What the Gospels Meant by Garry Wills
This is the third in Wills’ series, which started with What Jesus Meant and What Paul Meant.
Wills is on very strong ground here, since he stands on the shoulders of giants, specifically Raymond Brown. He cited Brown literally dozens of time and dedicates the book to that “devout scholar.” Much of what is here will be familiar to many readers and is entirely within mainstream religious scholarship.
Not that Wills is shy about his opinions. He provides his own translations from the Greek and is more than an interested amateur here. Despite that the main selling point here is that he synthesizes and compresses and, yes, popularizes Brown. To his credit, he also does it in just 209 pages.
For those who haven’t dipped into current scholarship and its popularizers, this is what to expect: the Gospels were written at different times, by different communities, for different reasons. No reason to try and synchronize them, since that does violence to their intent. Knowing that original intent should guide our reading. Being aware of the meaning and context of the original words enriches our understanding and should over-ride the all too familiar English translation we use. Wills helps make the Gospels unfamiliar and dermanding.
This is, of course, threatening to some. If the Gospels can’t be synchronized, which of them is inaccurate (lies)? Aren’t our great translations (King James) divinely inspired? What do you mean we should re-write the Our Father to reflect its end-time context? No “daily bread” or “delivery us from evil”?
Overall, I learned a little less and was less challenged by this than by his book on Paul. Paul pre-dates the Gospels and even then is already quoting songs and poems, while the Gospels, even the newest understanding of the Gospels, was something I had read more about. If noting else, Wills has given me a task for my (not soon) retirement. I would like to learn Greek. Wills attended the same high school I did. When he was there they taught Greek, but they dropped it the year before I arrived. I’ll have to remedy that sometime.
Posted by neotradlibrarian 