Jesus Puzzle: Chapter 22

Chapter 22 Critiqued:

"If the history were being created out of the text, there would be no need to adapt the text to fit the history"(JHMG:109).

Doherty wrote: “The baptismal scene, therefore, is not based on any historical incident. It is Mark’s construction out of scripture. It symbolizes the community’s own baptismal rite and its significant motifs. We can assume the Markan community possessed such a rite, otherwise Mark would have had no interest in portraying Jesus as being baptized, or in John as a Baptist prophet” (TJP:227).

Most New Testament scholars deem Jesus’ baptism to have been a historical event.
- Bart D. Ehrman wrote: “Or consider Jesus’ baptism by John: early Christians understood that in the rite of baptism, the person baptizing was spiritually superior to the one being baptized. Why, then, would a Christian make up the idea that Jesus was baptized by someone else? Wouldn’t that be open to the understanding that John was superior to Jesus? Since Christians who revered Jesus would not invent such a tale, it is probably something that actually happened” (TAFITDC:124-125).
The Gospel authors utilized a concept known as “typology” while compiling the Gospels. In brief, according to typology events in the past were perceived to have foreshadowed, or were “types” of things that were meant to occur in the future.
The Gospel authors were trying to show how events from Jesus’ life correlated with the “types” contained within the Hebrew Scriptures in order to show how Jesus was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah.
An explanation of midrash and how it was used will be provided next.

Doherty wrote: “This practice of drawing on scripture and combining two or more separate passages regarded as complementary and as strengthening each other (like two components of a manufactured alloy) is one of the central procedures in ‘midrash.’ Generally speaking, midrash was a traditional Jewish method of interpreting and using the scriptures to create new guides for behavior, to produce new readings of the old texts, to illustrate new meanings and spiritual truths. Often it was done through a retelling of ancient biblical tales set in contemporary circumstances. All these characteristics of midrash will become clearer as we examine how the Gospels were put together” (TJP:227).

The reader should go here for strong evidence against the idea that the Gospels were written as a form of midrash.
A few key points, provided by Charles L. Quarles, will be presented below:

“Thus, during and before the Matthean and Lukan period, there is no clear evidence that the term midrash was used of a specific literary genre” (MC:53).
“Any appeal to late haggadic midrash to support the possibility of the Evangelists using a nonhistorical creative genre is anachronistic, since one cannot demonstrate that the term midrash carried such connotations in the first century.In the New Testament era, midrash designated the exposition of Scripture and had nothing to do with the assimilation of historical and nonhistorical elements. The term midrash as applied to first-century literature which is intentionally and essentially nonhistorical is a misnomer” (MC:53).

Another scholar, David E. Aune wrote: “There is a danger of anachronism, however, in using Jewish homiletic forms from later centuries, since Jewish scholars place the beginning of these forms in the third century A.D.” ( TNTLE:53).
“The fundamental flaw with this position emerges from a paradoxical observation. 1 When ancient Jewish authors invented unhistorical narratives inspired by Old Testament texts, they generally quoted and interpreted Scripture quite literally. Since they were composing fiction they were free to tailor their creations to the texts which generated them. Precisely the opposite is the case for most of the gospel passages in question. In many cases the Old Testament references are reworded or reapplied in ways that make it much more likely that the gospel writers were trying to show how the Old Testament fitted the events of Jesus’ life and not the other way around. Hosea 11:1, for example, is not a prophecy in its Old Testament context but a reference to the Exodus. And although thirty pieces of silver are mentioned by Zechariah, Matthew attributes the quotation to Jeremiah, presumably because the bulk of Matthew 27:9-10 is a composite of allusions to that earlier prophet (suggestions include Je. 18:2-3; 32:7-9, and perhaps most plausibly 19:1-13). As R.T. France concludes, ‘if the history were being created out of the text, there would be no need to adapt the text to fit the history ’ (JHMG:109).
First, R.T. France made a superb point by pointing out how there would have been no need for the Gospel authors to adapt, or slightly alter, the Old Testament text in order to fit historical events if the history was being created based on the Old Testament text.
Thus, Doherty’s assertion that the Gospels are midrash is completely unsupported, and all contents of Chapter 22 of The Jesus Puzzle have been refuted since Doherty uses anachronistic methods to interpret the Gospel contents.

Doherty wrote: “The Temptation story is clearly not an historical incident, no matter what one’s view of Jesus existence. These three temptations of Jesus by the devil-to turn stones into bread so as to eat after fasting, to throw himself off the Temple’s parapet and demonstrate that God will protect him, to bow down before Satan and receive dominion over the world…” (TJP:227).

Doherty provided no evidence in support of the assertion that “the Temptation story is clearly not an historical incident…”

Doherty continued: “-these serve to make moral points which relate to the community’s concerns” (TJP:227-228).

Doherty never presents any archaeological or historical documentation in support of the existence of the communities Doherty writes about, such as the “Q community” or the “Markan community.”

Doherty spends the majority of Chapter 22 discussing what the contents of the Gospels meant to the “Q community,” of which he offers no historical evidence.
Some examples of Doherty’s discussion of the “Q community” include:

“The original question put to the Q community may have been….” (TJP:235).
“One wonders if the Q and Markan prophets actually claimed to raise anyone from the dead” (TJP:235).

Doherty wrote: “Healing miracles are common in Hellenistic literature and they are very similar to Jesus’ Gospel miracles both in substance and in literary style of reporting. Accounts of miracles are found in the ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Greek documents known as ‘magical papyri’” (TJP:235-236).

Dr. Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona wrote the following:

“Some critics may charge that Christians must disprove miracles in all other religious traditions in order to let their examples stand. Or they complain that non-Christian miracle claims somehow make Christian claims less likely. Although popular, this sort of response is opposed by a host of issues that are frequently overlooked.
First, genuine miracles could happen among unbelievers and still be entirely compatible with Christian belief. Thus, Christians have no obligation to disprove miracle claims in other religious traditions. Even in Scripture, God acted supernaturally among unbelievers, such as healing Naaman’s leprosy. If Scripture is correct, it may even be the case that demons can perform actual supernatural wonders or counterfeit illusions designed to confound people.
Second, miracles in other religions tend to be rather poorly attested. Their questionable factuality as historical events cannot rule out the possibility that a real miracle with good attestation could occur. Miracle stories involving founders of major world religions such as Buddha or Krishna, appear centuries after the events they are said to record. In other cases, like the lives of Confucius and Lao-Tzu, there are no serious miracle claims. Historian Edwin Yamauchi, one of the foremost scholars on ancient world cultures and religions, argues that the reports relating to miracles by Jesus and the accounts of his resurrection are unique.
Third, miracles in other religions usually can be dismissed with a plausible opposing theory, whereas we have seen that opposing theories fail to answer the facts regarding Jesus’s resurrection” (TCFROJ:143).

Also, Doherty provided no examples of literary styles or miracle reports from the first century C.E.

Doherty continued, writing: “The tales of heroes both legendary and historical included miracles allegedly performed by those figures, and the famous ‘peer’ of Jesus in the ancient world, Apollonius of Tyana, had many miracles imputed to him like those of Jesus” (TJP:236).
- A detailed examination of the account of Apollonius of Tyana is available in the critique of the Notes towards the back of The Jesus Puzzle.

2. Good question...did the gospel authors simply rip-off stories from the OT and ascribe them to Jesus? (off site)

Notes:

1. For more detail on these specific passages and a critique of this view, see, respectively, R.T. France, ‘Scripture, Tradition, and History in the Infancy Narratives of Matthew’, in GP,2, pp. 239-266; and Douglas J. Moo, ‘Tradition and Old Testament in Matt. 27:3-10', in GP,3, pp. 157-175, from which several comments in this paragraph are also drawn.