I think the value of “history” as a concept in literature is vastly underrated. Getting it right is necessary for making sense of the texts like the New Testament when you read them. So I’ll take two posts to do that. This is the first.
The Problem
Here’s a classic expression of a categorical problem for the Gospels:
But… John, last of all, conscious that the ‘bodily’ had been set forth in the Gospels, urged on by his disciples, and, divinely moved by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel. This is Clement’s account.
Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 6.14.
“History” isn’t mentioned in the quotation, but it more or less illustrates a common notion that “historical narrative” isn’t the right term to describe one, some, or all of the Gospels.
Let’s get a provisional definition of “historical narrative” and see if we can’t get some epistemological traction on the problem.
Definitions
A historical narrative is any narrative that depends on some real past for its meaning. I.e., a text is a “historical narrative” such that if the “real past” in question were erased from reality, the text would lose the foundational part of its meaning, and would in this sense undergo a crisis of meaning, or become hermeneutically impotent. This entails that a real author has a relevant role, since the “past” is channelled through the author’s perceptions, interests, and aims
By contrast, there are realistic narratives. These are narratives that are only “realistic” but not actually “historical”. For the sake of simplicity, consider them historical fiction. In contrast to “historical narratives,” they require no connection to anything real beyond the present experience of the reader.
[“Real human experience” matters for both, but the “historical” depends on “tokens” of the experience, and the “realistic”—much like science, psychoanalysis, or the like—depends on “types” of experience].
Options
It seems to me that this allows for a few possibilities with respect to the question “are the Gospels historical”?
They are “realistic narratives.”
Some are “historical narratives” (e.g., Synoptics), some are “realistic” narratives (e.g., John).
All are “historical narratives.”
It’s likely that you think one of these is accurate, but here’s the rub: All realistic narratives look like historical narratives. To see the problem, let’s go back to John’s Gospel.
Let’s say we think that it is the “spiritual” Gospel, and that this means—if left to the categories/definitions above—it is only a “realistic narrative.” This is actually a fairly common view, category mistake included. Let’s say it’s “option 2” above: The Synoptics are “historical narratives,” John is not.
Here’s the problem: why does John look so much like the Synoptics? I understand the worlds of scholarship dedicated to their differences, but if you sqint at them, so to speak, you’ll see that they’re more or less the same at a generic level. And then in general, by what means could you separate out a merely “realistic narrative” from a “historical narrative,” given that all historical narratives are realistic?
Let me illustrate.
A Stupefying Shelf of Books
You have two sections of books on a shelf: “historical narratives” and “realistic narratives” (see definitions above). Suppose the titles on the spines of these books are sufficiently ambiguous so that you can’t immediately tell which is which from the title. And since all “historical” narratives are also “realistic”, the content seems more or less of the same order.
Now suppose that all the books have been mixed up, so that you have no immediate way of knowing which is which. But you want to organize your shelf.
So, you pick two of these books up. Inside the cover of the first, it says
Book 1: “all characters are fictitious, and any resemblances between them and real people is pure coincidence.”
Inside the cover of the second, it says
Book 2: “everything you are about to read is the bare truth of what happened to so-and-so on such-and-such a date . . .”
And suppose, having thus read, you put the Book 1 into the “realistic narrative” category, and the Book 2 into the “historical narrative” category.
All done. Are you sure?
What if I told you that Book 1 is a roman à clef, a novel with a cipher, so that it is quite actually historical. I.e., its meaning would be derived from real people, places, and events in the past. If you had the cipher, you could unlock the aimed meaning of the real writer, who wanted to give some sort of true account.
And then what if I told you that Book 2 was using a clever or even manipulative device sometimes used in historical fiction. For example, I remember this being a whole “thing” with the novel The Da Vinci Code by that inimitable paragon of prose, Dan Brown. The excerpt below comes from outside the narrative proper, in the front matter of the book:
And—as far as the title goes (but not the content)—you do get ancient novels like Lucian’s Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα, True Narratives, or True Story.
Now let’s go back to the thought experiment, but this time, let’s use the Gospels.
You have four books to organize on your shelf.
Two are Gospels; the Gospel of John, and the Gospel of Luke.
You have another very special book, let’s call it Memoir 3. This book is special because you “know for a fact” that Memoir 3 is an ancient historical narrative. This is true, even while it shares whatever constraints on research and writing there were in the first century. It even contains some fantastic elements, but like most of humanity, you have reason to believe in some fantastic things. So, you put it on the “historical” shelf of history books.
A fourth book just came in the mail from a friend, it is a well-researched historical fiction, the period is the first century. You flip through it, and it looks great—maps, dates, historical artifacts, details galore—but you know they are subservient to your friend’s real purpose: a drama of ideas meant to play in the mouths of historical people for the benefit of a later generation (yours). It happens to be called Memoir 4.
Since you know for a fact what Memoir 3 and Memoir 4 are, you place them on their respective sides of the shelf. But what about Luke and John?
1. The Gospel of John: ???
2. The Gospel of Luke: ???
3. Memoir 3: historical narrative
4. Memoir 4: realistic narrative
You start to research. You learn that the early Christians called the Gospels τὰ ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων—“the Memoirs of the Apostles”. So, titles won’t help you. You open Luke, and this is what you read:
Luke 1.1–4 In view of the fact that many set their hand to compile a narrative about the events which have been brought to fulfillment among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses and ministers of the history from the beginning handed [them] on to us, it seemed good to me also—having followed, for a long time, everything accurately—to write [them] to you in order, most excellent Theophilos, so that you may learn the truth about the accounts of which you have been informed.
Luke must be “history” that’s clearly the signal of the author. You compare it with Memoir 3, and they look similar enough. So, you put it on the shelf.
You open John, and you begin to read:
John 1.1–5 In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning, with God. Everything came about through him, and without him not one thing came about. What came about in him was life, and the life was the light of mankind; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not understand it.
Wow, that sounds a bit like “once upon a time.” John must not be like Luke, so you put it on the shelf.
Now you have the shelf like this:
“Historical Narrative” Shelf: Memoir 3 and Luke
“Realistic Narrative” Shelf: Memoir 4 and John
All done.
But wait? What if Luke’s prologue was like the “FACT” statement from The Da Vinci Code above? A device intended to make you believe in the historical veracity of what follows, regardless of how true that actual narrative is?
And then you read on in John: John 1:6 and following connects up with 1:19, which begins a historical narrative in a more-or-less matter-of-fact way. You flip through, and it seems categorically like Luke, despite whatever differences you find between them. You come to the end, and you read:
John 21.24 “This is the disciple that bears witness of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his witness is true.”
Now this sounds something like Luke 1.1–4. So now you’re in a pickle: if Luke belongs on the “historical narrative” then it seems that John does too. But what if these are just literary techniques meant to make you think they’re historical narratives. After all, Memoir 4 (or The Da Vinci Code) has the same kind of statements.
What to do . . .
Thinking about Historical Texts
In the thought experiment, Memoir 3 acts like a hypothesis: if a book is historical, it would look like this. That allowed for putting the Gospel of Luke beside it. Memoir 4 also would act like a hypothesis: if a book were historical fiction, it would look like this.
The confusion comes from a failure/inability to make a differentiation based on other data. But in reality, you don’t need to be so hopeless about categorizing historical texts on something like the definition I gave above. A few things are true:
We have a number of texts from the ancient world which are more-or-less considered to be earnest historical narratives from people in positions to know. Memoir 3 type texts, all things considered.
We have a number of texts that are historical fictions and romance novels, and apocryphal religious texts. None of these are exactly like our Memoir 4, or The Da Vinci Code—i.e., there is no hyper-realistic ancient historical fiction—but they do use “historical” subject matter.
We have well-researched, modern period fictions (think Ben-Hur).
We have enough linguistic, archaeological, and physical data to see how “realistic” a text is or is not.
So what you can do is you can pool the texts and data we have, and create tests and standards to flesh this out. A historical narrative, for example, would have some signals that make it look like other historical narratives, and it would have some critical differences with merely “realistic narratives” or historical fictions. Those differences would be defined according to certain standards of accuracy, or expectation, or use of sources, or subject matter, and so on.
What you then do is you look at the actual evidence (i.e., the data in the texts) on the assumption that both hypotheses are true, and see which one fits the data better, your background knowledge, etc. [Of course, you could come up with a third, fourth, fifth, and so on hypothesis—and there are rules for coming up with good ones—and run the same kind of test].
The real challenge is to figure out which features are unique to one category or another, and which are common. There’s definitely more to say here, but I’ll save it for another time.
It turns out that when you do this with the Gospels, they all look a lot more alike than they do different. They also look like “history” as I’ve provisionally defined it above.
What I mean is this. Whatever else we call them—folkish, “Gospels,” theological, tragi-comic, or what have you (all those are well and good)—the Gospels look like the kind of texts that derive their meaning from a perception about a real past, so that if that real past vanished tomorrow, there would genuinely be a hermeneutical crisis about the text.
This leads to a less-provisional definition of history.
Non-Provisional Postscript
But what about the subjectivity of experience? What about the way in which everything always seems already interpreted? What about worldviews? What about the fact that documents are one thing with their own complex histories, but that oral tradition seems quite another, so that the two have a certain tension between them? And what about differences in meaning that you and I perceive in the present, and that other people like/unlike us have perceived in the past, and will in the future?
The thought experiment above just seems to show the problem with the “history” discussion, doesn’t it? It’s all too clinical?
Fortunately, it’s not. The thought experiment is a good practice to think about categories and one kind of history.
But as I said initially, “history” is vastly underrated. It’s underrated as a live option for dealing with all the hypothetical questions just raised.
As I think about studying these texts more, I think about giving a fuller, richer conception of history and meaning, which doesn’t neglect the analytical needs of the problem, but also expands into a more substantial realm of meaning and understanding.
Next time I’ll talk about that. Maybe.