Ask Steve:
Can I trust the Gospels?
I’ve just discovered that the Gospels were written a long time after the actual events took place – and that in the meantime the memory of the stories and teaching they talk about was passed on by word of mouth. If that’s true, doesn’t it mean that there’s huge danger that they are unreliable – Chinese whispers and all of that?
Your question is a very natural one. But behind it sits a group of cultural assumptions which, though they reflect our very 21st century western view of the world, aren’t necessarily true.
Jesus never thought it important to scribble down a scroll of his greatest thoughts and leave them for posterity. This fact alone should make us stop long enough to question some of our presuppositions. We live in a world where every leading thinker, teacher, politician (and even footballer) is in a desperate rush to record their views, insights and opinions on paper for the benefit of the rest of humanity.
However, ancient teachers including the rabbis – of whom Jesus was one – did not consider written text as an accurate or reliable means of passing on their teaching and approach to life.
A rabbi’s knowledge could only be passed on from life to life. Learning from a rabbi was all about relationship – primarily with your rabbi, but also with your fellow learners.
A rabbi’s followers rarely left their teacher’s side for fear that they would miss a teachable moment. They watched their rabbi’s every move, noting how he acted, thought and responded in every given situation. They worked passionately to incorporate his actions and attitudes, as well as his words, into their lives. A disciple’s deepest desire was to follow their rabbi so closely that they would start to think, and act, just like him.
As far as the rabbi was concerned, he had zero interest in having his students spit ‘pre-packaged’ information back at him just for the sake of it, even if it had been memorised accurately. What he wanted to know was whether his apprentices had wrestled and engaged with his teaching on a personal level – did they really understand it?
The teaching of the Gospels was only committed to writing when it seemed that there were few other options. The majority of scholars believe that it was the fall of Jerusalem to the Roman army, the resulting forced dispersion of the Jewish people, the persecution of the Early Church and the threat of the imminent death of the surviving apostles combined with – from the early Christians’ point of view – the delayed return of Christ, that eventually produced what we now have in our Bibles.
The four Gospels are there because the church around the world recognised them as being accurate. Others that were not accepted – which now form part of what is known as the New Testament Apocrypha – include the Gospels of Thomas, Philip, Peter, Mary, the Egyptians, Judas and Hermes.
What we easily forget is that the preference for oral, rather than literary, communication has been the norm throughout history. Even in our print-driven society, there is a growing mistrust of the written word.
How much time, for instance, do you spend trying to deal with the fall-out of the miscommunications and misunderstandings caused by our addiction to email? Or, how many times has a newspaper story where you actually knew the facts, proved to be inaccurate?
More than that, we tend to forget that the bulk of what we know is learned and confirmed orally and experientially, rather than from reading. When it really comes down to it, given the choice between reading the instruction manual for our new camera or computer or a practical demonstration from an expert, how many of us would vote for the written option?
We might live in a society that prides itself on being highly literate but, in the end, so much of what we do daily continues to make use of orally and experientially acquired learning. And, the reason is simple: it is rich, holistic, embodied, sensory and emotional and it makes for strong and lasting memories.
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