Showing posts with label Darrell Bock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Darrell Bock. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Tuesday, January 07, 2020
Bock on the formation of the Gospels
…recollections that were initially a part of oral traditions passed on by word of mouth as opposed to written down, and eventually they got recorded. The people who did the recording had different concerns and and considerations that feed into the details that go into story. The church made the choice we're going to tell this story from four different angles, because four different angles give us a better look at what's going on that merely telling one story in one way.
In fairness to Bock, it's hard to say anything intelligent on such a complicated topic in just a few minutes. But with all due respect, I this his summary is consistently misleading. So many equivocations and inaccuracies:
1. Assume traditional authorship of the Gospels. And there's a good case to be made for that. On text-critical grounds, there's a presumption that the Gospel titles are original rather than editorial additions. That's in addition to other internal evidence consistent with traditional authorship–as well as traditions of authorship from church fathers and canonical lists.
2. On that view, each of the four gospels has a distinct history. "Oral tradition" is inaccurate. The word "tradition" has connotations of a custom, belief, story, or information that outlives the source of origin. It's transmitted from one generation to the next. But assuming traditional authorship, that's not the timeframe of the Gospels.
i) In the case of Luke, his sources aren't oral traditions but oral histories. He's collecting anecdotes from contemporaries of Jesus. Eyewitnesses to the public ministry of Christ. Not traditions but living memory. And Luke is arguably the farthest removed from the source. But it's just one step.
ii) In addition, he has multiple informants. He had a wide range of contacts in the mid-1C church, in Jerusalem and Palestine.
So even is his case, the image of a story that passes through several different hands before it's written down is very misleading. It's not like family lore, where you hear a story from your parents, who got it from their parents.
iv) In addition, where multiple witnesses are available, the sources are synchronic rather than diachronic. Contemporaries to the same event who each have something to share. Consider recollections of high school by your classmates. They attended the same school at the same time. So the sources of information are parallel rather than unilinear.
v) Consider Mark. He's often classified as a secondhand source, like Luke. But since his hometown was Jerusalem, and his home as a founding house-church frequented by the apostles (Acts 12:12), the presumption is that Mark's Gospel is a combination of firsthand and secondhand information. It's likely that he was an eyewitness to Jesus when Jesus ministered in Jerusalem. In addition, he had access to apostles living in Jerusalem at the time.
vi) In the case of Matthew and John, they spend 2-3 years with Jesus during his public ministry. Not only were they firsthand observers to the key events, but it stands to reason that the disciples compared notes, compared recollections with each other.
3. The gap between when something is seen and when it's written down is ambiguous. For instance, decades may elapse between youth and when an old man writes his memories. But it's firsthand information. It's the same informant. He's writing about his own childhood and youth. The individual writing about events is the same individual who experienced the events. Just consider conversations with the elderly, whose recollections of their childhood and youth are so fresh and vivid.
4. Do the Gospels have different details because they reflect different concerns and considerations? To some degree that may be the case. But that's a rather artificial way of explaining differences generally. Isn't a main reason for the differences that each of them is writing down what he saw or heard, either directly or from others? Each narrator had a different experience. Different, albeit often overlapping, information.
It's not like they have to start out with a theological agenda, and select material to illustrate the agenda. Rather, they just report what they know, and the message emerges from the facts. The agenda is not so much in how the account is narrated. Rather, Jesus had a theological agenda, God had a theological agenda. The events have a theological thrust. It isn't taking raw, neutral material, then giving it that editorial viewpoint. Jesus had a mission. A single-minded plan for what to do with his life. The narrators report what he said and did.
5. No, the church didn't decide there would be four Gospels. It's not as if the church commissioned four biographies. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John took the initiative.
There was, of course, a preexisting constituency for the Gospels. The church had a crucial role in sponsoring and disseminating the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were members of the nascent Christian communities, so initially there was a close relationship between author and audience.
Bock is providing a stereotypical outline of the process, but in my view this is a formulaic explanation that's unhistorical and ill-considered.
Monday, May 13, 2019
Jewish law and Jewish people in the NT
From the perspective of a messianic Jew and progressive dispensationalist:
full transcript:
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Friday, September 14, 2018
Thursday, July 05, 2018
Wednesday, June 06, 2018
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Jesus could do no mighty work there
And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them (Mk 6:5).
In his commentary, Darrell Bock makes a couple of trenchant observations about this provocative statement. Cf. D. Bock, Mark (Cambridge 2015), 202. I'd like to briefly expand on Bock's comments:
i) Bock's first point is that in the Gospels, people are usually healed by coming to Jesus or being brought to Jesus. If, however, Jesus faces a wall of animosity in Nazareth, then far fewer people than normal will present themselves to be healed. So it's not about his absolute inability to heal them, but about their refusal to seek him out for healing. Jesus typically leaves it to the ailing individual (or friends and family) to take the initiative.
ii) In addition, there's a link between faith, the message, messenger, and healing. Jesus won't make a policy of healing people who aren't open to the Gospel. Physical healing is secondary. That's for this life, whereas salvation is primary–that's for all time. Jesus won't reward hostile unbelief. Accepting the gift but rejecting the giver.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Friday, February 23, 2018
When seconds count, police are minutes away
More of my recent debate with Darrell Bock on gun-control:
If we're going to do international comparisons, here's a broader sample group:
This only goes to 2015 so recent major events in the USA are missing including Orlando, Las Vegas, and now Florida. We have had several recently which raises questions.
That cuts both ways. We'd need to update the survey to include additional jihadist attacks abroad, since I was responding to a commenter who tried to compare the USA to Australia. With that in mind:
Unclear how updating the survey helps your case. The fact that Europe is a gun-free zone, due to gun-control laws, makes it a soft target for jihadis.
So I take it, Steve, you think we are Ok and just have to accept these incidents and make no effort to think through options.
Lots of permutations to that question. Let's break it down.
i) To begin with, I presume you appreciate the fact that we do have to accept a certain level of criminality. The best we can reasonably hope for is to keep crime at manageable levels. To prevent crime from spiraling out of control.
Utopian schemes to eradicate crime degenerate into totalitarian police state regimes that not only suppress civil liberties, but produce massive unaccountable corruption. So there are tradeoffs in a free and open society.
ii) There is, more over, the question of whether gun control laws are symbolic feel-good measures that fail to solve the problem. For instance:
There are some things we can do to try to improve the general culture.
iii) For instance, I know about a church where the senior pastor and the young pastor are both volunteer coaches at the local high school.
iv) Likewise, we can defend the civil right of Jewish/Christian students to form voluntary Bible clubs in school.
v) We should oppose the NEA's war on boys (e.g. Christina Hoff Sommers), which likely causes a backlash by creating resentful boys.
Unfortunately, Obama voters like you made it harder to improve the general culture when you elected a man who empowered the secular progressives.
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Dream act
Here's my side of an exchange I had with Darrell Bock on his recently article:
Darrell,
A chronic problem with your political articles is that you never engage the other side of the argument. You just assume that you're right. You just assume that people should see how reasonable your position is.
Your articles are unconvincing to someone who doesn't already agree with you, because you make no attempt at rational persuasion. There's no indication that you've bothered to study the other side of the argument on gun rights. For instance:
If you wish to change minds, you need to show an awareness of the best arguments on the other side, and address their arguments.
Darrell,
You're politically naive. You personally may not believe in confiscation, but gun control advocates in general are pursuing an incremental strategy. They won't announce outright that they wish to disarm private citizens and confine gun possession to gov't agencies, but that's the goal. Hillary was praising the Australian model, which was a confiscation model.
You imagine there's difference-splitting middle ground, but that's not the end-game for gun-control advocates. They won't stop there. We've had outright gun bans in big cities in blue states.
It's like the debate over gay marriage. Proponents pursued an incremental strategy. They framed it in terms of "marriage equality". They said, "how does gay marriage have any effect on you?"
From their viewpoint, that was the noble lie. But once they got SCOTUS to invent a Constitutional right to gay marriage, they began driving Christians out of business.
That's the way it works in the real world, Darrell. They lie about their true intentions to make irreversible gains, then build on those gains.
Darrell, it's a familiar wedge tactic.
BTW, what's wrong with citizens owning "assault rifles"? Why is it okay for police to use assault rifles to defend themselves, but not okay for civilians to use assault rilles to defend themselves? Why is it okay for police to use assault rifles to protect the public, but it's not okay for the public to use assault rifles to protect themselves?
If you ban assault rifles, that creates a lucrative black market for banned weapons. The criminal class will still have access to assault weapons. And the criminal class will have private citizens outgunned, since you've prevented private citizens from having comparable weaponry.
i) Darrell, those are defensive as well as offensive weapons. Why do you think the police use them? To kill masses of people?
ii) You and I are both old enough to remember a time when we didn't have mass shootings in school. Yet that was a time when there were high school gun clubs on campus. Boys brought guns to school. It's not access to guns that's the source of the problem, but a cultural change.
iii) It's kind of definitional that if you successfully eliminate guns, that will cut down on mass shootings. In reality, that just creates a black market for banned weapons, so the criminal class still has access.
But cutting down on mass shootings doesn't necessary cut down on mass killings. Take suicide bombers in Israel. Or vehicular jihad. Or all the people Tim McVeigh killed and maimed using fertilizer. Or knife attacks in China. Or the Sarin gas attack in Tokyo.
Some killers plan months in advance.
Regarding Dreamers:
The parents gambled on breaking the law and getting away with it. Well, when you take a risk, sometimes you lose the bet.
Suppose a father or mother illegally obtains a property. That's where they begin to raise their kids.
The rightful owner then gets a court order to have them evicted. It's a pity that the kids are caught in the middle, but we can't have a situation in which adults are allowed to game the system, then dare us to enforce the law because they use their own kids as human shields.
There are illegal immigrants who cynically use the anchor baby principle, then dare authorities to deport them. But we're under no obligation to turn our country into a haven for looters. Illegal immigration is very costly to citizens who play by the rules.
The fact that they broke the law isn't my primary concern. Rather, I'm making the point that when you obtain a good by breaking the law, that's a calculated risk. You act as if that should be a risk-free endeavor, and it's somehow unfair or unjust for people to suffer the consequences if their gamble doesn't pay off.
It's like betting a horses. I take the risk of losing my bet. Should I be protected from not losing my money if I put money on a race horse and another horse wins?
Yes, children are not the guilty ones. But children often suffer the consequences of choices made by parents. Are you saying we should create a system in which kids are always insulated from the risky or foolish choices of their parents?
Responsible wage-earners pick up the tab for cheaters. How is that fair?
Darrell, who is the "we" who invited them in? Was there a plebiscite in which the American electorate invited them in?
One of the problems with your position, Darrell, is that there's no logical cutoff on your principle. When illegal aliens know that if they just wait it it out long enough, their status will be normalized, that creates an insatiable chain of illegal immigration.
Anchor babies are a wedge tactic. That's the point. They can always point to their kids, then people like you will always buckle. So your position reduces to an open borders policy. There's never a last time for amnesty, since the principle is unlimited.
If a breadwinner supports his family through a criminal enterprise, and he's convicted, then his kids suffer. Does that mean we should never convict breadwinners?
Friday, June 09, 2017
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Wednesday, May 03, 2017
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Bock v. Ehrman
Recently I listened to Darrell Bock debate Bart Ehrman:
Bock did well given the constraints of the medium. Unfortunately, the exchanges were often inconclusive because Justin Brierley rushes the discussion along from one topic to another to fit within the allotted timeframe. I'd like to follow-up on some issues raised in the debate:
1. Ehrman thinks many of the NT documents must be pseudonymous because the disciples were illiterate, uneducated Aramaic-speaking peasants. That, however, raises a host of issues:
i) He mentioned the well-worn claim that the Greek in 1 Peter is too good to be written by someone with Peter's rustic background. But as Karen Jobes has demonstrated, that fails to distinguish between syntax and diction. Although the diction is sophisticated, the syntax is unsophisticated, and syntax is harder to master than vocabulary.
ii) Presumably, Paul was quite capable of writing his own letters, yet he found it convenient to dictate his letters. If even a well-educated man like Paul used scribes, why not less educated Christian leaders?
iii) Moreover, Paul's use of scribes implies the availability of competent Christian scribes in NT times.
iv) Ehrman says dictating a text requires the same level of education as writing it yourself. But that's clearly false. Take oral histories of emancipated slaves. These were uneducated speakers, but that hardly hindered them from giving interviews. Consider the WPA slave narratives. Their interviews were transcribed.
v) Apropos (iv), take Frederick Douglass. He had no formal education. Yet he taught himself to read and write.
vi) But let us grant, for the sake of argument, that Matthew, Peter, James, John, and Jude only knew Aramaic. In that event, suppose they had bilingual scribes. They spoke in Aramaic, while a scribe translated their statements into Greek.
Consider simultaneous translation. Take immigrant families where parents and grandparents barely know the language of the host country. At best, they speak broken English (or whatever). But their young kids quickly become fluent in the new language, and function as simultaneous translators for their parents. This also happens in more formal settings like the UN, or diplomatic meetings and press conferences between heads of state.
Moreover, in writing down what the speaker said, a scribe would have greater opportunity to consider the choice of words. Ask the speaker for clarification. The final product would be more accurate than simultaneous translation.
vii) In his book (Forged, 76), Ehrman objects to this in part because 1 Peter quotes the OT from the LXX. But it's hard to see the force of that objection.
Suppose a scholar translates a book by Martin Hengel or Adolf Schlatter into English. When Schlatter or Hengel quote the Bible in German, will the scholar directly translate their German rendering of Scripture into English, or will he substitute a familiar English version (e.g. NIV, ESV)? For an English-speaking audience, it would make more sense to use a familiar English version of the Bible.
In addition, Ehrman says that can't account for the "Greek rhetorical flourishes" in 1 Peter. But even if his objection held against 1 Peter, that can't be extrapolated to works like John's Gospel or 1 John. Do those exhibit the same "Greek rhetorical flourishes"?
viii) A potential objection to this theory is whether that's consistent with the verbal inspiration of Scripture. But since Ehrman rejects the inspiration of Scripture–there's no reason he'd object, in principle, to Peter or John speaking in Aramaic while a scribe turns that into Greek. In fact, Ehrman's own position invites that alternative explanation.
For Christians, this would require inspiration to extend to the scribe. But on the face of it, there doesn't seem to be any antecedent reason to preclude that possibility. It's no more effort for God to inspire two people than one person. To inspire the scribe as well as the speaker.
That's not ad hoc. Since dictation is a collaborative effort, having inspiration cover both parties to the transaction is reasonable.
Of course, an atheist will reject inspiration. But given a theological framework, that's not outlandish by any means. Indeed, it might even be necessary. Traditional formulations of inspiration overlook the role of scribes, but there's no a priori reason why scribes can't be included in the process.
ix) Another problem with Erhman's objection is that even if the Greek in 1 Peter is too classy to be written by Peter bar Jonah, the Gospel of John is written in very simple Greek, Mark is syntactically primitive, while Revelation has never been upheld as a model of Greek composition. In addition, Mark was an urbanite, not a peasant. Likewise, Luke was not a Jewish, Aramaic-speaking peasant. So Ehrman has to stretch his thesis to cover documents that are hardly analogous to 1 Peter.
x) Ehrman's appeal to Josephus is counterproductive. For Josephus only learned Greek later in life. If he can do it, why not one or more of the disciples or stepbrothers of Jesus?
2. Ehrman thinks writers resorted to pseudonymity to get their material accepted under false auspices. And he cite examples of 2C apocrypha.
i) That, however, courts anachronism. For instance, Ehrman thinks Matthew is pseudonymous. But that appeal may well be circular. Was a Gospel named after Matthew because he was famous, or was he famous because a Gospel was named after him?
Ehrman is viewing the reputation of the Apostles through the rear window of church history. They became famous. But can we use their posthumous reputation to explain pseudonymity? Put another way, how long would it take for them to become sufficiently famous and sufficiently revered that their name would facilitate acceptance of a document? For Ehrman's theory to work, we first need to abstract away the contribution which the NT had on their status. For you and me, it's the NT that makes them famous. But how well-known would Matthew be apart from the Gospel of Matthew?
ii) Presumably, early Christians were interested in documents by people who knew Jesus. To that extent, there'd be a a built-in constituency for writings by the disciples or the stepbrothers of Jesus. Mind you, even that isn't straightforward. How did they know who his disciples or stepbrothers were? In 1C Palestine, some people would have firsthand knowledge of their identity. But outside that ambit, it would depend on the Gospels and Acts. So we're back to circularity.
iii) Furthermore, Paul didn't have that advantage. He had to work very hard to become established in the nascent church. In addition, he was a controversial figure with well-connected opponents (e.g. the Judaizers). How widely was his apostolic authority acknowledged in his lifetime?
So why would an author write under Paul's name? In hindsight, that might be an obvious choice. After all, Paul became the most influential theologian in church history. But, of course, we can't expect a forger to enjoy that opportunistic foresight. How late would Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus need to be before Paul's reputation was sufficiently prestigious to name letters after him? Consider how Paul was challenged even in churches he personally founded and oversaw. You can't assume that his standing in the 2C is equivalent to his position a century earlier.
3. Ehrman says he operates with a "show me the evidence" condition. Sounds reasonable. Who can argue with that? But it depends on how we define evidence. Does he mean direct documentary evidence?
i) For instance, Ehrman is certain that stories about Jesus underwent extensive creative reformulation before they were finally committed to writing. But in the nature of the case, how can there be direct documentary evidence for a theory of creative oral tradition?
ii) Sometimes the lack of evidence can be evidentiary. For instance, archeologists may determine whether or not a site was populated by Jews based on the presence or absence of pig bones. That's not documentary evidence. And that's not positive evidence. The assumption, rather, is that a kosher diet explains the absence (or paucity) of pig bones.
iii) Likewise, there's the role of inference in historical reconstructions. It "stands to reason" that certain things will be the case, even if there's no direct surviving evidence. If, say, 1C Palestine was under Gentile rule and occupation, with Greek as the lingua franca, we'd expect many Jews to know conversational Greek, and some to be able to read and write in Greek. That would be necessary for commercial and political transactions. Even if you have no specific evidence, the circumstances may demand it.
4. Ehrman says he applies the same criteria (e.g. theology, style, situation) to NT pseudepigrapha that Bock applies to NT apocrypha (e.g. 3 Corinthians). But that's disanalogous. One reason for excluding NT apocrypha is dating. If 3 Corinthians was clearly written sometime in the 2C, then it cannot be authored by Paul.
5. Ehrman says Josephus is the only 1C Palestinian Jewish author we know of writing literary Greek. But, of course, he can only use that claim to exclude NT evidence on pain of vicious circularity. For the NT is prima facie evidence to the contrary.
Moreover, it's not coincidental that Josephus and the NT survived. As sacred Scripture, the NT was preserved. Likewise, Christians to an interest in Josephus. Other material didn't survive, not because there were no other 1C Palestinian Jews who might be literate in Greek, but because there was not the same incentive to copy their works for posterity.
Saturday, June 27, 2015
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