Do We Have the Words of Jesus? Part 2

Translations and Inerrancy

            A very active part of the ipsissima verba/vox debate in the Gospels involves the question of which language Jesus spoke. Ipsissima verba advocates tend to focus on Greek, while ipsissima vox lean more towards Aramaic. This question will be returned to in a moment, but for the moment it is good first to tackle the question of the relationship of translations and inerrancy in less-debated quarters.

            One of these areas is the recorded conversations that the Israelites had with various world leaders. An example of this is in Genesis 42. After Joseph spoke with his brothers, the brothers have a conversation among themselves. After this conversation is recorded, verse 23 informs us that "They did not know, however, that Joseph understood, for there was an interpreter between them." This verse tells the reader that the first conversation had been through an interpreter and that Joseph had not spoken the language of the brothers, even though the text states: "Joseph said" (v 7, 9, 12, 14, 18). If we consider Genesis to be inspired, then there must not be a problem with a recorded speech in Scripture being translated before it is inscripurated.

While this is the clearest example, there are other likely instances where someone not speaking Hebrew has a quote in Hebrew. Others would include the dialogue between Moses and Pharaoh, between kings of Israel and Judah and foreign kings, and between the Jews in exile with their captors, such as recorded in the books of Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. Would Nehemiah and Esther really speak Hebrew to a pagan king? Especially Esther, who was trying to hide her lineage? It is highly probable that much of the dialogue in these books has been translated into Hebrew for the sake of the Hebrew speaking audience.

This trend does not stop with the NT, either. Acts 22:2 describes how Paul was talking to the people in Hebrew, but all the words of Paul we have there are in Greek. While it is possible that the Hebrew words are not recorded for us, verse 2 seems to clearly refer to the words given in verse 1, which are in Greek. This means that we have words in translation once again. Acts 26:14 has a similar example, where Paul quotes words he heard in Hebrew, but he quotes the words in Greek.

Does this friendliness between translation and inspiration affect the ipsissima verba debate? Some claim that it does not.

[T]he Aramaic problem you [Kantzer] raise is totally irrelevant. By ipsissima verba is meant an accurate record of what Jesus in fact said. There is a world of difference between the straw man you seem to attribute to those holding my position (Jesus supposedly having to be quoted in the very language he spoke) and Osborne's position that what the Gospel writers attribute to Jesus he did not necessarily say in the precise terms indicated (Montgomery 2, italics original).

Montgomery wants to have both translation and ipsissima verba, which is a difficult position for someone to hold. As anyone who speaks two languages can attest, words cannot simply be transferred across languages without meaning shift. No matter how literal the translation, there will be at least a slight meaning change. If this is true, then it can be held that the essential meaning was held intact, but not the exact words. This would place Montgomery in the narrow view of ipsissima vox as presented by Wilkin rather than in the ipsissima verba category of Thomas.

Thomas and Green are more consistent on this point, although even they are not entirely coherent. Green recognizes that translation involves "an inevitable, even if slight, linguistic entropy in translating the spoken Aramaic of Jesus into the written Greek of the Gospels" (Green 7). Does linguistic entropy mean change in meaning? If it does, then that would make any translation incompatible with ipsissima verba. So to be consistent, they would need to claim that all Jesus' recorded words in the Gospels were originally spoken in Greek.

But how often did Jesus speak Greek? Research is beginning to lean towards the belief that Jesus occasionally spoke in Greek (Porter 235). Wallace portrays Jesus as often speaking Greek, which fits in with his broad view of ipsissima vox because then differences between gospels cannot be attributed to translation changes, but must be accounted for by other means. For the ipsissima verba side, Thomas speaks to the issue: "On occasions when Jesus used the Greek language - which conceivably could have been most of the time - it is quite possible that his listeners took down what he said in shorthand or retained what he said in their highly trained memories" (Thomas "Impact" 368-369). However, to state that Jesus only sometimes spoke Greek is inconsistent with his view of ipsissima verba, which would require him to state that everything that Jesus said which is recorded in the Gospels was spoken in Greek. Osborne picks up on this discrepancy.

There is a big difference between saying Jesus in some cases spoke Greek and in stating that Jesus did so “most of the time" (p. 369). Moreover, to say “Jesus spoke Greek most of the time” will not work to explain the differences, because if there was a translation from Aramaic at any time, then we do not have Jesus’ “very words” but a translation of them (Osborne 203). 

In response to this, Thomas complains that Osborne changes the tone of his statement on Jesus speaking Greek from a tentative statement to a certain statement in Osborne's paraphrase of Thomas' words. However, he never resolves the issue that Osborne brings up: How can someone hold an ipsissima verba view and still account for translation?

One example of translation in the Gospel is the command given by Jesus to the daughter of Jarius. In Mark 5:41 the text reads ταλιθα κουμ, ο εστιν μεθερμηνευομενον το κορασιον, σοι λεγω εγειρε, while Luke 8:54 reads η παις, εγειρε.  So Luke presents Jesus as saying only the Greek translation, while Mark has Jesus saying the original Aramaic. If the translation Mark gives is indicative of other translations, then it would not have been woodenly literal, since Mark adds the phrase soi. le,gw, which is not recorded in the Aramaic words he gives. (And as a side problem, according to Aramaic grammar it should have been koumi [as it is in the Majority Text] instead of koum [Critical Text] since he was speaking to a female.)  Another example is in reference to the command given to the paralytic to pick up his bed, where each of the three Synoptic Gospels has a different Greek word for bed (Matthew 9:6 has kli,nhn, Mark 2:11 has kra,batton and Luke 5:24 has klini,dion). Are we seriously expected to believe that Jesus repeated the same command three times in a row, changing only the word for bed each time?

While there is a good chance that Jesus knew Greek, it pushes credulity that Jesus the Jew would speak Greek to his fellow Jews on a regular basis. As Bock states, "It would be like asking Jesus to speak in English to a Mexican audience on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande!" (Bock 77). If it is true that at least some of the statements in the Gospels were originally spoken in Aramaic or Hebrew, then the ipsissima verba position becomes impossible to hold. But as seen earlier, this instance of translation causes no problems with inspiration since the OT contains explicit references to translation.

Josephus vs. Thucydides

            One of the arguments advanced by ipsissima vox advocates is the practice of ancient historians, particularly Thucydides. His comment on his method is often quoted.

With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said (Thucydides 1.22.1).

Based on this quotation and the practice of Thucydides, Bock makes a conclusion in regards to the Gospels, a conclusion with which Wallace mostly agrees. "[T]he Greek standard of reporting speeches required a concern for accuracy in reporting the gist of what has been said, even if the exact words were not remembered or recorded. The ancients also recognized an author's right to summarize and bring out the contemporary force of a speaker's remarks" (Bock 79).

            However, Thucydides lived in the 5th century BC. Is he really representative of Greco-Roman historians? Bock seems to think that Thucydides is representative of later historians, but Wallace is more cynical: "he reached the pinnacle of his discipline and became a model for historians to follow, though few attained the high mark that he epitomized" (Wallace 2). Wallace goes on to conclude that "even if Luke consciously followed a Thucydidian model, the other evangelists, especially John, hardly seem to" (Wallace 4-5). So Bock claims that the gospel writers were at least as good as Thucydides, while Wallace maintains that only Luke matches Thucydides and the other gospel writers do considerably worse (i.e., a broad view of ipsissima vox).

            Bock also highlights the Jewish transmission of tradition. "I am not trying to argue that the Jews did everything without error, but they did give great care in how they communicated and passed on events, especially divinely associated events" (Bock 80). Hence, he claims that they practiced ipsissima vox: the general idea, although they did sometimes err. Overall, Bock believes that if the Gospel writers kept to the same standard that Thucydides and the other Jewish writers kept, then we could all agree that while we do not have the exact words of Jesus, we can confidently say that we have the ideas of Jesus.

            As far as the question of Thucydides being representative, Green agrees with the pessimistic view of Wallace, saying that Thucydides was an ideal that few reached. Green points out "that the historical standard of the time did not even keep to the gist of the speech" (Green 58 italics original). Green goes on to argue that if Bock is going be consistent, then he would need to take the whole Thucydidian model, not just the parts that he likes. Green also contends that if Bock's optimistic viewpoint lands him with errors, then the viewpoint of Wallace has errors beyond numbering.

            Is Thucydides even relevant for Gospel studies? Both Bock and Wallace basically assume it is relevant under the category of "milieu, including the context of ancient historiography" (Wallace 1), but neither of them demonstrates any links between Thucydides and the Gospel writers. Green questions whether the gospel writers were actually influenced by Thucydides. "Although there is a verbal parallel to what the ipsissima vox writers want to prove, it is a logical leap of cosmic proportions to say (without further proof) that a nearly 500 year old statement proves what the Gospel writers standard was when they wrote the Gospel" (Green 64).

            But if the Thucydidian model is not one that might have influenced the Gospel writers, was there another model closer to home? Green picks Josephus as that model. Josephus had a dim view of the Greek histories.

For they take them to be such discourses as are framed agreeably to the inclinations of those that write them; and they have justly the same opinion of the ancient writers, since they see some of the present generation bold enough to write about such affairs, wherein they were not present, nor had concern enough to inform themselves about them from those that knew them; examples of which may be had in this late war of ours, where some persons have written histories, and published them, without having been in the place concerned, or having been near them when the actions were done; but these men put a few things together by hearsay, and insolently abuse the world, and call these writings by the name of Histories (Josephus Against Apion 1.8.609).

            Green argues that Josephus gives the common Jewish view of the Greek historians, and if the tone of the comment of Josephus gives any hint, then it would appear that the Jews would not use the Greek historians as a model. In this same passage Josephus argues that the Jews did a much better job in writing history truthfully. After briefly discussing the pattern of the rabbinic colleges who do not summarize the rabbis but quote their very words, Green takes this Jewish model of Josephus and the rabbis as the standard for the Gospel writers. "The Gospel writers' pattern for transmission of the words of Jesus is not found in ancient Greek historiography, but in the Jewish pattern that paid close attention to the actual words" (Green 67-68). (A question that Green does not answer is if this would be true of Luke as well, who was probably not a Jew.)

            But is Green on better ground here? Or, will his theory meet the same fate which he says the theory of Bock will meet: errors in the text? It appears that Josephus is not the best foundation for an ipsissima verba position. For example, the introduction to the standard English translation of Josephus states that "[h]e paraphrased and adorned the general statement of facts, not with the desire of falsifying, but by yielding to his literary tastes, and to those of the people for whom he wrote" (Stebbing XV). Another author states that "[a]ncient historians freely abridged, omitted, or expanded material, made substitutions from other sources, shaped and colored the narrative and invented minor improvements in detail" (Aune 82). If this was the attitude of ancient authors, perhaps Josephus was an exception? No, according to Aune: "Tacitus and Josephus were typical" (Aune 82). In a work that relates Josephus to the NT, Mason does exactly what Green said would result from Bock's theory. He takes the Thucydidian model and instead of ending up confidently with the ideas of Jesus as Bock does, he lands in a very different spot. But unfortunately for Green, the process for Mason leads through Josephus.

A third standard feature of Hellenistic history shared by Josephus and Luke-Acts is the formulation of speeches for the leading characters. It was Thucydides who created a major role for the speech in history writing. In a famous passage in the introduction to his history, Thucydides observes that particular speeches could not be reconstructed as accurately as events. So he would try to give the general drift of what was said, being sure to make it fit the occasion and the speaker (History 1.22). But commentators have long since noted that, although Thucydides does give his characters speeches appropriate to the occasion  - the arrogant speak arrogantly, statesmen speak like statesmen - the speeches are his own creations. Some may be based on recollection of what was actually said, but they are ultimately Thucydides' own statements, a means of making his own points and advancing his narrative. A concordance shows that Thucydides does not allow the various characters true independence of vocabulary and style, they all convey his themes. Under the influence of rhetorical training, such speeches become even more essential vehicles for writers of Hellenistic history to put their own themes in the mouths of their characters (Mason 192).

            While Mason's conclusions can be challenged, simply invoking Thucydides or even Josephus does not automatically keep one on evangelical ground. The most that can be said from this presupposition is that if the Gospel writers were influenced at all from the society around them, it would have strongly tended them towards paraphrasing and ipsissima vox.

Login to add comments