It's so encouraging to read that I am not!

[Darren Beachy]

Wade,
Two thumbs up! Marcus Borg would agree with Spong.
Darren

[Wade Tannehill]

Wendy,

Thanks for the comment and for the compliment. Glad you're not a satanic atheist :-)

[Wade Tannehill]

Darren,

Thanks for the two thumbs up. The Last Week is still on my reading list and I hope to get to it this year.