As you sit in your church pew during the coming Advent season, it’s likely you will read Jesus’ birth story. As you read Matthew’s account of the wise men coming to worship Jesus, you may discover that neither Mark nor Luke includes the story in his Gospel account. And you may ask Why?
In asking this question, you have become—probably without even knowing it—a redaction critic. This is not in the technical sense of studying the original Greek text for parallels and word origins, but you are “redacting” in the broad sense, asking the same questions biblical scholars ask about the Bible and how it has been produced:
• Did Matthew, Mark, and Luke somehow use each other’s reports in telling their stories? (Most scholars say yes.)
• How did the gospel writers choose the material to include in their accounts? Why did only Matthew tell about the wise men?
• Why do other accounts, like the Sermon on the Mount, differ in some of their particulars?
These are common questions that scores of Sunday school classes wrestle with every Sabbath day.
Yet there is something slightly disquieting about being called a redaction critic. A sixth sense tells us that becoming a “critic” of the Bible is not position A on the chart of orthodox Bible study methods. And the term “redaction,” or even its synonym, “editing,” does little to salve the consciences of those of us who believe we have a Bible proclaiming a very personal revelation from God. Can we believe in an error-free, inspired biblical text and still be redaction critics?
Biblical scholars are asking that question frequently. The exclusion of Robert Gundry from the Evangelical Theological Society last year, at least in part because of his misuse of redaction criticism, has made it a question that needs answering. So the Christianity Today Institute asked four New Testament scholars to meet and discuss it:
D. A. Carson, professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois;
Harold W. Hoehner, professor of New Testament literature and exegesis, Dallas Theological Seminary;
Vern S. Poythress, associate professor of New Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
David M. Scholer, professor of New Testament and dean of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Downers Grove, Illinois.
Kenneth S. Kantzer, dean of the Christianity Today Institute and professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, moderated the forum and wrote a concluding paper that appears at the end of the forum.
We also asked Robert Thomas, professor of New Testament at Talbot Theological Seminary, Biola, California, to comment on the question.
We have also asked D. A. Carson to prepare an extensive analysis, Redaction Criticism: The Nature of an Interpretive Tool, which the Christianity Today Institute will publish in monograph form. You may order copies from the Christianity Today Institute, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188, for $2.50 each.
Kenneth Kantzer: Why is redaction criticism such an important topic right now?
Harold Hoehner: It’s a young discipline, only 30 years old, and it comes across as a fresh means of approaching the Gospels. Many evangelical scholars are just starting to discuss how they can profitably use redaction criticism.
Willi Marxsen coined the term in 1954. For about 20 years, synoptic-gospel studies have been totally dominated by redaction critical methods, especially by more liberal scholars. Evangelical scholars have begun to realize you don’t have to be liberal to use the tool, if you start with the proper presuppositions.
David Scholer: A second reason: the exclusion of Robert Gundry from the Evangelical Theological Society last year was in part occasioned by his supposed misuse of redaction criticism, at least in the eyes of some members of the society. Thus, evangelical scholars in all theological fields have heard the term and know it is controversial. Many lay people also heard news of the ETS meeting and began asking questions.
D. A. Carson: I want to add a negative reason. It has become a shibboleth for things that are naughty—even where it may not be the root cause. If anybody is perceived to be soft on Scripture at any point, it can be chalked up to redaction criticism. In Gundry’s case, redaction criticism was partly involved, but it was much more a question of literary genre—what kind of an account was Matthew’s gospel: history, well-intentioned fiction, commentary? But redaction criticism received much of the blame.
Would you agree with one scholar who said, “Redaction criticism is the hot issue in evangelical theological circles right now”?
Hoehner: One of the hottest, anyway, partly because of the Gundry debate.
Scholer: But even before Gundry, Harold Lindsell’s book The Battle for the Bible called it into question. That book had enormous impact on the discussion.
Hoehner: Just recently, Gleason Archer, professor of Old Testament at Trinity seminary, wrote an article in Moody Monthly that seemed to say all redaction criticism is bad. Two of us from Dallas have written to him objecting to his putting all scholars who use redaction criticism in the same box. Perhaps his was an oversimplified statement, but you must recognize that your presuppositions make all the difference in the world. And some of us start with acceptable evangelical presuppositions.
Scholer: One of the reasons the issue is discussed so widely is the communication explosion. Apart from the Zeitschrift für die Neuentestamentliche Wissenschaft, most of the major New Testament scholarly journals are relatively new. Both the International Society of New Testament Scholars (SNTS) and the Oxford Conferences on the Bible have come on the scene since 1950. All this has changed the dynamic of the scholarly community. For the first time, a generation of evangelical, biblical scholars are participants in the whole range of scholarship. In one sense, redaction criticism has become the test case for this generation of scholars about what are the limits and possibilities of meshing “biblical criticism” and an inerrant view of Scripture.
Only One Definition?
Let’s define redaction criticism.
Scholer: Is there only one definition? I would like to think there is; what’s different is how people utilize it. A synonym for redacting is editing. Someone who redacts a piece of writing edits it, as a newspaper editor polishes a reporter’s news story.
“Criticism” in this case means a study of what these early “editors” did.
Thus, redaction criticism is the study of how editing has been done. It’s the attempt to ascertain the viewpoint of a gospel writer/editor: How did he select his material? How did he arrange his material? How did he phrase the material and direct it toward particular themes or purposes? Note that we’re not talking about the editor creating new material. We’re talking about selection and focus.
Hoehner: In theory, it’s nice to think there is only one definition. In practice, however, the term is used differently by different scholars. Some, like Norman Perrin, said the redactors invented materials, putting words in Jesus’ mouth he never said, for example.
In the proper sense of the word, evangelicals have always been redaction critics. Ask any layman which is the most Jewish of the Gospels, and he’ll usually tell you Matthew. That’s a simple case of redaction criticism.
Vern Poythress: I think there are two basic definitions, a narrow one and a broad one. Narrowly, redaction criticism studies the history of a document, in this case the Bible. How did the author produce this book? If he heard a story about Jesus from someone else, for example, how did he write it down? Or even earlier, how did he decide whether to write it down? In this narrower sense, we’re concerned more with the process than with the product.
The broader use of the term focuses more on the product: for example, we read Luke’s gospel and identify prominent themes.
Carson: You can’t have redaction criticism unless you have sources. The author of Chronicles used 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings—one piece of writing depends on others. In some cases, it’s hard to see who used what. The synoptic Gospels are literarily dependent; but which way the dependence runs is disputed at many points. The relationship of 2 Peter and Jude is an example. Which one came first?
The problem is, many use redaction criticism to work on documents where you don’t have the source in front of you. You try to figure out something about the author without having an earlier document to compare.
Scholer: That’s precisely where some would disagree, Don. For example, one scholar, Charles Talbert, has tried to write on Luke’s purposes without depending on comparisons with the other Synoptics. He looks for repeated patterns of thought within Luke itself for clues to what Luke was trying to accomplish. And he calls that redaction criticism.
Carson: I agree that’s the way the methods of redaction criticism are increasingly being used today. I acknowledge that. But I think it’s mixing the categories and isn’t a proper use of the term.
Can someone give me an example of the two different things you’re talking about here?
Scholer: If I’m writing a letter as dean of Northern Baptist Seminary to communicate information to entering students, I might take a former dean’s letter out of the file and rewrite it with minor changes to update it. I’m a redactor when I do that. It’s my letter, but I’ve used another letter as a source.
Poythress: Now suppose you’re a student looking at David’s letter. The student doesn’t have the former dean’s letter. Yet the student still tries to figure out how this letter was born. In that case the student is not doing redaction criticism because the student doesn’t have the source of the letter.
Carson: Suppose you remove the dates from the two letters. It’s obvious there is literary dependence between the two, but which came first? And then suppose you want to define the particular target group for last year’s letter versus this year’s letter. How are you going to define the two groups? More evangelical? Less evangelical? More conservative? Less conservative? More Free church? More Baptist church? As one example, that’s what redaction critics try to do with the three gospel accounts.
How does redaction criticism differ from other forms of biblical criticism?
Poythress: Unfortunately, the definitions sometimes overlap. It may be helpful for people who are not used to this terminology to know that many of the major distinctions are based on the factor of time. What stage in the growth of a biblical document are we talking about?
Text criticism looks at what happens after the completion of the final product, the actual book of the Bible.
Redaction criticism explores the step before that final editing.
Source criticism looks at the step previous, where the author chooses his sources, usually written.
Form criticism looks at the oral stage in back of that.
Not everything fits into that time categorization, but most do.
Carson: The purpose of most redaction critics is to understand a historical process. All of us around this table would separate ourselves from proponents of a new literary criticism that self-consciously disavows any interest in the historical Jesus. We assume a historical, divine Jesus. That’s a dividing gulf, it seems to me.
The distinctive need of redaction criticism is having other sources for comparison. Without comparison you don’t have redaction criticism in any form. You can’t have it in Paul. You can try to look for Paul’s point of view, but you’re basing it on something other than written comparative sources. And that’s when you have to be careful, because it’s very easy for subjectivity to creep in.
This is part of the confusion. Increasing numbers of evangelicals want to adopt a definition of redaction criticism that makes it indistinguishable from the new literary criticism, which says you can determine the meaning of the text as it stands without prior sources. This confusion of categories is dangerous, because younger scholars, who haven’t thought the whole issue through, believe they’re doing redaction criticism when they’re not, and that’s playing with fire. A workman must know what his tools can and cannot do. To think one tool can do everything is courting disaster.
Let me try another letter analogy for the distinction we’re trying to draw. If I get a letter from a businessman I’ve never met, I will read it very closely (especially if I’m going to do business with him) and try to figure out what he’s like—how he went about writing this. I want to get an idea how his mind works. Now, are we saying that’s not redaction criticism because we don’t have a comparable source? Isn’t this being passed off as redaction criticism in some quarters?
Poythress: Yes.
Carson: Agreed.
Scholer: Let me just object to the term “passed off” (laughter). If you have letters from a couple hundred businessmen, and you discover most introductory letters to you from the business community have certain common characteristics and deal with certain common subjects, then you might be able to do a type of legitimate redaction criticism.
Carson: But that’s form criticism. You only have redaction criticism when you presuppose or re-create a firm, available source that can be compared.
Hoehner: David, if I read those same 200 business letters, I might come up with an entirely different assessment, because it’s based on my reaction to the letters, not a demonstrable source.
Scholer: That’s why we have differences among redaction critics, and that’s why we argue over whether a particular interpretation of a verse is perceiving Matthew correctly or Luke correctly.
Isn’t that why a number of evangelicals say, “A plague on the whole house of redaction criticism”? They see it degenerating into a sea of subjectivity, and I sense you all are aware of that danger.
Some discount redaction criticism because they see the four Gospels as independent; thus no sources can be studied. I don’t think anyone here agrees with that.
Carson: No, I don’t think we do. Slip outside the Gospels for a moment. You can’t help but see the literary dependence between Chronicles and Samuel/Kings—whether you’re conservative, liberal, or anywhere between. So you are faced with questions of sources in the biblical text.
Scholer: Redaction criticism has gotten a bad name from some who use it improperly. I don’t think anyone is going to say the term is sacred and must be preserved. It’s a term of convenience. It is accepted terminology in the international scholarly community.
The undeniable fact is that the canon has multiple gospels. It does not provide a single gospel. So to be faithful to the canon as we have it, one is driven to try to ascertain why Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the story of Jesus with different emphases.
Now on the other side, many redaction scholars believe the redactors switched things around and sometimes added new things. I take it most of you are uncomfortable with that.
Hoehner: We’re uncomfortable with the invention of material. Or making the source say something it didn’t say. I have no problem of how it may have been said. When President Reagan finishes a 30-minute speech, a reporter says, “Reagan said,” and yet he doesn’t go through the whole text of the speech. He condenses. In fact, Reagan may never have used those particular words, but the reporter is not inventing whole new ideas.
Scholer: I think we could get unanimous feeling in the evangelical scholarly community that our commitment to Scripture would preclude creation or invention of events that did not occur.
Carson: Where we might not get agreement, though, is the setting of events. For example, in Howard Marshall’s use of redaction criticism in his commentary on Luke, he always justifies the authenticity of any saying of Jesus. He does not, however, always attempt to justify the authenticity of a setting of a saying of Jesus—even where the setting is most explicit.
Suppose one saying is found in four or five different places across the Gospels. Mainstream redaction criticism’s typical explanation of this is that the event has been inserted into settings that were not historically authentic. Here I have far more difficulty myself, because it seems to me redaction criticism must be used in tension with other tools, such as historical harmonization. For example, in the case of pithy sayings of Jesus, we have to realize he was a peripatetic, itinerant preacher. Itinerant preachers use their good lines again and again.
What I am trying to say is that by itself, redaction criticism is not a reliable tool for establishing or calling into question the authenticity of setting.
Presuppositions: Bad And Good
Could you sketch out for us some of the improper presuppositions some scholars use in applying redaction criticism?
Carson: We’ve mentioned one: the presupposition that redactors may have actually invented stories and ideas and added them to the text—or in the worst case, put words in Jesus’ mouth that carry ideas he never expressed. That goes beyond the definition of a redactor and is unacceptable to those of us who hold an inerrant view of Scripture, unless there is unambiguous evidence of a recognized literary genre that sanctions such inventions. I know of no such evidence.
Poythress: Another dangerous presupposition is to think too quickly that we understand the motive for a change. Often there were theological motivations or literary explanations for small changes in wording. But I’m not convinced it’s easy to figure out what those were. There may have been many reasons why a certain change was made.
I’d also like to comment on one other dangerous presupposition: If you discover the process of how a document came to be, you understand the final product. That is an unwarranted jump. Meaning comes from what the text says, not from how it was produced.
Can you illustrate with some negative examples?
Scholer: Well, you don’t like to point those out in others’ work, and it’s hard to find bad examples in your own (laughter). But many believe Bob Gundry did this in his interpretation of the slaughter of boys under two years of age in Matthew 2. He calls this a nonhistorical event. It’s not, however, a clear-cut case of misuse of redaction criticism, since part of his problem stems from the kind of literature he thinks Matthew was writing. He thinks Matthew created the story to illustrate a valid theological point. He thinks Matthew was using a literary genre called midrash, where this kind of illustration was accepted.
It’s partly a redaction criticism problem because he uses as part of his proof the fact that the story doesn’t appear in Mark. Thus, he’s comparing sources. I don’t think that’s entirely fair to Gundry, though. I admire him for attempting to use redaction criticism on a large scale in his commentary. I simply disagree with some of his conclusions.
A better negative example is what Hans Conzelmann, one of the early German fathers of redaction criticism, did with the baptism of Jesus. He correctly pointed out that in Mark and Matthew it says John the Baptist baptized Jesus. In Luke, John the Baptist goes to prison before the account of Jesus’ baptism, so Luke tells the baptism story in the passive voice and doesn’t mention John’s role.
Luke does it that way because of his literary purpose (“I’m finished telling you about John; now I’m going to tell you about Jesus”). But Conzelmann says that makes the first two chapters of Luke irrelevant to the rest of the text. As far as he’s concerned, they have no place in the gospel. That’s using redaction criticism to suit one’s preconceived notions. If it doesn’t fit, throw it out. Subsequently, virtually every redaction critic and Lukan scholar has come to see Luke 1 and 2 as an integral part of the gospel and closely connected to Luke’s purposes. Responsible scholarship means we must deal with the text as we have it.
The difficult thing about the Gundry case is that he wouldn’t dream of doing what Conzelmann suggests—if it doesn’t fit, throw it out. Gundry believes Scripture is inspired. He just thinks we have gotten accustomed to reading some parts as historical when in fact they were not intended to be historical.
Hoehner: Another presupposition is to dogmatically presuppose that we know in which order the Synoptics were written. We need to deal with the text as it is, and not with theoretical presuppositions. All too often scholars dogmatically presuppose which gospel was first and then show how the other gospel writers altered material from the first writer. But no one knows the order for sure. It is better to see agreements and differences with what we have than to speculate with preconceived source theories.
What are the correct presuppositions one must bring to the text in order to do redaction criticism?
Poythress: We must start by saying we believe in the entire trustworthiness of the biblical account. It’s inerrant and inspired.
A second is that God may providentially use human processes to bring about the final form of his revelation. It is by divine plan that Luke used sources to write his gospel. He even says he used sources (1:1–3). But that doesn’t need to threaten the inspired nature of his work.
A third is that there are uncontrollabilities in God’s governing of history—I’m talking about miracles and the like. Yet we live in the scholarly world, which puts a premium on rational explanation. The composition of Scripture involved primarily normal psychological processes rather than the great miracles of Scripture. Yet scholars must allow for these things: extraordinary states of consciousness in writing the Book of Revelation or Isaiah’s visions.
Comparatively, Luke seems a rather normal, providential process. We need to maintain humility before God, who governs the world in sometimes unexpected ways. The inspiration and production of Scripture may be equally extraordinary in various ways.
In fact, that may be a fourth presupposition: humility. We don’t know the reasons for a lot of things. There is no way we can figure out why the gospel writers put in some of the things they did, the way they did. And if we could ask Luke,even he might not know.
Scholer: Fifth, the biblical writers do have a point of view. Maybe that’s the first assumption one has to have in using redaction criticism.
Carson: Sixth, we must recognize that, by itself, redaction criticism is not a sufficient tool for discovering the meaning of a text. It has to be used with other approaches.
Hoehner: A primary presupposition is that change in transmission doesn’t mean change in meaning. God is supervising this whole process, and he ultimately gave us the Bible he wanted us to have.
Some Examples And Objections
Carson: A corollary is that one should lean toward harmonization before placing too much emphasis on differences. Let me give an example from Matthew 11:16–19, the passage about “To what shall I compare this generation?” Matthew says, “Wisdom will be justified by her deeds,” and the Lukan account is, “Wisdom shall be justified by her children.”
How do you account for that? It is almost certainly the same instance. The standard interpretation is that Matthew reflects a wisdom Christology that has developed—Jesus is wisdom personified, and his deeds reflect the same. Luke is earlier and simply talks about wisdom being justified in the children—and Jesus and John are the two children involved. Those are two quite different explanations of the same passage, and most of the commentaries affirm the difference.
However, I don’t think it’s necessary to see these passages as so different in meaning. I do not think Matthew has a wisdom Christology. He is still using an Old Testament view of wisdom. The text views wisdom as how you live under God’s rule—it is justified by the way you actually live it out. This, then, is applicable both to Matthew and Luke, both to John and Jesus. Both of them (one ascetic, one not) were living out their lives under the fear of God the way they were supposed to live—and in both cases they were justified by their actions. I would say both verses use different words to make the same point: the children are justified (Matthew), their actions are justified (Luke).
My point is, the only reason I came to this conclusion is because I am an inerrantist, and I always look for the common truth in Scripture rather than differences.
A scholar’s commitment to Scripture enriches, indeed controls, the handling of the tools. The scholar is thereby partly safeguarded from making sloppy errors.
Is The Term Worth Keeping?
Hoehner: Some critics say that the method of redaction criticism itself is wrong. What’s really wrong are some of the presuppositions some redaction critics start with.
Poythress: We must admit that sometimes the term itself is thought to include an antibiblical world view. We’re saying that doesn’t have to be. But unfortunately, the label is sometimes tainted, and some can’t imagine it being used properly.
Hoehner: We had a discussion of this very question at Dallas the past year, and that was precisely Norm Geisler’s point: It’s difficult to do redaction criticism without buying into some of the faulty presuppositions. I disagree with this, but I accept his caution.
Instead of trying to reclaim the term for use by evangelical scholars, some want to do away with it altogether and use another. Reactions?
Hoehner: I don’t think that works. What would you call it? “Editorial research”? Evangelicals have always done redaction criticism without it being called that. They have never looked at the Gospels as strict biographies but rather asked what is the theme and theological purpose of each author. On the other hand, having different themes and theological purposes does not distort what actually happened.
Scholer: The term redaction criticism is simply too broadly used in biblical scholarship to try to mount a campaign to do away with it. It’s better to define responsible redaction criticism.
Poythress: I wonder whether we aren’t influenced by a kind of separatist stand that varies from scholar to scholar. If you want to influence liberal scholarship, you must be able to communicate—and that means using their terms, but defined so we can accept them. If you don’t, communication becomes almost impossible.
Carson: I’m for communicating. But that leaves us with a very real danger. Some evangelicals are buying into larger presuppositions than I find comfortable. The question is whether or not our best solution is to back off from the world of scholarship and retreat into our own terminology, or whether we should engage—remembering, of course, that engagement always means some of the crew will defect. That’s a tough decision to make.
It’s a choice between protecting the uninitiatedby separating ourselves from debate with liberal scholarship or engaging in debate as academic missionaries. You have to make your choice.
That raises an interesting question about the academic-missionaries alternative. Do we really have a chance of bringing some liberal scholars around to our point of view?
Carson: I thought about that a great deal when I was at Cambridge as a doctoral student. I did a quick check on the nonevangelical doctoral supervisors who in the last 40–50 years had guided a significant number of evangelical students. I wanted to find out if any had been dramatically influenced by their students.
I found only one who made a major theological change: R. V. G. Tasker. The rest of them—no.
However—and this is an important point—by mixing it up in the international scholarly marketplace, we can help provide not only good scholarship, but a buffer for the next generation of students coming through. I know I appreciated that as a student. The writings of Leon Morris—and I don’t agree with everything he says—gave me more credence with my professors than I might have had otherwise. Here was someone who had tried to think through a lot of critical issues and had written some conservative essays on John.
And you’re saying this cannot happen without adopting the general vocabulary.
Carson: Yes, for one important reason. If you don’t adapt your vocabulary, you can’t get published in the journals. Unless your argument interacts with the literature already out there, it will never be accepted in the first place.
Scholer: I’d like to add a very practical reason for sticking with redaction criticism. It’s a useful tool. With correct presuppositions, it describes something we are doing and need to continue doing.
I guess I’m optimistic about dialogue with other scholars. I don’t always find the dichotomy between the Left and the Right to be hard and fast. A lot of people are not “biographical evangelicals,” but are not radical either. The old polarities don’t describe the reality.
Much of redactive critical work—for instance, an article any one of us could write—might contribute to someone’s understanding of the biblical text regardless of the author’s position, simply by trying to engage the text. Not everything is an issue of extraordinary unbelief versus belief.
Hoehner: When discussions about liberal scholars come up, I always ask the conservative participants what Greek lexicon they use. Well, they all use Bauer, who was not a conservative. Then I ask, “What concordance do you use?” Well, Moulten and Geden, who don’t qualify as conservative either. A great deal of their scholarship is useful to both sides.
Poythress: For me, that raises the question of the relative value of redaction criticism. Some things can be learned from studying the sources. But I don’t ever want to lose sight of the fact I need primarily to read the finished text.
For example, I recently read Marshall’s commentary on Luke. A third of that commentary discusses redactional issues. For the most part, Marshall did a reasonable job with those questions. But when I asked myself, What did I learn from his discussion of the sources? the answer was, Almost nothing. I learned much more from what he had to say about the gospel itself. In my own exegetical work I find redaction criticism gives very little input in terms of the meaning of the final text.
I think we all agree redaction criticism has speculative elements. Even if you have a source you know is a source, and you can see the changes, how do you weigh the importance of those changes? It is still subjective. Too much concentration on that question can lead you away, rather than toward, the text as a finished product.
Scholer: I see your point, Vern, but I don’t think redaction criticism is interested only in change. It also deals with the author’s point of view. That has been redaction criticism’s most important contribution to me both as a scholar and as a believer: To see Luke’s point of view about wealth and what it means to be concerned about the poor. That’s the whole motif of Luke’s gospel.
For a hermeneutics conference in Mexico, I was assigned to do a paper on the Magnificat of Mary. I read the relevant literature and found that very few English-speaking scholars noticed the line about “sending the rich away” and then tied it in with Luke’s concern for the poor. That’s the primary message of that passage, and I became aware of it because of redaction criticism.
Poythress: But you might have discovered that point some other way.
Scholer: True. But it still helped me.
Carson: It might be worth making a distinction between what redaction criticism can emphasize more quickly and what redaction criticism can do exclusively. If I were asked to identify something redaction criticism alone could point out, my answer would be, precious little. On the other hand, because redaction criticism focuses on texts word by word, does word counts, finds out how things are used as compared with other texts, it forces you to do thinking that probably wouldn’t happen otherwise.
In theory, you could have found all this material another way. But in practice, probably you wouldn’t.
Scholer: For instance, the word sinner occurs 5 times in Mark, 5 times in Matthew, 4 times in John, 16 times in Luke. You might notice the word a lot in Luke, but that’s all you’d notice. Comparison with other canonical sources gives some data to be found no other way.
Carson: Redaction criticism also examines where each occurs, parallel passages, and the differing contexts. Redaction criticism doesn’t teach you something fundamental that nobody has known before. On the other hand, I have learned many nuances of Scripture that have been immensely helpful. For example, I have recently been studying the homoios word group in Matthew. Homoios is usually translated “like” and is used to introduce various Mattheian parables.
When I compared how the same parables were introduced in the other Gospels, 1 discovered that only Matthew uses the aorist and future passive tenses of the verb. In every instance, it slants Matthew’s parable in a certain way. It does not make the parable say something fundamentally different from the parable in Mark or Luke, but in every case it makes a point about eschatology.
I don’t think this revolutionized my theology or my understanding of Matthew’s theology. But it did make me understand certain texts a little better because I’d done the comparison.
Another View
Most scholars define redaction criticism this way: a method of biblical criticism that seeks to determine the evangelist’s point of view by ascertaining the creative editorial work he does on his sources.
The discipline is problematic for the evangelical because of its “creative” aspect. The tendency of redaction critics, even evangelical ones, is to assign extreme creative activity to the gospel writers, with the result that questions are raised about the gospel’s historical accuracy.
Four areas of editorial activity have been proposed:
Selectivity. The writers did not write everything they knew.
Arrangement. The writers did not always write chronologically.
Modification. Sometimes the writers modified in minor ways to incorporate their own personal style and manners of expression. Sometimes they made major modifications by reading their own circumstances back into the life of Jesus.
Creativity. The writers created sayings and even episodes, attributing them to Jesus, so as to meet needs of their own time.
The first two types of editorial activity have always been recognized as legitimate by evangelical scholars, long before the birth of redaction criticism. The same is true of the minor modifications of the third category, where the writer’s style and writing habits are acknowledged. But major modifications, where without historical foundation the circumstances of the writer are read back into the life of Jesus, go beyond the bounds of biblical inerrancy. And, of course, creativity is out of the question.
Redaction criticism as defined by its origin and development has embraced all four of these editorial activities. For this reason, some evangelicals try to redefine redaction criticism to include only the first two-and-a-half categories: selectivity, arrangement, and minor modification noting that the English word redact simply means edit. After all, they say, there is nothing antievangelical in believing that the writers utilized editorial procedures in putting their Gospels together. But this line of reasoning assigns an abnormal meaning to “redaction criticism” that normally connotes more radical assumptions.
Why call our scrutinizing and comparing of the Gospels by this name? Are we not more honest if we use other terminology? If we use “redaction criticism” with a different-from-normal meaning, are we not guilty of the same malpractice as neo-orthodox scholars who use terms like “resurrection” but by them mean something different from the traditional meaning invested in them by evangelicals? By such misleading policies, we lose respect, even of radical scholars we may be trying to impress. We also confuse other evangelicals regarding our own views of the Gospels.
And worse, the specimens of evangelical criticism that have been forthcoming thus far have not limited themselves to selectivity, arrangement, and minor modification. They have also included major modification and creativity. For example, Bob Gundry’s commentary on Matthew, Howard Marshall’s commentary on Luke, and Bill Lane’s commentary on Mark follow a grammatical-critical-historical method of interpretation, allowing critical presuppositions to override the forthright historical meaning of the text. Gundry does this most often, Marshall not quite so often, and Lane only rarely. But they all do it.
When critical presuppositions so dominate, subjective judgments become the rule and the historicity of the text is open to all sorts of doubt, such as the question of how many of the eight beatitudes of Matthew 5 Jesus uttered. Did he give four, as Gundry contends, or was it only three, as Bob Guelich in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount holds? It is a foregone conclusion with these two evangelicals that he could not have spoken all eight, as a natural understanding of Matthew would require. When the critical, subjective element intervenes, doubt about the historical accuracy of Matthew is inevitable.
The traditional grammatical-historical method of interpretation is more in step with evangelicalism. The principles of grammar and the facts of history determine the text’s meaning, not questionable critical assumptions. The church has followed this method through its history, especially since the time of Luther, Calvin, and the Reformation. It has served us well, and with the adoption of evangelical presuppositions, tells us what is proper in discovering the meaning of the Gospels and revealing the historical facts about the life of Jesus.
ROBERT THOMAS
Professor of New Testament
Talbot Theological Seminary
Can any of you think of an instance in which you learned something through redaction criticism that you would never have been able to understand otherwise?
Scholer: I can think of two. One regards Luke’s handling of discipleship. I’ve gone through every discipleship call in Luke, and he consistently associates the word “everything” with it: leave everything, give up everything, et cetera. That is absolutely consistent in Luke; not so in Mark and Matthew. The point is not that Mark and Matthew are soft on discipleship. The point is that Luke is highlighting discipleship and its importance.
The second has to do with the various accounts of the night before the crucifixion. I simply made a careful chart of the events of the last 12 hours according to Luke, comparing them to Matthew and Mark. I then asked the question, Is there any way to explain these differences? Eventually, I came up with a good explanation that fit Luke’s purpose in writing his gospel. I came away with a real depth of appreciation for both Luke’s unique purpose and the trustworthiness of the gospel records. That’s using redaction criticism at its best.
Poythress: The crucifixion stories have been particularly important in my life also. The gospel accounts are really quite different. Here more than any other place I find myself asking, How does Luke differ in emphasis? In activity? In what he presents in this crucial event? Through asking those questions I found that Luke really communicates Jesus’ death as the death of a prophet. Not just any prophet, but the final prophet. He quotes Jesus’ statement, “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
Compare Luke’s account with Psalm 31, a very moving psalm about the suffering of the righteous. And then Luke follows with the centurion’s evaluation: “Surely this was a righteous man.” What literary style! (to say nothing of the deep theological truth). That’s the emphasis we don’t tend to see but can learn to see through a careful reading, without the use of redaction criticism in the narrow sense.
Redaction Criticism In The Pew
How can laymen use redaction criticism?
Carson: Strictly speaking, to do it correctly you have to know the original languages.
Also, most laymen are not likely to do detailed concordance work.
In more general terms, lay people can benefit if they have a good Bible teacher. They also need good tools—a Bible dictionary and an English concordance. Then they can note differences between sources. They will be able to use the better commentaries. They can examine how themes develop and how certain passages are put together. They can ask more intelligent questions, like, “Say, Pastor, how come Luke puts this here and Matthew puts it there?”
Scholer: I regularly encourage lay Sunday school teachers to use a gospel synopsis. Many are hesitant; a synopsis is a little clumsy. But I’ve seen their enjoyment of Scripture grow dramatically.
Recent commentaries are very difficult to read if you don’t know anything about redaction criticism—even the Good News commentary.
Poythress: I agree. But we can’t undersell the ability of laymen. I appreciate Don’s concern that many technical things are beyond the reach of the layman. But I think discussions are in their reach if we take time to teach them.
At the same time, we need to affirm over and over that we’re not talking about a division between the human author out on his own and the divine author, but rather how God has worked through the human author. One basic but useful thing to do is to read a whole book of the Bible through noticing its emphases and asking why it says things the way it does.
One example is the parallel between Luke 7 and Matthew 8, the story of the centurion who has a sick slave and asks Jesus to heal him. In Matthew he asks Jesus himself. In Luke he sends some Jewish elders to ask Jesus.
There are several harmonistic solutions. I think the best is to say there were intermediaries. Because this was such a common way of sending a message, Matthew omits the detail. But I think you can also ask the question, Since Luke explicitly mentions the intermediaries, did he have a purpose in doing so? If you say yes, then you can try to discover the purpose. (Mine would be that Luke introduces the Jewish intermediaries to emphasize the humility of the centurion.) But never forget that the answer is conditional and thus somewhat speculative.
Scholer: Another kind of example is in the parable of the sower. In the interpretation of the parable in Luke 8:12, the word for justification is used, one of only two times in the synoptic Gospels. The same term occurs in Luke 18 in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The question is, did Jesus use the term, or did Luke use it to represent Jesus’ words? If Jesus actually described such an important theological concept using that term, why didn’t the other gospel writers use it also?
Hoehner: Another is the sequence of the temptations. Luke put jumping from the highest point of the temple last, possibly trying to show that Jesus was not of the Superman mentality. Matthew put the temptations of ruling all the kingdoms last. Is that significant for his emphases? Maybe, but again it’s somewhat speculative.
Scholer: Another benefit of redaction criticism is that it helps us understand what the canon is. Most believers learn a harmonized life of Jesus. The Gospels are kind of leveled out. But God chose to give us four accounts of Jesus, and we must take that seriously.
Future Of Redaction Criticism
Where is the current discussion on redaction criticism in the evangelical community headed? What direction would you like to see it take?
Poythress: Some of our discussion has touched on areas a little broader than redaction criticism, and I think my answer to your question will do the same. Some of the really serious issues raised, in the Gundry affair in particular, get at the very essence of our view of Scripture. For example, are the Gospels history or are they semifictional? On the right wing of evangelicalism, people are saying, “If you can arbitrarily decide what genre a scriptural text is, then you can virtually destroy the authority of Scripture in practice. You can pretend to believe it all but say it doesn’t mean what everyone has always thought. The Virgin Birth and the Resurrection—they’re all great teaching devices whether they really happened or not. You can maintain that fiction teaches great principles even if historicity is absent.”
This is a statement of legitimate fear: If you open the doors with no control, you will destroy biblical authority.
What I hope will happen is the development of a way for scholarship faithful to Scripture, where scholars can work toward a better understanding of the purposes of individual books of the Bible to the benefit of the church and everyone’s understanding of Scripture. But we are in danger of a polarization that leaves no middle ground.
Hoehner: I think future debates will move toward discussing even newer criticisms. Source criticism had its heyday from the turn of the century to the First World War. Form criticism went from then to the end of the Second World War. Redaction criticism has held center stage since then. But now and in the future, we’re going to have to deal with tradition criticism, genre criticism, and literary criticism.
Scholer: It’s hard to say where the movement will go. In the long run, what we really want is to utilize every possible method or device to get at the fullest and richest understanding of the text. And there are aspects of redaction criticism that are valid and therefore will have permanent significance.
Adequate Controls
I think we have agreed that there is a legitimate sphere of scholarship activity that can be called redaction criticism. But I also hear us saying we are concerned that, without adequate controls, it can be taken to an extreme. Could we talk a bit about what the adequate controls might be?
Poythress: One red flag that indicates things are getting out of control is whenever conclusions are in clear conflict with Scripture elsewhere. I want the unified trustworthiness of all Scripture at all times. If I discover that the use of a critical tool brings me to results in conflict with a clear teaching of the Bible, then either I have misused the tool or made a mistake.
Another safeguard is that we not confuse speculative reconstruction of stages in the sources with the meaning of the final text. The final text is what is authoritative, and it precedes everything else in terms of meaning.
I also am very conscious of any kind of thinking that leads to an either/or reasoning about history and theology. If I discern a theological motivation for something, that does not mean I quit pressing for the historical fact also.
Scholer: I sincerely believe we must be willing to talk about these issues among evangelicals. That’s healthy. Whether or not redaction criticism fades as a discipline, it still provides us with some good tools that produce desirable results that will abide. Redaction criticism will become part of the stock in trade of how one studies the gospel.
Another control is unity. One of the dangers is dividing unnecessarily the evangelical community over issues of biblical criticism. Let’s face it: This is not a new discussion. Since at least 1860, conservative believers have faced the issue of what biblical criticism might lead to.
Hoehner: Another danger is overuse. When a new tool comes into existence, it tends to dominate. We need a variety of tools to get the full meaning, and if a biblical scholar finds himself overusing one, something may be wrong.
In using this tool, scholars need to understand where lay people are coming from. They need to identify what they fear and reassure them where possible. The scholar ought never to misrepresent his position but say, “I understand some of those fears, and I agree with you on that point.” Very often the lay person’s fears lead him to imagine you are becoming more radical than you really are.
The Bible is bigger than all of us. The struggle to appropriate and understand the Bible isn’t owned by us or anybody else. We need an attitude of humility. I say that in part because of my own personal struggle with arrogance.
Sometimes we will be right in our assessments and sometimes we will be wrong. But ultimately, we are to be judged by what the Bible says.
