Essay

Biblical Scholarship in a Positive Vein

Among Scripture scholars, the dominant approach to the Gospels can undermine traditional teachings of the Church. A leading scholar exposes the faulty reasoning behind that approach, and offers a more constructive alternative.

By Kenneth D. Whitehead

It is now possible to find serious scholars who study Scripture and reach the conclusion that Christ did not institute the Eucharist, in spite of what the Gospels plainly say.

The average person might be tempted to ask, "How do they know this?" But the average person is not a scholar, and the assumption persists that scholars are supposed to know such things.

But if it cannot be shown that Jesus was who he said he was, or that he really did and said what the Gospels say he did and said, then what importance does he have?

Farmer's procedure throughout was to demonstrate, on the basis of things accepted by modern scholars, some of the things that they commonly doubt today.

"Some exegetes appear to have little idea about how their work affects Christian doctrine."

There is the also not inconsiderable difficulty that not only has no copy of "Q" ever been located; such a document was never so much as mentioned in antiquity.

Can modern biblical scholarship serve the faith? The very idea sometimes seems questionable today, especially when the conclusions of such groups as the Jesus Seminar are presented in the media as the assured results of modern scholarship.

Not all biblical scholarship, however, is quite so negative and critical of Christian belief. The distinguished scriptural scholar William R. Farmer, provides a case in point. Farmer, an Emeritus Professor of New Testament from Southern Methodist University and currently a research scholar at the University of Dallas, takes a positive approach to Scripture which respects the Church's traditions and which could also point the way out of some of the sterile impasses into which modern scriptural studies have too often gotten bogged down today.

In order to examine anew the question of whether the mission of Jesus began with Jesus himself, or only with the post-resurrection Church, Farmer--who recently entered the Catholic Church himself--undertook in a recent lecture to relate the mission of Jesus, and particularly his redemptive suffering and death, to the famous "Suffering Servant" passages in Isaiah 53, where the ancient Hebrew prophet foretold of the servant of the Lord who was to come that "he poured out his soul to death...bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (Is 53:12).

Farmer not only showed that the early Church understood the organic relationship and continuity of Isaiah's prophecy with Christ's later actual fulfillment of that prophecy on the cross (and, not incidentally, with Christ's institution of the Eucharist on the night before he suffered); he showed that the evidence of Scripture itself unmistakably points to this same conclusion--a position which would be denied by those scholars who think the Eucharist was merely a cultic development in the early Church.

Modern scriptural studies, alas, have fallen upon confused and confusing times. It is now possible to find serious scholars who study Scripture and reach the conclusion that Christ did not institute the Eucharist, in spite of what the Gospels plainly say. Similarly, many serious scholars would not be prepared to affirm the Church's understanding of Christ's sacrifice on the cross as, among other things, an exact fulfillment of the prophecy contained in Isaiah 53. On the contrary, modern scriptural scholarship, particularly as it has been influenced by the the historico-critical method, has so thoroughly broken up the study of the ancient texts, so completely divorced the study of the various books of the Bible from each other, and so totally separated the study of the Old Testament from that of the New, and so absolutely separated the study of Scripture generally from the faith of the Church--that specialized scholars now quite often express profound skepticism concerning what the Church has handed down and believers have affirmed for centuries.

For example, many of the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar, which have received such heavy play in the media in the past few years, deny that Jesus ever made this or that statement in the Gospels--or even that he taught the Our Father to his disciples. The average person might be tempted to ask, "How do they know this?" But the average person is not a scholar, and the assumption persists that scholars and scientists are supposed to know such things. So the typical fragmented, skeptical approach of scholars like the ones who participate in the Jesus Seminar tends to acquire at least some credibility in the public mind, precisely because it is assumed to be "scholarly" or "scientific." This kind of critical approach has dominated the study of Scripture virtually since the 18th-century Enlightenment.

Given the a priori assumptions of this critical type of modern scholarship, one is sometimes tempted to wonder why such an enormous amount of effort and ingenuity is invested in the study of the Bible at all. Why spend so much time on the Scriptures, if the end result is only to call into question the historical claims of Jesus and of the Church, and hence of the Bible itself? Why bother poring over the Gospels--the accounts of the life of Christ--if Jesus was nothing more than a "Mediterranean peasant," a "marginal Jew," or an itinerant Cynic philosopher?

Traditionally, both Jesus and the New Testament which records his doings and sayings have been of interest to humanity primarily because Jesus was believed to be the Son of God who came into this world, gathered his disciples around him and taught them in order to form a Church which would perpetuate his words and his works in the world, and then voluntarily endured the sufferings of the cross for the sake of the sanctification and salvation of all men.

But if it cannot be shown that Jesus was who he said he was, or that he really did and said what the Gospels say he did and said, then what importance does he have? It is surely not much of an exaggeration to state that this is exactly the point at which a certain type of modern scriptural studies has landed many of its practitioners.

Farmer, however, is one of those scholars who has declined to be distracted from recognizing the true significance of Jesus Christ for humanity and for history. Nevertheless, since he is himself a scholar who has mastered his discipline, he is obliged to make his points in accordance with what is recognized today as acceptable scholarly criteria. With regard to the main thrust of a remarkable lecture which he delivered in New York early in November--the relationship of Isaiah 53's Suffering Servant prophecy with Christ's institution of the Eucharist and sacrifice on the cross, there are, of course, Gospel accounts which describe this relationship, particularly the accounts in Matthew 26 and Mark 14 on Christ's institution of the Lord's Supper.

Given the current state of biblical scholarship, it is impossible simply to refer to these Gospel accounts and make the necessary connections: too many questions have been raised concerning the authorship and authenticity of these Gospels themselves. Farmer explained the problem in his lecture:

Farmer's solution to this problem was to turn to sources whose authorship modern scholars do not doubt: some of the Letters of St. Paul. In Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians (15:3), the apostle recorded that "I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." Earlier in the same epistle (I Cor 11:23-26), Paul had included an account of the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus which, as Farmer pointed out in his lecture, was "remarkably congruent with the essential features of the nearly identical accounts preserved in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark."

Farmer also laid great importance on the first two chapters of Paul's Letter to the Galatians, where the apostle recorded the fact that he had "spent fifteen days visiting Peter in Jerusalem three years and some months after his conversion" (Gal 1:18).

Thus it was from Peter and the other apostles that Paul "received" what he said he "passed on" to the Corinthians; any mistakes or misapprehensions concerning his mission would have to have been cleared up for him by the eyewitnesses who had been apostles before him and with whom he expressly consulted. In a brilliant and subtle line of argumentation, including details and solutions to problems too numerous to summarize here, Professor Farmer then went on in his lecture to establish the credibility of the Gospel accounts--written by supposedly "unknown" authors--by showing their congruence with the account written by a "known" New Testament author, St. Paul. Then, going still further, he established that the "Scripture...according to" which Christ died was indeed nothing else but the chapter on the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53. His procedure throughout was to demonstrate, on the basis of things accepted by modern scholars, some of the things that they commonly doubt today.

For the Christian believer, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the whole exercise was that Farmer was obliged to undertake it. As he himself observed in his lecture: "Some exegetes appear to have little idea about how their work affects Christian doctrine." However, for an exegete who does accept and believe the authentic doctrines handed down in and by the Church, it is important to make one's case and lay things out in a way which cannot easily be undermined by the typical corrosive acids of today's "impartial" or "scientific" scriptural scholarship. It was particularly important in the present case to be able to show that the phrase "Do this in memory of me" indeed originated with Jesus himself and was not just a later cultic development in the Church, as some scholars claim.

In the present scholarly environment, all Catholics are indebted to those believing scholars who have also achieved mastery in their fields and can thus vindicate Church doctrine in accordance with today's accepted criteria in the scholarly disciplines.

Farmer was invited to deliver this particular address as the First Annual Lucille Choquette Memorial Lecture in New York City on November 8, 1997. This new lecture series was established by Msgr. Michael J. Wrenn in honor of a faithful parishioner who left a bequest to his church, St. John the Evangelist's on New York's upper East Side. Introducing this first of the lectures on the topic selected of modern biblical studies, Msgr. Wrenn emphasized that scholarly hypotheses should not be taught as certitudes. He also quoted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger about how an all-too-typical kind of modern biblical scholarship today has resulted in what the German cardinal called "the dissolution of the biblical witness about Jesus into a variety of fabricated personae." This unfortunate approach in turn, according to the German cardinal, has resulted in a "frightfully impoverished image of Jesus rendering a living relationship to his figure almost impossible."

Farmer was invited to give a different and more positive yet undeniably scholarly account of what Scripture actually does contain, because he belongs to a school of modern biblical scholarship which has a more constructive view--and which, happily, is increasing in importance. This is the school which accepts what is called the Two-Gospel Hypothesis regarding the authorship of the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

This school of thought in biblical studies holds (as the Church held for many centuries) that the Gospel of Matthew was the first Gospel written. The Gospel of Luke was written second, according to this theory, and used Matthew as a source, although not as an exclusive source; Luke had other sources as well. The Gospel of Mark was written third, in the opinion of this school, and is largely an abridgment of both Matthew and Luke. Mark was then addressing himself primarily to the growing communities of Gentile Christians for whom some of the issues that were alive for the original Jerusalem community, and were expressed in Matthew and Luke, had apparently become less pressing.

This Two-Gospel hypothesis, of course, goes entirely contrary to the majority view in the field of biblical scholarship today. The majority of biblical scholars today favor a theory called the Two-Sources hypothesis. According to this theory, the first Gospel written was Mark's--a theory for which the principal evidence lies in the facts that Mark's account is the shortest and simplest. Both Matthew and Luke are supposedly based on Mark--and on another, wholly hypothetical source which scholars have designated as "Q" (from the German Quelle, "source").

Nobody has ever seen "Q," if such a document ever existed. If it ever did exist, it has now disappeared, and no copies of it have survived anywhere. Nevertheless, proponents of the "Q" theory hold that such a document can be reconstructed by combining the elements in Matthew and Luke which are not found in Mark.

This Two-Source hypothesis, which originated in Germany in the last century, has always been fraught with many difficulties, not least the fact that just because the elements in Matthew and Luke can be compiled into a single document does not at all mean that they ever were so combined. There is the also not inconsiderable difficulty that not only has no copy of "Q" ever been located; such a document was never so much as mentioned in antiquity.

Notwithstanding these and many other difficulties, the Two-Source hypothesis nevertheless remains the preferred view held by a majority of trained biblical scholars today. It came into prominence and won scholarly acceptance in Germany at the same time that the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was conducting his original Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church; and, as Farmer has written, it became established, at least in part, because it claimed priority for a different Gospel than the one which so inconveniently recorded the words of Jesus addressed to Peter at Caesarea Philippi (Mt 16:18): "Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church."

In spite of these dubious origins, this Two-Source theory apparently remains the preferred theory among the majority of Catholic biblical scholars as well; certainly this is true in the English-speaking world today. It was the accepted view in the scholarly field, after all, when large numbers of Catholics started to enter the academic discipline of modern biblical studies just before and during Vatican Council II. Most of these new initiates quite naturally imbibed the theories that were popular among their first professors; they continue to hold to it today and to pass it on to their students. (Those familiar with the new catechesis, for example, know that the "experts" today are usually more zealous to get across to children the view that Mark's was the first Gospel than they are to proclaim the kerygma that "Jesus is Lord!")

Nevertheless, however popular the Two-Source theory may be among scriptural scholars today, it does not command unanimous support. The rival Two-Gospel Hypothesis also counts a number of articulate and knowledgeable scholars among its adherents. One of them is the same William Farmer, who has written an elegant recent book, The Gospel of Jesus: The Pastoral Relevance of the Synoptic Problem , in which he covers a number of the most important arguments, sustaining both sides of the debate.

As the subtitle indicates, Farmer's book is concerned especially with the pastoral consequences of adhering to the theory of the priority of Mark, for he demonstrates how this theory almost inevitably downgrades the importance and authenticity of orthodox doctrine. When one realizes that the majority of Catholic exegetes today do, in fact, adhere to this theory--that indeed it is nearly everywhere taught as an established certainty--one can readily understand the importance of summarizing the consequences that theory implies for the faith. Inhis book Farmer explains that adherence to the Two-Source Theory of Mark and "Q" supports the position of people who:

In the face of so many negative consequences for the faith and for authentic Catholic doctrine, it is not reassuring that the viewpoint which affirms the priority of Mark and the alleged existance of "Q" still represents the majority view among scriptural scholars, including Catholic scriptural scholars. To be sure, Farmer notes that not every adherent of the Two-Source Hypothesis necessarily accepts all of the above "pragmatic benefits" of buying into this particular theory. Nevertheless, the potential for harm to the faith and to authentic Catholic doctrine and practice is surely worthy of concern.

Kenneth D. Whitehead, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, writes regularly for a number of publications, especially on subjects of current Catholic interest.