Based on what I’ve been studying, I want to start with this post and challenge how the church often reads the Gospels.

To begin with, it’s important to recognize that a story or letter can work on more than one level at the same time, and the Four Gospels are a good example. In contrast to the letters of Paul, which speak directly to their respective audiences (and thus are intended to work primarily on just one level), the gospels speak to their reading audiences through words that Jesus speaks to other characters in the story. That means Jesus’ words “work” both on the level of the other characters who hear them and on the level of the readers who read them. Some commentators call this “transparency,” meaning that we the readers see through the characters’ words to a message intended for us.

I should note that this idea is quite offensive to a lot of people, because its implication is that Matthew describes Jesus as saying things that are really only meant for us, and that therefore Jesus didn’t actually say. Many people would call this inaccuracy or lying on God’s part. That feeling is justifiable.

But I want to argue that the idea of the Gospel writers fudging the facts is not so offensive if we understand them according to the purpose for which they were written.

To use movie terms, I think we should compare the gospels not to documentaries (which record events more or less exactly) but rather to movies (which use a combination of fact and fiction to make a point). When we watch Dead Man Walking, which tells a true story, we don’t describe its scenes as dishonest simply because they didn’t happen exactly as depicted; rather, we recognize that the story can be essentially true even if details are changed to teach particular lessons more clearly. I haven’t seen United 93, but I’m sure it includes dialogue and events that didn’t really happen; that, again, doesn’t make the story untrue.

There are some historical movies or biopics that change so many facts that we’d describe them as dishonest or inadequate, but most of us would acknowledge that a writer can take some artistic license and still tell a true story.

Why should we insist that God could not allow the authors of the gospels to do the same? Many people simply say, “Well, God wouldn’t do that.” But what if God did? Is it our job to describe what God is allowed to put in Scripture?

To give an example of Matthew’s transparency, the Sermon on the Mount may be addressed to Jesus’ disciples on the level of the story, but the way Matthew sets up his story implies that really, the sermon is intended for us, the readers. Well, actually it’s intended for Matthew’s first-century audience, but we share with them a certain distance from the historical life of Jesus that creates a commonality in our reading experience. (I deal with the Sermon on the Mount in this post.)

A natural tendency among Christians has been to treat the Gospels primarily as history (i.e., like a documentary), since they clearly do recount historical events carried out by real people.

Taken to its extreme, this understanding has led to some counter-intuitive interpretations; for instance, some Church of Christ folks have claimed that Christians are not to pray the Lord’s Prayer because Jesus taught it to his disciples (as Jews) before the kingdom had come. These interpreters, understanding the cross (or perhaps Pentecost; I can’t remember which) to have been the event where Jesus’ kingdom did indeed arrive, feel that the Prayer is no longer appropriate for believers today. We can read it and appreciate it as instruction to Jesus’ disiples at the time, but we are not to recite it today.

This is certainly a possible reading, but it seems odd for Matthew to have passed along a beautiful, memorable prayer if he specifically did not intend it for Christian use. In any event, I would argue that we should make our decisions about questions like this based on Matthew’s text as a whole, and so I want to look at how Matthew tells his story and what it suggests for how we should read his story.

Specifically, I think there are good reasons to see at least some of the words of Jesus in Matthew as being addressed less to the disciples in the story and more to the readers of Matthew’s gospel. If so, how do we determine which words are meant for whom? How exactly does Matthew’s transparency work?

One key point of interpretation for any narrative involves the impact that the story has on the reader. While some might take the Gospels as documentary history, careful reading reveals four powerful pieces of rhetoric. In much the same way as a movie such as Dead Poets Society (see my earlier post), they not only tell a story but also try to persuade their readers of their point of view on Jesus, the church, the End Times, and any number of other points.

In future posts, I’ll take up specific passages and trace how Matthew seems to use his story rhetorically to persuade and instruct the reader rather than give strict modern history. In the meantime, some questions:

  • What are we to make of this?
  • Would it be dishonest for God to have allowed Matthew to adjust or even invent words or deeds of Jesus that ended up in Scripture?
  • Should we be upset if Matthew really did invent things?
  • What does it mean for our understanding of Scripture if the different Gospels disagree on key points of who Jesus is?