But the justified hunger for historical reconstruction has been associated for a long time with a radical critique of the gospels that seeks to discover the real Jesus not with the gospels but against them. In this very context there is constant talk about overpaintings and exaggerations of the person of Jesus by early Christian tradition. But this confuses two different things: what the gospel critics call dogmatic exaggerations are nothing other than “interpretations” of Jesus, and interpretation is not the same as exaggeration. Many Christians rightly reject such words as “exaggeration,” “overpainting,” “overdrawing,” “mythologization,” and “idolization.” They should not be defensive, however, against the word “interpretation.”
For the gospels must not be regarded as mere collections of “facts” about Jesus. They are not an assemblage of documents from a Jesus archive in the early Jerusalem community. Obviously the authors of the gospels had a multitude of traditions about Jesus at their disposal, but they used these traditions to interpret Jesus. They interpret his words, they interpret his deeds, they interpret his whole life. They interpret Jesus in every line, in every sentence.
May we take texts that are interpretation from beginning to end and filter them through the sieve of criticism in the hope that the “facts” will remain behind? May we—like people panning for gold—wash away the useless sand of the interpretations to get at the heavy gold of the facts? May we derive strata from narratives whose whole purpose is interpretation, in order to get at the “original”? In the end, after the removal of all secondary layers, would we arrive at pure facts? The questionable nature of such an interpretive technique in reality is revealed by a simple question: where is the truth—in the facts or in their interpretation? Or, to use the image of the gold panner again: are the facts the gold, or is it the right interpretation of the facts?1
Fact and Interpretation
What, after all, is a “fact”? The word is usually used with great confidence and without reflection, as if its meaning were obvious. But so-called facts are not that simple.
Of course the world is full of facts, and often we can speak of them as a matter of course. When, for example, an earthquake happens we can certainly call it a fact. But even such facts are already interpreted. The event of the earthquake is, of course, established by seismographs, its strength measured by the Richter scale, and the earthquake observers compare their measurements. But then geophysicists investigate the kind of quake it is, and distinguish between “collapse earthquakes” (when subterranean caves collapse), “volcanic earthquakes” (connected with volcanic eruptions), and, finally, “tectonic earthquakes” (when shifts take place within the earth’s crust). The “fact” of an earthquake is thus fairly clear. It can be described in straightforward terms. And yet even such a description already contains more than a fair amount of interpretation—correct interpretation, we may suppose.
But not all facts are on this level. What does it mean when there is something like an “earthquake” in politics?—when, for example, a social landslide occurs or a political scandal becomes public? What does it mean when a politician is toppled—and no one wants to take responsibility? What is the fact here? What really happened, and what were only sham maneuvers staged for the public? What was mere opinion making, and what was deliberate disinformation?
Political events require interpretation, and a great deal more interpretation than purely physical phenomena. What really happened must be painstakingly researched, analyzed, and interpreted. But the recovery of the course of events always involves interpretation from the very start. Beyond all these difficulties there is ultimately also the question: who is the authoritative interpreter? And which interpretation will triumph in the end? Hence the quandary: is there any such thing as pure fact when the real actors are people, with their desires, interests, and passions? Is it not true that here every fact that appears is already bathed in interpretation from the outset, drenched in it through and through?
Jesus was apparently interpreted from the first moment of his appearance and in entirely different ways. There was the initially tentative but still believing interpretation of those who followed him. This culminated in the confession: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). Then there was the interpretation, quite ambivalent in many respects, by those who did not follow him but went out to see him, many of whom apparently thought he was the Baptizer returned or one of the earlier prophets (Matt 16:14). And finally there was the aroused reaction of his opponents, who were sure that he was driving out demons with the aid of the head demon (Mark 3:22). Interpretations, then, from the outset: which was correct? It is unavoidable, at the beginning of this book, to delve more fully into the relationship between “fact” and “interpretation.”
The So-Called News
Let us begin with what appears to be the simplest kind of question: what is the nature of the facts communicated to us by the media? When a young person begins to read the newspaper seriously, or starts to gather information from news broadcasts, she or he may still believe that all the events in the world can be summarized in the daily news. Perhaps one might even be as na
The “news,” for example, that reaches newspaper readers in the United States or Germany, or those who are faithful followers of the nightly news is, from a purely geographical point of view, extremely limited. Lands like Burma or Burundi, Togo or Tanzania only appear occasionally in our media. What is presented to us as news from within our shores is in itself a profoundly limited selection. And what do we hear about our own country? We get what amounts to an excess of partisan quarrels and assessments of the social or economic situation, much of it in the form of statements prepared in cabinet departments, party headquarters, or the offices of interest groups. Then comes the “cultural” sector, where nearly every segment reflects the subjective opinion of the correspondent carried to an extreme. After that we get sports, which in Germany means mostly soccer, in the United States football, basketball, baseball, and maybe hockey. Then there are the usual sensational stories that are to the media like spice in the stew: news of terrorist acts, murders, robberies, rapes, affairs, explosions, mine disasters, fires, weather crises, plane crashes. And finally there are those stories that always seem a little odd, on the model of “man bites dog.”
News programs of this sort are an unimaginably tiny and often subjective slice of reality. For what makes up the reality of world events is not first of all scurrilous doings, World Cup contests, accidents, and political quarrels, and not just movements in the social network and the economy.