The Past of Jesus in the Gospels (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series)

The Past of Jesus in the Gospels (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series)

Eugene E. Lemcio

Language: English

Pages: 208

ISBN: 052101879X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The aim of this study is to show that the Evangelists, to an extent hitherto unrecognized, wrote narratives which set out to distinguish Jesus's time from their own. Such an effort, Professor Lemcio explains, went beyond their merely putting verbs in past tenses and dividing their accounts into pre- and post-resurrection periods. Rather, they took care that terminology appropriate to the Easter appearances did not appear beforehand, and that vocabulary used prior to Easter fell by the wayside afterwards. The author shows that words common to both eras bear a different nuance in each, and that the idiom used is seen to suit the time. These are not routine or incidental expressions, but reveal what Jesus the protaganist and the Evangelists as narrators believed about the Gospel, the Christ, the messianic task, and the nature of salvation. This much becomes apparent from a study of the internal evidence, and by next turning to data outside the Gospels, the author attempts to show how biographical and historical writings of the ancient world may prove useful in separate efforts to reconstruct the course of Jesus's life. Lemcio shows how expectations for idiomatic and linguistic verisimilitude in Graeco-Roman historical and biographical writing were met and often exceeded by the Evangelists. His study thus makes a valuable contribution towards our understanding of the literary art of the Gospel narratives, and highlights a literary sensitivity on their writers' part which has failed to receive the critical attention it deserves.

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two extremes, and no historical judgment is possible based on stylistic criteria alone.67 What then should be made of these observations regarding the gospels' differences from the kerygma and their similarities to certain kinds of hellenistic biography? What does one gain from the fact that expressions of * "faith" were not projected back onto the narrative in a thoroughgoing manner and that Greco-Roman ideals for verisimilitude were met? First, the study above (and hereafter) tends to support

similar features occur elsewhere dominating large sections of text or controlling pivotal pericopae, then they provide strong clues about the nature and extent of the writer's editorial activity. Where these are absent or contrary, then one may suspect either an alternative Christian point of view (as redaction critics would be inclined to think) or an effort to relate the word and deed in a manner dictated by the desire to preserve the tradition accurately or to represent the situation

others what Jesus had done with them. The disciples' mission as in the other synoptics previously had been cast solely in Matthew 52 terms of exorcism and healing, proclaiming Jesus' message of the kingdom (10:1, 7—8//3:13 -15//9:1 -2), and bearing Spirit-inspired witness before hostile officials (vv. 18—20//13:9-11//12:11 —12). However, this injunction is unique to all of the gospels. In Luke 24:47, the risen Jesus commissions the disciples to preach (Kr|pi3ooew) repentance and forgiveness

about status must be made again, it is in the wake Matthew 70 of the mother of the (unnamed) Zebedee brothers' request that they be Jesus' right- and left-hand men (20:20-21). Scholars often cite this as yet another of Matthew's efforts to lessen the sting. Perhaps so; but Jesus' rebuke of such boldness is directed to the brothers as well (v.24//Mark 10:41). Matthew, unlike Mark, relates the disciples' amazement over the fig tree's withering. Both relate Jesus' insistence on the need for

(London, SCM, 1967), pp. 56-59. 8 Such would be the response of those who produced the series Gospel Perspectives (Sheffield, JSOT), ed. R. T. France and D. Wenham, vols.I-III (1980-83) and C. Blomberg and D. Wenham, vol. VI (1986). The arguments are marshaled comprehensively in C. Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL, IVP, 1987). Two pioneer works, whose conclusions have yet to be fully appreciated, are T. W. Manson's The Teaching of Jesus (Cambridge,

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