NT Narrative as OT Midrash, RM Price

[MrMacSon]

New Testament Narrative as Old Testament Midrash

Robert M. Price

A. Introduction

Christian exegetes have long studied the gospels in light of Rabbinical techniques of biblical interpretation including allegory, midrash, and pesher. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls lent great impetus to the recognition of the widespread use among New Testament writers of the pesher technique whereby prophetic prooftexts for the divine preordination of recent of events was sought. Slower (but still steady) in coming has been the realization of the wide extent to which the stories comprising the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are themselves the result of haggadic midrash upon stories from the Old Testament (as we may call it here in view of the Christian perspective on the Jewish canon that concerns us). The New Testament writers partook of a social and religious environment in which currents of Hellenism and Judaism flowed together and interpenetrated in numerous surprising ways, the result of which was not merely the use of several versions of the Old Testament texts, in various languages, but also the easy switching back and forth between Jewish and Greek sources like Euripides, Homer, and Mystery Religion traditions.

Earlier scholars (e.g., John Wick Bowman), as many today (e.g., J. Duncan M. Derrett), saw gospel echoes of the ancient scriptures in secondary coloring here or redactional juxtaposition of traditional Jesus stories there. But the more recent scrutiny of John Dominic Crossan, Randel Helms, Dale and Patricia Miller, and Thomas L. Brodie has made it inescapably clear that virtually the entirety of the gospel narratives and much of the Acts are wholly the product of haggadic midrash upon previous scripture. Earl Doherty has clarified the resultant understanding of the gospel writers’ methodology ...

... the more apparent it becomes that most gospel narratives can be adequately accounted for by reference to scriptural prototypes, Doherty suggests, the more natural it is to picture early Christians beginning with a more or less vague savior myth and seeking to lend it color and detail by anchoring it in a particular historical period and clothing it in scriptural garb. We must now envision proto-Christian exegetes “discovering” for the first time what Jesus the Son of God had done and said “according to the scriptures” by decoding the ancient texts ...

... ancient [Christians] learned what Jesus did by reading Joshua and 1 Kings. It was not a question of memory but of creative exegesis. Sometimes the signals that made particular scriptural texts attractive for this purpose are evident (like “[Out of Egypt I have called] my son” in Hosea 11:1), sometimes not. But in the end the result is a new perspective according to which we must view the gospels and Acts as analogous with the Book of Mormon, an inspiring pastiche of stories derived creatively from previous scriptures by a means of literary extrapolation.

... the favorite tendencies are to draw from the Exodus saga and the Elijah and Elisha cycles. For his part, Mark relied about as heavily on the Iliad and the Odyssey (perhaps seeing the parallel between the adventurous wanderings of both Exodus and the Odyssey as well as a punning resemblance between their titles, or between Odysseus and the 'odoV' of the itinerant Jesus; see Watts, pp. 124-128).

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_midrash1.htm

Rikki E. Watts, Isaiah’s New Exodus and Mark. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Reihe 88. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997.

[MrMacSon]

B. The Gospel of Mark

3. The Temptations (Mark 1:12-13)

The forty days of Jesus in the wilderness recall both Moses’ period of forty years in the desert of Midian before returning to Egypt (Bowman, p. 109) and the forty-day retreat of Elijah to the wilderness after the contest with Baal’s prophets (1 Kings 19:5-7), where Elijah, like Jesus, is ministered unto by angels (Miller, p. 48). The Q tradition shared by Matthew (4:1-11) and Luke (4:1-13) and possibly abridged by Mark, plays off the Exodus tradition in yet another way. Jesus resists the devil’s blandishments by citing three texts from Deuteronomy, 8:3; 6:16; 6:13, all of which refer to trials of the people of Israel in the wilderness (the manna, Massa, and idolatry), which they failed, but which Jesus, embodying a new Israel, passes with flying colors.


4. Commencement of the Ministry (1:14-15)

Only once he has completed the ordeal in the wilderness does Jesus begin his preaching of the near advent of the Kingdom of God. Bowman rightly observes the parallel to Moses leaving the wilderness, with Aaron, to announce to the children of Israel in the house of bondage that liberation would soon be theirs. (ibid.).


5. Recruitment of the First Disciples (1:16-20)

As Bowman suggests (p. 157), Jesus summons James and John as well as Peter and Andrew, two pairs of brothers, as a gospel counterpart to Moses’ recruiting his own unsuspecting brother Aaron at the analogous point in the Exodus story (4:27-28). But the events, minimal as they are, come from Elijah’s recruitment of Elisha in 1 Kings 19:19-21. Likewise, the calling of Levi in Mark 2:14. All are said to have abandoned their family livelihoods on the spot to follow the prophet.

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_midrash1.htm

John Bowman, The Gospel of Mark: The New Christian Jewish Passover Haggadah. Studia Post-Biblica 8. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965

Dale Miller and Patricia Miller. The Gospel of Mark as Midrash on Earlier Jewish and New Testament Literature. Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 21. Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press

[MrMacSon]

F. Acts of the Apostles

1. Pentecost (2:1-4ff)

The whole scene comes, obviously, from the descent of the Mosaic spirit upon the seventy elders in Numbers 11:16-17, 24-25, with an assist from Euripides’ The Bacchae, where we read “Flames flickered in their curls and did not burn them” (757-758), just as tongues of fire blazed harmlessly above the heads of the apostles (Acts 2:3). Ecstatic speech caused some bystanders to question the sobriety of the disciples, but Peter defends them (“These are not drunk as you suppose” Acts 2:15a), as does Pentheus’ messenger: “Not, as you think, drunk with wine” (686-687).


3. The Ethiopian Eunuch (8:26-40)

The story of the Ethiopian eunuch and of Philip the evangelist recalls several key features of the story of Elijah and Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5:1-14) (Brodie, pp. 316-327). The Elijah narrative depicts both healing (from leprosy) and conversion (from Syrian Rimmon-worship), while the Acts version tells only of conversion (from Godfearer to Christian). Luke was apparently reluctant to strain plausibility or good taste by having Philip physically restore a eunuch! Both Naaman and the Ethiopian are foreign officials of high status, both close to their monarchs (2 Kings 5:5; Acts 8:27c). Naaman came to Samaria to ask the king’s help in contacting the prophet Elisha. The Ethiopian for his part had journeyed to Jerusalem to seek God in the Temple worship, but the need of his heart remained unmet. This he was to find satisfied on his way home (like those other Lukan characters, the Emmaus disciples, Luke 24:13ff). The Israelite king fails to grasp the meaning of the letter Naaman presents to him, but a word from the prophet supplies the lack, just as Luke has the Ethiopian fail to grasp the true import of the prophetic scroll he reads till the hitchhiking evangelist offers commentary. In both cases salvation is to be sought by immersion. Naaman initially balks, but his servant persuades him. Luke has this temporizing in mind when he has the Ethiopian ask rhetorically, “What prevents me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36). Healing and/or conversion follow, though in both cases the official must return, alone in his faith, to his heathen court.

[MrMacSon]

4. Paul’s Conversion (9:1-21)

As the great Tübingen critics already saw, the story of Paul’s visionary encounter with the risen Jesus not only has no real basis in the Pauline epistles but has been derived by Luke more or less directly from 2 Maccabees 3’s story of Heliodorus. In it one Benjaminite named Simon (3:4) tells Apollonius of Tarsus, governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia (3:5), that the Jerusalem Temple houses unimaginable wealth that the Seleucid king might want to appropriate for himself. Once the king learns of this, he sends his agent Heliodorus to confiscate the loot. The prospect of such a violation of the Temple causes universal wailing and praying among the Jews. But Heliodorus is miraculously turned back when a shining warrior angel appears on horseback. The stallion’s hooves knock Heliodorus to the ground, where two more angels lash him with whips (25-26). He is blinded and is unable to help himself, carried to safety on a stretcher. Pious Jews pray for his recovery, lest the people be held responsible for his condition. The angels reappear to Heliodorus, in answer to these prayers, and they announce God’s grace to him: Heliodorus will live and must henceforth proclaim the majesty of the true God. Heliodorus offers sacrifice to his Saviour (3:35) and departs again for Syria, where he reports all this to the king. In Acts the plunder of the Temple has become the persecution of the church by Saul (also called Paulus, an abbreviated form of Apollonius), a Benjaminite from Tarsus. Heliodorus’ appointed journey to Jerusalem from Syria has become Saul’s journey from Jerusalem to Syria. Saul is stopped in his tracks by a heavenly visitant, goes blind and must be taken into the city, where the prayers of his former enemies avail to raise him up. Just as Heliodorus offers sacrifice, Saul undergoes baptism. Then he is told henceforth to proclaim the risen Christ, which he does.

Luke has again added details from Euripides. In The Bacchae, in a sequence Luke has elsewhere rewritten into the story of Paul in Philippi (Portefaix, pp. 170), Dionysus has appeared in Thebes as an apparently mortal missionary for his own sect. He runs afoul of his cousin, King Pentheus who wants the licentious cult (as he views it) to be driven out of the country. He arrests and threatens Dionysus, only to find him freed from prison by an earthquake. Dionysus determines revenge against the proud and foolish king by magically compelling Pentheus to undergo conversion to faith in him (“Though hostile formerly, he now declares a truce and goes with us. You see what you could not when you were blind,” 922-924) and sending Pentheus, in woman’s guise, to spy upon the Maenads, his female revelers. He does so, is discovered, and is torn limb from limb by the women, led by his own mother. As the hapless Pentheus leaves, unwittingly, to meet his doom, Dionysus comments, “Punish this man. But first distract his wits; bewilder him with madness... After those threats with which he was so fierce, I want him made the laughingstock of Thebes” (850-851, 854-855). “He shall come to know Dionysus, son of Zeus, consummate god, most terrible, and yet most gentle, to mankind” (859-861). Pentheus must be made an example, as must poor Saul, despite himself. His conversion is a punishment, meting out to the persecutor his own medicine. Do we not detect a hint of ironic malice in Christ’s words to Ananias about Saul? “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16).

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_midrash1.htm

Lilian Portefaix, Sisters Rejoice: Paul’s Letter to the Philippians and Luke-Acts as Seen by First-Century Philippian Women. Coniectanea biblica. New Testament series, 20. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wicksell, 1988.

[neilgodfrey]

See here for citation details:

B. The Literary Form

The Baptist narrative has been described as a “legend,”166 a “popular folk-tale,”167 a “Volkssage,”168 a “midrash,”169 or a haggadic ma’ase.170 Legend, folk-tale and saga are very broad terms in English. In addition, they usually imply that the content of the narrative is either unhistorical or not to be taken seriously. The term “midrash,” although employed more and more by NT scholars, really only applies to the verse by verse interpretation of a biblical book, for example Esther in b. Meg. 10b-17a.171 A ma’ase in rabbinic sources is a specific example of a general statement, usually in a legal context.172 Bowman, who applies the term here, assumes that Mark 6:16 is such a general statement

Although I disagree with the latter, Bowman is nevertheless basically correct in his designation. . . . .

I propose the term “etiological haggada” for the Baptist narrative. The story not only explains the cause of John’s being beheaded (his rebuke of Herod Antipas for marrying his former sister-in-law while his own brother was still alive), but also fills in the manner of the beheading, something typical of haggada.173

– – – – – – – –

166 See R. Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1963) 301; Klostermann, Das Markus-evangelium 58; as well as Grant, “The Gospel According to St. Mark” 734: “a popular legend.”

167 Anderson, The Gospel of Mark 167.

168 Merx, Das Evangelium Matthaeus 228.

169 See I. de la Potterie, “Mors Johannis Baptistae (Me 6, 17-29)” in VD 44 (1966) 147.

170 J. Bowman, The Gospel of Mark. The New Christian Jewish Passover Haggadah (Studia post-biblica 8; Leiden: Brill, 1965) 154.

171 See Strack and Stemberger, Einleitung 223.

172 Ibid., 36. It is the thirteenth of the thirty-two middot For such a ma’ase, see m. Yeb. 16:7 (“Once it happened that…”) in Danby, The Mishnah 245.

173 See I. Heinemann’s term, “the creative writing of history,” which fills in biblical narratives, quoted in Strack and Stemberger, Einleitung 225. Grossfeld in The First Targum to Esther iv defines haggada as “legendary recountings of incidents to supply gaps in the canonical history.”

One very often sees the term "midrashic" being used of NT/gospel narratives in an attempt to avoid clashing with the technical associations of "midrash". But haggada sounds cool, too.

[MrMacSon]

See here for citation details:

B. The Literary Form

The Baptist narrative has been described as a “legend,”166 a “popular folk-tale,”167 a “Volkssage,”168 a “midrash,”169 or a haggadic ma’ase.170 Legend, folk-tale and saga are very broad terms in English ...

I propose the term “etiological haggada” ...
.

Cheers. The line before 'B. The Literary Form' in your post also mentions “etiological haggada” viz. -

¶ I have taken the term “etiological haggada” from Roger Aus, Water Into Wine and the Beheading of John the Baptist, 1988. Brown University, Atlanta, Georgia. p. 68

Is “etiological haggada” as appropriate as "midrashic" ??

[neilgodfrey]

See here for citation details:

B. The Literary Form

The Baptist narrative has been described as a “legend,”166 a “popular folk-tale,”167 a “Volkssage,”168 a “midrash,”169 or a haggadic ma’ase.170 Legend, folk-tale and saga are very broad terms in English ...

I propose the term “etiological haggada” ...
.

Cheers. The line before 'B. The Literary Form' in your post also mentions “etiological haggada” viz. -

¶ I have taken the term “etiological haggada” from Roger Aus, Water Into Wine and the Beheading of John the Baptist, 1988. Brown University, Atlanta, Georgia. p. 68

Is “etiological haggada” as appropriate as "midrashic" ??

"Etiological" is obviously a dispensable qualifier.

I am not invested enough in this question to dig out a definitive answer. You'll just have to study examples of haggada and midrash and compare, I guess.

[archibald]

Sidenote:

It's been a while since I've seen Earl Doherty's name pop up.

Does anyone know if he actually has a degree in history (specifically a BA with distinction in Ancient History and Classical languages) as he claimed, or can for example say when or where he got it?

Last I heard, which was quite some time ago, it was questioned.

Can anyone shed light on this?

On second thoughts, I'll ask in a new thread:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3840