Did some New Testament books grow over time?

It has been so long since I entered the purgatorial fires of studying the Bible in context that it has become difficult to remember how shocking some of the things I say to my students must be--both to the young and even moreso to the adult ones I now teach regularly for our grad program. IWU's grad program right now, in my opinion, does a great service to a group of pastors who would not normally get masters training. The pool of groups in my evening classes is incredibly diverse and delectable. I've had Apostolic, Pentecostal, house church, Baptist, Bible Methodist, Disciples, Presbyterian, Free Methodist... and very few Wesleyans.

But I often feel depressed after class. Many of the things I say are obvious, far beyond any reasonable dispute. (Others aren't, of course) You know they're true as soon as someone points them out to you--like the fact that 1 Thessalonians says it was written to, well, people who lived in a place called Thessalonica.

But people aren't wired to read the Bible with the common sense they would read any other book. Some of my adult, pastor students have a squinty, puzzled look on their faces the whole 8 weeks of the course, as if I am speaking strange mysteries. I feel like I'm taking away their innocence, this despite the fact they stand up and speak from the Bible for God each week. Of course, I may be overestimating how well they see the implications of what I'm saying. Maybe they go back to their churches and continue using the Bible just as they did before, with no better sense of how to read the words in context.

Anyway, that's a tangent. The reason I bring it up is my conclusion that the vast majority of pastors in America (and that's not the ones who go to mainstream Christian colleges or seminaries) see the origins of the Bible much along the lines of God handing the 10 commandments to Moses. Paul sits down one day with papyrus and stylus in hand and God begins to tell him what to write. He writes until God is done inspiring him, perhaps amazed at the things "the Holy Spirit was revealing through him." And then we have it, Romans is done.

This model of inspiration is not wired to think of the books of the Bible in historical terms, as products of real situations with a writing process. You often encounter a subconscious resistance by many Christians when you begin to talk about the Bible historically, even when obvious, common sense aspects of that process are under discussion. And those who resist may not even be able to tell you why they find what you're saying puzzling or angering.

For example, many people will resist the idea that Paul or a biblical author might have used a secretary or sources in the course of composition. Mind you, becoming a scholar doesn't always change these deep seated inclinations. In my opinion, some evangelical scholarship is simply a sophisticated version of these aversions. Why the strong aversion, for example, to the idea that Silas might have served as Peter's secretary in 1 Peter 5? And since anyone can start a denomination or Bible college in America, it has historically been all too easy to insulate yourself as a group from obvious thoughts. There is a vast "scholarly" coping mechanism out there that has evolved with the main goal of avoiding obvious conclusions.

What inspired this little reflection is the fact that I was reading a little in Josephus' Jewish War the other day. The introduction was talking about how Josephus likely expanded the work over time, that the first two books of this 7 book work were probably added after the first publication.

For some reason, this clicked for me. It's a picture of Josephus writing a "first edition" of the War in honor of the emperor Vespasian, a very pro-Roman version. But of course every time someone wanted a copy, the manuscript had to be copied by hand all over again. The great thing about blogging is that if I make a mistake or want to fix or expand something, it is very easy to change it. So it was with ancient manuscript copying. Josephus was able to add two books to the front of the work giving historical background as a later copy was being made, a later "edition" if you would.

This picture of Josephus editing and expanding his work over time clicked with me in relation to some biblical material, John and Revelation in particular. With New Testament letters, it is a little different. They are sent to a particular location different from the author. The author doesn't really have the luxury to change much over time.

But the gospels and Acts could be a different situation. How do we know, for example, that Mark's parenthetical comments like "For the Jews all wash their hands..." or "By this Jesus declared all foods clean" were not added secondarily as new copies of Mark were made? The D manuscript of Acts is significantly longer than other manuscripts, and not because it contradicts the other versions. Most of the additions are geographical and explanatory.

Of course with D these additions were probably added later than Luke's lifetime. In the case of Mark, on the other hand, Mark himself could have added these comments. This creates complications for the synoptic question, for it is possible that Matthew and Luke used a slightly different version of Mark than we now have. It also potentially throws a monkey wrench into textual criticism as it is conventionally conceived. What if, for example, the story of the Samaritan women in John 8 was not in an early version of John while included in a later one?

In cases such as the latter one, where we actually have manuscripts with and without a particular verse or reading, the change is likely to have taken place after the author's lifetime. All the manuscripts of Mark have the verses we mentioned, but the earliest manuscripts of John don't have the story of the woman caught in adultery.

But in my opinion, the books that reflection on Josephus potentially impacts the most are John and Revelation. These are books that arguably belonged to a community of a somewhat more isolated bent with a charismatic figure or figures at its center that lived together over an extended period of time. And these two writings bear the marks of documents that have undergone significant expansion over time.

Let me just give a couple examples. In between the first and second sign in John is a reference to Jesus doing many signs. One explanation would be that an earlier version of John was expanded with the material that has reference to many signs now in between the original first and second signs.

One part of Revelation speaks of a sixth king on seven hills who "now is." This would likely be Vespasian. Yet it is the virtual consensus of tradition and scholarship that Revelation was finished in the reign of Domitian. My hunch is that the earliest version of Revelation was written just after Jerusalem and the temple was destroyed, but that it didn't reach its "final form" until the time of Domitian.

The model of ongoing editing and expansion over time fits what we observe in John and Revelation. It would also explain why John seems to show so little interaction with Mark--its earliest drafts would be created about the same time as Mark was being written. By the way, we have with the Dead Sea Scrolls clear examples of this sort of process, where among the scrolls are both earlier, shorter versions of documents and later, longer ones.

Now, back to where we started. I generally don't talk about this stuff with any of my IWU classes, with the exception of the times I teach a New Testament honors class. But you can see where this sort of thinking clashes with the usual model of how the books of the Bible were produced. For one thing, it seems such a human process, although why couldn't God inspire a person to edit and use sources as well as to receive dictation? But it also implies that John may not be a continuous narrative from a strictly historical perspective. I would suggest that this is no problem for John, but rather, a problem with our preconceptions about John.

I don't see any of these thoughts as contrary to faith or love of the Bible. And although I generally "don't go there" on many thoughts I have that seem obvious in the light of study, you have to wonder how Christianity can be healthy if at some point we don't develop a faith that can incorporate rather than avoid such things.

What do you think?