First Glance

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Jesus never uttered 82 percent of the sayings attributed to him in the Bible. Or so claims the Jesus Seminar, a group of New Testament scholars who have spent the past ten years rating the authenticity of his words. Only by looking to the remaining 18 percent, it appears, can we draw an accurate picture of the historical Jesus. Other Bible scholars, equally interested in determining who Jesus was, have sifted through the same texts searching for evidence that Jesus was a peasant, a priest, a Cynic, a pacifist or a magician. But by treating the New Testament as a grab-bag from which they can pick and choose at whim, these scholars have abandoned what should be their best source: The distinctive image of Jesus painted by the Gospels as a whole, writes Luke T. Johnson in the “The Search for (the Wrong) Jesus.”

A former Benedictine monk and priest, Johnson is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Candler School of Theology, at Emory University, in Atlanta. His attack on the Jesus Seminar continues in The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest of the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (HarperSan Francisco, 1995).

Did David conquer Jerusalem in about 1000 B.C. and unify the scattered Israelite tribes into a single nation, as the Bible records? Did there then ensue a period of unity under David’s and Solomon’s rule, followed by division into southern and northern kingdoms, Judah and Israel? And does the Bible provide accurate information about these kingdoms: the names and chronologies of their rulers, their battles, monuments, periods of weakness and strength? For a number of “minimalist” scholars, the answer to all these questions is “no”—or, at most, that there is no reason whatsoever to accept the historical reliability of the books of Samuel and Kings. These biblical narratives, according to the “minimalists,” were composed centuries later to glorify Israel’s past. In this issue, Baruch Halpern takes the skeptics to task for thus “Erasing History.” The books of Samuel and Kings, Halpern insists, do give a reliable historical outline—though not one without errors. The Bible’s essential historical accuracy is attested archaeologically, most impressively by non-Israelite kings with no reason to exaggerate Israel’s importance.

Halpern, professor of ancient history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, has written extensively on the Hebrew Bible, historiography, Canaanite and Israelite history, and the law and politics of ancient Israelite monarchies; among his publications are The Emergence of Israel in Canaan (Scholars Press, 1981) and The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History (Harper & Row, 1988). His forthcoming History of Ancient Israel will be published as part of the Anchor Bible Reference Library (Doubleday).

Eyewitness Record of the Life of Christ” blared the headline in the Times of London on Christmas Eve a year ago. The story that followed detailed the claims of one scholar who believes that three papyrus fragments of the Gospel of Matthew now at Oxford date to the mid-first century—just a decade or so after the events it records and significantly earlier than the date most scholars assign to the composition of the First Gospel. This claim dovetails with a second, championed by the same scholar, that a fragment from among the Dead Sea Scrolls contains a section of the Gospel of Mark. If this second claim is correct, it would place Mark’s composition to the mid-first century as well, and opposed to the 80 A.D. date held by most scholars. How well do the two claims stand up to scrutiny? Graham Stanton answers the question, “A Gospel Among the Scrolls?”

Stanton, a New Zealander who has lived in Great Britain since 1965, holds the chair of New Testament studies at King’s College, University of London, and serves as general editor of the Oxford Bible Series and of the International Critical Commentaries. His publications include A Gospel for a New People (Westminster/John Knox, 1992), The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford, 1989) and Jesus of Nazareth in New Testament Preaching (Cambridge, 1974). His just-published Gospel Truth? (Trinity Press Int.) includes a fuller discussion of the ideas explored here.

Jesus never uttered 82 percent of the sayings attributed to him in the Bible. Or so claims the Jesus Seminar, a group of New Testament scholars who have spent the past ten years rating the authenticity of his words. Only by looking to the remaining 18 percent, it appears, can we draw an accurate picture of the historical Jesus. Other Bible scholars, equally interested in determining who Jesus was, have sifted through the same texts searching for evidence that Jesus was a peasant, a priest, a Cynic, a pacifist or a magician. But by treating the New Testament as […]