Part One: Prolegomena
Chapter 4: Literary Criticism
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A Historical Introduction to the New Testament by Robert M. Grant
Part One: Prolegomena
Robert M. Grant is professor of New Testament at the University of Chicago, A formost scholar in the field, his books include Gnosticism, The Earliest Lives of Jesus, and The Secret Sayings of Jesus. Copyright 1963 by Robert M. Grant.
Originally published by Harper and Row in 1963.
But we cannot begin with the work as a whole. The whole cannot be understood -- even though its structure can sometimes be outlined -- before the sentence units are analysed. Generally speaking, the structure of an entire New Testament book is less easily grasped than the
constituent sentences are.
It may be asked why, in our search for units which can be readily understood, we do not begin with individual words. The reason for beginning with sentences lies in our understanding of the nature of New Testament language. In dealing with translations we have already
pointed to a number of ways in which the meanings of individual words can be and have been illuminated. But it is our opinion that individual words, no matter how carefully investigated, cannot be understood as exactly or precisely as can the structure of a sentence, especially in an articulated language like Greek. We should claim that the proper
approach to a New Testament document, while necessarily involving at least an approximation to the translation of individual words, begins with the diagramming of the sentences in such a way as to bring out the interrelations of words, phrases and clauses. Greek writers did not simply choose to write in a patterned manner; they had to write in a patterned manner because of the nature of their language, and in order to understand them we must understand the structure within which their thought moved.
It is of course possible that by diagramming in this way one may get an over-precise interpretation of thoughts which somehow transcended the limitations of language. But it is surprising how often ‘such writings as the Pauline epistles actually do conform to the rules of Greek sentence- structure.
The Sentence
There are certain features about New Testament sentences which immediately strike the reader’s eye, at least the eye which sees them diagrammed. For instance, it is obvious that many of the sayings of Jesus as reported in the synoptic gospels contain parallelism, a feature also characteristic of much of the poetic language of the Old Testament.
Sometimes this parallelism is synonymous. Approximately the same meaning is expressed in two slightly different ways.
Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do
harm?
to save a life or to kill? (Mark 3:4) If a kingdom be divided against itself,
that kingdom cannot stand;
and if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand (Mark 3:24-5).
There is nothing hid
but that it should be revealed, nor was anything made secret
but that it should come to light (Mark 4.22) Sometimes the parallelism is antithetical.
He who has,
it will be given to him;
and he who has not,
from him it will be taken away (Mark 4.25).
And Sometimes it is chiastic (from the Greek letter ‘chi’, which looks like a cross or X).
You know that
those who are thought to rule over the gentiles lord it over them, and
(b) their great men exercise authority over them.
But it is not so among you. But
whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant, and
(a) whoever wishes to be first among you shall be the slave of all (Mark 10:42-4).
The words ‘but it is not so among you’ indicate that the parallel is also antithetical.
It is perhaps worth noting at this point that in the synoptic gospels such parallelism occurs only in sayings, not in comments made by the authors themselves. On the other hand, in the Gospel of John it is to be found
not only in sayings of Jesus but also in what the evangelist says. Indeed, at some points it is impossible to determine whether it is the evangelist or Jesus who is speaking.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son
that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world
but that the world should be saved through him (John 3:16-17).
Parallelism is also common in the letters of the apostle Paul. From among the many examples we cite only a few.
He who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly;
and he who sows bountifully
shall also reap bountifully (II Cor. 9.6).
All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient; all things are lawful, but not all things edify (I Cor. 10.23).
There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit;
and there are diversities of ministrations, yet the same Lord;
and there are diversities of operations, but the same God . . . (I Cor. 12:4-6).
Naturally Paul’s style does not consist of parallelisms alone, even though he is very fond of them. In Greek, more than in Hebrew, the structure of a sentence is often controlled by the prepositions which indicate the relations between the various nouns and verbs. By considering the sentence-structure in relation to the prepositions, the precise meaning of the sentence often becomes clear.
For us there is one God the Father of whom are all things and
unto whom are we;
and one Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things and through whom are we (I Cor. 8.6).
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him were
created all things . . ;
all things were created through him and unto him;
and he is before all things,
and all things hold together in him (Col. 1.15—17).
Sometimes the precise relationship of the prepositions is not so clear.
Whom God set forth as an expiation through faith
by his blood
for the demonstration of his righteousness through the remission of past sins
in the forbearance of God;
for the demonstration of his righteousness at the present time. . . (Rom. 3:25-6).
The words translated ‘by his blood’ may mean ‘in his blood’; in that case, the meaning of the sentence would be somewhat different.
The Paragraph
After we have looked at individual sentences we are in a position to proceed to the paragraph. Sometimes, indeed often, Paul constructs his paragraphs with great care. For example, when he is giving exact instructions to the Corinthians about eating meat he uses a structure almost legal in form.
a. Eat everything sold in the meat-market, making no distinctions for conscience’ sake;
for ‘the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof’
(Ps. 24:1).
b. If any unbeliever invites you (and you wish to go), eat everything set before you,
making no distinctions for conscience’ sake.
c. But if anyone says to you, ‘This has been sacrificed,’
do not eat, for the sake of him who warned you and of conscience
— I mean not your own but that of your neighbour (I Cor. 10:25-8).
An example of a longer paragraph carefully put together occurs in I Corinthians 2, where a similar arrangement by sense-lines can be provided; but the most famous example is to be found in I Corinthians 13. Here there is a magnificent combination of repetition and variety.
The passage begins with a contrast between various gifts and virtues and the supreme gift of love.
If I — and have not love, I have become---.
And if I—and—and---,
and if I —, and have not love, I am---.
And if I---‘
and if I —, and have not love, I am---.
The second section is based primarily on verbs which indicate love’s nature. First come two positive verbal statements; then a verb with a negative is followed once by the noun love, five times by negative verbal statements. A transition to the positive is made by means of an antithetical parallel, and the section ends with four verbs whose object is call things’.
(positive) Love —,
— love;
(negative) it does not
love does not--- (six verbs)
(transition) it does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but it rejoices with the truth;
(positive) all things it — (four times).
The third section describes the finality of love by means of a series of contrasts which recall the themes of the first section.
(contrasts) Love never fails;
if there are —, they will be---;
if there are —, they will —;
if there is —, it will be---.
(transition) For we — in part and we — in part;
but when the perfect comes, the partial will be—.
(an example) When I was a child, I---- as a child (three examples), but when I became a man,
I put away the things of a child.
(eschatological conclusion) Thus far we see ----, but then
Thus far I know in part, but then,---.
(summary) Faith, hope, and love last, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
Some of the points can be arranged differently, but it is clear that a carefully planned arrangement does exist. To discover such structures in the New Testament writings is the primary task of exegesis. If we can understand them, we can at least begin to understand what the writers intended to say.
Special Paragraph Structures
In addition to the general problem of understanding sentences and paragraphs, there is also the question of particular literary forms which Paul and others may employ. One obvious example is the salutation which we should expect to find in a letter. Less obvious is the
thanksgiving which occurs not only in the Pauline epistles (except
Galatians) but also in other letters of Hellenistic and Roman times. Such thanksgivings often set forth themes which are later taken up in the body of the letter itself. (This subject is fully discussed by Paul Schubert in his Form and Function of the Pauline Thanksgivings, 1939.) In addition, Graeco-Roman writers were well aware of the possibilities provided by
the ecthes is, or carefully planned digression (I Corinthians 13 is an example).
Sometimes literary and oral style overlap, as in the instances where Paul addresses his readers as individuals (e.g. Rom. 2:1 ff.; cf. also James 2:18 ff.) or quotes from what some of them have said or written, as in I Corinthians (6:12-13; perhaps 6:18b; 8:1, 4, 8; 10:23). This manner of writing, reflected also in the question, ‘Don’t you know that... ?’, is characteristic of the descriptions of the diatribe or popular philosophical address developed by Cynics and Stoics. (Lists of virtues and vices, as well as brief descriptions of family duties, were also common among Graeco-Roman writers.)
A fascinating example of a special kind of paragraph occurs in II Corinthians 1:23-33, where Paul is reluctantly ‘boasting’ to the
Corinthians. As Anton Fridrichsen pointed out, this ‘catalogue of crises’
finds remarkably close stylistic similarities in the descriptions of the careers of kings and other potentates which were engraved on stone or related in Graeco-Roman biographies. These descriptions, like Paul’s, make use of ‘many times’ and of precise numbers as well; sometimes, like Paul’s, they contain brief accounts of significant episodes. The difference, of course, lies in the content. Kings list their achievements;
Paul lists examples of his sufferings on behalf of Christ.
Another special kind of paragraph structure which should be mentioned at this point is the parable, characteristic of the teaching of Jesus and that of his rabbinical contemporaries. This structure deserves notice especially because of the dogmatic assumptions associated primarily with the work of Adolf Jülicher (Die Gleichnisreden Jesu). Jülicher was trying to free the parables of Jesus from the ‘over-interpretation’ which had frequently been given them in patristic and medieval exegesis. He therefore sharply differentiated allegory from parable. According to his definitions, an allegory was an artificial story intended to convey a variety of meanings; a parable was a realistic story which made one, and only one, point. Unfortunately, while his general idea is correct, not all the parables of Jesus are realistic and not all of them convey only one point. Sometimes, as also among the rabbis, allegory and parable
overlap, and we are not in a position to reject those parables which seem to convey more than one meaning or, for that matter, the explanations of the parables which occur in the gospels themselves.
Words
We have seen that to understand the New Testament writings we must examine the literary form of sentences and paragraphs. Only after doing so can we turn to the smallest units of expression, the words. But we must remember that the meanings of words depend primarily on the function the words perform within the sentences. One might suppose that the simple connective ‘kai’ ordinarily translated ‘and’, would be easy enough to translate, or that ‘kai . . . kai’ could always be rendered as ‘both . . . and’. Such is not the case. ‘Kai’ obviously means two different things in the following sentence. ‘And ("kai"), passing by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and ("kai") Peter’ (Mark 1:16). The first refers to a temporal sequence; the second, to the association of two objects of vision. Sometimes the word can bear an adversative sense (‘and yet’); sometimes it is ‘otiose’, conveys practically no meaning, and should not be translated.
When we pass beyond this kind of word to the more difficult terms such as prepositions, we encounter the fact that both in popular Greek and in ordinary English, prepositions are fairly fluid in meaning. The Greek word ‘en’ can mean ‘in’; it can also mean ‘with’, ‘by’, or ‘to’. Its precise meaning depends on the context. And when we go on to key words like justification, redemption, salvation, grace (and others) we confront the problem of finding English equivalents (see Chapter m) and, more important, of trying to delimit the range of meanings. We have already seen some of the ways in which scholars have tried to make use of papyri and of the Septuagint, not to mention Hellenistic literature in general. Such dictionaries as those of Walter Bauer and Gerhard Kittel provide indispensable help.
( But they cannot give us precise definitions of any of these words. They can tell us what meanings the words seem to possess in various writings;
we cannot be sure that Paul, for example, always intended to convey any of these meanings in his letters.
Often the best analogies for the meanings of words and the overtones which an author intended to convey are provided in the author’s own writings. Thus Bultmann has pointed out that for Paul the verb ‘pisteuo’
often bears the meaning ‘obey’ as well as ‘believe’. The author’s own usage must be decisive. He was (ordinarily) the master of his own language.
The Question of Interpolations
Thus far we have been assuming that the documents we possess are the documents the New Testament authors wrote, in spite of the presence of a few textual difficulties. Such cases as Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:33- 8:11 are exceptional. But literary critics often attempt to go beyond textual evidence and discover interpolations by using literary criteria alone. We must therefore discuss these criteria and attempt to assess the results of applying them.
Obviously the evidence provided by ancient manuscripts is of primary importance. Passages omitted by early scribes often deserve to have been omitted. On the other hand, if various manuscripts present
essentially the same content but with variations in expression we cannot be certain that the passage involved is to be deleted. Probably one or another of the manuscripts has preserved the original version.
After textual criticism comes literary analysis as such. Three questions can be raised. (1) Does the passage in question contain words or phrases alien to the rest of the author’s known work? If it does, we may regard it as suspect -- though we must remember that vocabularies change and that, even at one time, an author does not use all the words he knows.
Closely related to this is the question as to whether or not words in the suspect passage are used in senses different from those in which the author elsewhere employs them -- though this question too must be raised with caution, since authors can, after all, use one word to mean several things and several words to convey one meaning. (2) Does the passage in question reflect the style used in other parts of the author’s work? If it does not, we may suspect the presence of interpolation. On the other hand, it must be remembered that one author can write in several styles and that in antiquity those who were trained in writing were taught to imitate the styles of various models. Sometimes scholars have listed criteria for finding interpolations by criticizing the style of certain passages. They assume that such an author as John could write well, and therefore interpolations may exist where there are (a)
compositional difficulties (‘when, then, the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John,’ John 4:1), (b) contradictions (‘yet Jesus himself was not baptizing; his disciples were,’ 4:2), and (c) obscurities. An excellent example of obscurity occurs in John 4:43-5.
After two days he went forth from there into Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honour in his own country. When, then, he came into Galilee the
Galileans received him, having seen everything that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves had gone to the feast.
What is the sequence of ideas in this passage? Origen found it so difficult that he was sure it was meant allegorically; and he may have been right. The difficulty with these three criteria lies in the assumption that an author (a) never has compositional difficulties, (b) never
contradicts himself, and (c) always writes, and intends to write, clearly.
This assumption is not necessarily correct.
Literary critics sometimes pass beyond these criteria in the direction of historical criticism. They analyse documents in relation to (1) the presumed author’s life and thought, (2) the known course of historical events, and (3) the assumed development of early Christian life and thought. The first of these methods can be regarded as still within the limits of literary criticism. Passages which are inconsistent with what is definitely known about an author’s life or thought (as reflected in his writings) may well be regarded as interpolations. In most instances in the New Testament, however, not enough is known about these
phenomena for us to be able to say with certainty what is inconsistent with them. The second and third of the methods go well beyond literary criticism. The fact that something seems unhistorical to us does not imply that it seemed unhistorical to a New Testament writer or that, for that matter, he was writing what we should regard as history. For
example, it has often been assumed that the description of the last times in Mark 13 was written either before or after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 but, in any event, with closer attention to the book of Daniel than to historical events. On the other hand, the precise reference to the devastation of Jerusalem by a hostile army in Luke 21:20-4 has
suggested that Luke is writing after the fall of the city. C. H. Dodd has pointed out, however, that Luke’s reference may well be derived from Old Testament passages which speak of the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC.
Mark, then, is close to Daniel; Luke is close to earlier prophets, and the passage is of no use in dating his book.
As for the third method, it cannot be discussed until we have considered the idea of development as applied to early Christian history (Chapter IV).
Questions of Authorship