Lecture Ten

The New Testament

Scope: This lecture considers the New Testament, which focuses on Jesus. We begin by seeing
Jesus in the letters of Paul, for whom Christs death and resurrection were the texts essential
items and could be explained to Gentiles (non-Jews) in terms of the mystery religions which had
sprung up all over the Mediterranean world. We then look at the Gospels of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John and consider that their differences might be the result of different emphases and
target audiences. Next we examine Jesuss preference for teaching in parables and look at one
of their recurring themes: Gods concern for the lost, the errant, and the lowlya striking
contrast to the way the gods valued humans in Greek and Roman literature. This concern for
the meek and the poor in spirit has implications for future literature, as we demonstrate with
Erich Auerbachs analysis of the story of Peters denial of Jesus in Matthews Gospel.
Outline
I. For Christians, this book is the new covenant, transcending or fulfilling the old one made with
the Hebrews.
A. For Christians, Jesus died a blameless death for the sins of the world, thus undoing the
primal sin of Adam and Eve and reconciling God and humans.
B. His resurrection validates his sacrifice and establishes a pattern in which humans can
participate, as all people are now Gods chosen people.
II. This was the message of Paul, the first great Christian missionary, who wrote the oldest
books in the New Testament, dating from 50 C.E.
A. Paul was writing to Gentiles (non-Jews) who would not have known Old Testament
prophecies about an expected Messiah.
B. Paul explained Jesuss death and resurrection in terms of mystery religions which had sprung
up all around the Mediterranean world as personal alternatives to the official and public state
religion of Rome.
1. According to Robert Payne, Romes religion was a duty; it offered little by way of moral code
and no promise of personal immortality.
2. Mystery religionswere dedicated to various gods (Isis,Dionysus, Mithra) and involved
initiation, ritual, and the promise of immortality through participation in the death and
resurrection of the deity.
3. For Paul, Jesus was the fulfillment of all other mystery religions: a god who was not from
mythology, who did not die annually but did so once and for all time in history, and whose death
and resurrection via belief and participation in his sacred mealthe Eucharistpromised
immortality.
III. The Gospels were written perhaps as late as the 2
nd
century in the case of John, and they
add information about Jesuss life and teachings to Pauls account of Jesuss death and
resurrection.
A. The Gospel according to Mark is the oldest and shortest gospel.
B. Matthew and Luke seem to have drawn on Mark but had other sources, since they include
material not in Mark. Luke includes material in neither Mark nor Matthew, so he may have had
access to a third collection of sources.
C. The Gospel according to John is very different from the other three.
1. It includes much material that is not in the synoptic Gospels.
2. It is deeply indebted to Greek philosophy for its explanation of Jesuss life and death.
3. It is more a meditation on Jesus than a history or biography.
D. For this lecture we will set John aside to focus on the other three Gospels.
IV. The Gospels of only Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic Gospels, since their
accounts, while differing in details, can be reconciled with each other, and can probably be
accounted for by their different aims and intended audiences.
A. The Gospel according to Mark is probably designed to get as much information about Jesus
into writing before those who remembered him died.
1. Its central question concerns Jesuss identity as the awaited Jewish Messiah.
2. In the first verse, Mark says that Jesus is the Christ, and Christosis the Greek word for
Messiah.
3. When the Jewish high priest asks Jesus if he is the Christ, Jesus says simply, I am.
B. The Gospel according to Matthew is written for fellow Jews, and its intent is to show that
Jesus fulfilled all the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah.
1. Matthews story is dense with allusions to the Old Testament prophets (reminding us of the
way Virgil uses Homer in his Aeneid).
2. Matthew includes some narrative details to show fulfillment of Old Testament storieslike
Mary and Joseph taking the baby Jesus to Egypt, which setsup interesting parallels between
Jesus and Moses, the deliverer of Israel from Egypt.
C. Thus, target audiences may have a great deal to do with the differences betweenthe synoptic
Gospels.
V. The synoptic Gospels all agree that Jesus preferred to teach in parables, which answer
questions indirectly with a narrative rather than a discursive answer.
A. Parablesas we have seen in those of Chuang Chouare more resonant than discursive
answers, handing more of the responsibility of understanding them to the hearer/reader.
B. Marks comment that Jesus told parables in public and then explained their meaning to his
disciples in private has given rise to a long tradition that posits a secret society which has
always known the real meaning of his teachings.
C. Most of Jesuss parables seem not to need secret interpretation. Many of themlike the
Prodigal Son, the man who loses one sheep out of 100, or the woman who loses one piece of
silver out of 10show Gods concern for the lost, the lowly, and the outcast.
D. In our course, this is strikingly new, since in most of the theologies we have looked at, God or
the gods favor the strong, the beautiful, and the successfulthose who are most like them.
E. There are exceptions to this idea.
1. In the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh takes such unlikely people as Moses and David and turns them
into heroes.
2. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that he will love anyone, from any caste, who will
sacrifice the actions of his life to Vishnu.
VI. The idea that God has a special care for the lost, the straggler, the ordinaryunderscored in
the Sermon on the
Mount in the Gospel according to Matthewannounces a new age with powerfulimplications for
the future of literature.
A. In Mimesis, Erich Auerbach argues that there had never been a serious treatment of common
people in literature before the New Testament. If they appeared at all before, they were treated
comically.
B. There is nothing in classical literature like the story of Peters denial of Jesus as told in
Matthew.
1. The scene, in classical terms, is too serious for comedy, too contemporary for tragedy, and
too politically insignificant for history.
2. The story engenders a new style in which what was once material for the comic reaches out
to the sublime and the eternal.
C. After the New Testament, it became possible in literatureto treat fishermen, prostitutes, tax
collectors, the sick, the paralyzed, the lame, the lost, and the erring seriously.
D. In literary terms, this may be the greatest revolution brought about by the New Testament.
Essential Reading:
The New Testament: The Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Supplementary Reading:
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Chapter 2.
Humphrey Carpenter, Jesus (Past Masters).
Questions to Consider:
1. How practical are the admonitions in Jesuss Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel according
to Matthew?
Should their practicality even be a consideration? Compare their rubrics with those of the ideal
ruler in
Confucius: in either or both cases, are we talking about a possible situation or an ideal which
cannot be reached but which should be aimed at?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of teaching in parables rather than in discursive
statements and answers? Try to make up a parable that contains the most essential things you
would like to teach your children or grandchildren, then ask a friend to interpret the parable.
How does your friends interpretation help you to understand the nature of parables?