HIDDEN SELF-PORTRAITS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

 The authors of the NT sometimes have a way of alluding to themselves in their writings in a rather indirect manner. Witness the following examples:

Matthew

All that we really know about Matthew's life is that he was a tax-collector when called by Jesus. But we can readily discern his preoccupation with monetary matters by comparing the following statistics regarding his use of vocabulary germane to that profession compared to the other four Evangelists:

Word                                                 Matthew         Mark         Luke          John

silver (argurion)                                  6x

gold (chrusos)                                     5x

tribute money (nomisma)                    1x

stater                                                   1x

penny (denari)                                    6x                  3x              3x              2x

talent (talanton)                                 15x

tax (kenson)                                        3x                                    1x

pay back (apodidemi)                        7x                                     2x

pay (teleo)                                          1x

farthing (assarion)                             1x                                     1x

quadrens (kodra)                               1x                    1x

Mark

There are two mysterious men who appear in this Gospel account: one before the Last Supper who shows the Apostles where that meal is to be held (14:12-16) and another young man who has followed Jesus and the Eleven from that meal into the Garden of Gethsemane and flees when Jesus is arrested (14:51). The first of these incidents is also narrated in Matthew 26:17-19 and Luke 22:7-13, but the most logical deduction for Mark being the sole evangelist to mention the second rather embarrassing situation is that he himself was the scantily clad young man who lost his linen cloth, and possible also the man who showed the Apostles where the upper room was located.

Adding to the likelihood of this possibility is the fact that the when the Apostles were later in hiding after the crucifixion, they were in the home of John Mark's mother. And Mark may have also been recalling this failure of his in light of his similar desertion of Paul while on the mission field (see Acts 15:38).

Luke

Some authors have attempted to detect the author in the use of specific medical terminology that would be appropriate to the Beloved Physician, but more recent studies throw doubt on that sort of reasoning. However, in Acts Luke does show up as a first-hand participant in some of the events, as pointed out in the “we” sections of the book, which do match up fairly nicely with what we are told in Paul's letter concerning his travels and missionary companions.

But the most interesting possibility is that Luke was the anonymous author of the Letter to the Hebrews. Assuming that letter was written by someone appearing elsewhere in the New Testament, Luke should be considered as a prime candidate for several reasons.

First is the historically strong association of the letter with Paul or one of his close companions. Next is very polished Greek style of writing also characterizing Luke's known writings. Also, David L. Allen, in his 400-page book Lukan Authorship of Hebrews, has pointed to numerous examples in which Hebrews shares unique Greek vocabulary and stylistic characteristics with Luke-Acts.

The fixation on the number “ten” seen in the structure of the Letter to the Hebrews has echoes in the ten appearances of “tabernacle” (all in the last half of the letter), lego in the present tense active voice and “Abraham.” Of the three key words in the book identified by Bengel, one (pistos, “faithful”) appears five times as does its root verb peitho. There are ten references to a new or better covenant in the book. Counting 7:8 as a possibility, Psalm 110 is alluded to ten times in Hebrews. Also, the Greek words for “tithe” and “receive tithes” appear in the NT only in this letter. Turning to Luke’s known writings, the use of number “ten” in his Gospel accounts for almost half the occurrences of this particular number in the whole NT. Including the multiple “ten thousand” in Lk. 14:31, “ten” appears exactly ten times in Luke’s Gospel. The combined work Luke-Acts contains 10 of the 17 appearances in the New Testament of “free/freedom,” indicating, in Allen's words, a “considerable theological weight” assigned by Luke to this concept. The key verb “evangelize”appears exactly ten times in Acts.

Turning to the overall structure of the Epistle (described in my post “Hebrews: Introduction to the Literary Structure”), there are only two books in the NT besides Hebrews that are structured using major divisions which each contain that same number of subdivisions. These are Galatians and the Gospel of Luke.

A more problematic argument for associating Luke with this epistle stems from the observation that both the prologue and conclusion of Hebrews can, with little difficulty, be seen as five-part chiasms, thus making the total number of sub-sections in Hebrews equal ninety, the exact number of sub-sections present in Luke's Gospel. The number ninety is also significant to Luke in that the key word akouo (to hear) appears ninety times in Acts.

John

In his gospel account we see the classic case of an author revealing his identity mainly by his absence in the story. The Apostle John is mentioned 20 times in the Synoptic Gospels and not once by name in the Gospel of John. Similarly, John's brother James is referred to 17 times in the Synoptics but not at all in John's Gospel.

From the above statistics, it seems obvious that the “Beloved Disciples” who is mentioned in passages such as John 13:23; 19:26; 21:7 and 21:20 is his way of referring to himself anonymously. And this penchant for the word “love” appears throughout John's Gospel and Epistles. Witness the following statistics:

The verb agapeo: 22x in the Synoptics; 36x in John's Gospel; and 24x in John's Epistles.

The noun agape: 3x in the Synoptics; 6x in John's Gospel; and 18x in John's Epistles.

The verb phileo: 5x in the Synoptics; 11x in John's Gospel.

As for the Book of Revelation, there is some controversy among scholars as to which John was the author. But ancient church tradition attributes it to the Apostle John, written in his old age while in exile. Since John was likely the youngest of the Twelve Apostles and John 21:20-23 appears to allude to false rumors that Christ would come again before he died, that would all fit in with the great possibility that John was the last of the Twelve to die.

But as to John hiding any autobiographical information about himself in Revelation, I can only think of one possibility. One of the strangest episodes in Revelation is found in 22:8-9 in which the author bows down to worship an angel and is told not to do so. This is odd since in 19:10 the exact same thing had happened earlier. Once possibility is that this represents one of several repetitions in the book of the same event.

But my own unfounded speculation is as follows: Earlier on, John was one of the three privileged people to witness Jesus' Transfiguration, and yet none of the three apostles appears to have taken that event for the divine appearing that it was. And then at Christ's Resurrection in front of the Eleven Apostles, we learn that some bowed and worshiped Jesus, but others did not (see Matthew 28:17). Perhaps John was one of those who refused to bow in worship on that occasion and had regretted it to the point where now in his old age he was trying to “undo” that lapse by worshiping even those heavenly beings who did not merit such adoration.

Paul

In quite a contrast to the other authors of the NT, Paul takes no great pains to hide himself in his writings. Instead, he constantly alludes to his varied experiences in his epistles. However, there is one obscure passage in which Paul appears to draw a veil over something tremendous that had happened to him by ascribing it to someone that he knew instead. I am talking about II Corinthians 12:1-5 in which he describes “a person in Christ” being caught up to the third heaven and having seen things that could not be revealed. He concludes this account with the strange comment: “On behalf of such a one I will not boast.”

Most commentators feel he is describing his own experiences but does not want to boast about being the one so honored by God with these revelations.

James

Any discerning reader of James' Epistle will be struck at how differently it reads from the other letters in the New Testament. In ways, it almost seems like an OT document with its lack of theological content. On the other hand, many of the teachings in this epistle may seem to be strangely familiar as if we have read them before elsewhere. And that is no accident, as several commentators have noted:

    Blue: “James did not actually quote the Lord's words, but he obviously had internalized His teachings and reproduced them with spiritual depth.”

    Hort says that “this style is especially remarkable for constant hidden allusions to our Lord's sayings, such as we find in the first three Gospels.”

    Adamson responds to the above by saying, “We ourselves believe that this is at least mainly due not merely to James's early sharing some of the oral and written evidence to which those Gospels sooner or later were indebted, but to his own personal witness of the life and teachings of Jesus – a conclusion in harmony with the fact that the groundwork of the Epistle is the same as that of the Sermon on the Mount.”

    Schmid: “James not only agrees in numerous passages with Matthew's Gospel, which appear to be but the echo of the discourses of Jesus...the Sermon on the Mount... its whole spirit may be looked upon as the model of the Epistle of James.”

    Kistemaker: “James seems to give the impression that he is familiar with the oral gospel of Jesus...In his epistle, James echoes the tone and tenor of Jesus' preaching recorded in the Gospels. The parallel between the Sermon on the Mount and verses, clauses, phrases, and words in the letter of James is remarkable.”

Actually, one interesting way to look at the Sermon on the Mount is as a commentary of sorts on Jesus' words recorded there. As an aid to such a study, I have compiled an extensive list of parallels from several sources, and the results may be seen in the post titled “James and the Sermon on the Mount.”

All of this goes to demonstrate that James has completely revealed his identity as Jesus' “brother” by his unique familiarity with the mindset of the Lord.

Peter

There are only two short letters in the NT attributed to Peter, and there are grave doubts regarding his involvement with the first of these (addressed in the next section below). But when I began to systematically compare I and II Peter with what we know concerning his life and speeches in Acts, it became obvious to me that Peter's fingerprints are all over these two books. But rather than rehearse all those examples, I will just refer you to an earlier post on that subject titled “1 and 2 Peter: Study Outline.” There you can find all of the parallels I was able to identify between the teachings in these two epistles and both Peter's life and speeches.

Silvanus

You may be wondering what this name is doing on the list. It all stems from the many negative comments made by scholars, such as those quoted below, regarding the authorship of I Peter.

    “It is unthinkable that Peter as a fisherman from Galilee had command of the Greek language to the degree reflected in the letter, according to our stylistic analysis.” (L. Goppelt, A Commentary on I Peter).

    “The person responsible for the poor Greek of 2 Peter could not have written 1 Peter and vice versa.” (P. H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter)

    “Such a letter could not have been written by him, the illiterate fisherman, if he had lived to be over a hundred.” (F. W. Beare, The First Epistle of Peter)

But when I began to compare the literary structures of all the NT books when I found that three of the books stood apart from the rest in having a unique type of organization. They were I Peter and I and II Thessalonians, and they all took this form: Introduction – ABA'ABA' – Conclusion

This begins to make sense when one considers the opening words of I and II Thessalonians: “Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians.” Then turning to I Peter 5:12, we read, “Through Silvanus, whom I consider a faithful brother, I have written this short letter...” Some scholars have taken this last verse to mean that Silvanus (also called Silas) was just the carrier of Peter's letter, but the similarities in organization of the three letters makes it clear that he served as a trained amanuensis, or secretary, to polish Peter's grammar and style. That effectively explains away the objection to the traditional authorship of I Peter and also makes it quite likely that Silvanus can be considered as the co-author of the letters to the Thessalonians.

Jude

Although most liberal scholars are reluctant to claim that the author of this short book is the brother of Jesus, other commentators are quite comfortable with that identification. Unfortunately, we do not have a lot of information to go on in making a judgment and Jude is a common name of the time, but Jude may have revealed himself as Jesus' brother in two ways.

First, we have the prologue to consider in which the author says that he is the servant of Christ and the brother of James. As Michael Green says, “The unadorned name James can only mean one person, and one only in the apostolic church – James the Lord's brother, the leader of the church in Jerusalem...it is a mark of his modesty that he was prepared to accept the position of playing second fiddle to James, his more celebrated brother.”

The biggest barrier to acceptance of the author as Jesus' brother is the style of writing, which some scholars have attributed to Alexandrian influences. But, as Towner explains, “Of course Greek culture and language had thoroughly penetrated Palestine of the first century, but this does not completely explain how a rural dweller, such as Jude must have been could have acquired the command of Hellenistic Greek suggested by the letter. If the Jude to whom this letter is attributed was the author...the answer might come in the missionary travels of Jude as a young man. His vocabulary is considerable, which travel and experience outside of Aramaic-speaking Palestine could account for, though his style is not as highly polished.”