Chapter 1
Randel lays out the thesis of his book right at the start: “The Gospels…are largely fictional accounts concerning an historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, intended to create a life-enhancing understanding of his nature” (10). According to Helms, the Gospels are basically works of art, specifically, works of literature. The Gospel’s authors, like all works of literature, employ the use of their imagination to create poetry, fiction, and other literary genres. To Helms, this should not be seen as a negative observation, as his goal in this book is not to debunk Christianity or the historical reliability of the New Testament; simply put, given that the Gospels are in written form, and as such are works of literature, they too are subject to literary criticism. This approach will open up a new world of interpretation, leading to possibly a deeper, more meaningful understanding of them, even if in the process they are divorced from any arbitrary relationship to ‘historical facts’.
The Gospels, from this perspective then, can be understood as religious propaganda in the form of fictional narratives. History has shown us that its most important figures are remembered first in the form of oral tradition, and that oral tradition, because of its very nature, often times is mythicized and connected with universally known archetypes or patterns. This by no means is unique to Jesus of Nazareth. Alexander the Great, Apollonius of Tyana, the Roman Ceasers, and many more have gone through mythological, legendary, and fictional transformations due to the unreliability of oral tradition. This is not a new discovery when it relates to the Gospels. Paul, the earliest of our New Testament writers, already had to deal with what in his opinion was a “different gospel” (Gal 1:6). Evidently, the stories of Jesus were not homogenous and at many points actually contradicted each other from the very beginning. The author of the Gospel of Luke was also aware of a flourishing enterprise in writing down the traditions about Jesus that were circulating around, and takes it upon himself to “…write an orderly account…so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed” (Luke 1:1-4) when speaking to Theophilus in the opening of his Gospel. All this, he tells us, after “…investigating everything carefully from the very first…” (Luke 1:3). Clearly, whatever accounts he’d come across were not sufficient enough for his reader to know the truth about what he had learned.
The ‘eyewitnesses’ that Luke and the other New Testament authors supposedly used obtained their knowledge from, according to Helms, three types of sources: personal revelation (Paul), tradition (Luke), and the Hebrew Scriptures (Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) (14). While the oral traditions about Jesus certainly began with those who may have known him personally, once handed down to the Gospel writers they were then embellished with fiction, legend, and myth in order to not so much recount the past as it is, but to affect the present. Their main interest in writing down these traditions and retelling them in their own unique way was not to share knowledge about the historical Jesus of Nazareth, but to lend their efforts to a theological vision.
Given the nature of the Gospel stories, the difficulty in carving out the historical Jesus from them is not a problem because of lack of data, but because an overabundance of it. Helms uses as an example the last words of Jesus on the cross. Within New Testament studies, the consensus is that Mark wrote his gospel first sometime shortly after 70 C.E. and that both Matthew and Luke, and possibly even John, used him as a primary source to write their own narratives. Jesus’ last words on the cross are completely different within each gospel. If the hypothesis is correct, that Mark was a source for at least Matthew and Luke, then why did they change the last words of Jesus on the cross? Clearly, Matthew and Luke were not interested in telling the same story that Mark was telling, they were more interested in telling their own. As a result, by editing Mark’s narrative and retelling it in their own unique way, Matthew and Luke indirectly declare Mark’s account as fiction and also their own. At other times, we know that they both quote Mark, sometimes word for word, and at other times they embellish a story, or right out omit it. The gospel writers then are “…[creating] narrative and dramatic scenes to express the ‘real’ or inner (theological) meaning of a situation…” (18). With the last words of Jesus specifically, they are self-consciously creating a work of fiction to tell the story about the ideal conception of Jesus’ death, often times, alluding to Old Testament passages in order to “fulfill” the scriptures.
In regards to the Old Testament, Helms makes an interesting observation by quoting Northrop Frye :
“How do we know that the gospel story is true? Because it confirms the prophecies of the Old Testament. But how do we know that the Old Testament prophecies are true? Because they are confirmed by the Gospel story. Evidence, so called, is bounced back and forth between the testaments like a tennis ball; and no other evidence is given us. The two testaments form a double mirror, each reflecting the other but neither the world outside.” (19)
In other words, there seems to be some type of circular reasoning going on when the gospel writers employ the usage of the Old Testament to ‘prove’ the prophetic nature of their stories. Jesus’ stories are true because they fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, the Old Testament prophecies are true because Jesus fulfilled them… In employing this methodology, the gospel writers turn the Hebrew Scriptures into no longer the story of Israel, but the story of Jesus, and consequently, that of Christianity. In quoting the Psalms, for example, they turn them into prophecies, and turn David into a type or foreshadowing of Jesus.
