FINDING BIBLE TRUTH - THE GOSPELS

The books of the New Testament were originally written on papyrus, a form of paper, which disintegrates after a relatively short time, or on parchment which unless specially protected and preserved, also has only a short life. Hence we have no original documents from the first century AD, only copies of copies. It also appears to have been a common and acceptable practice to sign works with the name of some well known figure, and a great number of the early writings we have are `pseudo-epigraphical' in nature. It cannot be assumed that the Gospels of St Matthew and St John were necessarily written by them just because they bear their names.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST MARK.

There can be little doubt that Mark was the first of the Gospels to be written (with the possible exception of John). Both Matthew and Luke - particularly Matthew - consist of Mark plus additional stories and sayings. To maintain the traditional view that Matthew was the first you would have to assume that Mark took Matthew's work, cut out everything that he thought was false or irrelevant, and published the rest as his own work. Mark was a common Greek name, and we cannot be certain which of a number of Marks mentioned in the New Testament was the author.

Papias (an early 2nd century bishop of Hierapolis, now in Turkey), reporting what he had learned from John the Elder (not John the Apostle, he never met any of the Apostles), and presumably referring to a copy of Mark's Gospel, gives Mark a fine testimonial:

"Mark having become the interpreter (secretary) of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers]*, but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements."

It is reasonably certain that Mark was not a Jew, and possible that he was the same John Mark whose mother's house in Jerusalem was used as a meeting place by the disciples (Acts 12:12), and who later accompanied Paul on some of his journeys. Tradition has it that he wrote in Rome around 60 AD, but some recent study has suggested Jerusalem shortly before it was taken and sacked by Rome in 70 AD, writing under the stress of war. Mark is written in rather crude and plain Greek, with some Aramaic.

Some thirty or forty years after Christ's Passion, the surviving disciples would have been ageing and memories no longer clear, there was time enough for events and sequences of events to be blurred and for Christ's teaching to have become contaminated with legend and by the licence allowed to all storytellers. The church may have had collections of Jesus' teachings and stories of his deeds for Mark to work from to supplement old memories while if Papius' statement is correct he would also have gained a lot of information from Peter. Mark's achievement lies in his having drawn together many of these sayings and stories to form a coherent narrative. It is not likely (and not important) that the narrative itself accurately details Christ's travels - indeed it disagrees with John's Gospel narrative at many points. Reference is made below to a `Q' source for Christ's words, however it is apparent that Mark did not have access to this. Mark is primarily a story teller not a theologian. He provides a tense and dramatic account of Christ's last days in Jerusalem, which takes up some third of the book. The first two-thirds can be seen as building up a picture of the conflict between good and evil, and between Christ and the Jewish authorities.

One of the most striking elements in the Gospel is Mark's characterisation of Jesus as reluctant to publicise himself or his works, frequently enjoining those he has healed to say nothing or tell no-one. He also refuses to identify himself as the long-awaited Messiah. Jesus refers to himself only as the Son of Man, and while not denying Peter's declaration that he is the one forecast, he nevertheless cautions his followers not to broadcast this. In Mark virtually all of Christ's teaching, other than to the disciples themselves, is in the form of parables; in fact Mark says in 4:33-34 "And with many such parables He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it. But without a parable He did not speak to them. And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples". There is a puzzle here - why did he teach in parables, explaining only to his disciples? Commonly it is assumed that the purpose was to make people think, but many of the parables must have been misleading or utterly incomprehensible to his listeners. Consider the care that Christ took to train the disciples, explaining to them, sending them out on a limited preaching expedition; possibly the aim was to give his disciples increased stature and confidence so that they could be better prepared for the wider task of spreading the Gospel and of explaining his teaching once he had gone.

Later, in one of the more puzzling statements in the Gospel, he quotes Isaiah 6:9-10: "all things come in parables, so that 'Seeing they may see and not perceive, And hearing they may hear and not understand; Lest they should turn, And their sins be forgiven them.'" This reference obviously made a great impression on the disciples for it recurs, with varying degrees of accuracy, in all the Gospels and in Acts. (Matthew 13:14-15, Luke 8:10, John 12:40, Acts 28:26-27). The quotation from Isaiah is altered and reads at first sight as though Christ does not want his listeners to understand or to turn or to be forgiven their sins. A mystery yet to be unravelled, although there is the suggestion in Matthew that the blindness and deafness is wilful and that a direct teaching would be wasted.

One quotation from Mark may be of particular importance:

Mark 10:45 "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

This is the only quotation which has the idea of a 'ransom'. It is not qualified to give any indication of who are being ransomed or the sense in which they are ransomed. There is no apparent connection with past or future sin or with Adam's sin. The quotation does not appear elsewhere. Searching the Gospels for Christ's explanation of his mission on earth leaves an overwhelming conclusion that he saw his task as evangelism, to recall people to God, shown typically as in John :

3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life
5:24 "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life.

This quotation from Mark is really the only one to give any support to the idea of the Early Church, as shown in Paul's teaching, that Christ's purpose was to redeem the sin of Adam, and that without his crucifixion it would have been impossible for God to lift the curse on man. It can however be read in a great number of different ways, and seems a frail twig indeed on which to hang such conclusions, or so to limit God's power.

The Apocalyptic sections of Mark have had immense influence on Christian thought, and on splinter groups of the Church. If analysed (in conjunction with similar sections of Matthew - mainly copied from Mark - and Luke who probably gives the best-ordered account), it appears to predict that within that current generation:

A period of turmoil during which the Gospel is spread among all nations in spite of great persecution by the civil authorities.

War in Palestine, the desecration and destruction of the Temple, followed by a period of even greater turmoil during which the followers of Christ are urged to flee to the mountains.

The end of the world as it existed, and the return of Christ.

The reference to Daniel's 'abomination of desolation' recalls the action of Antiochus Epiphanes in erecting an altar to Zeus over the altar of burnt offering and sacrificing a pig on it in 168 or 169 BC. Luke does not refer to this phrase or to Daniel. There is a substantial body of opinion among Biblical scholars that all these eschatological forecasts are later interpolations and while this seems somewhat improbable it is possible that the reference to Daniel might be an addition.

There are two textual traditions for the ending of the gospel. The majority of Greek manuscripts have the "long ending," closing with 16:20, but a smaller number extend only through 16:8. The dominant scholarly opinion is that the shorter version is the true one - that Mark came to his intended closure with 16:8, and that a 2nd-century scribe, finding that an abrupt and unsatisfying ending, drew on the Gospel of Luke in order to compose what seemed to him a more satisfying conclusion.

* Which may explain why the account of the death of Judas in Acts 1:18 varies so radically from Matthew's account.

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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST MATTHEW.

Matthew is generally reckoned to be the second of the four Gospels, written some five to ten years after Mark, and after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD70 (although the evidence for this dating is weak). It relies very heavily on Mark, both in chronology and text - of Mark's 661 verses some 600 are represented in Matthew.

In Matthew the name of Levi, the tax collector who in Mark became a follower of Jesus, is changed to Matthew. In a later summary of the names of the Twelve Levi is omitted and Matthew included. Luke follows Mark precisely in this respect. There is an element of confusion here that cannot be resolved entirely; the most simple explanation would be that Levi also had the name, or adopted the name, of Matthew. The writer of Matthew is probably anonymous. The story of the recruitment of Matthew/Levi would surely have been told in a very different way had the author been that individual, nor would the author have relied so heavily on Mark. The book was originally written in Greek.

The writer was a man with considerable knowledge of Jewish tradition, of teaching and interpretation. It is in some sense the most "Jewish" Gospel. He emphasises Christ's words on upholding the Mosaic Law and maintains that Christ's mission was to the Jews alone. E.g:

10:5"Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans.
10:6 "But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
15:24 "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
These quotations do not appear in other Gospels.

If Mark is the Storyteller, Matthew is the Missionary, trying to convert non-Christian Jews; moreover a missionary with his own distinctive ideas on how to obtain converts. His first two chapters form a sustained attempt to convince his readers that Christ was the forecast Jewish Messiah. The method used to link Christ with the Messiah is mainly through the use of Messianic forecasts from the Old Testament, accompanied by incidents or actions during Christ's childhood that appear to fulfil those forecasts. It is a pity that too many of the references are misquoted or rather unsubtly altered to fit, or taken out of context, and that too many of the supporting incidents are contradicted by other accounts of the period, or for one reason or another can scarcely be accepted as factual. Consider for example the linked stories of the `Flight into Egypt' and the `Massacre of the Innocents' by Herod. Such a crime as the latter could not fail to have made a deep impression on Jews at that time, yet there is no suggestion from Jewish sources of any such event, it is not chronicled by the historian Josephus in his history (Josephus gives an account of a Zealot uprising in Nazareth around this time - which is also mentioned in Acts). According to Luke the infant Jesus was taken peacefully to Jerusalem some 30-40 days after the birth, after which the family went back home to Nazareth, and stayed there.

The views of the Christian Jewish sect of the Ebionites are of interest. The early Ebionite literature is said to have resembled the Gospel according to Matthew, without the birth narrative. They rejected the Virgin Birth and believed that Jesus was the natural son of Mary and Joseph. Some scholars feel that there is evidence from his letters that James, the brother of Christ, was the leader of an Ebionite group among the early Christians.

The teachings of Christ - in Mark veiled in parables explained only to the disciples - are often detailed clearly as in the Sermon on the Mount and a number of other discourses (although Matthew does not excise the note in Mark that Christ only taught in parables). The personal touches that bring life to Mark's Gospel are truncated or omitted.

Much of Christ's teaching in Matthew must have come from the `Q' source (see below), which is used extensively, however a note of caution is needed. The `Q' source appears to have been just a list of sayings, with little or no indication of context. Hence in trying to insert them appropriately into his narrative Matthew had to try and guess what the context might have been, and find a suitable place. This can sometimes seriously distort the import of the words. An example of this is the parable in Matthew and Luke about the lost sheep (Matt. 18:10-14, Luke 15:3-7). The basic material has been used in different ways. In Matthew, the context is church discipline - how a brother in Christ who has lapsed or who is in danger of doing so is to be gently and graciously dealt with - and Matthew shapes it accordingly. In Luke, the parable exemplifies Jesus' attitude toward sinners and is directed against the critical Pharisees and scribes who object to Jesus' contact with sinners and outsiders. Matthew also has his own sources - much of the Sermon on the Mount does not appear elsewhere.

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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST LUKE.

Generally supposed to have been the third of the Gospels to have been written, at a date estimated at around 80 AD, although some have placed its date as late as 120 AD. Tradition has it that it was written by the same Luke that is recorded in Corinthians and 2 Timothy as a companion of Paul. He wrote good Greek (frequently improving on Mark's style,) and was familiar with the Septuagint, which was the Bible of Greek-speaking Gentiles. The Gospel is carefully structured and some 30% of it copies Mark. Some 20% is common to Matthew (see the `Q' source below), the remainder being original.

As with all the Gospels there has been some tampering with the original text. For example the words "but by every word of God" in Ch 4:4 and "Get behind me Satan" in 4:8 (the King James Version) are almost universally accepted to be late additions.

Luke's first concern is to establish elements of the divine around the births of both Jesus and John the Baptist. His is the only Gospel to claim a Virgin birth for Christ, crucial to the near Mary-worship of the Roman Church. Isaiah 7:14 was accepted by Luke as a forecast of a Messiah/Christ, and to accord with this it was necessary to establish Mary's virginity. However comparison of the Massoretic text with the original Septuagint suggests that the Hebrew in Isaiah for `a young woman of marriageable age' has been incorrectly translated as ` virgin'. Virgin births were claimed so often by ancient religions that they seem to have become synonymous with Divinity.

The virgin birth of Jesus is conventionally considered essential to faith because it is claimed that only through this can Christ:

(1) be fully God and fully Man simultaneously. In a narrow sense a man borne of woman is at least partly human, and hence not fully God, while a man born without a human father cannot be fully human. In a wider theological sense does the question of whether Mary was a virgin make the slightest difference ?

(2) be the "New Adam". This idea of a new Adam comes from Paul who says in effect that Sin entered the world through the first Adam, but leaves it through the second. Paul does not link this with a virgin birth (indeed Paul does not make any reference to virgin birth or to the mother of Christ) and it is difficult to see how a virgin birth affects the proposition?

(3) be sinless and perfectly obedient to the law of God on behalf of sinners. This harks back to the notion of original sin, and makes the peculiar assumption that sin is inherited from the father but not the mother, since Mary cannot be assumed to have been sinless.

(4) be the payment for sins as One who is both God and Man. The idea that Christ's death was `payment' for sin is a teaching of Paul. Does it have any significant support elsewhere ?

Luke does not promote Christ as Messiah to the same degree as does Matthew although it is still an important concept to him.

Two other queries on this part of Luke: The census of Quirinus, said to be the reason for the journey to Bethlehem, must have been held in the period 7-10 AD (Josephus says 9-10 AD), while Herod, in whose reign Christ is said to have been born, died in 4 BC. The genealogy of Luke 3:23 is wholly incompatible with that in Matthew; the suggestion, sometimes made, that Luke is giving in part the genealogy of Mary is scarcely defensible (of course it is still pointless if Joseph was not the physical father of Jesus). The problems over the childhood narratives of both Matthew and Luke mean that both must be read with great caution; it is no surprise that a majority of Bible scholars regard them as substantially fictional. Once beyond the stage of image-building the two Gospels become a lot more credible. Luke is the gentlest and least judgemental of the Gospels (except where Pharisees are concerned). Luke has "humanised" the portrait of Jesus. Piety and prayer (his own and that of others) are stressed. Love and compassion for the poor and despised, and condemnation of the rich are emphasised, as is Jesus' attitude toward women, children, and sinners.

Where Mark is strongly critical of the slowness and lack of understanding of the twelve disciples Luke is much more understanding. He depends far less on Mark than does Matthew, and about half of the Gospel is derived neither from Mark nor the `Q' source. While he suffers like Matthew from the lack of context in `Q' he seems to be more careful in fitting the sayings suitably.

Much of the teaching in Luke is hard to understand - does this parable mean that evil should not be challenged ?

11:24 "When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.'.
11:25 "And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order.
11:26 "Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first."

Or how to reconcile this teaching with the overall picture of Christ's mission:

12:51 "Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division.
12:52 "For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three.
12:53 "Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in- law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

There is a natural tendency to ignore or gloss over anything that disturbs whatever picture we may have formed of Christ or his teaching, such as his absolute and unconditional defence of the Law: ". . . not one jot or one tittle . . .". However it seems unconscionable that one element of his teaching should be preferred over another unless there is a good indication of invention or distortion by the writer, or of later corruption.

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THE `Q` SOURCE.

Matthew and Luke both used Mark, both for its narrative material as well as for the basic structural outline of the chronology of Jesus' life. It is widely accepted that Matthew and Luke use a second source, which is called Q (from German Quelle, source"), which was lost (but has been reconstructed from the two Gospels), for the sayings found in common in both of them. Thus, Mark and Q are substantial components of both Matthew and Luke. The placement of Q material in Luke and Matthew disagrees at many points according to the needs and theologies of the two gospel authors, but in both Mark's chronology is the basic scheme into which Q is put. After chapter 4 in Matthew and Luke, not a single passage from Q is in exactly the same place. Q was a source written in Greek as was Mark, which can be demonstrated by word agreement (not possible, for example, with a translation from Aramaic,) although perhaps the Greek has vestiges of Semitic structure form.

Another example of two passages used verbatim in Luke and Matthew, but differently placed is Jesus' lament over Jerusalem. In Luke (13:34-35) Jesus is looking ahead to his entry into Jerusalem. In Matthew (23:37-39) this same lament is placed after the entry into the city (21:9) and thus refers to the fall of Jerusalem and the Last Judgment. Apparently, Luke has historicized a primarily eschatological saying.

Bishop Papias is reported by Irenius as saying: "Matthew put together the oracles (of the Lord) in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could." This could possibly refer to the `Q' document (although the authors of both Matthew and Luke seemingly copied from a Greek text). It might also suggest a reason why the second Gospel was named for Matthew.

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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST JOHN.

John's Gospel appears to be entirely independent of the other three and offers a different perspective on the life of Christ. Tradition says that it was written towards the end of St John's life, but if this is so it is peculiar that it shows no knowledge of the earlier Gospels, nor any attempt to harmonise with them. Irenaeus names John as the beloved disciple, and says that he wrote the Gospel in Ephesus, but appears to base the identification on a false reading of Bishop Papias. Papias himself mentions John the son of Zebedee, the apostle, as well as another John, `the Elder', who might have been at Ephesus, but says that he never met any of the Apostles. Internally the Gospel claims to have been written by a beloved disciple whose name it does not establish. The Gospel itself never mentions either of the sons of Zebedee, James or John, while the last chapter (John 21) looks like an addition following a logical end of the Gospel at John 20:30-31. The Gospel's original language was Greek, and it may be considered doubtful that a simple Galilee fisherman would have written in what, to him, would have been a foreign language, or indeed been able to write Greek at all. The general level of sophistication also causes doubts to be raised. It is of course a possibility that it could have been written by an educated scribe from detail provided by John. Other problems arise from the near absence of any detail that would give humanity to Christ, or any sign of some interaction between Christ and the man said to be the beloved disciple. Because both external and internal evidence are doubtful, a working hypothesis is that John and the Johannine letters were written and edited somewhere in Asia Minor (perhaps Ephesus) as the product of a "school," or Johannine circle, some time late in the 1st century, or early in the second. Revelation may have been the product of the same group.

The work seems totally independent of the three earlier Gospels, and the writer shows no sign of having seen these, or of having access to the `Q' source, although some of the parables and sayings are common. This has led some experts to consider seriously whether it might have been written much earlier than is generally supposed.

John reinforces the view of the other Gospels that Christ's teachings and explanations were primarily directed at the Apostles. Other than in Matthew he spoke in public only in debate with those who challenged him, in deeds of healing, and in parables which he left unexplained. Elsewhere there are records of him teaching, as in John 7:14, but what he said is not given. What would our view of Christ and his ministry be if these explanations and the additional teaching given to the Apostles were not available to us (as they were probably not available to Paul) ?

John gives a clearer picture than the other Gospels of how Christ saw himself as the Son of God the Father, of his preaching of the God of love and of his role. A key quotation is John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

John's Gospel has not been free of later additions and amendments. For example the story of the woman taken in adultery in John 8:1-11 does not appear in the best-regarded early texts and internal evidence from study of the text also shows that it does not belong here. Elsewhere it is suggested that the last chapter may be a late addition. All the Gospels seem to show signs of having been subjected to some limited degree of revision but while the work of textual criticism can throw suspicion on passages, only very rarely can it indicate what the original text may have been.

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GOSPEL OF THOMAS.

Another source for the sayings of Christ is the so-called `Gospel of Thomas', which is headed: `These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded'. It is purely a collection of sayings and contains no contextual or background material. The early Church rejected the Gospel as being heretical and it was not even given formal Apocryphal status. The accusation has been made that it is contaminated with Gnostic influences (it was found among the Gnostic cache at Nag Hammadi), and the general scholarly opinion is that the text is corrupt and that its genuineness cannot be established. The collection seems original, showing no obvious dependence on either the canonical Gospels or the 'Q' source, yet it contains a good proportion of the sayings to be found in these.

There are also some sayings that can hardly be accepted as genuine. It is difficult to think of any context into which these samples could comfortably fit:

The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader? Jesus said to them, "No matter where you are go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."

Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits".

Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life." Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven".

If treated with considerable caution it can still be a useful reference.

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CONFLICTS AND STUDIES.

There are many differences, some very hard to reconcile, between the Gospel accounts of the trials of Christ before the Sanhedrin and Pilate. There are also very differing accounts of Christ's words during these trials, John reporting more comprehensive answers, and of Christ speaking where the other Gospels report that he was silent. In view of these differences it is reasonable to question how the details of the trials became known, and to question how much reliance can be placed on the reported answers.

There are many differences between the Gospel reports of the words spoken by Christ from the Cross; there are many differences, some seem irreconcilable, between reports of Christ's resurrection and subsequent appearances. Conflicts in the stories of Christ's birth and childhood have already been mentioned. There are conflicts throughout in the sequence of events, in his words, in his teaching. Is it really conceivable that God, as author, would have deliberately introduced such conflicts ? The alternative is of course is that the Gospels were written by men, well after the event, trying to make sense of second-hand reports, affected by their own prejudices and concepts. The approach should perhaps be to note where the Gospels agree and elsewhere to follow the broad thrust of the writing without getting side-tracked in trying to force agreement into literal detail. There can be difficulty in understanding some of Christ's words where they conflict with conclusions that you may have come to elsewhere. If you find the Old Testament Satan no more than a Hebrew bogeyman, Christ's condemnation of Satan and the Devil create great difficulty. If you reject the notion of Demons, Christ's acceptance of them creates great difficulty. If you accept that much of Daniel is unreliable, Christ's reference to him creates difficulty. Bear in mind that the Jews were firmly convinced of Satan, Demons, and of the validity of Daniel and consider what the effect might have been on the credibility and acceptance of Christ had he challenged or denied these concepts. Perhaps he was just prepared to use such beliefs to strengthen the impact of his teaching.

The JESUS SEMINAR

In recent years a Seminar has been organised by the Bible scholars Robert Funk and John Crossman known as `The Jesus Seminar'. Its aim was to provide definitive answers to the question: "What did Jesus really say". The method was to bring together a panel of supposedly leading scholars, meeting over a period of several years to discuss and vote on the historical reliability of each of the sayings recorded in the Gospels. Their conclusion was that only 18% of the text was certainly authentic. Needless to say both Traditional and Fundamentalist Christianity was outraged and a storm of criticism resulted, some of which appeared fully justified; this resulted in an equal barrage of defence, some of which also appeared fully justified. The net result was a great deal of heat and practically no light at all.

However laudable the aim it is clear that the methodology of the Jesus Seminar was seriously flawed, and the claim that it faithfully represented mainstream Bible critical analysis was not really justified. Studies relied primarily on four independent texts: Mark, `Q', the Gospel of Thomas, and John. The Gospel of Thomas was held to be the earliest and hence the most reliable (most scholars date the Gospel of Thomas around 140 AD, and hold it to be seriously corrupt). To be acceptable a text generally had to appear in at least two of these and since the reconstruction of Q, which included only items common to Matthew and Luke, but absent from Mark, automatically excluded anything in Mark, the dubious and non-canonical Gospel of Thomas often became the final arbiter.

There were supplementary criteria - a statement that conflicted both with current Judaism and the doctrines of the early Church would be favourably regarded on the basis that it was not likely to be an invention or later insertion (effectively isolating Christ from both his Jewish origins and from the doctrines based on his words). The members asserted repeatedly that Jesus did not proclaim a message of God's future intervention in history and final judgment, and anything of this nature, anything at all eschatological, was automatically condemned. Throughout the studies there was evidence that prejudice and pre-conceptions played a major role.

THE ECOLE BIBLIQUE

The traditional views of the Roman Church came under severe pressure in the second half of the 18th century. Darwin's 'Origin of the Species' and his later book 'The Descent of Man' questioned scriptural accounts of the Creation, influential philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were challenging conventional Christian ethical and theological assumptions. A book by French historian and theologian Ernest Renan: 'The Life of Jesus' sought to demystify Christianity, portraying Jesus as eminently mortal and non-divine, transforming attitudes towards biblical scholarship. What became known as the 'German School' also applied scientific rigour to biblical studies which challenged both the integrity of the Bible itself as well as prevailing theology.

One of the early responses to the challenge was the declaration of Papal Infallibility by Pope Pius IX in 1870, making it unlawful for anyone to question Papal ex-Cathedra announcements. To counter the depredations of uncontrolled critical analysis the Church began forming its own cells of trained scholars who were intended to confront Catholicism's critics on their own ground. Thus arose the Catholic Modernist movement. (Quote) "To Rome's chagrin and mortification the programme backfired. The more it sought to arm younger clerics with the requisite tools for combat in the modern polemical movement, the more those same clerics began to desert the cause for which they had been recruited. Their critical scrutiny of the Bible revealed a multitude of inconsistencies, discrepancies, and implications that were clearly contrary to Roman dogma. The modernists themselves quickly began to question and subvert what they were supposed to be defending. Rome had created a monster."

Damage control quickly followed. In 1903 the Pontifical Biblical Commission was created to supervise the work of Christian scholarship and the Ecole Biblique. Publications of some members of the modern school were placed on the Index of forbidden books and some of the authors were threatened with excommunication. In 1904 the Pope issued encyclicals opposing all scholarship which questioned the origins and early history of the Church and in 1907 modernism was effectively declared to be a heresy and the entire movement was formally banned. The 2nd Vatican Council held in the 1960s under Pope John-Paul XXIII promised hope of more liberal attitudes but the rigidly conservative views of the present See has reversed much of the progress.

Present day attitudes to biblical study within the Roman Church seem to be dangerously restrictive, for example current Church law requires that the biblical scholar's work should be guided and determined by Church doctrine, that is that it should have a clear bias towards conformity with the current Church beliefs. While by rejecting Fundamentalism the Roman Church has made a major contribution to rationality it is plain that one should not rely on getting unbiased or undistorted results from such Vatican institutions as the Ecole Biblique.

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