Making Joyful Noises

A compelling image; but not at all historical.

I'm glad I can't embed xweets, because I'd be tempted to on this.  It's an ad (looks like a xweet; Elmo has made it very hard to tell the difference) for something on YouTube that promises to tell the "chronological tale" of Jesus of Nazareth by "harmonizing the gospels." (and because it's an ad, it's gone now, or I'd try to link to it.  Fair is fair.)

Which means taking out the bits you don't like.  Because the gospels don't harmonize.

The classic example (as I've said before, ad nauseum) is the nativity.  Matthew and Luke alone have the story, and both put the birth in Bethlehem, but for wildly different reasons.  Luke has the famous story of the journey ("Las Posadas," a lovely tradition) to Bethlehem from Nazrareth because of the Roman census (for which there is no record in history).  There the shepherds come and the angels sing and it's simply lovely.  Most of us end it with the stable (actually it wasn't a stable; that's European retrojection) and the shepherds with angels hovering 'round (again, not what Luke describes).  But Luke ends it at the Temple, with the naming of the child (or is it blessing?  Luke isn't all that clear on Jewish/Hebraic customs) and the Song of Simeon ("Nunc Dimmitus").

Anyway....

None of that in Matthew.  Here the holy family lives in Bethlehem, and the holy birth draws no attention until the Magi show up, some two years later (no, not on the Holy Night).  That spurs Herod to enact the Massacre of the Innocents, even as the Holy Family recapitulates Hebraic history by fleeing to Egypt (a different journey, indeed).  They only return when Herod is dead, but return to Nazareth, not Bethlehem, so nobody will notice (or blame them for the massacre?).

Luke has Gabriel visit Zechariah, father-to-be to John the Baptizer, husband of Mary's cousin Elizabeth; and visit Mary.  Matthew has an angel visit Joseph in a dream; and again warn him to go to Egypt, and when to return (years later).  Matthew has the star guide the wisemen to Jesus; Luke has no star (sorry, your nativity scenes are a mess!).

Now reconcile all of that.  What do you leave out, and why?  Or do you make a grand hash of it, the way our nativity scenes regularly do?

Without removing one chronology or the other, you can't make these two stories harmonize.  So "chronological" doesn't work, here.  There's also the "Sermon on the Mount" from Matthew, which is on a plain in Luke (hierarchical symbolism); and John's gospel starts with the calling of the disciples (J the B barely appears), so no J the B preaching in the wilderness in preparation for Jesus (Matthew, Luke, Mark).  And John's gospel goes quickly from the wedding in Cana to Nicodemus to Lazarus to, mostly, Holy Week.  A lot of events in Matthew and Luke (which don't have all the same events) don't happen in John.

And which crucifixion do you want?  John has the famous exchange between Jesus and Pilate; but I don't think the other gospels do (my memory is fuzzy).  Mark doesn't have a resurrection (there is an empty tomb), unless you accept the tacked on ending found in some versions.  Matthew has Jesus see his disciples after death.  Luke has the Emmaus road narrative, and the ascension into Heaven.  John has Jesus appear and eat fish; then appear in a locked room.  These are all very different events, and the chronology is rather confused.  Luke has narrative gaps that indicate a passage of time he doesn't report on.  Mark hurries through events, mostly gives teachings, and gets straight to the crucifixion.  Only John has the Cana wedding, or Nicodemus, or the resurrection of Lazarus.  There are all kinds of events/miracles/teachings you can mash together like the nativity scene at Christmas, but you're leaving a lot out or brutalizing any chronology, or even the concept of a chronology, to do so.

And that's because the gospels are confessional documents, not histories.  Mark's gospel, best we can tell, was written in 70 C.E., 30-40 years after the crucifixion.  Matthew and Luke date to the last decades of the first century C.E., and John probably in the second decade of the second century.  They are telling oft-told tales.  Make of that what you will, but don't try to make hard history out of it.  You injure the gospels and their intent, to do so.

If you read the Hebrew scriptures as history, the history of Israel begins with Abraham, proceeds with Joseph (eventually) to protection in Egypt (during a period of famine), then Moses liberates the Israelites and eventually they establish their own nation under Judges.  Which works until Saul comes along and the people demand a king because everybody else has one.  Which leads to David, who is okay, and eventually to Solomon, who isn't.  And then comes Babylon and the Exile, as seen from the point of view of the prophets.

It's history; sort of.  But a great deal of the history of Israel I studied didn't depend solely on the scriptures for information.  Lots of gaps to be filled in there.  Lots of historical figures are not really historical figures; etc., etc., etc.  I'm okay with that; but when you try to make Moses or Abraham a real person living in real time, you run up against the problem of the historical record, which is thin to nonexistent outside the confessional documents.  Which, again, weren't written to conform to the later Greek ideas of history, much less the post-19th century European ones.  And trying to force them to does violence to the sources; and the confessions.

Now, "harmonizing the gospels" is an activity as old as Christianity itself.  I was an adult in seminary before I looked closely at Matthew and Luke and realized just the nativity stories alone were irreconcilable.  Jesus is a Nazarene born in Bethlehem in Luke, and is born in Bethlehem in Matthew because that's where his parents live; he only becomes a Nazarene because the family relocates to Nazareth after returning from Egypt.  And so on and so on.  The need to "harmonize" the gospels actually robs them of their rich complexity. It knocks off the parts that bother us, whoever "us" is.  And we shouldn't knock those parts off, especially for our convenience.  I, for example, am wholly uninterested in the "blood and thunder" Jesus, but sometimes he says things about condemnation and even damnation that I don't like, but can't ignore.  Jesus says gnomic things that sound good until you think about them.  I learned from Dom Crossan and others to read the parables not as charming Sunday School lessons, but as headbreakers that make your noggin ache when you think about what they explicitly (rather than implicitly) say.  Implicitly, they are "earthly tales with a heavenly purpose," but explicitly, they throw everything in the blender and shout "WHOOPEE!" over the destruction of expectations that results.  Here, this'll do. Turning that into a "heavenly story with an earthly meaning" drains it of all significance and importance, and reduces it to treacle, said the dormouse.  And I will no longer have it.

So "harmonizing" the gospels?  They don't even rhyme, much less sing in tune.  And a joyful noise unto the Lord that is, too.