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The reticence of the evangelists

An argument for the historicity of the Gospels that deserves attention is the argument from the reticence of the evangelists. Here's, in outline, how it goes: Consider the hypothesis that the Gospels are, or include, later, legendary stories. Then look at various places where human curiosity is not gratified in the Gospels by added stories, where one might expect these if the Gospel authors were not constrained by their actual knowledge or the information they got from real sources close to the facts.

This argument is closely related to the apparent reticence of the Gospel authors to "read back in" theological interests into early material.

Here are several categories of stories that we might expect to find if the Gospel authors were not constrained by truthfulness and available information, but that we don't find:

--Later stories about Joseph, Jesus' guardian. Joseph is a very sympathetic character. Why does he just disappear after the narratives of Jesus' infancy and the one story in Luke about Jesus in the Temple at age twelve? In my forthcoming book, I argue that Joseph "disappears" because he actually did disappear--that is, that he died prior to the beginning of Jesus' ministry. But this is, at most, implied. No Gospel actually mentions Joseph's death. It would have been easy enough for the author of John, say, to come along and add stories about Joseph later on, either before the beginning of Jesus' ministry or during Jesus' ministry. But he doesn't. Joseph is also conspicuously absent from many passages that explicitly mention, in a list-like fashion, Jesus' family members. The best explanation for this combination of presence and absence (the presence of Jesus' family, listed, and the absence of Joseph) is that Joseph wasn't around at all in those scenes and that the Gospel authors are truthfully reflecting that fact.

--Accounts of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances to James and Peter. This is quite surprising, when you think about it. The much-cited creedal formula at the beginning of I Corinthians 15 shows that the appearances to James and Peter were well-known in the Christian community at a very early date and were considered important to the Christian faith. Yet the Gospels, which are sometimes treated (even by relatively conservative scholars) as less reliable than the Pauline creed in I Corinthians, do not include anywhere in their appearance accounts any scene showing these meetings. Luke contains a mention (in dialogue) of the fact that "the Lord...has appeared to Cephas," but no developed scene at all (Luke 24:33). No Gospel even mentions the separate appearance to James, Jesus' kinsman. If the Gospels contained developed, legendary tales, these scenes would be perfect for inclusion. If Christians were sitting around making things vivid to each other, or to their children, by "fleshing out" the bare bones of the claim that Jesus (somehow, sans details) appeared to his disciples, one would assume that the scene of the appearances to Peter and James would be thus fleshed out. But if that was going on, we certainly see no sign of it in the Gospels.

This makes sense if the Gospels are constrained by honest reportage. Both Peter and James had reason to keep the details of such meetings private. John records that Jesus' brothers did not believe on him (John 7:5). The first we hear of the prominence of James (this is not James the son of Zebedee but James the kinsman of Jesus) in the Bible is in the book of Acts. It seems that James may not have believed on Jesus at all until the post-resurrection appearance. Peter, of course, had denied Jesus even after insisting that he would do no such thing. Their first meeting after Jesus' resurrection would have been extremely important to Peter, personally, but he may well not have wanted to tell exactly what was said. Real people often do refuse to share particular details. Sometimes they tell others that certain details are "not for publication." The absence of accounts of Peter's and James's first meetings with Jesus is easily explained if the Gospels are accounts coming from eyewitnesses or those close to eyewitnesses who are not including anything that they don't actually know to be true or don't have authorization to publish. This reticence is much harder to explain if the Gospels are unreliable documents that include non-factual stories that "developed."

--More information about Jesus' childhood. We're all curious about Jesus' childhood. Could he do miracles? How did he come to know that he was God as he grew up? How did he and Mary talk with each other? Later documents and, more recently, movies have explored these questions, but the canonical Gospels are extremely restrained. The only scene that even touches on such questions is the Temple scene in Luke 2. Both before and after that, Jesus' childhood after his infancy is left unknown. And the same for Jesus' young manhood prior to the beginning of his ministry. Again, this restraint is far more to be expected from honest reporters who stick to what they know than from recorders (or inventors) of pious legend. The earliest chapters of Luke, which contain the scene in the Temple, have a strongly Hebraic character and style quite different from Luke's usual style, which begins in Luke 3:1. I generally hesitate to hypothesize documentary sources, but it seems plausible that in this particular case there really was an earlier document that Luke translated, possibly given to him by Mary's family. But in that case he included nothing more because this was all the reliable information he had.

Here are a few of the instances of theological reticence:

--The presence in the Annunciation of references to Jesus' reign as the heir of David, combined with the absence of any allusion by the angel to his suffering and death. See a post that discusses this further (at the end of the post) here. This is much better explained if the Annunciation is taken, by Luke, from information he actually had about what was said than if Luke made up the scene. Luke himself obviously knew that Jesus never inaugurated an earthly reign, yet the intensely Jewish expectation encouraged by the angel's message and reflected in the Song of Zechariah would most naturally be taken to refer to an earthly reign of the Messiah. The Gospel includes no comment on or qualification of this expectation in these chapters. It just records what was allegedly said. This is good evidence that these chapters are not late developments but rather very early information not at all influenced by later knowledge or preoccupations.

--The absence of the Great Commission or any other endorsement of Christian baptism in the Gospel of Luke, combined with the extreme importance of baptism in Acts, written by the same author. It is possible that Luke didn't have access to Matthew, though I myself think it is highly likely that he did. (Nor is that some kind of fringe, "conservative" opinion, though I gather scholars are not unanimous on whether Luke or Matthew was written before the other.) If Luke had access to Matthew, and if Luke were trying to include things in his own Gospel for literary or theological purposes, it is quite remarkable that he didn't include the Great Commission. It is all the more remarkable given that the author of Acts (universally acknowledged to be the same as the author of Luke, though not universally acknowledged to be Luke) is keenly aware of the importance of baptism in the early church and records its importance from the day of Pentecost onward. Similarly, the Gospel of John records in John 4 that Jesus' disciples baptized, but the Gospel of Luke never mentions any such claim. If these stories were going around, wouldn't Luke have wanted to "set up" the importance of baptism in Acts? (This argument is modified from Stanley Leathes, The Religion of the Christ, 1874, pp. 257-258. Thanks to Esteemed Husband for bringing it to my attention.)

I hasten to add that I don't mean by this to cast doubt on the historicity of the Great Commission or of Jesus' disciples' baptizing ministry recorded in John 4. My point, rather, is that it is clear that the Gospel of Luke is not trying to record everything and not even trying to record everything that could be useful theologically. For all its high Greek language, the Gospel of Luke, like the other Gospels, has the quality of reportage rather than of literary crafting.

The Gospel authors are so far from putting words into the mouths of Jesus and/or his disciples for literary, legendary, or theological purposes that there is something, in a sense, slightly random about their including some incidents and not others. This is what we expect from a writer collecting living history from witnesses, or a witness himself, and writing a memoir.

Comments (12)

This is an interesting post Lydia, and thank you for taking the time to post it. My namesake (the real Lightfoot) probably knew of this sort of line of thinking, but it appears to have been lost or covered with dust in the 150 years hence.

Superb post, Lydia. Thanks so much.

Lydia,

Very interesting idea. I'm not sure if this fits into the same category, but I was recently thinking about how it seems to add to the verisimilitude of the Gospels when seemingly important events are recounted by only one Gospel writer. For example, I think only John mentions the woman at the well in Sychar (in Samria) -- but Jesus' interaction with her leads to a fairly significant dialogue both with the woman and with his disciples, not to mention the fact that then John says:

39 Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman[o] who testified, “He told me everything I have done.” 40 When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41 Many more began to believe in him because of his word, 42 and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”

But we only read of this event in John -- lending what I think is accuracy to the event as it was probably only known to John -- otherwise you would think such an interesting and important event would be recorded by the other writers.

I don't know if that argument works or not. *Generally* one considers that an even better type of evidence for an event is when there are multiple accounts that vary slightly in detail. Best yet is when these details fit together in the form of undesigned coincidences. The feeding of the five thousand is like this.

I tend to think that often the disciples _did_ know of particular events but didn't tell them, "just because." Just because they didn't think of them at the moment when they were writing or talking to someone who was writing. Just because there was something else they were eager to emphasize, just because they had limited scroll space, etc. I'm pretty sure that multiple disciples knew about the raising of Lazarus, for example, and there is kind of a cottage industry among NT scholars in conjecturing about why only John recounts it. Some have hypothesized that it was because John was written later than the others and because Lazarus and his sisters would have been in danger had it been recounted earlier, but to my mind this seems unlikely. The other evangelists give lots of other people's names as followers of Jesus and don't seem to worry about protecting their anonymity. I tend to think the absence of the raising of Lazarus is another of those "just because" things. That is, there are so many possible reasons that we will probably never know why it wasn't recounted.

Something similar (I'm inclined to think) is true of the meeting with the woman at the well, though it may be that John went to more trouble to find out exactly what was said between them. It's clear that at least some plural disciples were with Jesus in the events surrounding the meeting; they came back from buying food after he had been talking with the woman and were puzzled by Jesus' statement, "I have meat to eat that you know not of."

Here's a kind of a neat bit of verisimilitude connected with the woman at the well that Tim read to me from Paley, I think it was, recently: She runs off to the people in the town and says, "Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Is not this the Messiah?"

The old author noted that that hyperbole is characteristic of someone who is all worked up and excited. Obviously Jesus didn't literally tell her everything she ever did. But he did show that he knew about her sordid past and the fact that she was living with a man who was not her husband. We can _hear_ her saying, "This guy told me everything I've ever done!"

I tend to think that often the disciples _did_ know of particular events but didn't tell them, "just because." Just because they didn't think of them at the moment when they were writing or talking to someone who was writing. Just because there was something else they were eager to emphasize, just because they had limited scroll space, etc. I'm pretty sure that multiple disciples knew about the raising of Lazarus, for example, and there is kind of a cottage industry among NT scholars in conjecturing about why only John recounts it. Some have hypothesized that it was because John was written later than the others and because Lazarus and his sisters would have been in danger had it been recounted earlier, but to my mind this seems unlikely. The other evangelists give lots of other people's names as followers of Jesus and don't seem to worry about protecting their anonymity. I tend to think the absence of the raising of Lazarus is another of those "just because" things. That is, there are so many possible reasons that we will probably never know why it wasn't recounted.

I read this as saying that life is sometimes messy and plays out in a way that seems arbitrary. There is a famous quote by somebody about biblical scholars forgetting that these documents were written in a real world where real people moved about and interacted in ways that can't be reduced to a few principles. It's good to know that somebody else thinks a good explanation for some questions (but certainly not all questions) is "just because". Much energy has been expended on getting to the real reasons why an evangelist said or didn't say something that somebody else said, and the best I can muster at times is something like an almost flippant "Well, maybe that's just what he did at that moment while writing or dictating, and there's no deeper explanation." This is (as I see it) fully in harmony with the idea of men writing or speaking as they are moved to some degree by the Holy Spirit.


Here's a kind of a neat bit of verisimilitude connected with the woman at the well that Tim read to me from Paley, I think it was, recently: She runs off to the people in the town and says, "Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Is not this the Messiah?"

The old author noted that that hyperbole is characteristic of someone who is all worked up and excited. Obviously Jesus didn't literally tell her everything she ever did. But he did show that he knew about her sordid past and the fact that she was living with a man who was not her husband. We can _hear_ her saying, "This guy told me everything I've ever done!"

I'm sure some internet atheist somewhere has on their list of "587 Indisputable Gospel Contradictions" the claim Jesus could not have told her everything she had ever done in such a short space of time, hence there is a contradiction. (Heh.)

Seriously though, these sorts of little touches in the fourth gospel reinforce my sense that an eyewitness is behind this account (and further down the chain of deductions, that the ancients were correct, and St John the Apostle is the author or primary source of the fourth gospel).

Lydia, you'll never make the Jesus Seminar at this rate.

Jesus's father is not mentioned by name in the earliest NT writings, the Pauline letters and GMark.

The only "Joseph" mentioned in GMark is the person who buries Jesus.

So it is possible that by the time GMatthew was composed that people began asking who Jesus's father was, and the story grew up that Jesus's father was named Joseph, like the person who buried him in the earlier Gospel, GMark.

GMatthew even includes for the first time a backstory to go with the name "Joseph." There is the Moses-like story of the slaying of the innocents, a flight into Egypt and then an exodus out of Egypt, which echoes the story about Moses taking "Joseph's" bones with him out of Egypt and back to the land of Abraham.

So I don't see how a reticence hypothesis is needed since the stories about "Joseph" indeed seem to have grown over time. Even the story that Jesus was born of a virgin seems to have arisen after the Pauline letters and GMark. So that would tend to keep the center of interest on Jesus, not on Joseph who was after GMatt and GLuke believed to be merely Jesus's adopted father or step father.

Yes, we would like to know more about whatever Peter and James experienced that led them to believe Jesus had appeared to them, i.e., what they may have felt, seen or heard, where and when.

But the lack of these earliest details seems to fit with the lack of early details in Paul's letters as to the appearance he claimed; and GMark also lacks details of what was seen as well, even adding that Jesus had gone on before them to Galilee and would be seen there.

All of the earliest "appearance" tales thus contrast greatly with the post-resurrection tales in the lattermost Gospels, GLuke-Acts and GJohn that feature far more details, far more words allegedly spoke by Jesus, and far more concrete appearances.

So Christians don't appear to have been reticent to develop resurrection stories from mere claims of appearances with no details to more detailed stories over time.

True, the annunciation in Luke does not mention Jesus's death. But that does not constitute evidence of it being authentic history. The annunciations of the two divinely inspired births (John the Baptist and Jesus), along with the songs of Mary and Zechariah, all of which is found in GLuke, don't mention the deaths of John or Jesus, but stick with OT allusions and kingly praises, which in Jesus's case includes the OT idea may his kingdom have no end.

And compared in a wider sense, one might note that here is no reticence on the part of Christian authors to expand the tale of Jesus, from a lack of mention of a virgin birth in Pauline letters and GMark, to a virgin birth tale first seen in GMatt, along with an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream, to the tale in GLuke where there is not one but two miraculous birth tales, of the Baptist and Jesus, with angels being literally seen by Zechariah, Mary, shepherds, and the characters of Zechariah and Mary not merely speaking but bursting out into songs.

Ed Babinski, your use of "seems" is really so poor that I just simply do not have the time to list every (or even most) uses of "seems" in those three comments and to note how unsupported they are. No, it doesn't "seem" like...pretty much anything you just said it "seems" like. Your attempt to build a development thesis out of the kind of random variation of detail that actually characterizes independent testimony is, as with all such development theses, incredibly weak, cherry-picked, and strained. It would really not be a good use of my time to go through all of the poorly supported mere assertions in these last three comments and reply to them. But you just do seem to have a difficult time making judicious evaluation of evidence. You have a fixed idea that the gospels developed over time by legendary and other non-factual addition and are not recognizing evidence to the contrary.

Hi Lydia, Thanks for your idea of what my "fixed idea" is, however, all that I have pointed out is based on nothing more controversial than the chronological order of the NT writings and finished Gospels, a chronological order that most biblical scholars, even many Evangelicals, agree upon today. namely that the Pauline letters were earliest, then GMark was the earliest synoptic Gospel completed, followed by the completion and reception GMatt and of GLuke-Acts, with the completed GJohn also being post GMark and post GLuke.

The above order of Gospel completion and reception history, along with the most obvious comparisons of Gospel stories is what leads to such questions. While your own fixed idea seems to be that all NT stories are authentic and must be harmonized like a Christmas nativity play in church. Though NT scholars have noticed for a long time the difficulties of attempts at harmonizing all such tales.

Wait, Christians develop Resurrection stories from mere claims of appearances? I didnt know the existing church, prior to the Gospels, simply had mere claims of appearances. Especially for the cornerstone event of the entire movement. In fact, I wonder how a church could possibly grow with Jews or Gentiles, by simply alluding to some mere claims of appearances. It doesnt fit with Paul's own teaching of the centrality and importance of the resurrection - if Christ was not raised your faith is in vain, if Christ was not raised we have bared false witness against God etc. Its so implausible that a church could even get off the ground with just 'claims of mere appearances with *no details*' of the _central claim_ of the church.

Thats just the problems such speculation has given it's premises. Of course, theres little to no reason to accept its premises. The are a number of serious issues with taking 'Paul lists the important names and groups Jesus appeared too in a letter with little to no details', and concluding 'the Christians at that time had little to no details of Jesus' resurrection appearances'.

Yep. It's an argument from silence on steroids. Especially when considering a short passage that is obviously meant to be a briefly stated creed.

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