When it comes to the NT narratives, what is the relationship between “history” and “story”?
One of the things that interests me the most is how the NT narratives are constructed and how their composition contributes to an overall rhetorical effect on the reader. One of the things that frustrates me the most is how little attention is paid to literary issues when historical questions are being investigated. Earlier today I was reading a treatment of the historical Jesus written by a well-known NT scholar. The book was specifically aimed at a lay audience. It began with some preliminary issues in the study of the NT and then went on to speak of “inconsistencies” in the gospel stories. (As an aside, things that are sometimes called “inconsistencies” often have, I believe, little significance for the discussion of the historical Jesus anyway. This is mainly because of the literary character of the gospels, which is often overlooked.) In any case, the scholar whose book I was reading rejected attempts to “harmonize” every detail of the gospels as an illegitimate pursuit (and on this point I happen to agree with him). However, in his reconstruction of Jesus’ ministry, he demonstrated how the NT narratives cannot be harmonized and then argued that the places where they fail to agree are “inconsistencies.” This method not only seems circular but appears to be a trading of one type of fundamentalism for another. But, apart from the issue of his contradictory method, his approach fails to respect the genre of the gospels (not 21st century historiography but theologically-stylized, 1st century greco-roman biography) as well as the individual contribution each evangelist makes. This is all-to-common in Jesus research.
When approaching the NT narratives I believe we should begin by respecting the autonomy of each narrative before we ever begin to compare and contrast their respective presentations of Jesus and his ministry. Then, when we are ready to compare and contrast the gospels with one another, greater attention must be paid to what each gospel is trying to accomplish. In the end, this may create more difficulty for us as we seek to establish “facts” about the “historical Jesus,” but it will allow us to get away from a never-ending set of positivist conclusions about how and where the gospels “agree” or are “inconsistent.” We can attempt to meaningfully situate the narrative in its historical setting , but beyond that there is often little historical information about Jesus’ ministry that can be established. Historical Jesus research could benefit greatly from a developed literary hermeneutic. More on this later. . . .
