The Gospels: Literality, Reliability, and Myth

Ok... so this was written in response to a blog. I thought I would recycle it in my blog, because it holds many kernals of thoughts I'm trying to work through right now concerning the scriptures and understanding what, perhaps, we can learn from Art and Myth when thinking about the scriptures. And know this, that I don't pretend to have answers here, these are just things I'm trying to think through and seek the truth about. I post these things here on my blog so that other people can help me think through these things--so I really appreciate your comments. So... here goes:

New Testament Book Copies and Original Manuscripts

Regarding point #2 "Several hundred years separate the original from the earliest Gospel manuscript we have", this is, to my knowledge, a factual error. There have been discovered several manuscript excerpts from various books of the New Testament that have been discovered and dated within 200 years of their assumed date of authorship, the earliest of which is the John Rylands Fragment (John 18:31-33,37-38) dated 125 A.D. (within a century of the death of Jesus). When compared to discovered copies other ancient writings, the narrow span of 100 years between archetype and ectype is staggering. In Plato (427-347 B.C), the span is 1200 years. Ceasar (100-44 B.C.)? 1000 years. Homer's Illiad (100-44 B.C.) does a little better at 500 years. (For a more detailed comparison see this page on carm.org).

Thus, rather than the span from original to copy being a discouraging thing to faith in the reliability of the Gospels containing the accurate words of Christ, I find it rather encouraging for the authenticity of the New Testament manuscripts. Indeed, there are differences among manuscripts, especially in the NT, however the Old Testament manuscripts have an extremely surprising uniformity. But even in the NT, the vast, vast majority of discrepancies are theologically impotent.

But still, you pose good questions that demand examination.

"Does absolute, infallible transmission of manuscripts really matter?"

I think not. First of all, as you point out rightly, we are in trouble if it is vital to faith because there are, unarguably, discrepancies between manuscripts. But second of all, I think that the imperfection of the scriptures really fits quite well when considering Christianity from a theological perspective.

If we did have all of the original manuscripts of all the books of the Bible, held perfectly in tact with every "jot and tittle," we would be in grave danger of idolatry. It would be even more of a heinous situation if Jesus himself wrote a book preserved in such a way. It would be such a thing, I imagine, that wars would literally be fought over in order to possess. The focus would be so transfixed on this tangible relic of Christ and Christianity that the true nature and purpose of Christianity--community of love and faith--would be overshadowed. The incongruence of the scriptures, then, ideally spurs the Christian to embrace the other important aspects of Christianity such as the community of faith (the Church) and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus: the bridge between Jew and Pagan

I am very heavily affected theologically by C.S. Lewis and his Oxford friends (a.k.a. "The Inklings"--Tolkien, Barfield, Williams, etc.), and so I'm certain what follows will be very biased by that fact.

Consider that Christ is the one who unified Jew and Greek. The religion of the Jews was one of letters, tightly sewn to what had been written in the Law, the Torah and the Prophets. It was a very moralistic religion, a religion primarily consisting of regulations that were to be followed. Although the Jews were certainly not without their stories, the "real" importance (especially around the first century) was on "keeping the Law." Things were very "crystal", clear-cut, and definite.

But then there were the Pagans (i.e., essentially, the non-Jew). Most other religions at that place and time (to my knowledge) placed the emphasis much more heavily on stories--e.g., the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman god-myths. Not that these religions were without their own "rules" (indeed, sacrifice was a major element), but there was not the same kind of extreme emphasis placed on a "God-given, written Law" that was written and studied and followed to the letter.

Enter Jesus--the "Word become Flesh". Rather than writing more rules to be followed, he spoke of morality in parables, stories, thinking it best to that others to pass his words along rather than writing them down himself (a much less "definite" way of doing things). The words of Jesus, these parables (connected to the word "Parabola"), were more ambiguous, slippery, not the kind of crystal, clear-cut laws the Jews received in the Torah. So in this respect, it seems as though he has one foot in the Pagan world (ambiguity), and one in the Jewish world (morality), thus bringing them together.

Yet, Jesus himself was not ambiguous--he was flesh, tangible, factual. Lewis referred to the life of Jesus as "Myth become Fact". Here we see in Jesus a tangible story, a literal consummation of what had been foreshadowed in all prior myths of dying and rising gods. So in this respect, Jesus again has his foot in both the Pagan world (story) and the Jewish world (literality).
The writings of the Christian NT then, having feet in both Pagan and Jewish worlds, would seem to logically have --in contrast to the great pains taken for accurate transmission in the OT--much less emphasis on "exactness" in the transmission. Not that accuracy isn't important, but it is not all-important to Christianity. You see, I think that if everything concerning the historicity of Jesus was absolutely crystal-clear and undebatable, where would the Myth go?

Myth and Fact

In common language, we use the words "Myth" and "Truth" as antonyms, completely unrelated to each other. But is this really the case? People such as Lewis and Tolkien beg to differ. First of all, Myth and Art (I use this term in the broad sense of the arts in general) reveals Truth about life. Just as the very best Art is tied to reality, so Myth is tied to reality. Myth helps us to understand reality with our imagination (which Lewis calls "the organ of meaning").

But also, there is something, they say, that happens in Myth as in the Arts such as story, poetry, etc.: Truth is experienced. There is a kind of "slipperiness" to Myth and much good art, and this "slipperiness" places it just beyond our reach, just outside of the kind of tangibility that breeds manipulation, and this seems to be integral to the experience of Truth. This, I think, is why it was so important for Jesus to ascend and the Holy Spirit to descend. Note that the Spirit is a very ambiguous kind of thing—unseen, almost chaotic. Both Greek and Hebrew words for "spirit" (Greek pneuma, and Hebrew ruach) both also mean "wind." The nature of wind is very "slippery." "The wind blows where it pleases." It is almost chaotic, refusing to be ordered. You cannot hold wind in your hands. It is tangible and yet, in a way, intangible. In The Pilgrim's Regress, Lewis talks about a "Dialectic of desire" that served for him as a kind of empirical, experiential, ontological proof of God's existence, and this dialectic was brought about by an experience he called—among various names—Sehnsucht (a German word for "the desire for something that is out of your reach"). His experience of truth was integral to its being out of his reach—and this the thing that spurred him from atheism to a belief in the transcendental Other (which he later realized was the God of Christianity). Buechner speaks of something very similar in Telling the Truth: Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairytale.

The sort of paradox we get in Christianity presented to us in the 21st century is that the Gospel is both historical and mythical, tangible and intangible. It is tangible in the sense that we do have some proof of its accuracy and reliability, but it is ultimately out of the reach of a kind of "scientific" fact that proves it absolutely, once and for all, without question. This paradox of tangible-intangibility helps us both to infer—based on the evidence we have—that it is true, as well as experience that truth through the slippery, mythical quality it has.

"Does [the fact that we don't have the exact words of Christ and his disciples] matter?"

Yes and no. It does matter that we can at least infer that the essence of what is recorded in the Gospels is historical. It does not matter that it is exact, because that unexactness, that slipperiness, is what gives it more of the quality of myth. Even the stories that we do not think were in the original manuscripts (such as the woman caught in adultery) are worthy of reading because it is essentially true to the Myth of Jesus.

"Does it bother you that we can never truly know what Jesus may have said and what was the creation of some later editor?"

No, because this adds to the mystery behind Christ which creates a sort of transcendental experience. It seems somewhat obvious that Christ did not intend for us to know his exact words. That is why he left it up to other people to pass it on. It is a more organic and, really, personal way to do it, really. It lets Man be partners with God in his work here on earth.

I guess this all presupposes that the scriptures were not written verbatim by God—whispering every single word to the NT writers as they penned their Gospels and books, but that is a WHOLE other discussion, and it is an ideal that, I think, most theologians do not hold today. I could be wrong.

I don't know… let me know your thoughts on this, and where I need to clarify what I'm thinking about.

Thanks!