Much of the Bible consists of historical books. History is foundational to both testaments of the Bible, as can be seen by the fact that in both testaments the historical books are placed first in canonical order, before other types of books (poetic, prophetic, epistolary).
Yet the historical books of the Bible are not written in the same way that we today write history books. They were written in a different time and culture than ours, and they obey different literary conventions.
I was very impressed with this fact when I was experiencing a conversion to Christ at age twenty and read the Gospels for the first time. As I was finding my way to Christ, I opened a Bible that my grandmother had given me and started reading Matthew.
I hated it.
Not that I hated the Gospel itself. I was open to what it had to say. But I hated the way it was written. Since I didn’t grow up hearing the Gospels read, reading them was an unfamiliar experience for me. Matthew wasn’t like a biography of Jesus written according to the modern style. It was too different, too alien to me. I didn’t have a frame of reference to understand what was going on in the text, and I found it a very frustrating read.
When I got to Mark, things were worse. Because of the compressed way Mark records things, he can leave out material that can help with the interpretation.
By the time I got to Luke, however, I found that I was starting to like the Gospels more. I had read enough that I was starting to get a handle on how they were written, a “feel” for the rules they were obeying. I was—to a limited extent—starting to enter the mindset of their authors and original audience.
Today, I love all the Gospels. In fact, Matthew is probably my favorite—precisely because of its literary style. He presents material in a very careful, organized way that appeals to me. The other evangelists frequently include the same material, but they don’t organize it the way Matthew does.
This points out an important fact about Scripture: Not only is it written differently than we would write it today, but also the way in which it is written varies from one biblical author to another.
This fact, ironically, gives us one of our best windows into how the biblical historians approached their task.
Learning the Rules
The fact that the Gospels record the ministry of Jesus from four perspectives helps in figuring out the rules by which the Gospels are written.
Every genre of literature has rules. This is true whether the work is written or oral. Since people today are familiar with television genres, which have very sharply defined rules, they provide a useful way to explain this point.
At some point, no doubt, you’ve watched sitcoms on television. The rules governing the modern sitcom are well defined. For example, the stories have to be thirty minutes long, they are told in narrative form (chronicling events from the beginning to the end of the story in sequence), humor is the dominant element, and there is a “laugh track” (i.e., you hear unseen people laughing at the jokes).
Compare this to what you find on a news magazine like 60 Minutes. Here the rules are different: The stories tend to be fifteen minutes long, they aren’t told in narrative form (i.e., we jump back and forth in time and space to follow different ideas that are being raised), humor is not the dominant element, and there is no laugh track.
By watching these shows, we get a feel for the rules governing them. Even if we’ve never stopped to list the rules, we would know instantly if they were being violated. Imagine the letters of protest that would pour in if 60 Minutes decided to start using a laugh track to deride what the people it interviews said on camera.
Just as we have a feel for the kind of rules that are at work in the different genres our culture uses, so did people in the ancient world. They knew what the rules were and expected them to be followed.
The trouble for us is that, since we didn’t grow up in their culture, we don’t have that kind of native feel for what was and wasn’t allowable in their genres. For us to get that knowledge, we have to study.
One of the most fruitful ways of doing that is by comparing how two ancient authors present the same story. This is what makes the Gospels so useful, since they often tell the same stories from different perspectives. This lets us figure out some of the rules that the evangelists were using.
Leaving People Out
One of the rules that the evangelists follow seems to be this: It is okay to simplify the number of people involved in an event. For example, a given evangelist may recount an incident in which two people approached Jesus with a request, while another evangelist simplifies and mentions only one person.
This kind of “one in place of two” thing happens repeatedly. In Matthew 20:29–34, two blind men at Jericho ask Jesus for their sight back, while in Mark 10:46–52 and Luke 18:35–43, we read of only one blind man being involved.
Similarly, in Luke 24:4 two angels appear at the tomb of Christ, while in Mark 16:5 only one does.
There is even a “one in place of three” incident in the Gospels. Mark 16:1 records that “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome” brought spices to Jesus’ tomb, while Matthew 28:1 records that “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” (omitting Salome) went, and John 20:1 records that “on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark.”
It’s easy to think of situations today where we might mention only one person being involved in an event when in fact there were more. If you were walking on the street and two people approached you but only one of them spoke to you, later you might tell friends that someone approached you and spoke to you, without mentioning the one who was silent.
This may explain the situations with the blind men and angels. When two blind men approached Jesus, one of them may have taken the lead in speaking, while the other was mostly silent. When the women see two angels, it may have been that only one of them spoke.
Telescoping People
A more specialized way of omitting people in a narrative involves what I call “telescoping.” This involves omitting the less important people in a story when they are acting as agents of the more important people. They are, as it were, “collapsed” into the person on whose behalf they are acting, in the same way that the extendable segments of a telescope can be collapsed together.
For example, 1 Chronicles 21:29 refers to “the tabernacle of the Lord, which Moses had made in the wilderness.” Take this literally and you’ll think that Moses himself made the tabernacle, which isn’t the case. Moses may have been in charge of the project, but it was carried out by two men named Bezalel and Oholiab (cf. Ex. 38:22–23), who undoubtedly had others under them. Yet since Moses was in charge, it is said that he built the tabernacle.
This isn’t surprising. We use language this way today. If a particular doctor is responsible for a new clinic being built, we may say that he built it, even though we recognize that he was not the workman who constructed it. Indeed, he probably did none of the construction work, except perhaps a ceremonial groundbreaking.
Telescoping is something that we find in the Gospels. Matthew 8:5–13 and Luke 7:1–10 both record the healing of the centurion’s servant. Yet comparing them, we find that Matthew telescopes the centurion’s agents into the centurion himself.
From Matthew’s account alone, it would appear that the centurion himself came to Jesus and spoke with him. However, if you read Luke’s account you find that the conversation was carried on through intermediaries.
The centurion first sends several Jewish elders to speak to Jesus. Then, while Jesus is on his way to the house, he sends friends with the message, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed” (Luke 7:6–7, emphasis added).
Matthew does not mention the role of the intermediaries because they are less important characters, acting as agents of the centurion. Jesus and the centurion are the prime actors, so Matthew focuses on their interaction without going into how the interaction took place.
This kind of telescoping is one that we wouldn’t do today because people would not be expecting it. We do know that powerful, important people usually do not do their own construction work, so we recognize that expressions like “So-and-so built this building” aren’t literal. However, today people tend to do hold conversations firsthand rather than using messengers and envoys to do it, so we aren’t on the lookout for situations where a conversation is held through proxies.
Still, there is a parallel. Today people may talk by telephone, chat, e-mail, or even video conferencing, and referring to such conversations we might say things like “He told her . . .” or “He said to her . . .” without stopping to mention the medium through which the conversation was held.
Topical Arrangement
Another rule of biblical history is that events do not have to be recorded in strict chronological order. Often we find biblical authors (and particularly Matthew) organizing material topically.
A very clear example is seen by comparing Matthew 21:12–19 with Mark 11:12–21. In the former passage Jesus clears the Temple in Jerusalem, then sees and curses the fig tree, and the tree withers. In the latter passage Jesus first sees and curses the fig tree, then goes to Jerusalem and clears the Temple, and finally the tree is seen withered.
The most logical explanation is that Matthew is rearranging material in a topical fashion. Mark most likely records the chronological sequence in which these events occurred, but Matthew draws together the two incidents involving the fig tree.
Topical organization is characteristic of Matthew’s Gospel. This is particularly true of the way he organizes Jesus’ teachings. In Matthew there are five major discourses in which Jesus principally gives his teaching. When one looks at Mark and Luke, one finds that the material of these discourses tends to be scattered around rather than concentrated together.
For example, the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7) is roughly equivalent to the discourse Jesus gives in Luke 6 (sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain), but many bits of the Sermon on the Mount are found elsewhere. For example, Jesus’ saying about salt losing its savor (Matt. 5:13) appears in Luke 14:34–35. His saying about settling with your opponent lest you be thrown into prison (Matt. 5:25–26) shows up in Luke 12:57–59. And the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9–13) is found in Luke 11:2–4.
To all appearances, it looks as if Matthew took the same basic material that is found in Luke 6 (which is not to say the he got it from Luke’s Gospel) and then added to it other scattered sayings of Jesus. He grouped together material that Jesus had spoken about right behavior in order to compose a unified discourse on this topic, which is what the Sermon on the Mount is.
The fact that over and over again we see material grouped topically in Matthew while the same material is scattered around in other Gospels seems to point to a preference Matthew has for this type of organization. At least this is more likely than the idea that Matthew presents material in chronological order and the other evangelists for unknown and unfathomable reasons decided to fragment the material and put it out of chronological order on occasion after occasion.
The topical ordering of material is not without parallel in modern historical writings. Many biographies today do contain chapters devoted to particular topics—e.g., a chapter dealing with a president’s views on a particular issue. Such chapters can be like Matthew’s discourses in that they group things together that the person said on the subject at different times.
The difference is that in a modern biography one has to somehow signal to the audience that these things were said at different times. That’s because today we are much more persnickety about keeping track of exact times. In the ancient world, they weren’t. What was important was what a great teacher said on a subject, not precisely when he said it.
Read Part II here.