Book Review: From Jesus to Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco, 2004)

English-speaking New Testament scholars perhaps belong to one of three categories: Fundamentalist/Conservative; ‘Mainstream’; and ‘Liberal/Radical’.

One way an amateur can test a scholar’s presuppositions is in terms of their treatment of so-called/alleged discrepancies within or between NT documents.

Conservatives try to reconcile/’explain’ them, to avoid the cognitive dissonance of believing that Divinely-inspired material can be in error. (‘There are various explanations offered by the experts to explain this apparent discrepancy’).

Mainstream scholars usually put discrepant accounts side by side, weigh up alternative possibilities or explanations, and let the reader do what they will with them. (‘These are difficult to reconcile’…)

Liberal/radical scholars often go a step further and not-too-subtly deny the integrity of the text and/or its Divine inspiration (‘Both can’t be right’)

to the shock/horror of ordinary folks whose faith is bound up with what they’re ‘liable to read in the Bible’.

L. Michael White’s new 500-page book ‘From Jesus to Christianity’ belongs squarely in the mainstream. How can you tell? One way is to look at his citations and recommended reading lists. He suggests we study conservatives like F. F. Bruce, Gordon Fee, I. H. Marshall, R.P. Martin and authors of the Word Biblical Commentaries, but he especially recommends scholars who, like himself, write articles for the respected Anchor Bible Dictionary (Raymond Brown, J. T. Fitzgerald, H. L. Hendrix, et al), and/or have been ‘household names’ for decades in the world of biblical scholarship (J.N.D. Kelly, J.D.G. Dunn, C. K. Barrett, Ernst Kasemann, W.G. Kummell et al). He cites the Jesus Seminar scholars and Marcus Borg only once or twice, and popular radical authors like Bishop Jack Spong and Barbara Thiering not at all, so far as I can tell.

L. Michael White occupies the chair of Classics and Christian Origins at the University of Texas. In this highly-readable book he examines the documents – canonical and non-canonical – which help us understand the provenance of ‘the Jesus movement’. White takes a historical approach, looking at these diverse writings in the sequence in which they were probably written, to discover what we can know of Jesus and the various groups of his followers. In the process he summarizes the debates about Jesus’ humanity and divinity, the role of women in the early churches, the diversity of beliefs between different Christian communities, Gnostic influences, midrash, and the process of determining the ‘canon’: why certain books were included in the NT and others were eventually excluded.

Briefly: ‘The Christian Church did not simply erupt onto the scene as a fully developed and separate religious institution at a single moment fifty days after the death of Jesus. It was still a Jewish sect’ (p. 142). White (with all mainstream scholars) believes that ‘the way each Gospel tells its story of Jesus [reflects] influences and concerns that come from the time of the author and audience rather than from the days of Jesus himself’ (p. 3). He is not sympathetic to the post-Enlightenment scientific skepticism questioning the reality of the miracles: ‘In more recent scholarship, it has been recognized that magic and miracles were much more commonly accepted in the ancient world’ (p.104). On the issue of the ‘Synoptic Problem’ (the fact that Matthew, Mark and Luke have so much material in common – including verses with identical wording) White has an excellent summary of the various theories, without endorsing any of them totally. I sense he feels the jury is still out on the influence of a ‘Q’ source behind the Synoptic Gospels.

Some of the interesting trends in early Christianity (at least to me)

include the growing degree of formalization in liturgical matters and church offices reflected for example in the Didache and Letters of Ignatius. (The well-known sociological phrase for this is ‘the routinization of charisma’). Ignatius famously refers to the Eucharist as ‘the medicine of immortality’, and asserts that the presence of the Bishop is essential for the valid constitution of a Christian assembly: the church is to be “as closely tied to the bishop as the strings to a harp.”

And then there were some weird methods of exegeting passages in the Hebrew Scriptures by the church fathers. Like the epistle of Barnabas’ ‘perfect gnosis code’ for discovering a prefiguring of the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ in Abraham’s circumcision of 318 – important number for Barnabas! – household servants. Or Justin Martyr’s quoting of (a variant translation of) Psalm 96:10 – ‘The Lord reigns from the wood’ as meaning ‘The Lord reigns from the cross!’. (Interesting that the Epistle of Barnabas and 1 Clement were considered scripture even in orthodox circles down to the fifth century).

And it’s puzzling that Ignatius of Antioch showed little awareness of contemporary writings which eventually became part of the NT canon (he didn’t quote texts from other ‘authorities’ partly because he claimed to have divine inspiration himself).

And then there were some very interesting people in post-apostolic ‘Jesus Movement’. I wonder if anyone has written a psychological profile of Marcion, who labelled as ‘heretic’ any Christian who read the Septuagint! He was a specialist in what someone has called ‘othering language’. Highly intelligent and gifted ‘losers’ are always colorful characters!

And now, a quiz for you on topics highlighted by White (his answers at the bottom):

1. True/false: ‘Proper Hebrew, the language of most of the Jewish Scriptures was largely unknown and certainly unspoken, except by a very few in Jesus’ day.’

2. True/false: ‘Jesus did not appear as the founder of a new religion, and what we now know as Christianity did not exist for perhaps two generations after his death.’

3. True/false: ‘Writing in the name of another person from a past time is often called “pseudepigraphy”. It was quite common in antiquity, but was not considered a form of forgery or deception.’

4. True/false: ‘Prior to 70 C.E. the Sanhedrin was, in effect, the city council of Jerusalem; it had judicial as well as legislative authority, but was not a “religious”governing body per se… It is not clear that its authority extended much, if at all, beyond the city of Jerusalem.’

5. True/false: ‘It is not likely that the Sadducees constituted a religious sect or even a political party as such.’

6. The Dead Sea Scrolls include copies of fragments of each of the books of the Hebrew Bible except one. Which is that?

7. True/false: ‘There is no evidence of any connection between Jesus and John the Baptist with the Essenes, other than a sharing of the broad streams of Jewish apocalyptic thought.’

8. True/false: ‘That Jesus was a real figure of first-century Judean history is no longer much questioned.’

9. Which of the four gospels suggest that the duration of Jesus’ ministry is more than two years?

10. True/false: ‘Paul never mentions Jesus’ miracles’.

11. Do any of the four Gospels have no exorcisms practised by Jesus?

12. True/false: ‘The Gospel authors were far more interested in the theological significance of a story than in historical accuracy… They tell us more about the development of the early Jesus movement than about Jesus himself.’

13. With just about all NT scholars, White believes the earliest writings in the NT are the genuine letters of Paul. Now… which are these ‘genuine letters’, do you think?

14. True/false: ‘Paul was the “first Christian”.’

15. True/false: ‘Baptism [in the early churches] was performed in the nude.’

16. Which is the only letter of Paul addressed to an individual?

17. True/false: ‘Half a million Jews were ‘casualties’ in the 70CE destruction of Jerusalem.’

18. True/false: ‘Luke-Acts was probably written in the mid-second century.’

19. True/false: ‘In the early centuries the book of Revelation was quite controversial and not uniformly considered Scripture. It was not received into the Western canon until 393-4 CE.’

20. Who wrote Hebrews?

21. True/false: ‘The earliest discovered “complete Christian Bible” actually dated to the early church included two letters of Clement. An earlier Alexandrian Christian list included 1-2 Clement, the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, and sometimes the Shepherd of Hermas as inspired Scriptures.’

22. True/false: ‘There was no single Bible “book” containing Old and New Testaments until about 400 CE.

As I said earlier, White confronts the discrepancies, but generally leaves us to decide what to do with them. These include, for example, the timing of events like the cleansing of the temple (John puts this event at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the others at the end); the details and timing of the cursing of the fig-tree; the Last Supper (in the Synoptics, it is the first seder of Passover, in John it occurs ‘before Passover’).

A small point: I found quite irritating White’s use throughout of “Jesus’s” rather than the more common “Jesus'”. (And “Ephesus’s” – try saying that quickly ten times!).

But remember this is a textbook, so non-academic folks won’t find too much ‘inspiration’ or ‘soul-food’ here. But for serious students of Christianity, I’d give it a must-read grading.

White’s answers to the quiz-questions: 1. True. 2. True. 3. True. 4. True. 5. True. 6. Esther. 7. True. 8. True. 9. Only John’s. 10. True. 11. Yes – John’s. 12. True. 13. White’s list: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon. 14. False: Paul never uses the term “Christian”. 15. True. 16. Philemon. 17. False. According to Josephus there were 1.1 million casualties, and 97,000 Jews were taken prisoner. 18. False. White believes 80-90 is more likely. 19. True. 20. ‘The earliest manuscripts of Hebrews place it among the letters of Paul. Origen [was more cautious]: “As to who wrote it, God alone knows”.’ 21. True (p.328). 22. True.

(Rev. Dr.) Rowland Croucher

January 2005.