Scripture and God in Christianity

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G. Zuntz has observed that people of the old times time had a different attitude towards the text of an author, an attitude altogether different from that of ours in the modern times: "an attitude of mind almost the opposite of that which, at the time, prevailed among Christians of all classes and all denominations. The common respect for the sacredness of the Word, with them, was not an incentive to preserve the text in its original purity. On the contrary, the strange fact has long since been observed that devotion to the founder and His apostles did not prevent the Christians of that age from interfering with their transmitted utterances. The reliance of the believers upon the continuing action of the Spirit easily led them to regard the letter less highly; the two appeared to be at variance, the urge to interpolate what was felt to be true was not always resisted." 57 Bultmann has claimed that the early Church did neither perceive nor make a distinction between the pre- Easter sayings of Jesus and the post-Easter utterances of Christian prophets which were accepted as the words of the Risen Lord and were, sometimes intentionally and others unintentionally, retrojected into Jesus' mouth or into settings in Jesus earthly life. 58 Martin Dibelius has discussed the issue in detail. 59 M.E. Boring has made a case that a substantial number of early Christian prophet's sayings found their way into Synoptic Gospels. 60 H. Boers argues that, "The question of whether a particular saying was actually pronounced by Jesus in not only impossible to answer but, from the point of view of the developing Christian religion, irrelevant. What was important about Jesus for the developing Christian religion was not so much the concrete facts of his life but the impact he had made on his followers, as reflected in the tradition of his life and teachings and in the legends of his birth and childhood." 61 Thus, in the opinion of scholars like Boring and Boers, there was a great chasm fixed between what Jesus viewed and presented himself and the way early church interpreted him as Christ, Lord, or Son of God. It is possible then to perceive that these books are merely interpretations of the Christ event and do not give us the exact and accurate information about what Jesus preached about himself and what he really was. Therefore, to H. Conzelmann, "The historical and substantive presupposition for modern research into the life of Jesus is emancipation from traditional Christological dogma on the basis of the principle of reason." 62 On the other hand, there are scholars who view the matter differently. To them, the early Christians were no innovators. I. H. Marshall argues: "It is clear that the basic sayings of Jesus was modified both in the tradition and by the Evangelists in order to re-express its significance for new situations; it is by no means obvious that this basic tradition was created by the early church. Similarly, it is unlikely that the stories about Jesus and the narrative setting for his teaching are [all] products of the church's Sitz im Leben. The fact that such material was found to be congenial for use in the church's situation is no proof it was created for this purpose." 63 Richard A. Burridge, who has carefully discussed the biographical genre of the Gospels by comparing it with the other forms of biographies from the Graeco-Roman world, 64 argues that "If the early church had not been interested in the person and earthly life of Jesus, it would not have produced Bioi, with their narrative structure and chronological framework, but discourses of the risen Christ, like the Gnostic `gospels', instead." 65 Bilezikian argues that "the very existence of the Gospel, and that of Matthew and Luke after Mark, bears witness to the importance attached to the historical Jesus by the early church." 66 Some of these scholars argue that Jesus used various mnemonic devices to make his teachings memorable as well as memorizable. 67 In Jeremias and M. Black's opinion, there had been a relatively fixed Aramaic tradition from an early date behind much of Jesus's saying material present in the Gospels, which in the case of Synoptics, seems authentic to Jeremias. 8
"Nevertheless, we can say in conclusion that the linguistic and stylistic evidence... shows so much faithfulness and such respect towards the tradition of the sayings of Jesus that we are justified in drawing up the following principle of method: In the synoptic tradition it is the inauthenticity, and not the authenticity, of the sayings of Jesus that must be demonstrated." 68 (Many scholars do not share Jeremias's optimism). After discussing the matter at length, Black has concluded: "For the sayings and teachings of Jesus, however, there is little doubt that the bulk of Semitisms are translation phenomena and have arisen in the process of translating and paraphrasing the verba ipsisima of Jesus....I have seen no reason to change the conclusions which I reached in my Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts that an Aramaic tradition (oral or written) lies behind the sayings of Jesus (in the Fourth Gospel as well as the Synoptics." 69 W. D. Davies has stressed that the Jewish milieu of the earliest traditions and the special reverence that Jesus enjoyed in the community would have made his words and deeds probably exercise a conserving and conservative influence on the tradition. 70 Hengel observed, that "The earliest stage was not the isolated individual tradition, but the elemental wealth of impressions called forth by meteoric appearance of Jesus. Then still during Jesus' lifetime, there began a process of collection which at the same time meant selection and restriction." 71 G. Hughes argued, that "for those who lived as contemporaries with the transmission process, there was a genuine possibility of testing the information given by the writer... over against the traditions, [which are] the public property of the community within which the traditions have been received...; but this implies, in turn, that his [the biblical writer's] picture of Jesus is not at his beck and call but is subject to some degree of historical scrutiny." 72 Birger Gerhardsson has discussed the issue at length. He argued, that "During the first four centuries of our era the oral Torah tradition of the Jewish rabbis grew enormously. And it was still being handed down orally. If one wonders how it was possible for such a huge body of text material to be preserved and passed on orally, one must consider the rabbis' pedagogical methods and technique employed in oral transmission." 73 He pinpointed methods like memorization, text and commentary, didactic and poetic devices, repetition, recitation and art of writing as instrumental in this aspect. 74 From here he contended that "Jesus taught in parables and logia, in all probability he taught his hearers these texts... Jesus presented meshalim for his hearers, and the disciples were the first to memorize them, to ponder them, and to discuss together what they meant." 75 Therefore, he claims, that "there is a historical justification, based on sound historical judgments, for concluding that there is an unbroken path which leads from Jesus' teaching in meshalim to the early church's methodical handing on of Jesus texts, a transmission carried on for its own sake." 76 On the basis of this background he asserted that, "we are entitled to established one thing: in Paul's time early Christianity is conscious of the fact that it has a tradition of its own- including many traditions- which the church leaders hand on to the congregations, which the congregations receive, and which they are to guard and live after. In Paul's times there exists a conscious, deliberate, and programmatic transmission in the early Church." 77 He also observed that "early Christianity nonetheless had a genuine interest in the past, and a natural feeling for the fact that ancestors and generations before no longer live here on earth... Furthermore, early Christianity had a special reason for being interested in one specific aspect of the past: that which concerned Jesus of Nazareth... they wrote about his work in Israel during an era which lies in the past. It is not true that they give free, concrete expression to their faith in the heavenly Lord, and to their answers "in Christ's Spirit" to contemporary questions, by creating myths about what he says to the 9
Page 1 and 2: 1 3 Anthropomorphism and Transcende
Page 3 and 4: of a single century, under the ausp
Page 5 and 6: Luke the secretaries to Peter and P
Page 7: emerged out of particular "living s
Page 11 and 12: shall see later in the chapter, con
Page 13 and 14: light of a long period of mere oral
Page 15 and 16: It is interesting to note that in h
Page 17 and 18: hand to set forth in order a declar
Page 19 and 20: and the second and third Epistles o
Page 21 and 22: Therefore, according to the 1978 In
Page 23 and 24: tance of the New Testament mytholog
Page 25 and 26: Richard Swinburne's approach is qui
Page 27 and 28: from the beginning, a certain logic
Page 29 and 30: Contrary to that, John Hick firmly
Page 31 and 32: e partially hidden or to be underst
Page 33 and 34: G. Bernard Shaw argued that "Paul s
Page 35 and 36: assumes the complete agreement of t
Page 37 and 38: We have already seen in this chapte
Page 39 and 40: Therefore, it is safe to argue that
Page 41 and 42: The fact of the matter is that like
Page 43 and 44: On the other hand, many Christian s
Page 45 and 46: selves contain many passages which
Page 47 and 48: probably for the following reason:
Page 49 and 50: condescension. It was a unique and-
Page 51 and 52: The deity of Jesus may be more emph
Page 53 and 54: monotheistic passage from Isa. 45:2
Page 55 and 56: inclined to believe that a good cas
Page 57 and 58: passages are: "Passages of adoption
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ior to the one God.... In Justin's
Page 61 and 62:
God's transcendence and monarchia i
Page 63 and 64:
all saw the Father in the Son. For
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submitted to birth from a virgin, a
Page 67 and 68:
Christ. He taught that Jesus was me
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Jewish spirit it had absolutely not
Page 71 and 72:
comprehensive discussion of the per
Page 73 and 74:
His unity with the Father." 588 Ath
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that He was made,' or-is (was) chan
Page 77 and 78:
again the imperial power first in t
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Persons, and is not three separate
Page 81 and 82:
majesty, should be defiled by assoc
Page 83 and 84:
H. A. Wolfson, that "Apollinaris, i
Page 85 and 86:
their identity "There the person ex
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political power to suppress all rat
Page 89 and 90:
Christ; as from the beginning the p
Page 91 and 92:
Furthermore, the doctrine of one Pe
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even combined together do not give
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the body crucified was God's body.
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In view of what has been said, it b
Page 99 and 100:
the theology into two main categori
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world which produced this unique Ch
Page 103 and 104:
The same Cappadocian Father, St. Gr
Page 105 and 106:
105
Page 107 and 108:
30 30 For Irenaeus see Compenhausen
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85 85 L.W. Hurtado, One God, One Lo
Page 111 and 112:
142 142 E.P. Sanders, Ibid, 278; W.
Page 113 and 114:
205 206 206 Kelly, Ibid, 8 207 207
Page 115 and 116:
Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life
Page 117 and 118:
324 324 Ibid, 13 325 325 L. Hodgson
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380 380 Bornkamm, Ibid, 17 381 381
Page 121 and 122:
446 446 Armstrong, Ibid, p. 88-8 44
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530 530 Pelikan, 1, 17 531 531 Linw
Page 125 and 126:
614 614 Harnack, 4, 5 615 615 Ibid,
Page 127 and 128:
696 696 H.V. Campenhausen, Ibid, p1
Page 129 and 130:
773 772 Quoted from Whale, Ibid, 9
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