Posted on 03/21/2005 6:30:05 PM PST by Invincibly Ignorant
One hallmark of modern-day Christian fundamentalists is their insistence that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are literally true in every detail and a blueprint for legislators. Yet there must be moments when even these zealots notice that the four evangelists often contradict each other on facts and morals. Some may wish it to be otherwise, but the Gospels are quite simply not gospel.
At the other end of the faith spectrum, the evident disharmony between the quartet of accounts is often used to dish the whole idea of a historical Jesus. That, too, misunderstands these ancient texts. They have an undoubted historical worth, but only if you first accept that they are hearsay accounts, written between 20 and 60 years after Christ’s death by individuals who were not among his close associates. There is a core of history in there, but it is buried beneath many other layers — the teachings of figures such as Paul and Peter, polemics against the opponents of the early church, references back to the Hebrew Scriptures inserted to give Jesus a divine seal of approval, and the tinkering of later generations of Christian translators and editors.
Many academics have diligently worked away on the gospels separating the wheat from the chaff, but few can rival Geza Vermes, Professor Emeritus of Jewish studies at Oxford. His background gives him a certain objectivity. As a former Catholic priest who has returned to his Jewish roots, he tends to see the events described without party political bias. He is also a populariser, unafraid to challenge and unwilling to patronise. Over the past four decades, Vermes has been picking away with forensic skill at the Gospels to reveal them in a truer light. In The Passion, he distils that accumulated wisdom into a brief, punchy and thought-provoking account of Jesus’s last hours.
He works his way through his own 13 Stations of the Cross to show that many familiar details of the Good Friday story rest on the say so of only one of the four Gospel writers. The Virgin Mary’s presence at the foot of the Cross, for instance, is only detailed by John. The others have Jesus abandoned by her — hardly the stuff on which to build the cult that now surrounds her in Catholicism. Only Luke has Jesus utter the celebrated words “ Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (often quoted by Christians as evidence that forgiveness is the distinguishing virtue of their faith) and only Matthew dwells on Judas, his receipt of 30 pieces of silver and his subsequent suicide.
Vermes also contrasts what the Gospels tell us with other surviving accounts of the Holy Land in the first century. These cast doubt, for instance, on the annual amnesty that saw Barabbas freed (Vermes shows that a mistranslation has left him in the popular mind a murderous monster rather than a Jewish revolutionary). They paint a different picture of a tough, unpleasant Pilate from the generally non-judgmental account of him in the Gospels. And they contradict the account of the Jewish legal process given by all four Gospel writers.
Here, Vermes’s detective work takes on a bigger context. Did all the Gospel writers distort their account to blame the Jews rather than the Roman colonisers for the death of Jesus? It would seem so. It was therefore arguably these writers who gave rise to 2,000 years of Christian anti-semitism.
The central tension that Vermes highlights is that between history and faith. How can a historical document also be the basis of a religion? The Gospels try to square the circle by both recording events and shaping them to determine readers’ response. While absolute objectivity may be impossible, this biased approach has left them increasingly scorned in our secular age. Which, Vermes states, is a loss.
To get into this beguiling book, you will need first to overlook a rather clumsy play by the publisher for the same audience who saw Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. The subtitle of the book and its glossy jacket ape the feel of “book of the film” editions. But once you are inside the pages, you realise it is the polar opposite of Gibson’s muddled literalism and gore. This is subtle, teasing and erudite stuff. It may be ultimately inconclusive, as of course it has to be, but it will give Easter a whole new dimension for all but the most closed of minds.
ping
Thanks for the ping. Added to my Amazon shopping cart.
Depends upon whether or not you think the "Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome" mentioned in Mark 15 is Jesus's mother.
Yeah, right. Apostates never have political bias, do they - just ask Emperor Julian.
The guy doesn't say the other Gospels "claim" anything. However, I believe it to be a rather large detail to have been left out. Hence usage of the word "abandon."
Let the labeling begin. Perhaps you can comment on the substance of the article?
I can make one quick comment. The Romans weren't "colonizers".They were conquerors and rulers. The only Romans in Judea were the legions and other military types, the governor and his staff, and some merchants and traders.
My point is that, if you believe "Mary the mother of James, etc." is also the mother of Jesus, then Mark supports you in reporting her presence at the crucifixion. If you think, on the other hand, that Jesus was an only child, and that James et. al. were his cousins, then Mark doesn't state that Jesus's mother was present.
Why use the word "attack"? I see some disagreement in the article but where's the "attack"? By all means I encourage Jew/Christian friendship. However defending eretz Yisrael is a small part of commonality. Perhaps Christians should reconsider blatent anti-jewishness in New Testament writings.
There is no dispute that Jesus was a fellow Jew. However, Jews don't believe the person Jesus is the same character that later became the "Christ". You're talking to a former Messianic Jew.
His interpretation of the 3 Gospels that are silent concerning Mary's presence cause him to use the word "abandoned". The Gospels themselves don't claim "abandonment". That was my point. Why do you have to tell me to grow up? Thought we were just having a conversation?
Given that Mark sees fit to mention the presence of both Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, the exclusion of mention of Jesus's own mother would seem to be a rather significant oversight. Matthew adds the mother of the sons of Zebedee to the list, but likewise fails to mention Jesus's mother being there.
I could be mistaken...but it looks like the reviewer of book, Peter Stanford, is the one who chose the word "abandoned"...not the author, Geza Vermes. I've read Vermes before ("The Changing Faces of Jesus")...and from what I recall, he didn't write like he has an axe to grind....just was pretty straighforward in interpreting scripture in its proper timeframe.
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