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Virtually any movie about a leader facing a crisis––whether the movie is fictional or historical––includes a scene where the boss/king/president/warlord gives a speech to the beleaguered troops that inspires them to face the challenge at hand. As it turns out, history writers in the ancient world often used the same kind of dramatic scenes when they told the stories of real wars. I want to look here at two renditions of one speech in the mouth of an ancient Jewish warlord, and what implications they may have for how we read the Bible. Speeches outside the canon: Judas “the Hammer” addressing his men This speech is set during the Maccabean revolt, which began in 167 B.C., and which amounted to a family of Jewish priests/warlords rising up in response to religious persecution under a Syrian king. 1 Maccabees 3:58-60 (NRSV) says that Judas, leading a small revolutionary army against a more powerful army of Syrians, gave this speech to encourage his men: “Arm yourselves and be courageous. Be ready early in the morning to fight with these Gentiles who have assembled against us to destroy us and our sanctuary [the Temple]. It is better for us to die in battle than to see the misfortunes of our nation and of the sanctuary. But as his will in heaven may be, so shall he do.” This is neither the first nor the best speech that Judas gives in the book, but it is a solid (if brief) piece of rhetoric. Next, I want to consider the account of the same event by Josephus, whose Jewish Antiquities paraphrases huge portions 1 Maccabees. In fact, for much of this story, it appears that Josephus (writing around A.D. 90) used 1 Maccabees (written around 100 B.C.) as virtually his only source. (You can see how the two texts line up on this page.) Here’s how Josephus relates this same speech (adapted from Whiston’s edition):
It doesn’t require very careful attention to notice that Josephus’ version is several times longer than the same speech in 1 Maccabees. There are two really important reasons why this matters for our interpretation of ancient historiography:
The only reasonable conclusion is that Josephus invented almost the entirety of Judas’ speech, and then wrote, bluntly, that “this was the speech which Judas made to encourage them.” Some people’s first reaction might be to say that Josephus was being dishonest, but it turns out that composing speeches for figures within historical works was standard practice in antiquity, and Josephus probably thought he was being a good historian by doing it. No one seems to have expected a word-by-word transcript in a book like this (and in any case no such transcript was available to Josephus), yet it obviously was important to these historians to include these speeches to add drama to their stories and help the reader interpret what was happening. In all probability, the author of 1 Maccabees had made up the original version of Judas’ speech in the first place. Speeches within the canon: Major figures This has enormous implications for how we read the Bible, because we find speeches throughout Scripture, often at the most climactic events in Israelite and Christian history:
What we learn from Josephus (and others) is that there’s really no reason to think that any of these Scriptural speeches reflects anything like a transcript of what was said on a particular occasion. That kind of literal accuracy simply wasn’t expected, and I don’t know of anything in the way the Bible was written to suggest that its authors operated by a different standard. The one exception to this would be Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which probably does reflect Jesus’ actual teachings, perhaps in many cases even word-for-word. But Jesus was a unique figure, whose particular teachings were very important to his followers and were written down within a generation or two of when he spoke them. And in any event, many of the teachings of the Sermon are found scattered throughout Luke, so it appears that Matthew is the one who gathered them here into a single “sermon.” The rest of the biblical speeches I listed, however, make a lot more sense as compositions of later writers, perhaps with some scattered traditions to build on. The goal was not to give a transcript but to (1) engage their readers with dramatic speeches at climactic points in the story, and (2) teach their readers how to theologically interpret what had happened in their nation’s history. That’s what 1 Maccabees did, that’s what Josephus did, and that’s what it looks like the authors of Scripture have done as well. Implications for reading the Bible Part of the purpose of this post is to try to disabuse people of the idea that the speeches in the Bible were spoken word-for-word by the people they are attributed to. But my point isn’t just to be critical: understanding how these texts were composed is important for understanding what they mean. As I have tried to argue here often, a literalist reading of Scripture sometimes manages to distract people from what a passage of Scripture is actually trying to say. It doesn’t do to fixate on something Paul says in Acts as a key to interpreting, say, Romans, when the speech in Acts probably represents simply the kind of thing that Luke thought Paul would have said. Since Luke appears to have been a pretty good historian, the speeches in Acts probably really do reflect the kinds of things that were taught in the early church; we just need to understand that some of those teachings in the mouths of Peter and Paul might have actually been introduced only later, around the time Luke wrote. We probably have very little idea what Peter actually said in his first sermons. We should still read the speeches as intended for our edification, and it’s useful to imagine Peter actually giving the sermon at the feast of Pentecost –– that’s what Luke wanted us to imagine, after all. But as careful readers of Scripture, we should also read the speeches as part of a theological argument that Luke is making about who Jesus was and what it meant (and means) for the church. This may end up being at odds with, for example, what the real Paul thought, and that’s an important point to remember if we want to understand Christian origins. |
December 26th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Since Luke appears to have been a pretty good historian…
Which parts are we counting? Not the nativity story, right? =/
December 26th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
That’s a good point. It probably would be more accurate to say that Luke’s speeches reflect what a late-first-century Christian would have thought appropriate for the apostles’ first sermons to have been. That would qualify Luke as a good historian in the ancient sense of the word, but not in what we rightly expect from an historian.
As for the nativity story, it’s hard to know where Luke got his material. Even if you grant the angels descending from the sky, it’s still difficult to imagine Augustus shutting down the entire empire for everyone to trace their ancestral roots and go to their ancient hometowns to register for a census (Lk 2:1-3).
We should probably assume that Luke composed the speeches of Gabriel, Mary, and Zechariah, maybe with the help of some traditions or hymns about Jesus that were making their way around the churches.
Considering the real historical value of the birth stories in Matthew and Luke is tricky. Both authors may have inherited them from others and considered them historical, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily are. Certainly the story of the mysterious Magi in Matthew looks contrived, and the appearances of angels in both stories appear to be modeled off of visions of angels in the Old Testament.
Still, for a Christian, I think it’s reasonable to suppose that Mary or Joseph, or both, had some kind of vision of an angel concerning Jesus’ birth–in both cases the angel tells them to name the baby “Jesus,” which was common but which indeed means “salvation.”
From a secular historical perspective, it’s reasonable for Mary and Joseph to have traveled to Bethlehem for some reason shortly before Jesus was born. Perhaps they were going to stay with family there. And even the manger story isn’t that far-fetched, since houses were often built such that the lower floor was a stable for animals, and the people lived on a second floor just above; if a family member was going to go through a messy childbirth, I would think most families would send them downstairs to do it, rather than ruining whatever bedding they might have had. Certainly the story of the 12-year-old Jesus in the Temple is believable, even if it would have been a standard story to tell about a prodigy, and thus may well have been created.
There are two passages early in Luke that talk about Mary treasuring memories in her heart (Lk 2:19, 51). This doesn’t have to mean that every part of these stories is factual, but it might mean that at least some of it came from stories that Mary herself told early on, and that were passed around the early church with Mary identified as the source.
Luke’s job would have been to fill in the details (in the same way Josephus filled in details of his story), and to provide sound theological interpretation of the whole thing. In this sense, he did a good job.
December 26th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
It probably would be more accurate to say that Luke’s speeches reflect what a late-first-century Christian would have thought appropriate for the apostles’ first sermons to have been. That would qualify Luke as a good historian in the ancient sense of the word…
Makes sense to me.
December 30th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Scott, although it’s not a speech per se, I think Jesus’ prayer in the garden could be added to your list as well. If the apostles with him were asleep, how would anyone know exactly what he prayed?
December 31st, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I go back and forth on this one. On the one hand, Jesus’ prayer in the garden certainly sounds like a stylized speech intended to show Jesus’ humanity and his obedience to God, not to mention modeling the proper attitude for Christians who face suffering.
On the other hand, I think it’s fair to wonder whether the disciples got to ask Jesus any questions post-resurrection. Assuming Jesus explained certain things to them, could he have told them about a final prayer? I would think, at the least, that Peter would have been curious about what Jesus prayed that night.
But then, it’s difficult to judge exactly what Jesus said and did after the resurrection. For most of those texts it’s generally assumed that we’re just getting the church’s interpretation of who Jesus was, placed in the mouth of Jesus in the story. But then, there’s not really a neutral ground among Bible scholars, because historical arguments are usually made on secular grounds: in other words, Bible scholars lose credibility if they claim that Jesus bodily rose from the dead, so they have to assume that none of the post-resurrection sayings were really from the mouth of Jesus (though perhaps they at least reflect what the disciples thought they heard).
I’m tempted to fall into that camp as well, but because I believe Jesus’ bodily resurrection is so important for the legitimacy of the Christian faith, I feel compelled to push back and lend some credibility to post-Easter sayings of Jesus. If we believe Jesus really rose from the dead, and that he really spoke to the disciples afterwards, then we certainly should expect that they would have preserved some of the things he told them. The prayer in the garden at least may have been one of those things.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Thanks for your thoughts, Scott. Why are you tempted to fall into the camp of the disciples writing down what they thought they heard?
January 4th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Oh, I meant I’m tempted to fall into the camp that assumes all the post-resurrection sayings were created later by the church. I doubt that any of the major journals of biblical studies would publish an article that claimed that some particular saying had been spoken by Jesus after the resurrection. There are just too many Bible scholars out there that couldn’t take that claim seriously — like I couldn’t take seriously a claim by a Muslim scholar that some part of the Koran came straight from the mouth of God.
There is room for claims about what God actually said, if you go to the field of systematic theology, but my approach to the Bible as a scholar is primarily as an historian, and historians understandably insist that we only use arguments that all historians can find reasonable.
The problem with this approach is that it assumes God never breaks into the world and actually does anything. The problem with not seeking secular historical explanations for things is that we get lazy, and we end up reading the Bible naively, overlooking things like the nature of speeches, which I’ve written about here.
Some people lose their faith before it’s all said and done, but there are also plenty of us out there who are willing to play by the rules of secular historiography in our professional work, but who still believe (or at least hope) that God really does work miracles.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Thanks for the explanation. I agree with your take on the problems of reading scripture from either perspective with exclusion of the other. I appreciate how you find a balance of both in your posts.