Historical criticism: A brief response to Robert Thomas's "over view"

Thomas's basic thesis has merit: the view that the Gospel writers wrote independently from one another should be taken much more seriously than it has of late, and evangelicals should be careful to make certain that when using the techniques of historical criticism they don't fall prey to the nonhistorical presuppositions of the higher critics. The problem is that the article characteristically overstates its position and is presented in a polemical style that does not invite dialogue. Thomas's position seems clear-all of us who use form or redaction criticism in any sense or who hold either to Markan or Matthean priority are de facto denying the historicity of the Gospels. Several of us-including more than one past and future president of the societymust take issue with these charges. So let me respond by interacting with the article one point at a time.

It is true that the independence view predominated for 1700 years. It is also true that many like Thiessen and Tenney in this century have accepted that view. But we do not determine whether a view is right or wrong by how long it is held, nor by naming people who champion it. A position is decided on the basis of its merits, by comparing its strengths and weaknesses with the arguments advocated by opposing scholars: No issue or doctrine is held on the basis of longevity. If that were the case, Dr. Thomas could no longer be a dispensationalist, since that position is only 170 years old. It is the view of many evangelicals, including myself, that the data itself favors a literary dependence view. Arguments for the superiority of the independence view must proceed on that basis rather than an a priori assumption that dependence must of necessity deny historicity.

Thomas's recitation of the "recent debate" (pp. 99-100) is also highly suspect. What is missing in his patted survey is the acknowledgment that after 1985 there was a markedly different tone in ETS regarding the viability of an evangelical using the critical tools from within a framework of inerrancy. In the fourteen years until The Jesus Crisis appeared, there were no attacks on the orthodoxy of evangelical redaction critics. To me this is the most troubling aspect of the book. Is a new period of inquisition being established in which the criteria of heterodoxy are set by one group of scholars? It is one thing to disagree regarding literary dependence and the use of critical tools; it is quite another thing to declare that such positions entail a denial of the historicity of the material.

There are several other questions that must be raised. When I discussed the impossibility of harmonizing the Synoptics with John, he argued that I was "assuming non-historicity" (p. 100). On what ground? My whole discussion was of the chronology of Jesus' life, not of the reliability of the four Gospels. On the basis of John's three passovers (2:13; 6:4; 12:1) one could posit a two-year ministry, but in the Synoptics it seems there is a one-year ministry (one passover and one trip to Jerusalem). In truth there is no purely chronological arrangement in any of the Gospels. This does not mean there is no chronology, just that no Gospel writer organized his material on the basis of a week one/week two or month one/month two pattern. A "footsteps of Jesus" approach is highly speculative and virtually impossible because we cannot know with any degree of certainty how to organize all the stories into a Tatian-like chronology. Let us consider just Matthew 8-9 in such a harmony: 8:1-4 = Mark 1:40-45; 8:5-13 = Luke ?:1-10; 8:14-17 = Mark 1:29-34/Luke 4:38-41; 8:18-22 = Luke 9:57-62; 8:23-27 = Mark 4:35-41/Luke 8:22-25; 8:28-34 Mark 5:1-20/Luke 8:26-39; 9:1-17 =Mark 2:1-22/Luke 5:17-39; 9:18-26 = Mark 5:21-43/Luke 8:40-56; 9:27-31 = Mark 10:46-52/Luke 18:35-43; 9:35-38 (only in Matthew). It is very difficult to make a case that all these are different events; but when you note how different the order is in the three Gospels (e.g. 8:1-4, 14-17 reverses the order of Mark), it is difficult to make a case for a chronological framework. Thomas argues that there is "a close chronological agreement between" Mark and Luke here (p. 105), but that is true only in part. Mark and Luke disagree frequently, as any synopsis will demonstrate (e.g. Luke places the "fishers of men" [5:1-11] and the Beelzebub controversy [11:14-23] in quite different places). The Gospels do not attempt rigid chronological sequence; that is a modern historiographical demand. Historical errors are not involved here because the Gospel writers did not intend to organize their material on the basis of strict chronological order.

We can and should harmonize the Gospels, i and the purpose is always to support, rather than erode a high view of the historicity of the Gospels. There is certainly a difference between traditional harmonization and redactional harmonisation, but I agree with Blomberg2 against Thomas (pp. 104-105) that both are legitimate and must be used properly to settle seeming conflicts between passages. To limit all harmonizing to only one makes the task of demonstrating historical veracity all the more difficult. Evangelical higher critics have always been at the forefront of attempts to support the historical veracity of the Gospels, as in the Gospel Perspectives series by Tyndale Fellowship, Craig Blomberg's Historical Reliability of the Gospels, or the current multi-year project on the historicity of the Gospels by the Institute of Biblical Research. So when Thomas assumes that 1 support "nonharmonization and hence non-historicity" (p. 100), he is simply wrong. I do indeed believe there were several trips to Jerusalem as stated by John, but the Synoptics omit the others because they were not giving a chronological portrait. Once more, the key to an evangelical use of the two-source theory is that the Holy Spirit guided the use of Mark and other sources by Matthew and Luke.