Description 41
Description
Redaction criticism seeks to describe the theological purposes of the evangelists by analyzing the way in which they use their sources. Without denying, then, the need for form critics to study the oral traditions or the need for source critics to scrutinize written sources, redaction critics insist that the evangelists must be given their rightful place as authors : people who, however much dependent on sources and traditions, have creatively and purposefully molded that tradition into a literary whole with a theology of its own. The evangelists have not simply collected traditions and sources and pasted them together. They have added their own modifications to those traditions and, in doing so, bring their own particular emphases to the story of Jesus. “Redaction criticism is therefore one method of gospel study, and it includes five basic elements.
1. Redaction criticism distinguishes between tradition and redaction. "Tradition,” in this sense, is everything—from long written sources to brief orally transmitted stories and sayings—that the evangelist had before him as he wrote his gospel. "Redaction” refers to the process of modifying that tradition as the gospel was actually written. Because redaction criticism depends on our ability to identify the traditions on which the evangelist worked (so we can know what changes he made), it is accomplished most successfully on Matthew and Luke. We can compare their final edition with two extensive sources they have used: Mark and Q. For the same reason, redaction criticism of Mark is a much more difficult procedure, since we do not possess any sources that he has used. 61
2. The redactional, or editorial, activity of the evangelists can be seen in several areas:
The material they have chosen to include and exclude. For instance, it is generally agreed that the roughly parallel sermons recorded by Matthew in Matt. 5-7 and by Luke in Luke 6:20-49 are taken from Q. Luke’s, however, is less than one-third the length of Matthew’s, and it is evident that Luke has omitted almost all reference to the Old Testament and the law (e.g., Matt. 5:17-19, and the antitheses of Matt. 5:21-48). This suggests that Matthew has a serious interest in teaching the church in his day about Jesus’ relationship to the law, while Luke has not.
The arrangement of the material. It can be seen from , table 4 above that Matthew differs from Mark and Luke in the placement of three significant miracle stories: the stilling of the storm (Matt. 8:18, 23-27), the healing of the Gerasene demoniac(s) (8:2834), and the intertwined accounts of the raising of Jairus’s daughter and the healing of the woman with a flow of blood (9:18-26). Since Mark is probably Matthew’s main source for these stories, it is evident that Matthew has chosen to put them in a different order. When we find him doing the same thing with other miracle stories that end up in Matthew 8-9, we are justified in concluding that Matthew is deliberately arranging the material to make a point about Jesus as miracle worker. Such rearrangement takes place within pericopes also: does the change in order of the temptations (Matt. 4:1-11 = Luke 4:1-12) reveal different emphases of the respective evangelists?
The “seams” that the evangelist uses to stitch his tradition together. In order to fashion a continuous narrative from diverse sources, an evangelist has to supply transitions. These transitions, or seams, often reveal important concerns of the author. Matthew, for instance, alternates teaching and narrative in a very effective manner, and he signals the transition at the end of discourses with a repeated formula: "when Jesus had finished saying these things” (Matt. 7:28; 19:1; see also 11:1; 13:53; 26:1).
Additions to the material. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ healing ministry and call of the Twelve (Luke 6:12-19), which appears to depend on Mark 3:7-18, he mentions the fact, not found in Mark, that "Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God” (Luke 6:12). Here, perhaps, we find evidence of a Lukan concern.
Omission of material. Where the redaction critic can be pretty sure that an evangelist has had access to a tradition that he does not include, it is important to ask whether the omission serves a theological interest. For instance, it is frequently argued that Luke has omitted the reference to Jesus "coming on the clouds of heaven” (found in both Mark and Matthew) in his reply to the high priest (Luke 22:29) because Luke wants to avoid the idea of an imminent parousia.
Change of wording. In a well-known beatitude, Jesus, according to Matthew, pronounces a blessing on "the poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3); according to Luke, on the poor (Luke 6:20). The redaction critic would note this difference as perhaps indicating Luke’s relatively greater interest in socioeconomic issues.
3. Redaction critics look for patterns in these kinds of changes within a gospel. Where such a pattern emerges, we may conclude that we are dealing with a theological concern of the author. For instance, the addition of reference to Jesus praying (noted above) is of a piece with similar additions about prayer that Luke makes throughout his gospel. Prayer, we can surmise, was a theological concern of Luke. Following this procedure, a general picture of the theological stance of a particular gospel is eventually built up.
4. On the basis of this general theological picture, the redaction critic then seeks to establish a setting for the production of the gospel. Luke’s alleged omission of references to an imminent parousia, for instance, is said to show that he was writing in a setting where the delay of the parousia had become a problem. To "the setting in the life of Jesus” and "the setting in the life of the church” (the form-critical concern) is added "the setting in the life of the evangelist and his community.”
5. Some include within redaction criticism not only the study of the evangelists’ modification of tradition but the literary and theological characteristics of the Gospels, however discerned—what is sometimes called composition criticism. To some extent, this is a fruitless semantic quarrel, but it is perhaps better to maintain the narrower definition of redaction criticism so as to differentiate it from the composition criticism that good exegetes have always done.