The peculiar difficulties, which beset the philologist and the textual critic in
handling the language and text of the New Testament, are occasioned by an acute historical problem.
It is necessary, before
proceeding further, to state the problem as it is presented in the subject matter of the New Testament itself: that is, to state
the problem with which the critical historian is faced before ever he applies technical critical methods to its solution.
In the First Epistle General of Peter the elect are exhorted to endure suffering for conscience' sake, on the
grounds that it is acceptable to God.
For:
'Hereunto were ye called:
because Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you an example,
that ye should follow his steps:
who did no sin,
neither was guile found in his mouth:
who, when he was reviled, reviled not again;
when he suffered, threatened not:
but committed his cause to him that judgeth righteously:
who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree,
that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness;
by whose bruise ye were healed.
For ye were going astray like sheep;
but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.'
(I Pet.ii.21-25.)
This appeal to the passion of Jesus Christ is the culmination of an argument and is not lightly chosen, for
the writer returns to it again and again.
Nor is the close association of the death of Jesus with human salvation peculiar to this
epistle (cf. e.g., iii.18 ff., & chs.i & iv.).
It is emphasized in the writings of St.
Paul, in the speeches in the Acts, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the book of the Revelation, and in the Gospel and Epistles of
John (e.g. I Cor.xv.1‑5; Acts ii.22‑42; xx.28.).
In fact, so usual is it, and
therefore so familiar to the reader of the New Testament (Heb..1‑4; Rev.i.4‑7; vi.51;
xix.30; I Jn.i.7; ii.1, 2.), that its strangeness is easily missed.
But it is strange indeed.
Why should the sufferings of a man some years before be the example of behaviour to which men who never knew him are uniquely
called?
Why should his death upon a tree be considered a bearing of their sins?
Why should this bearing of sins enable the same men to die unto sins and to live unto righteousness, so that his bruise heals
them?
And why can it be affirmed that this example and this bearing of sins are responsible for the entirely new life that they are
living?
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It is an appeal to history, to certain events which are said to have taken
place, not in the distant but in the immediate past, and which may well have taken place, since they are not, from one point of
view, outside the common experience of mankind.
But when allusion is made to these events or when they are definitely recounted,
they are given a significance that lies wholly beyond ordinary human experience.
Someone suffered and was reviled, was hung on a
tree, and died.
So much explains itself.
Such things have happened a thousand times.
He was, moreover, completely patient and meek
throughout his ordeal, and commended his cause to God.
That too, though less usual, can be understood.
Because such occurrences
are self‑explanatory; because they are understandable; if they were to happen again they would be described in much the same
way.
But if they were to happen again: if a sinless man were to suffer and die nailed to a tree, it would be by no means obvious
that, in so doing, he was bearing the sins of other men in his body, and that the manner of his death was, not only an example for
their own bearing of suffering, but an efficacious assurance that they, being dead unto sins, might live unto righteousness.
And yet, all this is stated as if it were self‑evident from the event. Christ did all these things in
his passion, and, far from proving them, the author simply appeals to the doing of them as the culminating proof of his argument.
How is he led to make such a statement?
And what validity can such a statement have for his modern readers?
Suffering, reviling, being patient, dying, are descriptions of various human experiences.
But they are
tolerable descriptions of such experiences only when these are isolated and examined by themselves.
When such experiences play a
significant part in a whole context of events, they are better and more definitely expressed in terms of that context. 'X scored a
goal' is a description of an event isolated from its context.
'X won the Cup for the Corinthians' might equally describe the same
event, and more adequately, since it places it in its proper context.
Actually, indeed, X kicked a leather ball between two posts,
and the reader never doubts that he did so.
But, because it was the critical moment in a critical match in a Cup Tie, his action
is truly, and indeed, more truly, described as 'winning the. Cup'.
The historian writes history best when he examines the whole
context of events, and describes them according to their proper significance.
And so this Petrine description of the death of
Jesus will be better history than a bare record of the same event, if it is rightly founded on knowledge of a larger context of
events that showed him to be a unique person, and his actions to have a unique significance for other men and women.
This larger context is therefore a primary object of critical investigation.
The events described in the New
Testament must be examined, and their true significance discovered.
But it may not be possible to reconstruct the whole context of
these events in detail.
A large part of the New Testament is not simple narration of facts, but expression of judgements upon
facts.
Judgements, however, are themselves highly important material.
Most football enthusiasts today learn about their sport from
written reports, which consist largely of judgements.
A good report is one that fastens upon the significant points of the play,
and indicates them so as to give a true impression of a match.
A bad report, on the other hand, is one that either misses the
significant points, or misinterprets them so as to give a false impression.
The critical demands made upon a journalist are made
also upon all investigators and explorers: 'In every great discoverer there is a dual passion‑the passion to see and the
passion to report; and in the greatest this duality is fused into one ‑ a passion to see and to report truly' (The
Exploration of the Pacific, J. C. Beaglehole, P. 3).
So the value of a report depends partly upon the person and ability of the
reporter and partly upon the singleness of his judgement.
A false impression may arise from the subconscious influence of
irrelevant events, from partiality to some pet theory, from a bee in a bonnet, from a personal antipathy, or even, perhaps, from
some quite extraneous accident.
And so it is with the reports and judgements in the New Testament.
The first task of criticism is,
therefore, to explain the material, as it now exists.
For some reason or another, perhaps for many various reasons, the story of
the life and death of Jesus came to be recounted in its present form.
The judgements responsible for this form may have been true
or false.
In either case the fact that they were made has to be explained.
And the second task of criticism is to discover at what
point, and if possible, by whom, these judgements were made.
For if it can be ascertained who first fastened larger significances
upon the events of the life and death of Jesus, and if any irrelevant motives which induced them to do so can be isolated, much
will have been done to enable the modern reader in his turn to form a judgement for himself.
And that is the ultimate purpose of
the exposition of the New Testament.
The business of the commentator is to 'set forth the meaning of holy scripture itself, to
extract truths from, not to import them into it.' (Liddon, Life of Pusey, Vol. Ill, P. 150.)
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The selected verses of the First Epistle General of Peter illustrate how
fearlessly the writers of the books of the New Testament riveted a particular significance to the history of Jesus.
The problem,
then, is to discover whether there is evidence that they were led to do so by some extraneous influence; or whether there is
evidence that the significance was embedded in the concrete, historical living of the life and in the concrete, historical dying
of the death, and, moreover, actually conditioned the course of the one and the fact of the other.
In the latter case, the
primitive church, far from imposing its own interpretation upon these events, extracted, and exposed, and bore witness to their
proper significance.
So these verses illustrate the real problem with which all New Testament exegesis is ultimately faced.
The verses form a culmination of an argument.
They are therefore inserted with a particular purpose.
The
author is not content to achieve that purpose by depicting the suffering of Christ as a type of what Christians must expect of
their vocation, and his bearing of it as an example of how they must perform it; he adds, gratuitously it may seem at first sight,
that the passion was not only typical and exemplary, but that it was so because it was redemptive and sacrificial.
Not only does
the author refer to historical events for a purpose, but he regards them as having taken place because of that purpose.
That is to
say, he is not attaching a significance to historical events;
he is claiming that the purpose produced the events.
So often has he
proclaimed, or heard proclaimed, the passion of Jesus as the basis of salvation, that he quite naturally recalls that significance
of it when appealing to it in another connexion. 'By whose bruise ye were healed.'
This is a forcible reminder that many events in
the Life of Jesus were preserved in the tradition because they served a purpose.
They were edifying or reassuring, controversial
or comforting.
And the fact that the early church needed to be edified and reassured, to controvert and be comforted, caused them
to be handed down until evangelists were moved to collect them together, again for a purpose.
But, as this passage shows, the same
events could be used for various purposes.
Moreover, varying use, and a constant demand for a precedent in any novel problem that
confronted the church, may have given some of the stories a completely unhistorical significance.
We are all familiar even to‑day,
perhaps indeed supremely to‑day, with the facility with which a biblical episode or a biblical saying is twisted out of its
context in order that it may be applied to an urgent modern need, and set in a context wholly foreign to its original setting.
This procedure has an important bearing on New Testament criticism, for a precisely similar procedure may underlie the New
Testament as it stands.
It may be that even in the primitive church 'men were accustomed to wrest and pervert the language of
scripture, by adapting it to modern events.'
(Sir Walter Scott, Woodstock, Chapter I)
Each incident must be examined for signs of
a motive and, if a motive is evident which emphasizes a significance incompatible with the ministry of Jesus but explained by the
needs of a later date, the particular turn given by it to the incident must be discounted, if the aim of the historian be to
recover the Jesus of history, and not merely to record the beliefs of the primitive Christians.
The incident may indeed quite well
have taken place, but it is bad history to describe it in relation to a context to which it does not belong.
In this case,
therefore, since the passion of Jesus is used as a type, as an example, and as an assurance of redemption, reasons must be found
for concluding that the events which occurred in Palestine were occasioned by an exemplary and redemptive purpose, or else it must
follow that this description of them rests on a false interpretation, induced, perhaps, by the influence of those religions that
were satisfying at that time the craving of the Hellenic world for assurance of salvation.
If this be so, the exemplary and
redemptive gospel of the church rests historically upon the spiritual needs of the primitive Christians, and not upon the life and
death of Jesus of Nazareth, as the authors of the New Testament books would have us suppose.
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Now, what is the context in which the author of the First Epistle General of
Peter did in fact place the passion of Jesus?
At first sight the verses read quite naturally as a piece of description that
appears neither conventional nor forced.
As far as the description of actual events is concerned, it might well be the first
impression of an eye‑witness.
A surprising element is, however, introduced into the interpretation of these verses when they
are compared with the Greek version of the fifty‑third chapter of Isaiah.
The language is so similar that the resemblance
cannot be fortuitous.
| I Peter ii.21 ff. | Isaiah Iiii. |
|---|---|
| 21. (Christ) also suffered for you leaving you an example that ye should follow his steps. | 4. he ... is pained for us. |
| 22. who did no sin neither was guile found in his mouth. | 9. he did no sin nor guile was in his mouth. |
| 23. who, when he was reviled , reviled not again; when he suffered, threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously; |
(cf. 7. as a lamb before his shearers is dumb , so opens he not his mouth) |
| (cf. 11. the Lord also is pleased to justify the just one) | |
| 24. who his own self bare our sins | 11. and he shall bear their sins |
| in his body | (cf. 4‑6 he bears our sins he was wounded on account of our sins and was bruised because of our iniquities |
| the Lord gave him up for our sins) | |
| upon the tree, that we, having died unto sin, might live unto righteousness; by whose healed bruise ye were healed. | |
| 5. by his bruise we were | |
| 25. For ye were going astray like sheep; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. | 6. all we like sheep have gone astray |
(For the sake of clarity only parallels from Isaiah Iiii are set out.
But verse 23
seems to echo the language of Psalm x.7: 'All they that see me laugh me to scorn... '
Moreover, the attribution to God, in
verse 25, of the title 'Shepherd', while explicable from the context, has other Old Testament prece. dent, as for example Psalm
xi.1.)
How is this similarity to be explained?
Clearly the writer was picturing Christ in terms taken from the suffering of the faithful slave of God in the Prophecy of Isaiah.
But this passage and other parts of the epistle show that the author quite consciously sets the passion of Jesus, not primarily in
the context of Christian piety, but in the context of the Old Testament scriptures.
A clear problem therefore arises.
Did this conception of the fulfilment of the Old Testament in the concrete history of Jesus of Nazareth cause the author of this
epistle and the other New Testament writers both to set down as history details not actually true and also to introduce in the
process a context foreign to the actual history?
In any case, what right had he and they to apply this language to Jesus?
Was the need for finding in Old Testament scripture a prophecy of the passion so great that Christian apologists invented the
identification of Jesus with the suffering servant, or did the course of the ministry itself demand this identification?
In other
words, are we confronted with a process that took the spiritual experience of the Christians to be fundamental and found in Old
Testament prophecy the sanction for it?
Or, alternatively, did the Old Testament provide the context which in fact occasioned the ministry and death of Jesus, and did the
author of this epistle rightly set him firmly in that context, and rightly declare the spiritual and moral life of the Christians
to be dependent upon their recognition of the passion of Jesus as the fulfilment of the word of God revealed to Israel?
Or, to put it in another way, does the New Testament ultimately rest upon human spiritual and mystical experience, or does it rest
upon a particular individual history, which gave a peculiar direction to the knowledge and behaviour of the primitive Christians?
Or, lastly, to put the problem in yet a different form; is the Jesus of history wholly submerged in the New Testament, or does
that history rigorously control all our New Testament documents?
Professor Rudolf Bultmann has recently dealt with the problem raised in this chapter in his book Jesus,
English translation Jesus and the Word, London, 1935. Also by Professor Gerhard Kittel in his essay in Mysterium Christi,
London, 1930.
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