| Part 1 The Theory of Faith | Hirohumi Hoshika |
Why is academic inquiry into Jesus considered necessary in the first place? Are the Gospels unreliable as they are? Before considering the two concepts of Jesus mentioned in the previous section, I would like to confirm this point.
Judging by the writings of theological conservatives, it appears there are no issues regarding the historical reliability of the New Testament. For example, F.F. Bruce's The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? — mentioned in Chapter 1 - Essay 4 — as well as his meticulous commentary on the The Book of the Acts, attest to the accuracy of the accounts written by Luke, one of the New Testament authors.
According to this, there was a time when the title of a certain local official recorded by Luke in Acts was considered a fabrication because it was not the standard term used at the time; however, the existence of political documents bearing that title has recently come to light. Furthermore, regarding the name of the mayor of a certain local city mentioned in his account, it has been reported that a manhole cover from that era, bearing the inscribed name, was excavated.
While one certainly cannot expect every detail in the New Testament to be archaeologically corroborated, such examples suggest that the place names and dates recorded by the New Testament authors were documented with an aim for accuracy.
On the other hand, research presented by mainline theology — which is skeptical of the historicity of New Testament writings — often presupposes the view of religion held by the 19th-century History of Religions School, namely that religions in the Near East developed through mutual influence; furthermore, the dismissal of miracle accounts concerning Jesus — treated as a given in much of mainline theology — appears to stem from an uncritical acceptance of the "separation of phenomenon and thing-in-itself", a consequence of 18th-century Kant's epistemology. Consequently, these positions warrant further scrutiny, leaving one with the impression that they do not cast decisive doubt on the reliability of the New Testament documents.
It can be said that for a substantial period of time, I too was in a "peaceful slumber", brought about by the sense of security that the above two views provide, namely, that the accounts in the New Testament texts regarded as historical facts were written with care and integrity, and that many of the skeptical claims against these texts are outdated.
However, as I read about "Q" related to the discovery of the "Gospel of Thomas" in the last century, and learned of some of the considerations of the Bultmann school called "The Second Quest for the Historical Jesus", I gradually began to think that it was inappropriate to remain in this sense of security.
"Q" refers to a collection of the sayings of Jesus believed to have been used by Matthew and Luke as a source for their Gospels; it is not a document whose actual existence has been confirmed, but rather a source whose existence is reasonably inferred from the structure of the extant Gospels.
Among the Gospels—excluding the Gospel of John—the three known as the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) share a relationship in which the content of the Gospel of Mark is largely incorporated into both Matthew and Luke; consequently, the Gospel of Mark has come to be regarded as a common source for the other two and as the earliest of the Gospels.
However, in the mid-19th century, H. J. Holtzmann discovered that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke contained shared material not derived from Mark — material that consisted almost entirely of sayings or sermons of Jesus.
Based on these "biblical facts", Holtzmann argued that positing a source other than the Gospel of Mark was useful for explaining the origins of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; he thus proposed the "Two-Document Hypothesis," identifying that additional source as a collection of Jesus's sayings, or "logia".This Jesus' collection of sayings is known as "Q" and continues to play a key role in the fundamental understanding of the formation of the Synoptic Gospels.
Since the Gospel of Thomas, which was discovered in Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the mid-20th century, was a written record of Jesus' sayings, this supposed Q material confirmed the existence of a "collection of Jesus' sayings", and its credibility suddenly increased.
Although the discovered Gospel of Thomas differs in content from Q — whose scope is being defined through research advancing since Holtzmann — and is not identical to Q, it nonetheless confirms that an identical literary genre did exist.
This understanding—that the Gospels were formed based on multiple sources such as Q — does not overturn the simple view adopted by conservative theology regarding the differences in accounts found among the Synoptic Gospels; for instance, the view that just as multiple newspapers reporting on the same event write their stories from different angles, the discrepancies between the Gospels can be explained in a similar way.
However, this view becomes untenable when the following relationship between the Q material and both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke becomes evident.
It is the fact that the order of Q, as derived respectively from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, is the same. This indicates that Matthew and Luke each faithfully preserved the order of Jesus' sayings found in the Q source. Conversely, however, this implies that the sayings of Jesus found in the source material Q were inserted in their original order, without regard for the chronological progression of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
The narrative structures of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke differ significantly; consequently, when the sayings of Q are inserted into them—maintaining an absolute, rigid sequence—one is compelled to conclude that the settings and contexts in which Jesus appears to speak these words in the current Gospels are the result of editorial harmonization. In fact, the Q source is interspersed among Jesus’ five major sermons in the Gospel of Matthew and on his journey to Jerusalem in the Gospel of Luke.
This fact presented by the Bible cannot be ignored. This is because, if Q is employed in this manner—that is, if sayings of Jesus that were not originally spoken on a particular occasion are placed adjacent to, or in the midst of, actual events—then the resulting account cannot be said to convey the facts exactly as they occurred. Even if such a passage is not what Bultmann calls an "apophthegma" — that is, a narrative in which a biblical author constructs a fictional event around an aphoristic teaching of Jesus — the fact remains that it does not convey the events exactly as they occurred.
In this case, the argument made by defenders of "Bible Faith" — which we examined in Chapter 2 — that acknowledging a single imperfection in the Bible makes it impossible to deny the existence of further imperfections, would be applied at the level of "historical reliability", a tier below that of the "Word of God". This is fatal for conservative Christianity, which professes biblical "inerrancy".
I would also like to introduce an analysis by J.M. Robinson, a scholar of the Bultmann school. The passage in question is "The Healing of the Centurion's Servant" (or "The Healing of the Royal Official's Son").
In the accounts found in Matthew 8 and Luke 7, the centurion (a commander of one hundred soldiers) expresses faith in Jesus before learning that his servant has been healed, whereas in John 4, he is described as coming to believe only after learning of his son's healing.
Furthermore, while Matthew and Luke center their accounts on the centurion's expression of faith in Jesus' words, John presents a conventional miracle story following the pattern of "miracle–wonder–faith", and in this passage, Jesus utters a reproachful remark: "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe." (v. 48).
In other words, there are significant differences between the accounts of Matthew and Luke on the one hand, and that of John on the other, regarding both the centurion's faith and Jesus's response.
Based on this, Bultmann classifies the accounts in Matthew and Luke as "apophthegma" — narratives edited around the words of Jesus —
Here, Robinson's reasoning regarding the reconstruction of actual events is as follows.
――Since the accounts in Matthew and Luke are "apophthegma" centered on Q, the centurion's faith depicted therein is a narrative addition and not historical fact. On the other hand, the account in the Gospel of John does not display the sophisticated faith of the centurion found in Matthew and Luke; instead, it describes a simple faith — believing after being healed — which is likely closer to the truth. However, having been written more than 60 years after Jesus' death — and as evidenced by the fact that the Gospel of John, the last of the four Gospels, concludes its substantive final section (Chapter 20) with the words, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" — it is a Gospel strongly motivated to promote faith in Jesus' words, which can still be relevant today, rather than faith based on Jesus' deeds, which were by then becoming a thing of the past. Given this, it can be inferred that the centurion's artless attitude — as depicted in the "miracle source" available to the author John — did not align with his writing intentions. This point comes to fruition in verse 48, in the form of Jesus expressing a reproach against faith based on the grace of miracles; therefore, the words "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe" should be attributed not to Jesus, but to John. ――
Robinson's actual account is somewhat more complex and difficult to follow, but it essentially conveys the gist described above.
Conservative theology appears not to regard the accounts in John and those in Matthew and Luke as referring to the same event.
Nevertheless, the sequences of these three events are strikingly similar, so it would be difficult to treat them in the same way as the "Feeding of the 5,000" and the "Feeding of the 4,000", which are considered similar yet distinct events. After all, the account of the "Feeding" appears in the same Gospel twice, and there is even a reference to the chronological order of the two events. Its nature as a "biblical fact" differs from that of the "centurion" account, which is recorded across multiple Gospels. It seems that conservative theology treats these as separate events solely to avoid obvious inconsistencies between the Gospels.
Setting aside the question of whether Robinson’s argument — that the account in the Gospel of John is close to the facts — is correct, what is important here is that the same event is presented not merely from each reporter's perspective, but in a different light. This is because it compels us to say that the Gospels do not convey the facts exactly as they are.
Now, the two examples above do not suggest that the Gospels are historically "nonsense". Rather, they might well be regarded as traces indicating that the Gospels are rooted in the historical reality of Jesus and that their historicity has been preserved.
However, even if this is the case, it is certain that these considerations teach us that the Bible has characteristics that cannot be covered by the view that it is "a literal statement of the facts". This means that without gaining a deeper understanding of that nature, one cannot claim to have understood the Bible, nor can one arrive at the facts of the first century that the Bible conveys. For this reason, scholarly study of the Bible, the Gospels, and Jesus is considered necessary.
How, then, should the Gospels be understood? If they do not present the facts exactly as they occurred, what precisely are the accounts they contain?
While these matters are not yet clear, let us proceed with this issue step by step, without rushing. For me, these questions simply must be resolved. This is because, as I wrote in the "Chapter 2 - Episode" of "The Theory of Faith", my baptism was performed based on the confession: "I believe in Jesus Christ on the premise that the historical accounts written in the Bible are true."