READING THE GOSPELS TODAY, MCMASTER NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES

Written by Stanley E. Porter, (ed.) Reviewed By Kenneth A. Fox

The eight essays in this collection were presented at the 2002 H. H. Bingham Colloquium in New Testament at McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Canada.

Craig A. Evans (‘Sorting Out the Synoptic Problem: Why an Old Approach is Still Best’) introduces the Synoptic Problem and shows how reading the Gospels horizontally with a synopsis aids the task of interpretation. Evans favours Proto-Luke and defends redaction criticism as a method.

Stanley E. Porter (‘Reading the Gospels and the Quest for the Historical Jesus’) shows how discrepancies in the Gospels themselves give rise to the quest for the historical Jesus. He reviews the three quests for the historical Jesus and argues that this schema is wrong. Porter examines areas where he sees potential productivity in the ongoing quest: the genre of the Gospels as ancient biographies, the probability that Jesus spoke Greek, and the criteria of authenticity.

Michael Knowles (‘Reading Matthew: The Gospel as Oral Performance’) proposes that three kinds of readings take place in relation to Matthew’s Gospel. First, Matthew reads Israel’s Scriptures and proclaims the results in his Gospel. Secondly, we ourselves read the Gospel, being guided by various literary and symmetrical structures in the text. Thirdly, the Gospel ‘reads’ us, bidding its readers to participate ‘in a particular kind of reading and understanding that potentially characterises us as disciples of Jesus’.

Yong-Eui Yang (‘Reading Mark 11:12–25 from a Korean Perspective’) studies the stories of the fig tree and temple action. He surveys scholarly opinion whether to view the story of the fig tree as legend, historicised parable, early Christian creation, or historical event. More fruitful is the examination of the OT background and the literary effect of Mark’s sandwiching technique. Read together, the cursing and the temple action prefigure the eschatological doom of the corrupt temple.

Allan Martens (‘Salvation Today: Reading Luke’s Message for a Gentile Audience’) outlines Luke’s overall message of salvation, which he hopes will be useful as a general framework for understanding the Gospel. He shows how a number of themes, salvation and redemption, the theological significance of Christ’s death, and God’s plan of salvation for Jews and Gentiles, reinforce Luke’s essential message.

Andrew T. Lincoln (‘Reading John: The Fourth Gospel under Modern and Postmodern Interrogation’) begins by discussing the Gospel of John’s presentation of truth and attacks on it from modern and postmodern perspectives. Lincoln then addresses the truth claims of the Gospel in relation to its genre as ancient biography, eyewitness testimony, its alleged anti-Judaism, and its understanding of power as exercised in weakness and suffering.

Lee Martin McDonald (‘The Gospels in Early Christianity: Their Origin, Use, and Authority’) focuses on how the gospel tradition was perceived in the first and second centuries. He concludes that the four canonical Gospels were on their way to becoming sacred Scripture but had not yet achieved that status. Other gospels shared the same authority, as they too were seen as reliable reports of Jesus’ words and deeds.

In the last contribution Al Wolters (‘Reading the Gospels Canonically: A Methodological Dialogue with Brevard Childs’) examines how B. S. Childs applies his canonical approach to the Parable of the Wicked Tenants in Matthew 21:33–46.

This volume, Stanley Porter says, concerns ‘how to interpret these Gospels in relation to each other and in terms of the world in which we live’. In attempting to bridge the chasm between reading the Gospels in the academy and ‘in our contemporary situation’ the book provides a good introduction to the scholarly study of each Gospel. The volume would have been strengthened had more of the articles been written around shared subject matter. For example, it would have been pleasing to this reviewer to see chapters focusing on each Gospel’s overall theme, along the lines of Allan Martens’ contribution.


Kenneth A. Fox

Canadian Theological Seminary, Calgary