Redaction criticism is an old method of Gospel study which examined the Gospels and looked for reasons that the Gospel authors would change or invent stories and sayings of Jesus. Rather than find out about Jesus himself, scholars of old who engaged in this study tried to find out about the beliefs and needs of the earliest Christian communities.
In this post, I will aim to undermine the redaction-critical assumption that the Gospels were written for a specific community and rather hope to establish that the Gospels were actually written for an extremely wide audience of Christians. Since we can establish that the Gospels were not written for specific isolated communities, the standard of proof thrust upon the Redaction critics suddenly becomes much greater if they propose that some of the stories and sayings of Jesus were fabricated to meet the needs of the earliest communities.
So, before we actually immerse ourselves into the arguments against the communities thesis, we should first examine how this "communities" thesis became accepted by such a wide majority of scholars in the field of Gospel studies. Simply put, there has never been any sort of treatise or lecture or dialogue beyond a few sentences within the scholarly community which established the Communities thesis. Throughout the past century, the communities thesis has been established by nothing more than bare assumption, possibly on the authority of the towering giants of older New Testament scholarship like Albert Schweitzer or Rudolf Bultmann.
So, I will offer several evidences for the wide readership and hearership of the Gospels. THe first piece of evidence is the fact that the Gospel of Mark, assuming the 2-source hypothesis (which is believed by a hefty majority of scholars in the field, and by myself) was known by the author of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. We really should ask ourselves how Mark could have gotten into the hypothetical "matthean" or "lukan" communities if it was only intended for an isolated hypothetical Markan Community.
The second piece of evidence I want to give is the fact that the Gospels were actually written. If we are going to posit for the moment that the Gospels were written for a specific isolated community, of which the author was a part of, then we must ask ourselves why they felt so inclined to write it. If the authors were members of the community for which they wrote, then they could have simply communicated their messages to the communities orally. This shoudl bring to mind Paul's letter to the Romans. In it, Paul states that he has not been to Rome yet. Obviously the only reason Paul is actually writing the epistle to the Romans is because he cannot personally communicate his theology to them orally. To say that the Gospel authors wrote for their communities is tantamount to saying that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians while permanently resident in Corinth. Obviously Paul did not do this. This is nicely reinforced by the fact that nearly all writings of the early christians were intended to communicate to far away audiences. Take for example Clements letter to the Corinthians, Clement wrote this because he was staying in Rome and there were disputes going on in Corinth. Secondly, Ignatius of Antioch wrote to many churches during his journey towards his own martyrdom. Lastly, all of Paul's letters and the letter to the Hebrews were written for far and away audiences from the author, or authors (my bible teacher thinks that Hebrews was actually written by several different authors dictating to a scribe, and they included Paul, Barnabas, and Priscilla and Aquilla). To suppose that the Gospels are the one exception sounds an awfully lot like special pleading.
The third piece of evidence I wish to offer is the fact that the early christian communites were not scattered isolated communities but a network of different communities constantly communicating with one another. The first piece of evidence of this is the rather wide availability of travel even to common folk. Michael Thompson notes this in The Gospels for All Christians, roads made travel by land incredibly cheap if one walked, and Pax Romana made travel by sea even safer and cheaper (if one gained passage during the summer months). The second piece of evidence for this is the fact that Paul's letters provide some weighty evidence that there were disputes between different communities of Christians in its earliest years. Finally, the last piece of evidence is that the preponderance of evidence on the more prominent christians indicates that church leaders of the 1st and early 2nd century traveled widely, these included Barnabas, Paul, James, Peter, Mark, Priscilla and Aquilla, Silas, Philipp the Evangelist and his daughters, Andronicus and Junia, Agapus, and the Brothers of the Lord
The fourth piece of evidence I wish to offer is the fact that in the Greco-Roman world, Books were not intended for private use if they were written, they were intended to be disseminated and copied by many people. Material evidence for this in the case of Christians comes from the rather wide availability of Fragments of the New Testament and the Gospels. However, we can see that the commercial booktrade relied on people copying books. People did not write books to earn money, but to gain publicity.
the last piece of evidence I wish to offer is that John being written for those who already heard or read the Gospel of Mark provides evidence for a wide audience for John's Gospel. This comes from 2 parenthetical explanations found in John 3:24, which talks of a ministry of Jesus "before John was put in prison", and John 11:2, which talks about Lazarus being the brother of Mary, the person who annointed Jesus' feet. The first parenthetical explanation is odd because anyone who was reading John would have known that John was not put into prison because he was still baptizing people. This, as Richard Bauckham notes, most likely serves as a note for readers of Mark who may have thought that Jesus began his ministry only after John the baptist was put into prison. Hence, anyone reading John would have placed Jesus' Judean ministry between Mark 1:13 and Mark 1:14. The second parenthetical explanation is also odd if we do not presuppose readership already acquainted with Mark's Gospel because the healing of Lazarus occurs BEFORE Mary annoints Jesus' feet in John's Gospel. This is probably to serve as an indicator for readers of Mark, or hearers of the Synoptic tradition, that Lazarus was the brother of an already known woman in the Gospel narratives.
These 5 pieces of evidence from the Gospels and the ancient world seem to point conclusively against the popular communities thesis and rather to a wide intended readership for the Gospels.
This concludes my discussion on redaction criticism and the Gospels.
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