S5E4 - Pre-Pauline Tradition

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S5E4 - Pre-Pauline Tradition

November 16, 2020

What traditions and sources do we have for our faith from before the penning of the Gospels? In this episode, we discuss the early Christian community and some of the sources they provided.

Mike Licona is associate professor of theology at Houston Baptist University. HBU offers a fully accredited Master of Arts degree in Christian Apologetics that can be completed entirely online or on the HBU campus in Houston. For more information, visit https://bit.ly/2Wlej6Z.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Risen Jesus Podcast with Dr. Mike Lacona. Dr. Lacona is Associate Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University and he is a frequent speaker on campuses, churches, retreats and has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs. Mike is the President of Risen Jesus, a nonprofit organization.

My name is Kurt Charris, your first on today's episode we're looking at the pre-palline tradition. It's an interesting concept. Sometimes when we think about the Bible and reading the New Testament, we're just reading what was written down.

But what's interesting is as you pay careful close attention to the written words, they give hints and clues about content that existed before the pen even hit the parchment. And so it's really interesting to analyze the existing or pre-existing material out there and we're going to be going through a number of these sources on today's program. Mike, first up we're talking about Q, the concept of Q. And I know we talked about Q on season two of the podcast where we talked about the synoptic problem.

But why don't you refresh us about what Q is? Sure. Thanks, Kurt. So scholars start with Mark and Priority.

They first say, well, which gospel was written first? Some say Matthew, but by far most scholars say Mark was written first. So they call that Mark and Priority. And there's good reasons for thinking that Mark was written first.

So then you look at the traditions as we find them in the gospels and you see a lot between Matthew, Mark and Luke that is verbatim. And you say, well, why is that? Well, is it because they all had this great memory and could remember things that verbatim? Well, probably not because they're writing a few decades later. Are they using oral tradition? Yeah, probably.

They're doing that in some cases. But most scholars think that a lot of the near verbatim similarities, verbal similarities between Matthew, Mark and Luke is due to a literary dependence. And because they think Mark was written first, then it would be what what is the nature of this? What's the relationship of this literary dependence? And most scholars today think that Matthew and Luke used Mark as their primary source and supplemented him.

He said, well, just why can't it just be that, you know, they just had these good memories? Well, then you just think about this for a moment and just imagine you being in a restaurant with some friends and you're having lunch. And at the table next to you, there's a couple and they're arguing. And you hear the argument become more intense and they get louder in yelling at one another.

And finally, they're standing up and yelling at one another. And the woman takes a wine bottle on the the table, picks it up and slaps the guy in the face, breaks the bottle over his cheek and puts a big gash in his cheek. And just then the police come in and they arrest the woman and the paramedics attend to the guys wound.

One of the police officers comes over and asks all of you at the table, let's just say there are five of you. And they say, Hey, you heard everything, you saw everything? Yeah. All right, could you write everything down? I don't want you consulting with one another.

Write everything down as you recall it. Now, this is just within five, 10 minutes of it occurring. So your memory should be really good ability to recall at that point better than ever.

So you're writing these things down and you're not supposed to consult with one another. Of course, think about how similar your stories are going to be. And maybe there's going to be some quotes of what one person said to another, especially if it's a very succinct statement like I hate you, or whatever, you cheated on me or something like that, you're going to remember that statement.

But anything like a whole conversation, if you look at it, there's going to be some different ways of rendering it because your recollections are going to be different. And if they were all the same, the police officer picks it up, and sees that they're all the same, well, that's going to hint that there was some collusion involved. But let's go ahead and say that you all wrote it down and you all wrote it down separately.

And there's one more thing in here. And that is that they were speaking in Spanish. And fortunately, all of you are fluent in Spanish.

But anyone who's even familiar with the Spanish or any language knows that translation is as much art as it is a science. So because there's different syntax grammar within each language, and sometimes the words don't exactly line up. And if you translate it one day, you may use one term, but you'll use a synonym on the next day.

So you see the things are similar there with the English, but now the cop asks you to translate the Spanish into English. Now, what if there was verbatim agreement on the English translation of the Spanish? Well, then you would know there would definitely know there was some collusion involved. What we have to recognize is that with the New Testament, most of Jesus's teachings were in Aramaic.

We are reading them in Greek, translated. And so when you see these verbal similarities, there's some kind of a dependence. Now, is it oral tradition? Or is there a literary dependence here? And most think that there's well, there's both, but a lot being literary.

Just give you one example. In Jesus's Olivet Discourse, after Palm Sunday, he's talking about when the end is coming. And they ask him later on, once he's predicted the destruction of the temple, one of these things going to be in Jesus tells them.

And then he says, and when you see the armies surrounding Jerusalem, let the reader understand, flee to the mountains. Okay, that's how you have it in Mark. Matthew, it's pretty much the same.

When the armies surround Jerusalem, let the reader understand, flee to the mountains. The, that parenthetical statement, let the reader understand, is inserted in the same exact spot. And it's an awkward spot.

So that would suggest that there's some sort and it's the reader, let the reader understand. So that would seem to suggest that there's some sort of a literary dependence. So you have what's called the synoptic problem, the synoptic puzzle.

It's not really a problem. It's a puzzle that scholars try to figure out. What is the literary dependence? And most think Matthew and Luke are using Mark as a primary source and they supplement it.

Now here's the thing where Q comes in. There's about 235 verses shared by Matthew and Luke that are absent from Mark. So of course, they didn't get it from Mark.

So either Luke is using Matthew as a source, or Matthew is using Luke as a source, or Matthew and Luke are using a common source, which we no longer have. Most scholars today think that that's it, that they're using a common source, that we no longer have. Well, what do you call that source? Well, in 1863, there was a guy named H.J. Holzman, and he introduced the idea that they were using the common source.

And so in Holzman's German, and so the German word for source is quella. So you just abbreviate that and you call it Q. So that's all Q is. It's a hypothetical source that's shared by Matthew and Luke for some of their material.

Is there any, I mean, everything you said here is kind of an internal argument, like if we just looked only at the gospels. Outside of the Bible, is there any possible evidence for a Q source? No, actually there isn't. We don't have any manuscripts, nothing like that.

And you say, well, you know, well, that should do away with Q. No, not exactly. I mean, you've got first Corinthians 15, which we'll be talking about in a little bit, verses three through five, probably three through seven. That is an oral formula.

Same thing with Romans one, verses three and four. Same thing with Hebrews chapter, I'm sorry, first Corinthians chapter 11, where you have Eucharist saints here. These are oral traditions, formulas that have been passed down.

We don't have those in written format, but it's pretty obvious that these come in, that these existed prior to Paul's letters. Here's something else about the Q material. It's all saints' literature that's called La Gia teachings, saints.

And remember that word, La Gia, Ta La Gia. So, saints are teachings. So you have all these saints or teachings of Jesus, lots of them that makes the Q material.

And with only three exceptions, where you have some minor narrative involved, none of them involved narrative. So it's, it's when you look at the Q material and it's all saints material, that would even seem to suggest that that comes from another source. Now, is this why maybe Q intriguing as a subject matter as it is for your project here in the book you give this Q source rating of unlikely.

And is that because it contains so little narrative? No, it's because the Q material does not include anything about Jesus's death or resurrection. So it's just his teachings. So some have said there have been some who have posited that like Burton Mac, he has posited that there was this Q community that denied that Jesus rose from the dead.

I mean, yeah, it's crazy. But, but you know, you'd look at of, you know, you'd have to ask, well, did the same Q community reject the death of Jesus? Nobody rejects Jesus death by crucifixion, you know? No ancient source seems to do that. Why would you think the Q source did that? And then, and then we don't know everything about Q. Q is the same's literature, the teachings of Jesus.

So, you know, some like Davies and Allison have said it's quite plausible. So does Craig Keener, Darrell Bock and others have said it that with the Q material, Papius, when he talks about Matthew writing, he doesn't say Matthew wrote a gospel, he says, Matthew wrote the Talagia, the sayings, the teachings in the Hebrew dialect, or probably referring to Aramaic. And so it could very well be the case.

It's very plausible. Nothing at all implausible about it or improbable that Matthew took notes of Jesus' teachings, even while Jesus was still alive. And he took notes of what Jesus wrote.

He took them in Aramaic. Later on, these were translated into Greek, perhaps expanded. That's where we get some of the narrative.

And that's what Papius was referring to and why some thought Matthew wrote first because the Talagia, the Q source material was written before Mark. Mark just didn't use it. Matthew later had a secretary use Mark as the primary source, supplement it with the Q material and some what's called M or special M material.

That's additional eyewitness testimony source material for Matthew. That's entirely plausible. Some though, I think they reject Q and there are some very notable scholars who reject Q. You've got Mark Goodacre, you've got Nick Perrin, NT Wright, seriously questions whether Q existed.

Richard Bockum doesn't think Q existed. Bockum thinks that Matthew used Luke. All the others like Perrin and Goodacre would say that Luke used Matthew.

I don't know where Wright stands on that. Yeah, that's intriguing. If Luke wrote before Matthew and Luke says there are sources, it's got to be more than Mark.

Yeah, it's got to be more than Mark then. So that Luke is using. So that's why I tend to think that Mark, Matthew, and then Luke in terms of chronology at any rate though.

Okay, so let's get back here. So, you know, Q, there's a lot of odd theories out there by scholars about what the Q community believed. But as it pertains to your project here, Q doesn't really give us anything we can work with.

It's a historical source, but it's not a historical source pertaining to the death and resurrection of Jesus. That's right. It's not useful.

And we can say this, you know, for an answer to Mack and those who would say that they didn't mention, they didn't believe the resurrection. You know, it could be, of course, because it hadn't occurred. It's Matthew's notes of Jesus teaching during his lifetime.

Interesting. And look, you've got the apostles who are going around proclaiming Jesus rose from the dead and had appeared to them. So if there was a Q community that denied the resurrection, it's the Q community that went off message, not the apostles who would have been the original claimants.

And then think about it, if you actually had a Q community that rejected the death and resurrection of Jesus, why would you have Matthew and Luke who believed Jesus died and rose from the dead? Why would you have them? Why would they be using a source that rejected Jesus' death and resurrection? That just seems highly unlikely. Yeah. All right.

Let's talk about the pre-Markin tradition. What is the pre-Markin tradition? Well, there would be scholars present a number of reasons for thinking that Mark is relying on some tradition that didn't belong to himself. And, you know, I'd say, sure, there's some pre-Markin tradition.

It was Peter, you know. But they'll use some other arguments and they typically talk about the pre-Markin passion narrative, okay? That Mark got his passion narrative from another source. They don't think it's Peter.

They'd say it's another source or sources. But Marian Swords, who was a doctoral student of Raymond Brown, the great New Testament scholar Raymond Brown, he did his doctoral dissertation on the pre-Markin passion narrative and surveyed a bunch of scholars. I forgot how many, but the number 65 seems to be floating in my head right now.

It might have been not many, but I might be wrong with that. But they surveyed what they posited as the verses belonging to the pre-Markin passion narrative. And it's like 70% of the verses, if I remember correctly, there was no agreement on 70% of the verses in the pre-Markin passion narrative.

In other words, even scholars who posit the pre-Markin passion narrative, they don't agree on what it consisted of. So, you know, I just don't see that that is a very valuable discussion. Sure.

It doesn't yield much for, you know, what we're looking for in terms of what happened to Jesus. Yeah, yeah, not much there. All right, let's go to what could be a controversial subject here on the speeches and acts, the book of acts.

Now, when we're reading the book of acts, we read what Luke conveys someone said, frequently we want to think that this was the actual speech that someone said. And maybe there were notes beforehand. But is it fair to think that this is verbatim? You know, Stephen's speech to the Sanhedrin? Is this a word-for-word conveying? And how does Luke even get access to something like that? Yeah, good question.

So, we can be virtually certain that we are not reading something verbatim. Even with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, you can read the Sermon on the Mount in under 20 minutes. I've memorized Matthew's version of the Sermon on the Mount.

And in fact, it was recorded. I've done it twice in Israel, one on the traditional side of the Sermon on the Mount, and another one close by. We really don't know where the Sermon on the Mount happened.

And you can recite it. You can see it on my YouTube channel where it was recorded the first time. Beautiful place.

And you can recite it. I've recited. It took me about 16 minutes.

Well, it's doubtful that Jesus spoke for only 16 minutes. What we are looking at here is a summary of what Jesus said, of his teachings. And most scholars do think that even in Matthew's version, Matthew has taken Jesus' teachings from elsewhere and combined them with what Jesus probably said on that occasion.

And then artistically weave them in together. I mean, it's a beautiful sermon the way Matthew has it, what he's done with Jesus' teachings. Virtually, all of them is memorizing the Sermon on the Mount.

You get to see things that you never saw before because you just become so intimately acquainted with it. And it's wonderful to see how Matthew has artistically tied these teachings together. It's beautiful the way Matthew has it.

The way it is in Luke, it's about a third to size of it is in Matthew, but it's not tied together in the same way. So what we are seeing are even with the Sermon on the Mount is just a summary of some of the things that were said. And we can be almost certain that's what we have in Acts as well.

Now, when it comes to speech writing or reporting speeches in antiquity, there's some things that have been written on it. Thucydides mentions it, Polybius mentions it, Lucian of Samusada talks about it in his book, How to Write History. And yet you were allowed to invent and fill in the gaps as long, you know, if there were gaps and you don't know what was actually said at certain parts, you could fill in the gaps by inventing things as long as there was very similitude when there was no data available.

You could, Lucian talks about even improving what was said. So in fact, we've got an example of there was a speech given by, I think it was Claudius Caesar, I think it was him. And he gave a speech that permitted some of, I think some of the Gauls for their, to have some senators in the Roman Senate.

And so Tacitus reports what Claudius said. But then in, I believe it was the 1500s, they discovered a bronze plaque that was given to, it was found in lions in France. And it actually has the script of what was said.

Now, which one is which did they actually put on this plaque, what was actually read in the Senate that day? We don't know. But it, it's, that's probably closer to what was said. And we can see what Tacitus has done with it.

He has improved on it and made it more beautiful. And, and Lucian says that the order has free reign to take an existing speech and improve it and use his full, his full, full use of his oratorial skills. So, Luke has probably done some of this with his speech writing, reporting of speeches in the book of Acts.

He's given us a summary of the apostolic corigma, the official and formal apostolic proclamation. And he takes it and he knows that, you know, the corigma was spoken of in that day and he takes it and rewrites the speech in his own words, perhaps. So, it's not verbatim.

And what's interesting, one half of the book of Acts is direct speech, a half. So, speeches is big for Luc in the book of Acts. Most scholars think that the speeches in Acts at minimum provide that summary of the apostolic corigma.

But then they debate over whether Peter spoke on that occasion or Paul spoke on that occasion and things like that. Now, this shouldn't be all that concerning to people that maybe Luke was filling in the gaps, as you said. And I like to give as best I can modern day analogies that when we're conveying what someone said to us in a conversation we had, we sometimes fill in the gaps.

And as long as it's, you like the word gist, but as long as it's, you know, a faithful representation of the conversation, we shouldn't expect these, you know, audio recording very high fidelity standards upon that. I mean, it just, it didn't exist back then. The only way it could have happened is if Luke was present and there was someone, oh, I forget the term of the people that remember everything.

Oh, people with photographic memories? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, in this case, it would be audio, genetic memories or something. Yeah, but that's true.

You know, there are, there are such a small amount of the population of people that have that ability. But right, so the point is, is that very likely the case that Luke didn't have that sort of memory. And he wasn't even there for a lot of these speeches.

So our best guess is that these are perhaps even strong representations of what the Christian community taught. And, you know, with Paul, he could have asked Paul what he said at these speeches and Paul communicated this. So, you know, there is a room for variance from the way it really happened.

And that's okay, as long as it's reliable. So, and again, we do this in everyday conversations. So you're right, we do.

And, you know, for those who might have a little trouble with that, I understand that, you know, if you come from an ultra conservative background, I came from a very conservative background. And so this, I understand how this can be a little troubling because you deny that you think of scripture in terms of the process, the mechanism being divine dictation. You know, you deny that there's good evidence that that didn't happen.

But I think inside, you still are kind of committed to thinking of some sort of quasi dictation. And when you look at the phenomena of scripture, you know, the character, the nature of scripture itself, that kind of dictation just did not happen. And you see a human element in it.

We see Matthew and Luke improving Mark's grammar. You see editorial fatigue in the gospel of Luke on a couple of occasions. You see Paul having a lapse in memory about who he actually baptized.

If there's any kind of dictation going on, then you have to say the Holy Spirit had a memory lapse at that point, right? So there is a human element involved somehow, whatever the mechanism of divine inspiration was, however, we mean, define divine inspiration and think of it, it involved a human element. And obviously they use sources. You know, when you look at the book of Proverbs, there's a lot of borrowing from Egyptian Proverbs there.

So we can see these sources going on. It's nothing to be. It's like, okay, if that's the nature of scripture, that's the nature of scripture.

And we have to accept scripture as God has given it to us. What we don't want to do is try to force it to fit a mold that's shaped by how we think he should have. Yeah, yeah, our scripture itself needs to inform our view of inspiration and inerrancy.

That's right. Yeah. All right.

Hey, we're running long time, but Julie has a question here, Mike. She asks if you could tell of a time that you have seen or heard of God changing a mind and heart toward Christ's redemptive power through a debate or teaching and or books. Oh, man.

Yeah, I could, I could get plenty of them. I mean, plenty of Christians who have had their faith encouraged. I've got a guy that I've become friends with over the last year's names.

Ricardo Mora is a high school teacher out in California. And he said he had gone to buy Ola years ago and like was studying, he was studying gospel contradictions really bothered him. And he read books, you know, the typical ones out there that deals with Bible difficulties.

And he found some of the resolutions he said to be more problematic than the difference itself. And then he heard William Lane Craig recommend my book on gospel differences. Why are there differences in the gospels? He went out and read it and he sent me an email.

He said he was crying as he was writing this because he said, this is it. This is what something what he's been looking for. And that reading that book restored his faith in the gospels.

So people have had their faith encouraged. When I debated Richard Carrier, UCLA back in, I think it was 2004, I got an email that night from a guy that attended that debate, who was a psychology major. And he said he and a bunch of his friends were sitting on the front row.

And he said they were having their faith attacked tremendously at UCLA. But he says, really that debate on the resurrection of Jesus, the evidence they saw for it really encouraged their faith. I've had numerous people tell me they have watched my debates, whether in live or on YouTube.

And they become Christians that are as a result. Just last October, I was up at that conference that you held there in Chicago Kurt. And a guy came up to me, I got the video on on YouTube, my channel.

And he said he had been a militant atheist who was online really trying to put down Christianity, convince Christians to leave the faith. And then he watched my debate with Matt Dilihoney on YouTube. And he became a Christian.

And now he's using the arguments I used in that debate to now speak to atheist and provide them with those arguments. I mean, I could go on and on and on. There are many examples of people who have watched the debates and have either become Christians or had their faith encouraged.

Wonderful. That's great to hear. Mike, thanks for helping us work through some of the pre-Pauline material.

I say some because next week's episode will be jumping deeper into other texts, other oral tradition that we find in the text and looking forward to running through you with that. Well, if you'd like to learn more about the work and ministry of Dr. Mike Lacona, you can go to RisenJesus.com where you can find authentic answers to genuine questions about the resurrection of Jesus, the historical reliability of the gospels, and other subject matters as well. At the website, there's lots of great free resources, ebooks, PDFs, some of Mike's debates like he's mentioned here are all available there.

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