Birger Gerhardsson, Reliability of the Gospel Tradition, Hendrickson, 2001. Foreword by Donald Hagner.
Should we trust the four Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John? Modern scholarship as a whole has cast extreme doubt on the authenticity, veracity, and reliability of the four Gospels. While pushback to these critical tendencies has appeared, one thing that makes Birger Gerhardsson's book unique is his approach to the Gospel’s reliability. He contends that like a good Jewish rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth passed on his teachings to early Christian disciples and he made them memorize his teachings.
Gerhardsson's work consists of three sections: a) The Origins of the Gospel Tradition; b) The Path of the Gospel Tradition; c) The Gospel Tradition. These sections try to address questions raised during the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries by Hermann S. Reimarus and David F. Strauss. They question the Gospel’s historicity, hence, their reliability. Especially was this the case with Strauss, who argued that the Gospels largely consist of non-historical myths. The most crushing blow to twentieth-century New Testament readers came with Rudolf Bultmann. He was a German theologian and New Testament scholar still highly respected for his learning and ability to examine texts. However, the downside to Bultmann was his skepticism towards and lack of concern for the Gospel’s historicity: all that mattered to him was Christian kerygma (proclamation), not facts about Jesus.
It is within this context that Gerhardsson sets his task. The assault on the Gospels’ reliability continues to this day. It has not abated. So we need a study that addresses claims of those who cast doubt on the Gospels. And one finds a solid answer to the critics in Gerharddson's study.
Strengths: He contends that the Gospels can be trusted because they contain dependable accounts of what the Master said to his disciples. Granted, the Gospels existed in oral form before Matthew, Mark, Luke or John wrote them down. Does this mean that by the time they were written, possibly thirty years later, the contents of what Jesus taught his disciples had radically changed? Gerhardsson argues that is not the case. For if we compare the methods of Jesus’ teaching with ancient rabbis and other oral traditions, it seems that no changes of the sort proposed by the Jesus Seminar or Bart Ehrman occurred. The statement could be established by the method Gerhardsson uses and by the results of textual criticism.
1 cor 15:1-8
ReplyDeleteYes, that is a good verse for this subject. Gerhardsson employs the account in 1 Corinthians 15 and he discusses how it applies. One disadvantage to his study is that it has no indices. One has to take notes or simply remember where a verse is discussed. I can't give page number right now because I'm getting ready to eat supper (dinner). However, I know the account is there.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recommendation, Edgar:-)
ReplyDeleteI've never found Ehrman's skepticism compelling. One illustration he often uses seems to work against him: The Telephone Game.
I've played the telephone game, and the results aren't anything remotely like what we see in the Synoptics. I know that he's only trying to illustrate a point by reference to that game, but he needs to find another illustration, because this one just doesn't work.
~Kas
You're welcome, Kas. And it's funny that you bring up the telephone game because the Foreword of Gerhardsson's book addresses that point by showing that the analogy is inapt and ill wrought. Oral tradition cannot be compared to the telephone game: numerous studies have demonstrated this point.
ReplyDeleteThe Jesus Seminar did NOT age well at all.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame, I actually think scholars like Crossan and Mack were extremely talented and had many insights (even though ultimatley wrong) but the entire project was flawed.
Bart Ehrman suffers from having a mostly popular audience ... his popular books blow up the skepticism warrented.
I haven't read Gerhardsson's book (but your review makes me want to check it out), but I think the basic idea that the synoptic tradition is a very reliable source to reconstruct the historical Jesus remains the standard. I like the late Casey's more balanced approach, or Meier's balanced approach ... no theological baggage, just strict historiography.
Of course one must always remember that reconstructions are never the truth of the matter ... just reconstructions of what one can argue for.
Btw, there's been a lot of work in recent years on the function of memory in historical Jesus studies, and the genre of biography, Craig Keener's massive work (as all his works are) "Christobiography" is definately worth checking out ... I wonder if it's in the same tradition as Gerhardsson.
I mentioned Casey in response to your other comment, Roman. His last work on the historical Jesus is pretty good IMO. I've read most of the John Meier volumes and they're generally excellent when it comes to the scholarship they contain and the copious notes. Geza Vermes was also interesting.
ReplyDeleteI've just started the Christobiography: due to is size, I won't be finishing it anytime soon. Gerhardsson is part of the Scandinavian school of thought. See https://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2014/01/rip-birger-gerhardsson-1926-2013.html
I just read this book, it's very nice, slim, but full of good argumentation.
ReplyDeleteI find it funny that it's a book based on lectures, and a lot of the book deals with oral tradition, or oral text, transitioning into written tradition or written text; which is exactly what the book is an example of.
Glad you liked it. I found it to be a unique defense of the Gospels: a different take on addressing Ehrman's view of the Gospels.
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