Midrashic Technique

Thinking maturely about the Christian faith

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Midrashic Technique

By Rowland Croucher and others ⋅ October 13, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

from John Shelby Spong’s “Liberating The Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, Freeing Jesus from 2000 years of misunderstanding” (HarperSan Francisco: I996) pp. ix – xiv

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This book was horn as early as January I99I, when I was on sabbatical at Magdalen College, Oxford. At that moment I was working on the birth narratives of the New Testament and their implications for contemporary women. In discussing these matters with the Dean of Magdalen College, a New Testament scholar named Jeffrey John, he suggested that I might want to explore the concept of midrash, Haggadic midrash to be specific, that was present in the birth narratives. He also directed me toward the writings of Michael D. Goulder of the faculty of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, about whom I had never heard. It was this suggestion that was to determine the immediate future of both my aca�demic and my writing careers. To my regret I discovered first that most of Goulder’s books were out of print. I was able to purchase his most recent work, a two-volume commentary on Luke, entitled Luke: A New Paradigm. My first impression was that it was the most expensive book I had ever purchased! It was also heavy reading. It would be two years before I would do a thorough study of this work. Jeffrey John’s suggestion and some of Michael Goulder’s insights had their effect on me, however, and this was clearly visible when I published my book Born of a Woman in September I99I. The concept of midrash had be�come the lens through which I viewed the birth narratives.

Next I moved on to begin some new work on the resurrection narratives, and more and more I was enabled by Goulder and others to see these central passages of the Gospels through Jew�ish eyes. In the spring term of 1992, while a fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, I wrote Resurrection: Myth or Reality? In this book I proposed that the Jerusalem Easter tradition was shaped in almost every detail by the Jewish festival of Sukkot or Tabernacles. I had made, almost unconsciously, my first major interpretive connection between Jewish liturgical practice and the shape of the Christian faith. I was, however, not yet aware of how important that connection would turn out to be.

During that same time, I also found in the Cambridge library a copy of one of Goulder’s out-of-print books, Midrash and Lection in Matthew. I read it in its entirety. It was, quite frankly, the most exciting New Testament scholarship reading I had done in my professional life. Goulder documented for me the midrashic connections between the Gospels and the Jewish scriptures in mind-boggling ways, and he opened my eyes for the first time to the possibility that the Jewish liturgical calendar, far more than history or the memory of eyewitnesses, had deter�mined both the shape and much of the content of the Gospels.

So dramatic was this learning experience that I did three things. First, I contacted Michael Goulder, told him of my inter�est in his work, and asked if I might come to Birmingham to spend some time with him. He was wonderfully receptive, and a genuine friendship began to develop. We have now made four journeys to Birmingham to spend time in dialogue with this bril�liant and unusual man.

Second, I employed an English rare-books firm to search for copies of Goulder’s out-of-print volumes. They were successful, and now each of his published works is a cherished possession in my personal library. Each of these volumes also bears the marks of a book that, I did not just read, but devoured. They are penciled extensively, with underlines and comments, and I have copious notes on each of them in my files.

Third, I became convinced that I wanted to write my next book on the Jewishness of the Gospels, despite the fact that I had a contract for a quite different book with my publisher, HarperCollins. My first working title of this new book was The Gospels as Midrasb. My editor at HarperCollins, however, dis�couraged that title for two reasons: First, midrash is not a fa�miliar word to the general reader, he said, and second, Jewish people use the term midrash in a very strict and limited sense, which was quite different from the way I was using the term. I had seen that reaction in my closest rabbi friend, jack Daniel Spiro, the first time I used the term in a public lecture that he attended. I do not ever want to be offensive to my fellow pil�grims within the Jewish tradition, so in this book I have used the, word midrash only as the modifying adjective, midrashic, both to indicate the broadness of the way I am employing this concept and also to leave the word midrash to its special Jewish understanding.

My contract with HarperCollins was for a book on how one can continue to say the creeds of the Church with integrity while taking seriously the intellectual revolution that stretches from Copernicus through Einstein, and into the fields of astrophysics and subatomic physics, which has created what some ~all “the postmodern world.” This book, which was to be called A Be�liever in Exile, now needed to be postponed. Writing is such an all-consuming vocation that one can hardly afford to focus in more than one direction at a time. My friends at HarperCollins agreed to this plan and allowed me to postpone A Believer in Exile which is now scheduled for a I998 publication date.

So it was that my consuming task from I992. to I995 was to explore the Jewish background of the Christian scriptures. My primary teacher, through his books as well as in correspondence, and through personal visits, has been Michael Goulder.

This man fascinated me not only with his writing but also with the personal journey of his life. His story was unique. It is fair to say that Michael Goulder is not a power in religious or ecclesiastical circles. Indeed, his work is generally ignored by that world. One reason for this is that his books are not written for popular consumption. They will never he part of th e table talk of ordinary folk. They are closely argued, heavily foot�noted, and lean quite frequently on the nuance found in a Greek or Hebrew word. They are also challenging to the orthodoxy of the contemporary religious consensus. Since they are not likely, therefore, to come to public attention, the traditional theologi�cal “defenders of the faith” do not have to deal with Goulder’s arguments or insights. So a scholar like Goulder does not haunt the religious establishment. He tends rather to remain in the shadows.

There is one other reason, however, that I think is even more telling. Michael Goulder was at one time an ordained priest in the Church of England. Before plunging into graduate studies and an academic career, he had actually served as the vicar of a congregation. However, as broad as Anglican Christianity has tended to be theologically, the way that faith community under�stood its belief system became less and less adequate for this probing scholar. In producing three of his most pen�etrating books, Michael Goulder resigned from his ordination and ceased to identify himself as a priest. He also ceased even to identify himself as a Christian, proclaiming himself to be “a nonaggressive atheist.” Christian traditionalists who are more acquainted with the techniques of propaganda than they are with the demands of education find it hard to deal with a bril�liant New Testament scholar who is an atheist. The easiest way to handle that situation is simply to ignore it. So Michael Goul�der has generally been ignored in the academic circles that purport to be made up of “Christian scholars.” It is’ a shame be�cause the insights of truth, even the truth that lies buried be�neath the words of the gospel, are valid no matter who the illuminating source of those insights happens to be. Truth, even Christian truth, can and does stem from the mind and pen of one who thinks himself to be an atheist.

I have come to know, admire, and respect Michael. Goulder. He is gentle, loving, kind, and extremely personable. He and my wife seem especially happy in each other’s company. He. has never once been critical of or negative about my ultimate commitment to Jesus the Christ as my Lord. We have discussed those parts of the gospel story that stretch credibility to the breaking point when literalized. We have together sought to de�fine the God in whose reality I believe and he rejects. Both of us love to probe the scriptures for clues to truth for Michael and clues to God for me, and both of us delight when we discover something that has generally been undiscovered before. I re�member my joy when I came to the conclusion that Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, was a midrashic creation, with his name stemming from the fact that John had been identified with the prophet Malachi, whose immediate predecessor in the Bible was the prophet, Zechariah. So John’s immediate predecessor was called Zechariah. I remember even better Michael’s amuse�ment and his twinkling smile when he showed me that he had not only come to, but written about, this possibility years before .it even dawned on me to explore the issue.

I have footnoted Michael Goulder significantly in this book, but there is a sense in which this whole book is my attempt to make accessible to the general public the insights of Michael Goulder. I am not a slavish disciple. He is not my only source of insight. I have drawn on the reading of a lifetime. Nor do I agree with Goulder in all his conclusions. Indeed, I have broken with my mentor at significant points in my story~ The most striking disagreement will be on the -”order” that organized the Gospel of Luke. For me it was the Torah. For Michael it was the at�tempt on Luke’s part to harmonize Mark and Matthew, which are, Goulder will argue, Luke’s only major sources.

But I do assume -the validity of many of Goulder’s premises. I no longer accept the popular theory of the existence of some�thing called the “Q” document (Burton Mack, et al., to the con�trary notwithstanding). That is a new conclusion for me. Yet all, of the reasons,for asserting the existence of Q disappear for-me when Luke and Matthew are understood as liturgical and lec�tionary books. In this volume I will not debate or seek to justify my dismissal of the Q hypothesis. I will simply assume it. Those who wish to debate this are referred to the devastating argument against it developed by Goulder in the preface to Luke: A New Paradigm. It was for me totally persuasive. I prefer to think that Q was nothing more or less than Matthew’s own creative genius that emerged as he wrote his gospel as a midrasbic expansion of Mark designed better to fit the entire liturgical year of the Jews.

I also dismiss the presumed “M” and “L” documents as sepa�rate sources of written or oral tradition. The M source for me was Matthew’s personal creation based on Paul, or on the He�brew scriptures, but not picked up by Luke so that it remained uniquely Matthean. L was that material peculiar to Luke’s gospel that I think Luke himself wrote. Luke. I am assuming, had Mark and Matthew before him as he created his gospel. He preferred Mark and followed him closely. However, Luke also adapted Matthew to his purposes, thereby requiring what came to be called the Q hypothesis, which simply suggested that Matthew and Luke had enough common material to postulate a common source. That common source was, in my opinion, that Luke both had read and would employ Matthew in the writing of his gospel. Luke, however, like Matthew, also created some new, material based primarily on his understanding of the Hebrew scriptures. most especially Genesis and Deuteronomy. This was the material that in time came to be called the L source.

So this book assumes that Matthew had Mark before him when he wrote. Luke had Mark and Matthew both before him when he wrote; and John had Mark, Matthew, and Luke before him when he wrote. It is amazingly simple; and the lectionary theory presented in these pages answers almost all of the ques�tions that the various source theories were designed to answer.

I am pleased to express publicly my deep admiration for Michael Goulder and for his work. I am delighted if I can popu�larize some of his insights and thus inject them into the theolog�ical debates of the academy that will ultimately project their content into the pulpits and pews of the churches of the Christ�ian world. I would find it both ironic and exhilarating if the in�sights of my nonbelieving mentor, Michael Goulder, could help people to make meaningful and significant commitments to the Christian faith.