Today’s mail brought the latest issues of World, an Evangelical news weekly, and the Christian Research Institute’s Journal, a quarterly from the ministry that airs “The Bible Answer Man” radio program. I had to laugh as I placed the magazines side by side on my desk. It was a case of an editor’s worst nightmare: The covers were nearly identical, each touting a breakthrough story on the “Pensacola outpouring,” an emotion-laden and, apparently, lucrative mega-revival at an Assemblies of God Church in Florida. Not only was the main story the same, but the cover photographs were of the same preacher—and the photograph on the cover of the Journal appeared also on the lead page of the story inside World.
I can sympathize with the editors—and with their clerical staffs, who will receive lots of calls from curious readers wanting to know who borrowed from whom. The undoubted answer: Neither. Aside from the common photograph, which was taken by an Associated Press photographer, the articles were crafted independently, neither magazine being aware of what the other was doing. Yes, the magazines published at the same time. Yes, the stories read similarly. Yes, the stories took similar editorial stands (skeptical) regarding the authenticity of the phenomenon. But the writers didn’t borrow from one another—and they didn’t borrow from an unacknowledged third source.
That seems self-evident to me. I don’t need to search for editorial collusion. I don’t need to search for an “ur-document” that forms the basis of the two articles. But what would certain contemporary biblical scholars say if they were to apply their methodologies to these magazines? We know what they say about the Gospels.
Do the synoptics have similar, even identical, passages? They must have taken material from an unacknowledged (and, to us, undiscovered) source. Let’s call it Q (from the German Quelle = “source”). The one thing these biblical scholars know for sure is that any account we read must have been taken from an earlier account that is lost to us. It can’t be the case that Matthew and Mark and Luke wrote their Gospels based on their own legwork, occasionally using the same witnesses’ testimonies and writing more or less independently. They must have plagiarized a now-lost document.
And so it must be with the World and Journal pieces. The writers may have borrowed from one another but, more likely, borrowed from an earlier, uncredited report of the Pensacola events. That earlier report is now lost to posterity—someone, perhaps, having accidently pressed the delete button without first having made a backup. But no matter. The true account of the goings on in Florida can be retrieved. The ur-document can be reconstructed from the existing stories, and we can denominate it N (from Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe’s reply to the German call to surrender Bastogne: “Nuts!”).
But that’s a task for scholars armed with pinking shears. Me? I’ll just read the magazines and accept them at face value, simple believer that I am.