WACO, Texas (ABP) — Reading the Gospels is less like listening to a solo than to a choir singing in four-part harmony, a Duke University scholar said at the 2011 Winter Pastors’ School at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary.
Richard Hays, dean of Duke Divinity School, focused on the Gospels as he addressed the 2011 Winter Pastors’ School. (PHOTOS/Matthew Minard, Baylor Marketing & Communications)
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Richard Hays, the George Washington Ivey professor of New Testament and dean of Duke Divinity School, explained to nearly 200 people attending the event that the first three books of the New Testament — Matthew, Mark and Luke — are called the Synoptic Gospels. They include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence and sometimes with nearly exactly the same wording.
But Hays said a close examination shows very different approaches, each of which enriches the reader’s understanding.
Mark begins by “plunging roughly to the point of Jesus’ baptism,” Hays said. But Matthew anchors his account in Jesus’ genealogy, stretching back 42 generations to Abraham instead of “bursting out of nowhere” as Mark does.
Matthew’s approach is “hardly an electrifying way to begin the narrative, but it ensures the continuation between Israel’s story and the one Matthew is about to tell,” he said.
While Mark’s introduction to Jesus is straightforward — recounting the way John the Baptist heralded Jesus’ arrival — his Gospel also demonstrates “a reticence about the shocking claims he is making about Jesus,” Hays said. Mark rarely points explicitly to Old Testament Scripture references to the Messiah. And the Gospel ends with the women fleeing the tomb in fear, rather than the longer, bolder accounts of the Resurrection, which are described in the other Gospels.
Matthew, meanwhile, is “far more overt in many passages, providing explicit explanation of things only hinted about” in Mark, he said.
“Matthew erects a large highway sign to make it clear that Jesus is the fulfillment of Scripture,” Hays said. Matthew cites myriad allusions and quotations from Old Testament law and prophecies to frame his text in “an authoritative voice.”
Richard Hays, dean of Duke Divinity School, autographs books and visits with students and faculty at Truett Seminary between sessions of the 2011 Winter Pastors’ School. (PHOTOS/Matthew Minard, Baylor Marketing & Communications)
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The message is “beginning the world anew,” Hays said. “Jesus is both the son of David, the anointed king, and the son of Abraham.
In the third Gospel — Luke — the story of Jesus is “deeply counter-cultural,” referring to the Old Testament not so much as a collection of predictions but as a collection of promises.
Jesus is portrayed as an agent of liberation, a Spirit-anointed servant who will bring grace to outsiders, Hays said. His followers in the church will be a counterculture within Judaism and within the Roman Empire — in effect turning the world upside down.
“Israel is not to be saved by some new Moses, but God himself will appear on the scene—someone far greater than what John the Baptist was looking for,” Hays said.
The Gospel of John, which is not part of the Synoptics, parallels but stands apart from the other three Gospels, he added.
John can be compared to “the soaring descant or the deep bass notes” of a chorus, Hays said. “It adds flavor and texture to the tight harmony of the Synoptic Gospels.”
The purpose of The Kyle Lake Center for Effective Preaching at Baylor’s Truett Seminary is to prepare seminarians for preaching and to provide continuing education for pastors and other ministers. The center’s namesake, a 1997 Truett Seminary graduate, died while he was pastor of University Baptist Church in Waco. His parents, David and Shirley Lake, helped establish the Center so their son’s influence would be felt for generations.
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— Terry Goodrich writes for Baylor University. With additional reporting by Baptist Standard Editor Marv Knox.