Re: Biblical Interpretation Reconsidered

Comments interspersed.

--- wallyshoes <wallyshoes@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>
> Don Winterstein wrote:
>
> >  <?xml:namespace prefix="v"
> /><?xml:namespace prefix="o"
> > />Alexanian wrote: "If you claim that there are
> all sorts of
> > possibilities, then you are indicating that
> Scripture is untrue and so
> > Jesus is not the Son of God. Where would you ever
> get the notion of
> > Jesus being the Son of God if it is not from
> Scripture?" Perhaps it
> > would help to take a broader perspective here.
> Many if not all
> > religions with ancient roots have scriptures with
> stories that sound
> > far-fetched. Why is this? Presumably not all
> these stories are true;
> > yet many people have accepted them as cornerstones
> of their
> > faith. Example: A Buddhist text (Lalitavistara)
> maintains that the
> > Buddha planted himself in his mother's womb in the
> form of an
> > elephant. Eventually he exited the womb through
> his mother's side,
> > not down the birth canal. At his birth he was a
> human baby. Later on
> > stone statues of Hindu gods bowed down to him.
> These tidbits and many
> > more are depicted in stone bas-relief at the
> Buddhist monument of
> > Borobudur in Java. How does such stuff get
> written? How does it get
> > accepted? The fact is that it does, and it's
> common.

Of course, as far as I am aware (meaning I can only
discsuss the stories about Buddha that I have looked
at and read about -- which is actually quite a few)
the Buddha legendary stories are able to be dated as
being written many *centuries* after the Buddha's life
and are not within a generation or two of his life.
Thus, they share more in common with the rather odd
set of legendary elements that proliferate in gnostic
texts about Jesus, also written hundreds of years
after Jesus' death. They have little to do with the
language found in the canonical gospels, however odd
some of it may sound to modern ears.

While legendary stories do grow up around such
persons, the early Church, for a variety of reasons,
was rather keen to differentiate the apostolic witness
from later discussions of Jesus, not all of which were
gnostic heresies, but considered merely edifying and
not canonical, e.g., Shepard of Hermans, Clement's
epistles, etc. because of lack of apostolic
credentials.

So, the comparison is not one that is well-founded in
an understanding of the texts that comprise differing
religious traditions. The Buddha references you cite
are more akin to if the christian church had embraced
all the rather odd apocryphal stories about Jesus in
the gnostic texts like those found at Nag Hammadi --
some of which is nearly as odd to modern ears as some
of those Buddha stories.

>> So in the
> > writing of the gospels, could there have been
> something of this same
> > sort of impetus at work? If not, why not?

George can do far better than I in addressing this,
but this is a gross oversimplification.

Some things in the gospels and other parts of the New
Testament seem to address particular concerns of the
early Church, clearly. And there are clear
theological differences within the canon. However,
recognizing that is something utterly different than
saying that the gospel writers intended to do this
that and the other thing that some how differs from
their actual experience and understanding of Jesus of
Nazareth.

In other words, there is no good reason to dispute
that the the most fundamental thing to believe about
the gospels is that the writers tried to record what
they considered significant about Jesus and their
understanding of Jesus. Now, the choice of events,
how they are reported, etc. may all be colored by
their understanding of Jesus, but it stretches
credulity to say that they were trying to make
something up out of whole cloth or disparate sources,
etc. (Which you don't suggest, but is the logical
extension of what you suggest.)

Having read through two and a half volumes of N.T.
Wright's multi-volume opus on the historical context
of Jesus and NT Wright's arguments about the church's
and Jesus' understanding of His mission, it is amazing
to me how consistent the recorded actions of Jesus fit
into the context of what NT Wright argues was likely
Jesus' own self-understanding. A very summarized
version of these arguments can be found in NT Wright's
The Challenge of Jesus, and I would recommend it
highly, if nothing else for its excellent middle road
between the extremes of something like the Jesus
Seminar and more a-contextual readings of the gospels.
 While NT Wright's thesis is more in line with
Schweitzer's (although I do not believe Schweitzer and
Wright share many ultimate conclusions about Jesus in
common), he does a masterful job of discussing the
coherency of the gospel stories re Jesus -- including
their differences -- in light of Wright's argument
about Jesus' mission.

This was a long way of saying that when you assert
there is some impetus in telling the story, one has to
understand the context of the telling of the story.
Too many arguments about the impetus of the Gospels
from nonbelievers ignorantly start with a premise that
a community of faith can start practically sui generis
and concoct anything to fit whatever particular whims
they want to impose on the stories. It is at best
naively ignorant and at worst deceitful to start with
that sort of predicate for approaching the texts.

> > If we
> don't understand why
> > this kind of thing appears commonly in religious
> literature of all
> > sorts, can we assume it didn't happen with the New
> Testament?

Again, it depends what you mean by this. As I have
suggested above, there are qualitative differences
between the canonical stories about Jesus and the
legendary descriptions of Buddha.

The second problem, of course, lies in understanding
what the language means. We often make a mistake of
reading something in our modern worldview. To go back
to NT Wright, he discusses at considerable length the
language of apocalyptic literature in which the 1st
century Jew was steeped, discussing the langauge in
Daniel, etc. at length. Among other things, NT Wright
asserts that the coming of the Son of Man on a cloud,
etc. would not have been understood by a first century
Jew literally, but as language used to convey that
political, social, economic systems, etc. were going
to be turned upside down and radically changed, etc.

As a side note, NT Wright also argues that many of the
parables that are often taken to refer to Christ's
second coming actually were meant to refer to Jesus'
present actions and the consequences of rejecting the
way Jesus offered. But, I can't do those arguments
justice enough in this small space. The point is some
things that may be labeled as exaggerations are really
*our* category mistakes in misunderstanding the
meaning of the language used.

> > We can't
> > just assume it didn't happen, but I think we can
> make compelling
> > arguments that it's unlikely to have introduced
> serious
> > contamination. But our conclusions will not be
> obvious to everyone,
> > and they never will be. There's a well-known
> human tendency to
> > exaggerate. Can we say that the NT contains no
> exaggerations
> > whatever? What if John, for example, stretched
> things just a bit?

See my discussions above. We can tell to some extent
which things are theologically motivated, we can tell
to some extent whether some things are turns of phrase
or use styles of argumentation present in 1st or 2d
century AD, etc. A considered review of the text
allows one to at least make reasoned determinations
about such things. And, it depends what one means by
exaggerations. I don't know if that is a useful word
in this context, perhaps emphases may be more helpful.

>> If
> > you take everything John wrote in his gospel
> (assuming he wrote it) as
> > the "gospel truth," then you're right: the choice
> is between black and
> > white. But because John (or whoever) was a human,
> we can at least
> > imagine that he wrote his gospel in a human way;
> and a human way, when
> > you're writing religion, is to include stuff that
> seems far-fetched,
> > stuff that very likely never happened.

Or, you misunderstand the language that John uses and
it is you who is reading a meaning not intended.

Walt wrote:
> Again, I am not a theologian but I think that the NT
> makes the position
> pretty clear. The opinion that Jesus was the son of
> God (and that he
> said so) was not just something said by John. I did
> a search in
> http://www.biblegateway.org/cgi-bin/bible for that
> phase. It appears in
> all Gospels and other NT writings. So it would take
> more than one
> person's exaggerating. A "conspiracy" would be more
> like it. (MHO)

And as I briefly mentioned in the CS Lewis Trilemma
approach, NT Wright certainly believes that Jesus was
the Son of God and thinks he understands why it is
that His early followers came to call Him that.

It is clear, as Wally points out, that His followers
called Him that. It is also pretty clear that at a
minimum, Jesus' self-understanding (at least partially
described) was as acting in the stead of the God of
Israel in the history of Israel to reach a climax, a
final turning point, in Israel's history. Based on
how He acted and ultimately on the vindication of His
actions by being resurrected by God the Father, the
title Son of God is thoroughly appropriate.

The point, in part, is that there are multiple senses
in which one can understand Jesus to appropriately be
referred to as the Son of God, that are historically
within the orthodox christian tradition. I cannot do
justice in a short space to those various --
complementary -- understandings of Jesus' life, death
and resurrection by God the Father that make such an
appellation appropriate. None of them are an
"exaggeration" they are all logical extrapolations of
the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
 Theologically, they can mean slightly different
things, but that's much too big of a discussion (and
one that I am probably too ignorant about) to get
into. It should also be pointed out that taking them
in the wrong way that the language is used would also
be a category mistake. Again, that's too big to get
into for my meager purposes of trying to provide some
perspective on these issues.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
Received on Sun Dec 21 19:10:16 2003