The Gospels feign Classical Histories

By Suresh Shenoy

Have you read a history that is a non-history and a non-history that is history? At first glance, the question is a riddle wrapped in a contradiction. By customary norms of literature, it is mysterious if not nonsensical. That is, until one has read Jorge Luis Borges and Garcia Marquez, the masters of Magic Realism.
Writings in the mode of Magic Realism have the quality of magic. As by a sleight of hand, what is real looks like fantasy and what is fantasy from another angle looks like real. The constant demand on the reader to adjust perspectives is part of the textual presentation in this mode. That is the charm of Magic Realism.
Christians had contact with something more advanced than Magic Realism for close to two millennia in the Gospels. They read them and meditated upon them. In all that time, while aware of the mysterious quality of the Gospels, they could not explain what gave these books the rare quality.
The Greco-Roman Church explained away the all too apparent mystery of the Gospels. The official Church, insisting that it was serious, spread the story that the Gospels were of a unique genre of 'Sacred Scripture'. The uniqueness was a gift from God, it told the believers. God through His personal intervention inspired the Evangelists to tell their stories as they did with warts and all. Thus divinely planned and humanly executed, the Gospels were free of error and sure guides to our eternal salvation. They were the written 'Word of God'.
The Church did not tell their followers that their explanation about the 'Sacred Scripture' was indeed reflecting the quality of Magic Realism itself. That is to say, they were not explanations at all but only seemed like explanations. They were poorly thought out excuses.
Whereas Borges and Marquez confined Magic Realism to the presentation of their texts, the four Gospels went beyond. They imaginatively created the contents of their texts and the manner in which they structured them in genre behind genre. It was in 'genres disjunction'.
Mark added ironic subtext to the foreground text of the Gospel and added Classical History genre in the background and the genre of monomyths further in the background. Matthew did the same with more details. John had the Gospel in the foreground while Classical History in the background. Luke brilliantly outdid them all. He had a parody of the Gospel in the foreground, with Classical History, and three monomyths with a five-Act tragedy, one behind the other in the background.
This study, The Gospels feign Classical Histories discusses the first background texts. It shows that what seem like the Gospels are not Gospels but classical histories. Further studies will show that as the readers' perspectives change the Gospels will appear like something else.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Suresh Shenoy
• Release date: Jul 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310391637

Suresh Shenoy

I had been a secondary school teacher until my retirement in 2000. While planning for life after the gruelling work, I undertook a Masters course in Theology at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia. Graduation in M.Theol. coincided with the beginning of retirement. A course research paper on the Herod Narrative in the Jewish War by Josephus dramatically turned my life around. I'll explain how.While close reading the Herod Narrative, with my previous acquaintance with Roman literature, I discovered that Josephus had carefully incorporated all the literary conventions of a five-Act tragedy in Seneca's Hercules Furens. That gained for me a high distinction and an invitation to research into the whole of the Jewish War for a Ph.D. That was the year 2000.I began carefully reading the Jewish War as a history and where it fitted in the spectrum of classical histories. I found that Josephus fell closer to Herodotus than to Thucydides. I also noticed that the Senecan tragedy conventions were also present in the Jewish War side by side with the history. That indeed was an extension of the paper on the Herod Narrative.The evidence of two texts in one work by Josephus was my discovery. I named it 'Genres Disjunction'. The term explained that it was an example of Quintilian's structual irony. It also clarified that Josephus hid his deep hatred of the Flavian Romans, his benefactors, and secretly asserted his loyalty to the Jewish nation. He made the Flavians the heroes of the history and villains of the tragedy as he changed the Jewish nation from villains of the history into hero-victims of the tragedy.This is where my life began to change. I was baptized a Roman Catholic and lived a devout life of a Catholic until my reserch began. My curiosity took me from Josephus to the four Evangelists. I found to my utter disbelief that they too had 'Genres Disjunction' in their Gospels. All the Evangelists had the Gospel as the foreground text, but added other texts in the background. Mark had the classical history modeled on Livy's History of Rome. Matthew took Dionysius of Halicarnassus for his. Luke chose the Jewish War of Josephus for his background text and John had Herodotus for his second text.The more I studied the Gospels the more shocks were in store for me. I found that Mark had a second background text of monomyths in the public life and the passion of Christ. Matthew had the same including the Infancy Narrative. Luke followed Matthew and Mark with three monomyths. Luke also supplied the missing phases in Mark and Matthew.It was evident for me that what I had considered as genuine and truthful Catholic Christian Faith all my life, was pure myth, That there was nothing factual in the Gospels but fictional and fictitious. I began wondering why the Evangelists wrote the Gospels. Was it to deceive the early converts for the fun of it? Was there a grave reason for them to go to such lengths?I guessed that Paul gave them the reason, particularly because Luke, Paul's companion, was part of the group of disillusioned early Christians. I analyzed Paul's five personal letters and found that he was seriously afflicted with schizophrenia. He claimed visions and revelations where they were the brilliant flashes of his madness and mental instability.I also found that Paul and his Gentile Christians deceptively framed Peter and his Judaic faction as the arsonists of the Great Fire at Rome in A.D. 64. With James murdered at Jerusalem in A.D. 63 and Peter killed in Nero's persecution from October to December of A.D. 64, Paul was able to take control of the Church and shape it as he liked.The Church that Paul built was the tyrannical and corrupt organization that the Evangelists resented and rejected in their Gospels. Ironically, we in the twenty first century find the Gospels are relevant for their criticism of the official Church which the Gospel writers tore apart.My academic research into the Early Christian Studies has proven beyond doubt that my Catholic Christian Faith cannot be based on the Catholic dogmas and the Christ of Faith, but must urgently shift to the teachings and parables of Jesus of history. Those who read my seven books will doubtless come to the same concluions as I have.

Book preview

The Gospels feign

Classical Histories

New Testament as Literature Series

Volume 1

Suresh A. Shenoy

Copyright © 2015 Suresh A. Shenoy

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Cover information

Title: Die vier Evangelisten

Artist: Karolingischer Buchmaler um 820

Medium: Miniatur auf Pergament

Location: Dom, Schatzkammer

Cover designed by Prakash A. Shenoy

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

For Elvira

And our Six Stars!

Pilate asked Jesus, ‘What is truth?’

John 18:38

‘It seems more fitting to seek out the actual truth than mere imaginings of it.’

Niccolò Macchiavelli, The Prince

‘There is nothing that is not as if lost in the maze of indefatigable mirrors.’

Jorge Luis Borges, The Immortal

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part 1: Text and Genre

Chapter 1: Reading a Text for Meaning

Chapter 2: Genres Disjunction

Chapter 3: The Spectrum of Classical Histories

Part 2: Gospels feign as Classical Histories

Chapter 4: The Narrative of Mark’s Gospel

Chapter 5: The Narrative of Matthew’s Gospel

Chapter 6: The Narrative of Luke’s Gospel

Chapter 7: The Acts of Apostles by Luke

Chapter 8: The Narrative of John’s Gospel

Tying the Ends together

Epilogue: A Parable of the Barque of Paul

About the Author

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Debts of gratitude I owe many who have shaped my life and my thinking as a Catholic in a Hindu cultural milieu. It is humanly impossible to name them all except the very few with profound impact on me. Of these, my parents were my first educators who taught me to value the Catholic Faith for which my fourth generation ancestors gave their lives. The Jesuits have had significant formative influence on me; in particular do I acknowledge Professors Josef Neuner and Jacques Dupuis both of the Society of Jesus. By word and example, they instilled in me the discernment and the courage to choose, every time, the truth over and above political correctness.

It is an appropriate occasion to acknowledge my thanks to academics like Professor James S. McLaren of the Australian Catholic University and Professor William Dominik of Otago University for their warm encouragement in my doctoral research. However, I must affirm that the thesis of this book, the analytical process of the texts, the arguments and the conclusions expressed herein are entirely my own.

The comments and suggestions of readers and reviewers of the first published edition urged me to revise The Four Fabulists: the Literary Genres of the Gospels and the Acts of Apostles. I kept my mind open to what they had to say and tally it with what the texts were demanding of me to do. I gratefully acknowledge their contribution. The thoroughly revised original work is The Gospels feign Classical Histories.

To my friends Victoria Fritze, Barbara Boxhall, Pat Crudden and all my well-wishers who have generously rewarded me with their comments, I am grateful. Most importantly, it is my joyful privilege to thank my wife, Elvira, and our Six Stars. Their patience and generosity are boundless. Their unwavering support over the years has brought such a task as this within my reach.

Suresh A Shenoy

Melbourne

July 2015

Introduction

The Gospels feign Classical Histories is a revised edition of The Four Fabulists: the Literary Genres of the Gospels and the Acts of Apostles. The original work was a structural analysis of the books that the Greco Roman Church dogmatically alleges as divinely inspired.

My inspiration came from a variety of sources. The first, while analyzing the classical historians’ works it became clear to me that the differences among their histories outnumbered their commonalities. Common elements were the genre of classical history dealt with and the three types of textual content, namely, the ‘facts’, the ‘fictional’, and the ‘fictitious’. These three terms of importance to this study need definition and clarification.

A ‘fact’ in common parlance means anything that has occurred as is known as such with some certainty. However, as referred to in this study, ‘facts’ narrowly apply only to historically verifiable events and personalities. They require confirmation through sources independent of the texts under study. Such sources are the written testimony supported by other witnesses, official documents, archaeological relics and the like.

The ‘fictional’ are the events and the personalities which cannot be historically verified. Yet they could have occurred. Oral tradition, hearsay, rumor or gossip may transmit them. The only criterion they require is that they are humanly speaking probable or even possible. They allow for error and misunderstanding but within moral certainty required for human communication.

The ‘fictitious’ are beyond the ‘facts’ and the ‘fictional’. They are beyond human possibility. Their causation is attributable to Fate, Fortune, or the divine agency. It incorporates the belief that what is humanly impossible only the gods can accomplish. They are the object of ‘faith’ in all its shades. These three elements in varying proportions are consistently available in the textual content of every classical history.

The obvious differences lie in the pre-textual matter and variations in presentation as textual content. Pre-textual matter refers to events that occurred prior to their incorporation into the textual content. Add to these historical documents and archaeological relics. Textual content refers to matter chosen from the pre-textual matter as well as fictional and fictitious elements the author decides to incorporate into the text.

The differences between the texts suggested to me that the genre of classical history allowed for a wide range of expression. Having analyzed Herodotus first, his Historíai became the primary marker, one with a balanced blend of the three types of textual content. The other historians fell either to Herodotus’ right, with a distinct emphasis on historical fact, or to his left, with greater emphasis on fiction. It was easy to determine that Polybius is far to the right of Herodotus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus to the extreme left.

Josephus displayed his originality not only in getting himself closer to Herodotus in his history of the Jewish War. He also added another text of a different genre, one in the mode of Seneca’s five-Act tragedy. None of the scholars on Josephus had hitherto recognized this literary phenomenon. Neither did they realize that no other classical historian utilized ‘genres disjunction’, a form in which a single work contains two texts from different genres. Additionally, no other historian allowed the background text rather than the foreground text to bear the primacy of ‘meaning,’ in accordance with Roman irony as proposed by Quintilian.

The New Testament books were contemporary with Josephus and his Judaean War. Mark published his Gospel in A.D. 71, while Josephus published his War narrative in A.D. 79. Matthew soon followed with his Gospel around A.D. 85 and Luke around A.D. 90.

Such close contemporaneity of the famous works led me to wonder if the Gospels might share some generic commonalities with the works of Josephus. My curiosity took me with a fine comb through the Gospels and the Acts of Apostles. I was surprised to find how similar the Gospels and the Acts were to the classical histories.

I was also surprised to learn how and why Paul, later John seemingly, had made such significant changes to the identity and the life of Jesus, resulting in a split in early Christianity. Paul’s role in founding Gentile Christianity in rebellious opposition to Judaic Christianity under the leadership of James, Peter and John, then the Elders at Jerusalem, canonized the divinity of Jesus and diminished his humanity.

The second source of inspiration for The Four Fabulists I owed to The Da Vinci Code of a contemporary fabulist. My first experience of Dan Brown’s work was in its film version. The thoroughly entertaining ‘faction’ persuaded me to read the work in print. This would enable me to compare the experience of reading with that of watching the film. It was a mesmerizing reading over a couple of days. I was riveted to the pages, caught up as I was in the intrigues and novelty of the reconstituted world of medieval times.

One of the extraordinary claims in the Code was that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene and had children by her. Preposterous as it might sound the fabulist’s ‘art of astonishment’ so churns together the factual and the imaginary realities that the punch turns quite heady to the surprised readers. The impossibility of separating fact from fiction becomes the source of immense aesthetic pleasure.

Jesus, Mary Magdalene, fact and fiction with an admixture of aesthetic pleasure turned my mind to the New Testament. Specifically, I went to II Pet 1:4, which was my third source of inspiration. The author of this letter confidently claimed, ‘For we did not follow cleverly concocted fables when we made known to you the power and return of our Lord Jesus Christ; no, we were eyewitnesses of his grandeur’. In reality, the author was doing the opposite of what he was claiming to do. He was ‘following cleverly concocted fables’. He was brazenly offering his readers the ‘fictitious’ as the ‘facts’ asserting to be the ‘eyewitnesses of his grandeur’.

Instead of lulling my questioning mind, the deceptive claim in II Peter 1:4 turned it to the Gospels and the Acts of Apostles. I wondered how extensive the use was of the fact, the fiction and the fictitious in the four Gospels and the Acts. More to the point, I doubted if Mark, Matthew, Luke and John’s Gospels were less novelistic than Dan Brown’s novel was. I suspected that the Gospels hade outdone The Da Vinci Code. With a few weeks of reflection, I decided on venturing into an analytical study of the four books by the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel by John.

I had to draw the parameters of the study. It was clearly not going to be a fictional work, nor a mixed brew of fiction and fact, not a ‘faction’. The book would not investigate the ‘the method of form-history’ of the New Testament Gospels (Sancta Mater Ecclesia 5) or as divinely inspired ‘scriptures’ (Dei Verbum 11, 12). Rather, it would consistently focus on the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of Apostles as literary texts, that is, on their textual content and their textual presentation in accordance with the classical genres in which the authors wrote them.

By then, I had a clear hunch that they were in the genre of classical narrative history. Moreover, I was aware that the claim that they were divine revelations, or that they were divinely inspired, or that they were ‘scriptures’ free from error given as they were for our ‘salvation’ would stand or fall with the historicity, or the factuality of the narratives. Hence, the implications of this book are of momentous significance for Christianity as the four-fold Gospel is ‘the foundation of (its) faith’ (Dei Verbum 18).

There are at least four major issues having a bearing on the credibility of the Gospels and the Acts. If reports are correct, The Gospel of Judas seems to be an attempt at ‘setting records straight’. New Testament Gospels, the reports claim, were wrong about the death of Jesus, who in a conspiracy seemingly stage-managed his own execution at the hands of the Romans and their lackeys, the chief priests, with Judas as a ‘willing and loyal accessory’.

Such claims prompt more than a few questions about the ‘Gospel truth’. Firstly, it stops us in our tracks with the question, is there enough evidence in the New Testament Gospels, in the form they have come down to us, to support the claim that Jesus instigated his own arrest and execution? Secondly, if Judas was a ‘willing and loyal accessory’ then the New Testament Gospels calumniated him by distorting his character in depicting him as a traitor who came to a deserved suicidal end. Thirdly, could the Gospels have used Judas as a metaphor for someone else?

These questions demand of us as careful readers to search the Gospels for other examples of characters constructed to suit their authors. Further, the questions posed lead us to the associated topic of blatant bias in the New Testament Gospels, against individuals and groups of people. Bias affects the tone and atmosphere of the narration as well as the choice of narrative content and the actors who participate in it. The above issues implicitly affect the truth of the New Testament Gospels and call into doubt the claims of Christian dogma that they represent the written ‘Word of God’ or are otherwise ‘Sacred Scriptures’.

Briefly, each of these issues calls for a scrutiny. The first question is did Jesus stage-manage his execution? The New Testament Gospels stress that Jesus ‘cleansed the Temple’ (Mt 21:12-13; Mk 11:15-17; Lk 19:45-46; Jn 2:14-17), upturned the moneylenders’ tables and violently disrupted trade in the Court of the Gentiles, a legitimate trade approved by the Roman procurator and the chief priests. This comfortable trading arrangement benefitted many: the traders made their living by selling offerings for the sacrifice, the worshippers bought their offerings, the money-changers earned their commission by exchanging Roman denarii for Temple tokens, the chief priests got their share through Temple tax, and the Roman procurator profited from his part of the transaction. What seemed like a simple transaction benefitted five parties.

As the Gospel narratives stand, Jesus saw such activity as a desecration of the Temple and symptomatic of the corruption of contemporary Judaism. Indeed, he was disrupting with impressive passion the financial arrangements that affected two powerful groups of people as well as the livelihood of two less powerful groups. In such a context, Jesus’ intervention in the Temple could easily seem a rebellion deserving of capital penalty. When the priests challenged Jesus’ authority to disrupt the trade, he told them to destroy the Temple, as he would rebuild it in three days.

John the Evangelist promptly added that Jesus did not mean Herod’s Temple, but his own body. John thus informed his readers that Jesus knew of the penalty for his actions. In this regard, whether or not Jesus self-managed his death is no longer a moot question. In John’s Gospel, he deliberately chose to set himself up to the ultimate punishment according to the Roman law in practice at the time.

The ‘traitorous’ action of Judas, who was accused of betraying Jesus to the High Priest’s soldiers is another issue. If Jesus knowingly and willingly took part in rebellious activity punishable with death by crucifixion, it is hard to see how Judas became a traitor (Mt 26:14-16; Mk 14:10-11; Lk 22:3-6; Jn 13:21-28) in assisting his master and friend (Mt 26:48-49) to achieve the goal on which he had clearly set his mind. Rather, such a description of Judas to us seems a distortion of a character entrusted with responsibility for the finances of the group. Such an honored position reasonably demanded that Jesus trusted and respected Judas more than the others.

The trust of the master and the financial responsibility placed on Judas could easily lead to jealousy from the other disciples who were not averse to rivalry and self-aggrandizement. Take the instance of the two ambitious brothers, John and James, and the intervention of their mother on their behalf (Mt 20:20-28, Mk 10:35-45). Furthermore, it is quite probable that the disciples did not quite understand their master, much less the close relationship of Judas with him. Therefore, it seems that the Gospel writers imaginatively reconstituted the character of Judas and his role in the passion narrative. The story needed a villain and Judas was it. Such a character distortion is not unique to Judas. There are other