new testament scholarship its significance and abiding worth

8/13/2019 New Testament Scholarship Its Significance and Abiding Worth

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NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP:ITS SIGNIFICANCE AND ABIDING WORTH

by MORNA D. HOOKERLADY MARCARET S PROFESSOR OF DIVINITYIN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

I is a pleasure to have the opportunity of sharing with you in theseventy-fifth Anniversary celebrations of your Faculty. havemyself reached the stage in life when am somewhat puzzled bythe celebration of birthdays. No doubt for the very young andthe very old they bring a sense of achievement. But for those ofus in the middle years they are a reminder of mortality, and soprovide a somewhat dubious reason for celebration. With aninstitution such as this, however, celebration can be whole-hearted. t is appropriate on such occasions not only to look backover the achievements of the past but also to look forward withconfidence to the future.How is one to sum up the achievements of the last seventy-fiveyears? t is a formidable task. Manchester has been fortunate inhaving a remarkable series of scholars occupying the Rylandschair of Biblical Exegesis. Not that it is a long series: to have hadonly four incumbents in seventy-four years is in itself remarkable.But the men themselves have been among the foremost of thiscountry s New Testament scholars.

The first holder of the Rylands chair, A. S Peake, ensured thatbiblical studies in Manchester made a notable beginning. He wasdescribed on his death, in 1929, as the greatest biblical scholarof his generation .2 Yet he must have seemed at one time a mostunlikely candidate for that accolade. He came from a non-conformist family, and when he read theology at Oxford in the1880s it was only a few years since the University had opened i t sdoors to non-Anglicans. After graduating, he spent the rest ofhis life teaching theology--lecturing, indeed, in a theologicalseminary--in spite of the fact that he was a layman. If that does

A lecture given on 16 Oct. 1979, on the occasion of the 75th Anniversaryof the Faculty of Theology.W. F. Howard, writing in the British Weekly for 22 August 1929, quoted byJohnT. Wilkinson, rthur Samuel Peake (London, 1971), p. 192.

419


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420 THE JOHN RYLANDS UNIVERSITY LIBRARYnot seem strange today, it was certainly odd in Peake s day.Indeed, half a century after Peake took up his chair, whenmyself was reading theology in the 1950s, was frequentlyinfuriated by people asking me: Why are you reading theologyif you are not going to be ordained? Perhaps it was in partbecause he was a layman that Peake was concerned to dissemi-nate the results of biblical scholarship as widely s possible. thas been said that he did more than any other scholar to intro-duce the critical study of the Bible to this country. Yet he was amember of the Primitive Methodist Church-a denominationmore noted for evangelical ervour than for theological radicalism.

t was perhaps precisely because Peake himself embodiedboth personal piety and rigorous scholarship that he was able tointroduce a new approach to the Bible not only to the ministryof the Primitive Methodist Church but to many other Christiansas well. If he did not entirely escape the hostility of those whobelieved that any form of biblical criticism implied an attack onthe authority of the Bible, he nevertheless did a great deal toallay their fears and to change the climate of opinion in thiscountry. He played a considerable part in persuading men andwomen of hisgeneration that criticism was the proper preliminaryto exegesis. t is perhaps some indication of the important rolewhich Peake played in this matter that when Professors Rowleyand Black published a new commentary on the Bible in 1963 itwas entitled Peake s Commentary on the Bible, even though itincluded not a single item from Peake s original volume. tseemedas though the word Peake had become synonymous with one-volume Bible Commentary , much as the word Hoover hadbecome identified with a vacuum cleaner.If one were to sum up Peake s achievements, it would be firstand foremost as a teacher. There is no shortage of articles fromhis pen, but he is a middleman in biblical scholarship rather thanan innovator. Look at the enormous volumes of the HolbornReview which he edited and you will find lengthy book reviewswritten by Peake himself, sometimes fifty pages a quarter, tellingus what was going on in the scholarly world of biblical criticism atthe time. Though he himself wrote some commentaries, andbooks on the authority of the Bible and on the Old Testament


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NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP 421understanding of suffering, he left no magnum opus. His achieve-ment lay in changing the climate of popular opinion towardsbiblical studies rather than in pioneering any particular inter-pretation. This means that if we today want to know the scholarlyopinion on any biblical matter in this country at the beginning ofthe century, or sixty years ago, when Peake s commentary wasfirst published, then Peake is the man to tell us. Since the latterpart of the nineteenth century had seen enormous advances incritical work on the New Testament, which had led to generalagreement on most of the major critical problems, he wrote atan ideal time.

To Mancunians of the first quarter of the twentieth century,Peake s interpretation of the biblical material probably seemedavant garde. Not surprisingly, reading him today, at least on theNew Testament, he seems somewhat old-fashioned. do havePeake s Century Bible commentary on Hebrews on my book-shelves but confess hadn t realized it was there until beganpreparing this lecture. had simply assumed that ProfessorBruce s commentary on the epistle was more likely t o be ofassistance. Peake wrote an essay on the Messiah and the Son ofan but it is T. W. Manson s article on that subject that haveread and If do not naturally turn to Peake for help, it ispartly because his work has been superseded by that of laterscholars, partly because the questions which bothered him werenot necessarily the questions which bother me. For example, hepays far more attention to critical questions than to the moretheological issues with which many of us are concerned today.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that much of what Peake wroteis outmoded, there are times when have thumbed through thepages of one of his books and thought: How topical Sometimesone comes across a paragraph which could well have beenwritten in 1979 rather than 1909 Take it out of context, set it forcomment in an examination on the history of New Testamentinterpretation, and it might well leave a student guessing. Here,for instance, is a passage in which Peake comments on the

~ulletin, iii (19241, 52 81.21bid.xxxii (1949), 171-93, reprinted in Studies in the Gospels and Epistles, ed.M. Black (Manchester, 19621, pp. 123 ff.


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4 TH JOHN RYLANDS UNIVERSITY LIBRARYquestion of the relationship between Paul and what we wouldterm the historical ~esus:'The view that Paul owed little to the teaching of Jesus was more fashionableat one time than it is today, though it still finds advocates. We are told that theapostle had but little interest in the earthly life of Jesus. His attention was fixedon the Pre-existence, the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascen-sion, the Session at Cod's right hand. His thought and emotion were concen-trated on these great theological facts; to the details of His earthly career andto His teaching he was almost entirely indifferent. Although the remarkablesilence of the Pauline Epistles on the life and teaching of Jesus renders such aview plausible, cannot believe that it will bear searching scrutiny. The extentof the silence may be exaggerated. Paul appeals to the sayings of Jesus asfinally settling certain questions of conduct His knowledge of the facts ofChrist's career and the details of His teaching was probably more extensivethan has often been admitted; and his attachment to His person, the depth ofhis gratitude to Him, were too profound for such indifference to be at allnatural. do not institute any detailed comparison between the utterances ofJesus and the epistles of His apostle, but emind you of the situation in whichPaul was placed. There is unquestionably a change in the centre of gravity.Paul's emphasis is thrown much more fully on the great facts of redemption,the Death and Resurrection. . he Cross itself inevitably put the teaching [ofJesus1 nto a secondary place.

Here is Peake refuting a view of Paul's attitude to the historicalJesus which most of us associate with the name of Bultmann, anddescribing it as passe before Bultmann himself had begun towrite. Whether or not we are persuaded by his argument thatPaul knew more about jesus than might appear from his letters,it is interesting to notice Peake stressing both the vital changein thinking brought about by the Resurrection and the importanceof understanding the situation in which Paul found himself. Boththese themes are axiomatic for New Testament scholars today;nevertheless, one stil l finds it vitally important to remind one'sreaders and hearers of their truth.

Or again, listen to a passage taken from Peake's book on TheNature of scripture. You may perhaps think that he is statingthe obvious when he says that the Bible is not a manual ofready-made theology and ethics. t certainly was not obvious tothe men and women of his generation, and ear that it is not

The Quintessence of Paulinism', Bulletin, iv (1917),285-311.2~ondon, 922, pp. 67-71.


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NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP 4 3obvious to all Christians today, judging by the way in which theBible is s t l l appealed to and used--or abused-in theologicalargument. But even more interesting s Peake s insistence on thediversity within the Bible. Those of us who were brought upduring the period of biblical theology which dominated biblicalstudies in this country for many years may be surprised to findPeake stressing ideas which are once again being emphasized bybiblical scholars. According to Peake, the Bible is not primarily amanual either of theology or of ethics.

Only in fragmentary portions, s the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews hastold us, was t possible for God to speak to His ancient people; t was only in aSon who was the radiance of His glory and the clear-cut impress of His essentialbeing that He could fully translate Himself into human speech and expressHimself in a human experience.

And this leads us to the further result that we have come to recognize theglorious variety of Scripture. We do not find that the Biblical writers alwaysexpress themselves in accordance with the same scheme of doctrine, not evenin the New Testament, still less in the Old. We can frame no satisfactorytheology by an indiscriminate collection and arrangement of all the Biblicalstatements on each subject. The whole movement of revelation as an historicalprocess must first be studied. Each writer must be placed in his context, andhis theology as a whole so far as possible reproduced, and only when this hasbeen done can the various types of theology be brought together and unified.Only in this way can we do justice to the rich and many-sided experience of thewriters and the truths which have been conveyed through it We can hardlyover-emphasize the importance of the fact that while the Bible containsdoctrines of the highest importance, t is primarily a book of experimentalreligion; and that the truths t enshrines did not come simply s direct com-munications of theological propositions, but were realized through doubts andmisgivings, through wrestlings of the soul with God, through long and per-plexed groping, or through some sudden and radiant flash of insight. And t isthis human element which gives the Bible so much of its appeal to the humanheart, and stamps t with such marks of authenticity. If we go expecting to finda body of doctrine formulated with scientific precision, or an accurate recordof events such as a modern historian would give us, we may be disappointed.But we find something far better: we find life itself, the interaction of the Divineand the human in a great national history, and the experience of many anelect spirit We may lose in abstract correctness, but we gain in warmth andinterest The teaching may not be so instantly availableas if the Bible had beenrestricted to a series of theological and moral statements accurately expressedand duly co-ordinated into a system. But the difficulty in disengaging themfrom the history in which they are embedded is far more than balanced by thevital experimental quality conferred on them by the process through whichthey have come.


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4 4 THE JOHN RYLANDS UNIVERSITY LIBRARYFifty years after the death of the greatest biblical scholar of

his generation , then, we find that Peake s books are so out ofdate that one would never think of recommending them toundergraduates, and yet diligent search through them will dis-cover emphases and insights which foreshadow the outlook ofthe 1970s. If were an optimist, suppose that might be encour-aged by these two facts. might be comforted by the thought that,if Peake s writings now seem out of date, this means that we havemade some progress in the last seventy-five years. And if partsof them still seem apt, does this not mean that there are certainareas in New Testament scholarship in which his work has stoodthe test of time?

In fact, however-and is it only because am by nature apessimist?--I feel discouraged. When find Peake setting outviews which still find myself needing to underline seventy-fiveyears later, nevitably wonder: have we then made no progressin the intervening years? Are we simply going round in a circle?Or is it perhaps that on these particular issues we are reactingagainst changes of opinion which held sway in the interveningyears? Since scholarly opinion tends to swing to and fro like apendulum, have simply caught Peake on one or two mattersat the same point on the arc that myself happen to be? Andwhen find Peake, that great teacher, hopelessly out of date oncritical matters, this inevitably raises in my mind, as one whotries to teach: what, then, is the value of New Testament scholar-ship and teaching, if today s assured results become tomorrow squestion marks? Hence my t i t l e a n d those of you who arefamiliar with Peake s writings will have realized that stole it fromPeake himself. And though his book was in fact entitled TheBible: its origin, its significance and its abiding worth, make noexcuse for adapting it, since what Peake was concerned with inthat volume was in fact the value of critical methods in studyingthe Bible.

t is perhaps worth asking why it is that the work of scholarslike Peake becomes outdated, so that Peake s Commentaryneeded to be re-written and his Critical Introduction to the NewTestament was replaced with a new volume by R H. Fuller. Onthe one hand, of course, there are new developments in critical


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NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP 425study. Peake s Critical Introduction, for example, was publishedin 1909. Though E de Witt Burton had already propounded afour document hypothesis n 1904, itwas very different from thatwhich B H. Streeter set out in 1924.~ Sometimes there arediscoveries which produce dramatic results. While Peake waswriting, the Greek papyri which transformed scholars views ofNew Testament Greek were being unearthed and edited byGeorge Milligan. Even scholarly opinions can sometimes havedramatic results-as with the work of the form critics; it s justsixty years since the first form critical studies, by Dibelius andSchmidt, were published.

Secondly-and this s something far less tangiblethere arethe presuppositions with which any scholar comes to the evi-dence, and the questions which he thinks it important to ask.These, of course, arise out of the development and discoverieswhich have been made, and reflect the philosophy of theperiod--or, at least, the Sitz im Leben of the particular scholar.We are not surprised to find Peake treating the gospels primarilyas historical documents. t is true that he acknowledges thatthey may have been influenced by the Christology of theChurch; it s true that he argues that the impression made byJesus is more important than what he said. But he regards thequestion of Jesus self-consciousness as a vital one, and he haslittle regard for the work of Wilhelm Wrede since, in his view, itleads to total scepticism.

The value of Peake s work, then, must be judged in relation toisown time. When we read the work of scholars written seventy-

five years ago, it s necessary to remember the situation in whichthey were working. We need to make a mental adjustment,similar in some ways to that which we make when reading theBible itself, putting ourselves back into a past era. The abidingvalue of Peake s work was in establishing in the minds of hiscontemporaries the value of criticism as a necessary preliminaryto exegesis. If that is now taken for granted, it s to a large extentthe result of Peake s influence on the men and women of isgeneration. And if there are circles where criticism s s t i l l regarded

T h e Principles of Literary Criticism and the Synoptic Problem, Chicago,1904h Four Gospels, London, 1924


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4 6 THE JOHN RYLANDS UNIVERSITY LIBRARYas 'the work of Satan', then perhaps Peake's words are stillrelevant.

With the coming of C H. Dodd to Manchester in 1930 we havemoved on a generation and come to a new era. The names ofDodd, T. W. Manson and Vincent Taylor dominated New Testa-ment scholarship for at least twenty-five years. Their influence onthe theological climate of this country was immense. Dodd him-self stayed a mere five years in Manchester--which was no timeat all compared with the other men who have occupied thischair--but during that five years he published, among otherthings, his Commentary on Romans, his Parables of the Kingdom,and an article on The Framework of the Gospel Narrative' whichhas had an influence on subsequent study of the gospels outof all proportion to i ts size We may therefore justifiably in-clude C H. Dodd in our survey: indeed, how could one bypasshim?

In the preface to his Commentary on Romans, Dodd describedhis aim in these words: it was 'to.discover as exactly as possiblewhat Paul meant, in his own terms' and 'to try to indicate thebearing of what Paul meant, upon our experience, our ownquestions, and our own thought'.2 Reading through the com-mentary, one is tempted to wonder whether Dodd was not moresuccessful in relating his understanding of Paul to the situationand experience of the 1930s, than he was in discovering 'exactly

what Paul meant, in his own terms'. Nevertheless, notice thatDodd is listed as a 'best buy' in a recent book about ~o m a ns .~

The Parables of the ~ i n ~ d o m ~as an epoch-making book. twas an attempt to interpret the parables within the context ofthe ministry of Jesus. It is no exaggeration to describe the notionof realized eschatology upon which it is based as the most signifi-cant development this century in the discussion about the King-dom of God. In this book Dodd repeated and expanded thearguments for his theory which he had previously set out in a

E .T .xl (19321, 39fj-400, reprinted in New Testament Studies (Manchester,19531, pp l-11.?he Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London, 19321, p. m i v .3 ~ o h n . T . Robinson, Wrestling with Romans, London, 1979.4~ on don , 935.


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NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP 427lecture given in 1927. The debate which Dodd initiated, andwhich continued for many years, centred on the interpretationof certain key texts--e.g. on the precise meaning of the verbyyzmv in Mark 1:15 and of the Aramaic word which lay behindit, and on the proper translation of the participle ilq lveviorv inMark 9: l. Had the Kingdom of God arrived with the ministry ofJesus or had it only drawn near?Was it in fact already present,if only the disciples had possessed the eyes of faith to see it?

What I ind interesting, looking back on this debate, is the wayin which both Dodd and his opponents handled the evidence.The issue was the meaning of the proclamation of the Kingdomof God within the ministry of Jesus. Did Jesus himself think of theKingdom as present or future? The debate turned, however, onthe niceties of Greek grammar in Mark 9:1, where the problemis clearly the way in which a saying of Jesus was understood at thetime when Mark recorded it and on the recovery of an Aramaicoriginal at 1:15, where we have a Marcan summary of thepreaching of Jesus. Looking at the evidence today, the questionswhich come into my mind are: Did ark think of the Kingdomof God as present in the ministry of Jesus?Has ark adapted thesaying about seeing the Kingdom come in power to suit his pur-pose?I find it difficult to argue directly from the Greek used byMark to the interpretation of Jesus himself. Clearly the pre-suppositions with which most of us approach the evidencetoday are very different from those which underlay Dodd swork. It is not simply that we reach different conclusions. Eventhe questions which we think it possible to ask are different.

Dodd offered a consistent exegesis of the parables on thebasis of realized eschatology. Here we see a fascinating exampleof the way in which presuppositions not only influence one sapproach but also predetermine the outcome. If you come to theparables as a firm believer in the notion of realized eschatology,then it s possible o interpret hem in those terms. The seed whichwas sown secretly in previous generations has now grown tomaturity: the ministry of Jesus s the time of harvest, the time ofjudgement, the time of reward. On the other hand, i you are a

7he This-worldly Kingdom of God in our Lord s Teaching , Theology, xiv1927l, 258 60.


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4 8 THE JOHN RYLANDS UNIVERSITY LIBRARYbeliever in futurist eschatology, then t s possible to interpretthe parables in terms of futurist eschatology, as the work ofBultmann demonstrates. But since the British tend to avoidextremes, the most popular interpretation in this country s themediating view of Joachim eremiasl2 which modifies the positionof Dodd, though leaning to his side, and advocates eschatology-in-the-process-of-being-realized. Jeremias work on the parablesdemonstrates that t s possible to interpret the parables in termsof inaugurated eschatology. Whether or not his interpretationhas uncovered for us what Jesus himself meant by the parables,however, seems to me very dubious indeed. For what Dodd andBultmann and Jeremias and many other commentators havedone s a twentieth-century version of what the evangelists did:they have interpreted the material in terms of their own under-standing of the situation. For the evangelists, of course, thesituation with which they were concerned was their own: theparables must make sense for their communities. No doubt theyread them and re-told them in the light of their own under-standing of the coming of the Kingdom. Modern commentatorsmay think they are more objective-though often they areconcerned, like Dodd, to relate the teaching of Jesus to lifetoday-but they, too, inevitably, interpret the material in thelight of their own understanding of the situation, and so imposea particular interpretation on the material which the next genera-tion of scholars finds unconvincing.

If Dodd s book on the parables was influential so, too, was hisarticle on the historical framework of the gospels. In contrast tothose form critics who had assumed that the gospel pericopeshad been strung haphazardly together, like pearls on a string,Dodd argued that the so-called Sammelberichte of Mark, whichserved to join the pericopes together, made up a consistentcontinuous narrative. They were not, to change the image, merepieces of sellotape, linking the material together, but werethemselves part of the tradition. What Mark had done was totake this historical outline of the ministry and to use t as the

E . ~ .n /esus and the Word, E.Tr., London, 1934: The History of the SynopticTradition, E.Tr., Oxford, 1963

2 ~ h earables ol)esus (rev. edn.), London, 1963


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NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP 429framework for his gospel, inserting the remaining tradition atappropriate points in the narrative. Dodd believed that thisoutline of the ministry was itself part of the primitive kerygma.Like Peake, Dodd believed that history was important and heassumed that t had been important to the early Church also.It is not surprising that Dodd refused to abandon the search forthe historical Jesus-a search which culminated for him in hislast book, The Founder of ~hr is t iani t~?t a time when moreradical scholars were taking up the new quest for the historicalJesus, Dodd was continuing the old, using the gospel sayings asevidence for the messianic self-consciousness of Jesus in amanner very similar to that used by Peake.

Dodd s article confirmed many British scholars in their beliefthat the order of events in St Mark s gospel was basically histori-cal. If Mark used a traditional historical summary of the ministryof Jesus, then form criticism did not, after all, compel them toabandon the familiar outline or treat t as topical rather thanhistorical. Almost twenty-five years after t first appeared, how-ever, Dodd s article was subjected to searching scrutiny byD. E ~ i n e h a m . ~ven if Dodd s hypothesis were true, arguedNineham, and Mark possessed a traditional historical outline ofthe ministry, this could not provide the kind of historical informa-tion which Dodd had suggested. The structure was too flimsyand too vague to provide any kind of historical order of events.In other words, the skeleton which Dodd claimed to haveuncovered was more like the skeletal framework of a modernbuilding, steel girders around which bricks are added in a moreor less haphazard order, than the skeleton of a body, whichdictates which limb goes where. Nineham went on to raise ques-tions regarding the purpose of such an historical outline withinthe kerygma. What had the early preachers used t for?Dodd wasassuming that they were interested in history. Was he perhaps

Although this was not published until 1970, it incorporated the substanceof lectures delivered in 1954. Dodd did not change his mind significantly on thismatter in the intervening years.The Order of Events in St. Mark s Gospel-an examination of Dr. Dodd sHypothesis , pp. 223 39 in Studies in the Gospels, essays in memory of R H.Lightfoot, ed. D. E. Nineham, Oxford, 1955.28


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430 THE JOHN RYLANDS UNIVERSITY LIBRARYfailing to put himself into first-century shoes, assuming that theearly Christians interests were similar to his own?

It is interesting to notice that Dodd himself, in his inaugurallecture at Cambridge, had recognized this problem of puttingourselves back into a first-century setting and grappling withstrange ways of thinking:The ideal interpreter would be one who has entered into that strange first-century world, has felt i t s whole strangeness, has sojourned in it until he haslived himself into it thinking and feeling s one of those to whom the Gospelfirst came; and who will then return into our world and give to the truth he hasdiscerned a body out of the stuff of our own thought.. This is an ideal. Thatany of us, or all of us together, will be able to realise it fully, or to give a finalinterpretation of the New Testament, final even for our own age, is not to besupposed. But here our task lies.

Since Dodd himself described the task as impossible, he would,perhaps, forgive me for suggesting that he did not succeed in it.Indeed, I believe that the difficulties are even greater than herealized. Dodd recognized that the eschatological ideas of theNew Testament are strange to us. But one wonders whether hisown understanding of realised eschatology might not havebeen strange to the men and women of the New Testament. Intrying to make sense of the New Testament, it is a constanttemptation to produce something which makes sense to us andto read that back: it is very difficult indeed to put ourselves backinto the minds of men of the first century and make sense of theevidence in their terms. And though so-called radical scholarsmay be more aware of the problem, they are not necessarily anybetter at solving it. Dodd s Jesus made sense in the 1930s andBultmann s pau12 made sense in the 1950s. Would either of themhave been at home in the first century AD? Perhaps the 1970sare a period of pessimism, in New Testament scholarship as inother things, but Isuspect that we are more aware, today, of thecultural gap between the New Testament world and our own andof the problems of entering their thought world.

Dodd s understanding of realized eschatology provided forhim a yardstick in dealing with problems concerning the changes

The Present Task in New Testament Studies (Cambridge, 19361 pp. 40 f.Z~heologyf the New Testament, Vol. I E.Tr., London, 1952.


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NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP 431in the tradition of the sayings of Jesus. Naturally he regardedfuturistic eschatological sayings as later adaptations andadditions by the community. Once again, we see an example ofthe way in which presuppositions inevitably influence the wayin which one interprets the evidence. Moreover, although Doddacknowledged that there are changes in the tradition due to thechanging eschatological perspective, one wonders whether inother respects he made sufficient allowance for the shaping ofthe material during the period of oral tradition. Yet Dodd wasnot unaware of the problems raised by form criticism. Interest-ingly enough the lecture which he gave at the Fiftieth AnniversaryCelebrations of the Faculty here in Manchester was a study inform criticism entitled The Dialogue Form in the Gospels1.'

T. W. Manson was considerably less well disposed than Doddtowards form criticism. He described t s results in classifying thematerial as 'interesting but not epoch-making'. This classification,he suggested, did not take one very far. In a characteristic com-ment he remarked that 'a paragraph of Mark s not a penny thebetter or the worse as historical evidence for being labelled,Apothegm or Pronouncement Story or ~arad i~m ' .~ut

once form criticism went beyond the business of putting labelson the material, Manson felt that it had got out of hand. In anaddress given at Westminster College, Cambridge, in 1949, heargued in support of Dodd's view that the framework of Markwas historical. Manson declared that after working with theproblems for many years, he was 'increasingly convinced that inthe Gospels we have the materials-reliable materials-for anoutline account of the ministry as a who~e'.~n Manson's view,the quest of the historical ~esu; could go on and must go on.

In the same lecture, Manson poured scorn on what he termed'ardent explorers of the Sitz im Leben'P What he disliked was thefact that, as he put it 'they tend to explain more and more interms of the Sitz im Leben der alten Kirche and less and less interms of the Sitz im Leben lesu'. His quarrel, of course, was with

~ulletin,xxxvii (19541, 54-67.The Quest of the Historical Jesus--continued in Studies in the Gospelsand Epistles, ed. M . Black (Manchester, 19621, p. 5.ibid. p. 11. 41bid. p. 6


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432 THE JOHN RYL NDS UNIVERSITY LIBR RYthose who assumed that stories and sayings were created bythe community to meet the needs of the community. ProfessorBultmann s History of the Synoptic Tradition , he remarked tartly,is an account, not of how the life of Jesus produced the tradition,but of how the tradition produced the life of Jesus. He acknow-ledged, nevertheless, that it is undoubtedly a good thing that theGospels should be studied in the context--so far as we can knowi t - o f the interests, problems, and practical needs of the peoplewho first used them . This somewhat grudging admission was asfar as Manson was prepared to go in recognizing the value ofstudying the Sitz im Leben. Looking back on Manson s workthirty years after that essay was written, that comment sums upfor me the difference between the way in which he approachedthe gospels and the way in which many of us who were privilegedto s i t at Manson s feet feel compelled to approach them now.I or one would not disagree with him that sorting out the materialinto different forms does not take us very far in understanding thematerial; nor in feeling that the imagination of critics in inventingsituations in which sayings might have been created can runwild; nor in recognizing that the pursuit of the Sitz im Leben canbe a circular one, since we can recover it only when we know theinterests and concerns of the early community-which we candiscover only from the supposed Sitz im Leben. Nevertheless, itis the form critics emphasis on the Sitz im Leben of the materialin the community, and their awkward questions about i t s use andadaptation, which have subtly changed the climate of opinion,so that I ind I can no longer approach the material in the waythat Manson did, and ask the questions which seemed properto him.

Here, for example, is the publisher s blurb on the dust-jacket ofManson s first and most famous book:The main object of these studies is to demonstrate two propositions: first, thatthe form in which the teaching of Jesus s delivered is determ ined by two factors:the kind of audience addressed, and the period in the ministry--before or afterPeter s confession; second, that the key to the contents of the teaching is theprophetic notion of the Remnant; that the Son of Man in the teaching repre-sents Jesus formulation of the Remnant Ideal; and that he is the Son of Manby embodying that ideal in his own person.

h h Teaching of lesus Cambridge, 1948


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NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP 4You will, I hope, see my difficulties. The form in which the

teaching of Jesus is delivered is determined by he kind ofaudience addressed --but how do we know what audience wasaddressed? We know only the setting supplied-rightly orwrongly--by the evangelists. And by the period in the ministry-before or after Peter s confession -but how do we know theperiod in the ministry? We know only where the evangelistsplaced the sayings, and Mark s outline, pivoting as it does roundCaesarea Philippi, seems to be a theological rather than anhistorical construction. I eave it to Old Testament scholars totell me whether there ever was, in truth, a prophetic notion of theRemnant; but if there was, can we hope to find Jesus formulationof it Are we not dealing, rather, with the theology of the Church?The title which Manson gave to his book, The Teaching of Jesus,sums up my dilemma. We are far less confident, now, that wecan recover that teaching. The focus of our interests has moved,inevitably, from Jesus to the early Church, from history toChristology. The questions which we bring to the material aredifferent, because we recognize that the questions we used toask cannot be answered.

We can see another example of the change in our presupposi-tions and approach by looking at another well-known book byManson, The Sayings ofJesus? This is primarily a commentary onthe text of the document Q, which Manson attempts to recon-struct. He based his work on the conclusions of the source criticsand the four-document hypothesis of Streeter. Whether or notQ ever existed as one document Ido not know; if it did, Isuspectthat it was either much longer than Manson s reconstruction ormuch shorter. Fifty-five years after Streetef s Four Gospels, in thelight of work done by form critics and redaction critics, we oughtto be more cautious about the possibility of reconstructingdocuments underlying our gospels. Yet one surprising thingabout gospel criticism today is that in some areas yesterday sconclusions are not always questioned. Iam amazed, for instance,to find some scholars talking confidently about the theology ofQ. Is it not astonishing to find them boldly reconstructing the

re on don 1949; re-issue of art II of The Mission and Message of lesusLondon 1937.


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434 THE JOHN RYLANDS UNIVERSITY LIBRARYtheology of a hypothetical document? Moreover, the work ofthe redaction critics is based on an assumption that we knowwhat Matthew and Luke did with their sources. t is convenientto take over the conclusions of yesterday's source critics becausethey seem to provide us with solid foundations for the work ofredaction criticism. But those who are looking at the sourcecritical problems today are not quite so confident about theanswers. We need constantly to re-examine old questions, andask whether new discoveries and new approaches do not affectold conclusions.

One obvious area in which new discoveries have greatlyaffected our understanding is that of the Jewish background toNew Testament thought. Here the material from Qumran hasadded enormously to our knowledge of Palestinian Judaism-albeit of an off-beat kind. I ts value for understanding the NewTestament is perhaps illustrated if say that one of the bookswhich ound shed most light on the problem of the use of OldTestament quotations by New Testament writers was notwritten on that subject at all, but was a book by Professor Bruceon Biblical Exegesis in ~umran. 'And if Professor Bruce has usedthe material from Qumran to illuminate our understanding ofthe New Testament, so too has Professor ~ indars .~ith themwe come to the present day, and the problems which confrontus now. t is time to look back over our survey, and to sum up.

There is a story told of a former student of theology whoreturned to his old University and happened to pick up a copyof an examination paper which had just been taken by thecurrent generation of undergraduates. 'Good gracious ' heexclaimed, 'the questions here are exactly the same as those setin the examination paper which sat years ago.' 'Oh yes,' repliedthe professor, 'we set the same questions every year.' 'But surelythe students have got wise to this by now?' said the visitor. 'Ohyes,' came the reply, 'but you see in Theology we change theanswers. Whether or not that is true of other branches oftheological investigation eave you to udge; as far as New Testa-ment study is concerned, it seems to me that our survey of work

F. F. Bruce, Biblical Exegesis in the Qumran Texts, London, 1960.Barnabas Lindars, New Testament Apologetic, London, 1961.


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NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLARSHIP 435done in the first half of this century has demonstrated that manyof the questions which we put to the material have changeddramatically. Those of us who are involved in teaching thesubject are not always aware of the extent to which our thinkinghas changed. There was another former student-this timesomeone who had been an undergraduate at the same time asmyself-who heard me lecture on the subject of 'Recent develop-ments in New Testament studies' about fifteen years after we hadboth left University. Afterwards he came up to me and said, witha somewhat dazed look, 'Things have certainly changed in thelast fifteen years.' I ooked at him with equal astonishment. I hadnot realized that the changes in New Testament scholarship andin my own thinking had been so great.

And that incident, I think, sums up my own dilemma as ateacher of New Testament studies. Clearly Imust teach the truthas I see it but I must never give the impression that the answersare infallible. Both questions and answers must continually bere-examined, for New Testament scholarship is a living subject.It does not stand still. In this respect, of course, it is like manyother subjects. In science it is even more difficult to keep up-to-date. No responsible teacher will give the impression that hisanswers are necessarily the final ones. The scholars whose workwe have been surveying all had very clear opinions of their own;yet they did not impose them on others. It is said that Peakeoften set out the evidence before his students and left them tomake up their own minds on the matter-a habit which exasper-ated those who were used to being given clear-cut answers toevery question. T W. Manson would often set out alternativeexplanations and conclude by saying: Well, you pay yourmoney, and you take your choice.' Professor Bruce, I am told,after arguing his own case with conviction and force, has oftenconcluded an argument by saying Ah well The other fellow maybe right after all.' The greatest teachers certainly do not imposerigid views upon their students; they train them to go on thinkingfor themselves.

And if the New Testament is to be relevant to each generation,then there is a sense in which we must expect its interpretationto change. The tragedy comes when teachers are a generation


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436 THE JOHN RYLANDS UNIVERSITY LIBRARYbehind in their understanding. can see the point of performingShakespeare in modern dress; it is an attempt to interpret themessage of his plays in our own situation. have never been ableto understand the point of performing Shakespeare in Edwardiandress.

How, then, can we sum up the achievement of the giants ofthe past? Sometimes we shall find ourselves using their workdirectly, to great profit. Increasingly, we are likely to find ourselvesdisagreeing both with their methods and with their conclusions.And yet we stand on their shoulders and owe them an immensedebt of gratitude. Dodd, writing of his predecessor at Cambridge,F C. Burkitt, remarked: 'his achievement remains both as a surefoundation for further studies, and as an inspiration to those wholabour at the same unending task. t is a fitting description ofDodd himself, and of the others who have established thetradition of New Testament scholarship in this University. Ourdebt to the past seems to me to have been summed up in thegesture made by Professors Rowley and Black when they namedtheir Commentary after Peake. Not one article was taken overfrom the old book to the new. Yet the continuity with the past,and their debt to the scholars of the previous generation, wassuch that they were led to call it Peake's Commentary, a tributeto the abiding worth of critical scholarship.

he Present Task in New Testament Studies Cambridge 1936 p. 6

new testament scholarship its significance and abiding worth

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