#81 – Origin and evolution of the New Testament

Did decades of apostolic teaching of a cosmic divine universal Savior influence the eyewitness accounts — recorded in the Gospels many decades later — of a very human Jewish Messiah?

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at how the first century Christian church evolved its understanding of Jesus. To do that, we’re going to rely heavily on what they said and did about Jesus. But our only source of that kind of information comes from the Gospel accounts and the Book of Acts. So before we start that part of the conversation, we’ll want to look at how that eyewitness testimony itself evolved over the course of many decades.

We’re going to hear from a New Testament scholar — Dr. David Carr — about how the first Gospel account of Jesus was written a couple decades after Paul had been writing and preaching about Jesus being a cosmic divine Savior (and that the story that Mark wrote about was yet another decade or two in the distant past before Paul even began teaching this new narrative). And that the next two Gospel accounts (Matthew and Luke) were recorded after yet another decade or two of more apostolic teaching and further theological development of this new view of Christ. And then finally John’s Gospel — the one who easily portrays the most cosmic, divine portrait of Jesus — was written after yet another decade or two of that apostolic teaching.

A lot can change over the course of even just one decade, especially when the whole cultural zeitgeist around you is changing. Think how your memories and impression of any politician, or rock star, or favorite actor from ten years ago has changed. Now try to remember someone from forty or fifty years ago.

So imagine yourself as one of those people who had walked and talked with this person who was very much human, but now for the past forty or fifty years everyone was saying was very much a cosmic divine being. Wouldn’t that shape your recollection and interpretation of events when some interviewer/writer comes through town and asks you to tell your favorite Jesus-story?

There are hints of that re-shaping in the Gospel stories themselves. That internal thoughts (which are very subjective) were not quite lining up with external actions (which are very concrete and objective):

• if those people really thought that Jesus was “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” as John’s Gospel announces at the start of Jesus’s public ministry, then why were those two guys on the road to Emmaus so scandalized, saying they “had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel”?
• if Mary, one of his closest female disciples, knew Jesus would die and then be resurrected, why was she on her way to the tomb with spices two days later to prepare his body for burial? And then so distraught when the dead body wasn’t there anymore, as she would otherwise have expected?
• if his closest disciples knew this was all part of the plan, why were they cowering in fear behind locked doors, and then returning to their earlier careers as fishermen?
• if the apostles all knew all along that the Gospel message was meant for the whole world — Jew and Gentile alike — why were they always going to the synagogue (where the audience would be decidedly Jewish) to “teach that Jesus was the Messiah” (just look critically at their sermons in the Book of Acts), rather than preaching in the the city square where anyone and everyone would hear their universal message?
• and why were they disputing so long over circumcision, dietary laws, and opening their doors to Gentiles (this is a recurring theme in the Book of Acts)?

These and other details in the stories tell me that they didn’t “always know” that Jesus was the cosmic being that, decades later, they professed to follow.

None of my questions and statements here are intended to disparage the Gospel message, but rather to bring the Gospel texts themselves into tighter focus: if they are the foundation on which one builds an understanding of who Jesus is, then wouldn’t it be good to fully understand that foundation? To know its limits? Its strengths … and weaknesses?

This week, we’re going to come to grips with what the Gospels are — a collection of stories and interpretations that were shaped and revised over the course of decades — before we use those texts to unpack the bigger question of “who is this Jesus of Nazareth?” over the next few weeks.

Stay tuned …

As always, tell us what you think …

To find more about Dr. David Carr, see his faculty pages at Roberts Wesleyan College and at Northeastern Seminary.

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