Books, Faith, World & More

Two More Books on the Teachings of Jesus

Reviews of The Gospel of Jesus and of The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus

Beliefs: Mennonite Faith and Practice, by John D. Roth. Herald Press, 2005.

Stories: How Mennonites Came to Be, by John D. Roth. Herald Press, 2006.

Practices: Mennonite Worship and Witness, by John D. Roth. Herald Press, 2009.

Do we need any more books on the teachings of Jesus? As I thought of this, I was reminded of a statement about the Bible attributed to Mark Twain. Then I found that Gomes quotes it: “It is not what I don’t understand in the Bible that troubles me; it is what is perfectly clear that does” (73). But just as we do not stop listening to sermons because we have heard it all before, we may find that we can jog a memory or pick up an insight from books such as these.

Of the two, I find Gomes easier to read and more inspiring. Robinson represents a scholarly specialty. His book is subtitled, A Historical Search for the Original Good News. He affirms that this is to be found in the presumed second source used by Matthew and Luke and dubbed “Q” after the German word for “source.” Most of us most of the time are willing to settle for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John even though we may have become aware of editorial and rhetorical overtones. Like Mark Twain we find plenty to make us uncomfortable in what we already understand.

Robinson would propose to get us back to the original source of what Jesus really said. He writes that the best source is to be found in the “Sayings Gospel Q” which “is not readily available to the public, since it is not as such in the Bible; it has to be reconstituted from the tradition behind the shared sayings in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke” (6).

Robinson perceives that the Gospel of Mark was written for a Gentile Christian audience as noted in features such as “his explanation of Jewish customs for his Gentile readers” (7). On the other hand, “there are indications in the Sayings Gospel Q that it was written for a Jewish Christian audience” (8).

As a scholar, Robinson wants to get behind the edited version to the original. That this tradition—or document if there was one—may have been compiled for Jewish Christians is of interest to me. I have picked up a clue here and there about how Jewish Christians evidently fell by the wayside in the events of the early church.

Particularly after Constantine the church became official and Gentile. In a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem I was told that Constantine (or perhaps his mother) ruled that a person had to eat pork to be allowed to enter the church. Of course a Jewish Christian, according to Jewish tradition, could not do this and so was excluded.

As an example of what happened to the Sayings Gospel Q, Robinson notes that Matthew drew from it for the Sermon on the Mount. “Thus down through the centuries, when the Sayings Gospel Q was completely lost, indeed its very existence unknown, it is the Sermon on the Mount that functioned indirectly to keep its message—the gospel of Jesus—alive” (21).

Robinson devotes a paragraph to the fate of the Sermon, how it was lost when Christian soldiers followed Constantine into battle. It was lost, he says, until rediscovered by Francis of Assisi, Leo Tolstoy, and Martin Luther King Jr. This seems an odd combination. He evidently has not heard of the Anabaptists, the Quakers, or the Moravians, to mention a few. But, of course, Robinson is not a historical scholar.

In chapter 2 we learn that in 1983 Robinson called together 40 scholars “to reconstruct the Sayings Gospel Q word by word.” This has been published in a “Critical Edition” and an “Abridged Edition” for anyone who has the fortitude to follow through (22). For those of us less inclined, the text of this presumed document appears in this book on pages 27 to 54. Most of us will prefer the four Gospels. Cited one by one without context, the Sayings lack something, well, context. The rest of the book is given to citations of Jesus’ teaching in comparison with how they appear in the other Gospels, especially Matthew and Luke.

Among the scholarly assumptions that startled me is Robinson’s assertion that Jesus may not have been literate since an estimation of literacy in the Roman Empire runs from 10 to 15 percent and “it is not very probable that the son of a carpenter in an Aramaic speaking village in Galilee would have learned to read and write” (63). Rather than “scribal learnedness, one finds a villager’s intuitive insight into nature” (65). So in Luke 4 Robinson perceives that Luke has written “a very good Christian sermon. This is precisely what Luke would have done in Jesus’ name” (69).

Not being a scholar, I can only observe that New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey reports that “serious minded Jews would gather and devote themselves to studying the Torah and applying its laws to their day. . . . We can be confident that Jesus was a part of this group” (Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, 146. I reviewed Bailey’s book in Dreamseeker Magazine, Summer 2008.)

I do find some of Robinson’s other observations and warnings appropriate. He notes that after Paul, the Gentile church built its faith “around the cross as its primary symbol. . . . The outcome has been the apostles Creed which omits completely Jesus’ Galilean ministry as a Jew. . . . It is this glaring omission in . . . understanding of Jesus that this present book is seeking to fill” (88). 

Among Robinson’s observations is that “the only real theological term that Jesus constantly used was a rare expression usually translated ‘Kingdom of God’ but perhaps better translated ‘God reign,’ ‘God reigning’’’ (162). As for Jesus’ death, Robinson observes that “the Sayings Gospel Q presupposes Jesus’ death as a combination of the prophets sent by Wisdom and killed by Jerusalemites, yet without isolating his death as the saving event par excellence as the church is accustomed to think of it” (199).

These and similar observations remind us of our temptation to remake Jesus into our own image rather than to take him seriously as a model for us. If we have the patience to follow through, Robinson’s book can serve as a reality check on our perspective about Jesus. In the end Robinson hopes his book may be an evangelistic tract. “Listen to what Jesus had to say, hear his gospel, and let it change your life for good. This is why I wrote this book, for you. Take it and use it for yourself” (228). Yes, of course, even after Mark Twain.

The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus does not require the same level of concentration. Gomes is a world-renowned preacher, so he knows how to reach out to the reader. He also is concerned to present a gospel that can change us if we take it seriously: “It is my highest hope to appeal not so much to those who are already set in their convictions, but to that vast company of readers willing to investigate a point of view that may not be its own” (5). 

He who will later quote Mark Twain asks whether it “could be that we spend so much time trying to make sense of the Bible or making it conform to our set of social expectations that we have failed to take to heart the essential content of the preaching and teaching of Jesus” (23).

Each of the 11 chapters is essentially self-contained, probably growing out of sermons and lectures Gomes has given, but they are organized under three topics: 1) “The Trouble with Scriptures,” 2) “The Gospel and Conventional Wisdom,” and 3) “Where Do We Go From Here?” As Professor of Christian Morals and preacher in the Memorial Church at Harvard University, Gomes has been in a position to hear what is talked about in our culture. The book is a response.

In “We Start With the Bible” Gomes observes that “it is easier to talk about Jesus than it is to talk about what he talked about” (18). “Perhaps now, and in the pages to follow, is the place to look at just what Jesus preached and taught” (23). The chapter “An Offending Gospel” comments on Jesus’ sermon at Nazareth, the sermon which Robinson suggests was compiled by Luke. Concerning the sermon at Nazareth, he observes that “the people take offense not so much with what Jesus claims about himself as with the claims he makes about a God who is more than a tribal deity” (39).

At the end of “The Risks of Nonconformity” he observes that “God is greater and more generous than the best of those who profess to know and serve him. This is the radical nonconformity with the conventional wisdom that Jesus both proclaimed and exemplified, and, alas, it cost him his life. Will we hope to fare any better as disciples of his nonconformity?” (63).

In the second section Gomes responds to fear, as in “Where Was God on Sept. 11?” And to conflict where he reports on the sermon he preached before the Iraq war which brought a protest from a military man. But “conflict is the way of the world. The conventional wisdom tells us that there is little we can do about it, yet people of conscience, especially religious people, and most especially Christian people, are compelled by a vision of a world not yet here to deal with a world that is” (129-130).

In the final section, Gomes avers that the gospel is “A Social Gospel” and asks whether it is “possible to imagine a country in which those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ . . . can unite in a social wisdom that goes beyond the Bible and into the whole gospel for the whole person” (186). The final two chapters before the conclusion discuss inclusivism and hope as growing out of the gospel.

In the first of these he advocates for homosexuals. “If there is an area in which we are to be weighed and found wanting, this is it. It is not out of ignorance alone that we behave as we do to sexual minorities; it is out of ignorance, fear, and in certain cases, malice” (199). As for the second he observes that “If we want to know how hope works, we must look first to those who suffer, for it is only in and through suffering that hope is made manifest” (221).

Finally, Gomes asserts that “I’m convinced of two things, neither of which is novel but both of which are essential. First, what we know of God or about God we know because of what we know about Jesus, and second, Jesus’ proclamation is meant to take us from the world that is to a world that is to be” (240).

So we have two writers of experience reflecting on their experience and seeking to focus as an evangelistic message what they have learned. Those of us who read and underline do well to keep in mind the Mark Twain principle. If we get a new insight here, what have we done with the insights we already had?
—Daniel Hertzler, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, is an editor, writer, and chair of the elders, Scottdale Mennonite Church.