THE ENGLISH BIBLE : III. ARE THE GOSPELS AUTHENTIC ?
By PROFESSOR C. H. DODD
BETWEEN the Crucifixion and the writing of our earliest Gospel lies an interval of some thirty-five years. During that time Christianity had transformed itself from a local, Aramaic-speaking Jewish sect to a widespread, Greek-speaking movement with an organisation, a cultus and the beginnings of a theology of its own. The Gospels are separated from the events which they record by a gap not only of years but of place, language, mental habit and outlook. How can that gap be bridged ?
The epistles of Paul, written in the fifteen years or so preceding our earliest Gospel, provide a first-hand picture of Greek-speaking Christianity in being. The Apostle, writing to deal with urgent problems of the moment, can be observed to recall his correspondents from time to time to certain fundamental data of the Christian religion which are presupposed as the basis alike of worship, Church life, theology and Christian ethics. These data are all directly related to Jesus Christ as an historical figure who lived, taught, died and rose again at a known point in the recent past. It is comparatively rarely that Paul has occasion to recall directly the facts about Jesus, or to cite His sayings explicitly. When he does so, he makes it clear that he is referring to a common tradition known and accepted both by his readers and throughout the Christian Church. He was in a position to know this tradition from its most authori- tative sources, for his acquaintance with James, the brother of Jesus, and Peter, His leading disciple, went back to within a few years of the Crucifixion. (See I Cor. vii. to, ix. 14, xi. 23, xv. I-11, Gal. i. 18-19.) It is clear that in many places where he does not explicitly cite the authority of the tradition, he is indirectly alluding to it, and from such occasional allusions it is possible to learn a good deal about the facts of the life and death of Jesus, His character, His teaching and His place in history, as represented in the common tradition.
In the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles there are several brief summaries of the preaching of the apostles. Comparison with the Pauline Epistles shows that we have here, in a more or less stereotyped form, an outline of the same common tradition to which Paul refers fragmentarily. Although the Acts cannot well be dated earlier than the eighties, the comparison justifies us in tracing this common tradition, in its broad lines, to the earliest period of the Christian Church.
When now we turn to the Gospels, we discover that the general framework of their narrative corresponds closely with the outline contained in the apostolic preaching in Acts. If we take, for example; the brief statement in Peter's address to Cornelius in the tenth chapter of Acts, we observe that it might serve as a general summary of the Gospel according to Mark. This general framework is preserved, with much expansion and modification in details, in all the other Gospels (even the Fourth, which is the latest). From this we conclude that our Gospels follow a general line of tradition which was already fixed in the earliest period to which we can work back.
As we should expect, from a consideration of the forms of tradition in Paul and the Acts, the principal place is given to the story of the sufferings, death and resurrection of Jesus. The proportion and emphasis of the narrative here reflect the interest of the Church, from the beginning, in these events, which formed the chief basis of the preaching of the Gospel and of the theology drawn from it. In view of this we might expect the narratives of the Passion to be permeated with the theological ideas which by the time our Gospels were written had come to be associated with them. But in the main the story, in all four forms, is strikingly, even surprisingly, un-theological and objective. It is probable that the Passion-story was handed down in a relatively fixed form from the earliest times, and has been preserved, with certain expansions but with little substantial change, by all four evangelists. Such an authoritative narrative was called for both by the needs of preaching (see Gal. iii. 1, I Cor. ii. 2) and by that " proclamation " of the death of the Lord which entered into the liturgy of the Eucharist (see I Cor. xi. 26).
With the rest of the Gospel narrative we are in a different position. It is no longer a continuous story, but a collection of episodes, and the variations between the several Gospels are greater. Criticism aims at determining the sources from which the material was drawn by evangelists who have edited it on lines of their own. It has come to be generally agreed that while Mark has served as a source for the other Gospels (including probably the Fourth), Matthew and Luke have both drawn also upon another source, no longer extant, which is commonly denominated by the symbol " Q." It is evident that special weight must be attached to Mark and " Q " as the earliest written sources. Since they belong to different areas (Mark western, " Q " eastern), and were composed for different purposes, and on different principles, any cross-correspondences between them will serve to characterise the common and central tradition from which both are derived. In point of fact, a careful study of such correspondences yields a definite and con- sistent picture of the ministry of Jesus in its main features, a picture which must clearly take us back to a very early period.
Behind the written sources lies oral tradition. By a study of the various " forms " or "patterns" in which the material reached our evangelists, the critic infers various strains of tradition, formulated and preserved by various interests in the life and thought of the early Church. Along each channel of tradition there were occasions for expansion and modification under the influence of these same interests. But here again it is possible to compare the various strains, and to observe cross-correspondences which point to certain common and central elements inseparable from any tradition about Jesus, and to distinguish this central tradition (not in exact detail, but in its main lines) from the peripheral elements.
Bringing together all our various sources of information, the epistles, the Acts, and the several documents and strata of the Gospels, we can draw the conclusion that this central tradition is also primitive, that is to say, that it represents not an imaginative construction out of the beliefs of the advancing Church, but that conception of " the Jesus of history " upon which the belief and life of the Church were formed from the first, and that it goes back to the memories of the original witnesses.
This primitive tradition was not a record of " bare facts." but of facts understood and valued in a certain way. For example, the whole tradition is controlled by the conviction that Jesus lived and died as " Messiah," and that He rose from the dead. It is because the facts were experienced in this setting and with this meaning that they entered into history as an effective cause of the rise of the Christian Church. So much the historian may affirm upon the evidence. The final step, that of affirming the objective reality of the facts so interpreted, is more akin to faith than to a scientific historical judgement. But it is fair to observe that the tradition does provide a sufficient cause for known consequences, while those who reject it can account for the Church only by speculations which admit of no disproof and carry no conviction.
The Gospels in their finished state are a crystallisation of this tradition under various influences in the developing Church. The Fourth Gospel presents the tradition through the medium of definite theological conceptions. Of the rest it may be said that while their precise historical value in detail varies in their various parts, their combined effect is substantially true to the intention of the primitive tradition. If history is the presentation of events in a setting which gives them meaning, the Gospels are authentically historical documents.
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