I've just finished reading Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, by Marcus Borg. I want to present what he says about the emerging paradigm concerning the writing of the gospels. Quotes and pages numbers come from his book.
"The foundation is a way of seeing the gospels that has emerged since the Enlightenment. In a sentence, the gospels are products of early Christian communities in the last third of the first century. This short sentence carries a freight of meaning.
"First, it has a negative corollary: the gospels are not a direct divine product, as notions of biblical inerrancy suppose. Rather, as documents written within early Christian communities, they are human products. They tell us how our spiritual ancestors in these communities saw Jesus and his significance.
"Second, as documents written in the last third of the first century, they are the result of a developing tradition. During the decades between Jesus's historical life and the writing of the gospels, the traditions about Jesus developed. This is not a supposition, but demonstrated from the gospels themselves, as I soon illustrate. Thus the gospels are not simply historical accounts of Jesus's life. Rather, they tell us how Jesus's followers told and proclaimed his story several decades after his death.
"Third, calling them community products means that the gospels were written from within and for early Christian communities. Of course, they were written by individuals, but these individuals were not 'authors' in the modern sense of the term. Modern authors most commonly write for people they don't know, and they seek to be original and creative. But the individuals who wrote the gospels were crystallizing into writing their community's traditions about Jesus as they had developed in the decades since his death. They proclaimed the significance Jesus had come to have in these communities as the first century wound to its end." (pp. 28-29, italics in original)
To phrase these in different ways, as he does later in his book, although these words are mine.
(1a) The gospels are stories of Jesus remembered. They are not eye-witness accounts. No one had a notebook and wrote down what Jesus said and did as he spoke and acted. We do not have verbatims. In fact, for the most part, we have Greek translations of Jesus' Aramaic words. Rather, for about 20 years, disciples remembered and told what Jesus said and did. It is possible that around 50 AD some of these rembrances about Jesus were written down in documents that became sources for the canonical gospels. It was another 15-20 years (some 35-40 years after Jesus' death and resurrection) that the remembrances of Jesus' words and actions became the first canonical gospel, known as Mark. Another 15-30 years passed before the remembrances were written as Luke, Matthew, and John.
(1b) The gospels are stories of Jesus remembered after Easter. When the believers remembered what Jesus had said and did, they were looking back through the lenses of his death and resurrection. (I'm not sure that I would make this as significant as Borg does, but I agree with him that it is significant.) The lenses of the death and resurrection colors the way the people remembered the pre-Easter Jesus.
2. What they remembered, told, and eventually wrote down was meant to be understood as more than just historical, literal, or factual. In a sense, all the words and events in the gospels need to be understood as "parables". Their importance is in their meaning(s), not whether or not the event actually happened. Going a step further, seeking to prove the historical facts of a story, may hinder the discovery of the "more-than-literal" and "more-than-factual" meaning that is intended by the rembrances. For example, if a guide points out the exact spot on the Jerusalem to Jericho road where the man was robbed, beat up and left for dead, where a Samaritan eventually attended to his needs, does that help us understand the meaning of the parable? Is such a historical detail even relevant to understanding the meaning of the story? I think not.
When Mark tells us the story of Jesus healing a blind man in Bethsaida (8:22-26) -- the only healing of Jesus that required two touches -- the meaning of that story for Mark, especially within the broader context of 8:22-10:52, which ends with Jesus healing another man of blindness -- is about the struggle all disciples have of seeing (and following) the way of Jesus. Peter struggled with it in this section. He, saw the way only partially. He confessed Jesus as the Messiah, yet rebuked him when he said his way would take him to death. It's in this section that the demon-possessed boy's father confesses, "I believe. Help my unbelief." He believes and he doesn't believe, just like that first blind man could see and yet couldn't see. I know that it is a parable of my life of faith. I have been touched by Jesus. I see and understand the way of Jesus; and yet, it is often unclear, fuzzy, so I continue to need subsequent touches by Jesus to be able to see more clearly so as to follow Jesus on the way to the cross.
Did Jesus heal blind people? Most probably. Does Mark remember these stories decades after they happened just to tell us that Jesus could heal a blind person? I think, as Borg does, that Mark intends meanings that go beyond the historical and literal events. As such, they are like parables. (Borg uses the term "metaphor" for understanding the stories as more-than-historical and more-than-literal.)
