“He also thinks that Jesus’ Eucharistic words, “Take, eat,” are intended as a reversal of the (bad) eating in the story in Genesis 3. While these sorts of parallels have a rightful and beautiful place in Christian liturgy and reflection, I would say that such conjectures about authorial or divine intentions are not evidential in themselves but rather arise as possibilities only at the end of a separate, more crudely evidential, argument.”
Any chance this can be unpacked more, especially the last sentence?
Jesus is described as a new Adam in Romans and the idea of taking and eating does seem to be a direct connection to Jesus is the new Adam concept. This seems to be an example of how biblical narrative works, connecting different acts with the same words (although I don’t know if the word for eat at Communion matches to the word eat in Genesis 3 per the LXX). I am not a scholar but am willing to learn!
So sorry for my delay in replying here! I will pass this on to my mom and ask what she thinks. My own preliminary thought would be that personally I'm not quite convinced there is an intent to juxtapose the Eucharist with the forbidden fruit. Here and with other suggested parallels, there is more than one way to read it, and so I think Mom's point is simply that where room exists for multiple interpretations, it isn't in quite the same category of thing as other unambiguous clues of authenticity.
> But Luke does not record any massacre of innocents; only Matthew does. Nor is this merely a slip of the tongue. Luke’s infancy narrative is the only one that mentions Augustus; Matthew’s does not. Since Holland’s theory is that Luke in particular is inventing things to contrast Jesus and Augustus, the slaughter of the innocents cannot be evidence of any such intention.
I also found this episode of a historian misstating a fact in a way that fit his narrative instructive, but in a different way. To me, it shows the way that someone developing a narrative of events is inevitably affected by the framing he is bringing to the story. I find your arguments that the Gospel writers are not intentionally fabricating events persuasive. But I think you are downplaying the possibility that they not only made random errors of fact but very likely misstated events in ways that fit their preconceived notions in terms of fulfilling prophecies and so on. That is just how human memory works, right?
I myself have been shocked to discover that I had come to believe a self-serving falsehood that I once knew not to be the case. In the instance I'm thinking of, I had included a particular statistical analysis that showed a statistically significant result in a draft paper. I had no recollection of cherry-picking the specification that got a significant result. I believed I had chosen the particular model purely based on a priori reasons. But when I looked back at my notes, I discovered that I had tried other equally valid specifications that had *not* found statistically significant results.
The thing is that people writing about events decades after the fact are probably not working from written notes taken down at the time. They are thus prone to honest false memories and have no sure check against them. I think it's also important to remember that however careful Luke was in assembling his narrative, he didn't put nearly as much time and effort in has subsequent centuries of scholars have to dissecting his every word.
For me, this modest approach to the historicity of the Gospels does not weaken my faith as a Christian because I actually am interested in the Gospels first of all as witnesses to the impact of Jesus on the author themselves (and their community). The fact that they tell the story a certain way (highlighting the weakness and incomprehension of the apostles, for instance), is both the most certain and the most critical fact for me. The historical content is also very important, of course, but I can hold the particulars loosely. It would take much longer to elaborate on this perspective, but I wanted to at least briefly state it.
First of all, while it's commonly assumed that the synoptic gospel writers were writing decades after the fact, I don't think the case is closed. There are good reasons to think Matthew and Mark wrote before Luke and Luke wrote before Paul's execution in 64/65. However, I don't lean all that heavily on dating and accept a late date for John's gospel, which I believe to be highly reliable. In general, I think people try to extract too much from time gaps. If you've worked with oral history you know people can retain astonishingly vivid memories for *many* decades, let alone just a couple.
Further, while we do sometimes misremember things, like you with your stats study, this is really not analogous. We are talking here about the sort of earth-shattering, biographically essential events about which one doesn't have ordinary memory lapses. It's not as if anyone was sitting around thinking, "I'm *pretty* sure Jesus was born of a virgin. At least I think so. Ah, let's just go with it." And in Luke's case, he is not preparing a report of events he personally remembered, but making a record based on the gathered testimony of witnesses close to the facts, likely including Mary, who certainly wouldn't be in any uncertainty about this point!
OK, right, the important things are not analogous. But I guess something like Luke's apparent mix-up of Q. governors is? Or maybe the more obscure parts of the genealogies?
Anyway, I appreciate your response. These are pretty new ideas to me and probably a helpful corrective to some conventional wisdom I've absorbed uncritically.
There's a difference between Luke making an honest error and Luke deliberately "crafting" the piece to come out a certain way. This is the distinction Mom's drawing out here--Holland wants to press the latter as a matter of course.
But when the Evangelists differ in the order of certain events, say (such as the timing of the Last Supper with regard to Passover, IIRC), do y'all not see any role for the notion that one of them took poetic license to tell the story in a certain way to emphasize a certain theme or connect better with their particular audience, etc.? Is the only allowable explanation that they made a mistake?
We just don't see any good evidence for the theory that this is something they would feel free to do, or even something for which they had a category.
I would highly recommend Mom's books on the topic. The Mirror or the Mask is a good general survey of the literature, and The Eye of the Beholder focuses specifically on John.
“He also thinks that Jesus’ Eucharistic words, “Take, eat,” are intended as a reversal of the (bad) eating in the story in Genesis 3. While these sorts of parallels have a rightful and beautiful place in Christian liturgy and reflection, I would say that such conjectures about authorial or divine intentions are not evidential in themselves but rather arise as possibilities only at the end of a separate, more crudely evidential, argument.”
Any chance this can be unpacked more, especially the last sentence?
Jesus is described as a new Adam in Romans and the idea of taking and eating does seem to be a direct connection to Jesus is the new Adam concept. This seems to be an example of how biblical narrative works, connecting different acts with the same words (although I don’t know if the word for eat at Communion matches to the word eat in Genesis 3 per the LXX). I am not a scholar but am willing to learn!
So sorry for my delay in replying here! I will pass this on to my mom and ask what she thinks. My own preliminary thought would be that personally I'm not quite convinced there is an intent to juxtapose the Eucharist with the forbidden fruit. Here and with other suggested parallels, there is more than one way to read it, and so I think Mom's point is simply that where room exists for multiple interpretations, it isn't in quite the same category of thing as other unambiguous clues of authenticity.
> But Luke does not record any massacre of innocents; only Matthew does. Nor is this merely a slip of the tongue. Luke’s infancy narrative is the only one that mentions Augustus; Matthew’s does not. Since Holland’s theory is that Luke in particular is inventing things to contrast Jesus and Augustus, the slaughter of the innocents cannot be evidence of any such intention.
I also found this episode of a historian misstating a fact in a way that fit his narrative instructive, but in a different way. To me, it shows the way that someone developing a narrative of events is inevitably affected by the framing he is bringing to the story. I find your arguments that the Gospel writers are not intentionally fabricating events persuasive. But I think you are downplaying the possibility that they not only made random errors of fact but very likely misstated events in ways that fit their preconceived notions in terms of fulfilling prophecies and so on. That is just how human memory works, right?
I myself have been shocked to discover that I had come to believe a self-serving falsehood that I once knew not to be the case. In the instance I'm thinking of, I had included a particular statistical analysis that showed a statistically significant result in a draft paper. I had no recollection of cherry-picking the specification that got a significant result. I believed I had chosen the particular model purely based on a priori reasons. But when I looked back at my notes, I discovered that I had tried other equally valid specifications that had *not* found statistically significant results.
The thing is that people writing about events decades after the fact are probably not working from written notes taken down at the time. They are thus prone to honest false memories and have no sure check against them. I think it's also important to remember that however careful Luke was in assembling his narrative, he didn't put nearly as much time and effort in has subsequent centuries of scholars have to dissecting his every word.
For me, this modest approach to the historicity of the Gospels does not weaken my faith as a Christian because I actually am interested in the Gospels first of all as witnesses to the impact of Jesus on the author themselves (and their community). The fact that they tell the story a certain way (highlighting the weakness and incomprehension of the apostles, for instance), is both the most certain and the most critical fact for me. The historical content is also very important, of course, but I can hold the particulars loosely. It would take much longer to elaborate on this perspective, but I wanted to at least briefly state it.
First of all, while it's commonly assumed that the synoptic gospel writers were writing decades after the fact, I don't think the case is closed. There are good reasons to think Matthew and Mark wrote before Luke and Luke wrote before Paul's execution in 64/65. However, I don't lean all that heavily on dating and accept a late date for John's gospel, which I believe to be highly reliable. In general, I think people try to extract too much from time gaps. If you've worked with oral history you know people can retain astonishingly vivid memories for *many* decades, let alone just a couple.
Further, while we do sometimes misremember things, like you with your stats study, this is really not analogous. We are talking here about the sort of earth-shattering, biographically essential events about which one doesn't have ordinary memory lapses. It's not as if anyone was sitting around thinking, "I'm *pretty* sure Jesus was born of a virgin. At least I think so. Ah, let's just go with it." And in Luke's case, he is not preparing a report of events he personally remembered, but making a record based on the gathered testimony of witnesses close to the facts, likely including Mary, who certainly wouldn't be in any uncertainty about this point!
OK, right, the important things are not analogous. But I guess something like Luke's apparent mix-up of Q. governors is? Or maybe the more obscure parts of the genealogies?
Anyway, I appreciate your response. These are pretty new ideas to me and probably a helpful corrective to some conventional wisdom I've absorbed uncritically.
There's a difference between Luke making an honest error and Luke deliberately "crafting" the piece to come out a certain way. This is the distinction Mom's drawing out here--Holland wants to press the latter as a matter of course.
But when the Evangelists differ in the order of certain events, say (such as the timing of the Last Supper with regard to Passover, IIRC), do y'all not see any role for the notion that one of them took poetic license to tell the story in a certain way to emphasize a certain theme or connect better with their particular audience, etc.? Is the only allowable explanation that they made a mistake?
We just don't see any good evidence for the theory that this is something they would feel free to do, or even something for which they had a category.
I would highly recommend Mom's books on the topic. The Mirror or the Mask is a good general survey of the literature, and The Eye of the Beholder focuses specifically on John.