In 1939, international exhibitions were held on both American coasts: the New York World’s Fair and the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. The fair in New York had as its theme “The World of Tomorrow.” As visitors strolled by artificial pools and fountains and marveled at recent technological achievements like television they were moved by nostalgia for the fading Enlightenment. Trying to forget the tragedy of the First World War and the rise of totalitarianism, they embraced again that hope in progress, the uninhibited advance of human civilization. Representatives from sixty-three nations from around the globe came to New York, crossing geographical and political barriers to present their accomplishments in pavilions side by side: a final display of internationalism before the outbreak of the greatest conflagration in human history. Even before the exhibitors had torn down the temporary buildings, Hitler’s troops had marched into Poland. The tomorrow of the new world never dawned.
In the period before and immediately after the Second World War, NT research shared the nostalgia for the Enlightenment. The methods of empiricism and rationalism were continued and refined. Like the cooperative efforts of the exhibitions, scholars moved toward consensus. New Testament scholarship became increasingly international, and movements toward synthesis appeared. In Britain and America contributions were made to the study of the Gospels, seen in the work of Taylor and Cadbury. As in other disciplines—atomic physics, for example—NT research continued a development toward greater complexity. The NT scholar is called to become a virtuoso, a sort of Paganini of academia, mastering linguistics, textual analysis, exegetical imagination, historical reconstruction, and constructive theology. As Paul said, “Who is sufficient for these things?” Some, like Charles Harold Dodd, were.[1]
In the period between the wars prominent British and American scholars studied the Gospels. They accepted the Two-Document Hypothesis (2DH) as axiomatic: that Matthew and Luke independently used as sources Mark and a collection of sayings called “Q.” They were more cautious, however, in regard to other developments in continental scholarship. In response to the method of history of religion[2] they affirmed the significance of the historical setting but stressed Jewish rather than Hellenistic backgrounds. In response to eschatological interpretation they acknowledged the prevalence of apocalyptic forms but proposed revision of the eschatological substance. In response to form criticism they recognized the reality of the oral tradition but questioned the application and results of the method. The work of these scholars indicates the interconnected nature of the issues. Form criticism is concerned with the development of the tradition, and the tradition was concerned with Jesus, and Jesus had his setting in Judaism, and Judaism was concerned with eschatology. Is the tradition of Jesus recorded in the Gospels reliable? How is Jesus related to Jewish apocalyptic thought? Did Jesus understand himself as Messiah? To these and a host of related questions, British and American scholars turned.
Vincent Taylor was born in Edenfield, Lancashire.[3] As to his academic preparation, Taylor did not begin his higher education until he was twenty-two, when he entered the Methodist theological school at Richmond. Taylor’s academic degrees were awarded on the grounds of scholarly accomplishments after he left the classroom. On the basis of his book on the virgin birth he was awarded a PhD (1922), and in honor of a publication on Luke, a DD (1926), both from the University of London. In 1930, Taylor was appointed to the faculty at Wesley College in Leeds, where after six years he was named Principal, and where he remained until his retirement in 1953. In spite of his ministerial and administrative duties, Taylor had a passion for research, and he adhered to a self-imposed discipline, always producing at least a page a day.
Taylor’s first major work was The Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth.[4] He insisted on rigorous historical investigation. “Doctrinal presuppositions must be resolutely laid aside; there must be a common desire to ascertain the true facts of the evidence, whatever the results may be.”[5] Taylor begins his investigation by reviewing texts outside of Matthew and Luke. He notes that no mention of the virgin of birth is found in the Gospel of Mark, the Pauline epistles, and Hebrews, and he concludes that the authors of these documents did not know the doctrine. Since it is not included in Acts, Taylor believes Luke did not consider the virgin birth a feature of early Christian preaching. Taylor analyzes the text of Luke and concludes that Luke’s original account did not include the virgin birth. Later, after he learned of the doctrine, Luke, according to Taylor, added 1:34-35 and the parenthesis of 3:23. Turning to Matthew, Taylor believed the first two chapters were part of the original gospel, including the account of the virgin birth in 1:18-25. On the basis of his careful analysis of the details of these texts, Taylor concluded that the doctrine can be neither proved nor disproved by historical investigation. In his opinion, denial of the supernatural birth of Jesus does not destroy the faith expressed in the doctrine. “If, in the end, we must call poetry what they called fact,” says Taylor, “it will not be because we are strangers to their faith. They too were bound by the spell of that Transcendent Face in which is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.”[6]
Taylor’s major critical effort was devoted to the Synoptic Gospels. In regard to the problem of literary sources, he published Behind the Third Gospel: A Study of the Proto-Luke Hypothesis,[7] essentially a defense and expansion of the theory of B. H. Streeter.[8] According to Streeter, Luke had combined material he had collected at Caesarea, as companion of Paul, with the document Q, which he received after the death of Paul, to compose a gospel Streeter called “Proto-Luke.” Later, acquiring a copy of Mark, Luke, in Streeter’s opinion, added blocks of Markan material to Proto-Luke, resulting in the Gospel of Luke. In investigating this theory Taylor begins with the passion and resurrection narrative, where he finds material independent of Mark, and concludes that Luke used a non-Markan source to which he added Markan material. Late in his career Taylor revived this investigation, producing research that was published posthumously as The Passion Narrative of St Luke: A Critical and Historical Investigation.[9] The book is essentially a detailed analysis of the literary relationship between Luke 22–24 and Mark 14–16. Taylor proceeds through the texts, analyzing the linguistic and stylistic details, and reaches the conclusion that “the Lukan narratives of the Passion and resurrection were probably derived from an earlier non-Markan source or sources.”[10] In this later work Taylor concludes that Luke was not the author of this source, but that he found it, a written document, at Caesarea.
After the discussion of the passion narrative, Behind the Third Gospel presents Taylor’s investigation of Luke’s use of Mark in the narrative prior to the passion. Employing meticulous vocabulary and stylistic research, Taylor investigates the Lukan and Markan parallels and concludes that Mark does not provide the framework for Luke’s narrative. Instead, Luke, according to Taylor, used another source as primary and added Markan material to it. This primary source Taylor identifies as Proto-Luke. “The Proto-Luke Hypothesis . . . posits a continuous non-Markan source, consisting mainly of Q matter and material peculiar to Lk., as the foundation and framework of the Third Gospel.”[11] On the basis of this hypothesis Taylor affirmed the historical value of Proto-Luke, especially in the accounts of the passion and resurrection. “Here, indeed, it is everywhere comparable to Mk. as a competent witness, and where the two disagree it is Proto-Luke as a rule which preserves the better tradition.” The value of Proto-Luke, Taylor believes, enhances the value of the Gospel of Luke.
Too long we have looked upon the teaching peculiar to the Third Gospel as if it stood upon a lower plane of authentication than that of Mk. and Q. The Proto-Luke Hypothesis destroys this assumption; it throws back into the earliest stage of Gospel tradition the picture of a Christ whose compassion blesses the outcasts of society, and whose last words to man are a message of hope to a dying thief.[12]
Thus Taylor developed the Proto-Luke hypothesis beyond Streeter, making a credible case for the importance of Luke’s special material (L), but his claim that the hypothetical Proto-Luke, rather than Mark, is the framework for the Gospel of Luke is questionable.[13]
Taylor’s important contribution to form criticism is The Formation of the Gospel Tradition.[14] First published in 1933, the book was slightly revised in 1935 and frequently reprinted. In the preface Taylor asserts that form criticism furnishes “constructive suggestions which in many ways confirm the historical trustworthiness of the Gospel tradition.” The method “forces us to read the Gospels in the closest connexion with the life and experience of the first Christians, and brings the Gospels and the Epistles into nearer relationships.”[15] Taylor begins with a review of the work of Martin Dibelius, Rudolf Bultmann, and Karl Ludwig Schmidt.[16] He agrees that forms like those identified by these scholars are found in the Gospels, but he notes the difficulty of detecting the original form and determining the Sitz im Leben. He believes the form critics attribute too much creativity to the church and fail to recognize the continuing presence of eyewitnesses. “If the Form-Critics are right, the disciples must have been translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrection.”[17]
Taylor proceeds to investigate the gospel material according to his understanding of the forms. Most important is his distinctive contribution to form criticism: the identification of the “pronouncement stories.”
Their chief characteristic . . . is that they culminate in a saying of Jesus which expresses some ethical or religious precept; the saying may be evoked by a question friendly or otherwise, or may be associated with an incident which is indicated in very few words. Prized because they gave guidance to the first Christians, these stories circulated as single units of tradition, or were combined in groups on a purely topical thread.[18]
He proceeds to the “sayings and parables,” about which he writes: “I have no hesitation in claiming that the tradition of the words of Jesus is far better preserved than we have any right to expect, and with much greater accuracy than is to be found in the record of the words of any great teacher of the past.”[19] In regard to “miracle stories” Taylor believes the tendency of the tradition is to shorten the accounts. Concerning the “stories about Jesus,” he writes: “The result, then, for a study of the formal aspects of the Stories about Jesus is to strengthen confidence in their historical value.”[20]
Taylor concludes with his reconstruction of the development of the gospel tradition: in the period from 30–50 CE, independent sayings and stories about Jesus were repeated in the interest of the practical needs of the community; from 50–65, individual elements were gathered into collections; from 65–100 Gospels were written: Proto-Luke (60–65), Mark (in Rome, 65–70), Matthew in Antioch or northern Syria (around 90). Thus Taylor embraces the method of form criticism but shrinks from the skepticism of its German practitioners. He recognizes the formative influence of the early community but attributes virtually nothing substantial to it. He believes that the tradition, oral and written, faithfully transmits the words and deeds of Jesus.
Taylor’s magnum opus was his commentary on Mark.[21] He begins his lengthy introduction (some 150 pages) with a survey of the history of the Gospel of Mark in the early church. In reviewing nineteenth century criticism, Taylor notes the triumph of the Two-Document Hypothesis (2DH) and says that “in a modern commentary, it is no longer necessary to prove the priority of Mark.”[22] Taylor believes the author was John Mark, who preserved the reminiscences of Peter. He thinks the Gospel was written in Rome, between 65 and 67 CE. As to sources, Taylor believes that, in addition to the tradition of Peter, Mark used written material: for example, an early collection of sayings. Mark presents his Christology, according to Taylor, in titles used for Jesus, especially “Son of Man” and “Son of God.” “The sheer humanity of the Markan portraiture catches the eye of the most careless reader; and yet, it is but half seen if it is not perceived that this Man of Sorrows is also a Being of supernatural origin and dignity, since He is the Son of God.”[23] According to Taylor the “messianic secret” is a creation not of Mark but of Jesus, and was designed to avoid popular misunderstanding of his messianic role. Mark’s ordering of the narrative, in Taylor’s opinion is, historically correct.
In sum we may say that in Mark we have an authority of first rank for our knowledge of the Story of Jesus. Separated at the time of writing by little more than a generation from the death of Jesus, its contents carry us back farther into the oral period before Mark wrote to the tradition first of the Palestinian community and subsequently that of the Gentile Church at Rome.[24]
The commentary proper consists of over 460 pages, plus fifty pages of additional notes. The material is presented according to Taylor’s understanding of the structure of the Gospel. The Greek text, a revised Westcott and Hort, is printed at the top of the page; the comments (actually notes on the text) are printed in double columns below. “Detached notes” or excurses are interspersed at the appropriate places. As an example of his exegesis, “The Confession of Peter and the First Prophecy of the Passion” (Mark 8:27-33) is of special concern to Taylor. In his introductory comment he identifies the form as a “story about Jesus,” not a “legend,” as Bultmann supposes. Taylor thinks it remarkable that popular opinion did not include an identification of Jesus as Messiah. In regard to v. 29, Taylor observes that use of ὑμεῖς in Jesus’ question is emphatic, and Peter’s response σὺ εἶ ὁ Χριστός is also emphatic. Regarding χριστός, Taylor notes that this word translates משׁיח in the LXX, and that it is used for the Davidic Messiah in the Psalms of Solomon 17:32 and for the superhuman Son of Man in 1 Enoch 48:10. Commenting on this first and the repeated predictions of the passion, Taylor emphasizes Jesus’ intent to instruct the disciples concerning the suffering Messiah. He also believes Jesus predicted his own resurrection, but with less precision than Mark’s “after three days.” According to Taylor, suffering was essential to Jesus’ understanding of his messianic vocation. “The teaching is based on a unique combination of the idea of the Suffering Servant of Isa. liii with that of the Son of Man.”[25]
An example of Taylor’s excurses is the “Detached Note on the Date of the Cleansing of the Temple,” inserted after his introductory comments on Mark 11:15-19. Taylor argues against the Markan location of the event in passion week and offers reasons for an earlier date as presented in the Fourth Gospel, or according to Goguel’s chronology in which the cleansing of the temple occurred during a visit to Jerusalem prior to the journey to Perea, a few months before the final trip to Jerusalem.[26] Among the additional notes appended at the end, “The Construction of the Passion and Resurrection Narrative” is of special interest. Taylor detects two strata of tradition, an early summary account and a later version characterized by Semitisms. “The hypothesis suggested is that Mark found an account of the Passion in Rome and expanded it by the aid of the Petrine tradition.”[27]
All in all, Taylor’s Mark is a monumental achievement. He attends skillfully to all the disciplines of critical exegesis—text criticism,[28] linguistics, and grammar—all in the service of historical reconstruction and theological meaning. He provides references to the LXX, rabbinic sources, classical literature, and a host of modern scholars. Taylor’s work remained throughout the twentieth century a widely used and highly respected commentary.
Like Brahms, who did not attempt a symphony until after he was forty, Taylor undertook theological construction only after he had mastered the theory and practice of biblical criticism. In the preface to his first book on the atonement he wrote: “After devoting something like twenty-five years to the study of the problems of literary and historical criticism in connexion with the Gospels, and especially to the minutiae of source criticism, I am conscious of a strong desire to investigate some more vital issue, arising out of these studies, which bears intimately upon Christian life and practice.”[29] As a result he produced two series of books on NT theology: a trilogy on the atonement and a second trilogy on Christology.
Taylor’s first book on the atonement, Jesus and His Sacrifice, focuses on the passion sayings in Mark and L. Particularly important is Mark 10:45 (“the Son of Man came . . . to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many”), which Taylor takes to be an authentic word of Jesus, reminiscent of Isaiah 53. In L, Taylor stresses Luke 17:25 (“but first he must endure much suffering and be rejected by this generation”), a text in which Taylor believes Jesus identifies himself as the suffering Son of Man. Also important is the saying of Jesus: “For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was counted among the lawless’; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled” (Luke 22:37). According to Taylor this is the only explicit citation of Isaiah 53 in the teaching of Jesus, but it shows that Jesus understood his impending death according to the image of the Suffering Servant. In sum:
Jesus looked upon His suffering and death as the fulfilment of a divine purpose, in which His will was at one with that of the Father, and in virtue of which He accepted an active vocation connected with the Rule of God. He thought of His death as a victorious struggle with the powers of evil, and interpreted His suffering, in relation to men, as representative and vicarious in a sacrificial ministry which involved participation in the consequences of human sin.[30]
In the second book, The Atonement in New Testament Teaching, Taylor finds evidence that the earliest tradition agrees with the teaching of Jesus concerning his role as Suffering Servant.[31] Taylor is anxious to show that the doctrine of atonement did not originate with Paul or the author of Hebrews but rather, he thinks, with Jesus, and that it was affirmed by the pre-Pauline Christians. To be sure, Paul developed the doctrine in his own way, stressing the necessity of Christ’s death and affirming God’s action in Christ as grounded in grace and received by faith. As to Hebrews, “The writer devotes all his attention to one cycle of ideas, the vicarious, representative, and sacrificial offering of Christ.”[32] Drawing implications from his study of the texts, Taylor declares that atonement is the work of God, revealing God’s love. He asks: “How can it be said that Christ, the merciful Son, was punished by the Father, that He died as man’s substitute, or offered compensation to God for sin, if in all that He does for man, God is the moving cause of redemption and in it gives free course to His love?”[33] No, says Taylor, Christ’s death is neither punishment for sin nor substitute for sinners; it is representative, vicarious suffering, best described as reconciliation.
Taylor’s final book on the atonement, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, presents a systematic investigation of the major themes.[34] He begins with “forgiveness,” which he understands as a prior condition of reconciliation. In investigating “justification” he gives primary consideration to Paul.[35] “In this doctrine, when it is said that God justifies men, the meaning is that he declares them to be righteous in His sight in virtue of spiritual conditions which to Him are valid, namely faith in Him as the Saviour and Redeemer of men.”[36] “Reconciliation,” a favorite term for Taylor, affirms the reconciliation of humans to God, not God to humans. “Fellowship” describes the result of reconciliation, seen in the NT ideas of knowing God and union with Christ. In accord with his Wesleyan heritage, Taylor stresses “sanctification.” “Beyond doubt,” says Taylor, “the New Testament teaches the absolute necessity of ethical and spiritual perfection, or, if we prefer the word, attainment. It knows nothing of a reconciliation with God which does not make this goal the object of passionate desire.”[37]
Taylor’s trilogy on Christology began with his book on The Names of Jesus.[38] With his usual thoroughness he investigates forty titles that are applied to Jesus in the NT. Most important are those used to convey messianic meaning. “Son of Man,” according to Taylor, is the title Jesus chose to express his own understanding of messiahship. In the early part of his ministry, according to Taylor, Jesus viewed the Son of Man as the embodiment of the elect community, but in the latter part he identified himself as Son of Man, interpreted according to the idea of the Suffering Servant. Taylor discusses at length the famous Son-Father saying from Q (Matt 11:27 // Luke 10:22), which he accepts as authentic and as confirming the unique relation of Christ to God.
Taylor’s second book on Christology is The Life and Ministry of Jesus, based on lectures given at Oxford.[39] At the outset he acknowledges that a biography of Jesus is impossible, but he believes careful study of the sources can produce a reliable account of the ministry of Jesus. Prior to the Galilean ministry the decisive event was the baptism by John, whereby “Jesus was conscious of being the Son of God in a unique sense.”[40] Regarding the accounts of the Galilean ministry, Taylor is suspicious of the nature miracles and believes Jesus gave priority to preaching. “He clearly regarded his message concerning the Kingdom as of greater importance than his works of healing.”[41] Convinced that the crowd misunderstands messiahship, Jesus, in Taylor’s reconstruction, withdraws alone to Tyre to reflect on the meaning of his mission. The confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi provides Jesus with the occasion for instructing the disciples in his new understanding: he is himself the suffering Son of Man. In regard to the resurrection narratives, Taylor acknowledges that legendary features have crept in, but he believes the fact of the resurrection is proved by the transformed lives of the disciples.
The third book of the trilogy, The Person of Christ in New Testament Teaching, deals explicitly with Christology.[42] In this book Taylor exegetes the christological expressions in the Synoptics, Acts, 1 Peter, Hebrews, and the Fourth Gospel, but he gives primary attention to Phil 2:6-11. Although this may be a pre-Pauline hymn, as Ernst Lohmeyer had argued, Taylor believes it embodies Pauline theology.[43] The main theme of the text is Christ’s renunciation of his pre-incarnate equality with God in order to assume the form of a servant. The word ἐκένωσεν means that Christ emptied himself, and becomes the key term for the kenotic Christology that Taylor adopts. “The hymn speaks of the majesty of the glory of Christ’s pre-incarnate life, His renunciation of his glory and His full acceptance of a human lot culminating in obedience unto death, and the exaltation which reveals all that is true of Him.”[44] Taylor proceeds to present his interpretation of the Christology of the “great writers” of the NT: Paul, the author of Hebrews, and the writer of the Fourth Gospel. All these writers, according to Taylor, affirm the pre-existence and divinity of Christ; all affirm Taylor’s version of kenotic Christology. “The Christology which seems most in accord with the teaching of the New Testament is the doctrine that, in becoming man, the Son of God willed to renounce the exercise of divine prerogatives and powers, so that in the course of His earthly existence, He might live within the necessary limitations which belong to human finitude.”[45]
On the whole, Taylor is a significant NT scholar who enlisted meticulous historical critical analysis in the service of theological construction. He is remembered more for his critical work—his identification of the pronouncement stories, his commentary on Mark—than for his historical and theological reconstruction. Taylor’s solution to the messianic question (Jesus’ designation of himself as Son of Man-Suffering Servant) would continue to be popular with his British successors.
Henry J. Cadbury was born in Philadelphia into a household with solid Quaker foundations; the English branch of the family is noted for its production of chocolate candy.[46] At age nineteen Cadbury graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Haverford College. He studied classics at Harvard and received his MA in 1904. After working as a school teacher, he returned to Harvard to earn his PhD in 1914. He had begun teaching at Haverford in 1910, but in 1919 he resigned in reaction to an uproar created by a letter he had written to a Philadelphia newspaper lamenting American hatred of Germans. Cadbury joined the faculty of Andover Theological Seminary, which was at the time associated with Harvard. When Andover separated and moved to Newton, Massachusetts (1926), Cadbury accepted a position teaching biblical literature at Bryn Mawr. During this period he declined invitations from the divinity schools of both Harvard and Yale.[47] In 1934 he finally yielded to the call from Harvard, succeeding his mentor J. H. Ropes in the Hollis Chair of Divinity—the oldest endowed chair in America. Robert M. Grant, one of his students, said of Cadbury that “he encouraged his students to think their own thoughts, no matter how unlike his they might seem. He was honest, learned, and thorough, a thoughtful and sensible scholar.”[48]
Cadbury was active in the Quaker peace movement.[49] He served two terms as chairman of the American Friends Service Committee (1928–1934; 1944–1960). On behalf of the Committee he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947, dressed in formal attire borrowed from the relief supply the Committee had collected for impoverished members of postwar European symphony orchestras. Cadbury served on the translation committee of the Revised Standard Version (RSV). After retirement from Harvard in 1954 he moved to Pendle Hill, the Quaker educational center in Pennsylvania. He lectured widely in America and Europe and was named president of both the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (SNTS). He traversed land and sea in the cause of peace, testifying before congressional committees and counseling with government officials. Cadbury died at ninety after suffering an injury from a fall down stairs.
Henry Cadbury was a devout Quaker and a person of deep, unpretentious faith.[50] In an unpublished paper on “The Relation of Jesus to Spiritual Life,” he wrote: “But it is my privilege to speak here of a force for deepening spiritual life. . . . That force is Jesus Christ.”[51] However, he resisted the efforts of some Quakers to promote Christocentric doctrine.
We need to recognize that Christocentricity—if one must use the modern term—is also of various sorts, and not merely the doctrines so often associated with it. . . . Beside doctrinal centrality Jesus Christ can claim our loyalty in other and perhaps more fruitful ways. His teaching, as we can recover it, even if not given any more authority than the self-evident validity that he himself saw in it, continues to have an appeal outside Christianity.[52]
Cadbury’s own religion affirmed an inner certitude of a rationally informed conscience—a commitment to truths that seem self-evident. This perspective is reflected in his view of the Bible. “Its value consists of its agreement with experience, or with Truth,” says Cadbury. “What is true in the Bible is there because it is true, not true because it is there. Its experiences ‘answer’ to ours, that is, they correspond with ours.”[53] The Quaker tradition also allows room for historical criticism. Although Quakers can cite chapter and verse in support of pacifism, they do not proclaim the absolute authority of the Bible. “With their belief in the continuing revelation of the Holy Spirit—the same Holy Spirit that inspired the Scriptures—Friends have appealed for the experience as well as for the knowledge of the Scriptures.”[54] The Bible, as record of faith and witness to truth, calls for ethical response. When asked why he devoted so much effort to the work of the American Friends Service Committee, Cadbury replied, “I am still trying to translate the New Testament.”[55]
Cadbury’s many books and articles on the NT give primary attention to Luke-Acts—a term he apparently coined.[56] His Harvard dissertation investigates The Style and Literary Method of Luke.[57] The purpose of the dissertation is to study the writer of Luke and Acts as an individual author within the Hellenistic milieu. In the first part Cadbury investigates the diction of Luke and Acts. He observes that Luke uses a large vocabulary, and that his Greek is closer to Attic than is sometimes supposed. Cadbury investigates the claim of W. K. Hobart (1882)—with refinements by Harnack, Zahn, and Moffatt—that the author of Luke-Acts made distinctive use of medical language. Listing the alleged medical terms, Cadbury notes their extensive use in Lucian, Josephus, and the LXX. In an excursus on Lucian, Cadbury shows that if we examine the seventy-five so-called medical terms that appear in the NT only in Luke-Acts, Lucian uses them twice as often as Luke does. Cadbury concludes:
The style of Luke bears no more evidence of medical training and interest than does the language of other writers who were not physicians. . . . Of course the absence of marked medical traits does not prove that a doctor did not write Luke and Acts. . . . So Luke, “the beloved physician” and companion of Paul, may have written the two books which tradition assigns to him, though their Greek be no more medical than that of Lucian, “the travelling rhetorician and show-lecturer”; but the so-called medical language of these books cannot be used as a proof that Luke was the author, nor even as an argument confirming the tradition of his authorship.[58]
In a later essay Cadbury observes that “unlike the present medical profession the ancient physician scarcely had a technical vocabulary at all.”[59] Over a decade later, with tongue in cheek, Cadbury published “Luke and the Horse-Doctors,” in which he demonstrates that Luke’s vocabulary has affinity with the language used by ancient veterinarians.[60] Little wonder the story circulated that Cadbury earned his doctorate by depriving St. Luke of his!
In the second part of his dissertation Cadbury investigated Luke’s use of sources. Assuming the priority of Mark, Cadbury believed Luke’s method of using sources can be derived from the way he used Mark. In regard to the arrangement of material, Cadbury concluded that Luke largely follows Mark. Luke tends to shorten Mark’s dialogue and avoid his repetition. Cadbury believed that some of Luke’s changes indicate his literary predilections: he avoids exaggeration; he more clearly identifies audiences; he adds applications. In general, Cadbury thought that Luke improves Mark’s grammar and style. He concluded with data concerning Luke’s use of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. Cadbury’s interest in the style of Luke-Acts continued throughout his career. Late in life he wrote “Four Features of Lucan Style,” in which he notes elements of style that appear as pairs of opposites: repetition and variation, distribution and concentration.[61]
Henry Cadbury was one of the first English-speaking scholars to publish a response to form criticism. His essay, “Between Jesus and the Gospels,”[62] was written over a decade before the research on form criticism by Taylor. Cadbury reviews the work of Dibelius, Bultmann, and Schmidt,[63] and offers his own observations. Most important, the material of the Gospels has a history, and it was shaped by interests that were not primarily historical. Cadbury also agrees with the form critics that the order of the narrative in the Gospels is not reliable. “If there is any scheme in the gospel, any development or progression,” says Cadbury, “it is Mark’s, and not a residue of a primitive tradition. Tradition provided a great variety of memorabilia, but not the framework for setting them into a narrative.”[64] Similarly, Cadbury believes the order of the sayings material is equally arbitrary. The Gospels are “patchwork quilts, coats of many colors.”[65] However, in contrast to the German form critics, he rejects the thesis that much material has been imported into the tradition from foreign soil, insisting that “we need not ourselves plunge into monomaniac Panbabylonianism.”[66] He also thinks the incidences of divergences, incongruities, and contradictions tend to confirm the general reliability of the tradition.[67]
Much of Cadbury’s work on Acts was published in connection with the multi-volume Beginnings of Christianity.[68] When Cadbury moved to Cambridge to teach at Andover he was invited to participate in the project, and when Foakes Jackson withdrew, Cadbury joined Kirsopp Lake in editing the last two volumes. Cadbury contributed such essays as “The Composition and Purpose of Acts” and “The Identity of the Editor of Luke and Acts” to volume 2, and volume 3, The Text of Acts, included his collations of the Vulgate and Codex Vaticanus and of the Peshitto and Vaticanus. The Commentary (vol. 4) was the joint work of Lake and Cadbury, and Lake, who acted as the final editor, notes that Cadbury’s “interests are more specifically linguistic and literary.”[69] Cadbury contributed ten notes to volume 5, Additional Notes to the Commentary.
Cadbury’s typical linguistic and literary interests are displayed in his appendix to volume 2, “Commentary on the Preface of Luke.”[70] Cadbury notes that Luke’s preface is the only place in the Synoptics where conscious authorship and purpose are expressed. He writes that the preface reveals conventional Hellenistic literary motifs, for instance, a preface to the first volume of a multi-volume work that introduces the whole composition. Cadbury proceeds through the text of the preface, commenting on virtually every word; he treats textual, linguistic, and grammatical matters with great detail, all with reference to Hellenistic usage. For example, in regard to παρηκολουθηκότι (“after investigating,” Luke 1:3), Cadbury says the basic meaning is “follow,” but the usage is figurative, allowing various shades of meaning: (1) following what is read or said; (2) keeping in touch with a course of events; (3) actual presence or participation in events. In regard to v. 4, Cadbury asserts that the avowed purpose of the author was to present a defense of Christianity. In view of this apologetic purpose, “Theophilus was not a catechumen but an influential non-Christian . . . to whom this work is nominally dedicated or addressed with the intention of meeting incriminating reports or impressions by the presentation of exonerating facts.”[71] In regard to the author, first person is used in the preface three times: “fulfilled among us” has no personal meaning; “handed on to us” means “we Christians who have received the tradition”; κ’αμοί (“I too”) refers to the author himself, and identifies him with the “many” who have attempted to construct a narrative.
Among Cadbury’s contributions to volume 5 (Additional Notes), his note on “The Hellenists” illustrates his penchant for rowing against the stream of scholarly consensus.[72] He observes that Ἑλληνιστής is not a common word in the Hellenistic age. It is derived from the verb ἑλλενίζω (“to practice Greek ways”) and has no reference to language. Cadbury rejects the conventional interpretation of Acts 6:1 whereby the “Hellenists” are identified as Greek-speaking Jewish converts and the “Hebrews” as Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians. He observes that Ἑβραῖοι is not used in the NT for language but to describe Jews in contrast to Gentiles. Noting that some manuscripts omit the word “Jews” from Acts 2:5, Cadbury contends that the original account of the crowd at Pentecost included Gentiles. According to him, Luke did not envisage a gradual development toward Gentile mission but believed Gentiles belonged to the divine plan from the beginning. “There is therefore no difficulty in supposing that Acts vi. 1 may have introduced a story . . . in which Gentiles and Jews already formed the two national divisions of the Jerusalem church.”[73] According to Cadbury the Hellenists are Gentiles or “Greeks.”
Cadbury’s note on “The Titles of Jesus in Acts” employs philological and historical research in the service of theology.[74] He analyzes fifteen terms that are used for Jesus, including Lord, Son of Man, Son of God, and Savior. In regard to ὁ παῖς (the servant), Cadbury notes that this term is used four times in Acts 3 and 4—a usage not found elsewhere in the NT. He indicates that some interpreters take this term to represent primitive Christology while others glimpse an allusion to the Suffering Servant. His concluding comment is vintage Cadbury.
Whether it is reminiscent of the figure in Second Isaiah, or whether it is rather a somewhat archaic term not so much redolent of a given section of Scripture as suggestive of the language in which the notable figures of sacred history are described, cannot be settled with certainty. It is sufficient here to warn against the too easy assumption of dependence on Second Isaiah’s ‘Ebed Yahweh.[75]
This note, like all of Cadbury’s contributions to The Beginning of Christianity, is a model of historical critical research: meticulous attention to detail, rigorous research in the primary and secondary sources, imaginative reconstruction, and, typical of Cadbury’s “principle of parsimony,”[76] a stubborn resistance to the temptation to draw conclusions unwarranted by the data.
Cadbury’s most important contribution to NT research is The Making of Luke-Acts, first published in 1927 and reprinted as recently at 1999.[77] His purpose is “to give as clear, comprehensive and realistic a picture as possible of the whole literary process that produced Luke and Acts.”[78] Cadbury affirms the importance of Acts as a historical source, “the only bridge we have across the seemingly impassable gulf that separates Jesus from Paul, Christ from Christianity, the gospel of Jesus from the gospel about Jesus.”[79] Cadbury insists that the two documents, Luke and Acts, constitute a unity and must be viewed as two parts of a single work. The balance of the book investigates the four main factors involved in the composition of Luke-Acts.
First Cadbury discusses the sources used by the author. Before there were written sources, the tradition was transmitted orally. The material was of two types: narrative and sayings; these circulated in independent units and were eventually gathered into collections. According to Cadbury, Luke’s primary written sources were Mark and Q. He is skeptical of the effort to secure apostolic authority for the Gospel of Mark on the basis of the tradition from Papias. As to date, Cadbury believes all that can be known is that Mark wrote before Matthew and Luke. In regard to Q, Cadbury believes it impossible to ascertain what was omitted from Q by Matthew or by Luke, and which evangelist more faithfully follows the order and wording of Q. He thinks the identification of Q with the Logia of Matthew and the hypothesis of a Proto-Luke represent risky scholarly conjectures.
In the second part Cadbury investigates Luke’s literary method. As to language, he believes that Luke’s usage is of higher quality than the rest of the NT but that it is essentially the vernacular Greek of the Hellenistic period. As to genre, Cadbury believes Luke-Acts cannot be classified as biography or history, though it is closer to history. Like Hellenistic writers, Luke includes speeches, letters, and canticles, all of which Cadbury thinks are largely Lukan compositions.
In the third part Cadbury considers the personality of the author as it is revealed in his language and style. Cadbury notes that Luke can adapt his style to fit the situation of his narrative. Luke, Cadbury observes, is fond of presenting persons in parallel and in pairs; he is able to create suspense and convey a sense of pathos; he is cosmopolitan and urban in perspective. As to theology, Cadbury notes Luke’s apocalyptic eschatology and his stress on the resurrection. “No New Testament writer more often refers to the resurrection as predicted in Scripture or cites more texts in its support than does Luke.”[80]
In the fourth part Cadbury turns to the purpose of the author. According to him Luke’s purpose is to evoke faith in Christ; Luke understands the history he recounts as fulfilling the purposes of God. Luke, in Cadbury’s opinion, offers a twofold apologetic: the legitimacy of Christianity in relation to Judaism and the innocence of Christianity in relation to Rome. For Cadbury the ending of Acts allows various hypotheses: Luke has run out of sources or out of papyrus, or attained his goal, or planned to write a third volume. As to the identity of the author, Cadbury observes that the tradition of Lukan authorship could have been fabricated from data in Acts. However, he believes the traditional argument is not without weight. In Cadbury’s opinion scholarship cannot attain certainty about the date, place of writing, or identity of the author—matters he believes to be of secondary importance. “We do well also to realize how little our uncertainty about the author’s identity interferes with our effort to make clear and complete the story which we have aimed to recover.”[81]
In regard to historicity, Cadbury rejects the common notion that reliability is tied to the question of authorship; instead, he believes reliability should be evaluated in terms of the kind of literary investigation he has undertaken in this book.
The main effect of our method of study upon the question of historicity will be, however, neither to verify nor to correct the data recorded in these volumes, but to give reality, interest and attention to the later stage of history which the making of Luke-Acts represents. Instead of trying to conceal our real ignorance with plausible speculation, obscurum per obscurius, we shall turn our minds from the hidden underlying facts to the more accessible fact of the creation of this significant literary production. That fact itself—the making of Luke-Acts—by its concreteness, its verifiable fitness to its historical setting, and its irrefutable revelation of its author’s mind, times and heart can lend to our study of Scripture an element of historical certainty and human interest, which the more controversial and debatable subjects of date, authorship, inspiration, orthodoxy and accuracy do not permit.[82]
In sum, Cadbury’s Making of Luke-Acts is a classic—one of the great books of twentieth-century NT research.[83] It is an original work that joins penetrating analysis with synthesizing wisdom. Cadbury shows that scholarship is not always in the wind and earthquake and fire, but in the still, small voice of unpretentious, meticulous research.
Cadbury’s research on Acts is advanced in The Book of Acts in History.[84] In this book he investigates Acts in relation to its historical setting. In regard to the Greek background, Cadbury says that Luke is “undoubtedly the most Hellenic of the evangelists, and in secularity, in language, in approach to literature the nearest to a Greek man of letters that the early Church provides.”[85] Concerning the Roman background he writes: “Just as the Book of Acts constantly presupposes and often mentions this Roman environment, so that book itself is a first-rate source for an impression of what contemporary life under Rome was like.”[86] As to the Jewish background, Cadbury believes Luke provides significant information about the Jews of the Diaspora. In considering the Christian background he observes that Luke presents a Christianity different from Paul’s, but he affirms the importance of Paul for early Christian history.[87] Just as The Making of Luke-Acts had investigated the prehistory of Acts, so in a final chapter of The Book of Acts in History Cadbury investigates the history of Acts after it was written. He notes that Acts was separated from Luke in the development of the canon but that, even though included in the canon, it was not widely known in the early church.
Throughout his career Henry Cadbury reflected on the practice of NT criticism, especially as it relates to Jesus. In The Peril of Modernizing Jesus he exposes the anachronism of portraying Jesus in modern garb. The impetus for modernizing, Cadbury thinks, arises from the assumption that Jesus has universal significance—that he and his message are normative for today. The peril can be avoided, according to Cadbury, by acknowledging one’s presuppositions and by “painstaking historical research and imagination.”[88] Objective historical research will confirm the Jewishness of Jesus—his apocalyptic eschatology, his antiquated worldview. Cadbury thinks that “Jesus’ conformity to the mentality of his age spells at the same time his alienness to our own.”[89] Although he acknowledges that Jesus viewed himself as Messiah, Cadbury does not believe Jesus claimed the sort of purpose and plan usually attributed to him. “What I wish to propose is that Jesus probably had no definite, unified, conscious purpose, that an absence of such a program is a priori likely and that it suits well the historical evidence.”[90] Cadbury is also wary of finding in Jesus a normative religious experience. “Jesus himself made religious experience no aim or goal in his own life or in his teaching.”[91] Jesus did not, according to Cadbury, claim a unique relation to God. “Even when God is mentioned Jesus does not make him central in his teaching. That teaching is about human conduct.”[92] In short, no NT scholar since Albert Schweitzer had so audaciously questioned the relevance of Jesus.[93]
Cadbury’s Shaffer Lectures at Yale were published as Jesus: What Manner of Man. “I have attempted here,” says Cadbury, “to be more positive than in The Peril of Modernizing Jesus without myself ignoring the warning I have sounded in that volume.”[94] Adopting the archaic language of the Authorized Version, Cadbury explores questions raised by the Gospels, such as “Is not this Jesus?” In response, Cadbury says that the personality of Jesus is difficult to assess, but he insists that Jesus’ primary concern is human conduct. To “whence this Wisdom?” Cadbury replies that Jesus reasons from nature and affirms truth that is self-evident. To “why speakest thou in parables?” Cadbury answers that Jesus taught in parables because parables represent teachings derived from the observation of nature and people. “What is this? New teaching?” The newness in Jesus’ teaching, responds Cadbury, is not its content but its urgency, its apocalyptic emphasis. To “how knoweth this man?” Cadbury replies that Jesus “was of such ethical maturity that his judgment was frequently right.”[95] According to Cadbury, “Jesus appeals to the hearer’s powers of moral appreciation and response.”[96] “By what authority?” According to Cadbury’s answer, Jesus’ authority was not external, but “due to a kind of self-validating character in the teachings themselves.”[97] He concludes: “He is like all personality, an enigma. These chapters make no pretense of fathoming him. While he may help us understand ourselves and God, he is reported as having said, ‘No one knows the Son, save the Father.’”[98] Thus Cadbury presents a minimalist Jesus whose religion is Jewish, whose passion is ethics, whose urgency is apocalyptic.[99]
Cadbury’s work on Jesus reflects his lifelong preoccupation with the method and practice of criticism. Early in his career he contributed an essay to a volume on Christianity and Modern Thought, directed to the general reader and entitled “Critical Study of the New Testament.”[100] In surveying the history of research he laments the persistent resistance to enlightened study of the NT.
More than any other book the New Testament has had to wait and still must wait for enlightenment in many other fields of knowledge before receiving fair treatment. Presuppositions linger about it the longest, as the clouds cling longest to the highest peaks of the mountains. The truth about it has not often come to men by passive waiting, it has been won step by step with effort and struggle. The dust of strife has never been allowed to settle so that clear light could shine, but men have had to grope rather than see.[101]
In 1938 Cadbury described “The Present State of New Testament Studies.”[102] This essay assesses developments in various areas of NT study: text criticism, archaeology, history of religion. “Progress depends . . . on the patient effort of imaginative minds, often in unseen and unconscious collaboration, freshly revolving and resolving the intricate data for the New Testament by trial and error, by ever new reference to material in the contemporary cultures, until a fragment of new probability emerges from the search.”[103] Three years later, Cadbury envisioned “New Testament Study in the Next Generation,” calling for removal of the debris of theories earlier exploded and warning against the illusion that everything new is good.[104] In 1960 his essay, “New Testament Scholarship: Fifty Years in Retrospect,” contends that scholars have tried in vain to escape the apocalyptic element in the teaching of Jesus; realized eschatology he characterizes as “unrecognized wishful thinking.” In regard to a biblical theology that neglects the historical Jesus, Cadbury exclaims: “How it is possible to claim so much for Christ as the one great divine event in history and be so indifferent about the problem of what in actual history we can know of Christ is a matter of surprise.”[105]
In overview, Cadbury’s assessment of criticism is ambivalent: he affirms historical criticism but eschews fads and extremes, fanciful conjectures and overconfident conclusions. Typical is his essay, “Some Foibles of New Testament Scholarship.”[106] After rehearsing many of those already noted, Cadbury identifies the fundamental foible as “the way in which New Testament scholars have felt uncomfortable to leave questions unsolved. . . . [I]nstead of relying on precarious argument the scholar should make clear to the layman, who like nature abhors a vacuum, that we have not enough data to decide.”[107] For Cadbury, critical orthodoxy is almost as abhorrent as theological orthodoxy. In his presidential address at the SNTS he questioned the widely-held consensus concerning the pseudonymity of the letter to the Ephesians. After analyzing the style and vocabulary of Ephesians in relation to the other Pauline letters he concludes that the differences are not great enough to prove a different author nor the similarities sufficient to prove the same author. Cadbury acknowledges that he has not considered theology in his assessment of the authorship of Ephesians, an issue he believes to be clouded by subjectivity. Thus the address discloses Cadbury’s strength and also his weakness: his passion for objectivity and his antipathy for theology, the latter an element that is significant for the assessment of authorship.
In the history of NT research, Henry J. Cadbury represents a rare species. At a meeting of the SBL sometime in the early 1960s Professor Cadbury chose to sit with me (a young unknown) at lunch, when he could have dined with old friends and eminent scholars. Even more astonishing was his conversation. He wanted to know my views concerning the papers read in the morning session, and asked me what I had been reading that he should read!
As to Cadbury’s research, few have followed the Enlightenment ideal of objectivity more faithfully. Edgar J. Goodspeed is said to have remarked about Cadbury that “the consciousness of even a single certainty would be an insupportable weight upon his mind.”[108] At the very least Cadbury commends caution; the road of NT research is littered with shattered conjectures. Indeed, Cadbury’s approach may appear to be primarily negative—a conspicuous indifference to Jesus and the NT. Nevertheless, he affirms the integrity of the historian in the quest for truth. The truth he seeks, of course, is not grandiose; Cadbury, like his portrayal of Jesus, is too humble for that. His truth is in the details, the fragments that make up the mosaic of human life and history.
Thomas Walter Manson was born in Tynemouth, Northumberland, of Scottish ancestry.[109] He studied at Glasgow (MA, 1912) and at Cambridge (1919–22). From 1922 to 1925 he worked as a tutor at Westminster College, Cambridge, and from 1932 to 1936 as professor at Mansfield College, Oxford, succeeding C. H. Dodd. Later Manson again succeeded Dodd at Manchester University, where he was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis from 1936 to 1958. Manson lectured widely in Europe and America and was named president of SNTS. Harold H. Rowley described Manson as “a man of great learning and of strength and grace of character, a Christian gentleman in every sense of the term, a man of highest integrity and loyalty.”[110]
Manson’s basic approach to the Bible is evident in his essay “The Nature and Authority of the Canonical Scriptures.”[111] Most important, Manson believed the Bible to be a book that contains revelation. Compared with the two other great religions—Buddhism and Islam—Christianity, according to Manson, is the only religion with a valid claim to revelation. “Revelation . . . means primarily an act of God whereby He manifests His real nature to men.”[112] In Manson’s opinion, revelation reaches its zenith in “the personality and life of Jesus of Nazareth. . . . It is a revelation in terms of the highest category we can know—that of personality.”[113]
T. W. Manson’s major work is The Teaching of Jesus: Studies of Its Form and Content.[114] Originally published in 1931, the book was slightly revised in 1935 and frequently reprinted. It makes two basic affirmations: the substance of the gospel is the person of Christ; the key to understanding the NT is the idea of the saving remnant. In the first part Manson treats preliminary questions. His distinctive contribution is his attempt to distinguish the various audiences to whom the teachings of Jesus were addressed: the disciples, the multitudes, the opponents. In regard to sources, Manson generally accepts B. F. Streeter’s four documents.[115] Following the Papias tradition, Manson believes Mark preserves the tradition of Peter, but he rejects Papias’s assertion that Mark did not write in order. Q is identified by Manson as the Logia written in Aramaic by Matthew.[116] M represents the Jewish perspective and is, according to Manson, of less value that Mark and Q. Manson accepts the Proto-Luke hypothesis and believes L represents oral tradition collected by Luke himself. Turning to the formal features of Jesus’ teaching, Manson notes that Jesus taught in Aramaic and that his rhetoric echoes the poetic expressions of the OT. According to Manson, “A parable is a literary creation in narrative form designed either to portray a type of character for warning or example, or to embody a principle of God’s governance of the world and men.”[117] Manson believes all the parables “are governed by a single purpose—to show, directly or indirectly, what God is and what man may become, and to show these things in a way that will reach men’s hearts if it is possible to reach them at all. And, when we come to think of it, the greatest and most effective parable of them all is his own life.”[118]
The second part of the book discusses the content of Jesus’ teaching. According to Manson the background of Jesus’ teaching is to be found in the OT.[119] Manson believes Jesus gives primary attention to the doctrine of God, particularly the idea of God as Father, especially in the latter part of his ministry. “The result of this detailed examination of all four sources is to justify the general conclusion, suggested by Mk and Q, that Jesus rarely if ever spoke directly of God as Father except to his disciples and that he began to speak to them in this way only after Peter’s Confession.”[120] Manson believes the kingdom of God has been misunderstood in two ways: as a social order, and as an apocalyptic phenomenon. Analyzing the sources, he detects a shift: prior to the confession of Peter, Jesus speaks of the coming of the kingdom; after the confession he speaks of people entering the kingdom. This leads Manson to conclude that the kingdom is essentially a personal relationship to God, already present in Jesus, to be fully consummated in the future.
According to Manson the kingdom has three main aspects. First, it expresses the eternal sovereignty of God. In the post-exilic period the attempt to relate the sovereignty of God to the evil world led to the rise of apocalyptic, pushing retribution into a supernatural future and understanding the present according to a dualism. In Manson’s view Jesus took up and advanced the older prophetic position: God’s kingdom is already at work and its triumph in the future is certain.
Second, the kingdom is God’s rule in the world. In Israel’s history, the failure of the people to obey God led to the prophetic idea of the faithful remnant: the people in whom the kingdom of God is present. In Second Isaiah the remnant is presented according to the figure of the righteous servant who suffers on behalf of others. Manson believes this idea was appropriated by Jesus, and after the confession of Peter it was applied to Jesus’ own mission. Manson understands the confession “as the watershed of the Gospel history. Indeed it is not too much to say that Peter’s inspired declaration at Caesarea Philippi has changed the whole course of the world’s history.”[121] After the confession the presence of the kingdom in the world is expressed, according to Manson, in Jesus’ use of the title “Son of Man.” Manson believes that the two incidents in Mark when the title is used prior to the confession (2:10; 2:28) represent the Aramaic bar nasha—an expression that simply means “man.”[122] After the confession Jesus, according to Manson, uses the title Son of Man, like Servant of the Lord, to refer to the remnant.
His mission is to create the Son of Man, the Kingdom of the saints of the Most High, to realize in Israel the ideal contained in the term. This task is attempted in two ways: first by public appeal to the people through the medium of parable and sermon and by the mission of the disciples: then, when this appeal produced no adequate response, by the consolidation of his own band of followers. Finally, when it becomes apparent that not even the disciples are ready to rise to the demands of the ideal, he stands alone, embodying in his own person the perfect human response to the regal claims of God.[123]
Jesus is himself the saving remnant. As Manson says elsewhere, “the ministry of Jesus is not a prelude to the Kingdom of God: it is the Kingdom of God.”[124]
The third aspect of the kingdom is the final consummation. According to Manson, Jesus takes up the eschatology of the OT, which sees the end of history as the fulfillment of God’s purposes, and gives it a new expression: “the final consummation is not a compensation for the sufferings of the faithful in the present, but the result of them.”[125] On the basis of his investigation of the Son of Man sayings that refer to the future, Manson believes Jesus expected the eschaton to come with surprise and to include a universal judgment. Manson wrestles mightily with the problem created by Jesus’ prediction that the kingdom would come with power before the death of some of his contemporaries. He concludes that Jesus is not infallible, that he shares the limitations of his own time, and that “the belief in the nearness of the Day of the Lord is not one of the unique features in the eschatology of Jesus but a belief which, like the belief in demons or the Davidic authorship of the Psalter, was the common property of his generation.”[126]
T. W. Manson also published a significant work on The Sayings of Jesus—a work that is essentially a commentary on teaching material in the sources Q, M, and L.[127] Again he finds the center of the gospel in the person of Jesus. “The teaching of Jesus in the fullest and deepest sense is Jesus Himself, and the best Christian living has always been in some sort an imitation of Christ; not a slavish copying of His acts but the working of His mind and spirit in new contexts of life and circumstance.”[128] In discussing the development of the tradition Manson notes that sayings were grouped according to topics and shaped to meet catechetical and apologetic needs of the church. Thus he recognizes form criticism, although two major features of his work—the identification of audiences and the acceptance of Mark’s order—are antithetical to form-critical results. As to written sources, Manson stresses early dating: Q before 50, M around 65, and L around 60.
Examples of Manson’s exegetical work can be seen in his comments on pericopes from M and L. In the section “The Teaching Peculiar to Matthew” (M), Manson interprets “The Last Judgement” (Matt 25:31-36). He views the whole text as presenting the apocalyptic drama of judgment and identifies the dramatis personae: the “king” is Jesus; the “brethren” (NRSV: “members of my family”) are persons associated with Jesus; the “sheep” are Gentiles who helped; the “goats” are Gentiles who did not. According to Manson the “Son of Man” is the remnant—the corporate body of Jesus and his faithful associates, that is, the kingdom of God. The basis of judgment, in this view, is the response to the kingdom. “The deeds of the righteous are not just casual acts of benevolence,” says Manson. “They are acts by which the Mission of Jesus and His followers was helped, and helped at some cost to the doers, even at some risk.”[129]
In the section “The Teaching Peculiar to Luke” (L), Manson interprets “The Two Sons” (Luke 15:11-32). He sees the parable as a unity making two points: God’s care for the sinner, and a rebuke to the censorious attitude of the righteous toward sinners. According to Manson the father represents God; the elder brother, the scribes and Pharisees; the younger brother, the publicans and sinners. In noting how the younger son is reduced to the lowest state and engaged in a most loathsome job, Manson cites the Talmud: “Cursed is the man who rears swine, and cursed is the man who teaches his son Greek philosophy.”[130] Manson’s sense of humor is also evident in his comment on the protest of the older brother. “The impression remains, however, that the chief reason why he never got so much as a kid to make merry with his friends was that he would not have known how to make merry if he had got it.”[131] Manson concludes: “So the upshot of the matter is that the way of the father with the prodigal is God’s way with sinful men and Jesus’ way with publicans and sinners.”[132]
In an essay on “The Life of Jesus,” Manson acknowledges that a biography of Jesus cannot be written, but he argues that the main course of the ministry can be reconstructed by careful study of the sources.[133] In a lecture published some years later he discussed “The Quest of the Historical Jesus—Continued.”[134] The essay and lecture lament the limits of form criticism: its failure to recognize the reliability of Mark’s order and to give attention to the Sitz im Leben Jesu. Manson also depicts Schweitzer’s historical Jesus as a “deluded fanatic.”[135] However, he sees the quest of the historical Jesus as “still a great and most hopeful enterprise.” The reason for the quest is clear: “But if God does reveal himself in history, it is there if anywhere that we must find him. . . . If God spoke through the life and death of Jesus it is vitally important to know as fully and as accurately as possible what sort of life and death became the medium of God’s revelation.”[136]
T. W. Manson’s positive contribution to the quest is presented in his little book, The Servant-Messiah.[137] He begins with a survey of the messianic hope from the time of Antiochus IV to Hadrian, especially as expressed by the Jewish parties,[138] writing that “history shows that the Jews of Palestine were only too ready to welcome any promising champion of the cause of Israel and to take up arms in a holy war for the kingdom of God.”[139] Manson believes the confident expectation of the Jews was confounded by John the Baptist’s message of judgment and by Jesus’ radical revision of the messianic hope. He contends that “the whole Ministry—the teaching of Jesus, his acts, and finally the Cross, are a standing denial of the current beliefs and hopes.”[140] In investigating the historical material about Jesus, Manson begins with Q. From this primitive document he believes he can derive the principles that motivated the ministry of Jesus. Jesus’ rejection of a political role, according to Manson, is evident in the temptation narrative. In contrast to apocalyptic thought, Manson believes Jesus affirmed the future already present in history in himself as Son of Man—a figure who combines the Servant of Second Isaiah and the Son of Man of Daniel. “That dream-figure the Son of man, who gives his life a ransom for many and comes in glory with the clouds of heaven, became historical reality on the day when Jesus of Nazareth, coming up out of the Jordan from John’s baptism, took the first step on the road that led to Calvary.”[141]
Turning to Mark, Manson attempts to reconstruct the course of the ministry of Jesus. It begins with the baptism, faces a crisis at the feeding of the multitude, and reaches a turning point at the confession of Peter. In the last phases of the ministry Manson detects two crucial events. The cleansing of the temple, which Manson locates at the Feast of Tabernacles prior to the final visit to Jerusalem, is an action whereby Manson believes Jesus clears out the court of the Gentiles to demonstrate that the way is prepared for Gentile participation in the kingdom.[142] The second crucial event, of course, is the crucifixion, the culmination of divine revelation.
Jesus stood for something greater than the Empire or the Temple or the Law. He stood for the kingdom of God. In truth he was the kingdom of God. In his Ministry he had shown the rule of God in action, what it offers to men everywhere and what it demands of them. In Pilate, Caiaphas, and the rest the lesser loyalties united against the kingdom of God incarnate in Jesus the Messiah; and so Jesus went to the Cross—and made it his everlasting throne.[143]
The ministry, however, did not end but continued in the church, the body of Christ, “the continuation of the incarnation.”[144] “The Resurrection means above all just this,” concludes Manson, “that Christians do not inherit their task from Christ, they share it with him. We are not the successors of Jesus, but his companions.”[145]
Besides his work on the Gospels, T. W. Manson engaged in research on other parts of the NT. In “The New Testament and Other Christian Writings of the New Testament Period” he presents critical introductions to all the NT documents.[146] In regard to the Pauline epistles, Manson accepts the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians but believes it was written before 1 Thessalonians. He believes the Corinthian correspondence consists of four original letters and favors the south Galatian destination of Galatians. He tends to support Ephesus as the place of writing Philippians, though he does not believe Paul was in prison at the time.[147] Manson thinks the place of writing of Colossians and Philemon is Rome; he believes the problems related to Ephesians defy definite solution. As to Hebrews, Manson believes it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, perhaps by Apollos.[148] In regard to the Catholic Epistles, Manson thinks 1 Peter was written by Peter with extensive help from Silvanus; 2 Peter he believes to be unquestionably pseudonymous. Manson thinks the Fourth Gospel and 1 John were written by the same author (probably John the Elder), the Apocalypse by another writer (possibly John the Apostle).
In an essay, “St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans—and Others,” Manson presents his distinctive understanding of the original form and destination of Romans.[149] He begins by presenting the data: the omission from some manuscripts of the references to Rome at 1:7 and 1:15; the location of the doxology in various editions at the end of chapters 14, 15, and 16. Manson believes Marcion’s edition did not include chapter 16, and that Marcion cut off chapter 15. Chapter 16, according to Manson, was originally written to Ephesus. Manson thinks Paul originally wrote Romans 1–15, and at about the same time sent a copy of it along with a recommendation of Phoebe (chapter 16) to the church at Ephesus. Manson concludes that Romans circulated in three editions: Marcion’s (chs. 1–14); Paul’s original version to Rome (1–15); and the Ephesian version (1–16).
T. W. Manson also contributed to the study of NT theology. In his book The Beginning of the Gospel,[150] Manson insists that the person of Christ must be understood historically; his Christology is virtually identical with his historical Jesus. The essence of that Christology is seen in the fusion of the ideas of the Son of Man and the Servant of the Lord. In regard to ethics, Manson presented lectures at Manchester and at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School that were published posthumously under the title, Ethics and the Gospel. In these lectures he explicates the moral teaching of Jesus as presented in the Sermon on the Mount. In recognizing that the Sermon in its present form is a composition of the author of Matthew, Manson, anticipating redaction criticism,[151] comments, “We must not think of the evangelists as literary hacks producing gospels by stringing other people’s work together; they were genuine composers, with gifts as authentic as those of the poet or the musician or the artist, and a good deal more important.”[152] In any case, the Sermon is important, according to Manson, because it includes reliable material from Q. He believes the distinctive feature of the ethic of Jesus is the command to love as Jesus loved. “Christian ethics is certainly not slavish obedience to rules and regulations. It is active living, and therefore it has the power to go to the heart of every ethical situation that arises.”[153]
Manson was especially concerned with the theology of ministry. In The Church’s Ministry, originally lectures given at the University of London, he argues that the doctrine of ministry must be related to the doctrine of the church, and the church must be understood in relation to Christ. Ecclesiology, according to Manson, is a branch of Christology. Manson believes the ministry of the church is the continuation of the ministry of Christ. “The Body of Christ is the organism which He uses to carry out His purposes in the world in the same way that He used His physical body in the days of the ministry in Galilee and Judaea.”[154] Manson traces the emergence of various forms and titles of ministry in the history of the early church and concludes that none of these can be identified exclusively as apostolic, and that no single doctrine of the ministry is absolute. The view of the church as body of Christ confirms the essential unity of the church, according to Manson, and such a view can affirm both hierarchical and free church understandings of ministry. One is not made a minister by the action of bishops, presbyteries, or congregations, but only by the call of Christ.[155]
A collection of T. W. Manson’s essays on NT theology has been published as On Paul and John: Some Selected Theological Themes.[156] Among the essays on Paul, “Paul the Christian and Theologian” argues that the apostle was no systematic or philosophical theologian. “He is telling what God has done, is doing, and will do on the stage of world-history rather than what are the ultimate ideas and axioms in terms of which the universe may be explained.”[157] An essay on “The Cosmic Significance of Christ” finds the background not in Greek cosmology but in the Jewish idea that the world is under the control of demonic powers. In this context Paul speaks of the redemption of the universe (Romans 8) and the cosmic significance of Christ (Colossians 1). In “The Significance of Christ as Saviour” Manson contrasts the Greek and Hebraic ways of viewing salvation: for the Greeks salvation is knowledge, and emphasis is placed on seeing; for the Hebrews salvation involves hearing and obeying. According to Manson, Paul understands humans to be enslaved to sin, a slavery that can be broken only by the action of God disclosed in Christ. God’s action in Christ presents new revelation of God’s nature as characterized by love, and it makes possible a response of faith and radical repentance. “The work of Christ,” says Manson, “is thus something which affects the status of man before God and the moral condition of man in himself. It breaks the power of the evil forces that claim man, and it has a moral regenerating power in the life of man.”[158] Thus Manson basically affirms the moral influence doctrine of atonement.
In the second part of this book Manson presents essays on the theology of John. The essay on “Johannine Themes” begins with a discussion of agape in the teachings of Jesus, Paul, and John. According to Manson, John stresses the love of God revealed in Christ and finds love grounded in the nature of God. Manson believes that John understands salvation as eternal life—a present reality. Salvation is accomplished, according to Manson, by God’s action in Christ. Manson believes the sacrifice of Christ to be a disclosure of God’s love, and he understands Johannine atonement essentially as revelation. “The foundation of all that John has to say about atonement is that it is a manifestation, the supreme manifestation of God’s love (John 3.16).”[159] Manson believes that for John the blood of Christ signifies the death of Christ; the shedding of blood does not represent a magical transaction, but the ethical action of love—Jesus sacrificing his life for others, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 53. In his work on NT theology Manson notes distinctions within the NT, but basically he finds that the theology of the NT is one—a theology Manson himself is happy to embrace.
On the whole, T. W. Manson’s NT research combines faith and criticism. His faith rests on his recognition of the revelation of God in Jesus; his criticism provides the ground and meaning of that revelation. As heir of the critical tradition Manson affirms the priority of Mark and the existence of Q; as a person of faith he hears the witness of Peter in Mark and the voice of Matthew in Q. As critic he minimizes M; as a person of faith he maximizes L. Behind these written sources Manson, as critic, recognizes an oral tradition shaped by interests of the post-resurrection church. As person of faith Manson contends that the oral tradition is reliable, that the shaping did no distorting, that the source and criterion of the tradition is Jesus. As critic Manson is committed to the quest of the historical Jesus; as a person of faith he finds a Jesus who transcends the limits of history. Jesus speaks in apocalyptic language, but he is not an apocalyptist. Jesus is messiah, but a reinterpreted messiah. In the end, Manson presents a Jesus of faith—a Jesus who constitutes the unity of the whole NT.
Charles Harold Dodd was born in Wrexham, North Wales.[160] In 1902 he entered University College, Oxford, where he became an honor student in classics and philosophy. In 1907 he studied in Berlin and was impressed by Adolf von Harnack.[161] From 1908 to 1911 he pursued theological studies at Mansfield College, Oxford. Dodd was ordained to the Congregational ministry in 1912. In 1915 he was appointed Yates Lecturer at Mansfield, succeeding James Moffatt.[162] In 1930 Dodd was named Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, and in 1935 Norris-Hulse Professor at Cambridge—the first non-Anglican to hold a chair in divinity at either Cambridge or Oxford. After retirement in 1949 Dodd served as director of the project to produce a new translation, resulting in the New English Bible of the NT in 1961 and the whole Bible in 1970. In 1950 Dodd was visiting lecturer at Union Theological Seminary in New York. After returning to England he moved to Oxford, where he spent the balance of his life. He was a founding member of SNTS and served as its president, 1951–52.
Like Zacchaeus, Dodd was self-conscious about his small stature. W. D. Davies (in a recording made in 1986) told me that when, as a student, he would visit in Dodd’s study, the furniture would be so arranged that he would sit in a low chair and Dodd would sit above him on a higher one. Dodd was notorious for his absentmindedness, once appearing for a lecture wearing one of his own shoes and one of his daughter’s. He lectured with vitality and eloquence and was famous for his sense of humor, which even crept into his publications. In the introduction to his Romans commentary he gives the reason for a “clumsily made cut” at 16:23 as the “illimitable stupidity of editors.”[163] From early in his career, Dodd’s name was the subject of many limericks, for example:
There once was a scholar called Dodd,
whose name was exceedingly odd.
He said, if you please,
Spell my name with three D’s
Though one is sufficient for God.
Dodd was devoted to ecumenicity, and served on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches.
Dodd’s theological perspective is characterized by three main features: natural theology, a theology of history, and Platonism. In regard to natural theology, Dodd notes parallels between NT ethics and Stoicism and observes that both assume a common understanding of the good, implying an idea of natural law.[164] About the parables, Dodd argues that Jesus draws lessons from nature that are self-evident, and in discussing Rom 1:19-21 he points out that Paul declares that Gentiles who have no special revelation can know the works of God in creation. In the Fourth Gospel, Dodd sees evidence of natural theology in the idea of creation through the Logos. “In Christ, therefore, man is confronted with that Word, Wisdom, or Law which is the law of his creation, the same which was partially disclosed to Israel in the Torah, and is known in some measure to all mankind, through conscience and reason, as the Law of Nature.”[165] Dodd’s distinctive “realized eschatology” assumes natural theology, the idea that God’s presence and accessibility can be maintained within the structures of the world.
Dodd holds a distinctive theology of history.[166] He declares that Christianity is a historical religion; it affirms the revelation of God in history. Although revelation is progressive—an idea expressed in his earlier works[167]—Dodd believes that it finds its ultimate expression and norm in an event within history. “It takes the series of events recorded or reflected in the Bible, from the call of Abraham to the emergence of the Church, and declares that in this series the ultimate reality of all history, which is the purpose of God, is finally revealed, because the series is itself controlled by the supreme event of all—the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”[168] Although Dodd views history as a process, he believes its beginning and end is beyond history.
History, therefore, as a process of redemption and revelation, has a beginning and an end, both in God. The beginning is not an event in time; the end is not an event in time. The beginning is God’s purpose, the end is the fulfilment of His purpose. Between these lies the sacred history which culminates in the death and resurrection of Christ.[169]
Dodd rejects the idea of history as progress toward a divine goal.
The Gospel does not speak of “progress,” but of dying and rising again. The pattern of history is revealed less in evolution than in crisis. Once in the course of the ages the spirit of man was confronted, within history, with the eternal God in His kingdom, power, and glory, and that in a final and absolute sense. There was a great encounter, a challenge and response, a death and resurrection; and divine judgment and life eternal came into human experience.[170]
This idea of challenge and response, which Dodd borrows from Arnold Toynbee, understands history as transformed by spiritual power—the transcendent kingdom that comes into history and gives history meaning.
As an undergraduate Dodd fell under the spell of Plato and never recovered. His notion about the transcendent kingdom assumes Plato’s idea of the eternal realm of reality. “In the history of civilizations,” writes Dodd, “the great encounter is not unique but extremely rare, but this rarity must be taken as what Plato might have called a ‘shadow’ or ‘image’ of the idea of uniqueness which is the ultimate reality in the case, as the virtue of a good man is only the shadow of the Idea of the Good.”[171] Dodd’s Platonism is evident in his two Ingersoll Lectures on Immortality (1935, 1950).[172] Dodd says: “That which is completely real is beyond time.”[173] For him, however, transcendental reality enters into history, so that historical events are not mere shadows of reality; they embody transcendent reality. Nevertheless, as W. D. Davies observes, Dodd’s realized eschatology “was the contribution of a Platonist.”[174]
Dodd’s inaugural lecture at Cambridge in 1936, The Present Task in New Testament Studies, surveys the scene and sets his agenda.[175] In regard to history of religion, Dodd recognizes the importance of historical backgrounds, but denies that parallels indicate derivation. As to form criticism, Dodd approves the method and affirms its focus on the development of tradition in relation to the history of the early Christian community. In a later essay he wrote: “The most important service, to my mind, which the form critics have rendered to our studies is their insistence upon the living situation in the history of the church.”[176] The inaugural lecture also called for concerted attention to the Fourth Gospel. “If the solution of the Synoptic Problem was the most spectacular success of the nineteenth-century critics, the Johannine Problem represents their most signal failure.”[177] Most important, Dodd hails the NT as “an organic unity,” and says: “It is the task of New Testament study to understand this phenomenon for what it is in itself, in its characteristic unity as well as in its diversity.”[178] In “Thirty Years of New Testament Study” (1950),[179] Dodd writes, “As the great tradition reveals itself afresh in its wholeness and essential unity, the yawning gap which earlier criticism left between the Jesus of History and the emergent Church disappears, and we begin to see that to make a separation between the historical and the theological understanding of the Gospels is to put asunder what God hath joined.”[180]
Prior to his inauguration at Cambridge, Dodd had presented his understanding of The Authority of the Bible.[181] In the preface to the first edition he observes that criticism has destroyed the doctrine of infallibility, but in the process it has undermined biblical authority. His purpose is to examine the question of authority inductively from the perspective of the Bible itself. Dodd draws an analogy from science: just as our knowledge of science depends on experts, so also does our knowledge of religion. “In this sense we find a religious authority in the Bible—the authority of experts in the knowledge of God, masters in the art of living; the authority of religious genius.”[182] Dodd explicates three classes of religious expertise in the Bible: the inspiration of individuals, the corporate religious experience, and the authority of the Incarnation. In regard to individuals, Dodd praises the prophets. They believed their message had come from God, according to Dodd, “because of its inherent truth and worthiness.”[183] The authority of corporate experience is seen in the OT, which witnesses to “a process which taken as a whole reveals God.”[184]
The ultimate expert in religion, in Dodd’s view, is Jesus, so that the supreme expression of biblical authority is the Incarnation. Our knowledge of Jesus rests on historical critical study of the Gospels, and for Dodd the Gospels rest on reliable tradition. In a later publication he rejects Karl Ludwig Schmidt’s theory that the order of the Gospel of Mark is arbitrary and unreliable.[185] “Thus,” concludes Dodd, “it seems likely that in addition to material in pericope form, Mark had an outline, itself also traditional, to which he attempted to work, with incomplete success.”[186] For Dodd it is not the words of Jesus but the person behind the words that constitutes his authority. Indeed, the truths Jesus and the Bible affirm are largely self-evident. Dodd says that “Jesus never told men anything about God but what they could see for themselves.”[187]
Much of Dodd’s early work focused on Paul. The Meaning of Paul for Today first appeared in 1920 and was reissued in paperback as late as 1957.[188] As sources for his investigation he accepts ten epistles (all except the Pastorals) as authentic. Basically, Dodd presents a liberal Paul: “the classic exponent of the idea of freedom and universality in religion.”[189] According to Dodd, Jewish apocalypticism had a decreasing influence on Paul’s thought. “As he grew older, the apocalyptic imagery of the earlier days tended to disappear at least from the foreground of his thought, and more and more his mind came to dwell upon the gradual growth and upbuilding of the Divine Commonwealth.”[190] For the Jews, the commonwealth was nationalistic; they, according to Dodd, had “an outlook upon the world which bears the appearance of national arrogance run to an almost insane extreme.”[191] By way of contrast, Dodd sees Paul’s view of the commonwealth as universal.
Turning to the main features of Paul’s gospel, Dodd investigates Paul’s understanding of sin as a corporate condition that cannot be corrected by human effort. However, what humans could not do, God, according to Dodd, accomplished by sending the Son. For Paul, Jesus was the Messiah, and for Dodd the origin of that identification is to be traced to Jesus himself. “It seems at least highly probable that He was the first to link the thought of the Messiah with that of the ideal ‘Servant of Jehovah’ in the prophecies of the ‘Second Isaiah’—the Servant who would suffer and die that others might know God.”[192] Dodd believes Paul’s doctrine of salvation is expressed in metaphors. For example, Paul used the metaphor of sacrifice. “So far, therefore, from the sacrifice of Christ being thought of as a means of soothing an angry Deity, it is represented as an act of God Himself to cope with the sin which was devastating human life.”[193] Humans, according to Dodd, appropriate God’s action in Christ by faith, an act of trust in God and acceptance of Christ as God’s gift. Dodd stresses the continuation of justification into sanctification: life in the Spirit in which the believer makes moral progress, imitating Christ. When believers receive the gift of the Spirit they become members of the body of Christ. The motivating force within that community, according to Dodd, is love—the love of God directed toward all humanity. “That vision of a world made one and free was the inspiration of the apostle’s life work.”[194]
After studying and teaching the epistle to the Romans for more than a dozen years, Dodd produced a commentary on “the first great work of Christian theology.”[195] In a short introduction he deals with critical issues, giving major attention to the question of integrity. After reviewing the evidence and refuting the argument that chapter 16 was originally a letter sent to Ephesus, Dodd concludes that the original epistle included chapters 1 through 16, and that the letter was later shortened and circulated in different editions. The occasion of the letter was Paul’s projected visit to the Roman Christians on the way to Spain. “He therefore sets before them a comprehensive and reasoned statement of the fundamentals of Christianity as he understood it, which is at the same time an apologia for the principles and methods of his Gentile mission.”[196] Dodd orders the material according to his understanding of the structure of the epistle. In format he follows the pattern of the Moffatt series: the text is presented in Moffatt’s translation, followed by running commentary, with specific terms and phrases indicated in bold type.
In Rom 3:21-26, for example, Dodd finds the “Statement of the Doctrine of Justification.” In interpreting this text he explicates the meaning of the major terms. For instance, “righteousness” employs courtroom language and presents an audacious idea: God acquits the guilty. “Ransom” is a term mainly used for freeing slaves and, according to Dodd, it can be used without reference to payment. The word hilastērion, which Moffatt translates “propitiation,” should, in Dodd’s opinion, be rendered “expiation.” “In accordance with the biblical usage, therefore, the substantive (hilastērion) would mean, not propitiation, but ‘a means by which guilt is annulled’: if a man is the agent, the meaning would be ‘a means of expiation’ if God, ‘a means by which sin is forgiven.’”[197] The reference to “blood” shows that Paul is using sacrificial language. According to Dodd these terms indicate that Paul is using three metaphors: the law court (justification), slavery (emancipation), sacrificial-ritual (blood), all representing what God has done in Christ in history. Dodd rejects the idea that God’s justice is being satisfied or that Christ changed the attitude of God toward humans. “No antithesis between justice and mercy was in Paul’s mind,” says Dodd. “The justification of the sinner—his deliverance from the guilt of sin—is the conclusive proof of the righteousness of God.”[198]
A special feature of Dodd’s Romans is his treatment of chapters 9–11. He believes these chapters represent a separate treatise Paul had composed earlier and inserted here. Dodd also believes these chapters express Paul’s universalism. “If we really believe in One God, and believe that Jesus Christ, in what He was and what He did, truly shows us what God’s character and His attitude to men are like, then it is very difficult to think ourselves out of the belief that somehow His love will find a way of bring all men into unity with Him.”[199] In general, Dodd’s work on Paul can be characterized as conservative in criticism (accepting ten epistles as authentic) and liberal in theology (seeing Paul as champion of freedom and universalism, foe of the orthodox doctrine of atonement).
Already in the 1930s Dodd began to formulate his realized eschatology and his understanding of the kerygma. The first full expression of realized eschatology appears in his The Parables of the Kingdom.[200] Originally presented in 1935 as lectures at Yale, the book was slightly revised in 1960. Dodd’s major concern is to counter Schweitzer’s apocalyptic interpretation.[201] He selects the parables because he believes they constitute the most characteristic and authentic elements of the teachings of Jesus. Dodd agrees with Adolf Jülicher that the parables are not allegories, and that they provide essentially one point of comparison.[202] “At its simplest the parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature and common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.”[203]
The theme of the parables, according to Dodd, is the kingdom of God—a theme that has its background in the Jewish idea of the reign of God. In contrast to the Jews, who expected the rule of God over the whole world in the future, Jesus, in Dodd’s opinion, preached a radical new idea: the kingdom has already come. Dodd says that “the ‘eschatological’ Kingdom of God is proclaimed as a present fact, which men must recognize, whether by their actions they accept or reject it.”[204] He supports this interpretation by arguing that the words ἤγγικεν (Mark 1:15; literally, “has come near”) and ἔφθασεν (Matt 12:28; literally, “has come”) represent an Aramaic term that means “arrival.” As to texts that seem to speak of a future coming, Dodd believes some of these have been added by the later church and others represent Jesus’ visionary forecasts of the supernatural (not the historical) order. In regard to Mark 9:1, which most scholars translate “there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power” (RSV), Dodd renders as in the NEB, “there are some of those standing here who will not taste death before they have seen the kingdom of God already come in power.” This text, according to Dodd, does not mean that in future some will see the kingdom coming, but that they will recognize in the future that the kingdom has already come.[205] “When He spoke of it in terms of the future, His words suggest, not any readjustment of condition on this earth, but glories of a world beyond this.”[206]
Among those sayings that seem to refer to the future, Dodd gives special attention to Jesus’ words about the day of the Son of Man. He thinks this refers to a supra-historical happening. However, he believes Jesus applied the title Son of Man to himself, thereby predicting his triumph over death. Jesus, in Dodd’s opinion, understood this triumph as his resurrection, but the later church misconstrued the triumph as twofold: the resurrection and the future coming of the Son of Man. According to Dodd, “[t]he absolute, the ’wholly other,’ has entered into time and space,” but “[t]he historical order however cannot contain the whole meaning of the absolute. . . . The Son of Man has come, but also He will come.”[207] However, according to Dodd the future coming will not be the apocalyptic event the church expected.
There is no coming of the Son of Man in history “after” His coming in Galilee and Jerusalem, whether soon or late, for there is no before and after in the eternal order. . . . “The Day of the Son of Man” stands for the timeless fact. So far as history can contain it, it is embodied in the historic crisis which the coming of Jesus brought about. But the spirit of man, though dwelling in history, belongs to the eternal order, and the full meaning of the Day of the Son of Man, or of the Kingdom of God, he can experience only in that eternal order.[208]
Dodd proceeds to support his view by interpretation of particular parables. For example, he believes that the parables of crisis, such as the Thief in the Night (Matt 24:43-44; Luke 12:39-40) and the Ten Virgins (Matt 25:1-12), originally had to do with crises related to the ministry of Jesus, but that they were later changed into parables that address the delay and second coming of Christ. In regard to the parables of growth—for example, the Seed Growing Secretly (Mark 4:26-29)—Dodd argues that they refer to the growth of the kingdom during the ministry of Jesus. He concludes that the parables present the eschatology of Jesus. “It is realized eschatology.”[209]
Without question, realized eschatology is a central, unifying feature of Dodd’s total theological-historical project. While many reviewers agree that he has correctly disclosed a present or realized element in Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom, most scholars accuse Dodd of heavyhanded exegesis—of depreciating the apocalyptic feature of Jesus’ teaching, of attributing future eschatology to the church, and of transforming futuristic eschatology into Platonism.[210]
According to Dodd, Jesus preached the kingdom; the early Christians proclaimed the kerygma—the pattern of events in which the kingdom was present. Dodd believes the kerygma to be the central message of the NT, which constitutes its unity and confirms the reliability of its tradition. This view was articulated in lectures given at Kings College, London, in 1935, and published as The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments.[211] He begins by examining the preaching of the early Christians. “The word here translated ‘preaching,’ kerygma, signifies not the action of the preacher, but that which he preaches, his ‘message.’”[212] Dodd finds the locus classicus for this idea in 1 Cor 15:3-4. “The Pauline kerygma, therefore, is a proclamation of the facts of the death and resurrection of Christ in an eschatological setting which gives significance to the facts.”[213] Paul says that he received the message from tradition—confirming Dodd’s conviction that the kerygma had been formulated and widely proclaimed before Paul. Dodd outlines the content of the kerygma:
Dodd finds this pattern confirmed by the speeches in Acts.
Dodd turns to the development of the kerygma in the NT. In the Gospels he detects a tendency to relapse into apocalyptic thought, but he believes an authentic line can be traced from Paul to Mark. “Thus the authentic line of development, as the expectation of an immediate advent faded, led to a concentration of attention upon the historical facts of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus, exhibited in an eschatological setting which made clear their absolute and final quality as saving facts.”[215] Dodd thinks Mark understood himself to be writing a form of the kerygma, expanding the historical details and writing commentary. Matthew and Luke tend to divert attention from kerygma and didache (teaching), but they, too, according to Dodd, present an interpretation of the facts.
This, no doubt, means that we cannot expect to find in the Gospels . . . bare matter of fact, unaffected by the interpretation borne by the facts in the kerygma. But it also means that wherever the Gospels keep close to the matter and form of the kerygma, there we are in touch with a tradition coeval with the Church itself.[216]
Dodd believes the eschatological significance of the facts is explicated by Paul and John: “It is in the epistles of Paul, therefore, that full justice is done for the first time to the principle of ‘realized eschatology’ which is vital to the whole kerygma. That supernatural order of life which the apocalyptists had predicted in terms of pure fantasy is now described as an actual fact of experience.”[217] John advances beyond Paul:
Now for John the whole life of Jesus is in the fullest sense a revelation of His glory. . . . John therefore draws together two separate strains in the development of Christian thought: that which started from an eschatological valuation of the facts of present experience, and that which started from a similar valuation of the facts of past history. Accordingly, he has given to his work the form of a “Gospel,” that is to say, of a restatement of the kerygma in historical terms.[218]
Although there are various expressions and interpretations, the kerygma comprises the unifying message of the NT. “With all the diversity of the New Testament writings, they form a unity in their proclamation of the one Gospel.”[219]
Since the first element in the kerygma announces the fulfillment of prophecy, Dodd finds its background in the OT. In his book According to the Scriptures[220] he refers to the kerygma as “the ground-plan of New Testament theology.”[221] In building on this ground plan the writers of the NT supported their ideas by use of the OT, so that material from the Hebrew Scriptures provided what Dodd’s subtitle calls The Sub-Structure of New Testament Theology. This observation leads Dodd to investigate the hypothesis of “testimonies”—the theory that the early Christians used collections of OT material in support of their message. In contrast to Rendel Harris, who defended the existence of an early written document, Dodd argues that the testimonies were circulated orally.[222] He develops his thesis by investigating the use of fifteen OT texts, largely from Psalms and Isaiah, that indicate “that New Testament writers were working upon a tradition in which certain passages of the Old Testament were treated as ‘testimonies’ to the Gospel facts, or in other words as disclosing that ‘determinate counsel of God’ which was fulfilled in those facts.”[223] Pursuing his thesis further, Dodd argues that the early Christians understood the texts of the testimonies in their larger context and interpreted them according to a hermeneutic that became fixed in the early tradition. These texts were interpreted, according to Dodd, in support of the main elements of the kerygma and for the development of NT theology. For example, texts about the Son of Man and the Servant of the Lord were incorporated into primitive Christology. For Dodd all the pieces of the puzzle—biblical testimonies, reliable traditions, factual kerygma, NT theology— fit together into a harmonious picture.
Fundamental to Dodd’s understanding of the kerygma is his distinction between preaching (kerygma) and teaching (didache)—a distinction explicated in his book Gospel and Law.[224] Always alert to the appearance of patterns, Dodd finds evidence for the distinction in the NT. He notes, for instance, that the epistles usually begin with theology and later turn to ethics. This leads Dodd to the conclusion that ethics is response to proclamation. Thus features of early Christian ethics correspond to elements of the kerygma. For example, the proclamation that the kingdom has come brings a new ethical situation; the proclamation of Christ calls for imitation of his self-giving; the kerygma as expression of God’s love demands that love become the motivating force in Christian life. In sum, “[w]e recall that the earliest form in which Christianity was presented to the world, so far as we can discover, was two-fold: it consisted of the proclamation (kērygma), which declared what God has done for men, and the teaching (didachē), which declared what God expects man to do.”[225] With this book Dodd is anxious to correct what he considers an excessive emphasis in Reformed theology on grace to the neglect of law—the law of Christ, the ethical response to grace.
In overview, it is clear that Dodd’s view of the kerygma is fundamental to his affirmation of the unity of the Bible, realized eschatology, and the factual basis of faith. Actually, “kerygma” has become with Dodd a loaded term; the word for gospel (εύαγγέλιον) is used more often in the NT (seventy-six times) than κήρυγμα (nine times), and, contrary to Dodd, the word κήρυγμα a can signify the action of proclaiming as well as the content of the proclamation. Dodd tends to overemphasize the factual character of the proclamation, in spite of his insistence that the facts have their significance in an eschatological setting.[226] Moreover, critics have pointed out that Dodd’s distinction between kērygma and didachē is too sharply drawn, and Dodd’s theory concerning the testimonies has been subject to harsh criticism.[227] Of course, no one doubts that the early Christians supported their message with material from the OT, and virtually everybody welcomes Dodd’s stress on NT ethics.
As the document that adopts realized eschatology and interprets the facts of the kerygma theologically, the Fourth Gospel is Dodd’s favorite book. However, prior to his major works of the Fourth Gospel he also published a commentary on the Johannine epistles.[228] The distinctive feature of this commentary is Dodd’s argument that 1, 2, and 3 John were not written by the author of the Fourth Gospel. He detects differences of vocabulary and style, but primarily he discerns differences in thought. “Eschatology, the Atonement, the Holy Spirit: these are certainly no minor themes in Christian theology. In all three the First Epistle of John represents an outlook widely different from that of the Fourth Gospel.”[229]
Dodd believes the three epistles were written by the same author, a disciple of the writer of the Fourth Gospel, possibly John the Elder, writing between 96 and 110. In his exegesis of the exordium of 1 John he contends that the author’s use of “we” does not imply that he was himself an eyewitness of “what was from the beginning.” “He speaks not exclusively for himself or for a restricted group, but for the whole Church to which the apostolic witness belongs by virtue of its koinonia, over against the world which being outside the koinonia has no knowledge of the incarnate Son, and therefore no knowledge of the Real God.”[230]
Dodd’s major work, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, appeared in 1953, a weighty volume of 453 pages plus indices.[231] It is arranged in three parts: historical background, leading ideas, and argument and structure. As to the historical background, Dodd believes the setting within early Christianity is most important. He thinks the author knew the early kerygma and assumed realized eschatology.[232] According to Dodd the author directed his Gospel primarily to non-Christians. The world in which these readers live is permeated with Hellenistic syncretism.[233] To illuminate this syncretism Dodd turns first to the Hermetic literature, noting parallels to the Fourth Gospel. He says, surprisingly, that “it is surely clear at least that the Son of Man in the Fourth Gospel has more affinity with the Ἄνθρωπος of Poimandres than with the Son of Man of Jewish Apocalyptic.”[234] Turning to Hellenistic Judaism, Dodd investigates Philo and notes the common idea of the Logos as medium of creation. Philo, however, could never have imagined the incarnation of the Logos. “This means that the Logos, which in Philo is never personal, except in a fluctuating series of metaphors, is in the gospel fully personal, standing in personal relations both with God and with men, and having a place in history.”[235] In discussing rabbinic Judaism, Dodd notes the trend in scholarship away from Hellenistic toward Jewish backgrounds, one he heartily commends. Dodd acknowledges parallels between the Fourth Gospel and pre-Christian Gnosticism but emphasizes the distinctions. As to the Mandaean sources, Dodd believes they represent a much later form of gnostic thought and “have no value for the study of the Fourth Gospel.”[236] He concludes: “Rabbinic Judaism, Philo and the Hermetica remain our most direct sources for the background of thought, and in each case the distinctive character of Johannine Christianity is brought out by observing the transformation it wrought in ideas which it holds in common with other forms of religion.”[237]
The second part of this book deals with the leading ideas of the Fourth Gospel. By way of introduction Dodd observes that the author expresses his ideas in symbols or signs. Dodd, remembering Plato, says that a sign in the Fourth Gospel “refers, in the first instance, to timeless realities signified by the act in time.”[238] Among the leading ideas Dodd includes “eternal life” (a quality of life that is already present), “knowledge of God” (a personal revelation in Christ), and “truth.” About the latter he writes:
To conclude: the use of ἀλήθεια in this gospel rests upon common Hellenistic usage in which it hovers between the meaning of ‘reality,’ or ‘the ultimately real,’ and ‘knowledge of the real. . . . To ‘know the truth’ they must not only hear His words: they must in some sort be united with Him who is the truth. Thus even when the concept of knowledge of God is most fully intellectualized, it remains true that it involves a personal union with Christ, which goes beyond mere intellectual apprehension.[239]
The idea of “faith” is closely related to truth and knowledge. “Thus πίστις is that form of knowledge, or vision, appropriate to those who find God in an historic Person of the past, a Person who nevertheless, through it, remains the object of saving knowledge, the truth and the life.”[240]
Most important are the ideas of the Fourth Gospel that present the author’s understanding of Jesus. For this author the term “messiah” emphasizes Jesus as king. The author takes up the title “Son of Man” from the Christian tradition but gives it meaning in light of the archetypal man of Hellenistic thought, combining it with the idea of the Servant as representative of the people.
Thus the term ”Son of Man” throughout this gospel retains the sense of one who incorporates in Himself the people of God, or humanity in its ideal aspect . . . . In the Fourth Gospel . . . there is never any doubt that the evangelist is speaking of a real person, that is, of a concrete historical individual of the human race, ”Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph” (i.45).[241]
The term “Son of God” expresses the unique relation of Jesus to God. “The relation of Father and Son is an eternal relation, not attained in time, nor ceasing with this life, or with the history of this world. The human career of Jesus is, as it were, a projection of this eternal relation (which is the divine ἀγάπη) upon the field of time.”[242]
Dodd presents a very sophisticated analysis of the linguistic details and historical background of the idea of the Logos, where an ambiguity in regard to Jewish and Hellenistic sources is evident.
The ambiguity which (from our point of view) enters into the Johannine conception of the Logos could be understood if we assumed that the author started from the Jewish idea of the Torah as being at once the Word of God and the divine Wisdom manifested in creation, and found, under the guidance of Hellenistic Jewish thought similar to that of Philo, an appropriate Greek expression which fittingly combined both ideas.[243]
The author of the Fourth Gospel, however, does not begin with cosmic speculation and fit Jesus in; he begins with faith in Jesus and describes him in Jewish and Hellenistic terms. “We start with faith in Jesus, which involves the recognition that the meaning which we find in Him is the meaning of the whole universe—that, in fact, that which is incarnate in Him is the Logos.”[244]
In the third and last part of The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, Dodd examines the argument and structure. Most important, he dismisses all hypotheses of displacement and accepts the extant order as original. Dodd believes that the body of the Gospel is ordered into two main sections: the Book of Signs (2:1—12:50), and the Book of the Passion (13:1—20:31). The Book of Signs, according to Dodd, is divided into seven episodes. For example, the sixth episode, “Victory of Life over Death” (11:1-53) recounts the raising of Lazarus, which affirms the belief that eternal life is already present. Dodd believes that these episodes present a continuous argument with interrelated cross references, so that any attempt to rearrange the material would disturb the essential unity of the composition. The Book of the Passion, according to Dodd, is divided into two main parts: the farewell discourses and the passion narrative proper. In analyzing the passion narrative he notes differences from the Synoptics and contends that the Fourth Gospel rests on independent tradition. The author, Dodd believes, used historical tradition to present his theology.
Here is something that happened in time, with eternal consequence. . . . It is an ”epoch-making” event; in history things can never be the same again. But more: in it the two orders of reality, the temporal and the eternal, are united; the Word is made flesh. It is an event in both worlds; or rather, in that one world, of spirit and of flesh, which is the true environment of man. . . . Thus the cross is a sign, but a sign which is also the thing signified. The preliminary signs set forth so amply in the gospel are not only temporal signs of an eternal reality; they are also signs of this Event, in its twofold character as word and as flesh. They are true—spiritually, eternally true—only upon the condition that this Event is true, both temporally (or historically) and spiritually or eternally.[245]
In sum, this is a monumental achievement enlisting philological, historical, and exegetical work with theological sensitivity—all in the service of a comprehensive understanding of the Fourth Gospel and its message.[246]
Written a decade later, Dodd’s Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel is a sequel to the earlier book.[247] Another sizable tome (432 pages), this volume expands Dodd’s perception of the historical tradition behind the Gospel of John. For Dodd the crucial question is: “Can we in any measure recover and describe a strain of tradition lying behind the Fourth Gospel, distinctive of it, and independent of other strains of tradition known to us?”[248] Compared to this question, Dodd considers the usual critical issues like authorship to be secondary. About the author he says: “It is not impossible to imagine that a Galilaean fisherman may have grown into the accomplished theologian whom we meet in the Fourth Gospel, but I find it difficult.”[249] Dodd begins his quest for the tradition with an analysis of the narrative material, starting with the passion narrative. He carefully compares details of the narrative with the accounts in the Synoptics, discovering considerable agreement. Dodd argues that this agreement cannot be explained by literary dependence since sometimes John agrees with one and sometimes with another of the Synoptics, requiring a complex use of sources that would have been unfeasible. Dodd also analyzes material that is peculiar to the Fourth Gospel. Much of this material, he thinks, serves no theological tendency, so that it would not have been invented by the author.
To sum up: the evidence of the few passages which suggest prima facie literary dependence of the Fourth Gospel upon the others in the Passion narrative is not sufficient to prove such dependence. On the contrary there is cumulative evidence that the Johannine version represents (subject to some measure of ”writing up” by the evangelist) an independent strain of the common oral tradition, differing from the strains of tradition underlying Mark (Matthew) and Luke, though controlled by the same general schema. Its apparent contacts with Jewish tradition, and the appreciation it shows of the situation before the great rebellion of A.D. 66, make it probable that this tradition was formulated, substantially, before that date, and in Palestine.[250]
Following the same procedures, Dodd examines the narrative material concerning the ministry of Jesus and reaches the same conclusion.
Turning to the sayings of Jesus, Dodd acknowledges that the dialogues and discourses of the Fourth Gospel are literary compositions, but he believes they incorporate earlier tradition. “In view of all this, there would seem to be a strong presumption that even where John is to all appearance composing most freely, there is, sometimes at least, an older tradition behind him.”[251] Where sayings of Jesus in John have parallels in the Synoptics, Dodd argues for common tradition rather than literary dependence. Although the Fourth Gospel is sometimes supposed to contain no parables, Dodd points out that parables may be short parabolic expressions like the saying about a grain of wheat (John 12:24).
Jesus’ predictions about the future are of major concern to Dodd. He finds two distinct traditions in the Synoptics: sayings about the resurrection and sayings about the parousia. According to Dodd the Fourth Gospel emphasizes neither, but instead speaks of departure and return. “The starting point would appear to be some oracular utterance of Jesus conveying, perhaps in figurative terms, the assurance that his death meant a separation which was only temporary and would be succeeded by restored relations with his followers, to their abiding satisfaction.”[252] This original expression, Dodd believes, was later misconstrued to refer to the resurrection or to the parousia.
In a word, I suggest that John is here reaching back to a very early form of tradition indeed, and making it the point of departure for his profound theological reinterpretation; and further, that the oracular sayings which he reports have good claim to represent authentically, in substance if not verbally, what Jesus actually said to his disciples—a better claim than the more elaborate and detailed predictions which the Synoptics offer.[253]
Dodd concludes: “The above argument has led to the conclusion that behind the Fourth Gospel lies an ancient tradition independent of the gospels, and meriting serious consideration as a contribution to our knowledge of the historical facts concerning Jesus Christ.”[254]
Without question, Dodd’s two volumes have made an enormous contribution to Johannine research.[255] To be sure, he found in the Fourth Gospel support for his own historical-theological views: realized eschatology as original with Jesus, the kerygma as historical facts expressing eternal truths, the tradition about Jesus as reliable. No doubt these discoveries had been prepared by Dodd’s presuppositions. No doubt, The Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel is an apologetic work. As Dodd acknowledges, the meticulous argument is cumulative, like adding feathers one by one until finally the scale is tipped. Some scholars have welcomed Dodd’s identification of John’s independent tradition and his affirmation of the historical reliability of the Fourth Gospel.[256] Others have criticized his method[257] or charged that he has overstated his case, for instance, that the tradition is early and Palestinian, or that John’s eschatology is closer to Jesus than the Synoptics.[258] For some Dodd dismisses the problem of arrangement and literary sources too quickly, and the question of the relation to the Synoptics remains a matter of ongoing debate.[259] Nevertheless, Dodd gave a virtuoso performance, worthy of the accolades he has received.
Dodd’s use of the tradition in the quest of the historical Jesus is evident in one of his last publications, The Founder of Christianity.[260] This book expands, on the basis of intervening research, his 1939 article on “The Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ.”[261] Although he acknowledges that a biography of Jesus cannot be written, Dodd believes the main outline of the career of Jesus can be reconstructed. The Gospels are the primary sources for this reconstruction. Dodd believes Mark was the earliest gospel, used by Matthew and Luke, but John is also important because, as Dodd had argued in his earlier work, it rests on early, reliable tradition. Dodd begins with an investigation of the personal traits of Jesus. According to him, Jesus was a creative person whose teachings were vivid, drawn from real life. Dodd admits that Jesus used apocalyptic imagery but he claims that this was not essential to his teaching. His distinctive message, in Dodd’s opinion, was that the long-awaited kingdom of God had actually come. In relation to that message Dodd believes Jesus had to recognize himself to be the “messiah”—a title he avoided. Instead, says Dodd, Jesus understood his mission in terms of the Servant of second Isaiah and adopted the title “Son of Man” in order to present his relation to the consummation of the kingdom beyond history. “In view of this, it follows that the total event of the earthly career of Jesus, as well as his action in details, is regarded in two aspects: on the one side it had effects in an actual historical situation; on the other side it had a significance reaching out into man’s eternal destiny, and to be expressed only in symbol.”[262]
Dodd proceeds to recount the story of the ministry of Jesus. It begins with Jesus’ baptism. “For him, and not only for those who wrote about him, it was the act of God by which he was ‘anointed’ for his mission.”[263] After an early ministry in Judea (attested by the tradition of the Fourth Gospel), Jesus carried on his mission to Galilee—a mission of preaching, healing, and disregarding the ritual rules of Judaism. According to Dodd the feeding of the multitude was decisive. He believes that Jesus understood the event to symbolize the messianic banquet of the kingdom, but the crowd, misunderstanding his role, wanted to make him king (John 6:15). This misunderstanding provoked Jesus to withdraw from Galilee, to travel in foreign areas, and to concentrate on teaching the disciples. Because of his intent to establish the new people of God, Jesus, according to Dodd, took his mission to the capital, to Jerusalem. Dodd believes Jesus made two trips to the Holy City toward the end of his career: a journey at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles and another at the time of the following Passover. Jesus was arrested, Dodd believes, because of his cleansing of the temple and his attack on the religious authorities. Before the Sanhedrin he was accused of blasphemy, before Pilate with insurrection—the claim to be king (most clearly presented in the Johannine tradition). After his execution Jesus appeared to his disciples but, in Dodd’s opinion, the appearances cannot be fit into a continuous, consistent narrative. Besides, he says, the consequence of the resurrection—the changed lives of the believers—is more important than the “facts.” Nevertheless, Dodd concludes, “We are dealing with a truly ‘historic’ event.”[264]
Looking back over the work of Dodd makes it clear that he is one of the greatest NT scholars of the first half of the twentieth century. He mastered the skills and appropriated the methods. He was sensitive to the theological meaning and relevance of the NT. To be sure, his major ideas and the details of his argument have provoked insightful criticism. Yet the greatness of Dodd is not in the particulars but in his comprehensive synthesis. Combining natural theology with a theological understanding of history, he affirmed an eschatology that was realized in history and expressed in the kerygma—the central message of the NT. This comprehensive synthesis could include all in its perception: the tradition, the sources, the life of Jesus, the theology of Paul, the vision of John—one majestic stained glass window through which the light of God illuminated the ongoing life of humans.
The research reviewed in this chapter reaches a high point—a zenith, as the title suggests. Here the methods developed in the nineteenth century were refined and enlarged. The scholarship summarized is Anglo-American, displaying an increasing maturity and independence from the German domination of the earlier era. Indeed, through much of the period relations between Germany and Britain/America were less than cordial. In NT studies the Anglo-Americans accepted form criticism with some qualifications but viewed the lessons of the history of religion school with suspicion. In the main the Germans were seen as skeptical and extreme; what was needed was calm, moderating balance.
Thus the Anglo-Americans accepted the priority of 2DH, proud of their Oxford ancestors and the legacy of Streeter.[265] The gospel accounts were generally reliable, not tendentious à la Wrede.[266] Although the sources did not provide material adequate for a biography, they offered orderly accounts of the main contours of Jesus’ career. The resulting Jesus was similar to the liberal Jesus of the nineteenth century, a winsome teacher with universally valid ethical teachings. He was conscious of his messiahship and understood his vocation as Son of Man, assuming the role of the Suffering Servant. His message of the kingdom was primarily ethical, with stress on the present. Eschatological motifs, an element of the atmosphere of the times, were present, but not radical apocalyptic (à la Schweitzer).[267] Paul was of secondary importance—a “liberal Paul,” possibly a universalist.
Little did the scholars at Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard expect that virtually everything they accepted as established would come under attack in the rest of the century—the priority of Mark, the existence of Q, the historical Jesus, the Son of Man–Suffering Servant Messiah, the liberal Paul. Most of all, they did not anticipate the frontal attack that would aim to blow them out of the water: the militant message of the new biblical theology.
5-4. Vincent Taylor, The Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1920). ↵
5-12. Behind the Third Gospel, 246, 274. ↵
5-14. Vincent Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition (London: Macmillan, 1957). ↵
5-17. Formation of the Gospel Tradition, 41. ↵
5-18. Ibid., 63. This is the form Dibelius calls the “paradigm” and Bultmann the “apophthegm ↵
5-36. Forgiveness and Reconciliation, 62. ↵
5-38. Vincent Taylor, The Names of Jesus (London: Macmillan, 1953). ↵
5-39. Vincent Taylor, The Life and Ministry of Jesus (New York: Abingdon, 1955). ↵
5-42. Vincent Taylor, The Person of Christ in New Testament Teaching (London: Macmillan, 1958). ↵
5-48. Quoted by Bacon, Let This Life Speak, 171. ↵
5-49. See Henry J. Cadbury, “The Basis of Early Christian Antimilitarism,” JBL 37 (1918): 66–94. ↵
5-51. Quoted in Bacon, Let This Life Speak, 26. ↵
5-55. Quoted in Jones, “Henry Joel Cadbury,” 52. ↵
5-58. Style and Literary Method, 50–51. ↵
5-59. Henry J. Cadbury, “The Medical Language of Hippocrates,” HTR 14 (1921): 106. ↵
5-60. Henry J. Cadbury, “Luke and the Horse-Doctors,” JBL 52 (1933): 55–65. ↵
5-62. Henry J. Cadbury, “Between Jesus and the Gospels,” HTR 16 (1923): 81–92. ↵
5-64. “Between Jesus and the Gospels,” 87. ↵
5-69. Beginnings of Christianity, 4: vii. ↵
5-76. Amos N. Wilder, “In Memoriam,” 316. ↵
5-78. The Making of Luke-Acts, v. ↵
5-84. Henry J. Cadbury, The Book of Acts in History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955). ↵
5-88. The Peril of Modernizing Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 191. ↵
5-94. Jesus: What Manner of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1947), v. ↵
5-104. Henry J. Cadbury, “New Testament Study in the Next Generation,” JR 21 (1941): 412–20. ↵
5-106. Henry J. Cadbury, “Some Foibles of New Testament Scholarship,” JBR 26 (1958): 213–16. ↵
5-108. Quoted by Amos N. Wilder, “New Testament Studies, 1920–50” (see n. 1 above), 444. ↵
5-117. The Teaching of Jesus, 65. ↵
5-119. See T. W. Manson, “The Old Testament in the Teaching of Jesus,” BJRL 34 (1952): 312–32. ↵
5-120. The Teaching of Jesus, 98. ↵
5-123. The Teaching of Jesus, 227–28. ↵
5-124. Studies in the Gospels and Epistles, 9–10. ↵
5-125. The Teaching of Jesus, 259. ↵
5-128. Mission and Message, 301. ↵
5-134. Studies in the Gospels and Epistles, 3–12. ↵
5-135. Ibid., 8. See HNTR 2: 231–35. ↵
5-136. Studies in the Gospels and Epistles, 11. ↵
5-137. T. W. Manson, The Servant-Messiah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). ↵
5-139. The Servant-Messiah, 35. ↵
5-143. The Servant-Messiah, 88. ↵
5-146. In Companion to the Bible, 97–129. ↵
5-150. T. W. Manson, The Beginning of the Gospel (London: Oxford University Press, 1950). ↵
5-151. See pp. 150–52, 332–40 below. ↵
5-153. Ethics and the Gospel, 103. ↵
5-154. T. W. Manson, The Church’s Ministry (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1948), 20–21. ↵
5-155. See T. W. Manson, Ministry and Priesthood: Christ’s and Ours (London: Epworth, 1958). ↵
5-165. “Natural Law in the NT,” 142. ↵
5-168. History and the Gospel, 22. ↵
5-170. “Eschatology and History,” 95. ↵
5-176. “Thirty Years of New Testament Study,” ReL 47 (1978): 320–29, at 322. ↵
5-187. The Authority of the Bible, 291. ↵
5-188. C. H. Dodd, The Meaning of Paul for Today (New York: Meridian, 1957). ↵
5-192. The Meaning of Paul, 86. ↵
5-195. The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (see n. 163 above)), xiii. ↵
5-200. C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (New York: Scribner’s, 1936; rev. ed. 1961). ↵
5-203. The Parables of the Kingdom, 5. ↵
5-206. The Parables of the Kingdom, 54–55. ↵
5-221. According to the Scriptures, 12. ↵
5-223. According to the Scriptures, 57. ↵
5-228. C. H. Dodd, The Johannine Epistles, MNTC (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1946). ↵
5-234. Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 44. ↵