In Defense of Revisionist History (Part II)—Le Donne

Part I is here—and I found the comments for that post particularly helpful.

All history is revisionist to some extent. Sometimes we revise our histories because we stumble onto better data. Sometimes we do it because we learn to understand human behavior better. There are plenty of reasons to revise previously well-regarded histories. I’m fairly confident that this is what Matthew was doing with Mark. Matthew’s Jesus just makes more sense in conversation with first-century Judean synagogue culture (at least this is what Matthew seems to think). This is not to call Mark better or worse. Matthew’s revision of Mark just shows us how historical memory works.

I am well aware (perhaps more than most) that talking about genre issues in the Bible can make many Christians uncomfortable. But look, it is an important topic and one worth a bit of give and take. Unless we can work our way to a more sophisticated understanding of these issues, we’re doomed to repeat our heresy trials about dinosaur bones, big fish, and how many women were present at the empty tomb. Far too many of us were taught to think of the Gospels as supernaturally accurate courtroom transcripts. This notion lurks behind much of the hostile insistence that the Gospels are historical. Don’t get me wrong, the Gospels are historical; I just don’t take my cues from von Ranke (or Lonergan for that matter) when I make this claim.

So, taking the advice of Prof. Dr. Keith, let me say this as plainly as I can: the Gospels are not supernaturally accurate courtroom transcripts. They are a different genre altogether.

If you think that they are supernaturally accurate, you’ll have to go elsewhere because I get supernaturally bored by examples of contradictions in the Gospels. Folks who spend their time trying to catalog and reconcile these contradictions eventually become (what James Crossley calls) apologists for atheism.

But the real problem isn’t with the apologists. The real problem is that when normal folks (Christians and otherwise) say the word “historical” they import some really unhelpful connotative baggage. While they wouldn’t use the phrase “supernaturally accurate courtroom transcripts”, many people’s notions of “historical accuracy” are not far from this. Accuracy just isn’t a good way to think about memory; reliability might be better, but the apologists still hold this word hostage.

For many (most?) people, when they say “the Gospels are historical” they mean that the Evangelists represent what the FBI would have caught on tape if the Upper Room was wiretapped.   People, even if Dick Cheney traveled back in time to wiretap the Upper Room, it would still be just one more bit of historical memory set into relationship with sociological, theological, archaeological, and mythological evidence.  It would just be another piece of data… and a dubious piece at that because time travel is difficult and Dick Cheney is science fiction.  Doing history is not the simple act of accumulating data.  We caught the JFK assassination on tape; the tape only represents data, not history.  There are multiple histories, some more plausible than others.

Here we arrive at the heart of the problem: the Gospels present us with data to be considered; the Gospels do not do the work of the historian on behalf of the historian.  This is why we have to know what we’re looking at when we read the Gospels.  They are ancient biographies and ancient biographies do not function like courtroom transcripts.  So then, what is the best modern analogue for the ancient biography?

In my last post on this topic, Thomas wrote:

I think a helpful (though not wholly adequate) contemporary genre analogy to the gospels would be historical film. The film makers/script writers combine several motifs of history, worldview, and artistic craft into the final product - often unconsciously.

I like this suggestion a whole lot. Perhaps historical Jesus scholars ought to get together with filmmakers/scriptwriters to learn a bit more about this process.  A similar impetus stands behind the last thirty years of interest in ancient media culture by biblical scholars (if you’re interested, start here).  But perhaps the filmmaker angle would help the general public get their minds around the whole genre thing.  Would it be heretical to say that I think that the Gospels are more like historical films and less like historical documentaries?  Because if it is, I won’t say it.

Part III is here.