Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 158:632 (Oct 2001)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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BSac 158:632 (Oct 01) p. 478

Periodical Reviews

By The Faculty And Library Staff Of
Dallas Theological Seminary

Robert D. Ibach, Editor

“Evangelicals and Ipsissima Vox,” Donald E. Green, Master’s Seminary Journal 12 (spring 2001): 49-68.

This article by a faculty associate in New Testament at Master’s Seminary seeks to critique and assess the claims of those who argue that the Gospels often record the “voice” of Jesus (ipsissima vox) rather than always recording His exact words (ipsissima verba). Green suggests that only an ipsissima verba view is biblically sound. He argues that the vox position could have “far reaching effects on evangelical confidence in the historical accuracy of the Gospels” (p. 68). In arguing for the verba position the work goes further than even the book Inerrancy, issued by the Council on Biblical Inerrancy and edited by Norman Geisler (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979). In that book Paul Feinberg states, “Inerrancy does not demand that the Logia Jesu (the sayings of Jesus) contain the ipsissima verba (the exact words) of Jesus, only the ipsissima vox (the exact voice)” (p. 301). Green’s piece analyzes my article “Live, Jive, or Memorex,” in Jesus under Fire, edited by Michael Wilkins and J. P. Moreland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995; pp. 74–99), as the point of contention.

The first problem with Green’s article is that it fails even to note the context of my remarks. I was responding to the position of the Jesus Seminar, which argues that over 50 percent of the Gospel sayings attributed to Jesus were not actually His. My goal was to show how such a view could be countered. I began by discussing the standards of Greco-Roman historiography, referring to the work of Charles Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983), and a well-known and debated citation from Thucydides 1.22.1. On reading Green’s essay, however, one gets the impression that this discussion was the total thrust of my argument. Green faults me for not showing that ancient historians were not always reliable. However, my citation from Fornara says, “We are not entitled to proceed on the assumption that the historians considered themselves at liberty to write up speeches out of their own heads” (Jesus under Fire, 79). This fabricated-speech view is precisely what the Jesus Seminar was arguing for concerning much of the material in the Gospels. One strand of Greco-Roman writers cared more for rhetoric than substance, whereas others were more careful with substance. I was arguing that the Gospel writers wrote in accord with the latter tradition. I stated this point ...

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