Pondering Christianity's Legacy

A Millenium, hence, when the final hymn has been sung, and the last parish priest has laid by his chasuble for a final time at the close of Mass; when the only functioning baptistry is filled with dust, and the vibrant edifices of Christian worship are crumbling mausoleums housing the bodies of the faithful awaiting resurrection day, secular historians will ponder the Christian faiths of the twenty-fifth century much as historians today ponder the Greco-Roman religions of some two Millenia ago.

            I personally am unaware of any residual influence those religions of Greece and Rome play in contemporary religious life. No one today, so far as I know, calls in prayer the names of the eternal Gods of the Greco-Roman world. What remains of their crumbling temples are stark testimonies to the once great influence of their religions. What then served as their religious literature is today relegated to ancient history classes, much as might be the case with the Bible in a Millenium or so. The corridors of history are cluttered with the remains of “true” religions. (Everyone’s religion is the true religion.) This observation raises the issue of the legacy of Christianity; what will today’s Christian faiths have bequeathed to the generations after its demise and final gasp as a vital force in human life?

            Legacies are only a matter of opinion, but there is one feature sparked by the Judeo-Christian faiths that has elbowed its way into contemporary human culture as perhaps a lasting residue of Biblical, Jewish, and Christian faiths. It is the caring concern for the most vulnerable in society. Until recently, such a humane concern was even inculcated into some USA governmental programs (USAID, for example, which Mr. Trump has effectively all but eliminated) but is found primarily in innumerable private benevolent programs for the poor and disfranchised of society.

            In Hebrew Bible God was the protector of the most vulnerable in Israelite society, widows, orphans/fatherless, strangers/sojourners, and the poor.¹ For example:

You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. (Exod 22:21-22 RSV)

You shall not strip your vineyards bare; neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the sojourner: I am the Lord your God. (Lev 19:10 RSV)

Christian faiths used the old covenant texts as Holy Scripture and to them added several postscripts in the form of what they called new covenant texts: gospels, letters/epistles, and an apocalypse. Within these postscript epistles/letters and gospels there is evidence that the gatherings of the earliest Christ followers continued the Israelite tradition of caring for the most vulnerable.

Jesus said, “Congratulations, you poor! God’s domain belongs to you. Congratulations, you hungry! You will have a feast. (Luke 6:20–21 SV)

In a parable: “Quick! Go out in the streets and alleys of the town, and usher in the poor, and crippled, the blind, and the lame.” (Luke 14:21 SV)

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (Jas 1:27 RSV)

First Timothy 5:9–16 reflects the existence in the second century of an organized ministry to pious church widows and Paul coordinated a collection of money to support the poor saints in Jerusalem (1 Cor 16:1–4; Rom 15:25–29; 2 Cor 8–9; Gal 2:10; Jas 2:16–17).

            Many of the references about care for the disadvantaged in the New Testament relate to those in the household of faith but at several points the concern seems to shade over into care for anyone in need (for example, Rom 12:19–20; 1 Cor 13:8–10; Gal 6:10). The clearest example of humane care for the nobodies of the world, however, is found is a story Jesus told about an unknown man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. The man is mugged and left beside the road half dead. Two other men, likely officials of the Judean temple at Jerusalem, pass by him with a furtive glance while a third man, a Samaritan (despised by Judeans) was moved to act compassionately. He tended the wounds of the half-dead man, and took him to an inn, where he cared for him that evening. The next day he paid the innkeeper what amounted to two day’s pay and told him “Take care of him and whatever more you spend I will repay you when I come back” (Luke 10:29b–35). The Samaritan’s abundant benevolence is simply astonishing!² The story is a product of the history of Judaism, but it has been garnered from history’s dustbins by early Jesus followers, who elevated its putative creator to divine status. It represents (in my view) the best example of disinterested benevolence that Christianity has to offer. What in your view will be the most positive legacy of Judeo-Christianity?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹M. G. Vanzant, “Orphan,” NIDB, 4.343; B. B. Thurston, “Widow,” NIDB, 5.846–47.

²The story recalls an aphorism in the Gospel of Thomas attributed to Jesus: “Blessed are those who go hungry to fill the starving belly of another.” Gospel of Thomas 69b (my translation).

Trickery in the Gospel of Mark

Artifice is defined as “a sly or artful trick”¹ and is regularly found in fiction literature, when an author informs a reader what characters are thinking or feeling:

[A]rtifice is unmistakably present whenever the author tells us what no one in so-called real life could possibly know.²

In life such views are not to be had. The act of providing them in fiction is itself an obtrusion by the author.³

Such obtrusions are especially obvious in narration that purports to be historical. And yet intelligent men were until quite recently able to read ostensibly historical accounts, like the Bible, packed with such illicit entries into private minds with no distress whatever.⁴

Booth continues by citing several New Testament passages in the canonical gospels where the authors perform the trick of reading Jesus’ mind. Specifically, he mentions two mind-reading tricks in Mark (1:41 and 5:30) and Jesus’ crisis of conscience in Gethsemane (Mark 14:32–42). How was it that this prayer came to be recorded in the Gospel of Mark when all of Jesus’ companions were fast asleep (14:37–40)? It turns out, however, that they might have overheard it, since scholars think that in antiquity people prayed out loud and not silently.

Ancient Prayer used to be spoken aloud. Silent or whispered prayer was reserved for offensive, indecent, erotic, or magical uses, but was later adopted as the normal rule in Christian practice.⁵

            Imagine my surprise when I read through Mark looking for interior views in which the narrator told readers what characters were thinking and/or feeling. Mark uses this novelistic deception over 30 times! Here are ten instances in which Mark informs readers what characters are thinking and/or feeling:

Mark 2:8 Jesus perceives in his spirit that they questioned within themselves.

Mark 5:29 She felt in her body that she was healed.

Mark 6:20 Herod feared John; when he heard John, he was perplexed but heard him gladly.

Mark 6:34 Jesus had compassion on them.

Mark 6:51–52 Disciples were utterly astounded and did not understand about the loaves.

Mark 9:6 Peter did not know what to say and the disciples were exceedingly afraid.

Mark 9:15 All the crowd were greatly amazed when they saw Jesus.

Mark 9:32 Disciples did not understand Jesus and were afraid to ask him.

Mark 12:15 Jesus knew their hypocrisy.

Mark 15:10 Pilate perceived that the chief priests delivered Jesus up out of envy.⁶

Such obtrusions are invented by the flesh and blood author, who attributes thoughts and feelings to the characters in the narrative for the purpose of advancing the narrative plot and developing characters in line with the narrative plot. The technique belongs to the rhetoric of fiction literature rather than the historians’ craft. Even had the flesh and blood author of the Gospel of Mark been present during the events being narrated (which s/he was not) the private thoughts and feelings of people would simply not have been accessible. Even when others tell us what they are thinking and feeling, we only know what they tell us. We can never have direct access to their private thoughts and emotions. Hence, exposing private thoughts and feelings is a deception performed by novelists, charlatans, libelers, and gospel writers. This one literary feature alone is enough to challenge the historical character of Mark’s Gospel.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4^th ed.). s. v. “artifice.”

²Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (2^nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 3.

³Both, Rhetoric of Fiction, 17.

⁴Booth, Rhetoric of Fiction, 17-18, note 10.

⁵H. S. Versnel, “Prayer,” Oxford Classical Dictionary (3^rd ed., 1999), 1243. There were, however, exceptions to praying aloud. See Hannah’s prayer which was clearly silent (1 Sam 1:9–20).

⁶Here are the other interior views: Mark 2:8; 6:26; 7:27; 8:12; 10:22, 24, 26, 32, 41; 11:18, 32; 12:12,17; 14:4–5, 19, 33, 40; 15:44; 16:6; 16:8.