Bart Interrupted: Part Four

We live in a text bound age full of litigious people concerned about copyright, intellectual property, and authorship in the modern sense. I have a friend in fact who is in fact a intellectual property lawyer. You don’t want to know all the permutations and combinations of that law. By contrast, the first century world of the NT writers was a dramatically different world. For one thing, it was largely a world of oral cultures. Perhaps 10-15% of the populus was literate, could read and write, and even less actually owned ‘texts’ or manuscripts. Furthermore, the production of texts in antiquity was a tremendously laborious process, and expensive as well. Scribes did not come cheap, papyrus and ink was not cheap, and the codex, or notebook form compilation was just coming into existence in the first century A.D. Most documents were written on a single sheet of papyrus which would be rolled up and tagged, with what I like to call a toe tag—a small identifying marker. Scribes were not mere secretaries in antiquity, they were in fact the intellectuals and scholars of their age. It you want to learn about their various roles you can read several of the chapters in my forthcoming Baylor book What’s in a Word.

Not surprisingly, ancient views about ‘authorship’ are not quite the same as modern views which assume ‘individual’ authors for almost all documents that aren’t collections of essays by some group of scholars. However in ancient collectivistic cultures this was not the norm. Many, if not most ancient documents were anthological in character--- a compilation of traditions from various different persons and ages through time. This was true about collections of laws, proverbs, songs, religious rituals, and stories as well. We should not be surprised in the least in reading through the book of Proverbs that all of a sudden in a book ascribed to Solomon, we have in Prov. 30 the sayings of Agur, or in Prov. 31 the sayings of King Lemuel, whoever he may have been. Or again, the psalms are compilations from various different ages, some are probably songs of David, but some are songs for or dedicated to David, some are composed by others still. It is a mistake to evaluate ancient documents as if they were just like modern documents, and this applies to NT documents as well, in various regards.

For example, the vast majority of scholars are in agreement that the Gospels we call Matthew and Luke are compilations from a variety of sources, including Mark and a sayings collection, and some unique material not found in other Gospels. Of course, this becomes puzzling to modern readers of Matthew because they rightly ask the question--- why would an eyewitness apostle like Matthew need to use secondary sources for events he was present to view? Why indeed. Here is where I say to you that while we must properly answer this question, one also needs to not do what Bart Ehrman does in his chapter on who wrote the Bible when it comes to this issue—which is to suggest that these Gospels were originally anonymous, and labels were added to them later for apologetical purposes, and that when we read of who they are attributed to in an early source like Papias, we can with a wave of the hand simply dismiss such evidence. If you want to read what a historian of merit has to say indetail about the Papias’ traditions I would point you to Richard Bauckham’s book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, which is mostly a close reading and explanation of Papias and what he says. It does not in any way agree with Ehrman’s analysis of these early traditions. Indeed, most scholars today think there was a collection of the four canonical Gospels together at some point early in the second century in codex form which is when we get the official labels—according to Matthew etc. based on earlier traditions about the sources of these documents (see e,g, the work of Graham Stanton).

When the Gospel documents were originally written, the audiences that received them knew who the authors were and had a relationship with them. This is especially clear from a text like John 21 which informs us that while the final compiler of the Fourth Gospel is not the Beloved Disciple, nevertheless, he is the source of the traditions in this Gospel, having written them down, and “we know that his testimony is true”. The compiler of the Fourth Gospel knows the man personally, and can vouch for his trustworthiness in telling the Gospel stories. So let’s deal now with some of the flimsy assumptions made which are the basis of Ehrman’s conclusions.

1) Assumption One: The canonical Gospels were probably originally anonymous. This is wrong on two counts. First, when these documents were written down, if there were not identifiers in the document, the papyrus would have been tagged by the scribe to be able to distinguish it from other documents, and these tags regularly had the names of the author or compiler and sometimes a short title as well or instead. Second, we should not imagine that the Gospels were written for general public consumption. Publishing in antiquity was almost always an in house, small audience thing, unless we are talking about Emperor’s publishing laws and propaganda. The circles for which these Gospels were written in all likelihood knew who wrote these documents. Papias is simply basing on to us the early traditions about Matthew, Mark, and John that he heard personally from John the elder, who had know various of the eyewitnesses.

2) Assumption Two: In the case of a Gospel like Matthew which includes some 95% of Mark within it, obviously this means that Matthew had nothing to do with the content of this Gospel since it relies on earlier and even secondary sources. This sort of reasoning ignores the anthological nature of most ancient documents. All it took for a document like Matthew to be labeled ‘Matthew’ is if he was the most famous source used in the document for some of its material. And of course if the three sources used in that document are: 1) material from Mark, not an eyewitness, 2) material from Q or a sayings collection; 3) material from some other unique source scholars usually call special M material, then if either 2) or 3) came from Matthew, his name would take precedent over Mark’s in the document, especially if there very first source material in this Gospel, the birth narratives, came from Matthew. What Papias says is that Matthew had compiled some of the largely sayings material of Jesus in Aramaic or Hebrew. This sounds more like 2) above, than 3), but Papias is general enough that it could be 3) since the Greek word logia need not mean just ‘sayings’. It could mean teachings, for example or even ‘words about the Lord’.

3) Assumption Three: Jesus’ disciples were “lower-class, illiterate, Aramaic speaking peasants from Galilee.” (p. 106). First of all fisherman are not peasants. They often made a good living from the sea of Galilee, as can be seen from the famous and large fisherman’s house excavated in Bethsaida. Secondly, fishermen were businessmen and they had to either have a scribe or be able to read and write a bit to deal with tax collectors, toll collectors, and other business persons. Thirdly, if indeed Jesus had a Matthew/ Levi and others who were tax collectors as disciples, they were indeed literate, and again were not peasants. As the story of Zaccheus makes perfectly clear, they could indeed have considerable wealth, sometimes from bilking people out of their money. In other words, it is a caricature to suggest that all Jesus’ disciples were illiterate peasants. And Bart is absolutely wrong that Acts 4.13 says otherwise--- what Acts 4.13 says is that the council is shocked at the theological capacity of Peter and John because they are ‘unlettered’. This is not the ancient word for illiterate, it is the word for not being learned, not having done formal school training, say in a synagogue.

We need to move on now and consider what Bart says about forgeries and intellectual property in antiquity, and yes indeed there was a concern about such matters in the first century A.D. though certainly not to the same degree as we find today. Bart is also right that there were also not only forgeries in antiquity, there were also pseudepigrapha of various sorts. Now the latter has to be evaluated on a genre by genre basis. By this I mean that while there was a literary convention when it came to apocalyptic works to ascribe those works to ancient luminaries or worthies (e.g. the Testament of Abraham is not by Abraham, the Parables of Enoch are not written by Enoch and so on), it was not an approved literary practice to write letters in the name of other persons without their approval or dictation. This issue has to be evaluated according to the literary type of document we are talking about. The parables of Enoch are not a forgery, they are a pseudepigraphic apocalyptic document and the conventions were well known in early Judaism about such documents.

Pseudonymous letters, sermons or speeches are a whole different ballgame. These, if they are genuine letters or sermons, can be called forgeries if there is no connection between the putative author and the actual author of a given document. Bart is absolutely right when he says “Ancient sources took forgery seriously. They almost universally condemn it, often in strong terms.” (p. 115). He is also quite right that forgeries had the intent to deceive. And he is also equally right that various of these sorts of documents were penned in the second century A.D. to add to the corpus of Christian writings for various purpose. A good example of this would be the so-called Acts of Paul and Thecla, or the Epistle to the Laodiceans. Our concern is not however with such documents, but with those from the first century A.D. (and it is only first century documents in the NT) that made it into the canon of the New Testament. Are their forgeries in the NT?

First of all, we need to bear in mind that anonymous documents are not pseudonymous documents. Hebrews for example, has no attribution of authorship internally or externally, it is an anonymous sermon. Perhaps Apollos wrote it, but in any case, the author of the document is not trying to pass it off as written by some luminary. Secondly, there are documents which are internally anonymous but had an external attribution. For example 1 John, in the content of the document says nothing about the author at all. It is a sermon, and it appears that early Christian sermons, like Hebrews, were frequently produced without internal attribution. And exception to this is James. Bart wants to argue that this is by some otherwise unknown James. The problem with this suggestion is shown by the many commentators on the book of James, and also by the content of the book, which draws on no less than 20 sayings of James’ brother Jesus. As Bauckham has shown at length, there is no reason to doubt James is by the famous James the brother of Jesus, any more than there is reason to doubt Jude, who identifies himself as James brother is by Jude, the brother of Jesus. On the other hand, Bart is right that Revelation is by one John of Patmos, who is probably not John Zebedee, nor is he the Beloved Disciple. This man was a apocalyptic prophet whose Greek and theologizing is different from that found in the other Johannine documents (see my Revelation commentary).

The real issue when it comes to pseudeigrapha in the canon is whether documents like 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, the Pastoral Epistles, 2 Peter are pseudepigrapha. Bart thinks they are, and I think they are not. For the record, the commentators are about evenly divided on most of these books with the exception of 2 Peter, which most take to be a pseudepigrapha. In fact 2 Peter is a compilation document which draws on Jude in its second chapter, and on a testimony of Peter in the first chapter, and perhaps some Pauline material as well in 2 Pet. 3. As a compilation document it is attributed to its first and most famous source Peter. There is a Petrine testimony about the Transfiguration in 2 Pet. 1, that likely goes back to Peter himself. The compiler of the document does not see or present himself as an author. He follows the ancient tradition of attributing the compilation to its most famous contributor, as we saw was true for Proverbs, Psalms, Matthew as well.

But what about those Pauline letters? Let me remind the readers that Paul certainly used scribes. We see this in various of the ways Paul ends documents. For example, in Gal. 6 he says he is now taking up the pen and writing a bit in his own hand, which clearly implies he has been using a scribe to compose the letter. Or in Rom. 16 we have a greeting from the scribe Tertius whom Paul used for that document. In the Pastoral Epistles Paul tells us “Luke alone is with me” which explains why the Pastorals reflect so much Lukan vocabulary and style. ‘Authorship’ in the ancient world was a term that basically meant ‘a document which comes from the mind of X and faithfully reflects his views/message, whoever actually composed the document’. If an author had a faithful scribe who knew his mind on an issue, he could simply tell the scribe—compose a document on X on wax, I will review it, then you may copy it out on a papyrus, with possible changes. There was a sliding scale between on the one end using a new or hired scribe to simply take dictation for most of the document and on the other end of the spectrum using a trusted colleague who knew one’s mind to compose a document. Paul and Peter (using Silas, see 1 Pet. 1) used such scribes to convey their thoughts for them. When one examines these NT letters carefully, and takes into account the ancient conventions about composing such letters, I see no reason to conclude any of these documents are forgeries, particularly on the basis of style, which is a function of personality and personal preference if one is a skillful writer, and it depends on the type of letter one is writing as well. Rhetorical style was chosen according to the situation. Furthermore, a skillful scribe could choose to write in verbose Asiatic Greek rather than Attic Greek if he chose (cf. e.g formal English English to American slang). When we take these things into consideration, as we should there is no reason to come to the conclusions Bart does about forgeries in the NT.

The early church, as we begin to see already in Papias, was confident that their ultimate source documents went back to apostles, prophets, eyewitnesses and their co-workers, which is why these 27 documents are in the NT. They were composed by Paul (with help of scribes and co-workers), Peter (1 Peter with help of Silas probably), Mark, Luke (both co-workers of both Peter and Paul), the 4th Evangelist (drawing on Beloved Disciple written sources. The Beloved Disciple composed 1-3 John himself), the compiler of Matthew, James, Jude, perhaps Apollos in the case of Hebrews, John of Patmos, and at the very end of the NT period, the compiler of 2 Peter, drawing on Petrine and other materials.

In short, the NT can be traced back to about 8 people, either eyewitness apostles, or co-workers of such eyewitnesses and apostles. Early Christianity's leaders were largely literate, and some of them, like Paul and the author of Hebrews, were first rate rhetoricians as well (see my little primer NT Rhetoric).

Bart Interrupted--- A detailed Analysis of 'Jesus Interrupted' Part Three

One of the valid points made by Bart Ehrman at various junctures in this study is that each Gospel needs to be allowed to have its own say. He is guarding against the tendencies to blend all the accounts together, and I understand this. What we have in the NT is not the Diatesseron, the account later created blending four Gospels into one. His concern is especially with a sort of false harmonizing that vitiates some individual point a particular Gospel wants to make. Fair enough.

But Bart himself is well aware that any historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus does indeed involve comparing and compiling data from a variety of sources, after allowing each one to have its say. The so-called historical Jesus that Bart presents us with in his book Jesus. Apocalyptic Prophet involves precisely this sort of synthetic project. The trick is to do the combining without undermining. When it comes to the issue of the virginal conception vs. the incarnation it seems to me that something vital is missing in Bart’s discussion—namely the recognition that these two ideas are not rivals, nor do they contradict one another, for they speak really of two different things. Incarnation tells us that a pre-existent person showed up in the flesh, without telling us anything about how. The virginal conception tells us something about how the human being Jesus came into this world. Thus while it is true that Luke, at least, is silent on the issue of pre-existence, when he talks about the virginal conception (Matthew probably is not, since he tells us that Jesus is Immanel, God with us), this does not make the virginal conception and the notion of incarnation in any way incompatible. They are concepts which address two different, though related issues—how, and what, when it comes to the origins of Jesus.

On p. 77 Bart makes a surprising statement--- “Jewish apocalypticism was a worldview that came into existence about a century and a half before Jesus’ birth…” Now perhaps Bart is thinking solely of Daniel, and is really late dating the book, but even if so experts in apocalyptic literature are clear enough that we see the beginning of this way of thinking much earlier--- in the exilic period with Ezekiel and in Zechariah for example which certainly are not books that date to the second century B.C. Why quibble over this point? Well because of course historically it matters, and it calls into question Bart’s historical judgment. For my part, I don’t think, once one has read the gamut of scholarship and commentaries on Daniel, that one can conclude that even Daniel can safely be dated no earlier than the second century B.C. as a book.

In his succinct presentation of the teaching of Jesus in Mark, Bart is right that this Evangelist takes an apocalyptic approach to presenting Jesus. This is quite true (see my Gospel of Mark commentary), and he agrees that Jesus is presented as the Son of Man in Mark. He says nothing however about the connection between these two facts, namely that Jesus presents himself as the figure referred to in the apocalyptic vision in Dan. 7—the one ‘like a son of man’ who descends on a cloud from heaven, and is given a throne by the Ancient of Days and will judge the world, and rule in a kingdom forever. This text—Dan. 7.13ff. is in fact echoed and alluded to in various ways throughout this Gospel, and sometimes it is explicit (see e.g. Mk. 14.62). Now this son of man concept is crucial to understanding Jesus’ own self-presentation, and scholars of all stripes, and many of no faith persuasion, agree on that point. So what should we make of Dan. 7.13ff. ? In the first place I would suggest we compare that text to 2 Sam. 7—the famous promise to David to give him a kingdom for him and his offspring in perpetuity (with some provisos). What stands out about 2 Sam. 7 is the promise is to David and his descendants, but the promise to the Son of Man figure in Daniel 7 is that he himself will reign, judge, rule forever--- by himself. You have to ask what kind of human and more than human figure could do that, and the answer is--- a person who is both human and divine, which is exactly how the Son of Man figure is portrayed in that chapter. This is why the same text says the Son of Man figure is to be worshipped, again something reserved for God in the OT!

Now it is precisely this sort of analysis of Dan. 7 as a background to the Son of Man material in Mark that is totally and absolutely missing from Bart’s presentation, and it allows him to make a dramatic contrast between the presentation of Jesus in Mark as a human, messianic, but non-divine figure, and the presentation of Jesus in John. Unfortunately by making this contrast: 1) Bart has overplayed his hand, and 2) under-read the data from Mark with its apocalyptic background; and 3) as a result he has not done justice to a proper comparison and contrast between Mark and John and their respective portraits of Jesus. Bart is of course right that John presents the humanity and divinity of Jesus very differently than in Mark. The crucial point however is that both Evangelists present Jesus as both human and much more than human as a fair reading of both texts will show.

Besides this remarkable oversight, there are some other blunders along the way as well. Consider for example the suggestion that the coming Kingdom of God is not part of Jesus’ teaching and preaching in the Fourth Gospel (see p. 80). This frankly is not true. There are seven Kingdom of God sayings in John’s Gospel, and the Johannine Jesus certainly does make this a topic of conversation--- for example in John 3 Jesus tells Nicodemus that unless he’s born again, he shall not enter or see the future Kingdom of God. Now it is true, that this subject is by no means as emphasized in John as it is in Mark, but it is quite impossible to say you don’t find the subject in John. But there is more. Bart insists that what ‘kingdom of God’ does mean in John is “life in heaven above”--- really??? This makes no sense of even John 3.3 which speaks about “seeing” the Kingdom of God. Jesus says nothing here about seeing or going to heaven. The discussion is about the Kingdom come on earth, and the key to seeing that kingdom is being born again here on earth.

One of the real caricatures of Johannine eschatology, is that there is no future eschatology in John. I agree that the focus in John is not on future events on earth at the End, but they are indeed mentioned in this Gospel. For example in John 5.28 Jesus says “a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his (i.e. Jesus’=the Son of Man’s) voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to life, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.” There is no good reason for denying that this reveals some of how Jesus views the coming kingdom of God in this Gospel. It involves future resurrection and final judgment on earth and notice both are connected to the Son of Man language from Daniel 7.

But another caricature is involved in this analysis and contrast between Mark and John. On p. 81 Ehrman says “In Mark, Jesus predicts that the end will come right away, during his own generation, while his disciples are still alive (Mk. 9.1; 13.30)” Really?? Actually that would be a bad misrepresentation of what Jesus says in Mark. He says clearly enough at Mk. 13.32 that not even the Son knows the timing of the second coming! Mk. 9.1 is not about the second coming it is about seeing the Kingdom come with power which can refer to either the Transfiguration or the Resurrection (take your pick), both of which events happen whilst the original disciples are alive, but in any case this is not how Jesus in Mark refers to his return. Jesus is not the kingdom, he is the Son of Man, and his coming with power on the clouds is referred to differently (contrast Mk. 9.1 to Mk. 14.62).

But equally amazing is how Bart has simply amalgamated all the varied material in Mark 13 together to reach his conclusion. Mark says clearly enough that the events leading up to the destruction of the temple, which involve various signs and events on earth, will take place within a generation (= 40 years in the Bible). And sure enough, Jesus predicted this correctly in A.D. 30, for the Temple fell in A.D. 70. But what Mk. 13 also goes on to say is that after those days (i.e. when the temple is already destroyed), then we can talk about cosmic signs and the return of Christ at some unknown time.

In other words, Mk. 13 is perfectly clear that we don’t know how long after the destruction of the temple Jesus’ return will be, and there will be no signs on earth presaging it. Rather he will come like a thief in the night, at a surprising time.

In short, Jesus in Mk. 13 tells us that preliminary eschatological events leading to the destruction of the Temple will happen in a generation. He also tells us that the second coming will happen after that at an unknown time and without preliminary signs on the earth. You have to really do a demolition job on Mk. 13 and ignore the full context to come to the conclusion that Jesus said he was coming back within a generation in that chapter.

As always, much more can be said, but this is enough to show that Ehrman: 1) does not do justice to what Mark actually says or John actually says, which allows him to 2) over play the contrast between these two Gospels on various important matters. I am not suggesting that there are not some important differences between these Gospels on various matters in the way they present Jesus and the Gospel message. There are. But Bart has not adequately or accurately represented what these differences are, or their significance either. More later.

Christos Aneste-- The Emmaus Road Story

A Companion Along the Way: Easter Sunday on the Emmaus Road
by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

The gleaming cloud tops and fragrant spring air would have
invigorated most travelers leaving Jerusalem that Sunday
afternoon. But these two began their trek to Emmaus staring grimly
at the trail, forcing leaden feet up the steep path to the ridge,
where they would follow the road down the Judean slopes.

Cleopas and his friend were going over and over the events of the
weekend that had climaxed with their Leader hanging limp, pale,
lifeless on a stained wooden cross. Then a hurried burial -- and
despair.

Hearing the crunch of footsteps behind them, Cleopas glanced back.
A traveler was rapidly climbing the grade, as if to join them. But
he had caught only fragments of their conversation. "What are you
talking about?" he asked, as he caught up to them.

Cleopas stopped. "Where have you been?" he asked. "Everybody in
Jerusalem has been talking about Jesus of Nazareth." He told of
their excitement. Of the arrest and crucifixion. Of the women's
tale of a stolen body and of angels. "We had hoped that he was the
Messiah," Cleopas said, "but now...." His words drifted off in
sadness as he resumed the journey.

They were at the summit, and as the road began its downward
incline, the traveler shot a strange challenge: "Don't you know
what the Scriptures say?" Cleopas just shrugged and gestured with
his hands as if to say, "We don't know."

So for the next several miles, the traveler began to talk,
patiently explaining each of the Scripture passages that spoke
about how the Christ, the Messiah, would have to suffer. Then he
explained about Messiah's glory to come.

Cleopas and his friend walked with amazement. It was as if
Scriptures that they had heard, but never understood before, began
to click into place. Their steps quickened. Their hearts were
pounding, but they didn't notice.

The miles seemed to melt away. Then suddenly, just around the bend
was their village, Emmaus. They were home. The traveler thanked
them for their company and turned again to the path, but they
didn't want to let him go. Not someone who could bring them such
hope, such understanding from the Scriptures.

"Won't you stay overnight?" Cleopas called. "It'll be dark soon.
You must! Please!"

He did stay. As they reclined around the table, Cleopas handed a
fresh round loaf to the traveler. "Would you honor us by offering
the blessing tonight?"

The traveler lifted up the bread and repeated the familiar the
Jewish blessing:

"Blessed are you, O God, King of the Universe,
Who brings forth bread from the earth."

And then he began break it, handing a piece to each of them in
turn. Cleopas caught his breath. His eyes met the man's. Suddenly,
in that moment, he knew! Who knows how? -- but he knew. It was the
Lord! He saw the faintest glimmer of a smile on his face, and then
Jesus simply vanished.

All they could do was stare at each other for a moment in stunned
amazement.

Then Cleopas jumped up. "It's true! The women were right. Jesus
is alive! He has risen!"

Their food and drink lay untouched on the table, but both men were
bounding out the door and away, running. "No wonder our hearts
burned within us while he was talking to us on the road," his
companion said later, as they paused briefly. They ended up
running, then walking, then running again nearly the whole way
back to the city.

Cleopas pounded on the upper room door. "We have seen him! We have
seen Jesus!" Peter opened the door a crack, but Cleopas couldn't
contain himself and pushed his way in. Then their story tumbled
out. "He's alive!" Cleopas concluded. "The moment he broke bread
with us, all of a sudden, we knew him."

Like these two men on their way to Emmaus, many have come to the
same startling conclusion. Unrecognized, Jesus begins to walk the
road with us, to talk to us. And if we think to, if we care enough
to ask Him in, we come to realize who He really is -- the Christ,
the Son of God, the Risen One.

This story has been adapted from Luke 24:13-35.

COLBERT INTERRUPTS EHRMAN

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Bart Interrupted--- A detailed Analysis of 'Jesus Interrupted' Part Two

Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, (San Francisco: Harper One, 2009), xii +212 pages. Part Two ( pp. 61-75).

In his first rate analysis of Edward Gibbon’s classic 18th century study, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a work which set the pattern or paradigm for modern historiography with its basic skepticism or agnosticism about all things non-empirical, Jaroslav Pelikan in his The Excellent Empire brings to light some of the fundamental problems with Gibbon’s way of approaching history, which leads to flaws in his analysis of Constantine and the decline of the Roman Empire. It will be worthwhile to listen to a few things that Pelikan points out.

Gibbon in explaining why he treated ‘ecclesiastical history’ in the very same manner he treated all history writing says the following “The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon the earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.” (cited by Pelikan p.36).

It is indeed the job of the historian to analyze history as it was, not as we might like it to be. And it is fair to say that the NT does not shy away from displaying its own dirty laundry. Luke, in Acts is perfectly candid about various of the problems the early church had (see e.g. the story of Ananias and Sapphira), and Paul in his letters is constantly recounting the troubles he had with his churches. These writers were not people likely to guild the lily or make things up out of whole cloth, unless you believe that people are regularly prepared to be martyred for things they know are lies.

The earliest Christians writers were, almost without exception, educated Jews, who passed on early Christian traditions in a thoroughly Jewish manner and had a high regard for the truth of things. As much as we might enjoy today a Dan Brown novel suggesting gigantic conspiracies and cover-ups as an explanation for early Christian history, these sort of explanations do not do justice to the actual historical data that we have, whether we are discussing the data within the NT itself, or the story of the copying of its manuscripts and its later ecumenical councils and canon. And justice is what must be done with historical data, otherwise what is written is a travesty or a tragedy or both.

Evelyn Waugh, the novelist once commented on why Gibbon’s history made such an impact on subsequent treatments of the same subject of ancient Rome and early Christianity. He stressed that it was Gibbon’s style, his eloquence, memorable phrases, wry sense of humor, clarity that led to his work having the impact it did—“that is what style does—it has the Egyptian secret of the embalmers”. A person who has that gift of communication but is skeptical about the content he is writing about “might make it his business to write down the martyrs and excuse the persecutors.” (Pelikan, p. 40). In other words, he might well be guilty of revisionist history writing, something we’ve seen a lot of in recent years with the rising tide of Gnostic gospel discussions.

There are then three dangers we learn of when reading and critically analyzing Gibbon’s classic work: 1) history writing that either dismisses or is dismissive of the role of God in human history, claiming that that is not a part of the historian’s task, even if there is considerable evidence to the contrary, and 2) because of its skeptical bent, history writing that is prone to revisionism of a sort that distorts rather than dissects and correctly analyzes what happened back then and back there; 3) history writing that conveys 1) and 2) in a clear and eloquent and understandable fashion such that the clarity of the explanation makes it appear that the conclusions are obvious and should go without challenge. This of course is the power of good rhetoric—it persuades without necessarily providing the detailed evidence and analysis necessary to prove one’s point.

It is of course true that any historian knows that one is dealing with probabilities and possibilities. But it serves no good purpose to rule out some possibilities in advance of actually doing the historical analysis. In other words, it is narrow-minded rather than open-minded to start with a skepticism about the role of the divine in human history, and write one’s history guided by that skepticism. That, as it turns out, is bad historiography, not good critical historiography.

On the other hand, it is equally a mistake to do historical analysis in a gullible manner, ascribing all manner of things to the divine, when a sufficient human cause can be detected and described. Writing the story of early Christian history should neither be an exercise that could be called ‘Gullible’s Travels’ nor an exercise that could be called ‘the Skeptic’s Revisionist Speculations’.

There needs to be an openness to all the data as we have it, and a willingness to give the ancient writers the benefit of the doubt in the same way one would do with an admired contemporary colleague or friend in one’s field. Without sufficient native sympathy for the material or its author, the tendency to bend or distort is considerable, and the results unfortunate. The acid of skepticism has a corrosive effect. It leads one to find contradictions and faults at every turn, even when they aren’t there. It leads to atomizing and vivisecting a group of texts in a manner that prevents one from seeing the whole and its interconnectivity because one has divided it into so many discrete parts.

This methodology leads to result rather like the familiar parable of the five blind me all feeling different parts of the elephant. The first says “an elephant is like a horn” for he felt the tusk of the elephant. The second says “an elephant is like a rope” for he felt the tail of the elephant. The third says “the elephant is like a hose” for he felt the trunk of the elephant. The fourth says “the elephant is like a giant leaf” for he felt the ear of the elephant. The fifth said “you’re all wrong, the elephant is like a wrinkled old man” for he felt the knee of the elephant. One needs to see the parts in relationship to the whole in order to be able to assess the whole. The point is, while there is some truth in what each person said in this case, without a vision of the whole, one cannot properly analyze the significance of the parts and the differences in data and interpretation.

As we turn to Ehrman’s chapter entitled “A Mass of Variant Views” let is start with a statement on p. 63--- “Paul wrote letters..he did not think he was writing the Bible….Only later did someone put these letters together and consider them inspired.” Here we are dealing with a half truth appended to which is a false conclusion. It is quite right to say Paul did not think he was writing canonical books. He did however think that both his oral proclamation and his writing were inspired by God’s Spirit, and he says so repeatedly in these letters. The notion of inspiration is not something that came later and after the fact. Indeed, Paul was convinced from the outset that his preaching was the living word of God, and his writings likewise inspired. I have dealt with this subject at length in my book The Living Word of God, but what will have to suffice here is a simple quotation from one of Paul’s earliest undisputed letters, 1 Thessalonians--- 1 Thess. 2.13 reads as follows: “And we also thank God continually because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.”

Early Christianity, from Pentecost on (see Acts 2), was a pneumatic movement, a movement of prophets and Spirit inspired teachers and preachers and apostles. It was a movement profoundly convinced that it had a new and late word from God that the world needed to hear. The leaders of this movement believed not only that the OT was inspired by God and so God-breathed (see 2 Tim. 3.16), they believed that their own words and writings were likewise inspired by God. This is precisely why in a text like 1 Cor. 7, Paul can quote the very words of Jesus on divorce, and then put his own words right beside them as equally authoritative and inspired and true. Now of course a secular historian can be skeptical about whether what Paul says is true or not, but what is absolutely not historically true is the notion that only later someone put these documents together and considered them inspired. That would be a false analysis of the historical data.

Bart pleads in this chapter that each Biblical author be allowed to speak for himself. I quite agree with this up to a point, But these Biblical authors did not think they were operating in a social vacuum. They believed they were part of a movement, and they relied on traditions, oral and written, from those who had come before or were their contemporaries. Bart’s modern and individualistic approach to each Gospel ignores the collective nature not merely of ancient culture, but also the tight-knit nature of the early sectarian split off movement from Judaism, called Christianity.

So when Bart says of Mark “he certainly did not think that his book should be interpreted in light of what some other Christian would write thirty years later in a different country and a different context” (p. 64), he is in fact going against the historical evidence we have which suggests the earliest Christian leaders knew each other, and sought, despite difficulties, to consult with one another, and work together. They wrote their documents as tools for evangelism and discipleship with one eye on their source material and one eye on their audience. Consider for example the preface to Luke’s Gospel, Lk. 1.1-4---

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to write an account of the things that have happened among us [notice the ‘us’], just as they were handed down to us by those who were from the beginning eyewitnesses and servants of the Word (notice the sense of inspired speaking and writing), I too, having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, decided to write an orderly account for you noble Theophilus, so that you might know the certainty of the things you have been taught”

This is the spirit, and character of the way Luke approaches his source material, recognizing he is dealing with historical sources, and many have come before him compiling the eyewitness data. Considering how similar Luke’s Gospel is to Mark’s and Matthew’s in terms of the big picture, it is hard to doubt that Mark had a similar approach to sacred tradition and the writing of his Gospel. This is what we would expect from early Jews who had a reverence for their sacred traditions oral and written.

Let us mention a point of congruence with Bart’s analysis. Bart is right that the modern synthetic approach to the Gospels, which blends all the accounts together in one’s mental blender leads to distortions or neglect of the particular perspectives this or that Evangelist is highlighting. I quite agree with this point.

Each Gospel portrait of Jesus should be allowed to have its own flavor and character. The question is whether these four portraits are compatible, or whether they provide us with such divergent views of Jesus that we need to speak of one portrait contradicting or correcting the other. Bart thinks we do need to speak in that way, and I disagree.

And again the problem is Bart is atomistically analyzing these accounts as if they were meant to be photographs, not portraits and interpretive works of art. So for example Bart rightly points out that the portrait of the death of Jesus in Mark is stark and dark. Jesus says nothing on the cross except “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. We are dealing with theological history writing here. Not theology written up as history, but theological interpretation of a history that itself is inherently theological, involving the divine.

Does this account somehow contradict, say the Lukan account where Jesus speaks to his fellow crucifixion victims? Well no, it does not. Why not? Two reasons. None of the Gospel writers is pretending to present an exhaustive account of what happened. And all of the Gospel writers are writing from a particular angle of incidence, a particular point of view. They have their own themes and theses they wish to highlight and like other ancient biographers and historians they assume a certain amount of literary license and freedom in editing and arranging their material. In other words, they are not pretending to be neutral or ‘objective’ in the modern sense of those words. They are committed believers. The question then becomes do their ‘points of view’ and faith commitments lead to a distortion of the historical evidence, or to the contrary do they lead to a profound and sympathetic understanding and interpretation of the evidence? I would suggest the latter.

One of the key assumptions guiding the comparison of the Markan and Lukan crucifixion accounts is revealed by Bart on p. 68—he assumes that the Gospel writers are portraying Jesus at the exact same moment on the cross, or that each of them are portraying the whole crucifixion experience. Frankly, neither of these assumptions are warranted. In each Gospel, only a precious few verses is devoted to what happened and what was said when Jesus was on the cross. But in fact these same accounts also tell us that Jesus was on the cross for three or more hours!

It is a classic error to mistake the part for the whole, or to assume that two different angled interpretations are meant to represent the same instance. Neither of these assumptions are warranted. Luke gives us more of what Jesus said on the cross, Mark, considerably less. It is perfectly possible that Jesus went through a gamut of emotions on the cross, moving from God-forsakenness to acceptance, to forgiving others etc. Any one who has done some counseling and pastoral work with the dying knows that a dying person does indeed often go through a variety of responses to his demise, even in a short period of time. None of these sort of dynamics are taken into account in Bart’s analysis. The Gospel writers are not suggesting Jesus was “all these things at once”. They are presenting different portions or aspects of the crucifixion experience, and nothing more.

If Bart had wanted to discuss the degree of freedom exercised with historical source materials, he would have done better in comparing the differing words of the centurion at the cross. Did he say “Surely this is the Son of God” (or perhaps ‘a son of the gods’), or did he say “Surely this was a righteous man” as in Luke? Conservative Christians most definitely need to come to grips with these sorts of real differences in the account, and avoid explaining them by explaining them away.

I take it that Luke’s modification of his source is intended to convey the same thing as Mark’s original—namely that Jesus was a righteous person who died a noble death and did not deserve to be crucified, unlike the bandit who was busy cursing his fate. The phrase ‘son of God’ on the lips of an actual centurion was a way of saying that someone had ‘pietas’, piety, righteousness, and probably did not deserve his fate. Crucifixion was considered the most shameful way to die, and the centurion is suggesting that Jesus did not deserve to be shamed in this way. His noble character was reflected in the way he died. In other words Luke, with his concern to show to Theophilus that Jesus’ crucifixion was a travesty of Roman justice (and that Christianity was not at odds with Roman jurisprudence) has rephrased the original words of the centurion in a way that makes plain Jesus’ pietas and righteousness. These two ways of presenting the centurion’s utterance are compatible once one realizes that the centurion is probably not a Christian before his time, nor is he doing a Christian theological analysis of Christ on the cross.

The art of historical analysis involves a judicious assessment not only of differences in an account (and an explanation for those differences can be offered), but a judicious assessment of the important similarities in the accounts. Only so is a balanced assessment possible. Bart, in reacting to the homogenizing tendencies of conservative Christians dramatically over emphasizes, and over interprets the differences in the accounts. The end result is not a fair assessment of either the Gospels as individual iterations of the story of the crucifixion, nor does it lead to a detailed enough assessment of the history behind the Gospel accounts. It is for example, not enough to say—they all agree Jesus died on the cross. No, in fact they all agree he died as a ‘king of the Jews’ on the cross as the titulus says, and that is already a theological matter, not merely a political or historical one. My point is this--- you cannot nicely separate or parse out the history from the theology, precisely because the history is inherently theological in character, and is not merely theological interpreted by the Evangelists.

He goes on to point out what he deems irreconcilable difference between the Easter morning stories about the visit by the women to the tomb. For example he points out that Mark says the women saw “a man” at the tomb, whereas the other accounts say that one or more angels were seen. He takes the reference to “a man” to be a contradiction to the references to angels.

This conclusion I find very odd, since he ought to know that with regularity in the OT and in Intertestamental literature, angels are called and described as men (see e.g. Dan. 9.21; 10.5; 12.6-7). This sort of descriptor is particularly common in Jewish apocalyptic texts like Daniel and like Mark’s Gospel itself. And again, one has to ask the question—when Matthew or Luke read the Markan account, are we really to suppose that they thought they were significantly changing the account by calling those figures angels? I doubt it. Again we are dealing with a wooden sort of literalism on Bart’s part that does not take into account the larger context of such ‘angelic’ material in early Judaism.

With regularity in this book, Bart continues to ask the question--- why have pastors trained in seminary in the historical critical method regularly deprived their congregations of such information as he presents in this book? He suggest perhaps a failure of nerve or a “when in doubt chicken out approach”. I cannot speak for all such pastors, but since I do a myriad of church events all over the country every year in United Methodist and other sorts of churches which have pastors trained in such things, I must say the reason they are not telling their congregations the sort of things Bart is saying in Jesus, Interrupted is precisely because for the most part they do not believe in his radical interpretation of the data. Even those who are very keen on the historical critical method, would not agree with many things Bart says in this book.

No, there is not a conspiracy to suppress the actual truth about the NT in the contemporary church. Rather, there is an exercising of good and balanced judgment to allow the more radical interpretations of the data to go in one ear and out the other, because it is not true to the character of the data as a whole. In fact, I cannot tell you how many pastors who have gone to more liberal seminaries have told me this very thing. They don’t intend to convey conclusions they either disagree with, or have serious doubts about. Good for them. This does not make them cowards or uncritical thinkers.

One of Bart’s larger points is that there are theological incompatibilities between the Gospel accounts. The virginal conception and the incarnation ideas are not reconcilable, and anyway no Gospel, or other NT sources seeks to reconcile them, in Bart’s view. He insists (p. 74): “for the writers of the Gospels, the idea of the virgin birth and the idea of an incarnation were very different indeed.” Really?

The idea of a virginal conception has to do with how Jesus came into this world, by what means, and the answer is by means of a miracle that took place in Mary’s womb without the involvement of a man. This idea says nothing for or against the idea of a pre-existent son of God, and that in any case is not its purpose. John 1 on the other hand does speak of a pre-existent logos, one later called only begotten son of God in this same chapter, who “took on flesh and tabernacled amongst us”. Aha! The account of the incarnation does indeed speak about taking on flesh. This is indeed what the virginal conception story is about—explaining the human and also divine origins of Jesus.

Should we assume that a situation existed where a particular group of Christians knew only the Gospel stories told in one particular Gospel? This is how Bart dogmatically puts it--- “If your only Gospel was Mark--- and in the early church for some Christians it was the only Gospel—you would have no idea that Jesus’ birth was unusual in any way”. (p. 74). Really? Now when a writer makes a dramatic claim like this it is always appropriate to ask- “How do you know this, and if you don’t have evidence to support the idea, why would you assume it is so?”

First of all, the evidence we have suggests that this assumption is simply false. Remember again the preface to Luke’s Gospel. He knows of many other such accounts. He also knows of eyewitnesses and early preachers of the word and he has consulted him. I doubt it is in any way a wise thing to assume that Mark was writing to a group of Christians hermetically sealed off from the other Christians in the Roman Empire and without access to other Christian documents and traditions. Secondly, the very solution to the Synoptic problem that both Bart and I agree is likely, namely that Matthew and Luke used Mark, in itself gives the lie to the assumption that this Christian community only had this one Gospel, and that one only had that one, and so on. This is a myth, not good historical analysis.

But even leaving the Gospel out of account for a moment. Is it really true that only the Gospel of John tells us about a pre-existent one who takes on flesh and dwells amongst us? Well no. In fact we find this idea in some of our earliest Christian documents--- Paul’s letters. Compare for example 1 Cor. 8.4-6 to Phil. 2.5-11. Already in the 50s and 60s Christian writers believed that there was a divine pre-existent son of God who came to earth and took on human form.

It is of course true that Paul does not directly mention ‘the virginal conception’, but what he says is not only compatible with the idea (see Gal 4.4—God sent his son, born of woman, born under the law. Notice Paul does not say, born of a good Jewish man with proper paternity), Rom. 8.3 suggest knows of the virginal conception idea for he says that God sent his son “in the likeness of sinful flesh”. Now what is the point of the word ‘likeness’ in this verse? I would suggest Paul is saying that Jesus really had flesh but it was not tainted with human fallenness the way all other human flesh was (see Rom. 5.12-21). In other words, Paul already knows about the idea of Jesus being conceived in a pure and sinless manner. The attempt to treat the NT writers as if they were ignorant or ignored or were polemicizing against one another or lived in splendid isolation from one another does not work.

The early Christian movement was a tiny sectarian movement dedicated to world evangelism, and working together towards that end. Paul knew Peter and James and John, and others. He knew Mark and Luke and Apollos and others. He is the bridge figure between the various local Christian communities, and as he tells us in Galatians, he even went to Jerusalem to present his own Gospel to the pillar apostles so they would all be in theological accord about the message--- and indeed they were, if by ‘they’ we mean those who ended up writing the NT and apostolic documents.

In fact all of the NT documents can be traced back to apostolic sources or were written by apostles—all of them can be traced to about 9-10 persons who were eyewitnesses or apostles or both. These persons include the Beloved Disciple, Mark, Luke, John of Patmos, Paul, probably Apollos, Peter, James and Jude. 2 Peter is a later composite document made up of material from Peter, Jude, and with a knowledge of the Pauline corpus, but you will notice it does not appear to draw on non- apostolic source material. The claims that we do not know who wrote these books, or that some of them are forged are greatly exaggerated claims, that many historians like myself do not find convincing or compelling on the basis of the actual historical evidence itself.

We have no documents in the NT by the Judaizers, or by the super-apostles Paul combated. We have no documents in the NT then by Paul’s opponents, or James’ opponents or the like. Were there such people in early Christian communities--- yes there were, and their legacy was not preserved except indirectly because it did not comport with the message of the apostles, about which Peter, James, John, and Paul all shook hands on.

The attempt to present the NT writers as examples of dueling banjos does not pass muster when one really analyzes early Christianity in its first century period. There was not the sort of radical diversity amongst these earliest Jewish Christians, unlike some of what we find when the church became largely dominated by Gentiles in the second and succeeding centuries, and major heretics arose like Marcion and the Gnostics.

The attempt to trace radical diversity back into the NT period is doomed to failure, because it is not grounded in a fair historical reading of the original source documents. Equally unfair and historically inaccurate is the notion that high Christology or Trinitarian orthodoxy was something only cooked up in centuries subsequent to the NT era, particularly in the 4th and 5th centuries. To the contrary, we already see a proto-orthodox theology in the NT itself in Paul, in John, in Hebrews, in Revelation. Christ is already view as deity by Paul and other NT writers, and already in various places we hear about Father, Son and Spirit all being called God in the NT. That this high Christology and Trinitarian theology is further developed after the NT era is beyond dispute. But those developments were founded on and grounded in the orthodoxy that already existed in the apostolic era.

Let me be clear. If you do not like these Christian ideas, that is fine. But what you cannot do is say that the earliest Christians did not believe things like the deity of Christ or the virginal conceptions. The attempt to make 4th century Christians the inventors of high Christology imposes a myth of origins on Christianity that amounts to a rewriting of history in a false way. Distaste for this or that theological idea should not be allowed to lead to a truly biased and unhelpful interpretation of the historical facts about what the earliest Christian believed. The transcript of their faith is found in the NT itself, a collection of apostolic and sub-apostolic documents. One is free to disagree with their theological perspectives, but one is not free to say they didn’t hold such views or to suggest that there were widely divergent and contradictory beliefs about such subjects amongst early orthodox Christians. This is simply not true. More soon.

You Know the Economy is Bad when.......

I must confess to being partial to the cat in this picture--- he's so dramatic :)

BW3

AL MOHLER ON POST-CHRISTIAN AMERICA AND EASTER WEEK

There is an interesting and detailed article in Newsweek this week about the decline of Christianity in America over the last ten years, which includes an interview with my near neighbor and fellow seminary colleague Al Mohler of Louisville Southern Baptist. Here is the link, see what you think.


http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583?GT1=43002

Bart Interrupted--- A detailed Analysis of 'Jesus Interrupted' Part One

Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, (San Francisco: Harper One, 2009), xii +292 pages. Part One ( the first 60 pages)

Bart Ehrman is both a gifted writer and a gifted lecturer. Perhaps his best gift is the ability to distill difficult and complex material down to a level that undergraduates and ordinary lay folk can understand. It is thus understandable that his popular level books on the New Testament and cognate subjects have been well and widely read, and in age disposed to ‘dis’ the Bible anyway, which is to say, in a generally Biblically illiterate age, Bart’s work has been seen as confirming suspicions already long held by the skeptical or those prone to be skeptical about the Bible and Christianity.

One of the problems however with some of Bart’s popular work, including this book, is that it does not follow the age old adage--- “before you boil down, you need to have first boiled it up”. By this I mean Bart Ehrman, so far as I can see, and I would be glad to be proved wrong about this fact, has never done the necessary laboring in the scholarly vineyard to be in a position to write a book like Jesus, Interrupted from a position of long study and knowledge of New Testament Studies. He has never written a scholarly monograph on NT theology or exegesis. He has never written a scholarly commentary on any New Testament book whatsoever! His area of expertise is in textual criticism, and he has certainly written works like The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, which have been variously reviewed, not to mention severely critiqued by other textual critics such as Gordon D. Fee, and his own mentor Bruce Metzger (whom I also did some study with). He is thus, in the guild of the Society of Biblical Literature a specialist in text criticism, but even in this realm he does not represent what might be called a majority view on such matters.
It is understandable how a textual critic might write a book like Misquoting Jesus, on the basis of long study of the underpinnings of textual criticism and its history and praxis. It is mystifying however why he would attempt to write a book like Jesus, Interrupted which frankly reflect no in-depth interaction at all with exegetes, theologians, and even most historians of the NT period of whatever faith or no faith at all. A quick perusal of the footnotes to this book, reveal mostly cross-references to Ehrman’s earlier popular works, with a few exceptions sprinkled in—for example Raymond Brown and E.P Sanders, the former long dead, the latter long retired. What is especially telling and odd about this is Bart does not much reflect a knowledge of the exegetical or historical study of the text in the last thirty years. It’s as if he is basing his judgments on things he read whilst in Princeton Seminary. And that was a long time ago frankly.

It is not sufficient to reply that Bart is writing for a popular audience and thus we would not expect much scholarly discussion even in the footnotes. Even in a work of this sort, we would expect some good up to date bibliography for those disposed to do further study, not merely copious cross-references to one’s other popular level books. Contrast for example, my last Harper book What Have They Done with Jesus? The impression is left, even if untrue, that Ehrman’s actual knowledge of and interaction with NT historians, exegetes, and theologians has been and is superficial and this has led to overly tendentious and superficial analysis. Again, I would be glad to be proved wrong about this, but it would certainly appear I am not. This book could have been written by an intelligent skeptical person who had no more than a seminary level acquaintance and expertise in the field of NT studies itself. And I do not say this lightly, for this book manifests problems in all areas, if one critiques it on the basis of NT scholarship of the last thirty or so years. There are methodological problems, historical problems, exegetical problems, theological problems, and epistemological problems with this book, to mention but a few areas.

My grandmother used to say, “if you can’t say anything nice about a person, then don’t say anything at all.” So let me start the more detailed part of this discussion by saying something positive--- I believe Bart Ehrman is an honest person, who really has been a truth seeker when it comes to the Bible and Christianity. His preface to this latest volume reflects that, and I applaud his honesty and forthrightness, while at the same time pointing out that I was a person who went through the same process of deep study and inquiry whilst in college and seminary and came to very different conclusions than Bart, and it wasn’t because I checked my brain at the door or ceased being a critical thinker on these subjects along the way. Bart and I are different in that I did not come out of a fundamentalist past at all, but we do share not only UNC and Bruce Metzger in common, we also both did English literature degrees in college, which explains to some degree the ability to write and the tendency to do it frequently.

Let me start then with a general criticism about Bart’s entire approach. He begins in his first chapter by bemoaning the fact that the general populus including the church, has been left in the dark about what “scholars have been saying” for lo these many years (over a hundred actually) about the Bible. He puts it this way “the perspectives that I present in the following chapters are not my own idiosyncratic views of the Bible. They are the views that have held sway for many, many years among the majority of serious critical scholars teaching in universities and seminaries of North America and Europe”(p.2).

Now it is always a danger to over generalize when we are dealing with as important a matter as the ‘truth about the Bible’. And frankly it is simply untrue to say that most scholars or the majority of Bible scholars or the majority of serious critical scholars would agree with Bart Ehrman in his conclusions about this or that NT matter. NT scholarship is a many splintered thing, and Ehrman’s position certainly does not represent a majority view, or the critical consensus about such matters. At best, one has to say yes and no repeatedly to what Bart takes as the critical consensus about such matters. Bart Ehrman, like the more radical members of the Jesus Seminar (e.g. Robert Funk cf. Robert Price) represents a minority position which has indeed been very vocal in proselytizing for their point of view. So this book should have come with a caveat emptor--- “Buyer Beware: Hyperbolic claims about what most or the majority of critical scholars of the NT think will be frequent in this tome”. The appeal to authority or expertise in any case does not really settle much. The issue is—what is the evidence and why should we draw this or that conclusion? The other issue is--- why mislead the general public about what “the majority of serious critical scholars” have been saying? Perhaps an end run has been done from the outset--- you define a small circle of scholars as the serious ones, the critical ones, the real scholarly thinkers, the real historians, and then having defined your own group narrowly enough, you then say—“the majority of such people think…” Evangelicals are sometimes just as guilty of this ploy as others, but in any case, it does not help when one misrepresents the actual state of play of things among scholars to the general public.

Bart reminds us early on that the method of studying the Bible taught in most mainline seminaries is “the historical critical method”. It is also, in fact perhaps the main method of teaching the Bible in evangelical seminaries today as well. And two of the major things one is taught, quite correctly in the study of this method are: 1) ancient historical texts must be studied in their original historical contexts to be properly understood; and 2) modern post-Enlightenment historiography is at odds with the historiography of most ancients, particularly when it comes to the issue of God’s involvement in human history.

There is a further corollary—in order to understand the Gospels or Acts, or Paul’s letters, or Revelation, one needs to understand the features and characteristics of such ancient literature—in short their respective genres. The Gospels are written like ancient biographies, not modern ones, or in the case of Luke-Acts like an ancient work of Hellenistic (and Septuagintal) historiography. Unless one knows the conventions and limitations that apply to such literature, one is in no position at all to evaluate whether there are “inconsistencies” “errors” or other problematic features of such literature. Error can only be assessed on the basis of what an author is attempting to do and what literary conventions he is following. Let us take an example Bart uses from p. 7 of his book—the fact that in John the cleansing of the temple comes early in the Gospel account, whereas in the Synoptics it is found in the Passion narrative. He is right of course that some modern conservative Christians have attempted to reconcile these differences by suggesting Jesus did the deed twice--- once at the beginning and once at the end of the ministry. The problem is, that this conclusion is just as anachronistic (and genre ignoring) as the conclusion that the Gospels contradict each other on this point. What do I mean?

If you actually bother to read ancient biographies (see e.g. Tacitus’s Life of Agricola, or Plutarch’s famous parallel lives) you will discover that the ancients were not pedants when it comes to the issue of strict chronology as we are today. The ancient biographical or historiographical work operated with the freedom to arrange there material in several different ways, including topically, geographically, chronologically, to mention but three. Yes they had a secondary interest in chronology in broad strokes, but only a secondary interest in that.
If one studies the Fourth Gospel in detail and closely in the Greek, comparing it to other ancient biographies what one learns is that it is a highly schematized and edited product, and the sign narratives are arranged theologically not primarily chronologically. And whilst this might cause a modern person some consternation, it is not a reason to say that John contradicts the Synoptics on this Temple cleansing matter. The Fourth Gospel begins by showing that Jesus replaces the institutions of Judaism with himself—a theological message (he is the Passover lamb, he is the Temple where God’s presence dwells etc.). The Synoptic writers are likely presenting a more chronologically apt picture of when this event actually happened. But strict chronology was not the major purpose of the Fourth Evangelist, we should not fault him for not giving us information we might want to have, or for focusing on the theological import of the event, rather than its timing. Such was the freedom, within limits, of ancient biographies and histories. I must disagree with the conclusion then when Bart says “Historically speaking, then, the accounts are not reconcilable.” (p. 7). False. This is only so if one insists on a flat modern anachronistic reading of the text which pays no attention to what the authors are attempting.

The Gospel of John probably tells us nothing about this chronological issue, the Synoptics probably do, and judged on their own terms and on the basis of their ancient genre, one cannot draw the conclusion Bart does. Period. And unfortunately, this is a mistake Bart makes over, and over again, judging ancient texts on the basis of modern presuppositions about history writing, and what counts as truth or error. In fact, it is not entirely erroneous to say that Bart reads the Bible with the same sort of flat literalistic hermeneutic that he would have used before he did his scholarly study of the text. And I find this passing strange.
Let’s take his next pet example--- the three denials of Christ by Peter, and the cock crows. I quite agree with his critique of those who come up with six denials of Christ by Peter. No Gospel says that, any more than any Gospel mentions two cleansing of the Temple. Bart points to the difference between Matthew and Mark, the latter saying Peter will deny Christ before the cock crows twice, whilst in Matthew it says ‘before the cock crows”. He then asks--- “which is it?” The assumption is: 1) these Gospel writers were trying to be very precise; and 2) these two options are mutually contradictory; and 3) we should ask these sorts of detail questions of ancient historical documents because we have a right to assume that modern historical ways of analyzing this material will help us to get to the bottom of such matters and find the historical truth.

In the first place let’s consider point 2). In fact, if Peter denied Christ three times before the cock crowed at all, then he certainly denied Christ three times before the cock crowed twice!!! But suppose the Gospels writer were not much concerned to give us precise information about the intricate relationship and intercalation between denials and cock crows. Suppose, in terms of historical information they just wanted to make clear that there were three denials and there were cock crows? Of course this is maddening to those who think that we must have precision on such matters, but in fact if an author wants to be general let him be general, and if he wants to be more specific, let him be more specific. Mark may simply have wanted to be more general in his account. And since I think, with most scholars that the First Evangelist is using Mark’s account, he probably knew far more about the Markan intent than we do, and decided to be more specific. He edits his Markan account according to his own presentation of things. I could go through Bart’s examples one by one explaining how insufficient attention has been paid by him to the ancient conventions of such genre of literature, but I agree with him that over-harmonizing on the basis of modern anachronistic considerations is wrong, just as wrong as claiming there are obvious contradictions based on a modern literalist reading of the same texts. And herein lies a very fundamental problem with the ex-fundamentalist readings of Bart Ehrman.

The Gospels are not, and never were intended to be inspected as if they were ancient photographs of Jesus taken with a high resolution, all seeing lens. On the contrary these documents are much more like portraits, and portraits always are selective, tendentious, perspectival. Let me illustrate this point.
One of my favorite Impressionist painters is Claude Monet, and I really love his series of painting done of Rouen Cathedral. These paintings were done in the late 1890s and they depict the front face of the Cathedral from slightly different angles of incidence, and in different lighting. But in each case it is recognizably the same cathedral with the same basic shape, from the same basic frame of reference. Let us suppose for a minute then that the Gospels are like these paintings. Now it would be totally pedantic to have an argument that went as follows: “In this painting Monet depicts the color of the front façade of the cathedral as being gray, but in this picture he paints it as being a yellowish shade, and in this picture a pinkish shade.” Which is it? Surely one must be right and the other depictions wrong.” Of course the proper response to this silly discourse is that they are all right, because they attempt to depict the appearance of the building at different times of day from slightly different angles. And no art critic in their right mind would think of suggesting that one painting was in error compared to the other. My point is simple. The Gospels are not works of modern biography or historiography and they should not be evaluated by such canons.

Nor for that matter are we much helped by evaluating the Gospel traditions on the basis of the canons of modern German form criticism which is grounded in notions about the passing on of oral traditions which simply do not apply to the first century A.D. and in the Jewish setting of the Gospels and Acts (on this point see Richard Bauckham’s fine study Jesus and the Eyewitnesses). Various of Bart’s comments presuppose that most NT exegetes and historians assume that the Bultmannian conclusions about oral history and oral tradition are correct. This is certainly not true now in the way it might have been said to be true specifically in mainline schools in the 70s. On the contrary, there is now a lively discussion about oral history that makes clear that the notion that there was likely a long gap between the events and their being written down, or between eyewitness testimony and their being written down is probably false.

Equally pedantic and unhelpful is Bart’s analysis of Genesis 1 and 2(pp. 9-10), which are generally agreed to be two different ways of telling the story of creation, one more general, and one more focused on the creation of humankind. Besides the fact that Genesis 1 falls into the category of poetry or poetic prose and should not be analyzed on the basis of it being some sort of scientific account of creation, it is frankly not fair game to compare and contrast these two chapters as if they were attempting to say the same thing in the same way writing like modern historians. They are not. Ancient narratological conventions come into play (see now Bill Arnold’s fine commentary on Genesis in the Cambridge series I edit). And now we begin to see why Biblically illiterate folk who are skeptical about the Bible are drawn to the Ehrman analysis. It appears to take the text at face value, and evaluate it by comparison and contrast, without taking into consideration at all issues of literary context or conventions. In other words, it approaches the matter as if one could simply read the English translation of the text without any knowledge of ancient writing conventions and come to important conclusions about historical truth and error. But in fact, this is not only not proper, in most cases it is not possible. The real truth seeker knows that a text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you would like it to mean.

Let’s take another example--- Bart’s treatment on pp. 10-11 of Psalm 137. In the first place this is a song, and so should not be treated like a theological or ethical treatise. In the second place, what this song is a revelation of is what is on the heart of the psalmist. In the psalms, human beings speak to, pray to, implore their God in various ways. It is a very truthful and accurate reflection of various things on and in the human heart, including the desire for vengeance. What the psalms are generally not is a revelation of what is in God’s heart or character. But Bart seems oblivious to this point which is commonly enough recognized by commentators on the Psalms. More in depth study of the psalms could have led to the avoidance of this sort of error.

Let’s take now an example from the second chapter (pp. 24ff). Here Bart is comparing and contrasting the relationship between the events that lead up to Jesus’ death as told in Mark and as told in John, and trying to synch that up with the Jewish liturgical calendar in regard to the celebration of Passover, and the Day of Preparation.

A few historical remarks are in order. 1) despite what Bart says, no Gospel suggests Jesus was crucified on Passover, which is to say between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday on April 7 A.D. 30 (or less possibly in A.D. 33); 2) the meal described in John 13 is definitely not the same meal as that described in Mark 14 and the other Synoptics. John 13 is very clear about this--- John 13.1 reads literally “But before the festival of the Passover…” The text does not say how long before. This could easily be a meal at the beginning of the week when the feast of Passover transpired, rather than near its end. And nothing whatsoever is said in John’s story about sharing the Passover elements. This is a striking difference from the accounts in the Synoptics, and I would say the differences are great enough that we must take them to indicate we are dealing with different stories here. 3) Most scholars who have written commentaries on the Synoptics do indeed think that Jesus celebrated his last supper with his disciples on Thursday night, which is to say, on the beginning of the Day of Preparation rather than on Passover day. There was precedent for this in early Judaism in some cases, and some scholars have even argued that Jesus was following the Galilean rather than the Judean liturgical calendar, which is certainly possible and believable. Whether this is so or not, it is notable that there is no mention at all about Jesus and his disciples eating lamb….in any of the accounts. This has led some to conclude, wrongly in my judgment, that even the Thursday night meal was not a Passover meal. 4) one of the major issues in determining when Jesus actually died is the question of which clock an Evangelist is running on--- is it the Roman way of keeping time, or a Jewish and Oriental one? Which hour is the third, sixth and ninth hours, according to the respective Evangelists? Mark’s seems to be based on the Roman way of time keeping, but this may not be the case in John. In any case, all the Gospels in fact are in agreement that Jesus died before sundown on Friday, which is to say, before Passover actually begun, which is to say on the Day of Preparation. 5) in A.D. 30 the day of preparation for the Sabbath was in fact the day of preparation for Passover. It was one and the same day. Therefore, Mk. 15.42 does not in any way disagree with John when it says that Jesus died on the day of Preparation. Correct— and this was Friday before sundown when both Passover and Sabbath began that year. John did not need to change a historical datum to make a theological point that Jesus was the Passover lamb. The point is inherent in a theological interpretation of the actual day Jesus died. In this case, Bart is busily finding contradictions in the text which are a chimera. They are not really in evidence.

Bart carries on in much the same vein in his analysis of the birth narratives. What is of concern to us is not where he sees differences in Matthew and Luke’s accounts, but rather where he finds what he deems to be actual discrepancies. The first of these is that Bart claims that what Luke says in Lk.2.1-3 is clearly historically in error (pp. 34-35). What however does the Greek text of Lk.2.2 actually say--- “this registration happened first/prior to the governing of Syria by Quirinius.” The issue here is the function of the word prote. What it seems to indicate is that the census in question took place prior to when Quirinius was governor of Syria. There was indeed a famous and indeed notorious census which led to the rebellion of Judas the Galilean in A.D. 6, and so Luke would be distinguishing that census from the earlier one when Mary and Joseph were enrolled. Bart also deems the notion of such enrollments as historically improbable, at least in the way Luke tells the story. There are however very clear examples from the province of Egypt of such census taking done for the purpose of taxation. And in fact, the evidence suggests a link with one’s ancestral home. I see no reason why the Romans would do it any differently with the province of Judea. Furthermore, when Augustus decide to go for the full blown Empire deal, he needed much more money for many more troops and armaments.

While Luke may be using rhetorical hyperbole when he says all the oikomene was being enrolled, a rhetorical usage common in Hellenistic historiography influenced by rhetoric, what Luke is referring to is the inhabited Roman empire, outside of Rome itself. In other words, his audience would likely have understood the reference quite easily and naturally. Bart also takes exception to the story of the wise men following the star. He says nothing of the fact that ancients often thought stars were living beings, the heavenly hosts, and it is more than likely that what Matthew is describing is the leading of the heavenly host or angels, of these persons to the birth place. Here again however some latitude must be allowed for ancient story tellers to present their narrative in ways that their audience would understand. While Matthew’s account does not tell us that Nazareth was Mary and Joseph’s hometown, his account is compatible with this fact, which Luke does tell us. The absence of an explanation does not a discrepancy make nor should it lead one to conclude the author thought something different, especially when Matthew tells us that eventually the holy family did go to Nazareth, and why would they pick that wide place in the road out of the blue if they had no prior associations with it? No good reason. The scripture fulfillment text in Matthew is a midrashic attempt to explain the fact that Nazareth was their home. It did not generate such an idea.
Lastly, Bart wants to argue that both Matthew and Luke made up the notion of a trip to Bethlehem independently of one another based on Micah’s prophecy, in order to indicate Jesus’ messianic origins, rather than suggesting he was born in a one horse town in Galilee. The problem with this is that Bethlehem itself was also a one horse town in Jesus’ day, and among other things, the slaughter of the innocents is perfectly in character with Herod’s paranoia as described in Josephus. It was hardly necessary for a messianic figure to come from Bethlehem unless one wanted to insist he was a descendant of David, but as we know from Qumran, there were other Jewish traditions that did not associate messiah with the Davidic line. In regard to the oft parodied story of the slaughter of the innocents, we are only talking about a handful of infants at most in such a tiny village anyway, perhaps 6-8. There is nothing improbable about a birth in Bethlehem at all or a slaughter of a few infants. Jesus was called Jesus of Nazareth because he grew up there from infancy.

Differences there are indeed in the accounts of the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. And they are not explained by denying their existence, or resorting to false harmonizing tactics and exegetical gymnastics. We are not however talking about direct contradictions at all here. These narratives are quite compatible in all their essential details, and it is remarkable that two such independent accounts would in fact emphasize the same crucial points--- a virginal conception and a birth in Bethlehem. This did not happen because they were both creative exegetes. It happened because they both relied on historical sources of information about these events. Ehrman’s conclusion that “there are historical implausibilities and discrepancies that can scarcely be reconciled” (p. 34) is saying far more than he knows or the evidence suggests. Had Luke said Jesus was born in Nazareth and Matthew said no he was born in Bethlehem, then we would have a contradiction. But we find nothing like a contradiction in these two accounts—differences do not necessarily equal discrepancies much less equal disagreements. One has to come up with much better examples than this if one wants to claim the accounts can’t be explained or reconciled.

It is the task of a historian, which Bart Ehrman says he is, to get his facts straight. When he takes on the differences in the genealogies there are a few crucial facts he either ignores or is ignorant of. The first of these crucial points is that in Jewish law, if a man adopted a son, that son was entitled to be considered a descendant of his adoptive father, including being a descendant of his step-father’s ancestors. The genealogies in both Matthew and Luke are strange in part precisely because of this legal issue, and more to the point they are strange because both writers want to include the notion of the virginal conception in their accounts, indeed Matthew includes it right in his geneaology, and this may be the only known genealogy where the wife is included in the husband’s geneaology like this!

Bart is right about various of the differences in these genealogies. But he does not correctly explain some of the reasons for the differences. In the first place ancient royal genealogies often were prone to leaving the skeletons out of the list, and so offering an edited version of the ancestry. Something like this is happening in Matthew who wants to suggest Jesus is the seventh son of a seventh son of David, namely the perfect descendant of David. In other words, the form of the genealogy reflects not just historical but also theological interests. The same can be said for Luke’s genealogy and his concern to show that Jesus is not merely son of David son of Abraham, but also son of Adam, and more crucially, son of God. The issues here are not purely historical and it is a form of reductionism to treat them in a purely historical manner. But they were not intended to answer purely historical questions. One needs to read them in light of the conventions of such ancient genealogies, not in the light of modern historical conventions.

Scholars have long debated why these two genealogies differ, and Bart may be right that they both are genealogies connected to Joseph, rather than Luke’s being connected to Mary’s family. But even if this is true, one of them could offer some part of Joseph’s paternal ancestry and the other some part of Joseph’s maternal ancestry. We honestly cannot say. What we can say is there is no basis for the confidence that Bart shows that we have clear contradictions here. More would need to be known about ancient genealogy composition to come to that conclusion. We could carry on with this sort of dialogue with Bart’s list of complaints but we have already dealt with what he takes to be some of the more famous parade examples of clear contradictions. Some of his other examples are much weaker, and can be explained on the basis of the differing editorial tendencies different Gospel writers had, or in Luke’s Acts accounts on the basis of what were the conventions of rhetorical history writing in the first place. About such things Bart says little or nothing, because he seeks to read the text on the basis of modern historiographical conventions, a signal mistake. Ancient texts must be evaluated on their own terms and without demanding of them a precision they never were intended to have.

It is interesting that as the book moves along, Bart stresses here (and later in this study) that he does not think that historical critical study of the Bible should necessarily or will necessarily lead to a loss of Christian faith. I quite agree with this. In fact, I would say in my case that it is precisely the historical, contextual study of the Bible that has strengthened my faith in its truth telling on various subjects of import, not the least of which is the need for and possibility of human salvation. I also quite agree with Bart that teaching students to think and do critical thinking about life and the Bible is a good thing. On these two conclusions we would simply agree. What is interesting is that the more I studied the Bible the less I was prone to accuse the Bible of obvious historical errors and stupid mistakes, including theological errors about a matter as profound as human suffering and evil. To the contrary, I found the Bible rich, complex, varied, and helpful and truthful in dealing with precisely such life and death matters. It would be appropriate then to ask---why exactly did studying the Bible in the same way at seminary and during doctoral work lead Bart Ehrman and myself to such different conclusions? In my case, my faith in the Bible was strengthened, but the opposite seems to have been the case with Bart. “This is a mystery and it calls for profound reflection”. Some of this clearly has to do with presuppositions. Let’s take a theological one that seems to be at the root of some of the differences.

Bart seems to assume that a God who is both almighty and a God of love, would not allow the hideous amount of suffering that goes on in this world. Now this is by no means an uncommon objection to Biblical revelation, but what it seems to assume is a particular sort or deterministic or even extreme Calvinistic view of God, God’s sovereignty, and human life. I can see how extreme suffering and evil is a major problem for such a view of God. It would seem to make God the author of suffering and evil, or at least an uncaring deity in too many cases. Suppose however that God has not pre-determined all things? Suppose God chose to create us in his image with a measure of freedom of choice, the power of contrary choice? Suppose God relates to us relationally and not on the basis of divine decrees? Suppose the vast majority of suffering in the world is a result of human misbehavior or stupidity or sin? Suppose in addition that God does repeatedly intervene in human history to aid and rescue us, without taking away our ability to make viable choices that have moral consequences? It seems to me that part of the issue here is that Bart and I have very different views of the Biblical God and how God actually operates.
Here’s another quandary and quagmire. It appears to me that Bart and I disagree profoundly about the import of textual variants. As Bruce Metzger who taught us both once said--- we know what about 92% of the NT said in its original manuscripts with a rather high degree of certainty. As for the other 8%, very little of theological or ethical consequence is at stake. For example, the Trinity is not at stake if 1 John 5 did not mention it. The deity of Christ is not at stake just because some NT documents do not mention it directly, and some unscrupulous scribes added some clarity to this matter in other manuscripts in ways that distorted some NT manuscripts.

We also disagree rather strongly on the degree of flux in belief and in the handling of NT documents early on. It is simply not true to say that many of the primary Christian doctrines were not affirmed widely until centuries after the time of Christ. It is also not true that any such doctrines hang on only late copies of this or that NT book. When it comes to the issue of textual variants, the development of the textual tradition, and the theological import of such variants, Bart simply over-reads the evidence, or as the British say, over-eggs the pudding.

Now I think I understand why he does this. He rightly gets peeved with those fundamentalists who want to stick their heads in the sand and say, there are no such issues or problems even in the least. But an over-reaction is just that--- an over-reaction. Throughout this book, the real boogeyman that Bart is trying to refute is fundamentalists who hold to a certain wooden and very literal view of inerrancy which hardly takes ancient historical considerations into account at all. I would actually have as many problems with the same people as I have with Bart’s views.

He also does not do justice to a reading of these texts in light of ancient genre, conventions, purposes, history writing and the like, but for very different reasons. The reasons seem to include that he is a ardent convert from fundamentalism to a very narrow and all too modern form of historical critical analysis of these texts-- a form that starts with an inherent skepticism about the supernatural among other things, and assumes that critical thinking equals the ability to doubt this, that or the other ancient datum. I call this justification by doubt. It is no more a valid starting point for evaluating the NT than blind fideism is. Indeed, I would argue that to actually understand an ancient author you must start by giving them the benefit of the doubt and hear them out, doing one’s best to enter creatively into their own world and thought processes before understanding can come to pass. To approach the text with a hermeneutic of suspicion is to poison the well of inquiry before one even samples the water in the old well.

Bart and I furthermore disagree on the issue of pseudonymity in the canon. It is one thing to say there are anonymous documents in the NT, which there are. Hebrews would be a good example. It is another thing to say that there are pseudonymous documents in the NT, forgeries. I and many other critical scholars think this is not so, but Bart is right that many scholars think otherwise. My point is simply this--- there is a healthy debate about that issue amongst scholars. It is not a “well assured result of the historical critical method” on analyzing the NT. I have pointed out at length in my Letters and Homilies of the NT, series the problems that pseudonymity raised in the first century A.D. for both Greek and Latin writers, never mind writers of documents supposed to convey God’s truth. The Gospels as we have them are formally anonymous in terms of their internal evidence, though the Fourth Gospel tells is that the Beloved Disciple (not specifically identified) is the source of the material in that Gospel. We can discuss the merits of the attributes later appended to these Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John), but in my view the testimony of Papias is important, and makes evident these attributions already existed in the first century, and in some cases during the time when there were still eyewitnesses. They cannot be dismissed with a wave of a hand, but at the same time one needs to ask--- what were the conventions when it came to appending names to composite documents? This deserves more discussion. In the second part of this post, we will pick up the discussion with Chapter Three. Stay tuned.