Between History and Apologetics: A Response to Craig Keener

Χρὴ εὖ μάλα πολλῶν ἵστορας φιλοσόφους ἄνδρας εἶναι. – Heraclitus

First, I’d like to congratulate Craig Keener; it takes a lot of courage to argue a stance on the subject of Jesus, which was considered dated even before the days of Renan, and bring it back into Academia.  It is not easy, I imagine, trying to argue apologetically, while wishing to be taken seriously by a community where many of us are tired of arguments of special pleading.  Understandably, though, we cannot fault Keener for trying.

If I am being harsh or unnecessarily critical, I do not apologize.  I don’t mind open and thoughtful conversations on the subject of the accuracy of the Gospel accounts, the post-Easter kerygmatic traditions that Bultmann so loved to analyze, or on whether we can determine—if any such determination could be made at all—what genre the Gospels, both individually and wholly (including extraBiblical Gospels), best represent.  However, Keener does not offer debate, or conversation, nor even a chance for scholars to retort without first accepting his premise; that we might accept the Gospel traditions as historical (or perhaps only historical enough) in order to find the historical Jesus within them.  His premise is, essentially, the same as the one argued by Luke Timothy Johnson in his short book The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the truth of the Traditional Gospels (1996).   Keener writes:

“Why would scholars assume that the disciples of Jesus were less reliable transmitters of his teaching than other disciples were for their teachers?”

The whole of his argument for the accuracy of the Gospel tradition rests on assumptions; the assumption that historical disciples of Jesus transmitted the stories which we now possess in the Gospels to the Gospel authors, that all disciples of teachers (I’m not sure if Keener means to suggest both Greco-Roman teachers—including actual grammarians—or just Jewish rabbis) outside of the Jewish tradition are considered reliable, that scholars ignore or take for granted the possibility that the disciples, assuming they actually wrote the narratives, could recall accurate, historical details collectively in their individual accounts of Jesus’ life, and so on.  Either Keener has not heard of John A.T. Robinson or he presumes he is the first person since Jesus to argue for the authenticity of the Gospel traditions.

Like Plato’s ahistorical man pulling the unenlightened from the cave into the light of the world, here, too, must we explain that the forms on the wall of the cave are not what those fettered want to believe they are; there is more than just the shadows on the wall, what Leonard Susskind thinks on the matter notwithstanding.

The Genre of the Gospels and the Methods of “Minimalist” Scholars

Keener’s opening remarks attack critical (what he calls “minimalist”) scholarship for creating methods of analyzing the Gospels which they would not apply to “comparable documents not associated with World Religion.” If anything, the opposite is true.  Scholars have grown far more critical of historical and biographical literature from secular sources in antiquity and especially so over the course of the past few years, analyzing more thoroughly their intertextual connections;[1] and those which deal with contemporary events are criticized just as thoroughly as those which were written about much later.  And why not?  Someone writing immediately after the events might have more of a reason to be deceitful than someone writing hundreds of years later.  In fact, it stands true today as much as it stands true in antiquity, those who are writing about something contemporaneously are less likely to separate bias from their analyses than those who are writing at a distant point in the future, able to look outside of the events and see the whole picture rather.[2] Since history is inductive, it is vital that no work from antiquity be accepted at face value; all literature from the past must be openly examined with a healthy dose of skepticism.  However, Keener’s opinion is flawed if he believes that all sources from the past are equal and need to be examined equally.  Literature from the past is vast and each piece needs to be weighed against itself and against the whole corpus.  Still, to suggest that scholars don’t apply strict methods towards examining other secular literature is hyperbolic at best.

To add insult to injury he writes “if these sources involved a first-century emperor or philosopher, we would likely read them less skeptically.”  Do modern scholars really look at Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Alexander “less skeptically?”  I know that Keener has heard of Tacitus, Philostratus, Plutarch, Josephus, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Hellenicus, for that matter (or, rather, I hope he has); what makes him believe that these sources are not looked at critically as well?  I have shown, for example, that Josephus fabricates whole sections of his histories; his entire narrative about Alexander the Great’s march on Jerusalem is not only fabricated but it is intertextually connected with the Book of Judith and other Jewish literature.[3] Some scholars have gone so far as to say that all histories of the past need to be taken with a grain of salt (see n. 4).

Some of these ancient authors listed above, Keener states, could not be the authors of biographies or histories because their “works show little interest in historical information or sources.”(!)  But Keener is wrong; that is precisely the interests of these authors, at least in part.[4] At the very least, they had more of an interest in information and sources than the Gospel authors had, and to say otherwise is (though perhaps not intentionally) misleading.

Showing that, once again, Keener is reliant upon dated scholarship, he writes:

“In recent decades, as scholars have examined the best ancient analogies for the Gospels, it has become increasingly clear that the Gospels were designed as biographies—though as ancient rather than modern ones.”

His source for this is Charles Talbert and a work more recently published, though still over fifteen years old, by Richard A. Burridge.  But in the time between Burridges’ publication and the present, several other investigations have been made into the study of genre and the Gospels.[5] Most notably is the analysis by Michael Vines in his The Problem of Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel (2002), pp. 7-19 specifically, where he takes Burridge, and David Aune as well, to task.  His most relevant point, in my opinion, is that the Gospels do not focus on biographical aspects but on theological ones.  Burridge’s case rests on whether or not the Gospels imitate, unconsciously or purposefully, the genre of Greco-Roman biography (though he admits that the option is there that they only do so coincidentally).  However, the Gospels do not imitate Greco-Roman biography as Burridge, Aune, and Keener wish they did.

Putting aside the Gospel authors’ reliance upon theological, rather than historical, situations, the Gospels are written as narratives whereas the basic foundation of a great deal of Greco-Roman biographies is that they are discussed.  While it may seem like a superficial thing to separate, there is a difference.  On the one hand, the Gospel author is anonymous while, on the other, one is much more confident knowing who wrote the secular histories and biographies.   To further evaluate the difference between a biography and a narrative (as we have them in the Gospels), we look to some examples.

The Greco-Roman biography of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus is not one continuous narrative but, rather, the story of his life as discussed by Philostratus.  Philostratus not only gives us his sources (personal letters and the will of Apollonius himself—whether real or not, reports about him located at shrines, Damis of Hierapolis, Maximus of Aegeae, and so forth), he analyzes his sources (why he chose not to use Moeragenes), debates points of Apollonius’ life against his sources (cf. 1.23-24), inserts anecdotes; there is no question that the story is being recounted by Philostratus.  Most important, perhaps, is that Philostratus is not telling us the story to explain a theological point, but he is engaging the source material for the purpose of writing about the life of Apollonius.

The Gospels, however, present a continuous story line with no pause, no discussion of method, no discussion of sources, no anecdotes, and make appeals to theological nuances like Jesus’ divine mission (Mark 1:1-3, for example).  These sorts of traits go against the grain of Greco-Roman biography.  As dubious as the historicity of Apollonius may be, his biography is actually sounder and more credible than that of the Gospels precisely because (a) we know who wrote it and (b) our narrator discusses his sources, allowing us to analyze his methods.

Moving right along, next we have Arrian.  Arrian’s history of Alexander’s campaigns functions as the best late-written history yet extant, which also functions, to a large degree, as a biography, containing a great deal of elements commonly associated with the genre of Greco-Roman biography.  If we were looking for an example of Burridge’s ideological history written with coincidental and, perhaps, even unconscious links to Greco-Roman Biography, Arrian’s Anabasis Alexandri is the best we’ll find; yet it is so unlike anything we see with the Gospel accounts.[6] Even as late as Arrian is, he uses methods that surpass the methods used (if any were used at all) by the Gospel authors.  In the very opening of Book 1, he explains part of his method to the reader:

Wherever Ptolemy and Aristobulus in their histories of Alexander, the son of Philip, have given the same account, I have followed it on the assumption of its accuracy; where their facts differ I have chosen what I feel to be the more probable and interesting. (Anabasis Alexandri 1.1)

Like Philostratus, Arrian compares his sources which consisted of eyewitness (written) accounts from Alexander’s generals; he compares them to each other and tells us why he is choosing one account of an event over the other, or why one seems to hold more weight.[7] His sources are, therefore, also subject to criticism and evaluation (since we actually know what they are) and, what’s more, many of the sources Arrian uses are known from other contemporary and later sources.

Here, as before, there is a discussion occurring, not a narrative.  While some events display traits of a narrative, the reader is able to interact with it, to analyze the history with the narrator.  With the Gospel accounts, however, there is no interaction with the narrative; the reader is moved along with the story, unable to analyze and critique it and, instead, is told that how the author of the Gospels wrote it is precisely how it occurred.  There is never an instance where the Gospel authors take two separate accounts of an event—even though each Gospel portrays similar events differently, in different chronologies, with different individuals, and sometimes within different contexts and even locations—and openly discuss which is more likely to have occurred.  What you read is what you get and, in almost every instance, what you get is a theologically-driven exegetical interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.[8]

On the other hand, the hard truth is that the Gospel authors were not written independently, but were written for what are clearly different theological, political, and exegetical reasons, one after another over a period of at least 100 years.  They don’t name their sources, ever, but it is clear that Matthew and Luke had copies of Mark; a fact to which Keener admits, but he glosses over the fact that they don’t ever cite each other.  Keener greatly overstates his position when he writes that:

“…Matthew and Luke (whom we can best test) use their sources very carefully by ancient standards.… This does not mean that these writers concerned themselves about telling every detail in exactly the way that they received it—most ancient audiences expected writers to exercise more freedom than that—but that, by the standards we apply to their contemporaries, the Gospels are remarkably useful sources.”

This is quite an incredible statement.  If by using their sources “very carefully,” Keener means to admit that the authors changed, adjusted, or otherwise ignored each others’ works extensively (i.e. purposefully changed accounts from other Gospels in creating their own) then he is correct; they did utilize each other quite remarkably; so remarkably, in fact, that some scenes which occur in two Gospels appear as a parable in another.  Some vanish entirely!  Others are so chronologically garbled that Keener will be hard pressed to explain how it could have happened with such diligent and thorough authors utilizing their sources so carefully.  If the events of Jesus’ life could so easily be invented, removed, or altered so often, then clearly the authors of the Gospels were not interested in preserving the historical Jesus.  How could they have been?  They went out of their way to manipulate the narratives to show us a Jesus that was of their own minds, their own individual interests. Why, if they were “very carefully” utilizing their sources?  It doesn’t seem to have bothered them much at all.  When thinking of an example of such an occurrence in the text, the fig tree is one that comes to mind almost immediately.

In Matthew, Jesus has just finished cleansing the temple after a very triumphal entry into Jerusalem and he was already running away to Bethany to escape the guards who were looking to kill him.  He sleeps the night there and awakens the next day to head back into the city; along the way back Jesus decides he is hungry.  Luckily for him, fig trees were abundant.  Unlucky for the fig tree, it was out of season.  Jesus becomes infuriated; he had called but the tree had not answered.  Throwing what, in my opinion, is not much different than a childish temper-tantrum, he curses the tree and it withers “at once.” (Matt. 21:19)   The disciples all marvel and even ask each other “How did the fig tree wither at once?” (Matt. 21:20)  With a little teaching that follows, this ends Matthew’s fig tree story.  This event might be historical; if Keener is correct, one might be able to pull a little historical truth from this.  But the Gospel authors, who Keener suggests were far more knowledgeable of the circumstances of the accounts than we are, do not seem to agree.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus only makes it into the city before realizing he must leave again.  After what seems to have been an exhausting day of entrances, it’s off to Bethany he goes to spend the night as it was “already late” (Mark 11:11).  Awaking the next morning, Jesus and his companions make their way back to Jerusalem.  And as before, on their way, Jesus became hungry; he had to build up his strength for all the table-throwing and scolding later on, it seems.  He approaches the fig tree, out of season, and curses the fig tree.  All of his disciples heard this curse. (Mark 11:14)  After a long day of cleansing the temple, throwing over tables, they again departed from the city to escape the plotting priests and scribes.  The next morning the disciples saw the fig tree withered away and “remembered” (ἀναμνησθεὶς) in Mark 11:20.

Luke, Keener’s prized historian and biographer, seems to have completely forgotten this event as it is described in the other two accounts.  For Luke, there was never an incident with a fig tree at all; it was a parable all along. (Luke 13:6-9) In fact, the parable is told far from Jerusalem in Galilee, a full six chapters before the Triumphal Entry occurs in Luke’s narrative. An interesting aside might be to note that Luke doesn’t seem to recall ever spending the night in Bethany during his stay near Jerusalem with Jesus. Some might find Luke’s ignorance of this account rather embarrassing, especially if they are trying to argue for the historical accuracy of the Gospel accounts.

John is not only clueless of the withering of the fig tree, but he doesn’t even recall the parable!  Instead, John “remembers” Jesus calling Nathanael from under a fig tree (John 1:43-48), but beyond that, he is completely ignorant of any cursing, withering, fig tree incident.  But Matthew clearly writes that all the disciples marveled.  Not some, not a few, not two.  This is odd–as Keener points out, Matthew and Luke both had access to Mark, yet Mark states that all the disciples saw the fig tree withered the next day.  If Matthew and Luke cared so greatly about the accurate reporting of historical events, why did they change this part of Mark’s narrative?  If they “construed Mark as biography as well,” as Keener suggests, why did they alter (or remove entirely) this scene from the narrative?

This is only one example; there are countless more.  Nearly every scene from Mark is re-imagined, becomes a parable, is marginalized, or disappears in every other canonical Gospel.  When there are four different stories (or, rather, three different stories—in one the story is omitted), all unique, you should be suspicious.  This is an example, not of memory recall nor of concise and careful source-use, but of authorial intent; purposeful, deliberate.  This seems to be more than an oversight.  According to Keener, however, the Gospel authors are more useful as sources for historical tradition than Arrian.

What is worse, perhaps, is that by assuming this account is historical—and other accounts like it—so that we can attempt to locate this nonextant entity known as the “historical Jesus,” we marginalize the meaning of the narratives or remove the meaning entirely.[9] I presume, though I am not certain, that Keener wishes to salvage the message of the texts because he might find them important.  If that is so, I must wonder why he would want to eradicate the very strong exegetical and theological meaning behind this part of the narrative (or, for that matter, any part of the narratives) by euhemerizing them; we do nothing but throw away the meaning that links all four fig tree accounts by chalking them up to historiography—especially when, if they are biographies, they would have to be considered extremely poor examples of them, even according to the standards of their own day.  If Keener wants to accept the Gospel accounts as biographies, he must accept the fact that the Gospel authors were either really incompetent in transmitting the historical data or simply cared little for it.  I would think his best bet would be to embrace them as narratives or novels; stories like the Gospels can bring so much more theological value to the table when we stop treating them like poorly-written mythologized histories or biographies.

Would it even Matter?

Keener, and others, seem to be under the false impression that, if the Gospels were shown to be Greco-Roman biographies, they would be more reliable.  I’m not so sure how compelling of an argument that is.  After all, biographies can be, and have been, written about fictional characters, like Plutarch’s biography of Lycurgus (the legendary Spartan lawmaker) which, even though extremely late and written long after he supposedly lived, is, ironically, less dubious than the gospel accounts for methodological reasons.  Which methodological reasons?  Again as before, we know the author and, as with our other examples, Plutarch discusses both the problems with his sources and who his sources are:[10]

Concerning Lycurgus the lawgiver, in general, nothing can be said which is not disputed, since indeed there are different accounts of his birth, his travels, his death, and above all, of his work as lawmaker and statesman. (Plutarch, Parallel Lives, ‘The Life of Lycurgus’ 1.1)

Even if one could convincingly persuade the consensus to accept the genre of the Gospels as Greco-Roman biographies, that would not do much to salvage the fact that they are unreliable.  It has absolutely nothing to do with assumption; they are unreliable.

Luke as Historian

Turning now to Keener’s statement that “Biographers and historians writing about recent figures tended to be right far more often than those writing about ancient ones,” this discussion turns to his remarks on the accuracy of Luke.

“While the Gospels taken on their own terms constitute biographies, one of them—the Gospel of Luke—also doubles as the first volume of Luke’s two-volume historical project, Luke-Acts, Luke’s preface (Luke 1:1-4) reveals his historical subject (“matters fulfilled among us”) and is a fitting historical preface unsuitable for novels.

“In Luke 1:3, Luke claims “thorough knowledge” of the matters about which he is writing, matters that he has already attributed to eyewitnesses. How might Luke have obtained such intimate acquaintance with these matters… If, as I and many others argue, the author of Luke-Acts did travel with Paul, then Luke spent up to two years in Judea—plenty of time to consult with early sources (Acts 21:17; 24:27; 27:1).”

It doesn’t help that the author of the Gospel Keener champions to be the most reliable—the author of the Gospel of Luke—was more than likely the latest Gospel author to have written.[11] This scholarship isn’t new, either.  A late terminus a quo was considered during the early years of historical criticism by Ferdinand Baur and has been reconsidered seriously within the past decade.  The strongest argument against a mid-late first century dating and for an early-mid second century dating is the dependence on Josephus by Luke.[12]

But late dating does not suggest, as I have already stated, that the source is less reliable.  What hurts the author of Luke’s credibility are the several intertextual sources Luke used to create his narrative.  The aforementioned study by Marianne Palmer-Bonz and another by Dennis R. MacDonald show,[13] quite aptly, that while Luke was not using the Hebrew Bible, earlier Gospel accounts, or Josephus, he was (now, nearly proven) drawing from Greco-Roman epic.  It is fundamentally difficult for Acts to be credible while so much of its narrative—if not all of it—is recycled literary tropes, topoi, and motifs from all over the Greco-Roman world.  I believe Todd Penner[14] said it best when he wrote that “one is no longer interested primarily (or even at all) in the historicity of the material in Acts but rather in examining the only thing that Acts can really yield in the end: a window to Luke’s socio-cultural world.”

And, of course, we must reconsider who it is Luke is asking when he inquires, in Acts 8:30: “Do you understand what you are reading?” (ἆρά γε γινώσκεις ἂ ἀναγινώσκεις)

Conclusion: Do Supernatural Claims Hurt Credibility?

Keener then borders on the absurd.  He asks the question that cements his place within an apologetic framework rather than a critical, academic one.

“Even today, literally hundreds of millions of people claim to have witnessed events that they interpret as miracles. Why should we deny that first-century followers of Jesus’ ministry could have had analogous experiences, however we explain them?”

And:

“The presence of such elements in the Gospels should not, then, be cited against their usefulness as historical sources, or even against them containing eyewitness elements.”

The long-short of it is that in the real world, scholars have to base their interpretations on the text first.  As Thomas L. Brodie reminds us: “The first commandment of exegesis is that the literary question comes first, before history and theology.”[15] But this is really only the top of the pillar.  The Gospels aren’t unreliable because they “naturally contain more” miraculous stories than typical historical works and biographies; the Gospels are nothing but miraculous stories.  That is precisely what scholars who argue for the historical reliability of the Gospels and the Gospel tradition can’t seem to grasp.  The Jesus we have of the Gospels is not the Jesus of history; it is the Christ, the son of God, who is not a healer, but a miraculous healer.  He isn’t a teacher; he’s the transfigured incorporeal being, resurrected and walking through walls, vanishing through buildings, solving the world hunger crisis by multiplying loaves of bread and turning water into wine.  There is, as can yet be determined, no Jesus of history in the Gospels to be found.  It may be someone might develop a means to excavate that Jesus from them, but it was not done in this essay and, using Keener’s methods, it will never be done.

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[1] The most well-known investigation into a secular “history,” which has recently become comparable to the Gospels al la Dennis R. MacDonald in his Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (2000) is the book The World of Odysseus (1977), by M.I. Finley.  More recent trends in Classics have focused, rightly, on intertextuality, imitation, and rhetoric in ancient secular sources which, of course, must “minimalize” their historical value; cf. Tim Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation (2001), Stephen Hinds, Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation of Roman Poetry (1998), David West and Tony Woodman, eds., Creative Imitation and Latin Literature (1979), and C.D.N. Costa, Greek Fictional Letters (2001) (which contains translations of pseudonymous material with the names of philosophers, poets, and historians; that these letters are recognized as pseudonymous and fictional is rather contrary to Keener’s point). Rather than historicizing what are now understood to be imitated traditions, modern works in Classical literature focus on exploring that cultural landscape which created them—although some feel this is nearly impossible (most notably by those following the interesting, perhaps even compelling, trend in Classics dealing with the uses of reception—see Charles Martindale, Redeeming the Text [1993] and subsequent essays in Charles Martindale and Richard F. Thomas, eds., Classics and the Uses of Reception [2006]); as impossible, perhaps, as some believe it is to locate the cultural traditions of the first Christians and the landscape that produced the New Testament.

[2] Consider the recent trend in contemporary history where modern historians now believe it is likely that the United States and other Allied nations caused the former Soviet Union to use Eastern European satellite nations to act as a buffer in case of another invasion, as a response to the growing threat of Allied military installations in Germany; in other words the contemporary label of expansionism (i.e. the Red takeover) was really just consolidationism.

[3] See my Of Men and Muses: Essays in History, Literature, and Religion (2009), pp. 102-112.

[4] For some excellent analyses of ancient historians and their productions, see John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (1997), Michael Grant, Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation (1995), Thomas L. Thompson, The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past (1995), Philip R. Davies, In Search of ‘Ancient israel’ (2^nd Rev. Ed., 1994), G.W. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (1994), David S. Potter, Literary Texts and the Roman Historian (1999).

[5] Besides the work done by Michael Vines, see also Marianne Palmer-Bonz, The Past as Legacy: Luke-Acts and Ancient Epic (2000) and Roland Boer, ed., Bakhtin and Genre Theory in Biblical Studies (2007).

[6] While I hold Arrian’s methods high, they fall short of modern standards.  Even though Arrian is a step above the typical ancient historian and biographer, his work is not perfect.  He openly equates “interesting” stories with “probable” stories and, as one of his reasons for choosing Ptolemy as a source, states that it is because he was a King and “it is more disgraceful for a king to tell lies than anyone else.”  (Anabasis Alexandri, Preface 1-3) If a “good” ancient historian like Arrian can still succumb to these sorts of biases, one should be concerned with how much bias affects those ancient historians of lesser quality and, especially, those with theological agendas who remained anonymous.

[7] On comparing conflicting accounts for the reader, cf. Anabasis Alexandri 3.30.4-6.

[8] See Thomas L. Brodie’s excellent monograph, The Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings (2004); See also Thomas L. Thompson The Messiah Myth: The Near-Eastern Roots of Jesus and David (2005) and Robert M. Price, The Pre-Nicene New Testament (2006).

[9] See Thomas L. Thompson’s refreshing treatment of the fig tree narratives in his The Messiah Myth, pp. 74-80.

[10] Among his sources Plutarch sites Aristotle, Timaeus, Xenophon, Apollodorus, Simonides, and Eratosthenes.

[11] Richard I Pervo, Dating Acts (2006) and Joseph B. Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle (2006) have been influential in overturning the traditional ‘late first century CE’ dating, instead opting for a early-mid second century CE dating, where Luke-Acts appear to have been written in opposition to the growing Marcionite movement.

[12] Marcion and Luke-Acts, pp. 14-15; Steve Mason side-steps the issue but has a lot to say about the connections between the two in his Josephus and the New Testament (2^nd Rev. Ed., 2003).  See also Richard Carrier’s discussion of Luke as a historian, his use of Josephus, and problems with Luke’s method in his recent book Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed (2009), pp. 173-211, cf. Carrier’s online discussion Luke and Josephus (2000).

[13] Does the New Testament Imitate Homer?  Four Cases from the Acts of the Apostles (2003)

[14] ‘Civilizing Discourse: Acts, Declamation, and the Rhetoric of the Polis,’ in Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele, eds., Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco-Roman Discourse (2003), p. 84

[15] ‘Towards Tracing the Gospels’ Literary Indebtedness to the Epistles’, in Dennis R. MacDonald, ed., Mimesis and Intertextuality in Antiquity and Christianity (2001), p. 104.