[ p. 228 ]
W E KNOW fairly well the Gospel which tells about Jesus. What was the Gospel he himself taught? Has not this been obscured—or in part forgotten—because of the time and effort spent in explaining his relation to the Father?
The exact opposite is the truth. It is the Gospel about Jesus which has saved for us the Gospel of Jesus. The acceptance of the teaching concerning him made his followers feel that his own message was utterly indispensable. Among the Jews of the day the burning question was: “How shall we face the Messiah when he comes?” And to this question the Christians —and the Christians alone—could return a confident answer: “Believe and live as the Messiah has taught. Among the Messiah’s functions, everyone believed, would be that of prophecy: he would declare perfectly and finally God’s will for men. But—said the Christians —this function of the Messiah has already been fulfilled; the complete prophetic message has been delivered and is in our hands. “Moses indeed said: A prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me; to him shall you hearken in all things whatsoever he shall speak unto you. And it shall be that every soul that shall not [ p. 229 ] hearken to that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.” [1]
The Christians, then, regarded themselves as the custodians of the Prophet-Messiah’s teaching, which it was their duty, in turn, to pass on to others. They taught it publicly in their missionary appeals—of that we may be sure. But their greatest teaching activity lay among the converts they made. At first, when some one hearing a Christian preacher professed faith, he was immediately baptized and made a member of the new brotherhood. Most of these converts, accordingly, must have entered the community with a very rudimentary knowledge of the new Way of Life. Training must begin at once, and must continue until they were in full possession of all that they ought to know. This placed a most serious responsibility upon the Christian leaders.
The responsibility was increased to the breakingpoint by the enormous numbers of converts with whom the community was soon forced to deal. [2] There was no precedent for such a task. Rabbis, of course, were well accustomed to the teaching of disciples, but the rabbis dealt with small groups of selected and intelligent scholars, who had unlimited leisure at their disposal. The Christian leaders, on the contrary, were face to face with thousands upon thousands of believers, living all over Palestine and outside it, [3] many of them of very simple understanding, men and women [ p. 230 ] who could spare but little time from the labor needed to sustain life. All this made the “pedagogic problem” of the apostolic band most difficult and puzzling. The only possible way of solving it was to reduce the instruction to the barest and simplest of essentials.
What Jesus had said or done during his early manhood could have been learned by anyone in Jerusalem, for his family had settled there; but the first Christian instructors were interested only in the period of his formal teaching. Even here a drastic selection was needful, without any attempt at completeness. Questions of time and place, except in extremely important cases, must be discarded; when and where Jesus gave his teaching was normally of no consequence. Details which only added vividness were likewise discarded. There could be no “purple patches.” Indeed, the experience of these first disciples had been so wonderful that they were quite beyond rhapsodizing about it. Their one desire was to preserve a record of important facts and pass it on to others. To do this, such material as could be preserved must be arranged in a form which could be most quickly and permanently memorized.
We may divide this material into five main classes: Sayings, parables, dialogues, miracles, and the passion narrative. With the separate sayings the task was simple, for Jesus himself had given his words in a form so perfect as to defy improvement. Even in modern translations, his utterances have a quality which makes them impossible ever to forget. In Aramaic, their [ p. 231 ] wording was often rhythmical, or even rhymed. [4] The problem for the Christian teachers was the assembling of the single sayings into groups, according to some mnemonic rule—usually that of topic. Here, too, Jesus had prepared the way. There would, of course, be no hesitation, in treating a theme thoroughly, in bringing together the most characteristic sayings of Jesus relating to it, no matter on how many or what distinct occasions these sayings may have been uttered. In this way sayings-groups, having the appearance of regular discourses, were built up. To ask whether or not Jesus actually delivered just such discourses would have seemed to be, and actually would have been, wholly beside the mark. [5]
The parables need no discussion. Each is perfect, and each is unforgetable. Tradition did no more than assemble them into groups—there are seven parables, all dealing with the Kingdom, in St. Matthew xiii [6] —and perhaps to supplement some of them with a few words explaining their application.
The dialogues are formed around some saying of Jesus which (usually) could not be well understood without knowing the situation, such, for example, as his utterance on the tribute question. We are told, then, the occasion; how certain questioners came to him; their questions; Jesus’ answer, including the special [ p. 232 ] saying; and (normally) a brief sentence describing the effect of his words. Each dialogue is a complete whole, capable of being taught just as it stands. Most dialogues are very short—about seven or eight verses—but occasionally two or more dialogues are combined into one. “Chains” of dialogues are familiar, and were certainly used in the first instruction; St. Mark ii: i—iii: 6 is made up of five dialogues, all giving disputes with the Scribes.
Miracles form a self-explanatory class. They were taught to illustrate how “Jesus went about doing good, and healing all them that were oppressed of the devil,” [7] and to give believers confidence in his power. They, too, are generally given in very brief form.
Of course it will be understood that the first teachers did not sit down and consciously divide their material into these various classes, labeling each as they went along. The types tend in some degree to blend into one another, [8] and combinations of them are very common. A dialogue, a saying, and a parable, on the same subject were especially popular. There is surprisingly little in our first three Gospels, from the opening of the ministry to the passion, that does not fall under one of these four descriptions.
The content and order of the passion narrative were naturally determined by the events on the last day of Jesus’ life. There never had been such a death as this. Not only did it display Jesus’ nature in fullest clearness, but it was regarded as bringing salvation to all [ p. 233 ] believers. Consequently, details are given much more fully. Toward the end every incident was important and time and place really mattered. Even here, however, the narrative is broken up into short paragraphs, each of which could be taught separately.
The first instruction, as has been said, was by topics selected for the immediate needs of converts. They must know the elements of righteousness; so they would learn more or less what we call the Sermon on the Mount. They must avoid the mistakes of their earlier teachers; therefore Jesus’ denunciations of the Scribes and Pharisees were important. The converts must prepare themselves for the approaching judgment; therefore his sayings about the future would be indispensable. All aspects of Christian life must be covered in this way.
Normally the teaching was oral. If the new teachers followed the custom of their age—and why not?— they sat in the midst of the hearers and recited a saying, which the “class” would repeat aloud many times until it had been committed to memory. Then the next saying would be treated similarly, then the next, until the available time was exhausted. [9] This method is still in vogue in many orthodox Jewish schools today; Orientals memorize far more quickly and accurately than Western people.
General accuracy in the tradition of Jesus’ words was indispensable; but, with so many teachers in so [ p. 234 ] many different places, and with oral instruction predominating, there was grave danger lest utterances be taught as coming from Jesus which were none of his. Hence there must have been some general oversight, something corresponding roughly to “teacher training.” Such supervision would naturally be the task of the Twelve. When the place vacated by Judas was filled, the qualifications for his successor are stated; the new leader must be one who had been “companying with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, until the day that he was received up from us.” [10] The force of these qualifications is evident; the new member of the Twelve must be a competent witness of all that Jesus had taught, and must know what Jesus did not teach. Inevitably, however, in the multiplicity of tasks which beset the Twelve, special duties must have been assigned to special individuals. The labor of preserving and perpetuating the tradition of Jesus’ words seems to have been the special function of Matthew.
For this we have the evidence of an early secondcentury bishop named Papias, who took unusual interest in apostolic details and spent endless labor in collecting information. He tells us that “Matthew wrote in the Hebrew [11] tongue the ‘oracles,’ [12] and everyone interpreted them as he was able.” In other words, the time had arrived when oral teaching was [ p. 235 ] becoming unmanageable, and so an official written account must be provided. Matthew did this work very objectively, so objectively that he did not even explain the more difficult passages.
In the meantime a further complication was present. In Galilee, practically the only language used by the Jews was Aramaic. But after Pentecost the headquarters, so to speak, of the Christian movement were shifted to Jerusalem, and many converts were made there. Jerusalem, however, was bilingual. Aramaic was the native language, but the city was flooded with pilgrims, most of whom spoke Greek. Many of these pilgrims settled in Jerusalem—to die in the holy city has always been a Jewish ideal—and continued to use their own language. From this class many converts to Christianity were made, and for their needs special provision was necessary. From the very beginning, accordingly, the teachers were obliged to provide Greek translations of Jesus’ words and of the accounts of his acts. Probably the first written records began at this point, for it would have been very difficult to keep stable an oral tradition in translation. Certainly these “Hellenist” Christians, as they were called, would demand everything in their own tongue that was included in the “official” Aramaic tradition. We may be certain that when Matthew published his edition of the “oracles,” a Greek translation soon followed. [13]
[ p. 236 ]
Accredited teachers who had been with Jesus in his lifetime would not have felt bound to confine themselves to the material ordinarily taught. Members of the Twelve, above all, were free to enlarge and supplement the regular tradition in any way they pleased. The rank and file of the instructors, however, would be careful not to venture outside recognized limits, and would have been quickly called to order had they done so. Thus the early converts would become accustomed to a “standard” type of material, taught in generally accepted forms. It is this material, chiefly, which was used by the writers of our first three Gospels.
As far as we can ascertain, it is this stage of the tradition, also, with which Paul was familiar. Pie shows no acquaintance with written records of Jesus’ words, [14] but he is familiar with the fact that these words have been collected. In I Corinthians vn, his converts ask him certain questions. One of them is, “May a wife depart from her husband, and marry again?” He replies, “Under no circumstances! And it is not I who say this, it is the Lord.” Another question was, “Should a virgin [15] marry?” To this he replies, “I have no commandment of the Lord bearing on this matter; the best I can do is to give my own opinion.” In other words, he knew Jesus’ sayings, and knew that none of them dealt with this concrete problem.
Similarly, the whole body of Christian teachers had [ p. 237 ] a well-authenticated record of what Jesus had said and done—and this from the very earliest days. The story of Jesus, in substantially the same basic form, was a familiar story from the time he had left his disciples. This is the story we have in our four Gospels.
Acts hi: 22-23; compare vn: 37. ↩︎
Making all allowance for Oriental picturesqueness in reporting numbers. ↩︎
Chiefly pilgrims who were converted when they visited Jerusalem. ↩︎
Rhyme in Aramaic is extremely easy, as the language has comparatively few word-endings. ↩︎
While our Gospels often tell us that Jesus “taught in the synagogues,” they make no attempt to record his addresses. St. Luke iv: 16-30 is no exception. ↩︎
A discourse composed entirely of parables is naturally unthinkable. ↩︎
Acts x: 38. ↩︎
Though not as often as one might expect. ↩︎
As not much time could be given on any occasion, the sections learned were necessarily brief. ↩︎
Acts i: 21-22. ↩︎
i.e., Aramaic. ↩︎
Anything about Jesus, whether a saying or an act, was an “oracle” to Papias. ↩︎
When the Gospel spread to the Gentiles, written records would have been still more needful. Greeks were not accustomed to memorizing oral tradition. ↩︎
Although this proves nothing. ↩︎
The “virgin” in this chapter is something more than an unmarried girl, but the question cannot be discussed here. ↩︎