The Possibility of a Historical Outline 52
The Possibility of a Historical Outline
We have made no attempt here to prove a position with respect to the historicity of the Gospels. But if we may grant that others have provided, not a proven position (there is no such thing as proof in such matters) but nonetheless solid grounds for accepting the Gospels as historically reliable, 97what kind of information about Jesus can we expect to find in them? Is it possible to reconstruct a historically coherent "life of Jesus”? Some deny the validity of any such attempt. Brevard Childs, for instance, insists that the "canonical shape” of the fourfold gospel should be respected. He faults traditional harmonies for seeking the meaning of the Gospels in a historical construct that disregards this canonical shape. 98While Childs is right to insist that meaning is to be found in the texts as we have them, rather than in some necessarily hypothetical pasting together of all four accounts, he is wrong to deny all significance to harmonies. For the truth of what the evangelists are saying is inevitably tied to the historical reality of what they narrate. The attempt to put together that historical reality—the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth—is both necessary and significant.
But is it really possible? A major barrier to the enterprise has always been the many places in which the Gospels appear to contradict themselves over historical details. The most troublesome texts have been the subject of many harmonizing interpretations, ranging from the ridiculous to the convincing. Our whole approach to this matter will depend greatly on what we think of the evangelists’ accuracy generally. The more we are impressed by their accuracy—as the authors of this volume are—the further we will search for satisfactory explanations. Nevertheless, there are some places where fully satisfactory answers simply are not available. In such cases, it is better, as Luther put it, to just to let it alone than to force unlikely meanings on the text. 99
These difficulties must not obscure the fact that the Synoptic Gospels exhibit a high degree of coherence about the general course of Jesus’ ministry as well as about many of the incidents within that ministry. Some of the greatest divergences do not suggest contradictions, so much as accounts that have little in common with one another (such as the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke). Coherence at the historical level in such situations is relatively easy to attain. Nevertheless, a fully satisfactory historical harmony of Jesus’ life is impossible. It was simply not the evangelists’ intention to provide us with the kind of data we would need for such an enterprise. They give few exact chronological indicators, and those we do have (general phrases such as "after these things,” "when,” and Mark’s "immediately”) are often too general to be of real use to the historian. The evangelists narrate historical facts, but they so select, arrange, and present these facts that little information of the kind needed to piece together a detailed life of Jesus is available.
The generally similar chronological sequence in the Synoptic Gospels is not always matched by agreement on individual episodes. In such cases, it is not a matter of chronological error, but of chronological indifference. The evangelists, and sometimes the sources the evangelists use, arrange their material topically at times, often making it impossible for us to know when in the ministry of Jesus a particular incident occurred.
An example is the series of controversy stories that Mark narrates in Mark 2:1-3:6. That Mark or his source has grouped these stories together because of their similarity in subject matter (Jesus in controversy with Jews) seems likely, particularly when we note that none of the episodes is given a specific chronological relation to any other. When, then, did Jesus heal the man’s hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-6)? Early in the ministry, as we might conclude if Mark’s placement was chronological? Or later on, as the placement of the incident in Matthew might suggest (see Matt. 12:9-14)? We might venture some guesses, but we cannot know for sure: the evangelists simply have not given us enough information. The fact, then, that a detailed life of Jesus cannot be reconstructed on the basis of the Synoptic Gospels in no way discredits the Gospels as accurate historical sources. They should be judged for what they do tell us, not for what they do not tell us.