It is quite common for people to blame fundamentalist views of inerrancy and forced harmonizations of the Bible on modernity but Hengel points back to Andreas Osiander’s (1498–1552) strained interpretation of the Bible which rivals anything we’ve seen from modern day fundies. Osiander was of the mind that if there were any differences, no matter how small, in the Synoptics then that was evidence of separate accounts. So for example Jesus stilled two storms (Mk. 4:35-41; Lk. 8:22-25), etc. Now hear Hengel:
This may seem to us to be a quite extreme case, but similar sort of unbiblical, and ultimately rationalistic, apologetics remains the rule in Protestant orthodoxy until the beginning of historical criticism in the eighteenth century, and indeed in some evangelical fundamentalist circles to the present day. Such a ‘fundamentalist rationalistic’ exegesis which makes the New Testament a law book does as little service to the real historical and theological understanding of the Gospels (the two cannot be separated) as the radical ahistorical scepticism which seeks to investigate the text only by literary approach in terms of its aesthetic value or by a dogmatic approach in terms of its unalterably fixed ‘truth content’ and prohibits any authentic historical investigation, or at least is not interested in it.
The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, 23-24.
B”H
I follow, but I don’t follow: What solution does he offer?
By: tc robinson on July 4, 2009
at 4:02 pm
I’ll never get over the postscript and the article it was based upon. Very strange and unjustified, incomprehensible synoptic solution.
By: steph on July 4, 2009
at 8:12 pm
Steph: Which article was it based upon? I don’t feel like looking at the end notes (ever!) at the moment. It’s such a shame that this book has end notes too since so many of them are worth reading.
By: Nick Norelli on July 4, 2009
at 10:39 pm
I’m not at my computer, I’m at Maurice’s so I can’t look at my bib and my coffee is here and so is my cat so I’m not moving… It was only about 3 and a half seconds (or pages) long, written a few years ago, I think it was in Expository Times and it was called something enlightening like ‘Matthew’s use of Luke’. It doesn’t really matter seeing he’s expanded the whole thing is his postscript – although still without proper demonstration.
By: steph on July 5, 2009
at 6:09 am
Steph: Got it. I thought you meant that the postscript was in response to an article.
By: Nick Norelli on July 5, 2009
at 10:07 am
I was actually digging through some Expository Times before looking for something else and came across Maurice’s review of ‘The Four Gospels’ It sums up my view of the book and especially the postscript. Coincidentally, Hengel is my doctoral grandfather so to speak (he’s Roland Deines’ supervisor – my second supervisor) and my other doctoral grandfather so to speak, CK Barrett, and Hengel, collaborated together in a book I hadn’t heard of, Conflicts and challenges in early Christianity edited by Donald A. Hagner. What a fascinating day of distractions, tangents and time wasting I’m having!
By: steph on July 5, 2009
at 10:39 am
Steph: I’ll have to give his review a read after I compose mine.
By: Nick Norelli on July 5, 2009
at 4:49 pm
Jim wrote one too on JBL.
By: steph on July 5, 2009
at 6:01 pm
TC: Sorry, I missed your comment. The solution is to let Scripture be what it is without forcing all kinds of foreign ideas on it. Scripture nver claims inerrancy for itself so to read it and think you have to reconcile every discrepancy to fit with an idea of strict inerrancy is wrong.
Steph: Jim who?
By: Nick Norelli on July 5, 2009
at 6:46 pm
Ha ha – did I write that? Jim West.
By: steph on July 5, 2009
at 6:55 pm
Steph: Under what name did he write it? I can’t seem to find it.
By: Nick Norelli on July 5, 2009
at 8:18 pm
Under Jim West of course!!
By: steph on July 6, 2009
at 6:09 am
I mean JBS not JBL… ;-)
By: steph on July 6, 2009
at 6:16 am
Steph: That would explain why I couldn’t find it!
By: Nick Norelli on July 6, 2009
at 9:07 am