Thesis
If biblical scholarship is ever to play the enlightening role it ought to have both in the church and in the larger culture, the pastors and people of the church and culturally literate people in general will have to be shown how to think and speak about the Bible in ways that are informed by such scholarship and that also resonate with their experience in the modern/post-modern world. That means an opportunity to view the New Testament through the lens of historical knowledge rather than through the lens of ancient myth, biblical literalism, and of traditional theology backed by creedal and ecclesiastical authority. Such a new view of the NT could have an effect upon people's orientation that is roughly analogous to the effect upon those who first looked at the world through Galileo's telescope. They looked at the same heavens they had gazed upon many times and with which they were quite familiar, and they looked from the same earth as they had before they first made use of the telescope. But neither the heavens nor the earth would ever be the same, once they were persuaded by the truth of what the telescope brought into view. What is proposed here is analogous to Galileo's invitation to his contemporaries to look through his new device: a new lens that will ultimately persuade readers about the truth of what it brings into view, and that as a result neither the New Testament nor its readers will ever be the same again.
The path from the darkness of antiquated religious belief with its "mysteries of the Bible" to an enlightened modem faith cannot be opened to view by stitching a few patches of modern knowledge on the garment of ancient and medieval forms of faith. It can only come by a reorientation of the way we think and speak about religion. Modern faith requires modern dress, not merely a modem fringe on a holey ancient, and threadbare robe. .
I refer to patches here because in my perception and experience that is the way many who are attracted to the Jesus Seminar's work try to make use of it. They pick and choose those aspects of the Seminar's work that they think can help them salvage elements of traditional belief that they would like to hold on to. Others regard historical Jesus scholarship as not an essential thing to do, however interesting or "respectable" it may be to do it. A prominent churchman, one of the principal presenters at the Westar event in NYC, openly and rather emphatically said that he was not much interested in the historical Jesus, but that he was very interested in discovering why Jesus' followers called him Christ, Lord, Son of God. In other words, that churchman is interested in making traditional christology believable, not in reorienting his religious understanding in a way that is not dependent on traditional beliefs. He sees no need to follow Thomas Kuhn's advice about the necessity of embracing a new paradigm. He only wants to find a way to "translate" the semantics of ancient mythology into modem speech. Modem historical knowledge in his approach remains captive to traditional beliefs, if it is used at all, or is set aside as religiously unimportant.
This shuttered response produces bold pronouncements wrapped in theological confusion. It can seem rich in "progressive" opinions, so that it is perceived as liberal minded, but it is poor in enlightened religious meaning, so that it is lost in the fog of trying to make yesterday's piety serve to enlighten human experience in the modern world. It does not liberate the human spirit to find meaning in modem human experience and to express it in modem terms; it remains tethered to the ideas and symbols of the past. .
So long as this halting use of our new knowledge about Christian origins prevails as the preferred method of its appropriation, biblical scholarship will find itself marginalized as merely a sometimes decorative option, not the means of religious transformation. The ultimate result of biblical scholarship is unrecognized by such an "appropriation." The end product of biblical scholarship is not the production of incidental trivia with which to decorate the cake of tradition; it is the creation of a whole new cake. Put differently, the ultimate fruit of biblical scholarship is that it changes your whole way of looking at the Christian tradition, not that it offers nuggets of excavated "facts" that can be used to confirm arid "update" what you believed before you began the inquiry. If we do not succeed in convincing our readers and auditors of this -- and in making visible the theological import of such enlightenment -- it seems likely that our whole scholarly enterprise will ultimately fail. Consider what the fate of modernity would have been, if Galileo's opponents had succeeded in convincing everyone that, however interesting and "respectable" their inquires were, he and his kind were merely eccentric academics, and that both Copernicus' theory and Galileo's looking glass were, in the final analysis, unnecessary, untrustworthy and not to be compared with the venerable truths of the ancient mythical tradition. We might still be obliged to live under the authoritarian blessings of medieval piety and theology rather than being blessed and enlightened by scientific discovery and historical knowledge.
The Apostle Paul can model this change of attire and direction for us. Speaking about his own reorientation from being completely devoted to the forms of Judaism in which he had been raised to being an apostle of Jesus as the Christ, Pau1 said that everything he once had most highly valued he now regarded as worthless (Philippians 3). That is the testimony of a man who had seen the dawn of a new era and recognized that the currency of the previous era could no longer buy him what he wanted and needed. The new era required new coinage.
Publishing a new kind of New Testament cou1d prove to be a breakthrough in religious understanding for many people. Here's why. The structure and order of the traditional New Testament is mythical. The traditional New Testament begins with the story of Jesus' miraculous virgin birth, moves on to a brief miracle-studded account of his life, a divinely predestined crucifixion, a miraculous resurrection from the dead, followed by a divinely inspired new community of faith that embarks upon a divinely directed worldwide mission that will one day be crowned by Jesus' spectacular return from heaven in power and glory to reign over the whole of creation forever and ever ... a scenario of ancient religious myth from beginning to end.
We can change our contemporaries' view of the New Testament, if we change this scenario -- by publishing a New Testament whose structure and order is historical rather than mythical. This new structure and order would do much to enable its readers to leave the old, mythical model of the NT behind and to embrace a new model that understands the NT in historical terms. Such a New NT would tell a story that begins with the public activity of an historical person -- his teaching, healing, and fateful journey to Jerusalem where he fell into the hands of the Temple authorities and the Roman governor and was executed. His followers persuaded themselves to continue his mission, which they did in various ways and in various places through much of the Roman world. This is not an old world tale of myth and miracle, but a story of historical origins and diverse historical developments that in principle extends to our own time. This story takes place in history, just as the story of our own lives does, and can be understood in the same terms in which we understand our own experience and our own times. It does not depend upon amazement and miracle for its meaning.
A Proposed Structure and Order
What would such a new model of the NT look like? This is something we will need to discuss and debate; but here is an initial attempt to describe what such a new NT might look like:
In this draft proposal the concept and aim of a new NT -- a story that begins with an historical person and that continues as a story of an historical development, or as diverse historical developments, not as an old world tale of myth and miracle -- should be seen as the principal proposal, with the above illustration only an initial example of how such a concept and aim might be configured. The advantage of this kind of proposal is that it offers readers a dramatically reordered form of their old New Testament that will induce and persuade them to see that old New Testament in a new way -- one that is historically oriented rather than mythically oriented, and thus more accessible to readers in the modem world. Such a new NT could be a first step in "revising the canon”. The second step, for which this first step would prepare the way, could be a "new" NT with revised content, rather than [mostly] only a revised order and structure.I. Earliest First Century Documents
A. Earliest Gospels
These could be ordered in any of several ways:
1. By reordering the documents: Q, Mark, Matthew, Luke, Thomas
2. By distinguishing certain documents from their sources: Matthew, Luke, Thomas
(With Mark and Q as superseded sources)
3. By distinguishing content for which there is common tradition from content that is peculiar to a particular gospel author's interpretive perspective: place the infancy narratives and the resurrection appearances narratives in Matthew and Luke in a separate category as later additions of the individual authors.
Infancy/Early Childhood Narratives and Genealogies: Matthew 1:1-2:23, Luke 1:5-2:52
Resurrection Appearances Narratives: Matthew 28:1-20, Luke 24:1-53[Chronological information should also be included in ordering the above and could change the order considerably. For instance, Luke might well join Acts as an early second century writing.]
B. Earliest Letters
The seven authentic letters of Paul-- in chronological order and with composite letters broken out into their original surviving forms: [following Malherbe for 1 Thessalonians; Koester for the rest, which produces some apparent differences with Art Dewey's order of fragments for 2 Corinthians.]
1 Thessalonians [50 CE] Galatians [53-56 CE] 1 Corinthians [53-56 CE] 2 Corinthians Fragment 1: 2:14--6:13; 7:2-4. [53-56 CE] Fragment 2: chapters 10-13. [54-55 CE] Fragment 3: 1:1--2:13; 7:5-16. [Summer, 55 CE] Fragment 4: chapter 8. [Summer, 55 CE] Fragment 5: chapter 9. [Summer, 55 CE] Philippians Letter 1: 1:1--3:1a. [Winter, 54-55] Letter 2: 3:1b--4:9. [Winter, 54-55] Letter 3: 4:10-23. [Winter, 54-55] Philemon [Winter, 54-55] Romans [Winter, 55-56] II. Late First Century to Early Second Century Documents
Gospel of John
Gospel of Luke
Acts of the Apostles
Pastoral Letters
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
General Letters
James
1 Peter
2 Peter
1 John
2 John
3 John
Jude
Hebrews
Apocalypse of John
Apostolic Fathers (a selection)
1 Clement
Letters of Ignatius
To the Ephesians
To the Magnesians
To the Trallians
To the Romans
To the Philadelphians
To the Smyrnaeans
To Polycarp
Letter of Poly carp to the Philippians
The Martyrdom of Polycarp
Letter to Diognmus
Letter of Barnabas
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles [Didache]
Q
Mark
Matthew
Luke-Acts
John
Peter
Mary
Thomas
P. Oxy. 840
P. Oxy. 1224
Egerton
First Stone Gospel
Infancy Luke
Infancy Matthew
Infancy James
"Essential Gospel" - a compendium of authentic words / deeds of Jesus
"Essential Paul" - a compendium of authentic letters / letter fragments
Romans
1-2 Corinthians
Galatians
Philippians
I Thessalonians
Philemon
Ephesians
Colossians
Hebrews
James
1 John
1 Peter
1 Timothy
Revelation
Thunder Perfect Mind Diary of Perpetua
Odes of Solomon
Didache (Teaching of the 12 Apostles)
Visit this site for a chronological order of Early Christian Writings.