by
Damien F. Mackey
“Rather
than trying to see unity between Matthew and Luke,
or
between them and the other evangelists, [Fr. Brown]
frequently
emphasizes division or non-coherence …”.
Michael E.
Giesler
Michael Giesler’s comment here,
concerning a focus upon the negative, is exactly the sort of thinking that had
prompted me to comment as follows, in my recent article:
Righteous Origins of the Magi
(3) Righteous
Origins of the Magi
…. I
had a crack at Catholic (priest) exegetes – and this applies … to Fr. Raymond Brown, as well – wh0 will
criticise the Bible for a presumed problem, instead of trying to find a
solution that saves the scriptural inerrancy, as would be their vocation. I
wrote:
No
wonder then that, on this basis, The
Jerusalem Bible says that “the geography [of the Book of Tobit] is
inexact”; while Fr. D. Dumm (article, “Tobit”) in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, exclaims that:
“[The
angel] Raphael knows the journey of life
far
better than the route to Media!”
Unfortunately,
though, Fr. Dumm just leaves it at that, without being willing, or able, to
defend the accuracy of the Bible with a proper explanation of what is happening
here.
….
This
shows a lack of faith - learned priests treating the scriptures as documents to
be cleverly dissected, rather than striving to unearth the truths underlying
them.
[End
of quote]
Brown's Birth Of The
Messiah . . . Revisited
Description
A critique of the assumptions behind Raymond Brown's
1977 analysis of the infancy narratives, which called their historicity into
question.
Larger Work
Homiletic & Pastoral Review
Pages
16 - 24
Publisher & Date
Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA, February 2001
Though this book (Raymond Brown, Birth of the
Messiah, New York City, 1977, 594 pp.) has already been reviewed many
times, it is worth revisiting for the purpose of understanding it more clearly.
Father Brown (may he rest in peace) has had a great influence on Catholic
seminaries and biblical studies in the United States. He may have been quite
sincere in his studies and efforts, and doubtless he had great empirical
erudition, but I do think that questionable assumptions and implications remain
in his book — particularly those that cast doubt on the historical value of the
infancy narratives in the gospels of Saints Matthew and Luke.
The book is obviously the result of long and extensive
research, with sources that mostly come from authors of the historical-critical
school over the last 100 years. His analysis of the annunciation patterns in
Matthew and Luke is presented with detail, along with his various textual and
linguistic commentaries.
Towards the beginning he explains that one of his
purposes in analyzing the infancy narratives is to defend them against the
"rationalistic scoffing" (p. 25) of those who see little value in
them because they deny their historical character. While he too doubts their
historical character, he adapts — knowingly or unknowingly — a method similar
to that of Rudolf Bultmann, who wished to defend the gospels in general against
mockery by using the process of "de-mythologizing": the attempt to
separate what was historical in the gospels from what was mythical. Brown uses
the concept of "theologizing," that is, he is of the opinion that
while we cannot know the historical certainty of the infancy narratives, we can
identify their Christology — which is the main message of the evangelists.
He takes for granted that no one of the evangelists
was an "eyewitness" (p. 27), therefore discounting the traditional
view that Matthew and John were the final authors of their gospels. This idea
is bolstered by his view (standard among many modern critical scholars) that
Matthew and Luke were written in the 80s or 90s, thus allowing a number of
years to go by so that traditions could be developed about Christ's life that
would not be dependent on strict history.
Mackey’s comment: On this, see e.g. my
article:
Dating
the biblical books before 70 AD
(3) Dating the
biblical books before 70 AD
Michael E. Giesler continues:
His main thesis is that in the infancy narratives
Matthew and Luke are above all theologians, who wrote their accounts in the
light of a post-resurrectional theology of Christ.
He was the Messiah of the Old Testament and the Son of
God — and therefore his conception and childhood had to be marvelous. This view
distinguishes them from Mark and John, who tell us nothing about the birth and
childhood of Christ.
His methodology is the strict application of the
historical-critical method, as he states in footnote 2 of the Introduction. In
his presentations, at least initially, he does not take into account later
statements of the Magisterium or the Fathers of the Church, but restricts
himself to the texts at hand, or ancient documents from secular or Jewish
sources such as the dead sea scrolls. He obviously thinks that this is the
scientific and empirical way to do Scripture studies, and that it is truly
ecumenical as well. Only later in his analysis does he consider Magisterial
statements, in a somewhat secondary way. For this reason he frankly admits that
he sees "no reason why a Catholic's understanding of what Matthew and Luke
meant in their infancy narratives should be different from a Protestant's"
(p. 9).
Brown brings the same dichotomy — separating the texts
from their traditional comprehension in the Catholic Church — to the study of
the gospel texts themselves. Rather than trying to see unity between Matthew
and Luke, or between them and the other evangelists, he frequently emphasizes
division or non-coherence — for instance between Matthew's and Luke's
genealogies, or the apparent ignorance of Matthew for the story in Luke's
gospel and vice-versa, or the different accounts of the holy family's return to
Nazareth. He frequently brings up Mark's text about Jesus' relatives and Mary
(Mark 3:21, 31), which he thinks shows them to be outside of the circle of
Jesus' followers. Because of these perceived tensions, he questions the
historicity of the infancy narratives — thereby reinforcing his central vision
of their theological message and design.
I don't think that the book proves one of its main
assumptions, namely, that the oldest preaching about Christ concerned his death
and resurrection, then his ministry, then only later his childhood.
If the Greek Matthew draws content from the lost
original in Aramaic, and from Mark (as many modern scholars believe), why
couldn't the Mathaean infancy narrative have been in the Aramaic original? Or
in an ancient Q source (Q, short for the German Quelle, meaning
"source": in this case referring to a collection of words or
discourses that the evangelists had before them)? Or why couldn't the tradition
of the virgin birth have been transmitted very early in the Jerusalem community
by Mary and others — and only later recorded by Luke? In other words, there is
no reason to imply that the virginal conception was simply a Christological
statement of later times. Because of its intimate, less public nature it makes
sense that the virginal conception would not have formed the primary part of
early Christian preaching at first (as exemplified in Acts 10: 34-43); but
later on, with greater reflection on Scripture, and with the entry of more
women into the Church, it was recorded and included more in apostolic preaching
since it presented the complete message about Christ, God and man.
I believe that his questioning of the historicity of
many passages is itself problematic.
For instance, he questions the historicity of the
Annunciation to Mary because of the stereo-typical literary form used (p. 296).
Yet he himself admits that there is not much more choice than to describe an
angel's appearance in certain ways. I would also say that the fact that the
Lucan annunciation is like other angelic messages in the Old Testament supports its
historicity, rather than puts it into doubt. God truly intervenes in history
through his messengers, and the biblical form for describing these interventions
is more or less constant. The same could be said of Old Testament persons or
events that are fulfilled in the New.
The author looks at these only in terms of literary
sources, not as real persons or events who prefigure others, as the Fathers of
the Church looked at them. It is true, as Brown points out, that there is a
resemblance between the birth of Moses, savior of his people, and Jesus the
Messiah — insofar as there is an evil ruler involved (Pharaoh in Moses' case,
Herod in Jesus' case, both of whom destroy children) — but this does not mean
that Matthew's account of Herod's murder of the children is a literary invention.
It simply means that corrupt kings act in a similar way throughout history, and
the innocent often suffer. The same could be said of the Balaam-Magi
correspondence to which the author refers frequently. The Magi are not a pious
literary development because they have some similarity to Old Testament Balaam,
the foreigner who blesses Israel and who speaks of a star coming forth from
Jacob, or a scepter from Israel (Num. 24:17); rather, one could truly assert
that the Magi historically represent the fulfillment of the Balaam event. In
other words, it is clear that mere literary similarity does not mean
fabrication, or a reason for questioning the historicity of an event.
Brown also makes much of a presumed first century
Haggadic midrash (a Jewish commentary on the Old Testament that embellishes
texts for the moral edification of the people) which speaks of the Pharoah
having a dream that predicts the birth of Moses. Apart from the fact that the
nature of midrash in the first century A.D. is still quite unknown ( it is
really a rabbinical technique from 2nd century A.D. onwards), and though it is
pure speculation if Matthew had any access to this text, he suggests a connection
of this midrash with Matthew's account of the dreams of Joseph and Herod's
knowledge of the Messiah's birth, along with the dreams that the Old Testament
Joseph had. Again, rather than considering these hypotheses as casting doubt on
the historical value of Matthew's texts on Joseph's dreams, one could
positively interpret them as affirming the way God communicates with Joseph the
foster father of Jesus, just as he would communicate the future to the Joseph
son of Jacob in the Old Testament.
As for midrashic documents in the first century which
speak of supernatural dreams, they are neither an argument for or against the
historical character of Joseph's dreams in Matthew's account.
The author is continually looking for sources or
traditions (whether pre-Mathaean or pre-Lucan), to the point that the reader
gets the impression that the infancy narratives are a mere literary artifice.
At some points the desire to find a previous source goes beyond common sense.
On page 106 for instance he interprets that the two dreams that Joseph had are
indications of two "pre-Mathaean sources" — one for each dream, as
well as one for each geographical destination to which Joseph is directed. But
the evident and most straight-forward approach is that Matthew recorded two
dreams because his source (written or verbal) described two dreams in the first
place. There is no need to hypothesize about the existence of more sources,
though it may appear more scholarly and sophisticated to do so. He does make a
valid point, I think, in showing that the Scriptural formula citations have a
certain literary form that could be more Mathaean, and therefore could have
been added to a pre-existing narrative.
On page 346 he states that it is "pre-critical
and naive" to say that Mary actually spoke the words of the Magnificat.
Apart from the fact that this would mean that the Church's preaching tradition
has been "naive" for the past 1950 years, there is no reason to
suspect that a holy woman, who must have reflected on Scripture before and was
moved by the Holy Spirit, could not have uttered the words of the Magnificat
(or at least their substantial content) particularly in the grace-filled
context of a visit to her cousin Elizabeth. And the same could be said of the
canticles of Zechariah and Simeon.
Though in footnote 22 he states the possibility of an
intervention of the Holy Spirit in the saying of these canticles, he gives no
further attention to it and proceeds to the theory that he favors more: that
Luke took the verses from a different source, or added some of his own. (On
page 352 he states that Luke makes Mary the spokesperson for a group of
"anawim" — pious Christian Jews who had been marginated or were
waiting for a spiritual liberation. This theory is based on some literary similarities
with Jewish documents of the time, and may indeed show one of Luke's sources,
but it should not be used to put into doubt the historical value of the
canticle itself).
In similar fashion, he holds that Mary's words at the
Annunciation, "Behold the Handmaid" are really Luke's retrojection of
Mary's character as known through the accounts of Christ's ministry (p. 318).
In other words we do not know for certain if she really said them, but she
could have said them given her later comportment. The same in his opinion would
apply to her words "I do not know man"; rather than being her own
words, they are the projection of Luke's Christology, which highlights the fact
of God's role in the conception of Christ (p. 308). According to Brown then,
Luke was not primarily interested in giving Mary's words, as he was in showing
that God was the cause of Christ's conception, not a man.
On page 413 he states that Luke has a "confused
memory" about the date of the census at Jesus' birth. Though it is true
that we have no outside record of a census under Quirinius in the dates most
likely for Christ's birth (6 to 3 B.C.), there is no reason to suspect Luke of
inaccuracy. History does not record all the census that Augustus ordered during
his reign, and perhaps there was a series of minor census that preceded the big
census that is known to have taken place under Quirinius in the years 6-9 A.D.
One such census could have taken place at Bethlehem.
If this were the case, why could not Luke affirm that the 6 to 3 B.C. census
took place "under" Quirinius, in the sense of preceding him? There is
also evidence that Quirinius could have been co-governor with Saturninus in the
year 6 B.C. (see R. Ginns, St. Luke's Gospel, n. 749b in A Catholic
Commentary on Holy Scripture, Orchard, Sutcliffe, Thomas Nelson & Sons,
New York, 1953).
Whatever the answer to this question, we must keep in
mind that historical events in Scripture are not recorded in an exact
chronological way, as in a modern textbook.
Mackey’s
comment:
There is much more historical complexity to this situation, I believe. See e.g.
my article:
Judas
the Galilean vitally links Maccabean era to Daniel 2’s “rock cut out of a
mountain”
(3) Judas the
Galilean vitally links Maccabean era to Daniel 2’s “rock cut out of a mountain”
Michael E. Giesler continues:
The author's rather stringent view of biblical history
can also be seen on page 513 when he states that "only the second chapters
of the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke support Bethlehem as the
birthplace of Jesus." The logical question arises: isn't that enough? If
the hagiographers are truly inspired by God, and give no indication that their
words are non-historical, or that they are products of a later Christological
conception or historicized "theologoumenon," as Brown puts it on page
513, why suspect the historical value of their accounts?
Regarding the very important issue of the virginal
conception, he deals with its historicity in a problematic and questioning way,
not denying it but implying that belief in it may have come about more as a
result of a "post-resurrectional" theology in the Christian community
— and stating that biblically at least we cannot attest to its reality. On page
527 he affirms that "the scientifically controllable biblical evidence
leaves the question of the historicity of the virginal conception
unresolved."
By "scientifically controllable" he means a
tradition of identifiable witnesses not in conflict with other traditions
(footnote 26a, p. 527). The problem with this line of thinking is that none of
the gospel accounts have "identifiable witnesses," in the modern
technical sense of the word, other than the writers themselves; with Brown's
scientific controls one could question almost any of the events or facts
narrated in the gospels. Unfortunately he rejects as naive or pre-critical the
idea of a direct historical testimony coming from Mary or Joseph, or from
Jesus' family members. He stresses the fact that no other hagiographer refers
to it outside of Matthew and Luke, and that later documents of the Church about
it may have been referring more to Christ's humanity than to the biological way
he was conceived. But all of this kind of thinking is very minimalist, and
misses the clear intent of Matthew's and Luke's gospels, along with the
testimony given in the traditions of the Church from the beginning about the
virginal conception. It is not "naive" to take the testimony of two
evangelists as historical, especially when it is not denied by the other
evangelists, and has formed part of the historical magisterium of the Church in
a consistent way.
In speaking of the evangelists' sources he immediately
discounts that the Matthaen infancy narrative could have come from Joseph and
that the Lucan infancy narrative came from Mary (p. 525). He argues that the
"Matthaean and Lucan annunciation accounts are developed variants of a
pre-Gospel annunciation tradition"(p. 525). But if this were so, what
could impede that this pre-Gospel annunciation tradition was itself based on
real historical events, and that Mary and the friends and relatives of Joseph —
if he was deceased at the time of Matthew's original Aramaic account — could
have been the sources for the Gospel? I think that many of Brown's puzzles
about the origins of the infancy narratives could be resolved with more
emphasis on the original Matthaean Aramaic text; this is the obvious source for
the information about Joseph, which Matthew the apostle and evangelist could
have gathered from Jesus himself or from those who knew Joseph, and which was
later translated into the Greek Matthew. He also excludes rather summarily
James the cousin of Jesus as a good source of family traditions, connecting him
too quickly with the apocryphal gospel that bears his name (p. 33), and thus
doubting his possible testimony.
When Luke wrote his gospel he was working with a
different tradition, a Marian tradition which was just as early as the Joseph
tradition, and did have the context of the Anawim, or that group of prayerful
and just Jews awaiting redemption.
Why doesn't Luke show more knowledge of Matthew's
infancy account? Either because it was written after Matthew's account, and
therefore it was not needed to give a complete account of Jesus' childhood, or
because Luke had his own unique evangelizing message (which was based on
Jerusalem and the events there), and the trip to Egypt would not be needed. The
fact that Luke does not mention the slaughter of the innocents or the trip to
Egypt does not put these into doubt, nor does the fact that Matthew does not
mention Mary's annunciation or visitation put those in doubt. It could well be
that these intimate events were revealed by Mary after Matthew wrote his early
account in Aramaic (according to one tradition Mary went to heaven around the
year 50, enough time for her to reveal to the apostles or to the holy women
these intimate events of Christ's conception and birth).
In general his arguments are not convincing. He works
always within the realm of speculation — a necessary condition for him since he
questions that the infancy narratives were founded on eye-witness reports;
therefore his major activity is one of nuance and distinction. It is neither a
positive affirmation, nor a well-proven denial. The reader is continually left
in a kind of exegetical limbo about the real meaning of the events of Christ's
infancy; the one sure thing, according to the author, is the theology woven
into it by Matthew and Luke.
As it stands Brown's book has underlying assumptions
that make it hard to be used by a Roman Catholic who wants to see the infancy
narratives in an integral way, connected with the traditions and practices of
the Church. In great part this difficulty comes from Brown's initial premise:
that the Bible itself can be studied as an end in itself, in only a
historical-critical way, without reference to a greater context or truth. This
is an unreal starting point, almost like isolating a cell of the body without its
reference to the body in general.
Mackey’s
comment:
See e.g. my article:
Preferring
P. J. Wiseman to un-wise JEDP
(3) Preferring P.
J. Wiseman to un-wise JEDP
Michael E. Giesler continues:
The books of the Bible were obviously written within a
tradition, and for a tradition — and this must always be kept in mind. In the
words of Dei Verbum: "Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture
form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church. It is
clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the teaching
authority of the Church, in accord with God's wise design, are so linked and
joined together that one cannot stand without the others" (n. 10). And
again: ". . . since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the
same spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to
the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the Sacred
texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church
must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements
of the faith" (n. 12).
Secondly, he continually argues that Matthew and Luke
were more theologians than historians in the infancy narratives, and that their
texts may not be based on eye-witness accounts. This view is not proven, except
by inference or innuendo, and for every point that he brings up in question of
historicity, another could be produced that affirms it. For instance, the fact
that only Matthew speaks of the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem leads
him to question the historicity of the account, but the knowledge of the
character of King Herod affirms it. In the same way there is no reason to infer
that the presence of shepherds in Luke's account is a symbolism or midrashic
reflection on Old Testament texts (see pp. 420-423), when it is just as
reasonable to consider that there were actually shepherds in the vicinity of
Bethlehem tending their flocks when Jesus was born — most likely in the
springtime, as many scholars believe.
Thirdly, and most importantly in my opinion, is his
view of what can be a true literary form in the New Testament.
On page 534 he states that "any intelligent
attempt to combine an acceptance of inspiration with an acceptance of biblical
criticism must lead to the recognition that there are in the Bible fiction,
parable, and folklore, as well as history."
Certainly parable and history are in the Bible, but
the existence of fiction and folklore must be carefully proven, and if they do
exist, they should be understood correctly. First of all, we should not forget
the intrinsic connection between word and event which is at the very core of
God's revelation to mankind. (The creation, the passover, the miracles of
Jesus, the sacraments all involve both an event and a word that causes or
elucidates it; this is the way that God chooses to reveal himself in history).
If an interpreter thinks that there can be a literary form in the bible that is
historical in appearance only, or that there could be a salvific word in the
bible (such as the angel's announcement to Mary) without a true salvific event
connected to it, he must examine his conclusion carefully because he could be
introducing an element into Scripture which contradicts the simplicity and
truthfulness of God the divine Author. In the words of Pope Pius XII in the
encyclical Humani Generis: "[W]hatever of the popular
narrations have been inserted into the Sacred Scripture must in no way be
considered on a par with myths or other such things, which are more productions
of an extravagant imagination than that of striving for that truth and
simplicity which in the Sacred Books, also of the Old Testament, is so apparent
. . ." (EB, n. 618). And Pope Benedict XV also warned about interpreting
history in the Bible only in a figurative way (enc. Spiritus Paraclitus,
n. 458).
This caution about the proper understanding of
salvation history applies not only to the infancy narratives, but to the entire
New Testament, including the miracles and especially the death and resurrection
of Christ. Brown is careful never to use the word "myth" in his book,
but his continual emphasis on Christology, and post-resurrectional
retrojections have the result of casting the gospel narratives into a
quasi-mythical light.
The author has no difficulty in stating that the
evangelists probably used midrashic techniques, though he is careful to state
that their works are not midrash, that is, mere commentaries on the Old
Testament (pp. 560-561) and that they composed their gospels using a mixture of
Old Testament stories, materials from Jewish traditions (as seen in Qumram
documents and others), some historical events (very hard to verify), and
creative imagination. But at this point we can legitimately ask him (and
ourselves): is this type of literary form truly biblical, and does it fulfill
what the Second Vatican Council meant when it said that Scripture faithfully
records "what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught
for their eternal salvation"? To that he might answer that history is only
one literary form, and the Holy Spirit could use many others, including
fiction, folklore, or the creative imagination of the author. In defending this
idea he states on page 562, "the acceptability of this approach involves a
recognition that there are ways other than history by which a people can be
instructed. I have little hope that those for whom history is the only biblical
genre will be open to such an approach." But I think that he is begging
the question here, since more traditional scholars have always recognized
non-historical genres, such as allegory, poetry, parables, etc. Of course they
would agree that God can instruct people with non-historical literary forms,
and that such forms are also inspired, but this in no way should weaken the
credibility of the great texts referring to salvation history.
Is there any evidence that the infancy narratives were
ever considered to be a pious reflection, or a "historicized
theologoumenon," that is, "the historicizing of what was originally a
theological statement" in Brown's own words (p. 505)? Do any of the early
Fathers of the Church reflect this view, or any of the documents of the
ordinary magisterium, or the preaching to the people of God throughout the
centuries? It seems very far-fetched to say that the Holy Spirit could have
allowed the Church to be in the dark about the infancy narratives for so many
centuries, or have allowed the piety of the people to be nourished on a mere
theological-literary artifice but that now with the advent of
historical-literary criticism "the real truth" about the infancy
narratives has been discovered. ….
