Grace
Theological Journal 5.2 (1984) 271-288
Copyright © 1941 by Grace
Theological Seminary. Cited with permission.
Understanding the Difficult Words of
Jesus
WESTON W. FIELDS
Understanding the Difficult Words of
Jesus, by David Bivin and Roy Bliz-
zard.
It was during my sabbatical year in
quainted with David Bivin,
Robert Lindsey, and other students and colleagues
of
David Flusser of the
anticipation that I began reading this book by David Bivin
and Roy Blizzard,
which
popularizes some of the results of a whole generation of research into
the
linguistic and literary background of the synoptic Gospels by Prof. Flusser,
Dr. Lindsey, and their associates in
generally
good, and I can be enthusiastic about most of them. The informal
style and
largely undocumented format in which these ideas are presented,
however, may
for many detract from their ready acceptance.
The Milieu
and Burden of the Book
It is
important to understand that this book was born out of a combina-
tion of circumstances which cannot be found
anywhere except in
which
could not have been found even in
factors
include a rapprochement between Jewish and Christian scholars in a
completely
Jewish University, freedom of study unhampered by religious
hierarchical control, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a growing
appreciation for their bearing on NT study, and most importantly, the fact
that
gospel research in
very
similar in many respects to the Hebrew idiom (Mishnaic
Hebrew)1 of
[1]
See, for example, Jack Fellman,
"The Linguistic Status of Mishnaic Hebrew,"
JNSL 5
(1977) 21-22; Chaim Rabin, "The Historical
Background of
Scripta Hierosolymitana, vol. 4: Aspects of the
and Yigael Yadin (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1958) 144-61; and W. Chomsky, "What Was
the
Jewish Vernacular During the
212; Jonas
C. Greenfield, "The Languages of
Languages. Theme and Variations, ed. by Herbert H. Paper (
tion for Jewish Studies, 1978) 143-54; Herbert
C. Youtie, "Response,ft
in Jewish Lan-
guages. Theme and Variations, 155-57; Joshua Blau,
A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew
(Wiesbaden:
Otto Harrassowitz, 1976), I; E. Y. Kutscher, "Hebrew Language: The
Dead Sea
Scrolls," Encyclopedia Judaica 16: cols.
1583-90; Idem, "Hebrew Language:
Mishnaic
Hebrew," Encyclopedia Judaica 16: cols.
1590-1607
272 GRACE THEOLOGICAL
JOURNAL
Jesus’ day. All of this, moreover, is accomplished in the
midst of growing
recognition
among NT scholars that the key to understanding a number of
sayings in
the gospels has been lost, unless one finds it in Jewish and Hebrew
sources.
The more technical background of Understanding
the Difficult Words of
Jesus is to be found in scholarly literature
authored by Flusser, Safrai,
and
others at
panion to this book are two works by Robert L.
Lindsey, pastor of Baptist
House in
sey's work is integrated here with the
suggestions of Bivin and Blizzard. The
first of
Lindsey's works is entitled A Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of
Mark (with a foreword by Flusser)3 and the second a pamphlet entitled
simply, The
Gospels.4
The burden
of these books may be summarized in a few propositions,
which not
only go counter in some respects to the prevailing wisdom of NT
scholarship
outside of
revolutionary than might first appear. These propositions are:
-Hebrew was the primary spoken and
written medium of the majority
of the Jews in
-Jesus therefore did most if not all of
his teaching in Hebrew
2
Many of these articles are available in English. A sampling of Professor
Flusser's
writings
follows (some of them are English summaries of Hebrew articles): Jesus (New
tyrdom in Second Temple Judaism and in Early
Christianity," Immanuel 1 (1972)
37-38;
"The Liberation of
I (1972)
35-36; "The Last Supper and the Essenes," Immanuel
2 (1973) 23-27; "Jewish
Roots of the
Liturgical Trishagion," Immanuel 3
(1973-74) 37-43; "Did You Ever See
a Lion
Working as a Porter?" Immanuel 3 (1973/74) 61-64; "Hebrew Improperia,"
Immanuel 4 (1974) 51-54; "Hillel's
Self-Awareness and Jesus," Immanuel 4 (1974)
31-36;
"Two Anti-Jewish Montages in Matthew," Immanuel 5 (1975)
37-45; "Theses
51 on the
Emergence of Christianity from Judaism," Immanuel 5 (1975) 74-84;
The
Crucified
One and the Jews," Immanuel 7 (1977) 25-37; "Do You Prefer New
Wine?”
Immanuel 9 (1979) 26-31; "The Hubris of the
Antichrist in a Fragment from
Immanuel 10 (1980) 31-37; "At the Right Hand
of the Power," Immanuel 14 (1982)
42-46;
"Foreword" in Robert Lisle Lindsey, A
Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of
Mark (Jerusalem: Dugith,
1973) 1-8. Flusser and Safrai
together: "The Slave of Two
Masters,"
Immanuel 6 (1976) 30-33; "
Period,"
Immanuel 6 (1976) 43-45; "Some Notes on the Beatitudes (Matthew
5:3-12;
Luke
6:20-26)," Immanuel 8 (1978) 37-47. "Who Sanctified the
Beloved in the Womb,"
Immanuel 11 (1980) 46-55; "The Essene Doctrine of Hypostatis and
Rabbi Meir,"
Immanuel 14 (1982) 47-57. Safrai
alone: "The Synagogues South of Mt. Judah,"
Immanuel 3 (1973-1974) 44-50; "Pilgrimage to
3
Robert Lisle Lindsey, A Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of Mark
(
Dugith, 1973).
4
Robert Lisle Lindsey, The Gospels
(Jerusalem: Dugith, 1972). Also important are
his
articles "A Modified Two-Document Theory of the Synoptic Dependence and
Interdependence,"
NovT 6 (1963) 239-63; and "Did Jesus Say Verily
or Amen?"
Christian News from
FIELDS: DIFFICULT WORDS OF JESUS 273
-the original accounts of Jesus' life were
composed in Hebrew (as one
might conclude
anyway from early church history)5
-the Greek gospels which have come down to
us represent a third or
fourth stage in
the written6 transmission of accounts of the life of
Jesus
-Luke was the first gospel written, not
Mark7
-the key to understanding many of the
difficult or even apparently
unintelligible
passages in the gospels is to be found not primarily in a
better
understanding of Greek, but in retroversion to and translation
of the Hebrew
behind the Greek (made possible by the often trans-
parently
literalistic translation methods of the Greek translators).
Although many of the same ideas have been
proposed for some time on
the
basis of Aramaic NT originals,8 the insertion of Hebrew into the
picture is
becoming more
and more accepted, especially among speakers of Modern
Hebrew,
perhaps because a conversational knowledge of Hebrew makes it
5
Among early Christian writers who speak on the subject there is
unanimous
agreement that
Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew. The testimonies include Papias
(Fragment
6); Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.1); Origen (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History
6
Lindsey, The Gospels, 4; A
Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of Mark, xix-xx.
7 This is developed much more at length by
Lindsey on the basis of the order of the
stories or
units in the Synoptics. There are 77 units found in
all three of the gospels. 60
of
these are in the same order in all three gospels. Mark contains 1 unit unknown
to
Matthew and
Luke; Matthew contains 27 units unknown to Mark and Luke; Luke
contains 46
units unknown to Mark and Matthew. These "extra" units occur, usually
in
groups, in between the 60 units which the Synoptics
share in common. Most
remarkable is
the fact that Matthew and Luke contain 36 units which are unknown in
Mark,
"yet only in one of these units do Matthew and Luke agree as to where to
place
them
among the 6O-unit outline they share with Mark" (The Gospels, 6). Lindsey
continues:
"When we put these and many other facts together we see (1) that it is
improbable that
either Matthew or Luke saw the writing of the other and (2) that
Mark's
Gospel somehow stands between Matthew and Luke causing much of the
agreement of
story-order and wording we see in the Synoptic Gospels. We also see that
whatever be
the order of our Gospel dependence it is probable that each had at least
one
source unknown to us" (Ibid., 6). Lindsey suggests that it is the
vocabulary of
Mark that is the key to priority. The unique story units show that Mark
used either
Matthew or Luke. The book which shows uniquely Markan
vocabulary was probably
dependent upon
Mark and the one which does not contain Mark's unique vocabulary
probably
preceded Mark. It is Matthew that carries over many of Mark's unique
expressions,
while they are usually missing from Luke. Hence, the order of composi-
tion seems to be Luke, Mark, Matthew (Ibid.,
6-7). The numbers in the statistics and
quotations
above have been slightly corrected to coincide with those in A Hebrew
Translation
of the Gospel of Mark, pp.
xi-xiii.
8
Cf. Gustaf Dalman, The Words of Jesus Considered in the Light of
Post-Biblical
Jewish
Writings and the Aramaic Language, trans. by D. M. Kay (
of the
New Testament (London:
Geoffrey Chapman, 1971); and Idem, "The Contribu-
tion of Qumran Aramaic to the Study of the New
Testament," NTS 20 (1974) 382-407.
274 GRACE THEOLOGICAL
JOURNAL
easier to
see the Hebrew syntax behind a document.
Some of the other ideas
are old
ones now revived, and some of the propositions, especially those of
Lindsey are quite new. At
first glance, some evangelicals will undoubtedly be
inclined to
say that such an approach represents something dangerous for or
incongruous with
certain modem conceptions of inspiration and formulations
of
inerrancy, especially when taken together with the inferences which are
commonly
drawn out of them by American Christians. But such fears would
be
unfounded, and objections based on such misgivings should be held in
check,
until it becomes clear whether the problem is with the theory of
Hebrew
backgrounds for the Synoptics (to which one might
easily add the
first half
of Acts and the book of Hebrews, although Bivin and
Blizzard do
not), or
with the theories of composition and authorship and notions of
literary
convention that are sometimes attached to accepted notions of the
inspiration of
these ancient documents of the Church.
The Language
of Jesus
Bivin and
Blizzard first take up the question of the language of Jesus.
This
question is not settled as easily as one might expect from reading the
unfortunate
translation of [Ebrai~j and [Ebrai*sti< as
"Aramaic" in the NIV
(John 5:2;
expected a
little more reticence in changing the text on the part of these
particular
translators. In their defense, however,
it must be said that they are
following in
part the suggestion of the Greek lexicon available at that time,9
but the
more recent lexicon10 which was published the year after the
complete
NIV, adds that "Grintz,
JBL 79, '60, 32-47 holds that some form of Hebrew
was
commonly spoken." Had either Gingrich and Danker or the translators
of the NIV
been aware of the large amount of literature published between
1960 and
1978 which supports Grintz's contention, they
undoubtedly would.
have
taken more seriously the NT's statement that these words were Hebrew11
It is a
little unfair, for example, that the NIV takes "Rabboni"
in John 20: 16
as
"Aramaic" when the text says that it is Hebrew, and it is in fact
equally as
good
Hebrew as Aramaic.12 Even if it were Aramaic, it undoubtedly could
have been
described as Hebrew as legitimately as "Abba" and "Imma" can be
9 William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New
Testament
and Other Early Christian literature (A translation and adaptation of
Walter
Bauer's Griechisch-Deutsches Worterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testa-
ments ulid der ubrigen urchristlichen
literature, fourth
revised and augmented edition,
1952;
10 William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New
Testament
and Other Early Christian literature (Second edition revised and augmented
by F.
Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker from Walter Bauer's fifth edition,
1958;
11 See nn. 1, 2, and 3 of this article for a listing of some of this literature.
12
M. Jastrow, A
Dictionary of the Targumim. The
Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi.
and the Midrashic Lliterature, (reprint;
seems to
use "language of the fathers" J. W. 5.2) and "Hebrew" (J.
W. 6.2.1) to refer to
Hebrew and
not Aramaic as the spoken language of the people during the siege of
FIELDS: DIFFICULT WORDS OF JESUS 275
today,
though in fact these last two may also be described as "Aramaic loan
words."
NIV reverts to "Hebrew" for Ebri*sti< in
there is
no choice but to understand the words "Abaddon"
(a synonym for
hell in
Rabbinic literature)13 and "Armageddon" as Hebrew. Somewhat less
defensible is
the NIV's insertion of the Aramaic words Elwi, Elwi" in
Matthew's
account of the crucifixion (27:46), with little important textual
support.14 These translations of the NIV show the bias which Bivin and Bliz-
zard oppose.
Their first chapter reminds the reader
that 78% of the biblical text as we
have it
is in Hebrew (most of the OT). If one
grants to Bivin and Blizzard for
the
moment their assertion about Hebrew originals for the gospels and adds
to the
OT the highly Hebraic portions of the NT (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
Acts
1:1-15:35, which together constitute 40% of the NT), the percentage of
the
biblical material with a Hebrew background rises to 87% (subtracting the
1% that is in Aramaic in Daniel and Ezra).
When one further adds the 176
quotations from
the OT in John and from Acts 15:36 to the end of the NT,
this
percentage rises to over 90%. To this Bivin and Blizzard might have
added the
entire book of Hebrews, which early Christian writers who speak
on the
subject agree was written by Paul in Hebrew and translated into Greek
either by
Luke or Clement of Rome.15 This would bring the percentage of NT
books with
a Hebrew background even closer to 100%.16 All of this leads
13 Ibid., 3.
14
The textual support in favor of the
Aramaic phrase is: x B 33 copsa, bo eth, but as
Metzger
points out, this was undoubtedly an assimilation to
the Aramaic reading in
Mark
literated Hebrew hml (why?) as well as yniTaq;baw; (forsaken), with Codex Bezae charac-
teristically giving a completely Hebrew reading of the
quotation from Ps 22:1, -------
representing the
Hebrew yniTab;zafE. Thus the NIV strikes out on its own here, rejecting the
reading of
the Byz family, most other manuscripts, and the UBS
text as well (Bruce M.
Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament
[
Bible Societies, 1971] 70,119-20).
15
Eusebius speaks of this tradition several
times, indicating his preference for
Clement of
but also
recording that there was a strong tradition in favor of Luke. Both Clement of
tion
(Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History,
16
To this many would add the Gospel of John.
Cf. C. F. Burney, The Aramaic
Origin of
the Fourth Gospel
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1922) and The Poetry of
Our Lord
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1925). What is proposed here for Aramaic might even more
cogently be
proposed for Hebrew. In addition to this, even W. F. Howard (James
Hope
Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek,
vol. II: Accidence and Word
Formation, by W. F. Howard [
solution of
the tangled problem of the language of the Apocalypse is said to be this:
(a) The
author writes in Greek, thinks in Hebrew; (b) he has taken over some Greek
sources
already translated from the Hebrew; (c) he has himself translated and adapted
some
Hebrew sources." On the basis of "the instances of mistranslation
corrected by
retroversion"
Howard leans toward the latter two suggestions. However, it appears
that,
when new advances in understanding the Hebrew of the period as well as early
historical
references about the composition of the Apocalypse are taken into account,
the
first of these suggested solutions is nearer the mark. The very Hebraic style
of
Revelation
is most transparent.
276 GRACE THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
rather
inescapably to the conclusion that Hebrew is as important for the
study of
the NT as it is for the study of the OT (though certainly not to the
exclusion of
other languages and cultures which were influential in the period
of the
It is interesting that the authors connect
the theories of Markan priority
and
Aramaic backgrounds as well as the idea that the Greek Gospels repre-
sent
"late, faulty transmission of oral reports recorded by the Greek speaking
Church far
removed from the unsophisticated Judean and Galilean scene"
(p. 26) with "liberal" scholarship. It
might be more to the point to say that
the
first two are almost universally assumed by NT scholarship of every
brand,
while at the least the oral aspect is tacitly assumed by many, both
"liberal" and "conservative" alike. Bivin and Blizzard
imply (though the point
is not
made as forcefully as it could be) that the gospels we have rest on
written
records, and that these records were made in the
language of
Jesus by people surrounded by the culture and religion of Jesus
very
shortly after the life of Jesus. This,
in their opinion, makes the study of
Hellenism
and things Hellenistic (not to speak of Roman language, religion,
and
culture) very secondary indeed for the understanding of the gospels.17
Of
course, it
must first be established that Hebrew was the primary spoken
medium of
Jesus and his followers. Certainly
Aramaic was used, but not as
much as
it was four or five centuries earlier by the returning captives from
Aramaic-speaking
was
well-known and used among scholars for certain purposes. But most of
the
literary indications extant today about the language of the common people
of
Jesus' day point toward Hebrew as the primary language in an undoubtedly
bi-,
tri-, or quadrilingual society (and no one living in
multilingual
today can
doubt the possibility and feasibility of such a thing in Jesus' day).
The
linguistic situation during that time is probably best described by the
term
"diglossia." This term is used to describe the well-known
habit of multi-
lingual
speakers of speaking their various languages in different religious,
social,
economic, or political situations, which may vary as well with the
particular
geographical setting in which an utterance is made. The indications
in
favor of Hebrew are: (1) the languages used in the inscriptions on the cross
(Greek,
Latin, and Hebrew); (2) the large number of Hebrew words surviving
in the
NT (many more by actual count than Aramaic words); (3) the now
better-understood fact that Hebrew works from the time (just as modern
Israeli
Hebrew scholarly works) contain Aramaisms, but that
these do not
point to
Aramaic originals; and (4) most especially the astounding fact that
much of
the day-to-day
17 The debate about the
"Hellenistic" or "Non-Hellenistic" background of the
writers of
the NT (including Paul) continues.C.F. e.g., on the
Hellenistic side, Samuel
Sandmel, The Genius of Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1979), and on Jewish side,
W. D.
Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (4th ed.;
a most
stimulating recent approach to the religion of Paul, see E. P. Sanders, Paul
and
Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) and Idem, Paul. the law and the
Jewish People
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983).
FIELDS: DIFFICULT WORDS OF JESUS 277
Massada is
in Hebrew. All of this, and especially the last point, is so over-
whelming that
even Matthew Black has had to concede that "if this is a cor-
rect estimate of the
a
spoken Palestinian language in NT times], where Hebrew vastly predomi-
nates over Aramaic, then it may be held to
confirm the view identified with
the name
of Professor Segal that Hebrew was actually a spoken vernacular in
One of the most striking indications of
Jesus' use of Hebrew comes from
his
words on the cross, Hli hli lema sabaxqani (Matt 27:46; see n. 14 above
on the
text). Although Mark
lema sabaxqani,
quoting the Targum to Psalm 22, the context seems to indi-
cate that Jesus must have uttered them in
Hebrew, because Eli (Hli, ylixe) was
a
shortened form of Eliyahu (Hli<aj, Uhy.Alixe), "Elijah," only in Hebrew, and
the
bystanders thought Jesus was calling for Elijah. But yhilAx<, the Aramaic
(see Dan
can
account for the misunderstanding. Bivin and Blizzard could have pointed
out the
obvious psychological fact that the utterance of a man in pain and in
the
throes of death, without any doubt whatsoever would have been made in
the
language he was most accustomed to speaking. Sabaxqani may have been
as much
Mishnaic-like Hebrew as Aramaic, though it was
certainly Aramaic
in the
first instance and would have come over into Hebrew only as a
loanword-a
distinct possibility in Jesus' time, considering the kind of litera-
ture in which it occurs.19 It is used enough now in Modern Hebrew to be
considered
genuine Hebrew by Even-Shoshan; it passed from
loanword status
to
Hebrew status somewhere along the way.20 Of course the Biblical Hebrew
word in
Psalm 22:1 is yniTab;zafE. The word hm.AlA?, transliterated variously by Greek
18 M. Black, An
Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (3rd ed.;
Clarendon, 1967) 47. Birkeland gives a convenient summary of
the history of Aramaic
and
suggests a view of the relative importance of Aramaic and Hebrew as spoken
languages in
the time of Jesus similar to the one suggested above in this article (Harris
Birkeland, The Language of Jesus [
1-40). Some other important sources for the consideration of
Aramaic vis-A-vis Hebrew
are: B. Jongeling, C. J. Labuschagne, and
A. S. Van der Woude, Aramaic
Texts from
G. F. Pijper, vol. 1/4;
Dialects," in Jewish Languages, ed. by Herbert H.
Paper, pp.29-43; and E. Y.
Kutscher,
"Aramaic," Encyclopedia Judaica 3:
cols. 259-87. Especially important is the
evidence in
favor of Mishnaic Hebrew as the spoken medium during
the Second
Clarendon, 1927) 1-20.
19 Jastrow, Dictionary, 1516-17.
20 Nwvw-Nbx Mhrbx, yrbfh Nylymh (rps-tyrq: Mylwvry)
1323. James Barr's discussion
of “Aramaisms" and Aramaic loanwords in Hebrew still
remains one of the best on the
subject. See his Comparative Philology and the Text
of the Old Testament (
Clarendon, 1968) 121-24. For an explanation of and a listing of other Modern Hebrew
borrowings from
Aramaic, see Jonas C. Greenfield, "Aramaic and Its Dialects," in
Jewish Languages. Theme and Variations ed. by Herbert H. Paper (
Association for Jewish Studies, 1978) 42.
278 GRACE THEOLOGICAL
JOURNAL
manuscripts in
the Matthew passage as
Mark passage
by the additional meima.21 The difference in pronunciation
between the
Aramaic and Hebrew would have been difficult to distinguish
orally, so
the language of the utterance probably hinges on the shortened
form of
Elijah.
Other convincing proofs for Hebrew as the
spoken vernacular follow one
upon
another. Consider the account in the
Talmud (Nedarim 66b)22
about the
difficulties an Aramaic-speaking Jew from
with his
Jerusalemite wife, who spoke Hebrew, or the findings of Flusser
that
of the
hundreds of Semitic idioms in the Synoptic Gospels most can be
explained on
the basis of Hebrew only, while there "are no Semitisms which
could only
be Aramaic without also being good Hebrew" (p. 40). Or consider
the
opinion of Moshe Bar-Asher, the prominent Aramaic scholar at Hebrew
University, that the Synoptics go back to an original
Hebrew and not Ara-
maic.
Joining in this train, according to Bivin and
Blizzard, are Pinchas
Lapide of
Seminary), Frank Cross (
But for those familiar with the writings
of the early Fathers this does not
come as a
total surprise. The testimony to an
original Hebrew Gospel by
Matthew is
found from about A.D. 165 in Papias, through Irenaeus, Origen,
Eusebius, Epiphanius, and most
strikingly, Jerome (ca. 400). During his
thirty-one
years of translating in
Matthew, also called Levi, apostle and
aforetimes publican, composed a gospel
of
Christ at first published in
circumcision who
believed, but this was afterwards translated into Greek though
by what
author is uncertain. The Hebrew itself
has been preserved until the
present day
in the library at
have also
had the opportunity of having the volume described to me by the
Nazarenes of Beroea,
a city of
wherever the
Evangelist, whether on his own account or in the person of our
Lord the Saviour
quotes the testimony of the Old Testament he does not follow
the
authority of the translators of the Septuagint but the Hebrew. Wherefore
these two
forms exist, 'Out of
called a
Nazarene."23
One of the
common arguments for an Aramaic vernacular at the time of
Jesus is the
existence of targumim and the discovery of some of
these Ara-
maic paraphrases at
linguistic
situation which preceded Jesus' time by at least a century and a half
or more
and which changed by the last days of the
be seen
by careful analysis of the writings of the Tannaim
and Amoraim.
Furthermore,
the Aramaic targumim are outnumbered at
translations, and few seriously contend that Greek was the primary spoken
21 Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 70, 119-20.
22 Babylonian Talmud (London: Soncino, 1936), Nedarim 66b, pp. 214-15.
23
See n. 5 above for the other references.
To these should be added Epiphanius,
Refutation of All Heresies, 30.3.7. The complete. quotation from Jerome
can be found
in
Jerome, Lives of Illustrious Men, 3, in vol. 3 of the Nicene and
Post- Nicene Fathers,
second
series, trans. by E. C. Richardson, ed. by P. Schaff
and H. Ware, p. 362.
FIELDS: DIFFICULT WORDS OF JESUS 279
language of
first century
taries) found at
religious
revival that occurred under Judas Maccabaeus after
his cleansing of
the
tion), which was the impetus for the
resurgence of Hebrew as the primary
vernacular of
Coins, inscriptions,24
Rabbinic literature such as the Mishnah, and espe-
cially Rabbinic parables (there are about five
thousand of these which survived in
Hebrew and
only two in Aramaic) all go to bolster the case for Hebrew as the
vernacular of
Second Temple Israel and thus of the documents behind the gospels.
But perhaps most telling are the gospels
themselves, and in particular the
Gospel of
Luke, the Greek translation of which evidences transparently
literalistic translation from a Hebrew original more often (and perhaps most
surprisingly) than do either Mark or Matthew. These semitisms,
most notice-
able in
syntax and idiomatic expressions (as would be the case with any
literalistic translation) are not evenly spread throughout the book. They
occur
in
blocks, most notably in direct statements attributed to Jesus or to his
Jewish opponents. Some of these Hebraisms
are so common and obvious
that one
scarcely needs to mention them, but for those unfamiliar with them,
perhaps it
is valuable to note a few. The constant kai> e]ge<neto + e]n + article +
infinitive +
subject of infinitive in the accusative + kai> + main verb obviously
reflects yhiy.;va + preposition (usually b or k) +
infinitive construct + v +
main
verb.25 Thus, the repetitious use of - in narrative is reproduced as one
of the
outstanding
characteristics of the gospels, a feature also apparent in literalistic
English
translations such as KJV or NASB, which retain the semitic syntax,
even
twice or three times removed.
It might be helpful to give an example
of the ease with which many
portions of
Luke are returned to idiomatic Hebrew, often with few changes
even in
word order. One that Lindsey uses, Luke
22:67-70, is particularly
excellent
since it contains a common Rabbinic introduction to a disputation
as well
as allusions to two OT passages (and possibly a veiled reference to a
third
passage):
ei] su> ei# o[ xristo<j, ei]pon h[mi?n. ei#pen de> UnlA rmox, Haywim.Aha hTAxa Mxi
au]toi?j: e]a>n u[mi?n ei@pw, ou]
mh> pisteu<shte Mk,lA rmaxo Mxi Mh,ylexE
rm,xy.Ova
e]a>n de> e]rwth<sw, ou] mh>
a]pokriqh?te UnfEta xlo lxawix,
Mxiv; UnymixEta xlo
a]po
tou? nu?n
de> e@stai o[ ui[o>j tou? a]ntqrw<pou bweOy wnAx, rBa hy,hyi hTafameU
kaqh<menoj e]k deciw?n th?j
duna<mewj tou? qeou?.
. . . hrAUbG;ha Nymiyli
ei#pan de> pa<ntej: su> ou#n ei#
o[ ui[o>j tou? qeou?. NB,
xOpxe hTAxa MlA.Ku
Urm;xy.ova
o[ de> pro>j au]tou>j e@fh: u[mei?j le<gete o!ti e]gw<
MT,xa Mh,ylexE rm,xy.ova
Myhilox<hA
ei]mi. xUh
ynixE yKi Myrim;Ox
24
Francis E. Peters has cautioned against giving too much weight to coins for
deciding the
languages of
in Jewish Languages. Theme and Variations, 161).
25 As
recognized by Nigel Turner, who calls this construction a "Semitism"
(James
Hope
Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek,
vol. 3: Syntax, by Nigel Turner
[
280 GRACE THEOLOGICAL
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Lindsey's
explanation of this passage is a good example of the kind of
work that
is being done by those studying the gospels from the standpoint of
their
Hebrew and Jewish background:
As in all of Luke it is
not Jesus who uses the word Messiah about himself;
this word is employed by the chief priests who are trying to get Jesus
to "level"
with them and confess the thing his actions and speech have long
hinted at but
not made explicit. Faced with
hostile interrogators who are nevertheless con-
scious of their duty to get the facts Jesus does
"level" with them by pointedly
telling them that he cannot expect them to
believe the truth if he says it and that
he cannot even "ask" them anything; this last is a
reference to the accepted
rabbinic procedure in debate: the one asked a
question is allowed to ask a ques-
tion in return. But rather than leave things at an impasse
Jesus then makes a
statement which can only leave his hearers
following the patterns of rabbinic
exegesis to try to make out what he means.
"The Son of Man" is a Messianic
title they know full well from Daniel 7.13,14 and the "seated at
the right hand"
they easily identify as a reference to Messianic Psalm 110. Jesus' expression "the
Power" is another accommodation to the rabbinic habit of
replacing an ordi-
nary name for the deity by an evasive synonym. But of even more interest is the
seeming addition in the priestly expression
"the Son of God." Here, as
Professor
Flusser once pointed out to me, the explanation
seems to be in the way the
rabbis connected Psalm 110 with Psalm 2 by
reading verse 3 of the former as
j~yTil;lAy; lFa (cf.
the LXX) which is the same verb found in Psalm 2:7. They answer
therefore: "You are then the Son of God!"
and of course mean, "You are, then,
the Messiah!" Jesus answers, "It is you who are saying that
I am he!"26
Bivin
and Blizzard point out such common Hebrew idioms in the gospels.
as "he lifted up his eyes and saw," "Heaven," in
"
substitute term for God for fear of violation of the
third commandment;27
and the idiom "to come/be near," as the equivalent of
"to be present" (i.e.,
"the
the word "judgment" with "salvation" instead of
with "destruction" may not
be as well chosen, even though this may occasionally be the way to
translate
the word in the OT.
Even Arndt, Gingrich,
and Danker recognize a number of these idioms,
while, perhaps, not fully appreciating their significance since the
bulk of their
work (and Bauer’s) was completed before the
important implications of the
idioms with a semitic background both in the introduction to the lexicon
as
well as in the text itself.28 They do at least recognize the influence of
the LXX
on NT Greek syntax, and there can be no doubt
where the LXX got its
syntax. Still, one is not quite prepared for the
superlative in which they
express it. “As for the influence of the LXX, every page
of this lexicon shows
that it outweighs all other influences on our
literature.”29
While this state-
ment may be hyperbole, these lexiconographers
are definitely on the mark
26Lindsey, A Hebrew
Translation of the Gospel of Mark, xx-xi.
27Cf.
Bruce D. Chilton, A Galilean Rabbi and His
Bible (
Glazier, 1984) 78.
28BAGD, xix-xxv
29BAGD, xxi
FIELDS: DIFFICULT WORDS OF JESUS 281
about one
thing: the NT is full of semitic syntax, vocabulary,
idioms, and
thought
patterns. Perhaps in the case of the Synoptics, however, this should
not be
traced so much to the influence of a Hebrew-to-Greek translation of
the OT,
as a Hebrew-to-Greek translation of documents which lie behind
these
gospels. In any case, the point is that
the Hebrew influence is there, and
this fact
coupled with other factors already mentioned in this article once
again
points to Hebrew as the linguistic background for the gospels. As for
the
actual listing of the Hebrew expressions and idioms in the gospels, the
72-page-long
list in Moulton-Howard, vol. 2 (where the whole scope of the
NT is
covered) is only a beginning;30 there are
many more which are most
apparent to
someone who wears the glasses of Hebrew fluency to see them.
The Process of Composition
One of the more controversial parts of
the book by Bivin and Blizzard
will be
their discussion of the process of composition of the gospels. Although
there is
very little in the canonical writings which explains the actual process
of
writing down the stories, or the mechanics of inspiration, there are ideas
about
composition and inspiration which have come to be almost canonical!
It is undoubtedly worthwhile to remind
ourselves just what is actually
known. As for the composition of the gospels, only
Luke tells us his method:
he used
written sources (Luke 1:1-4). He
undoubtedly had oral sources as
well, but
he does not say that he did. Early
church historians suggest rather
often that
Paul was an oral source for Luke and that very well may have been
true to
some extent.31 As for the
mechanics of inspiration, the Bible gives no
explanation at
all. And the situation is complicated
even more by the fact
that the
foundations of currently popular views on inspiration among Ameri-
can
evangelicals, the "autograph," is something neither mentioned in the
NT,
nor in
any of the discussions of inspiration and canonicity in the first cen-
turies of the Church.32 This is
notable because there is an obvious question
which
arises from the early church accounts that the Greek Gospel of Matthew
and the
Greek book of Hebrews are translations: what is an autograph? Or,
more to
the point, which was the autograph then in the case of these books:
the
Hebrew original or the Greek translation?
The same question might arise
out of
Luke's report that he used written sources for his gospel, as well as the
suggestions of Bivin and Blizzard about the composition of the Synoptics. On
the one
hand both our conceptions of canonicity and the content of the
Canon are
entirely dependent upon the tradition of the Church Fathers.33
30 Moulton and Howard, Grammar, vol. 2, 413-85.
31Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.1; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 6.24.
32Liddell and Scott list only Dionysius Halicarnassensis
and Plutarch as users of
the word (LSJ, 279). BAGD does not list the word. It is true,
of course, that the
concept does not depend upon the use of this particular word, but I can
find no such
concept connected with inerrancy during the early centuries of the church.
33The main canon lists are: The Muratorian
Canon (ca. 2nd century); Eusebius
(4th century); Cyril of Jerusalem (A.D.
349); Apostolic Canons (4th century); Codex
Alexandrinus (4th century); Council of Laodicea
(A.D. 363); Council of Carthage
(A.D. 397); the African Code (A.D. 419);
and Jerome (A.D. 420). None except Jerome
282 GRACE
THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
the other hand the Fathers neither raise nor answer the question of
"auto-
graphs," since they were not, apparently, concerned with them or
even aware
of the concept as it is used today, even though they spoke freely
about the
fact that some of the NT books were translations. Thus, an answer to the
question, "what is an autograph" is not immediately apparent,
but it is a
crucial question for the doctrine of inerrancy, since inerrancy is
claimed only
for "the autographs." Bivin and
Blizzard raise the question only by implica-
tion and thus do not suggest
an answer.
With this background, then, we come to the propositions of Bivin and
Blizzard
about the composition of the Synoptics. They outline four steps in
the process of the preservation and transmission of the gospel
stories. Natur-
ally, these steps are hypothetical.
Of course this must be the case with any
reconstruction based on a particular theory, such as the currently popular
theory of Markan priority. Since any theory of composition is based on a
long series of inferences, no matter what hypothesis one prefers, one
is still
working in the dark. In the end a
theory of composition must be judged on
the basis of how many questions it answers and problems it solves,
weighed
against the questions it does not answer and the problems it does not
solve.
Bivin and Blizzard believe that their alternative to Markan priority answers
more questions and solves more problems while at the same time leaving
unsolved and unanswered less than does the theory of Markan
priority.
Step one occurred within five
years of the death and resurrection of
Jesus, when his words were recorded in
Hebrew. Bivin
and Blizzard estimate
that this "Life of Jesus" was about 30-35 chapters
long. Notice that they
postulate a very early written account, as opposed to the widely held
theory
that the raw material of the gospels is late and oral.
Step two according to Bivin and Blizzard involved the translation of the
Hebrew "Life of Jesus" into
Greek in order to supply the demand for it in
Greek-speaking churches outside of
lation of the LXX,
slavishly literal, and "since books translated from Hebrew into
Greek are much longer in Greek, it was
about 50-60 chapters in length" (p. 94).
Step three followed only a few
years later when, "probably at
the stories, and frequently elements within the stories, found in
this Greek
translation were separated from one another and then these fragments were
arranged topically, perhaps to facilitate memorization. (What remained were
fragments that were often divorced from their original and more meaningful
contexts)" (pp. 94-95). There
are a number of clear instances of "fragmenta-
tion" in the gospels
which Bivin and Blizzard did not point out. An example
may be seen by comparing Matthew's "Sermon on the Mount"
with the
fragments of it scattered throughout Luke. My own computer-assisted analy-
sis of the approximately 390 sections (using the divisions of the UBS
Greek
NT), for example, has demonstrated that
large sections of the material found
agrees completely with our canon. Most of these are conveniently
gathered and cited in
their original Greek or Latin (except the Muratorian
fragment, which is undoubtedly a
translation) in B. F. Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon
of the
New Testament (7th ed.;
FIELDS:
DIFFICULT WORDS OF JESUS 283
in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 in one "sermon" are found in six
different places in
Luke (6, II, 12, 13, 14, 16) in addition to shorter sections found elsewhere.
Some of this difference in arrangement of
material is undoubtedly a reflection
of Jesus' repetition of his words in slightly different form to
different audi-
ences in
different places at different times and in different contexts. But some
of it might also support the contention of Bivin
and Blizzard that a certain
amount of fragmentation and displacement occurred between the time that
the stories were originally committed to writing and the time that
they were
arranged in the form in which we have them now.34 This displacement of
stories from their contexts may be clearly seen by comparing accounts of
the
same stories in the Synoptics. One example which will clearly illustrate the
point is the healing story found beginning in Luke
Matthew 8: 16. In Luke and Mark the phrase "when it was
evening," or "when
the sun had gone down" makes sense in those two books since the
story is set
in the context of Shabbat (the Sabbath); and of course the Jews had
to wait
until Shabbat was over before they could do any work such as bringing
sick
people to Jesus to be healed. But
in Matthew the same story (as well as the
healing of Peter's mother-in-law) is set in a different context with
nothing
either preceding or following it about Shabbat. Hence in Matthew the phrase
"when
evening came" has been separated from its original context and one
must go to the parallels in Luke and Mark to recover its full meaning.
Step four in the composition of our Synoptics according to Bivin and
Blizzard was the stage at which a fluent
Greek author used this topically
arranged text, reconstructed its fragmented elements and stories to
produce a
gospel with some chronological order (either explicit or implicit), and
thus
created still another document.
"This author, even before our Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, was the first to struggle
with a reconstruction of the original
order of the story units (represented by steps one and two). In the process of
reconstruction, he improved its (step three's) grammatically poor Greek, as
well as shortening it considerably" (p. 95).
According to this theory of the composition of the gospels, Luke wrote
first and used only the "topical" text (step three) and the
"reconstructed text"
(step four). Mark followed Luke's work (both Luke's Gospel
and his Acts, as
Lindsey points out)35
and Matthew used Mark's. Mark and
Matthew had
access to the "topical" text (step three) as well, but none of
the synoptic
writers had access to the original Hebrew "Life of Jesus" (step
one) or the
first Greek translation of that "Life" (step two). Matthew did not use Luke
directly.36 Bivin and Blizzard also suggest that Matthew wrote the original
Hebrew "Life of Jesus" as all of
the Church Fathers who speak on the matter
in the first 400 years of church history contend, but the extant
Matthew was
34Cf. Lindsey, A Hebrew Translation of
the Gospel of Mark, xxii-xxvi; Joachim
Jeremias, The Sermon on the Mount, trans. by Norman
Perrin (
1963) 13-33.
35Lindsey, A
Hebrew Translation of the Gospel of Mark, 39. To this Lindsey adds
Mark's
verbal dependence upon James, 1-2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Corinthians, and
Romans (p.
52).
36Ibid.,xviii.
284 GRACE THEOLOGICAL
JOURNAL
not done
by him, and his name came to be associated with it because of its
evidently
Jewish tone and the tradition that Matthew wrote his in Hebrew.
While it is
true that our Gospel of Matthew does not itself say who wrote it,
and we
thus rely entirely on the tradition of Church History for this conclu-
sion, the tradition itself is so pervasive
that there seems to be no good reason
to deny
it. Matthew's Hebrew "Life of Jesus" is connected with the disciple
by that
name as late as Jerome, who, as we noted above, says that a copy of
it in
Hebrew was still in the library in
admits that
no one knows or even suggests who might have translated the
Hebrew Gospel into Greek.
In any event the priority of Luke is the
heart of the burden of Bivin and
Blizzard and
in this they are merely summarizing decades of work by Lind-
sey, which Lindsey himself conveniently
outlines in a most convincing manner
in the
introduction to his translation of Mark.
NT scholars in the West have
yet
seriously to interact with it, perhaps in many cases because they simply do
not know
about it. It is most unfortunate that
the book was originally pub-
lished in
material it
presents, and it has not been widely advertised. These factors have
undoubtedly led
to its obscurity.
Reconstruction
Some of the scholars in
Synoptics have
themselves attempted to reconstruct some of the fragmented
stories and
teachings by combining elements from the various gospels which
can be
related through key words. Bivin and Blizzard give one example of
this with
a reconstruction of the Mary and Martha story, combining elements
from Luke
10, Matthew 6 = Luke 12, and Luke 16.
Thus, Martha's complaint
about
Mary's neglect of her share of the work precedes Jesus' teachings on
worry
gathered from several places. These are
followed by the story of the
rich man
who tore down his barns to build bigger ones.
Then the story is
concluded with
the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
Of all of the innovations in the book,
this is the one which may be
hardest to
accept. In fact, the entire chapter
would probably have been better
left out
of the book. Such reconstruction, one
might argue, may be the next
logical step
after one has recognized that some stories are fragmented. Gospel
harmonies
actually amount to this. But there is
still a lingering feeling that
what we
have is what we have, and that we should leave it as it is. Each
canonical
gospel has come down to us in a form which has value and signifi-
cance just as it is. Each must in the end stand
on its own merits. Comparison
of the Synoptics for the purpose of understanding parallel stories
is one thing
(and must be done at a deeper level than mere lexical
similarity); comparison
of the Synoptics for the purpose of reconstruction is quite
another. It is not
that it
is any more theologically dangerous or disrespectful of the gospels
than,
e.g., Gospel Harmonies or the numbers in the Eusebian
and Ammonian
Canon Tables. It is simply a question of
whether extensive reconstruction on
the
basis of a few similar words or thoughts is really convincing or helpful.
FIELDS: DIFFICULT WORDS OF JESUS 285
Retroversion
and Retranslation
"Theological error due to
mistranslation" takes up the next section of the
book. These "theological errors"
according to Bivin and Blizzard are "paci-
ficism," "giving without
discernment," and the "theology of martyrdom." The
arguments are
made rather convincingly, but they may not convince everyone.
This section
is followed by an appendix in which Bivin discusses
individual
verses and
phrases and explains them from their Hebrew/Jewish background.
For the less
trained reader this section will undoubtedly be the most interest-
ing.
For the trained reader this section is the test of whether the idea of
Hebrew
backgrounds to the gospels is a good solution for difficulties of trans-
lation and interpretation. If a few of the flaws, such as the use of the
King
James
Version instead of the Greek text, can be overlooked, almost anyone
can find
help here with some of the most impenetrable sayings of Jesus.
The first
saying which Bivin discusses is "Blessed are the
poor in spirit,
for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven." Here Bivin points out
that this verse
intends to
teach that God's followers are made up of the spiritually "down
and
out," who are humble enough to let God save them.
Luke 23:31, "For if they do these
things in a green tree, what shall be
done in
the dry?" is explained against the background of Ezekiel's prophecy
against
with the
"Green Tree," a Messianic symbol of the times and the "Dry
Tree"
with the
people of
hands of
the Romans. Bivin
suggests that "in" should be "against" (no doubt
going back
to an original Hebrew ). Not only does
the verse finally make
sense, but
it shows once again, as Bivin says, that "Jesus
seems hardly ever to
have
spoken without somehow or in some way making a messianic claim," even
though he
never comes right out and says "I am the Messiah" in the Synoptics.
Bivin finds
the key to Matt 11: 12, "From the days of John the Baptist
until now,
the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the
violent take it
by
force," by comparing a rabbinic midrash of Mic 2:13, a connection pointed
out by Flusser. It appears
that Jesus is here taking a Messianic interpretation
from the
literature (whether oral or written) of his culture, perhaps altering it
slightly, and
subtly using it to make a messianic claim.
Bivin next
takes up Luke 12:49-50: "I am come
to send fire on the earth;
and what
will I, if it be already kindled? But I
have a baptism to be baptized
with; and
how am I straitened till it be accomplished." This enigmatic state-
ment is the occasion for the most lengthy and
fascinating explanation that
Bivin
offers. By comparing the verse with Matt
explaining the
many Hebraisms latent in the verse, Bivin shows that
it is
better
translated,
I have come to cast fire upon the earth,
But how could I wish it [the earth] were
already burned up?
I have a baptism to baptize,
And how distressed I am till it is over!
286 GRACE THEOLOGICAL
JOURNAL
In his discussion of Matt
earth
shall be bound (or loosed) in heaven," Bivin
shows that understanding
the
Hebrew background of the saying would lead to the translation "allow"
and
"disallow" for this very common rabbinic phrase. He also shows how this
authority was
applied at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, at which James
both
"loosed," i.e., allowed the believers not to be circumcised and not
to
keep the
whole law, and "bound," i.e., disallowed idolatry, cult prostitutes,
and
eating meat from which the blood had not been removed (Lev
Matt
the scribes
and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of
heaven,"
is illuminated by the insight that the hqAdAc; of the Pharisees had been
reduced to
almsgiving, and Jesus was calling for a greater hqAdAc;, God's hqAdAcA
(righteousness).
Matt
prophets; I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say to you, till
heaven and
earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise
pass from the law
till all
be fulfilled," is explained by showing the typical Hebrew rabbinic
phrases
employed in this statement evidently aimed at other rabbis. The
Hebrew idiom
"I have come" obviously means "it is my purpose to," and
the
terms
"destroy" and "fulfill" were commonly employed in Jesus'
day as tech-
nical terms in rabbinic argumentation. "When a rabbi felt that his colleague
had
misinterpreted a passage of Scripture, he would say, 'You are destroying
the
Law.' Needless to say, in most cases his
colleague strongly disagreed.
What was
'destroying the Law' for one rabbi, was 'fulfilling the Law' (cor-
rectly interpreting Scripture)
for another" (p. 154). Thus, it is Jesus' method
of
interpretation that is under consideration here. Hence, to paraphrase, he is
saying
"never imagine for a moment that I intend to abrogate the Law by
misinterpreting it. My intent is not to
weaken or negate the Law, but by
properly
interpreting God's Written Word I aim to establish it, that is, make
it even
more lasting. I would never invalidate
the Law by effectively removing
something from
it through interpretation. Heaven and
earth would sooner
disappear than
something from the Law. Not the smallest
letter in the alphabet,
the yod nor even its
decorative spur, will ever disappear from the Law" (p. 155).
Bivin goes on
to show that Luke
a
literalistic translation of the Hebrew idiom meaning, "to defame
(publicly)
you." Luke 9:29, "the appearance of his face
was altered," a phrase appearing
twice in
rabbinic literature, is shown to be a subtle messianic claim. Luke 9:44,
"lay these sayings in your ears" is a Hebrew expression
familiar to any reader
of
Biblical Hebrew.
One often hears that the expression
"he set his face to go" in Luke
demonstrates Jesus' resolve to go to
that this
expression has nothing to do with resolve, but is only a Hebrew
idiom
which means "turned in the direction of."
One final example of sayings of Jesus
better understood through recog-
nition of the Hebrew and Jewish background of
the gospels is offered. It is
FIELDS: DIFFICULT WORDS OF JESUS 287
the
saying in Luke 10:5-6: "Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Shalom be
to this
house.' And if a son of shalom is there, your shalom shall rest upon
him; but
if not, it shall return to you," Bivin would
paraphrase this "When
you are
invited into a home, let your first act be to say, "Peace to this
family!"
If the head of the house turns out to be truly friendly and hospitable
[a 'son of peace’], let the blessing, 'Peace,' you pronounced
when you entered
his
house remain upon his family. If he is
not friendly, withdraw your bless-
mg [and
move to another house]" (p,
168). Bivin
compares Jesus' instruction
here to
similar blessing used by other rabbis: "Shalom to you, shalom to your
house [i.e" 'family’], and shalom to everything you own"
(p. 169).
With this the book closes, but it does
not close the discussion it is likely
to
engender. The core of
ideas which the book presents represent an oppor-
tunity for NT scholars to make a real advance in
the understanding of the
gospels, and
the book ought to be taken seriously even though it is in a
popular
style and is defective literarily, typographically, and especially in the
many
assertions which are not supported by sufficient documentation. The
trained
critical reader should not presume that lack of documentation in the
book
means that documentation is not available.
One may suppose that some
of this
lack of documentation is a result of the popular style the authors
chose in
order to reach a larger audience. It may
also be that after having
lived and
worked among speakers of Hebrew the authors came to assume
many
things which are obvious to someone fluent in Hebrew and very con-
versant with
Jewish culture and history, but not to those who do not have
such a
background. Or they may have simply
underestimated the degree to
which NT
studies in Western Europe and
fortably unaware of the original linguistic and
cultural setting of our Synop-
tic
Gospels. It is also possible that they did not fully realize the extent to
which
American conservative Christianity is so much more dependent upon
the
fourteen epistles of Paul, the Gospel of John, and the Apocalypse. The
Synoptics are
largely untouched in American conservative Christianity, except
for
portions which contain the infancy narratives, the narratives of the last
days of
Jesus on earth, and a few scattered eschatological references. In
contrast to
the early Christians whose favorite gospel seems to have been
it:
Matthew, there is no doubt that American conservatives today prefer John, In
contrast to
early Christians who placed much more emphasis on the teachings
of
Jesus, American conservatives emphasize the epistles of Paul. Without
making a
judgment on the reasons for or the rightness or wrongness of these
phenomena, it
is sufficient in the present case to remark that these facts alone
portend a
resistance to the suggestions of Bivin and Blizzard. The lack of
familiarity with
the Synoptics on the part of a major segment of the
Christian
community m
the West will mean that few will even see the significance of
their
suggestions and fewer still will be capable of evaluating them. This is
not to
say that everything that is suggested in the book will be acceptable
even to
those who are capable of such evaluation.
Unfortunately, the tone of
some of
the statements in the book places the forum for discussion of the
merits of
its ideas on the very level where no questions of theology or biblical
288 GRACE THEOLOGICAL
JOURNAL
scholarship are
finally decided: the level of polemics and assertion. I can only
hope that
in a future edition of this book or perhaps in another book the
authors will
offer more documentation from the many sources that are avail-
able, and
that they will present this evidence in a format that will appeal
more to
scholars. But if one can look past this
defect to the ideas themselves,
he will
find a tool for the recovery of the background of the Synoptics
which
will make
them live, and thus, in my opinion, make them a much more
powerful
corrective for human lives. To be
realistic, however, it must be
admitted that
Bivin and Blizzard (as well as Lindsey, Flusser, Safrai, Lapide,
and
others) are going against much of the mainstream of Western Synoptic
studies; but
perhaps the stream needs to ask itself whether it is really flowing
in the
right direction.
It remains, finally, for each student of
the Synoptics to remind himself,
as he
should do periodically, that it is possible to worry so much about what
kind of
material was used to build the house, who put it there, when it was
put
there, and how and why it was put there, that the beauty of the finished
house
itself is missed; but if the point of the study of gospel composition
continues to
be the better understanding of the difficult words of Jesus and
the more
incisive application of them as a corrective for human behavior,
then the
enterprise remains not only beneficial but obligatory.
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
Grace
Theological Seminary
www.grace.edu
Please
report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at:
thildebrandt@gordon.edu