A difficulty has arisen in exegesis of the gospels. Allowing for variations, scholars figure in two main classes, the first largely introverted, the specialists, and the second “outsiders” who attempt to collaborate with them. The first, far the more numerous, comprises those who examine internally the New Testament, using Qumran and other intertestamental material, and Old Testament texts where they are cited or quoted in the New Testament, to enable the gospels to comment upon themselves and each other, employing in this procedure skills adequately described as “literary-historical”. One may refer to these scholars as “the critics”. Fashion gives great credence to “redaction-criticism”, heir to “source-criticism” and “form-criticism”. National traits tend to emerge, as is not surprising since subjective criteria are bound to operate in an estimate of what the evangelists were about, and national traits easily escape notice amongst their victims. In fact no one knows who the evangelists were or how they worked. Internal evidence alone leads to unending contradictions. Scepticism continues to play a role, and passages (such as one to which we come) which are not internally “corroborated” are more or less confidently dismissed as fabrications. The history, the archaeology of the New Testament is, at its most sensitive and useful point, at the mercy of skills that are principally literary and unashamedly academic. What is literary is of enormous value, but in no other field would it claim to exclude parallel sources of information.
