The Errors Of People Finding Errors In Scripture

Often, some of the best material in a book is found in its notes. Martin Hengel has a great line in a note in a book he wrote about the gospel of Mark. He's addressing modern critics who are overly dismissive of the author of the gospel of Mark because of alleged errors he made on matters like geography and Jewish customs:

"As many and as few mistakes are made in the Gospels as in monographs on the New Testament." (Studies In The Gospel Of Mark [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003], n. 51 on p. 148)

In the same note, he gives an example of a fellow New Testament scholar, apparently, who made a geographical error similar to the ones that are supposed to be in Mark:

"When I visited my distinguished colleague A. Kuschke (to whom I had dedicated the above article on his seventieth birthday) in Kusterdingen, south-east of Tübingen, we were able to admire Pfrondorf to the north, beyond the Neckar. A colleague who had lived for many years in Tübingen asked me, 'Is that beyond Wankheim?' 'No,' I had to tell him, 'it's in the opposite direction.'"

The house my mother is currently living in is the one where I spent most of my childhood. I lived there for a double-digit number of years, and I frequently go back there to visit. I can't name some of the streets closest to the house. There are many aspects of the topography, names of certain neighbors, etc. that I wouldn't be able to provide if asked. But critics often expect Mark to have a much higher level of knowledge about regions of Israel, like Galilee, where we have no reason to think he ever lived. As Hengel comments elsewhere in his book, "His 'deficient knowledge' of the geography of Galilee, which contemporary exegetes like to criticize, in fact simply shows up the [latter's] historical incomprehension: without a map it would be difficult even for a man of antiquity like Mark to establish his bearings in a strange area a good seventy miles from his home city" (46).

Hengel wasn't a conservative, and he wasn't an inerrantist, but he often agreed with conservatives and inerrantists on significant issues. And what he says above about the gospels is also relevant to criticisms that are often brought against the church fathers and other ancient sources. The evidence supports the inerrancy of scripture, and the supposed errors in Mark are often not seen as errors even by people who aren't inerrantists. But the points Hengel makes above should be kept in mind. Since inerrantists often argue for inerrancy by appealing to the general trustworthiness of the relevant documents, without yet appealing to their inerrancy, Hengel's points are relevant accordingly even for those wanting to persuade people to accept the inerrancy of scripture.

Christology between Jesus and Paul

Larry Hurtado has a new blog post out noting just how quickly there was a well-developed Christology, after the death and resurrection of Christ. He relies on Martin Hengel's work, Between Jesus and Paul: Studies in the Earliest History of Christianity:

* Paul's letters (which date from ca. 50-60 CE), including notably Romans (addressed to a "pre-Pauline" Christian community), already reflect a developed christology, and do not indicate any real development across the years in which they were composed, the maximum period for the christological development reflected in the letters can be no more than ca. 18 years, "a short space of time for such an intellectual process" (39). Or, to cite another memorable statement: "In essentials more happened in christology within these few years than in the whole subsequent seven hundred years of church history" (39-40).

* This christological development took place above all in Jewish-Christian communities in Jerusalem, Caesarea, Damascus, Antioch and other places in Syria and Roman Palestine, involving both Greek-speaking and Aramaic-speaking believers.

* It is dubious, thus, to employ the multi-layered schemes of the old History-of-Religions scholars or the modified versions put out in the 60s and 70s, involving "Primitive Palestinian", "Hellenistic-Jewish", and "Hellenistic-Gentile" stages of development, all of these sometimes posited as preceding Paul's "conversion".

* Speaking of Paul's "conversion", which likely must be placed within at most a couple of years subsequent to Jesus' execution, we have to consider that an "enormously rapid christological development" took place within this even shorter period. Paul's characterization of the cognitive content of his religious re-orientation is that it was a "revelation of God's Son". But, since he then promptly associated himself with other Jewish Christians (including Peter/Cephas, per Gal. 1), the most reasonable inference is that the christological view he adopted was pretty much what he had been opposing [as a Pharisee]. And that means that some pretty powerful developments must be dated within the very first few years!

* Given this tight chronology, it is also dubious to ascribe much to any supposed influence of pagan religious ideas and practices on these early christological developments. It requires a strong necessity to ignore chronology, and some implausible assumptions about psychology too, to posit, for example, that early Jewish Christians were somehow unconsciously disposed to treat Jesus as bearing divine-like honour through the subtle influence of pagan ruler-cults.

I am taken with this: "In essentials more happened in christology within these few years than in the whole subsequent seven hundred years of church history". Roman Catholics talk "development" over centuries. What their "development" primarily does is to obscure what was "once for all given to the saints", primarily in the quest for who was greatest [and, not coincidentally, proclaiming themselves the greatest]. To be a Roman Catholic apologist is to miss the pearl of great price.